Must Love Pets: A Romance Box Set

by Theresa Weir

  Back outside, he looked at Giselle. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Only a muffin.”

  “Do you have plans, Jessie?” he asked.

  She wanted to say yes, but honor outweighed comfort. “No, not really.”

  “Why don’t you come to my house and have some breakfast? I’ll call someone to look at your car—we can take it from there.”

  The thought of being in his company for another several hours sent a fresh wave of panic through her middle. “Giselle, get in the truck.”

  Her daughter heard the tone of voice and obeyed instantly. As soon as Giselle slammed the door closed, Jessie said in a low voice, “Luke, this is just too weird for me. I don’t know how to act or what to say, or anything.” She looked at him with entreaty. “It’s been eight years. I don’t even know who you are now.”

  For a moment, his gaze was fixed over her head. A long muscle along his jaw tightened. He touched his chin, moved his foot, weighed his words. Through it all, she waited.

  “You do know, Jessie,” he said finally, as he looked at her. His dark eyes were sorrowful and beautiful and struck the chords of a thousand memories within her. “You’ll always know me. Just like I know you.”

  That struck the wrong chord. “Right,” she snapped and was about to push past him when he grabbed her arm just above the elbow.

  “Jessie,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “Give me a break, will you? We can’t pretend we never knew each other, but we don’t have to be enemies.”

  So close. Jessie stared up at him, snared by her own stupid nostalgic emotions, by the warm brown of his skin, the cut of his jaw and the gentleness of his mouth. With an almost physical need, she ached to bury her face in the shoulder of his jacket, to breathe that foresty smell of his skin in deeply…

  She remembered how it felt, too, how perfectly her head nestled against his shoulder, how he rested his chin on the top of her head, how even their breathing seemed to synchronize when they were close.

  Tears sprang to her eyes suddenly and she broke away. “Damn you, Luke,” she swore. “I could have done without this.”

  His face hardened. “Me, too.” He touched her back lightly, nudging her toward the door. “Giselle’s waiting.”

  * * *

  She entered his house, Luke thought, as if there were snakes hidden beneath the furniture. It was his own place, bought three years before, and he was proud of it. The simple bungalow had been stripped of its old plaster walls, and Luke had restored the original woodwork.

  Once inside the front door, Jessie stopped in the middle of the living room and looked around. “This is nice,” she said.

  He couldn’t prevent a chuckle. “I like it.”

  On the couch, curled around each other in a mass, were his cats. Nino opened one eye to see what the commotion was all about, then stretched luxuriously. Jessie made a soft, approving noise and went forward. “Oh, he’s beautiful.”

  Luke smiled to himself as she gathered the huge black cat into her arms, stroking his silky fur. Nino butted his head against her chin and purred loudly.

  “You’re a sweetie,” she murmured.

  Giselle bent over Sylvester, but it was plain she was only doing it because she thought she ought to. “I have dogs in the backyard,” he said.

  “Can I go out, Mom?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather help me fix breakfast?” Luke asked, feinting a punch to her left arm. “I’m going to make French toast, if that’s okay with you.”

  “I love French toast!”

  Luke grinned. “Thought you might.” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Come on.”

  From the fridge he took a bowl of brown eggs and put them on the table, then took another bowl from a cupboard. “Break about six or seven,” he told her.

  “What’s wrong with these eggs?” Giselle asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing. They’re just fresh. I get them from a farm out east.” He stripped off his coat and draped it over a chair. Taking coffee and a filter out, he watched Jessie circling the living room, cat in her arms.

  “What’s wrong with plain old store-bought eggs?” Giselle asked.

  Jessie looked up, and for the first time she smiled at him. No scowl or suspicion, just genuine amusement, an acknowledgment of his beliefs about food and the ways it should and should not come to the table. He lifted a rueful eyebrow and looked back to the child awaiting his answer. “Let’s just say for now, these taste better.”

