She listened to it now. “You are good, Jesse,” she swore fervently. “I’d want no other father for my child.”
Silence hummed between them. And Jesse’s image grew bright—intensely so, as if some electrical surge had increased his energy tenfold. But too soon, the brightness faded. His image wavered, and he disappeared into the bedroom shadows.
Elissa’s throat constricted with torturous self-blame. Her blindfold had been ripped away too late.
She hugged her baby, who slept soundly in her arms. She needed the comfort of his warmth, his closeness. Jesse’s blood ran through his veins, and though she’d always loved her son beyond limitation, his parentage now filled her with a bittersweet pride and tenderness.
Cody squirmed in her arms; she’d been holding him too tightly. She bent over the crib to lower him into it
A low whisper tore from the shadows, “No, bring him”
She lifted her eyes and saw no one. “Bring him—?”
“In here.”
A baby blanket rose from the crib, clutched by invisible hands. She followed it out into the corridor, down the hall and into the master bedroom. The blanket wafted down onto a pallet of large floor pillows that had been arranged in front of the bedroom hearth. As she stood watching from the doorway, a spark flared in the fireplace, and a flame burst from the kindling. Behind an antique fire screen, a small fire soon crackled and danced.
“Come here, Elissa.” The quiet invitation drew her attention to the floor pillows where Jesse reclined, solidly visible in the golden firelight, leaning on one elbow beside the outspread baby blanket “Lay him down here.”
Slowly she approached, breathing in the redolence of polished hardwood flooring, firewood and Jesse’s subtle aftershave. Folding her jeans-clad legs beneath her, she sat on the pillows and nestled her baby on the blanket beside his father. A potent contentment soon replaced the chill that had seeped into her bones.
Feeling unaccountably breathless as she watched Jesse gaze down at his slumbering son, she managed to whisper, “It’s good to see you, Jesse.” The cliché took on a whole new meaning. He smiled slightly in acknowledgment and she breathed easier. She’d been so afraid of never making him smile again.
“It would be good to touch you,” he said.
Longing rushed through her as their gazes locked. She wanted his touch. She wanted to be in his arms, to assuage the ache in her soul with the awesome power of his lovemaking. “We can’t,” she whispered.
“We will.” He made no move to touch her.
Unable to contain her guilt a moment longer, she said, “I’m sorry, Jesse. I wronged you so badly.”
“I’d rather be wronged by you than loved by anyone else.”
Though her heart swelled with fierce love for him, she wouldn’t be distracted from her apology. “I doubted every word you said. I believed Dean without question. When I think of the mistake I might have made, allowing him to act as a father to Cody!” She shuddered. “There’s no telling the psychological damage he would have inflicted. How could I have been so blind?” A possibility, a likelihood, then struck her. “Is that why you came back, Jesse? To show me Dean’s true nature?”
“I’d like to say it was, but I’d be lying. Dean had me fooled, too. I thought we were family.”
Although his expression hadn’t changed, her sympathy went out to him. She’d forgotten that he, too, had suffered a betrayal, perhaps worse than hers.
“I came back for you.” His voice softened with a sensual gruffness. “Dean was wrong when he said I never loved you. I did. From our very first conversation.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “Our first conversation? But I...I didn’t say much.” She’d been awed by him that entire evening—by his masculine beauty, yes, but more by the raw, sensual power that had drawn her irresistibly to him.
“You might not have said much in words.” His stare warmed her with its heat. “But we didn’t need words then. I think we do now. I love you, Elissa. Marry me.”
Emotion lifted her heart, then twisted it painfully. She was elated that he loved her; astonished that he could, after her hateful distrust. And she was agonized that their love could never be. She wanted to say yes, to spend the rest of her life with him, to disregard the fact that he was visible only to her, and then only at certain times. But she knew better than to hope that a future together was even a remote possibility. He belonged elsewhere.
“Don’t answer me,” he said curtly, “until there’s not a doubt left in you.”
Tears slowly filled her eyes. She had never loved him more. “Jesse, it’s not a question of doubting love—mine or yours. We can’t possibly marry. You have no future in this world. You died in that plane crash. You should be headed toward your...destiny.”
Annoyance flickered across his rugged face. “Let’s not start with that nonsense again.”
“I wish it were nonsense, but it’s not. You’re dead.” Seeing that she was getting nowhere with this tactic, she asked, “When you experienced those blackouts, did you see anything you didn’t quite understand?”
“Like what?”
She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want him to leave her. But what choice did she have? “In the near-death experiences that have been recorded, most have one thing in common—a tunnel that the spirit seems to travel through. There’s a light at the end of that tunnel. A parapsychologist told me that earthbound spirits should be directed toward that light. Have you...seen it?”
“No, I haven’t seen any damn tunnel or any damn light.” He paused, then slanted her a considering look, as if hesitating to confide in her. After a moment he murmured, “I do remember something about the downed flight, though. You know, the plane crash that...killed me.”
She winced at the sarcasm and chose to ignore it. “What do you remember?”
“I remember the plane taking a dive and panic breaking out among the men. Then earsplitting noise and smoke and pain. It seemed to go on forever.”
“Oh, Jesse!”
