“Will you stay with him?”
“For the foreseeable future.”
“Then why not marriage?”
“It’s hard to be married with a career like mine.”
“But your relationship with Ben isn’t much different from the way many marriages work.”
Caroline shot her a dubious glance. “Long-distance?”
“He visits you during the week, and you spend weekends together.”
“Unless I’m on trial, in which case I spend weekends in the office.”
“Married people do that, too, when their work demands it. Ron did it.”
“And look what happened.”
Leah dug in her pocket for the car keys. “His work hours didn’t cause the divorce.”
“What did?”
“Boredom.” She opened the door, set her bundle inside, and reached for the bag Caroline held. “On the surface, Ron was perfect. He was everything Mother wanted me to have in a husband. Beneath the surface, we’re talking serious hangups. He was twenty-nine going on fifty. He couldn’t stand change. He wanted lamb chops for dinner on Monday, fish on Tuesday, chicken on Wednesday, and, so help me, even if we ate out, that’s what he’d have. He was a computer genius. Too much so. He was programmed to the hilt.”
“Did he make love that way, too?”
“In a fashion.” But in the next breath Leah wasn’t thinking of Ron in bed. She was thinking of Jesse, who let one feeling inspire the next in a carnal stream-of-consciousness. Ellen McKenna would adore him. Not sexually, of course.
“Ben is an inventive lover,” Caroline said.
Leah tore her mind from Jesse’s body and said with as much poise as she could, “That figures. He’s an artist. He’s creative.”
Caroline made a sound that held hint of longing and desire, and reflected what Leah was trying so desperately not to feel.
“So why don’t you marry him?” she asked sharply.
“Why should I? What can a marriage license offer that I don’t already have?”
“Aren’t you afraid you might lose him?”
“Ben adores me. He wants to spend the rest of his life with me.”
“Then why not marriage?”
“You are as bad as Annette,” Caroline charged. “What is so all-fired important about marriage? I could understand it, if Ben and I wanted kids. But I’d be a lousy mother, having had a lousy example, and, anyway, I don’t have time to have kids. So that’s one argument down the tubes. And another—I don’t need Ben’s money. And another—I don’t need his name. Why marriage? is more the question.”
Leah closed the door on the bundles and leaned against the car. “Is it that he doesn’t fit the image?”
“The image of what?”
“Of what Ginny wants in a son-in-law?”
Caroline barked out a laugh. “I do what I want, not what Ginny wants.”
“Yes,” Leah said, “that’s what we tell ourselves, only it isn’t always true. We think we’re doing what we want—like when I moved to Washington to rebuild my life after my second divorce. Since I’d married the kind of man Mother wanted twice, and failed, I was declaring my independence. So what did I do? Being a stranger in a strange town, I gravitated toward people who just happened to be related to people Ginny knew, which was how I knew them in the first place. I found them acceptable, because they were prominent, wealthy, and well connected. Those were the things I’d been taught to value. So I ended up with the same friends Ginny would have chosen for me—even though I had myself convinced that I was doing my own thing.”
“I am doing my own thing,” Caroline insisted. “Ben’s being so different proves it.”
Leah was suddenly impatient. “But you won’t marry him. What I’m asking is whether the problem is that he isn’t what we were taught to want.”
Caroline shook her head. “No. Definitely not. That isn’t the case here. My not marrying Ben has nothing to do with prominence, wealth, or connections. It’s me. That’s all.”
“You don’t think Ginny would make a fuss if you married him?”
“She’d find it far preferable to my dying an old maid. Of course, she’d insist on a prenuptial agreement. But that’s Ginny.”
“Would you draw one up?”
“No.”
“Strange, coming from a lawyer.”
“No. I know Ben. I know how he lives and what he wants in life. He has far more pride than greed.”
Leah continued to look at her sister’s face for a thoughtful moment, then shook her head in amazement.
“What’s the matter?” Caroline asked.
“You’re so sure, and about so many good things. You’re very lucky.” And Leah was very envious. She started around the car. “Need a ride back?”
“Thanks, but I’m just starting here. Annette and I spent the morning at the mall. She bought T-shirts and jeans. She says the doesn’t wear them at home because she wants to look more wifely, but since Jean-Paul sent her here, to hell with that. She’s rebelling.”
“Poor Annette,” Leah said, then grinned dryly. “Never thought I’d say that. I must be going soft.” She opened the driver’s door. “I’m heading back. See you later.”
Leah loved baking bread. She loved kneading dough and watching it rise. She loved punching it down, dividing it, and braiding it. Mostly she loved the smell when the hot bread came from the oven.
The smell this time was robustly maple with something exotic thrown in.
She made six loaves. By the time the first four had been wrapped and the last two set on racks to cool, clouds had rolled in from the west, and Caroline and Annette had returned.
“Smells divine,” Annette said and tasted the slice Leah offered. “Mmmmm. Tastes divine.”
“Where are you going?” Caroline asked as Leah pulled on a sweater.
“I promised Julia a loaf.”
“The Julia?”
“The very one.” She glanced at the clouds. “Think I’ll make it there and back before the rains come?”
“Nope.”
