One More Kiss (Affair Without End Book 2)

by Ward, Susan

  I shrug. “It’s no big deal. I had to make a phone call. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Jack’s eyes round. “A call about what?”

  I lift my chin. “Just a call back on a job interview from last week. I’ve been striking out everywhere and suddenly someone called back. It was great, you know, to feel not completely unwanted.”

  His thumb does a light glide on my chin. “You are very wanted. Always. By me.” His hand drops away, he stares at me and then frowns. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for a job?”

  My eyes round. “I did.”

  His frown lowers. “No you didn’t. What’s going on, Linda? What is it you don’t want me to know?”

  Shit, he is suddenly tense, his blue eyes drilling into me. “There’s nothing. OK? So I didn’t bore you with my fascinating adventures looking for employment. God, why are you making such a big deal about this?”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to figure out why the woman in my life won’t share with me what’s going on in her life.” This time his palm cups my chin and turns my face so I can meet his gaze. “There is nothing about you that would bore me.”

  Instantly defensive: “I share with you everything.”

  Jack’s eyes widen and he is suddenly overly alert. Oh damn, I said that too hotly. The way I said it makes me sound like I am being secretive, and, to be brutally honest with myself in a way that is not comforting, I am secretive with Jack about a lot of things in my life.

  As troubling as that thought is, now is not the time to probe it. “I just don’t like to talk about me. OK?” I add with a shrug.

  “Why?” He stares intently at me.

  “Because everything is not rosy and perfect in my life. Who wants to hear someone else’s shit?” I counter in knee-jerk, defensive, auto-pilot mode.

  “I do.” He frowns as if for the first time he has realized I don’t talk about me sans him. Not ever. He’s exasperated and runs a hand through his golden hair. “So, tell me about the job and the phone call.”

  I glance down at my hand, focusing on my fingers poking at the piece of parsley on my breakfast plate. What a useless thing parsley is. I look up. He’s still watching. Waiting. Insisting.

  “Please, don’t be angry with me,” I whisper.

  Jack’s eyes change. Surprise. “I’m not angry. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on with you. Why you’re suddenly intent to shut me out. And what I’ve got to do not to have you do that.”

  Jeez—I’m making us all fucked-up again, and I need to stop this.

  I sigh. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, how long you’ve been looking for a job, for starters. And why you didn’t tell me.”

  “Since I graduated. OK? Finish school. Look for work. Perfectly normal and perfectly dreary. And I’m not real thrilled about the fact that I’ve been this close—”I hold up my thumb and index finger with just a hair between them. “—to having to move back in with Doris. So pardon me for not wanting to talk about me.”

  “How long has money been a problem for you?” He’s staring at me concerned and…surprised?...like it’s something new about me.

  A part of me feels slightly affronted and a part of me just plain pissed. “Like always. My entire life. Some of us aren’t born on pretty little estates in a land called Hope, rich boy. Broke is a perfectly normal thing.”

  He rolls his eyes and I can see that I’ve irritated him.

  “You need to tell me these things.”

  “Why?”

  His golden brows shoot upward. “Because I can’t know what you need from me unless you tell me.”

  I lift my chin. “Well, I don’t need anything because I got offered a job this morning. I can fix my own problems.”

  He stills. “What job? Did you accept it?”

  Why is he staring at me that way?

  “I interviewed with Sandy Harris for an administrative position in his public relations department. He called back. We spoke this morning and I accepted the job.”

  I don’t have a chance to figure out why I just told a half-truth and a half-lie just then. Everything about Jack changes in way I find confusing and unsettling. He gazes at me for a moment, searching my face, and then frowns.

  I change course. “I know why my dad’s been calling me.”

  Jack arches a brow. “You called him back?”

  “No. Sandy called him for a reference,” I explain. “My dad actually gave me a good one. I didn’t anticipate that. For dear old dad to come through for me.”

  My flippant remark is followed by a knot that rises in my throat—I never expected this kind of emotional disquiet talking about my dad—and I look away, focusing on the window.

