The No Sex Clause

by Glenys O'Connell

  “Well, that Wilson girl can have him – Anna’s too smart for that one, and too ambitious. My money’s on the television gent,” Dan replied, reaching for another slice of pumpkin bread.

  * * *

  Anna had finally fought her way out of Joey’s grasp. “I think it’s time I went home,” she told him, anger glinting in her eyes. But he missed the signals entirely, announcing that he was going to get them another little drink. “It’ll loosen you up a bit, sweetheart,” he said as he swayed a little on his feet. “But first, I need to take a…er, visit the little boys’ room.” He winked at her with what he thought was a coy expression but which Anna thought made him look like a fool. Was Joey as boorish as this when they were in high school? Or was it just being a disappointed hero that had made him this way? Or had Anna just been blinded by teenaged hormones? Whatever it was, she couldn’t spend another minute in his company.

  The moment he was out of sight, she grabbed her purse and jacket in readiness for a quick escape. The door opened, letting in a breath of fresh winter weather. And Jed Walker.

  She gasped when she saw him, feeling a shiver of pleasure until she realised that he wasn’t alone. Jed was out on the town with Maria Wilson. Disappointment was a pressure under her breastbone, robbing her of breath.

  Tears pricked against her eyelids and she bit her lip to hold back the cry that wanted to pass her lips. Jed and Maria! How long had that been going on? Had the manipulating pig been romancing the other woman while he claimed to care for Anna? Was this Louis all over again?

  She watched in frozen fascination as Jed, ever the gentleman, pulled back a chair for Maria and, bending his dark head down to her red-haired one, spoke in her ear. Her hand flew to her mouth – what was she to do? She couldn’t stay and watch another woman with the man she loved – and yet she couldn’t leave.

  The man she loved? Where did that come from?

  As she lurked in the shadows and dithered about what to do, Joey returned, clutching two more drinks and wearing a big grin, his face flushed. She watched as he stopped at a table to exchange some comments with three or four other guys she vaguely recognised from high school; she knew the comments were about her because they all shot quick glances in her direction, followed by some masculine laughter and a lot of backslapping.

  “Go for it, buddy!” she heard one of them say.

  She knew what the ‘it’ was, and she also knew damn well that Joey wouldn’t be getting it from her. Ever.

  The best thing she could do would be to leave, she told herself, but the path to the door would take her right by Jed’s table, and she simply couldn’t face him. She’d either burst into tears or else slap him. The latter would be the most satisfying, but the thought that all he’d said about wanting to be with her was lies brought tears into her eyes again.

  Then Joey was back at their table, pushing another drink that she didn’t want into her hand. A few minutes later, while they both fished around for conversation that didn’t come, he asked if she was going to finish her drink. When she said no, he downed it himself. Quite the little gentleman.

  Joey threw his arm around Anna and looked expansively around the room, enjoying the envious glances of the other guys he knew from high school. Then he caught sight of Maria and Jed and the smug look turned to a glower. He pulled Anna tightly towards him and whispered loudly in her ear that maybe it was time for them to leave.

  So Anna had little choice but to walk through the crowded bar looking as if she was happy in Joey’s company. She’d be damned if she was going to let Jed Walker think she’d been pining for him, the rat! As they passed Jed’s table, Joey took the opportunity to kiss her. As far as Anna was concerned, that was one move too far - he aimed for her mouth, but she moved her head at the last moment and his wet lips landed on her cheek instead.

  All she could see, as the bar door closed behind them, was Jed’s hard eyes boring into her.

  * * *

  He’d seen Anna the moment they had walked in the door of the crowded bar, as if some sort of internal radar announced her nearness. It had been all he could do not to pull her out of that big jerk’s grasp and claim her for his own.

  He told himself Anna was with her former school football star crush of her own free will; that he had no rights to her. He had to see her, talk to her, and explain about the magazine article. He cursed himself as a fool for not telling her how he felt while he had the chance; he knew women needed to hear the words. But what if she didn’t return his feelings? He knew she must have been hurt by that magazine article. No matter what, he couldn’t leave things as they stood.

  “You’re really into her, aren’t you?” Maria’s voice broke into his reverie. She really did have a nice voice – he hadn’t lied when he promised to listen to her demo disc.

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, but I …”

  “Don’t you think that’s unfair to both of them – your fiancé and to Anna?” Maria was nothing if not outspokenly blunt.

  “That article was a load of bull…nonsense,” he spluttered. “Felicity Fernley and I grew up together; our families are friends. But it was never more than that, at least as far as I was concerned. I’ve told her I want a retraction, that I have no intention of marrying her.”

  “Well, good for you – the silly cow had some nerve to print a story like that, then, didn’t she?”

  “I would never have thought she’d do something so…destructive. And Anna doesn’t know the truth…”

  Maria gave a tight grin. “It’s like one of those classic comic-tragedies. I’ve fancied Joey since we were in high school, but he’s never looked at me twice. Then Anna comes along…I keep telling myself it’s just her book that has him all hot and bothered. And you want Anna, but Anna’s off with the football hero….”

  Jed took a deep draught of his beer. “Well, then, we’d better go and set both of them straight, hadn’t we?”