“And then there’s snatches of other memories that I can’t quite put together. Blurred faces, babbled voices. I thought I heard the word dakrah.”
“Dakrah?” she repeated, mystified.
“It’s a word I learned on an undercover mission two years ago, when I worked in an Asian village. We needed information about a terrorist, and I was the only one who spoke the language well enough to get by.”
“What does the word mean?”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “It means dying.” After a grim moment of reflection, he shrugged. “But then I also remember hearing Colonel Atkinson, shortly after that.”
“Colonel Atkinson?”
“Yeah.” With a half frown, half smile, Jesse shook his head. “The colonel said, ‘I’ll eat green grits for you, son.’”
“Green grits!”
“It’s a private joke between us. Has to do with a Saint Patrick’s Day we spent here in Savannah. He could take the green beer—plenty of it—but not the green grits.”
“Oh, Jesse, it sounds like you were dreaming. Delirious, probably.” On your deathbed.
His stare seemed to probe her thoughts. “You really think I’m dead, don’t you. What the hell can I do to prove I’m not?” He reached for her, and she drew away.
“Don’t risk touching me, Jesse! I’m afraid that if you do, you’ll disappear again, before we even have a chance to—” She broke off midsentence.
He wasn’t listening. He had drawn back his hand and now frowned down at it as he examined his little finger.
“Is something wrong with your hand?” She resisted the urge to take it in her own to better see it. She couldn’t touch him. She dared not endanger whatever life force he had left. “Does it hurt?”
“No, it doesn’t hurt, but—” He balled up his fist, then slowly released it, watching his little finger. “My finger’s been giving me trouble. It’s numb.”
“What do you mean, numb? Like, pins and needles?”
“Like, no feeling in it at all.”
His explanation sent a shard of fear through her Professor Lehmberg had theorized, “Maybe he’ll simply cease to exist.” Elissa’s panic flared. No. She couldn’t bear to believe it “Maybe you hurt your finger when you were choking Dean.”
“I did that with my mind, not my hand.”
“Oh. Well, maybe you jammed your finger when you fell off my bed the other morning.”
“No, I remember it bugging me before that...when I changed your flat tire.”
“Could it be from punching those men in that roadside fight?”
“I hit ’em with my right hand, not my left.”
A dark foreboding gripped her. Would he gradually lose all feeling? “Oh, Jesse, please listen to me! It’s starting to happen, just like Dr. Lehmberg warned it might. This is serious, real serious.”
“My finger?” He let out a brief laugh. “Over the last fifteen years, I’ve been shot more times than I care to remember, holed up in deserts and jungles for months on end, chained in foreign prisons with electrodes attached to my—” he stopped. His lips tightened. “Let’s just say that I’m not going to die over a numb pinkie.”
Stunned by his casual revelations, Elissa wanted to take him in her arms and blot out those painful memories with good, loving ones. But it was too late for that.
“Jesse, that numb pinkie might be just the start. The longer you stay trapped from your destiny, the more you’ll suffer. Please open your mind to the possibility that I’m right.”
The passionate concern in those brown eyes almost made Jesse forgive her for not saying that she loved him. Almost, but not quite. He wouldn’t let her get away without saying it. “If someone told you that you were dead, would you believe ’em?”
“No,” she admitted, “but that’s an entirely different matter. I’m not invisible!” Expelling a harried breath, she raked loose, sable dark waves from her face and smoothed them behind one ear. “Humor me, then, Jesse,” she implored in the low, smoky voice that always stirred him to thoughts of lovemaking. “There’s obviously some goal you haven’t attained, some need left unfulfilled that’s very important to you. Think what it might be.”
Only one came to mind. He had to make her his. He had to make Ehssa Sinclair love him as he loved her—eternally, unconditionally, and at any cost.
But of course, he also had a whole lifetime of other, less compelling business that he fully intended to handle. He damned sure wasn’t dead. If he were, he’d be the first to admit it.
“Can’t you think of anything?” she prompted. “Any goal that you feel passionate about achieving?”
“Just one.” Straining to resist the powerful urge to pull her into his arms, he whispered, “I would defy death itself for a lifetime of loving you.”
Her stare—her passionate, caring stare—darkened with a curious emotion, the last one he expected to see there. Alarm. “Me?” she breathed. “I’m keeping you here?” With an almost inaudible sob, she wrenched her gaze away from his, gathered up the sleeping infant and stumbled toward the door.
“Elissa!” he called.
But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even glance back. The door to her room across the hall shut. The lock clicked into place.
Astonished by her reaction, Jesse stared off in the direction she had fled. He had opened his heart to her, as he had with no one else in his life. And she had refused him. Locked her door against him.
Why? How could the need, the desire, the love that consumed him be completely one-sided? And what, Jesse wondered, made her think that a mere locked door would keep him out?
He rose to follow her, but the weariness set in. It felt deeper and more debilitating than ever.
SHE HAD INTENDED To GO—to pack her bags, bundle Cody up in his blankets and drive far, far away from here. But common sense prevailed before she’d packed a single bag. She couldn’t outrun Jesse. He had appeared at her house, at an isolated roadside spot, in a hotel room and near the river. He had accompanied her into town; he had spirited Cody away to his backyard garden. Where could she possibly go that Jesse couldn’t follow?
