Jenna sat up against the headboard and brought the sheet up to cover her breasts. She shoved the tousled layers of her hair off her face. “It’s not simple, Jake. It is never that simple, especially between you and me. I agree, this lovemaking was probably fated. We always intended to make love—we just didn’t get married to do it. But to translate these few hours of passion into something else, something permanent or lifelong, when all the old problems still exist, plus a few more new ones to boot…” Misery and fear rushed in. Jenna shook her head.
Jake sat up, too, but let the sheet fall past his waist. He rested an elbow against his raised knee. “I know my life is a mess right now, with Melinda back on the scene. But she won’t always be here,” he promised.
Jenna did not share his confidence. Jenna turned away. “And what if she is?” she asked wearily.
“Then we’ll deal with it,” Jake said quietly, taking her hand.
Jenna turned back and searched his eyes. “Will we?”
“Yes.” Jake tightened his fingers over hers. “We will,” he insisted stubbornly. A gentle, loving smile spread slowly across his face. His eyes glimmered with a sexy light. “In the meantime, the old sparks between us are still there, Jenna. I feel them in here.” Jake took Jenna’s hand and laid it over his heart. “And I know from the way you kiss me back that you feel them, too.”
“I don’t deny there’s a very, very potent physical chemistry between us,” Jenna allowed reluctantly, as the heat of his skin and the thudding of his heart were transmitted through her splayed fingertips. “It’ll probably always be there, but—”
Jake shifted Jenna onto his lap. “It’s more than physical chemistry, Jenna.” Jake paused and looked deep into her eyes, the desire he felt for her as potent an aphrodisiac as the way he held her closer. “What we have is something special. Something that comes along maybe once in a lifetime. If you’re lucky. We’re lucky.” His lips moved down her neck, eliciting tingles of fire everywhere they touched. “We’ve found each other again. And this time, I’m not ever letting you go.”
Tears filled Jenna’s eyes even as she hardened her heart against him. “I know you want it to be the way it was. So do I. But we can’t go back to the way things were, Jake.” She shook her head miserably, determined to be practical even when he was not. “Too much has happened. Too much has changed.” She looked at him steadily. “Our lives are even more complicated now.” And he was moving too fast. Expecting too much.
“Then let’s go forward,” Jake said softly, not the least bit discouraged. He shifted again, moving Jenna off his lap and onto her back. Then, stretched out beside her, he draped her with his warmth and his strength. “Let’s pick up where we left off, deal with all the changes, and just go forward.”
Jenna turned her head away from him. “You can’t make something happen just by wanting it, Jake. It may work for you, but it doesn’t for me.”
Jake gave her a sexy half smile, even as his eyes glimmered with annoyance. “Only because you don’t want it enough.”
Stung, because he just might be right, Jenna shoved him away and shot back, just as fiercely, “You don’t just get to do something like this over, Jake. There are no do-overs in this life. Especially do-overs of this magnitude.” She vaulted from the bed and reached for her robe.
“Guess you’re right about that,” Jake stated, coming after her lazily.
“I am,” Jenna repeated, just as firmly, as she slipped her robe on and belted it tightly at her waist.
“And that being the case,” Jake said, ignoring Jenna’s warning look as he took her resisting body back in his arms and slowly, surely lowered his head to hers to deliver another long, breath-stealing kiss. “I reckon we’ll just have to plunge on ahead.” And plunge on ahead he did.
Chapter Six
“As much as I hate to say it, we better get a move on if we want to be on time to pick up Alexandra over at Meg’s,” Jake said as they finished off the pizza and salad he had brought for their dinner.
Still in her robe and nothing else, Jenna stood and carried her dishes over to the sink. Jake followed gallantly, his dishes in hand, too.
Like Jenna, he was still glowing from their second round of lovemaking. Which had been, to Jenna’s amazement, even more tender and incredibly arousing and satisfying than the first. For years now, she had channeled all her passion into her work. Tonight, she had channeled it into her relationship with him. She was both amazed and a little unnerved at how good that felt. She hadn’t expected to fall in love with him all over again, yet that was exactly what was happening. To them both.