  “Why wouldn’t he give you a good reference?” Jack says quietly. “You’re wonderful, Linda.”

  I suck in hard on my lower lip trying to keep everything inside me from coming out. The only reply I can manage is to roll my eyes over Jack’s compliment.

  “God, you’re a frustrating woman,” he breathes taking me in his arms and dropping a kiss on my head.

  “I think that’s why you like me.”

  He snorts. “Maybe. Why do you like me?”

  I lean back just enough so I can see him. “I can’t think of a single reason.”

  He laughs. Then he’s all serious eyes, serious expression again. “Don’t shut me out, Linda.”

  I crinkle my nose. “I’m boring. Why do you want in?”

  He makes a face back at me. “You’re not boring. You’re the most interesting woman I know, and I love you.”

  He sets me back from his arms and climbs from the bed. He takes our breakfast tray out to the living room. He steps back into the bedroom and asks, “You did remember to tell Sandy you couldn’t start for a few months, didn’t you?”

  Oh shit…I manage to hold it together and nod.

  He pulls out shorts, a pale pink cotton t-shirt and flip-flops. He turns, smiling at me. “This is the last leg of the last tour ever. It makes me so happy to know I’ll be doing this with you. I don’t think I could do the next two months on the road without you. It’s been miserable from day one. My heart is just not in it, Linda. I’m going home for good, focusing on you and Chrissie, and just being happy.” He drops a kiss on my nose. “Do you think you might like having a stay at home beach bum in your life?”

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.

  I smile. Internally I am in chaos. Snippets of our pillow talk six weeks ago sound in my head with the percussion of a machine gun. I didn’t believe he was serious when he suggested I travel the final leg, the summer portion, of his tour with him. That he was done and he wanted me with him when it was officially over. The famous last words of all mega recording stars: last tour, done. They never mean it…and as for me traveling with him, I don’t recall what possessed me to say that I would, but I must have otherwise he wouldn’t think that I am.

  I stare up at him. Oh fuck.

  “How long will it take for you to get dressed?” he asks.

  “Not long.”

