Part of the Bargain

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I’ll bring it to you,” Jess said. It was, after stealing it, the least he could do. He’d check first, to make sure that Libby really was sleeping, and with luck, he could be back before she woke up.

  “Thanks,” sang Monica in parting.

  Jess hung up the phone and climbed the stairs, pausing at the edge of the bedroom. He dared go no farther, wanting that rumple-haired little hellion the way he did. “Libby?”

  When there was no answer, Jess turned and went back down the stairs again, almost grateful that he had somewhere to go, something to do.

  Monica hid her annoyance well as she inspected the muddy splotches on her car’s upholstery. Overhead, the incessant rain pummeled the garage roof.

  “I’m sorry,” Jess said. It seemed that he was always apologizing for one thing or another lately. “My truck wouldn’t start, and I was in a hurry….”

  Monica allowed a flicker of anger to show in her gray eyes. “Right. When there is a damsel to be rescued, a knight has to grab the first available charger.”

  Having no answer for that, Jess shrugged. “I’ll have your car cleaned,” he offered when the silence grew too long, and then he turned to walk back out of the garage and down the driveway to his own car, which refused to start.

  He got out and slammed the door. “Damn!” he bellowed, kicking yet another dent into the fender.

  “Problems?”

  Jess hadn’t been aware of Ken until that moment, hadn’t noticed the familiar truck parked nearby. “It would take all day to list them,” he replied ruefully.

  Ken grinned a typical sideways grin, and his blue eyes twinkled. He seemed oblivious of the rain pouring off the brim of his ancient hat and soaking through his denim jacket and jeans. “I think maybe my daughter might be at the top of the list. Is she all right?”

  “She’s…” Jess faltered, suddenly feeling like a high-school kid. “She’s sleeping.”

  Ken laughed. “Must have been real hard to say that,” he observed, “me being her daddy and all.”

  “It isn’t… I didn’t…”

  Again Ken laughed. “Maybe you should,” he said.

  Jess was shocked—so shocked that he was speechless.

  “Take my truck if you need it,” Ken offered calmly, his hand coming to rest on Jess’s shoulder. “I’ll get a ride home from somebody here. And, Jess?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t hurt Libby. She’s had enough trouble and grief as it is.”

  “I know that,” Jess replied, as the rain plastered his hair to his neck and forehead and made his clothes cling to his flesh in sodden, clammy patches. “I swear I won’t hurt her.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” replied Libby’s father, and then he pried the truck keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Jess.

  “Ken…”

  The foreman paused, looking back, his eyes wise and patient. How the hell was Jess going to ask this man what he had to ask, for Libby’s sake?

  “Spit it out, son,” Ken urged. “I’m getting wet.”

  “Clothes—she was… Libby was caught in the rain, and she needs dry clothes.”

  Ken chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “Stop at our place and get some of her things then,” he said indulgently.

  Jess was suddenly as confused by this man as he was by his daughter. What the hell was Ken doing, standing there taking this whole thing so calmly? Didn’t it bother him, knowing what might happen when Jess got back to that house?

  “See ya,” said Ken in parting.

  Completely confused, Jess got into Ken’s truck and drove away. It wasn’t until he’d gotten a set of dry clothes for Libby and reached his own house again that he understood. Ken trusted him.

  Jess let his forehead rest on the truck’s steering wheel and groaned. He couldn’t stand another cold shower, dammit. He just couldn’t.

  But Ken trusted him. Libby was lying upstairs in his bed, and even if she was, by some miracle, ready to handle what was destined to happen, Jess couldn’t make love to her. To do so would be to betray a man who had, in so many ways, been as much a father to him as Cleave Barlowe had.

  The problem was that Jess couldn’t think of Libby as a sister.

  Jess sat glumly at the little table in the kitchen, making patterns in his omelet with a fork. Tiring of that, he flung Libby a beleaguered look and sneezed.

  She felt a surge of tenderness. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  He shook his head. “Libby…”

  It took all of her forbearance not to stand up, round the table, and touch Jess’s forehead to see if he had a fever. “What?” she prompted softly.