Nevertheless, at least one of them needed to be sensible and she guessed, from the ardent look in his eyes, it was going to have to be her.
Ignoring how sexy Jake looked in jeans and bare feet, his shirt open to the waist, Jenna slid her dishes into the dishwasher. She straightened, looked him straight in the eye. Calling on every inch of practicality she possessed, Jenna told him softly, “I know what you want, but…I’m not going back to the ranch with you tonight.”
She held up a hand before a frowning Jake could interrupt. “And don’t give me that look,” Jenna continued sternly, knowing she had every right to want some time to herself after all that had happened tonight. Tightening her robe around her, she padded barefoot back to the bedroom, gathering up their discarded clothes as she went.
Jenna thrust Jake’s socks and boots at him, then watched as he sat down on the mussed covers of her bed to put them on. “Buster and Miss Kitty are sufficiently settled in for you to manage them on your own. Nor are you in need of any kind of chaperone or buffer tonight, since Clara will be there to sleep and Melinda will not. Besides—” Jenna sighed as she hunted around for her slippers. “I have to be here early tomorrow to open the shop. And I need to get more done on Alex’s new wardrobe.” Steadying herself by curling a hand around Jake’s biceps, she slid her feet into her ballet-style terry-cloth slippers, one at a time. Finished, she looked up at him, wishing he didn’t look and smell so darn sexy. “For some reason,” Jenna said. “I don’t seem to get a lot of work done when you’re around.”
Jake smiled, and when she removed her hand from his arm, he caught it and brought it up to his lips. “You’re saying I’m a distraction?” He kissed the back of her hand tenderly.
A mixture of longing and satisfaction shimmered through her. “So much so I think it’s best if I sleep at my apartment tonight.” She needed time to consider what she was really getting herself into here, and prepare for what was coming next.
Jake studied her, sensing there was more she was deliberately not saying. “You want to meet with my mother tomorrow morning, don’t you?” He preferred she skip it. At the very least, put it off indefinitely.
Jenna sighed with a weariness and trepidation that cut clear through to her soul. “I admit I want to hear what Patricia has to say.” Again, Jake appeared about to object. And again, Jenna put up a hand to stop him. “I have to know what I’m dealing with.” She had to find out what his parents were thinking and feeling before she and Jake got any more involved.
“Then let me be here when you do talk to her,” Jake said softly, taking her tense body in his arms.
Jenna shook her head, even as she rested her forehead against the solid warmth of his shoulder. “No. I have to handle her alone.” Jenna looked up into his eyes. “I can’t hide behind you, Jake. Not anymore. If this is going to work—at all—on any level, I’ve got to be able to stand up to your mother and anyone else who might not want us to be together.”
Much as she could see he wanted to, Jake could not argue with that. “Alex will be disappointed,” he said eventually.
“I’ll see her later tomorrow. She’s got to have a fitting for her alphabet dress, anyway. In the meantime,” Jenna reminded as she buttoned his shirt for him and watched him tuck it into the waistband of his jeans, “you’ve got to go.”
Aligning his length intimately with hers and cuddling her close, he
kissed her brow, her temple, her cheek. “Just as soon,” he said softly, pressing a hand to her spine, urging her closer, until her breasts were nestled against his chest, “as I steal one last kiss.” And then his lips touched hers and he kissed her as she had never been kissed before, until the world fell away, and she felt that everything really was going to be all right.
“THANKS FOR SEEING ME on such short notice,” Kate Marten said as she breezed into Jenna’s shop at eight-thirty sharp the next morning.
“No problem.” Jenna smiled at her old friend. “I hear you’ve got an Air Force hero coming home on leave next month.”
“Actually, I think the whole town of Laramie has a hero coming home,” Kate corrected with a slightly beleaguered smile. “Which is why we’re spending the first night of Craig’s leave alone, at a posh hotel in Dallas. We want to have some time to get reacquainted before we come back to Laramie and the welcome-home party my folks are throwing for Craig.”
“Smart move,” Jenna said as she pulled out her tape measure, pad and pen.