  Giselle’s mouth pursed in doubt, but she dutifully broke a couple, then stared hard into the bowl. “They look the same on the inside.”

  “Yep.” He measured coffee and ran cold water into the pot. “They taste good, too. You’ll see.”

  In the living room, Jessie paused by an antique trunk, on which Luke had displayed a collection of photographs. Most of them were family pictures—his mother and father and Marcia. He watched as she picked out one of Marcia, shook her head with a smile and replaced it.

  “Okay, what next?” Giselle asked.

  “Vanilla, milk and salt,” he instructed, crossing the linoleum to the table. “Then we’re ready for the cooking.”

  “I hope you haven’t made any for me,” Jessie said from the doorway.

  “Mom,” Giselle scolded with severity, “you have to eat breakfast. You can’t get your vitamins from coffee.” With a saucy roll of her eyes, she confided to Luke, “I can never get her to eat enough breakfast.”

  He chuckled and glanced over his shoulder. “I never could, either.”

  “At least Giselle doesn’t try to get me to eat rabbit stew in the morning,” Jessie returned dryly.

  “You loved it.” He took a hefty stack of bread from the wrapper. “And we did make some for you, so you’ll have to eat it.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Which turned out, Luke noticed later, to be quite well. She ate easily as much as he did. “Pretty hungry after all, weren’t you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” With a rueful smile, she patted her tummy. “I’m finding out all those people who told me your metabolism changes after you’re thirty were right.”

  Luke followed her gesture and found himself admiring her round curves. Looked okay to him.

  “Can I go see the dogs now?” Giselle piped up.

  “Sure. Get your coat,” Jessie replied.

  She ran to fetch it, then bounced back through the kitchen. “I still can’t believe you have dogs and cats,” she said, buttoning her coat.

  “Luke’s home for wayward animals.” With a self-mocking grin, he added, “I’m also running a home for abandoned console radios in the basement, if you hear of any strays.”

  Giselle gave him a perplexed little smile, but Jessie chuckled in her rich, husky voice. He glanced at her quickly, surprised how good her simple laughter felt in his hollow heart. “Watch the big one, honey,” he told his daughter. “He’ll lick you half to death.”

  She giggled. “Okay.”

  When he turned back to the table, Jessie’s clear topaz eyes were fixed on him. The last of her smile lingered around her full lips and there was friendliness—maybe even a little more—in her expression. For a minute, the past didn’t matter, and he was admiring a very attractive, sexy woman across the table. The rush of desire surprised him. He wanted to kiss her, to fit his palms to the swell of her round breasts…

  He closed his eyes, clenching his teeth against the powerful vision. Too much time had passed to heal the wounds between them. Too much time and too many betrayals. Hers, by leaving him when he needed her and hiding his child. His, by leaving her in an entirely different way, the way he’d known even then would be most painful for her.

  Shame at what he had become in those dark days sent a spiral of regret through him. He reached for the bag of tobacco in his pocket. “So, whoever is doing this harassment has targeted almost all the key players, except Marcia. You should be careful.”

  She frowned. “I guess so.”


  “It worries me.” He quickly rolled a cigarette. “Did you see anybody at the hotel that you might have seen in Albuquerque?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s got to be an Indian.” He took his time settling the cigarette just so in his mouth, then scratched a match with a thumbnail. He held the flame to the end of the cigarette, watched it flare softly orange. He shook out the match, exhaling. “An Anglo couldn’t have gotten to Daniel’s food or George’s brakes without somebody noticing.”

  “Why does that tobacco smell so much better than regular cigarettes?” she asked with an edge of irritation.

  “The way it’s cured.” He looked at the blue curls of smoke, remembering that Giselle told him Jessie quit smoking. With a grin, he asked, “You want one?”

  She smiled, again reluctantly. “I gave up all my bad habits.”

  He exhaled sharply. “Yeah,” he said in a voice rough with shame. “Me, too.”

  “How long has it been, Luke?”

  “Seven years and four months.”

  Still, there was no change in her expression What had he expected? A broad round of applause?