  “Then let’s get the hell out of this room. I’ve been landlocked for two months. Let’s just go walk on the beach, OK?”

  ~~~

  We whiz down the Santa Monica Freeway toward Zuma Beach. It’s sunny in the southland, hot even for June, and I’m starting to feel uncomfortably warm with the top down even though I’m wearing a baseball cap and a light t-shirt and shorts.

  The beach is going to be packed. Not that Jack will care. Not that Jack will even notice. A thousand people could stare at him simultaneously and it wouldn’t ruffle one hair on his head. And even stranger, people stare, they notice, and no one ever bothers him. He roams every beach up and down the California Coast and I have yet to see someone approach him. I don’t know how he maintains this brilliant distance from the world, but within it he is at his most peaceful.

  I feel his eyes on me and I smile. He downshifts as we join the slower moving traffic on Pacifi
c Coast Highway. With each mile, the tension has eased out of Jack, and the sensation of soaring along road, open air, is strangely soothing.

  We were both tense beneath the surface when we left the hotel for this adventure. I know what’s on my mind, troubling me. My earlier dishonesty is as uncomfortable as it is despicable. I look at Jack. What’s bothering him? There is something. I can feel it.

  Everything along the coast is packed.

  “You do realize we’re never going to find a parking place,” I ask.

  Jack laughs. “Of course we will. We just need to be patient and then strike.”

  “Ah patience. My weak suit.”

  He gives me a salacious grin. “Ah patience. My strong suit.”

  I laugh. I hear in my head his husky voice in long ago memory: Patience, lovely Linda. We have all day. The remembrance warms my heart, but doesn’t fully calm my worries. We do have all day today and tomorrow, but then I go one direction and Jack goes another, and our roads are suddenly worlds apart. Will they ever cross over again?

  Wistfulness claims me.

  I frown. “Whose car is this?”

  Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know. Garrett arranges these things for me. It could be his for all I know.”

  “If you’ve got a roadie who drives a Carrera, I definitely feel I wasted my time going to college.”

  “Graduating USC is an enormous accomplishment. I’m so proud of you. You should have walked at graduation, Linda.”

  I crinkle my nose. “It seems kind of silly to celebrate the ending of something.”

  His fingers intertwine with mine and he touches them to his lips. “When you end something you start something new.”

  Tears unexpectedly burn my eyes. I look away.

  He turns into the beach parking lot. It’s packed. Not an empty spot in sight. I try not to gloat as we start that slow crawl hovering in wait for a departing vehicle ritual

  “Well this is a bust,” I say, after first trip up and down the parking lanes.

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  Jack’s eyes continue to rapidly scan the parking lot in-between fast, darting looks at the ocean. The water is packed with surfers. The swells must be good today.

  Jack stops the car in the middle of a lane and leaves it to idle. “Wait here.”

  My eyes rounds. There is a giant line of cars behind us and this is LA. “What are you doing?”

  Jack climbs from the car. “That guy over there is packing up, getting ready to go. I’m just going to ask him to hurry it up.”

  I look where he points. A guy with a beat up van, wetsuit off upper body and hanging at hips. He’s nursing a beer, sitting on the open back cargo bay. He has one leg bent, back resting against interior wall, and his posture does not say about to leave. His posture says fuck you.

  “Jack, he doesn’t look ready to go to me.”

  Jack shrugs and starts moving around the front of the car. I look over my shoulder at the car behind us, smile, and turn to spot Jack closing in on guy in the van.

  I watch in wary fascination as Jack calls out a greeting and the surfer ignores him. Before I can decide which way this is going to go, Jack is half way leaning in the van, his hand on a board, rattling on in that folksy way he has. Wow…Jack’s reluctantly tolerant buddy hasn’t a clue who the fuck just climbed into his van to talk about boards.

  Jack has moved to sit on the edge of the cargo bay, legs dangling, and while his pal doesn’t look any more likely to be accommodating, at least he does look less hostile.

  I look over my shoulder at the car behind me again, and smile. I get one hand raised with a finger and the other heavy on the horn for my effort. I debate climbing over the center console and trying to edge the car out of the way, but I don’t know how to drive a stick.

  A minute passes. I turn until my arms are flush on the top of the door. “Jack, let’s go. We’re blocking traffic. You can’t block traffic in Southern California.”

  Jack nods at me. They continue talking. The next thing I know, the kid is closing up his van. He gives Jack one of those strange guy-world type of hand bump and Jack’s crossing the asphalt back to the car.

  Jack waves behind him for the car to inch back, and the asshole who just gave me the horn with the finger inches back. The van starts up with a heavy cloud of smoke, the driver tosses Jack a careless wave and the second it’s clear, Jack parks.

  I stare at him. “Has everything always just worked for you that easily? That guy didn’t have a clue who you are and he just gave you a parking place at the beach on a Saturday.”

  Jack shakes his head, part amused and part exasperated. “Everything doesn’t always work easily for me. I gave the kid twenty bucks for the spot.”