But Leah wanted to try. Carrying three loaves, she dashed for the car and slid in. She was buckling her seatbelt when the first raindrop hit her windshield. By the time she had figured out how to turn on the wipers, she needed them.
She started slowly down the drive, wondering whether she wanted to drive into town after all. Julia didn’t need the bread tonight. Besides, only two of the loaves were for her.
At the twist of the drive, just out of sight of the house, she turned onto a rutted path. Several minutes later, she pulled up behind Jesse’s pickup.
Sheltering one of the loaves under her sweater, she made a run for the back door and let herself into a small outer room that was home to boots, shovels, rain gear, hurricane lanterns, and a neat stack of chopped wood. A second door led into the cottage.
She was drawn into the room. Even without Jesse, warm feelings touched her. She didn’t know whether it was the soft brown-and-russet tones that did it, or the nature photographs on the wall, or the woodsy smell, or the compactness. But she felt comfortable here, completely at home, even excited.
She refused to think that it was destiny. She was simply taking life one step at a time.
“Hi,” he said softly.
She whirled around, blushing. “Hi. I—your door wasn’t locked.”
“It never is.” He approached, looking oddly unsure. “Wet outside?”
She nodded, which was about all she could do. She didn’t understand how she could be so drawn to a man as to be speechless, but she was. Jesse did that to her—the dark spikes of hair on his brow, the thick shadow on a square jaw, the way he stood with his weight on one hip, the veins on his forearm. She couldn’t believe that this incredible man had been inside her. His presence took her breath away.
He sniffed. “What smells so good?”
Blushing still and breathless, she produced the forgotten loaf from under her sweater. “I made maple-curry bread. It’s my be
st.”
“And still warm.”
“Vaguely. I have two loaves in the car for Julia, but I don’t know if I want to drive into town in the rain.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t—”
He kissed her then, and whatever protest she had been about to make was forgotten. She was in heaven—tasting him, smelling him, feeling him.
When he released her mouth, she kept her head tipped up, eyes closed, breathing soft and shallow. “I wasn’t sure if it was real. I was my old self again today. I kept thinking I’d dreamed it all up.”
“You didn’t.”
She wrapped her arms round his neck. “You smell good.” She opened her eyes. “A little like dirt.”
“It’s my hands. They’ve been in the greenhouse.”
“It’s a healthy smell.”
Holding her face with those healthy-smelling hands, he kissed her more deeply. She was feeling weak-kneed when he said, “Let me clean up. Then I’ll drive you to Julia’s.”
She followed him into the kitchen, watching him walk, watching him stop before the sink, watching him reach for the soap.
He shot her a self-conscious smile.
She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I love your photographs. Did a local artist take them?”
“You could say that.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “They’re keepsakes from my trips.” He lathered his hands. “The canals are in St. Petersburg. The crocs are in Tanzania. The fishing trawler is in the Bering Strait.”
“You took them yourself?”
“Why so surprised?”
“They’re very professional. Do you sell them?”
“No. It’s just a hobby.”
“I don’t see lots of equipment.”
“I don’t own lots of equipment. Just a camera.”
Charlie had been into photography. He had state-of-the-art equipment, plus every imaginable gadget, yet he couldn’t have produced a photograph like one of Jesse’s if his life had depended on it.
“Just a camera,” Leah echoed with the release of a breath.
Jesse rinsed his hands. “So, what did you think of Downlee?”
Nosy was the first word that came to mind, and, a day or two before, she might have used it. But it seemed too harsh now. “It’s curious, in a friendly kind of way. What was it like growing up here?”
“Intimate. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
“That can be devastating.”
“It wasn’t. My mother left when I was little. Since everyone knew it, they all mothered me.”
Leah was horrified. “Why did she leave?”
“She and my father had differences.”
“How awful for you.”
He smiled sadly. “Children adapt. There were other people who loved me.”
“Certainly your father.”
“In his way.” He was shooting her bemused glances as he wiped his hands. “I can’t picture you in the city.”
She leaned against the counter, coincidentally coming closer to him. “Why not?”
“You’re not hard-looking.”
“I was.”
“No. I saw you when you first got here. Not even then.”
She had an odd thought. “When was it, that first time?”
“Late at night. I’d gone for a swim. You were asleep on the swing.”
“You covered me with your afghan.” It made utter sense. A patchwork afghan fit Jesse far more than Virginia. She could see it folded over the plump arm of his leather sofa.
“It was a cool night,” Jesse admitted, then more quietly, “The afghan’s never looked better. My mother made it. It’s the only thing of hers that I own.”
Leah was more touched than she could imagine.
“I told you,” he said, returning the towel to its hook, “I’ve been waiting for you. One look, and I knew.”
“Don’t say that,” she begged. “It scares me.” There were implications from declarations like his, none of which she was ready to face. “Maybe we ought to go?”
He smiled, stroked her mouth with his thumb, and gestured her toward the back door.
Riding in Jesse’s pickup was a whole other experience. It was a man’s vehicle, roomy enough for his long frame, but still a vehicle, and, in that, confining. Worse, it had a bench seat. Leah wasn’t prepared for a bench seat—or the ease it allowed in sitting close to the driver.