“And romantic, I hope. Which is where the knockout dress comes in. When Craig steps off that plane I want to be wearing something that will really get his engines going, if you know what I mean.”
Jenna grinned. “I do indeed and I think I can manage that. Let’s take a look at colors and fabrics and I’ll show you some basic styles.” Thirty minutes later they’d settled on a design that both Jenna and Kate Marten were sure would knock the major’s socks off. Kate scheduled an appointment for a fitting in a couple of weeks and told Jenna she’d be in to look at wedding dresses as soon as they knew precisely when and where the wedding would be.
Kate thanked Jenna again and took off for her job at the hospital just minutes before the Remington limo pulled in at the curb.
Jenna watched as Patricia and Melinda emerged. Both were dressed to the nines in beautiful business suits and Italian leather shoes. Matching bags and expensive, elegantly understated jewelry completed their ensembles.
Squaring her shoulders for what appeared to be a surprise double whammy, Jenna went to greet them and usher them inside. Obviously they couldn’t wait to do battle with her. Hence they might as well get it over with, Jenna thought as she summoned up a smile and put on her “game face.” “Mrs. Remington. Melinda. How nice to have you both here,” she said. For Jake’s sake, she made sure she was extra-cordial. “Can I get you some coffee or tea?”
“That won’t be necessary, Jenna, thank you. I’ll get straight to the point.” Ignoring Jenna’s wish they sit comfortably on the sofa in her shop, Mrs. Remington and Melinda remained standing amid the wedding gowns and evenings dresses on display. “I think that it’s best that you end this…fantasy that you and my son might someday pick up where you left off the night the two of you tried to elope.”
Too late, Mrs. R. We already have, Jenna thought acerbically.
“The two of you are clearly from two different worlds,” Patricia Remington continued gently but firmly.
“Not that Jake would ever be so uncouth as to point that out,” Melinda added with an I’m-just-trying-to-be-helpful smile.
Patricia Remington sent a quelling look at her former daughter-in-law, then turned back to Jenna. “I wouldn’t want to see you hurt again,” Patricia said kindly.
“I don’t want that, either, for either Jake or me,” Jenna said.
“Good. Then we’re on the same page,” Patricia noted with relief.
Jenna studied Jake’s mother. Much as Jenna was loath to admit it, Patricia did seem to have only Jenna’s—and Jake’s—best interests at heart. “Jake and I are going to be business partners,” Jenna said eventually, figuring as long as Mrs. Remington was here they might as well get all their cards out on the table. “Did you know that?”
Worry lit Patricia’s gray eyes. “I’d heard rumors to that effect,” she said quietly. “I had hoped they were not true.”
“Well, they are,” Jenna said as the phone began to ring.
Jenna went to get it and quickly discovered the call was not for her. Covering the receiver with her hand, she turned to Melinda. “The personal secretary of a Count Something-or-Other is on the phone from Italy. He says the count would like to speak with you.”
“It’s Count della Gherardesca,” Melinda said with a bored sigh and a steely look. “And you can tell him I said to forget it. Our relationship is over. I’m not coming back. I’m going to stay right here in Texas and concentrate on my daughter and getting to know my ex-husband again. And furthermore, the count knows that very well, as I made it very clear where we stood when I left Italy!”
Nerves jangling at the knowledge that Melinda indeed wanted Jake—and Alex—back in her life again, Jenna relayed the message. Listened again as that message was relayed and another sent forward again. “The secretary says the count insists.”
An irritated look on her face, Melinda stalked over, took the phone and hung it up loudly in the cradle. “There. That ought to take care of that. Now, where were we?”
“I think we’ve said everything there is to say.” Jenna gave both women a look that let them know this meeting was over, then went to the door and opened it.
Patricia Remington looked at Jenna steadily. “I’m not just thinking of you and Jake. I’m thinking of Melinda and Alex, too. For the first time in years, Jake has a chance to make his family whole again. I don’t want him to let this opportunity pass him by, only to regret it later.”
Guilt and uncertainty flooded Jenna. She didn’t want to stand in the way of Jake’s happiness, either. It was obvious, at least to Jenna and to Jake, that Melinda was not and never had been the right woman for him. It was also obvious that Melinda resented and looked down on Jenna, and that Jenna’s presence would likely cause problems for Jake—and perhaps Alex, too—as long as Melinda was around.