  “I think I should take you home.”

  Libby was hurt, but she smiled brightly. “Well, it has stopped raining,” she reasoned.

  “And I’ve got your dad’s truck,” added Jess. “Um-hmm. Thanks for stopping and getting my clothes, by the way.”

  Outside, the wind howled and the night was dark. Jess gave the jeans and loose pink sweater he had picked up for Libby a distracted look and sneezed again. “You’re welcome.”

  “And you, my friend, are sick.”

  Jess shook his head, went to the counter to pour coffee from the coffeemaker there. “Want some?” he asked, lifting the glass pot.

  Libby declined. “Were you taking another shower when I got up?” she ventured cautiously. The peace between them, for all its sweet glow, was still new and fragile.

  Libby would have sworn that he winced, and his face was unreadable. “I’m a clean person,” he said, averting his eyes.

  Libby bit the inside of her lower lip, suddenly possessed by an untimely urge to laugh. Jess had been shivering when he came out of that bathroom and unexpectedly encountered his newly awakened houseguest.

  “Right,” she said.

  Jess sneezed again, violently. Somehow, the sound unchained Libby’s amusement and she shrieked with laughter.

  “What is so goddamn funny?” Jess demanded, setting his coffee cup down with an irritated thump and scowling.

  “N-nothing,” cried Libby.

  Suddenly Jess was laughing, too. He pulled Libby out of her chair and into his arms, and she deliberately pressed herself close to him, delighting in the evidence of his desire, in the scent and substance and strength of him.

  She almost said that she loved him.

  “You wanted my body!” she accused instead, teasing.

  Jess groaned and tilted his head back, ostensibly to study the ceiling. Libby saw a muscle leap beneath his chin and wanted to kiss it, but she refrained.

  “You were taking a cold shower, weren’t you, Jess?”

  “Yes,” he admitted with a martyrly sigh. “Woman, if I die of pneumonia, it will be your fault.”

  “On the contrary. I’ve done everything but throw myself at your feet, mister, and you haven’t wanted any part of me.”

  “Wrong.” Jess grinned wickedly, touching the tip of her breast with an index finger. “I want this part…” The finger trailed away, following an erotic path. “And this part…”

  It took all of Libby’s courage to say the words again, after his brisk rejection earlier. “Make love to me, Jess.”

  “My God, Libby—”

  She silenced him by laying two fingers to his lips. Remembering the words he had flung at her in the Cessna the day of her arrival, she said saucily, “If it feels good, do it.”

  Jess gave her a mock scowl, but his arms were around her now, holding her against him. “You were a very mean little kid,” he muttered, “and now you’re a mean adult. Do you know what you’re doing to me, Kincaid?”

  Libby moved her hips slightly, delighting in the contact and the guttural groan the motion brought from Jess. “I have some vague idea, yes.”

  “Your father trusts me.”

  “My father!” Libby stared up at him, amazed. “Is that what you’ve been worried about? What my father will think?”

  Jess shrugged, and his eyes moved away from hers. Clearly h
e was embarrassed. “Yes.”

  Libby laughed, though she was not amused. “You’re not serious!”

  His eyes came back to meet hers and the expression in their green depths was nothing if not serious. “Ken is my best friend,” he said.

  “Shall I call him up and ask for permission? Better yet, I could drive over there and get a note!”

  The taunts caused Jess to draw back a little, though their thighs and hips were still touching, still piping primitive messages one to the other. “Very funny!” he snapped, and a muscle bunched in his neck, went smooth again.

  Libby was quietly furious. “You’re right—it isn’t funny. This is my body, Jess—mine. I’m thirty-one years old and I make my own living and I damned well don’t need my daddy’s permission to go to bed with a man!”

  The green eyes were twinkling with mischief. “That’s a healthy attitude if I’ve ever heard one,” he broke in. “However, before we go up those stairs, there is one more thing I want to know. Are you using me, Libby?”

  “Using you?”

  “Yes. Do I really mean something to you, or would any man do?”