  Bitterness swirled with his shame of moments before. As if the pair of emotions were an unstable chemical formula, he felt pressure build in his lungs and gut. Abruptly, he grabbed plates and silverware and carried them to the sink. They landed with a clatter in the old porcelain basin.

  Behind him, he heard Jessie gather more dishes and bring them over. Luke felt her next to him, warm and smelling of shampoo. He stared rigidly through the window, watching Giselle dance with Tasha, his wolf mix. Quite a pair they made, both sable and cream, with their golden eyes. “Jessie, did you know you were pregnant when you left me?”

  It was her turn to avoid his gaze. Long lashes swept down to hide her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? At least give me a chance to pull my act together?”

  She crossed her arms, head still bowed. “You were so damned set on destroying yourself, I didn’t think it would make any difference.” Defiantly she looked up, cocking her chin at that I-dare-you angle he remembered so well. “I didn’t want to have to go through it all again.”

  “All what?”

  “My mother quit drinking at least thirty times. She’d do okay for a while, then fall off the wagon again. And every time it was harder and harder to believe in her.” She shook her head, glancing out the window toward Giselle. “I couldn’t let my child go through what I did:”

  “She’s mine, too!” A painful burst of anger swelled in his chest. “You could have given me a chance.”

  “Maybe somebody else could have,” she said. “Not me.”

  He gave her a bitter smile. “Yeah, there was always that piece of you that you had to keep safe. Something nobody could ever touch. Not even me.”

  “I thought we agreed to leave the past alone.”

  “Maybe it’s not that easy.” He sighed and looked at her. Drawn by the wintry light washing over her face, he took a step closer. “Maybe it isn’t really dead.”

  For a moment, she didn’t move, just stared up at him like a deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car. Her body was only inches from his own, her lips a simple stoop away. Even through his regret and anger, he wanted to kiss her like he used to, hear the soft sigh of her breath as she released herself to him, taste the sweet velvet of her mouth…

  As if he’d spoken his wish aloud, Jessie reacted. Her gaze flickered over his face and lit on his mouth, then flew back to his eyes, a little less afraid. Without thinking, he lifted his hand and brushed the translucent curve of her cheek with the tips of his fingers. Her lips quivered a little.

  “God, Jessie,” he whispered, “I can’t believe you’re still so beautiful.”

  With a small cry, she broke away. Slamming forks against stoneware as she stacked the dishes, she said harshly, “Don’t.” The word was almost strangled.

  He closed his eyes in swift sorrow, then grabbed his coat from the chair and went outside with his daughter and his dogs, who offered what Jessie had never been able to give him—a whole heart.

  * * *

  Jessie cleaned up the kitchen automatically, pouring herself into the simple task in an effort to get a handle on her roaring emotions. It wasn’t easy. The window over the sink faced the backyard, where Luke and Giselle scampered with three dogs and a Frisbee. With her hands sunk deep in hot, sudsy water, Jessie watched them. Under her breath, she was humming, something she did automatically when she washed dishes.

  She shifted her attention to the suds, and the song in her throat became recognizable. “I’m On Fire,” by Bruce Springsteen.

  In spite of herself, she chuckled. The sound unknotted some of her tension. Ruefully, she had to admit to herself that there was something still smoldering on the hearth of the past. There was a restless, aching wish in her to feel Luke’s burnished skin skimming hers, to feel his cool, heavy hair between her fingers, to feel him linked with her in the most ancient way.

  And not just anyone. Luke.

  Only Luke.

  It had always been this way—and she knew from a moment ago that the chemistry hadn’t changed for him, either. It didn’t matter how much time had passed or what else had gone on between them, there would always be this thrumming, physical connection.

  Even now her dreams were filled with Luke’s laughing eyes as he kissed her by the orange light of a campfire; Luke’s skillful hands coaxing a response from her body; Luke’s long, brown body naked and warm next to hers beneath the covers in a cold, cold room.

