It was ironic, really, except that one time at the restaurant, Johnny and her father, and maybe even her mother because her mother never thought for herself but always deferred to her father, were the only people on the planet that she knew of that even noticed that he had a touch of Spanish ancestry.
A little befuddled by her musings, Christina licked her lips, sliding Jack another glance. He was even more attractive than the husband she remembered, if she was honest. He had every feature she’d loved about the boy, but the jaw line was more defined, the cheekbones higher, the nose was the same, though slightly larger. This was not the face of a boy. This was a man.
Whether it had to do with his loss of memory, his injury, or that he wasn’t her husband, the biggest difference between the two men was the silence. Johnny had been loud when he’d been home on leave. Sometimes obnoxiously so. Thinking his dirty jokes at her expense were really funny. She’d been too young in the earlier parts of their marriage to understand that he’d actually been making fun of her. Her lack of experience. Her lack of reaction. Her lack of everything he could get somewhere else from someone else.
They hadn’t made love on his last leave after he’d confessed he’d had a brief affair with a female soldier in Iraq that had resulted in a curable but contagious STD. The betrayal hadn’t hurt as much as it should have, which, in a way, hurt even more. But it had hurt enough that she’d thrown hateful, hurtful words at him. Words that hadn’t ever passed her lips before. Words meant to sting, to injure. He’d left, returning to his unit before he’d had to, and she’d been glad to have him out of her sight, until only a few days later, men had arrived to tell her he was gone.
Tears smarted at the long buried memories, but she blinked them away. How had she allowed herself to worship him these past two years as if he’d been a saint? How had she suppressed all the hurt and loneliness of a marriage to a man who had really been nothing more than a self-centered boy who probably hadn’t really loved her?
He’d wanted her, at least at first, and she’d wanted to marry him and leave her strict father’s house, but the truth was they’d barely known each other, and he hadn’t been around enough for them to get to know more.
It hadn’t been all his fault. She’d known absolutely nothing about what to expect from marriage, short of her father telling her to obey her husband as she had her parents. She knew she had failed him just as he had failed her, but he never gave her a chance to learn. Anything.
She’d had no sexual experience and being barely eighteen when they married, she was still just a kid herself. To Johnny, sex was a kiss, forcing himself into her over and over until he ejaculated, and falling fast asleep within seconds. He’d never touched her in the way she’d dreamed of. He’d hurt her more often than not, and she’d started stiffening up any time he would join her in bed.
The immediate pregnancy after their marriage had thrilled her as it had been, to her, that magic indication that she was truly a grown up, and it had stopped Johnny from touching her. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t so sure about Johnny’s feelings about being a father. They hadn’t ever discussed them. Though he’d been very clear about his feeling about her getting pregnant so soon after they’d married.
He’d been angry. Angry that she was going to get fat. Angry that her body wouldn’t look the same when it was all over. Angry because he had no desire to put his penis inside a body where a baby was growing.
Shocked by the recollections, Christina backed from the stove and leaned against the opposite counter. She covered her mouth, as if she could hold in the shock of remembering so much that she’d obviously repressed.
What a fool she’d been, walking around, heartbroken, lost, acting like the child Johnny had treated her like. She was a woman now. A woman living on a farm she didn’t want to run. A woman with a child who needed a better example than the sullen, grieving one she’d set. A woman who had ignored her body’s needs. Yes, needs! Needs that had never been met.
“Have I upset you?”
Christina shook her head, startled, as she’d forgotten Jack was still in the room. He was so gorgeous. So tall. So masculine. And she was free. She was truly free. “Would you make love to me?”
Her eyes widened as she realized she’d actually spoken the thought out loud, but she couldn’t make herself retract the request. She’d been lonely—no, she’d made herself lonely with a memory that wasn’t real. She’d pined away the last two years for a man she’d barely known. Their quick high school romance and always separated marriage had been replaced in her mind with a great love that had never really existed. Now that the real memories of her married life were surfacing, she wasn’t entirely sure she and Johnny would have made it once he left the Marines and came home to stay.
The thoughts felt like a betrayal, but were perhaps the most honest she’d been with herself in all these years. She smiled at Jack, at herself, realizing she had really grown up over a skillet of frying chicken.
“I’m serious. Would you make love to me?”
Chapter Eight
Jack sat the paring knife down on the chopping block. He faced Christina, studying her lovely features. Her cautious eyes, flushed cheeks, and teeth-trapped bottom lip proved to him how unusual, and hard, the request had been for her. Her chest rose and lowered rapidly, her hands were balled into fists, indicating her excitement, and perhaps her fear.
He approached her slowly, as he did many things these days, but this time it wasn’t because of pain. The four days of all-out rest, interspersed with much needed exercise, had restored him as nothing else had and he felt darned good.
His heart fluttered with hope. He hated waking up every morning wondering who he was. Hated it even more since learning he could be a part of a family that he could have deserted. And since meeting Christina, watching her go through the motions of life, and liking the quiet dignity she wore like a cape, he wanted the issue resolved for her as well. Her life must have been hell.
“Have you decided I’m him, then?”