Downlee looked different, more friendly and familiar, from under the protection of Jesse’s long arm. Once parked in front of Julia’s, Leah pulled on his hooded slicker, dashed inside, dropped off the loaves, and dashed back to the truck. He had the door open. She quickly slid in, nestling closer and closer during the return to Star’s End. By the time he pulled up behind his cottage, she had an arm around his waist and her face against his throat.
She couldn’t get enough of him—of touching him, feeling him, smelling him. She wanted to stay with him. But she knew her sisters would be wondering where she was.
He killed the engine, brought her up, and kissed her, and though the best of intentions gave her the strength to break away once, then a second time, she couldn’t make it stick. He tasted too good, and she was hungry again.
With surprising ease, she straddled him, and the kisses went on, joined by a hand on her breast, her hip, her thigh. Her insides quickened and warmed. “Ummmm, Jesse,” she whispered.
“Feel good?”
“Does it ever.”
He unzipped her jeans, pulled out her tee shirt, and slipped his hands underneath.
She groaned. “I have to get back to the house.”
He stemmed the thought with his mouth and kissed her until she was too busy to protest. Her hands combed his hair, rubbed his shoulders, slipped down his sides—using the realness of his body to ward off whimsical thoughts, like destiny. She whispered his name, begging for more, and, to the tune of the rain on the roof and the rustle of oilskins, he gave it.
His fingers brought her to a first, shuddering orgasm. She paused only to catch her breath before kicking off her jeans, opening his shorts, and impaling herself. She didn’t move, content to savor his thickness inside her. Her breath came soft and short. Her eyes held his.
He whispered a smug, “Nice, huh?”
“Umm-hmmm. You make me shameless.”
“Everyone should have someone who does that. To be shameless is to be free.”
“I feel free.”
He moved his hands over her, stroking her breasts, her belly, her backside. Her breathing quickened. She rested her forehead on his.
“I could stay like this for a month,” he said, more hoarsely now.
She gave a short, high laugh. “Yes, I think you could.”
“Would you mind?”
Mind? The slightest movement—even that laugh—caused a ripple of sensation. When he slipped his hands under her bottom, the ripples increased.
“Make that two months,” came his hoarse whisper.
“I have to be back in Washington in two weeks.”
“For what?”
“Cancer Society meetings.” She gasped when he raised his hips and came higher inside her. “Ahhhhh, Jesse, that feels good.”
“What if you missed the meetings?” he rasped.
“I couldn’t co-chair the fund-raiser.”
“What if you didn’t?”
“Didn’t what? I can’t think, Jesse. How can you?”
“Not…easily,” he ground out. In the next breath he made a guttural sound and thrust impossibly upward into a release that shook his body.
Leah coiled her arms around his neck and hung on through her own orgasm. When it was done, they stayed locked together. Finally, lowering a hand to touch his belly—such a vulnerable spot, it seemed—she sighed. “I have to go.”
He didn’t release her.
“They’ll want to do something for dinner.”
“I’d have made dinner for you
here.”
“You cook, too?”
“I’m a Renaissance man,” he said with a self-mocking grin.
She was wondering if he wasn’t just that—master gardener, world traveler, skilled photographer, cook, lover. She was also wondering where he fit into her life. She couldn’t see making love to him on the bench in the courtyard behind her Woodley Park townhouse, not like they’d just made love in the cab of his truck.
Then again, she couldn’t see not making love to him, there or anywhere else. The attraction between them wasn’t to be denied. One look, and she wanted him, and the reward went beyond the orgasmic. In Jesse’s arms she felt totally loved, and, in that, sated at last.
It was almost, almost as though he was right when he said that they were meant to be together. It was a scary, scary thought.
Jesse helped her dress and ran her through the rain to her own car. When she had trouble backing up, he slid into the driver’s seat, turned the car around until it faced forward, then sent her off.
She pulled up under the porte cochere, careful to leave his slicker in the car. She might blame her lateness on Julia’s chatter, and the mess of her hair on the weather, but the slicker would be harder to explain.
Her sisters must have been waiting, because she had no sooner run up the stone steps and burst through the screen door into the front hall when they ambushed her, one on either side, their faces intent.
“Congratulations,” Caroline said. “It’s unanimous. You’re our choice.”
“For what?”
“To call Ginny. Now.”
thirteen
I’VE NEVER LIKED GOODBYES, NOT SINCE THAT summer in Maine so long ago when the pain wouldn’t die. I decided then that I simply wouldn’t say them, but would skirt parting scenes any way I could and thereby minimize the hurt.
To some extent I succeeded. When Caroline first started college, I used dropping her at her dormitory as a springboard for a trip to Paris, where I wouldn’t be able to dwell on her absence. Likewise when Annette married Jean-Paul. The busier I was with details of the wedding—seating arrangements, flowers, food—the more numbed I was when Nick walked my second-born down the aisle and gave her away. And Leah—dear, Leah—who kept coming in from Washington last year to face the doctors with me—how could I make a ceremony of her leaving each time, when I never knew if I would live to see her again? Far easier to simply pretend that I’d be seeing her the next day.
For My Daughters Page 16