  She blew a lock of hair from her eyes. It had been so hard to leave all that behind. Only the wonder of the child growing within her had kept her from breaking down, going back to him. Then Giselle had been a baby, flesh and blood, with enormous needs that kept Jessie busier than she’d ever been in her life.

  In time, Giselle grew older, and Jessie had begun to accept dates from a handful of men she thought she could trust. It never worked.

  Over the past couple of years, she hadn’t bothered, even though the dreams of Luke had finally faded. The success of her work and the network of friends she made in Albuquerque gave her serenity. For male companionship, she always had Daniel, who’d also filled the need for a father in Giselle’s life. It was enough. A part of her had accepted the fact that she’d given the best part of her heart away and would never find a replacement. She learned to live with it.

  But sometimes it was lonely. Lately, Jessie had begun to think she might be stable and strong enough now to find another man. Maybe not a great love or a wild passion, but a good and honorable kind of relationship, the kind of relationship in which she could share her life and old age. She wanted someone calm and easy to talk to, someone she could trust.

  Peace was what she wanted. Not passion.

  Beyond the window, Luke raced over the winter-dry grass and scooped a shrieking Giselle into his arms, swinging her around like an airplane. Giselle, in complete trust, flung her small arms around her father’s neck and hugged him fiercely. For a moment, the two glossy dark heads nestled together, and Jessie caught sight of Luke’s face. His eyes were closed, his expression joyous and sorrowing all at once. Jessie, watching, felt tears well in her eyes.

  This was what had been meant to be. Only there should have been a dozen children crowding around the legs of this teasing and gentle man. Not just one, borne in secret far away.

  “Oh, Luke,” she said softly. “How did we ever let it come to this?”

  But she knew the answer. She also knew both of their futures depended upon keeping the Pandora’s box of the past closed and locked. Luke was sober and she was strong. Neither of them could survive another upheaval. Jessie knew it even if Luke didn’t.

  She’d see to it that the box stayed closed, desire or none. There was too much at stake now to risk everything.

  Chapter 4

  By the time Luke and Giselle came back into the house, Jessie had managed to pull he
r defenses more closely around herself.

  “Mom!” Giselle said, leaning into Jessie’s lap. “My dad says we can go to the mountains if you say it’s okay. We can take Tasha with us, ’cuz she likes it up there.”

  “When?”

  “Today,” Giselle declared, as if it were the only possible choice. “Now.”

  Jessie glanced out the front window. “It’s cloudy. Won’t it be awfully cold?”

  “Not really,” Luke said. “We’ll bundle up and put an extra pair of socks on. It’s nice up there this time of year. Do you remember Cheyenne Canyon? Helen Hunt Falls?”

  Jessie chuckled, thinking of her ragged copy of Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel of a California woman and the Indian, Alessandro, she loved. Jessie had discovered a dusty copy in the library when she was fourteen and read it three times—just that year. She’d lost count of how many more times she’d picked up the beloved book. “How could I forget?”

  Luke grinned, and his face was suddenly ten years younger. He’d often teased her about falling in love with him because she had loved Alessandro first.

  And in a small way, it was true. The first time she had seen Luke, hammering nails into the frame of her father’s new study, she had been riveted. As he worked in the heat of a California afternoon, his long black hair braided and dark skin shimmering with sweat, he’d been the most singularly attractive man she’d ever seen. His back was bare and long and dark, his arms strong and hard-muscled. A red bandanna tied around his forehead kept the hair from his eyes. She stared at him through her bedroom window, her stomach tight, unable to believe he was real. He paused, wiping a forearm across his brow. And then he looked up.

  Jessie, romantic and young, had thought with a painful pinch, Oh, it’s Alessandro! Her heart flipped when he gave her a slow, mocking, sexy smile.

  Much like the one he was giving her now. “What do you say?” he urged. “It’s a little more touristy these days, but the falls are still the same.”

  “Please, Mom?” Giselle said, folding her fingers into a prayer like petition.