Natural Attraction

by Marisa Carroll

  “Sixteen years from being middle-aged,” he answered before she could make the mental calculations. “I thought that might get you. Start undressing, Jess.” Mark twirled the ends of a villainous mustache. “You can bargain for Cecelia’s offspring with your lovely body.”

  “Oh, stop that,” Jessie gurgled. “You know as well as I do I’ve gained back the twelve pounds I lost last winter.” Mark didn’t seem to be listening. He took off his shirt and pants, hanging them over a tree branch.

  “There’s more of you to love. Quick, get in this sleeping bag. It may be May, but it’s darn cold when the sun goes down.”

  Jessie didn’t need a second invitation. Soon she was lying naked beside him within the comforting folds of the down bag. “On my honor, I’ll have Cecelia spayed, but aren’t the kittens adorable?”

  “They grow into cats,” Mark replied unarguably. He seemed to be studying the dark pattern of new oak leaves intercrossing above their head. Jessie didn’t care about trees; she watched Mark.

  “I thought you liked babies.” She paused, all at once serious. It was the opening for which Mark had been waiting.

  “I do love babies—in their proper place.” He pulled Jessie close. She snuggled against the warmth of his lean frame. She didn’t meet his gaze, tracing patterns across the hard planes of his chest. “It’s been bothering you, hasn’t it, Jess?” he went on in a quiet, soothing tone. “You’re worrying that you aren’t going to be able to give me what you think I want most. It’s time to set the record straight.”

  “I love you more every day, Mark. You do believe that?” There was an infinitesimal note of fear in Jessie’s tone. He turned slightly to kiss her once, lightly, reassuringly. Tendrils of cinnamon-colored hair brushed his cheek, beckoning his touch.

  “I can’t go back to formulas and two-o’clock feedings no matter how much you want us to have a family of our own,” Jessie said softly. Her breath tickled his skin where she lay against his chest.

  “Look at me, Jess,” Mark lifted her chin with his finger. “I do know how you feel.” Desire for his wife stirred and strengthened in him. She was the most precious thing in the world. How could he make her understand? Mark gathered her close. “What if I told you I’ve changed my mind?” He could feel more than see Jessie’s tear-bright gaze searching his face in the dusk.

  His intentions were the best. He wanted to settle this last hurdle between them, but the sight of her soft corral lips sent all rational arguments from his brain. He lowered his head to taste the honey of her mouth.

  Jessie’s lips parted; her tongue welcomed his. This was reality, Mark thought vaguely, the most secret of his dreams come true. Jessie was the loving companion, the friend he’d always wanted during the long, lonely years, the mother of his children: the daughters he’d love and nurture as though they were his own.

  They didn’t speak again. Jessie welcomed him joyously, glorying in the ever-renewing pleasure of joining with him. They soon found themselves reborn again, whole and complete, in the soft, damp darkness of a May night.

  “JESSIE, ARE YOU AWAKE?” MARK’S voice was rough with sleep.

  “No. What time is it?”

  “Very late,” Mark said with a chuckle at the convoluted logic of his lover’s statement.

  “I don’t want to miss the sunrise,” Jessie mumbled sleepily. “Then we have to leave. We have to be home before the girls.”

  “I imagine the birds will wake us in plenty of time.”

  Jessie rolled to her side to study Mark’s profile in the light of a low-riding spring moon. She wiggled closer, breathing deeply of the mingled odors of leaves and earth and Mark. “What are you thinking?” she asked, running a finger along his jaw.

  “About the conversation we never finished. Somehow I got sidetracked.”

  “Babies?” Jessie sounded tense. Mark caught her hand, turning his lips into the palm. Jessie lifted her face to his. The kiss was reassurance and recommitment.

  “About how close I came to losing you over a misunderstanding.”

  “A misunderstanding? Now I don’t understand?” Jessie threaded her fingers through his. A small corner of her brain registered the rustling of an unseen nocturnal wanderer. She slid closer to Mark’s comforting bulk. She would learn to love the wilderness for his sake, but it would take some doing.

