Natural Attraction

by Marisa Carroll

  “Driving. I have to give the girl credit. She’s trying hard to grow up in a hurry. Enough of Kerry. We’ve done all we can for her. Jessie, marry me. Now. Right away.”

  “Kerry caught Mom’s bouquet. She should be first,” Jessie said, musingly picking at a speck of lint on his lapel. The stereo moved into “Moonlight Serenade,” Jessie’s favorite Miller classic. She started to hum along.

  “It’s possible she could be,” Mark said. “At least at the rate of progress I’m making. I wish her and David luck. They’ve got two strikes against them already, but if they’re both willing to try, who knows?”

  “I think Kerry is. Is that why you didn’t break it off with her sooner? I thought…” Jessie gave up trying to put her musings into words. In his way, too, Mark had been helping Kerry mature. All these deductions were too difficult. She was too tired. A nagging memory tugged at her; had Mark asked her to marry him again a few moments ago or was she dreaming? She really should ask him to clarify the matter.

  “I know exactly what you thought. I thought we’d settled that matter out in the pantry. Jessie, are you drunk?”

  “A little, but happy, mostly.” The matter of Kerry Bay was settled as far as she was concerned. Mark would always be a sucker for a small, helpless woman. She wouldn’t want him any other way. He was a good, caring man. And as long as his attentions to other women were strictly avuncular…

  “Jessie, you haven’t answered me.” Her head was on his shoulder. His arms were riding low on her waist. Their weight was heavy and comforting. Jessie nestled closer, her arms around his neck. She ignored the interested, watchful eyes of her offspring, her mother, her stepfather and her brother.

  “Will you marry me, Jess? You still haven’t said yes.” There was a note of pleading in his low, rough voice that Jessie couldn’t resist.

  “But we haven’t solved everything—”

  “We will. We’ll work on it together. I still want a baby with you, but I can understand your feelings, too. If you change your mind later I’ll be the happiest man on earth. If you don’t, I’ll still be happy because I have you and the girls. Maybe I can’t give up my dreams just yet, not altogether, but having you in my life will give me other dreams to cherish. I need you, Jess. I need the girls in my life. I love you more than anything else on earth. Does that answer enough of your questions.”

  “Yes.” It did. Maybe he hadn’t been quite as eloquent as he wanted to be, either, but she understood. “Yes, I want to marry you and be with you for the rest of our lives.”

  “Thank God.” Mark’s embrace was fierce and elated but gentled almost at once. “Kiss me, Jess.”

  Jess glanced around. They were alone—for the moment.

  “Whatever you say, Colonel,” she replied with an impish grin. She reached up on tiptoe, clutching the lapels of his jacket with both hands, pulling him slightly down to meet her questing lips. The night stood still as his lips met hers, as his tongue touched hers.

  “Mom! Not again!” Ann and Lyn stood in the foyer doorway, hands on slim hips.

  “This kind of thing has got to stop,” Ann said with mock severity.

  “We need to have a long talk about kissing in dark corners. All about the birds and the bees.” Lyn nodded to her sister judiciously; then they both burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Mark sighed, postponing for another few minutes the kiss he longed for with every fiber of his being. He couldn’t help smiling at the twins’ obvious merriment.

  “Mom always gets it all mixed up,” they chorused in unholy glee. Jessie could feel her face turning a dull red.

  “Don’t worry about that anymore, you two,” Mark growled, holding Jessie firmly in his strong, loving grasp. “I’ve had lots of experience stealing kisses in dark corners. From now on, I’ll be in charge of your mother’s education. You can leave everything to me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I DON’T KNOW ABOUT ALLOWING the girls to stay out all night, Jess.” Mark’s blue eyes were serious. His mouth set in a firm line as he surveyed his wife across the kitchen table. Jessie continued to load film into the camera.

  “It’s the junior/senior prom. They always last all night. It’s part of the ritual. First dinner and the dance, then a movie and bowling or roller-skating or whatever. Breakfast is at sunrise. Don’t you remember?”

  “No. We didn’t do such things back in the old days.” Old days? Wasn’t he still in his prime, for heaven’s sake?