Christina shook her head. “No. I’ve decided you’re not.” She lifted her hands, stopping just inches from touching his face. “May I?”
Jack nodded, never taking his eyes from hers, hoping the reaction of his lower body wouldn’t fall under her immediate scrutiny. He didn’t want her to think him without control, though at the moment it was evidently true, if just the thought of her hands on him could stir him so. She swallowed visibly as she first touched him, and then gently ran her soft hands down his cheeks, along his jaw-line, across his nose. Her eyes never left his as she gently outlined his lips, then ran a finger over them as if testing their softness.
He didn’t know what to say about her decision. If she’d decided that he wasn’t the husband she’d loved, what was she doing teasing him like this? He took her hands and placed them in his own, afraid he’d resort to begging her to let him take her if she kept touching with such adoring fingers. She smiled up at him, and his already hard dick jerked in reaction. As turned on as he was, he couldn’t let her do something she might later regret.
“What’s this about?”
She studied the face she’d just finger-inspected, then settled her gaze on his eyes. “I know you aren’t Johnny. And though I’m not going to explain myself, in many ways that’s a relief. He’s gone forever. But I’m not. I want to be held and touched. I want to feel something inside a body that has been an empty shell for way too long. And I’m asking you—Jack—to be the man that fills that shell.” Her cheeks pinkened. “Is that ridiculous? Is it asking too much?”
Jack took a deep breath, then exhaled. Having such a lovely woman want him, even need him, sexually, was a turn-on any day of the week. But he barely knew himself and her not at all, and there were bound to be repercussions given her situation, and for all he knew, his.
“There are a lot of things I don’t remember right now, but I’m a man, with a beautiful woman, and giving you what you want would be very easy to do.
Except I don’t want you to think it’s a mistake later. If I really do prove to be someone else, how will you feel? If we eventually find out I really am Johnny, how will I feel when I realize my beautiful wife wanted to make love to a man she doesn’t believe is me?”
Christina lowered her arms and took a step back. She chewed her bottom lip, but kept her gaze on him until the popping of frying grease had her running to the stove. He watched as she transferred the chicken to a paper-towel covered dish then turned the burner off. She turned off the boiling potatoes, settling them on the one remaining cold coil on the stovetop.
When she turned back to him, she shrugged. “I don’t know how either of us will feel. But I know Johnny is dead. We were young when we married, and I don’t know that I even really knew him since he was overseas almost all of those years, more married to the Marines than to me. But I do know one thing for sure. He loved the Marines. Perhaps above all else. He never would have deserted them. Never. Johnny is dead.
“I guess, if I had a wish, it would be that it was confirmed. Mostly for Lisa’s sake. I don’t want her only memory of her father to be that people thought he deserted his country. And her.”
“Then how do you explain my looking just like him?”
Christina shook her head. “I can’t. And I can’t explain how you got a letter I never even knew my daughter wrote.”
The letter. “Then you read it?”
“Yes, while you slept the other day. It freaked me out a little. It’s her printing. I’d know it anywhere. We practice her writing all the time.”
“Where is Lisa now?”
“She’s at my mother-in-law’s house in Florida. They’ll be home on Christmas Day. Margaret will probably have a heart attack when she sees you.”
Jack felt a little kick in his chest. He raised his hand to cover his heart, but figured it had something to do with his still healing body. “She’s Johnny’s mother?”
Christina nodded. “Yes. She’s a wonderful woman. And a very young grandmother. She had Johnny when she was eighteen, so she’s only in her mid to late-forties. I keep telling her she’s too young to retire to Florida. I think her leaving here mostly was so she wouldn’t be reminded on a daily basis that Johnny wasn’t ever coming back home to Legend.”
She approached him again. “Jack, this is awkward for me, but I am attracted to you. Not like you were my husband, but to you. I’d like to make love with you. No strings attached.”
The humming in his body forced him to reach out and take her, pulling her to him. He closed his eyes as need and want make his body react. “Are you sure?”
Christina looked up at him, bit her lip, then nodded. “I need to do this.” Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “I have lubrication.”
Jack felt the chuckle in his chest, but she looked so serious he couldn’t laugh. “I assure you, we won’t need it.”
Chapter Nine
Christina took a step back, wondering what had compelled her to do what she was doing. She was by no means promiscuous. She’d never once in her life, not even with Johnny, asked for sex. And the truth was she was scared silly. But she was tired of always being lonely.
Every time Lisa had a Little Ladies of Legend Tea date at Lilly’s shop, New Beginnings Baby Boutique, the mothers met with other women friends for grown-up time together and more often than not, walked five shops down Main Street to Mocha Mae’s Internet Coffee House to catch up and have one of Mae’s wonderful blends.
She’d joined them every opportunity she could, and had kept her mouth closed and her discomfort to herself, as well as the envy that those who had shared the more intimate details of their lives had experienced something that was totally different, and obviously so much better, than her own marital experiences.
It wasn’t just the sex, though it seemed women talked quite freely about that to each other, just as the girls in high school had. It was about overall relationships with their husbands and significant others that had bothered her most.
Christina knew she’d never consider revealing such a selfish thought. After all, her husband was an American hero. At least she’d believed he was. And she still did.