  * * *

  “Will you stop! Try to kiss me one more time and I swear I’ll scream and wake up the whole damn village!” Anna was really angry by now. A girl could only take so much, and she’d had more than enough of Joey Henderson. No doubt he was still an attractive man, but he wasn’t for her.

  “Oh, come on, baby – you were crazy about me in high school…”

  “And you never once gave me a second glance.”

  “Well, I was an idiot then. I’ve grown up and learned to appreciate people more,” Joey replied. “Intelligent woman really turn me on.”

  “Probably a case of opposites attract,” Anna snarled through her teeth.

  “Come on now, don’t be like that….you could be my dream come true. An intelligent woman who likes sex.”

  “What makes you think I like sex…? More precisely, that I would like sex with you?” Jed Walker’s face rose in her mind, and her mood worsened.

  Joey actually blushed and wiped his sweaty palms down his jeans. “You wrote the book on it, didn’t you? I can’t think you did all that research without actually liking it…”

  That did it. Anna’s anger boiled over and she made good on her threat. She opened her mouth and screamed bloody murder, loud enough to wake up not just Knotting Grove but the adjacent town and the next town along as well. Joey cringed against the wall of the war memorial where they’d stopped to read the names of Joey’s family who had fought in the last two wars.

  If he wasn’t careful, he was going to become another dead man in the war between the sexes, Anna thought grimly.

  * * *

  Jed stopped in his tracks and Maria collided with him. “Oh my god – that was Anna screaming! What is that idiot doing to her!”

  “What is he doing to her? What is she doing to him, you mean!”

  They both took off at a run, Maria struggling in her heels on the rough sidewalk. She fell once and Jed had to turn back to help her up. Then he sped off again in the direction from which the screams were coming. He and Maria both stopped simultaneously, shock r
eflected on both their faces, as they saw Joey cowering up against the monument with his arms over his head, and Anna standing with her hands on her hips, still screaming.

  Jed reached Anna and pulled her into the protective circle of his arms, putting his mouth over hers in a hot kiss to stop the screams. A kiss that continued long after Anna had lapsed into silence.

  Maria ran over to Joey, kneeling beside him on the granite foundation of the monument and pulling his arms down from his face and muttering little reassuring cooing sounds. “What is it? Where are you hurt? What did she do to you?”

  Joey gulped. “Nothing except that awful screaming! I thought half the town would be out here by now, and I’d be blamed….”

  “Whatever did you do to make her scream like that?”

  “I just said I was interested in her because I like a woman who likes sex…Owwww!”

  Maria had slapped him hard across the face. “What’s with you, asking the Mouse if she likes sex? Shame on you, Joey Henderson!”

  “I didn’t think she’d mind, with that book of hers and all.”

  “Well, now you know. Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “Ask you what?”

  “If I like sex?”

  “Do you?”

  “I might, with the right guy…”

  “And would there be any chance that I…?”

  “It would depend on how much you liked me. And how much I liked you…”

  Joey had managed to stand up now, although he was keeping a wary eye on Anna.

  “I’ve always liked you a lot, Maria. But you were so talented and I always thought you’d be a big star and you’d not be interested in a broken down football player.”

  “Joey?”

  He gave a long sigh. “Yes, Maria?”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Yes, Maria.”

  * * *

  It was warm and quiet in the Adams comfortable living room. Jed had walked her home and kissed her goodnight passionately. “I’ll stay tonight at the hotel and be back for you tomorrow, we’ll talk this over then,” he promised. Thinking about it, Anna had to smile – even the great Media Mogul had been intimidated by the sight of Sofia standing on her doorstep, arms folded, dressed in a fleecy housecoat.

  After he’d left, she found it hard to sleep. Excitement at the idea that Jed was returning for her, on top of the strange events of the evening, made her restless, so she picked up a couple of paperback books and curled up with a warm knitted afghan in the living room. But her thoughts constantly strayed from the book she’d chosen, and her eyes scanned the photographs that abounded in the little room. To her amazement, many of them were of her at different ages.

  Christmas cards displayed in a tree shaped wall bracket gave testimony to how well her foster parents were liked in their community. Funny how memory plays tricks, she mused.

  To Anna, the Adams had always seemed frugal, strict and cold.

  But had it really been like that? With the distance of time, was she seeing more clearly?

  Granted, they had always celebrated Christmas as a religious festival, clinging to the beliefs that began the whole story and eschewing commercialism. But could they really be faulted for that? Sofia had grown up in Communist Russia, at a time when even food was scarce, and she had learned the value of everything she had, along with the determination to never sink into poverty again.

  Gifts had been in large part, handmade, small, unfashionable things that other kids in her school probably laughed at. Memory tickled her mind. Yes, there was the year when they bought her the CD player, a dream come true for a music lover.

  And another year when things had been tough right up until Christmas, food very basic, the heat turned down because of the high cost of oil to heat the old house, costs cut to the bone. Her expectations, and those of the two other foster children staying with the Adams, had been depressingly minimal.

  And then, with big smiles, they’d presented all the children with the gifts they’d most set their hearts on – gifts that went far behind the payments they received from social services. The frugal weeks were explained.