  “Uh-oh, now I get it. Have the twins been teasing you about your age again?” Jessie commiserated with false sympathy. Her husband looked absolutely marvelous to her, but it wouldn’t do to tell him so.

  “Not exactly,” Mark said with a grin that was a tad sheepish. “They just mentioned how distinguished I look with all this additional gray hair. When did that happen?” He ran his fingers through the thick dark pelt, now sprinkled here and there with a silvery shade.

  “I noticed a few more after Nell sprained her ankle cross-country skiing that weekend in February, and possibly one or two more after Ann had that fender bender with your car last month.”

  “You ended up with a couple after the fender-bender episode yourself, old girl,” Mark pointed out. “Actually, aside from Nell’s ankle I thought the winter survival weekend went quite well.”

  “It did. I never thought I’d spend two nights in a snow cave and almost enjoy it.” He loved it when Jessie teased him that way. The easy camaraderie that had grown up between them went a long way toward making up for all that he’d missed or denied himself for a lot of years. She was a friend and a lover, the best of both worlds.

  “You mean you’d try it again? I’ve been thinking it would make a great article.”

  “I’ve got some great shots. Do you think National Geographic would be interested again? I can’t believe how well they paid for my stuff. We could carpet the living room.”

  “Are you implying that Meanderings doesn’t pay well?”

  “Well, you’ll have to admit you’re not in the same league with NG. But my loyalty is with you. You can have first crack at my work,” Jessie offered magnanimously.

  “Just leave out the shot of Nell hobbling about on crutches made out of ski poles.”

  “At least she learned a lesson about following directions, and there wasn’t any lasting harm,” Jessie added with a fond smile.

  “No one told me this parenting business would age a guy so fast.”

  “Oh, yes. I did try to warn you. Repeatedly,” Jessie said with a laugh. “You just wouldn’t listen to me.” It was as close as they seemed to come to mentioning anything about starting a family of their own. Jessie had tried all winter to bring herself around to Mark’s way of thinking on the subject but she couldn’t. They’d been so busy at first settling into their new life together that there hadn’t been the opportunity to discuss the matter at length. Then it had been tax season…and the launching of the successful spring issue of Meanderings. Even the winter survival weekend, supposedly private and intimate, ended up including Nell when the Peavy girl came down with chicken pox two days before they were scheduled to leave for the National Forest Systems wilderness campground in the White Mountains.

  “We’ve only been married five months. Is it too late to plead temporary insanity?” Mark reached out to tap Jessie on the tip of her nose. He hated to see her frown. She still did it far too often to suit him. She was his now; so were the girls. He’d never enjoyed any challenge in his life so much as making them happy, fitting into their lives.

  “Yes, far too late. I think you’re well and truly caught, Colonel Elliot.” Jessie smiled, snapping her camera shut as she danced away from his outstretched hands and look of imminent retaliation for her sauciness.

  “Come here. I haven’t had you to myself all day.”

  “Can I help it Ann’s formal needed to be hemmed at the last minute? You’re lucky Lyn didn’t demand I lengthen hers. I’d still be at it. Mom’s the seamstress in this fami
ly. I’ll be glad when they get back from Florida. Have I thanked you properly yet for giving Mom and Hi the use of your loft this summer?” Jessie widened her eyes suggestively as Mark moved closer.

  “Not properly,” he insisted, with a meaningful glance that promised much.

  The doorbell’s chime interrupted Jessie’s response. “That must be the twins’ dates,” she said with a sigh of disappointment.

  “What do you know about these boys, Jess?” He had no idea who the escorts were, but it was his fatherly duty to screen the applicants.

  His wife laughed and shook her head at his serious tone. “They’ve gone to school with the girls all their lives. I didn’t ask for security clearance. Lighten up.”

  Now it was his turn to feel a little foolish. “Still, you can’t be too careful. I know how seventeen-year-old males think.”

  “You do have a remarkable memory for a man your age. Tell me, what do most seventeen-year-old males have on their minds?”