  I start to laugh, but indignantly say, “If you were going to buy a parking place why’d you leave me a sitting duck in an open car blocking traffic while you had a conversation with the guy?”

  He drops a kiss on my nose. “You weren’t a sitting duck. If anyone made one step toward you I’d kick their ass. And the kid had some incredible boards in there. He had a Gordon. Must have been twenty years old.”

  I make another aggravated shake of the head, climb from the car, and shut my door. The stay at home beach bum remark he made earlier was only half jest. The ocean is Jack’s first love, music is the second. That thought takes me back to our earlier discussion, and my internal conflict kicks into overdrive again.

  I still haven’t told him where my job with Sandy Harris is, or that I’m not going on the road with him, even though I want to. I really do. In a perfect world I’d run off on the road with Jack, but a girl in my circumstance just can’t take off for two months to be with a guy and let opportunity pass. A job with Sandy Harris is a good opportunity and I’m starting at zero, trying to build a life. Jack will get that if I explain it well, even though I did sort of technically lie earlier. Not smart, Linda…

  “Why are you so quiet?”

  Jack startles me from my thoughts.

  I look up, realizing we’ve stopped walking. I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just quiet.”

  Instead of continuing toward the opening of the retaining wall for beach access, he lets go of my hand and hops the four foot barrier. From the other side, he lifts me up, and sets me on the wall.

  I point toward the entrance not more than ten feet away. “I’ve never known anyone such a nut about the ocean that they can’t walk a few feet instead of hopping a wall. Did you know I never go to the beach? The only time I go to the beach is with you.”

  He plants his hands on my thighs and smiles up at me, but I tense. The smile is not in his eyes. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Linda. Things always work out better for me at the beach. I’m clearer. Calmer. More focused.”

  My eyes round. This is not a casual outing. He brought me somewhere public to do something he thinks might go badly. He slowly lowers me onto my feet on the sand. He kicks off his shoes. Reluctantly, I kick off my own shoes.

  We cut across the sand to the shoreline and walk along the edge of the surf. He pulls from his pocket a pack of cigarettes, pops one into his mouth, and lights it. We walk for a while with him just smoking and me an anxious mess.

  He’s not holding my hand, which is strange. He always holds my hand when we walk.

  A slight curve touches his lips. “It’s nice being outside of a hotel room together for a change, isn’t it? Just two people who care for each other out enjoying the day.”

  “It’s a beautiful day,” I reply, carefully. God, this feels so uncomfortable. Is it me? Or is it him? I slant him a look sideways under partially lowered lashes.

  He pauses. His magnificent blue eyes fix on me in a heavy, searching way. “I haven’t been fair with you have I, Linda?”

  Oh no. I’m not sure where he is going, but I don’t like the start of this.

  “I don’t mind the hotel rooms, Jack. I’d go just about anywhere to be with you.”

  The corner of his lips are held wit
h only a terse almost un-shown smile now. “Would you?”

  I nod.

  His eyes flash. “Then you should punch me, Linda. Because that would make me a first rate asshole. Not that I haven’t already been.”

  He shakes his head, shoving his hands deep in his pockets as we continue to walk.

  After nearly unbearable minutes of silence, he says, “I can get a bit of tunnel-vision at times. Not see everything. Careless.” He looks at me. “But I do eventually see, Linda. And I don’t ignore what I see when I see it.”

  The pit of my stomach does a painful shimmy. I’m starting to feel dazed, disoriented, that kind of disorientation you feel when something bad is about to come your way. His serious demeanor. His artfully selected words. Not good, Linda. Not good. Is this neutral territory for a confrontation walk?

  I can’t take it anymore. I snap, “What are you trying to tell me, Jack. What is going on?”

  He stops in front of me, staring. “That’s what I’d like to know, Linda. What is going on with you?”

  My insides go cold. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve felt it since the moment you walked through the door. All kinds of stuff going on inside your head that you don’t want to talk to me about. You’ve been remote. Preoccupied. You became instantly distant and jittery when I talked about you going on the road with me. Even when we make love it feels like you’re thinking and not completely there.” His blue eyes drill into me. “Are you involved with someone else? It that what I’m feeling here?”

  My eyes round. I anxiously look around us. This argument has gone from zero to surface-level-of-the-sun-heated in record time, and we’re surrounded by people.

  Quietly, I counter, “How could you ask me that?”

  “Because I can feel it, like there is something standing between us. Or is it someone? Just tell me the truth. Talk to me, Linda. Why won’t you ever just talk straight to me?”

  “I’m a one man kind of woman since I met you,” I say, stealing his line and hoping to redirect his mood and the conversation. I don’t want to get into our issues, not here, not now.

  Jack hands go deeper into his pockets. His posture screams frustration. “Stop toying with me. Stop trying to manage me and just talk to me.”