  Libby felt as though she’d just grabbed hold of a high-voltage wire; in a few spinning seconds she was hurled from pain to rage to humiliation.

  Jess held her firmly. “I see the question wasn’t received in the spirit in which it was intended,” he said, his eyes serious now, searching her burning, defiant face. “What I meant to ask was, are we going to be making love, Libby, or just proving that you can go the whole route and respond accordingly?”

  Libby met his gaze bravely, though inside she was still shaken and angry. “Why would I go to all this trouble, Jess, if I didn’t want you? After all, I could have just stopped someone on the street and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but would you mind making love to me? I’d like to find out if I’m frigid or not.’”

  Jess sighed heavily, but his hands were sliding up under the back of Libby’s pink sweater, gently kneading the firm flesh there. The only sign that her sarcasm had rankled him was the almost imperceptible leaping of the pulsepoint beneath his right ear.

  “I guess I’m having a little trouble understanding your sudden change of heart, Libby. For years you’ve hated my guts. Now, after confiding that your ex-husband put you through some kind of emotional wringer and left you feeling about as attractive as a sink drain, you want to share my bed.”

  Libby closed her eyes. The motion of his hands on her back was hypnotic, making it hard for her to breathe, let alone think. When she felt the catch of her bra give way, she shivered.

  She should tell him that she loved him, that maybe, despite outward appearances, she’d always loved him, but she didn’t dare. This was a man who had thought the worst of her at every turn, who had never missed a chance to get under her skin. Allowing him inside the fortress where her innermost emotions were stored could prove disastrous.

  His hands came slowly around from her back to the aching roundness of her breasts, sliding easily, brazenly under the loosened bra.

  “Answer me, Libby,” he drawled, his voice a sleepy rumble.

  She was dazed; his fingers came to play a searing symphony at her nipples, plying them, drawing at them. “I…I want you. I’m not trying to p-prove anything.”

  “Let me look at you, Libby.”

  Libby pulled the pink sweater off over her head, stood perfectly still as Jess dispensed with her bra and then stepped back a little way to admire her.

  He outlined one blushing nipple with the tip of his finger, progressed to wreak the same havoc on the other. Then, with strong hands, he lifted Libby up onto a counter, so that her breasts were on a level with his face.

  She gasped as he took languid, tentative suckle at one peak, then trailed a path with the tip of his tongue to the other, conquering it with lazy ease.

  She was desperate now. “Make love to me,” she whispered again in broken tones.

  “Make love to me, Jess,” he prompted, nibbling now, driving her half-wild with the need of him.

  Libby swallowed hard, closed her eyes. His teeth were scraping gently at her nipple now, rousing it to obedience. “Make love to me, Jess,” she repeated breathlessly.

  He withdrew his mouth, cupping her in his hands, letting his thumbs do the work his lips and teeth had done before. “Open your eyes,” he commanded in a hoarse rumble. “Look at me, Libby.”

  Dazed, her very soul spinning within her, Libby obeyed.

  “Tell me,” he insisted raggedly, “that you’re not seeing Stacey or your misguided ex-husband. Tell me that you see me, Libby.”

  “I do, Jess.”

  He lifted her off the counter and into his arms, and his mouth came down on hers, cautious at first, then almost harshly demanding. Libby was electrified by the kiss, by the searching fierceness of his tongue, by the moan of need that came from somewhere deep inside him. Finally he ended the kiss, and his eyes were smiling into hers.

  Feeling strangely giddy, Libby laughed. “Is this the part where you make love to me?”

  “This is it,” he replied, and then they were moving through the house toward the stairs. Lightning crackled and flashed above the skylights, while thunder struck a booming accompaniment.

  “The earth is moving already,” said Libby into the Jess-scented wool of his sweater.

  Jess took the stairs two at a time. “Just wait,” he replied.

  In the bedroom, which was lit only by the lightning that was sundering the night sky, he set Libby on her feet. For a moment they just stood still, looking at each other. Libby felt as though she had become a part of the terrible storm that was pounding at the tall windows, and she grasped Jess’s arms so that she wouldn’t be blown away to the mountaintops or flung beyond the angry clouds.