  “Almost seventeen-year-old females,” Mark replied ominously. “I don’t know if I like it.”

  “Most fathers don’t, I’m told. Don’t be so worried. You’ve always told me the twins were the most levelheaded teens you’ve ever met. Trust them. I do.”

  Mark caught her around the waist, gazing deep into Jessie’s serene brown eyes. His heart swelled with love and pride in his new family. “I trust them, too.”

  Jessie was thankful for the ease with which Mark had slipped into the role of father to her girls. He filled up such a big gaping hole in their lives. Not that there hadn’t been clashes, but they’d accepted him so readily that most disturbances barely rippled the surface of their existence. With his help she’d been able to look on sibling differences of opinion and occasional rebellion against authority more evenly, more objectively than she had as a single parent.

  “What bothers me is that they’re even old enough to go to a junior/senior prom,” Jessie confessed wistfully.

  “That’s because you don’t look much older than they do,” Mark offered gallantly. “You should be going along, not sitting home with your nearly ancient husband.”

  “Bored with married life already, Colonel?” Jessie only half-joked as she searched his features for an answer.

  “No, cabin fever I think. This must be the first really nice weekend we’ve had this spring.”

  A small plan began forming in Jessie’s brain, but she didn’t have time at the moment to put it into execution. “Let’s meet the girls’ dates.”

  “Inspection?” Mark brightened.

  “Introductions,” Jessie said, cautioning him sternly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mark grinned unrepentantly and, grabbing her hand, led the way to the foyer.

  Jessie paused in the entryway long enough to greet the boys and introduce them to Mark. They looked gawky and ill at ease in their rented dinner jackets and stiffly pleated, stark-white shirts.

  “God, I remember how they feel,” Mark whispered as they entered the room.

  “Me, too,” Jessie said with a giggle. “They asked my advice on what flowers to choose.” She’d suggested pale yellow carnations to enhance Lyn’s Victorian gown and baby-pink roses for Ann’s Scarlett O’Hara-style formal. They’d agreed, and matching corsages and boutonnieres rested on the hall table. “I remember my prom date doing exactly the same thing with my mother,” Jessie whispered to Mark. “Some things never change.”

  A rustle of satin behind her made Jessie turn and stare. Were these lovely women her little girls? They took Jessie’s breath away. She raised her camera and snapped the scene through a mist of emotion. The tableau dissolved with the speed of light.

  “Mom,” the twins chorused in unison. “Don’t go taking a role of film. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Okay, but how about one or two for your grandmother?” Mark gave Jessie’s shoulder a meaningful squeeze.

  “Mother’s privilege.” Jessie spoke lightly to hide the lump in her throat. Mark watched over her shoulder. She kept her word and refrained entirely from photographing the awkward young men as they dealt with the tricky business of pinning on corsages.

  “How about a shot of you and Mark with them, Mom?” Nell suggested as she bounded down the stairs in scruffy blue jeans and an old sweatshirt that was a size too small. She’d grown over the winter, slimming down, developing the beginning of the lush, full curves bequeathed her from Jessie and Marta. “I’ll take it,” she offered, holding out her hand. “Come on, Mom. Stand over by them.” She still never referred to her sisters by their given names if she could get away with it. Mark took most of her adolescent outbursts in stride. Jessie wasn’t quite as low-keyed but she thought she’d handled this daughter’s transition into womanhood in much better fashion than she had the twins’.

  “It’ll be a nice print for Grandma,” Ann said graciously, smiling at her date to show him he wasn’t being left out. “A family portrait.” She moved under the protection of Mark’s outstretched arm never knowing the simple statement more than made up for any difficulties he might envision in molding a place for himself in their lives. They were a family, his family.

  Lyn joined her twin. Mark pulled Jessie close to his other side. “Just one shot, Nell, so make it good,” he advised.

  “Yes, sir!” Nell had taken a fancy to military jargon over the long winter. She conversed with him as though they were fellow officers. She plagued him unmercifully about his career in the corps. Lately she’d even voiced a preference for studying military science as a career. A West Point poster showed up in her room that Jessie didn’t quite know what to make of. She seemed to think the phase would pass, though Mark wasn’t so sure.