Her shoulders knotted with tension, Jenna held the door open. “I appreciate your stopping by.” The way she said it gave them no choice but to leave.
“Well, I never!” Melinda fumed with a toss of her head as she stalked out.
“I’m sorry, Jenna,” Jake’s mother said. “For everyone’s sake, I felt obliged to let you know how Jake’s father and I feel.”
“Well, you’ve done that, all right,” Jenna shot back, just as honestly.
And it hurt, knowing Jake’s parents wanted him back with his ex-wife, both for Alex’s sake and because they found Melinda more socially acceptable.
Jenna watched Patricia join her former daughter-in-law at the car. Jenna stayed at the window until the sleek black limo pulled away from the curb. With a sigh, Jenna turned and headed for the back of the boutique. She’d barely reached the storeroom when she realized she was not alone.
Her sister, Dani, and her brand-new husband, Beau Chamberlain, were standing there. Jenna had only to look at the distressed and worried looks on their faces to realize what had happened. “You heard that, didn’t you?”
“Sorry.” Beau said. “But we were across the street and saw them arrive. We didn’t know whether you needed help or not, but we thought we would slip in the back and ride to your rescue just in case.”
“Fortunately, you seemed to handle them just fine,” Dani added.
“Mrs. Remington doesn’t scare me the way she used to,” Jenna said. In fact, she was beginning to feel a little sorry for Patricia Remington—she was so out of touch with her son. And yet she clearly loved Jake, and wanted only the best for him and Alex. Patricia was just wrong about what was best.
“As well she shouldn’t,” Beau interjected, protecting Jenna as fiercely as if he had been a part of their family since day one, instead of for just a few weeks.
Dani shook her head. “When I remember what Mrs. Remington said about you—”
Beau lifted a curious brow, prompting Jenna to illuminate, “Patricia and Danforth Remington were very upset when they found out Jake and I had been seeing each other for years, without their knowledge. Or approval.” Jenna dr
ew a breath, recalling how hurt and angry Jake’s parents had been the night it had all come to an end. “They told Jake I was a social-climbing gold digger, that I was just using him to create a better life for myself.”
“Only thing is, we Lockharts never cared a hoot about belonging to high society, and we were never poor,” Dani said. “At least not in any way that counted. Mom and Dad worked very hard to provide for us.”
“They just didn’t count on a devastating tornado,” Jenna said sadly, remembering how hard things had been for them financially after their parents’ death. The ranch had still been heavily mortgaged. There were debts. Funeral expenses. The expenses of selling the ranch and moving into a much smaller place while saving every penny possible for the continuing education of them all. It hadn’t been easy for Jenna or her sisters.
But not wanting to talk about that, or think about how little Mr. and Mrs. Remington really knew about her, Jenna turned to Beau and said, “I saw your new movie, Bravo Canyon. And I hear it’s still at number one for the third week in a row. That must feel pretty good.”
“It does.” Beau grinned. He wrapped his arm around Dani’s shoulders. “But not as good as being married and having a baby on the way.”
They looked so much in love. Jenna couldn’t help but be happy for them. “So, how was the honeymoon? Or do I even have to ask?” she said, taking in their glowing faces.
“It was romantic,” Dani said with a heartfelt sigh.
“Very romantic.” Jake smiled and kissed the top of Dani’s head.
“Not that it’s over yet,” Dani continued.
“No.” Beau wrapped his arms around his wife, bent her backward from the waist, and kissed her long and deep. “We plan to keep this one going for a very long time.”
Dani sighed and wrapped her arms around Beau’s neck and kissed him back. “Inifinity, even,” she murmured dreamily.
“Stop!” Jenna said. “You two are making me jealous.”
“Really.” Dani studied Jenna as Beau slowly set her on her feet once again. Dani teased, “I could have sworn your cheeks had a telltale blush in them, too, when Jake’s name came up.”
The Bride Said, Finally! (The Lockharts of Texas) Page 13