  “Touch me, Libby,” Jess said, and somehow, even over the renewed rage of the storm, she heard him.

  Cautiously she slid her hands beneath his sweater, splaying her fingers so that she could feel as much of him as possible. His chest was hard and broad and softly furred, and he groaned as she found masculine nipples and explored them.

  Libby moved her hands down over his rib cage to the sides of his waist, up his warm, granite-muscled back. I love you, she thought, and then she bit her lower lip lest she actually say the words.

  At some unspoken urging from Jess, she caught his sweater in bunched fists and drew it up over his head. Silver-blue lightning scored the sky and danced on the planes of his bare chest, his magnificent face.

  Libby was drawn to him, tasting one masculine nipple with a cautious tongue, suckling the other. He moaned and tangled his fingers in her hair, pressing her close, and she knew that he was experiencing the same keen pleasure she had known.

  Presently he caught her shoulders in his hands and held her at arm’s length, boldly admiring her bare breasts. “Beautiful,” he rasped. “So beautiful.”

  Libby had long been ashamed of her body, thinking it inadequate. Now, in this moment of storm and fury, she was proud of every curve and hollow, every pore and freckle. She removed her jeans and panties with graceful motions.

  Jess’s reaction was a low, rumbling groan, followed by a gasp of admiration. He stood still, a western Adonis, as she undid his jeans, felt the hollows of his narrow hips, the firmness of his buttocks. Within seconds he was as naked as Libby.

  She caught his hands in her own, drew him toward the bed. But instead of reclining with her there, he knelt at the side, positioned Libby so that her hips rested on the edge of the mattress.

  His hands moved over every part of her—her breasts, her shoulders, her flat, smooth stomach, the insides of her trembling thighs.

  “Jess…”

  “Shh, it’s all right.”

  “But…” Libby’s back arched and a spasm of delight racked her as he touched the curls sheltering the core of her passion, first with his fingers, then with his lips. “Oh…wait…oh, Jess, no…”

  “Yes,” he said, his breath warm against her. And th
en he parted her and took her fully into his mouth, following the instinctive rising and falling of her hips, chuckling at the soft cry she gave.

  A violent shudder went through Libby’s already throbbing body, and her knees moved wide of each other, shaking, made of no solid substance.

  Frantic, she found his head, tangled her fingers in his hair. “Stop,” she whimpered, even as she held him fast.

  Jess chuckled again and then went right on consuming her, his hands catching under her knees, lifting them higher, pressing them farther apart.

  Libby was writhing now, her breath harsh and burning, her vision blurred. The storm came inside the room and swept her up, up, up, beyond the splitting skies. She cried out in wonder as she collided with the moon and bounced off, to be enfolded by a waiting sun.

  When she came back inside herself, Jess was beside her on the bed, soothing her with soft words, stroking away the tears that had somehow gathered on her face.

  “I’ve never read…” she whispered stupidly. “I didn’t know…”

  Jess was drawing her up, so that she lay full on the bed, naked and sated at his side. “Look it up,” he teased, kissing her briefly, tenderly. “I think it would be under O.”

  Libby laughed, and the sound was a warm, soft contrast to the tumult of the storm. “What an ego!”

  With an index finger, Jess traced her lips, her chin, the moist length of her neck. Small novas flashed and flared within her as her pulsing senses began to make new demands.

  When his mouth came to her breast again, Libby arched her back and whimpered. “Jess…Jess…”

  He circled the straining nipple with a warm tongue. “What, babe?”

  No coherent words would come to Libby’s beleaguered mind. “I don’t know,” she managed finally. “I don’t know!”

  “I do,” Jess answered, and then he suckled in earnest.

  Powerless under the tyranny of her own body, Libby gave herself up to sensation. It seemed that no part of her was left untouched, unconquered or unworshiped.

  When at last Jess poised himself above her, strong and fully a man, his face reflected the flashing lightning that seemed to seek them both.