  Photos out of the way, the twins left amid a flurry of last minute good-byes and instructions from both Mark and Jessie.

  “Whew! I’m glad that’s over,” Nell observed dryly from her sprawled posture at the foot of the stairs. “I’m spending the night with Sharon Peavy. Mark, could you drive me over? We’re going to watch old John Wayne movies on cable. I’ll be home early, I promise, Mom,” she ended in a rush to forestall Jessie’s objections.

  “You bet you will,” Jessie replied, her mind scurrying back to her plan as she picked up empty flower boxes. “It looks as if a hurricane hit your room. Be home directly after lunch, and be sure to clean under your bed. You sisters will be awake by then, so the noise won’t cause an argument.”

  “Want to come with us, Jessie?” Mark asked hopefully. “We could take a little ride out into the country. The sunset should be fantastic tonight.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m tired,” Jessie lied. “I’ll get us a bite to eat.” She ignored his pique, giving him an absentminded kiss on the cheek as she headed back to the kitchen.

  AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER, HIS good humor restored, Mark rested his shoulders against the trunk of a sheltering old oak and drew Jessie into his arms.

  “How did you know this is exactly what I needed?”

  Jessie turned her head from the view of hills and trees and purpling western sky. “Because I love you,” she said simply, “and you’ve been hinting broadly enough to convince a stone you need to get out of the city.”

  “That bad, huh? Do you really intend to spend the entire night under this tree?” A smile quirked the corners of his mouth.

  “With you, yes sir,” Jessie declared emphatically. “Why else would I drag out the sleeping bag and round up enough food to ward off starvation until sunrise, not to mention sufficient bug spray to repel an army of mosquitoes, if I weren’t serious? Besides, I like it out here.” She settled back into the curve of his arm, munching on an apple core before tossing it down the hill heading to the old farmhouse that witnessed their early misunderstanding.

  “I have to admit it beats spending the evening in front of the tube.” Mark’s hands found the fullness of her breast.

  “No interruptions,” Jessie breathed, snuggling close against his hand, twining her arms around the strong column of his neck. “Are
n’t you glad I planned this little outing?” Her hand strayed along the inseam of his faded brown cords. They didn’t often have time to indulge in the sensual games other lovers played, but when they did she enjoyed the erotic give and take.

  “This place is for sale,” Mark threw out experimentally. “The whole farm. Maybe we could move out here after the girls leave home. The magazine’s taking off like a rocket. I think we could afford the land. Would you like that?” He shifted his weight, taking her against him. “In a few years we can build a place of our own. You can commute to A & M with me every morning and take pictures to your heart’s content.”

  “Sounds marvelous. The house will be so lost and empty when the girls are gone.” She faltered a moment, then continued. “The loft is a lovely place…but…”

  “You never thought of it as home. Funny, I haven’t either. It was a hobby, a place to mark time in. I’ve always wanted a house away from city lights and traffic noises.” How easy it was to share his dreams with her these days—all but one. Jessie shied away from the subject of children. The time was here, in the few precious hours alone together, to tear down the last barrier between them.

  “A log cabin?” Jessie murmured. “With central heating and at least a bath and a half. I’d like living out here.” Jessie snuggled against him in wanton invitation.

  “That’s settled, then. See how easy it is when you talk things out? Your house is too big for two middle-aged people.” Mark leaned away from her, unrolling the double sleeping bag that Hi and Marta had sent for Christmas.

  “How can you think that house will ever be empty? Have you forgotten the guppies procreating by the hundreds or the hamster the pet-store man swore was a boy or the cats…?” Jessie broke off. “Five kittens aren’t so many, Mark,” she pleaded, catching the gleam in his eye. “It’s so hard to find good homes for new kittens.”

  Mark removed his shoes, pretending to ignore her plea. “Go on.”

  “Anyway. Speak for yourself,” Jessie changed the subject abruptly, recalling his earlier remark. “I’m not middle-aged yet. I intend to live to be one hundred and four. That makes me…”