  They’d bought Anna a laptop computer. Oh, it had been a basic model, but for an aspiring writer it was like being handed the keys to heaven. And the Adams had been as fascinated by it as she had been. She remembered the secretive looks they’d exchanged over Christmas morning breakfast, when a gift-opening ban was announced that remained in place until after church.

  And the big delighted grins on their faces when they’d pulled that big, brightly wrapped package out from behind the Christmas tree.

  How come she’d forgotten the good times that her foster parents had tried, in their own quiet way, to provide for her as if she were truly their own daughter? The answer was plain – she was an angry little girl who could not get over losing her parents so suddenly. Not just her parents, but the comfortable detached home, the pretty pink bedroom of her own, and the tiny paddock behind the house that had housed the pony that had been a gift for her sixth birthday. The friends who lived all around her street, the car rides and treats and movies and…things that somehow represented all the security of love and objects that middle class American children expected to have in their lives, that they took for granted.

  At the age of eight, she’d lost everything she’d ever known. And who did the Adams think they were that they could replace all that?

  They were the only people who’d stepped forward and given the rebellious and angry eight year old a home. But I was too angry, hurt and frightened to ever trust them, or anyone else, again. People you loved went away and hurt you.

  But the Adams were always there…..

  And now there was Jed. She’d met him only recently and yet she felt as though she’d known him her whole life. Could she cast off the last remnants of her childhood tragedy and risk trusting and loving him? It felt like she was being asked to leap off a cliff and just have the faith that there would be a safety net below.

  What was it Sofia and Dan always said about their faith in a Divine power? Faith means jumping and believing that God will catch you.

  Was she ready to take that chance with Jed?

  * * *

  Jed stared out of the window at the rising sun scattering pink blossom reflections on the lake behind the motel. He’d never noticed how beautiful this part of the country was – certainly, the last time he’d been here he’d been too preoccupied trying to work out the enigma that was Anna to pay attention to what lay beyond their motel room.

  Last evening, after he’d rushed like a knight in shining armor – his lips curled at the memory – to rescue Anna from that no good ex-jock, they’d walked back to the Adams house together, hand in hand. Sofia and Dan had let them in and discreetly left them in the living room, but they had both been conscious of the older couple lingering in the kitchen next door. Sofia had insisted on fussing with coffee and more of her delicious pumpkin bread, while Dan had expressed outrage at Anna’s experience at the hands of Joey Henderson. Outrage which rapidly turned to laughter as Anna gave a tongue-in-cheek description of the events that led to her rescue by Jed.

  Finally left alone, they had talked for hours, it seemed, before Dan finally poked his head around the door and asked Jed if he had no home to go to, then nodded pointedly towards the clock.

  Anna saw him out, and they’d stood on the front porch, kissing and holding each other, clinging as if there was no tomorrow. He’d known then that the fire Anna had kindled in him also blazed in her, and he groaned softly at the memory of how he’d desired her: A desire that had been firmly slapped down when the porch light suddenly came on and flooded their intimacy with light, and Sofia, swathed in a thick flannel robe and with oily face cream glistening on her skin, had scowled out at them as if they were a couple of naughty teenagers.

  So Jed had booked himself into a lonely hotel room, where a compassionate desk clerk had broken house rules by supplying him with a couple of beers and a ham sandwic
h. He’d spent the rest of the night deep in thought, tormented by visions of Anna warm in her bed. What did she wear for sleep? he wondered, and tortured himself anew with thoughts of slipping a sexy hardly-there, lacy nightdress from her shoulders…..

  He’d given up expecting to fall in love; had come to the conclusion he was just not going to be blessed that way. Sure, there’d been plenty of women in his life and several times he’d thought perhaps he’d hit the jackpot. But it never seemed to take hold, and he’d moved on.

  Then he met Anna and it was like being struck by lightning, only in a good way. Strange that I’ve known her only days and yet I’m sure; I’ve known Felicity since I was a kid but there was never the same electricity between us. His mind drifted back to that store front display he’d looked at with Anna. Her plaintive question about whether families were ever like those depicted in the tableau, haunted him. The scene had awakened in him the lonely longing for something he no longer expected to find.

  How easy it had been to insert himself and Anna in that scenario! He was still reeling from the stupendous realization that he wanted to give Anna a Christmas just like that, to hold their child and watch the joy in her eyes as they decorated the tree together. He wanted to give her - his child…

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, Jed Walker, one of New York’s most eligible confirmed bachelors, grabbed his jacket and raced out to where his vehicle stood covered in the several inches of snow that had fallen overnight.

  If he left now, there would still be time.

  CHAPTER FIFTEENHe wasn’t coming back. She’d been a fool to believe him when he said he’d return for her. She simply wasn’t fated to be loved by someone like Jed Walker. She sighed a sigh that rose from the very depths of her heart as she let the lace curtain fall back over the window and turned once more to the room.

  “You’ve peeked out of that window a hundred times; a watched kettle never boils, you know,” Sofia said crisply as she came into the room carrying a large battered box of Christmas decorations. “Come now, make yourself useful. Remember how we always used to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve and sing carols?”