Even now, she kept glancing around the bedroom, waiting for him to appear. Oddly enough, he did not.
With a sense of impending doom, she gave up her plan to leave, changed into her nightgown and slipped beneath the bedcovers, her misery roiling within her. She was the one keeping Jesse trapped in this mortal world. Her love for him, her need to be with him, had obviously spanned the miles—and the boundaries of life and death—to hold him back from that final trek to the other side.
Even if she hadn’t actually summoned him away from the beckoning light, she had given him reason to stay with her. She’d laughed with him, cried over him, made love to him. She’d given him a son. Dangerous things to do with a man like Jesse. He was simply too strong-willed to let a good thing pass. And their love was a good thing, the very best thing that she’d ever found in her life. Or rather, it could have been...if only he were still alive.
But he was not. And it wasn’t only Jesse denying that fact. She herself had not accepted it. Even now, as she lay agonizing in his guest room, knowing that her love was destroying him, she wanted to hold him again. She wanted to love him.
She had to fight that love. She had to deny its very existence, even to herself. Only then did she have a chance of saving Jesse, of motivating him to leave.
Hardening her resolve to send him away if he should appear, Ehssa lay on her side, her hand tucked beneath her cheek on the pillow, her eyes resolutely closed. She had to sleep. She would need her wits about her tomorrow. First thing in the morning, she’d pack her bags and leave for home. If Jesse followed, she’d make him wish he hadn’t
A clock downstairs chimed twelve, a lone dog howled somewhere in the distance, and the big old house creaked around her. Slowly, Elissa drifted into slumber.
It was sometime later, hours, maybe, when movement in the bed disrupted her sleep, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Don’t open your eyes.” The whisper rushed across her ear from behind, and she became aware of a warm, male body against her back. She knew instantly who it was, and before her mind could censure her response, her heart rejoiced.
“Close your eyes, Elissa,” he commanded softly. His hand brushed down over her eyelids and forced them closed. “You wouldn’t be able to see me right now, and I’d rather not end up on the floor.” His wry comment reminded her of the fright she’d suffered earlier in the week, finding him invisible in her bed. “It seems that if I don’t waste energy on trying to appear,” he explained, “I can...touch you.”
She realized with a little shock that it was true—he was touching her. Yet she felt no hellish force prying them apart, no psychic current running through them.
His hand drifted away from her eyes, which remained obediently dosed, and he pulled her closer, his arm around her waist. “I’d give up visibility forever if it’s the only way I can hold you.”
Longing coursed through her as his solid, muscular form cradled her, their bodies fitting spoonlike. Sensuality bloomed within her, its roots reaching deep and low.
“Jesse,” she implored, struggling to resist its sweet lure, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Why?” Though no more than a drawn-out whisper, the word resounded with disappointment, frustration, opposition.
“To get help. Professional help. I...I don’t know how to deal with a...a ghost.” She felt his body tense—as if from a physical blow—and she had to force herself to continue. “I’m going to hire a channeler, or whatever kind of psychic might be able to guide you to the ‘other side.”’
He cursed softly and thoroughly. The bed creaked, and with an abrupt movement, he rolled her onto her back. From the proximity of his voice and the way his breath fanned her cheek, she knew he had braced himself above her. She kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to replace the comforting image she held in her mind’s eye with the frightening rea
lity—an angry, invisible Jesse.
“Damn it, Elissa,” he swore, “I’m not a ghost.”
“Then why can’t I open my eyes?”
“Go ahead and open them. But I don’t have the energy to appear. Not if I want to touch you. And I do want to touch you,” he added on a gruff whisper.
“If you’re not a ghost, then there’s only one thing you could be.” She steeled herself against the inevitable pain. “You must be a figment of my imagination. A fantasy conjured up by grief. In which case—” she choked out the words, holding back tears “—I’d better see a grief counselor, or maybe a shrink.”
A sharply indrawn breath told her the words had hit him hard. After a tense moment, heat tingled over her; the dry, unnatural heat powered by his anger. Ever so softly, he scoffed, “A figment of your imagination, am I?”
“You must be.”
His muscles shifted with sudden purpose, and before she knew what he was doing, he’d leaped from the bed and scooped her up into his arms. She cried out, her eyes flew open, and sheer darkness spun alarmingly around her. She shut her eyes and clung to the warm, muscular neck, shoulders and chest that she wasn’t able to see.
“I’m taking you to my bed,” he uttered hoarsely, “where you belong.”
“I don’t belong there,” she said with an anguished sob.
“I want to remember you there, anyway.”
In a few long strides, he’d crossed the hall and reached his bedroom. Above her riotous heartbeats she heard the crackle of the fire in the hearth, felt its gentle warmth. When Jesse halted, she peeked down to see the bedcovers of his huge pine bed peel magically back from the pillows.
She closed her eyes again as she tumbled down onto the mattress. Jesse swiftly joined her there, his bare, iron-strong legs, arms and torso sliding over hers, trapping her neatly beneath him.
Possessing Elissa Page 15