  “I never made it clear to myself, though, Jess. I think I got caught up in the whole parenting thing, the joy of finding you and the girls, finding what I’d lost so long ago and thought never to have again. A baby would have been another part of us to carry on into the future. It sounds silly and macho now that I’ve said it out loud.”

  “It sounds like a loving, caring man with a well-developed nesting instinct.” There was a smile in Jessie’s voice.

  “More like a quiet mid-life crisis,” Mark snorted, hugging her close to his heart.

  “Lighten up, Colonel. It happens to all good men sooner or later.”

  “Think so?”

  “I know so, especially when you’ve waited so long. Have you really changed your mind about a child of our own?” Jessie leaned over him, the better to make out his features in the dim light. “I don’t want to destroy your dream…your ‘happily ever after.”’ Jessie couldn’t suppress the twinge of anxiety in her words. She wanted him to tell her it was all right between them.

  “I have my dreams. They’re you and the girls, a family of my own.” Mark chose his words carefully. “I felt close to your girls from the very beginning. I never felt that way toward Kerry’s children, although I tried. I think it’s because the twins and Nell are nearly adults. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “All the sense in the world.” Jessie dropped a kiss on his palm, resettling his hand just below the swell of her breast. “You wanted a family. Society says you have to start with babies, not teens.” The warmth of his touch stirred the embers of passion so recently banked. Small flames of wanting licked along Jessie’s nerve endings, but she tried valiantly to keep her mind on the topic of discussion. Mark had told her everything she wanted to hear. Relief and passion combined to make her as giddy as champagne did.

  “I wanted the companionship of your daughters. I wanted you,” Mark continued, following his own line of thought, “because you are the most desirable woman I’ve ever known. Because you understand events and times that are only history-book memories to someone like Kerry. Damn, I said that all wrong, didn’t I, Jess? I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I can be gracious in victory. I can even wish Kerry all the luck in the world if she decides to go back to David. In fact, I hope she does. California is just about far enough away for a born damsel in distress like that one.”

  “I deserve that,” Mark admitted. “But, Jess, you make me feel so young. I thought at first that Kerry would make me feel even younger.” He grunted in self-mockery. “Was I ever wrong. After you left me I felt a hundred years old. I didn’t know how I’d gotten myself into such a mess.”

  “Love makes us do funny things. I thought I was ready to give you up to another woman for the same reasons. We deserve to have ended up with each other.”

  “For the rest of our lives?” Mark’s lips were on her hair. Jessie shivered, pressing closer to his strength, the heat of his ardor pushing forcefully against her thigh.

  “And beyond.”

  “I’ll be the best stepfather three girls ever had, Jess.”

  “You already are. They love you almost as much as I do.”

  “You’ve shown me a man doesn’t have to be a biological father to be good at the job.”

  “You’re the best.” Jessie had a quick glimpse of the house they’d build in this spot, small and intimate but roomy enough to stretch out to enfold a host of loved ones. “It’s all in the heart.” Mark pushed against her thighs, beginning the age-old rhythm that would escalate between them with each successive touch.

  “I’m going to be one hell of a grandfather someday.” He rolled over, his weight pus
hing Jessie deep into the soft warmth of the down bag. The smell of crushed oak leaves drifted upward as they moved. “By then you’ll be a full partner in Abrahms and Mahoney and your pictures will be famous.”

  “Meanderings will be on newsstands all over the Northeast.” She smiled up at Mark with all her love and contentment mirrored in his heated gaze. “You’ll make one hell of a sexy grandfather. Know why?”

  “Uh-uh,” Mark grunted, his hands buried in her soft, scented hair. His lips caressed the hollow at the base of Jessie’s throat where a pulse beat quickly and lightly in cadence with his heart. “Tell me.”

  “Because you’re a natural; that’s why.”