But she was being honest with herself today, so she took a deep breath and faced the truth squarely; as great an American hero she believed him to be, Johnny hadn’t been much of a husband. Even when he’d been on leave he’d spent all his time out on the farm riding around on his daddy’s old tractor, or hunting deer, turkey, rabbit, or squirrel, depending on the season, with his best buds, as he’d called them.
He’d stayed away from the house as much as possible, only coming in for lunch, a tussle with Lisa like she was a little boy, then he’d leave to do his own thing again until he returned to eat. After the meal he’d watch TV, have a couple of beers, and then be ready for either sleep or sex. She’d always hoped it would be sleep.
She knew now that they’d both just been too young to marry. Johnny was a serious soldier, but he was still pretty much a boy the rest of the time. And she’d been so sheltered, she hadn’t known what to do to please him, or herself for that matter.
Which made meeting with other women in Legend like Lilly Hood and Suzie Matthews, who laughed and talked of their husbands with such love and adoration, doubly hard. Even the newly elected sheriff Polly Stevens, who intimidated the pants off of her, just became one of the girls when the women got together to talk about their men.
It was almost like being in high school again, except, well, more irritating because now she’d had some experience. Obviously the wrong kind.
“Ground Control to Major Tom.”
Christina blinked, coming out of her musing, only to find Jack grinning tenderly at her. She bit her lip as she stared back, uncertain what to do now. She was used to the man dictating the action, way back when, but apparently Jack, who had settled back against the counter, wanted her to run the show.
She took a deep breath, pasted a smile on her lips, and turned to the stove. “Let’s eat.”
“Let’s don’t.”
Christina’s heat jumped, hitting her ribs hard. Tingling excitement raised bumps all over her skin. She turned back. Darn, but the man was something. The tingles increased, making her nervous and excited, and maybe just a little giddy. “You’re not hungry?”
Jack’s grin opened into a full smile and she thought her legs might give. He was older, yes, but he oozed sex appeal and for some reason, her once dormant ardor was awakening to the possibilities. She bit her bottom lip, hoping she wasn’t setting herself up for a big, disappointing fall. He approached her, lifted her chin with one finger and, with his eyes on hers, slowly lowered his head to press his lips against hers.
His breath was minty fresh. And he smelled incredibly good. Then her mind closed to all but the sensation as the kiss deepened, as tongues smoothly meet, danced, and his hands gently grasp, molded, moved, and molded some more.
A moan worked its way up her throat, as jumbled nerves made their way down her hyper-sensitive body. Her nipples pebbled, making them hurt a little. Her legs shook—in fact her whole body trembled.
“You smell so good.”
Christina smiled against his nibbling lips, wondering why she’d never felt this before. The anticipation, the desperation, the desire to rip her clothes off and feel his hard body, skin to skin, next to hers. As if he’d read her mind, buttons went flying off the heavy white cotton shirt she donned that morning. The thermal material was designed to insulate against an errant winter wind that sometimes made its way into the old farm house, but there was no danger of a draft chilling her now.
She was on fire. From hair follicles to toenails, heat radiated inside and out, and she was more than happy to help him wrestle the material from her body. Christina tore at his shirt. The flannel she’d given him last night to put on this morning was an enemy that had to be destroyed, fast. She struggled with it as their mouths fought for control, and satisfaction flared when she heard the shirt rip.
The rus
h of adrenaline should have scared her, but she fed off it as she devoured his mouth. He pulled away abruptly. The shock of cold air separating them felt like a slap, which only heightened her desire. She tugged the torn material from his arms and pulled his mouth to hers once more, her hands now working feverishly against snap and zipper, a zipper that fought back as it worked its way over his engorged manhood.
He worked equally frantically, her jeans and lace panties falling to the floor together, as she won her battle with his jeans and boxers. They released each other’s lips and smiled, and Christina had never felt so free. Together they stepped from and kicked away the unwanted clothing. Now all she wore was the lace bra, and the thick fuzzy socks she always wore in winter to keep her feet warm against the cold, hard wood floors. Jack was bare-footed, his large feet with their neatly trimmed nails sexy. His erect penis drew her gaze away from his feet and she inhaled. Like Johnny, Jack wasn’t circumcised, something that was rare in a predominantly Christian community. The first time she’d seen Johnny naked he’d shamefully admitted that Margaret hadn’t believed in having her son’s manhood cut. It hadn’t mattered to her. If he hadn’t said anything, she’d have never known there was a difference. She glanced quickly to Jack’s face, searching, not as sure now as she’d been before.
Slower this time he pulled her to him, and she trembled as he released the catch of her bra. He gently pulled it from her arms, flung it to the side, and took her mouth in a deep, hungry kiss that made her legs give. No, he wasn’t Johnny. Johnny had never kissed her like this. Johnny had never made her want like this.
Together they went down, onto the thick braided kitchen rug. He pulled the torn flannel shirt to them, rolled it into a flattened ball, then placed it under her head. He leaned back and grinned at her. “We could go to a bedroom if you want.”
Christina shook her head. “No, this is perfect.”
A Legendary Christmas Page 18
