Comfort and Joy Page 13

  The tree nearly overwhelmed the room, towering regally in its corner. Robin bent down by the wall socket and plugged the lights in. The room filled with a multicolored glow from the tiny sparkling bulbs.

  Her gaze wandered to the fireplace. Jesse would be freezing by the time he got back from Kate’s house. She tugged open the mesh curtain protecting the hearth, balled up a few sheets of newspaper, piled on some kindling and two logs from the small stack on the hearth, and applied a lit match to her construction. It caught instantly, lending the room a cozy warmth.

  She remained seated on the floor by the fireplace, admiring the yellow licks of flame as they flared upward. A feeling of contentment infused her as she inhaled the pungent scent of burning wood and let the heat wrap around her.

  “You read my mind.” The mellow sound of Jesse’s voice startled her; she hadn’t heard him enter the house. Flinching, she glanced over her shoulder and found him standing less than a foot behind her, unwinding his scarf. “It’s cold out there,” he said, sliding off his blazer and tossing it onto a chair. Then he dropped onto the carpet beside Robin and extended his hands palm forward to catch the fire’s warmth.

  “I’m going to sound like a mother for saying this,” Robin muttered, “but why do you run around in nothing but a blazer when it’s wintertime?”

  He grinned. “I’m from Southern California, remember? I don’t have much in the way of winter coats.

  “Then it’s high time you bought yourself something warmer,” she scolded. “This is New England. Treat yourself to a coat for Christmas.”

  “I’ll treat myself to a coat out of respect for Mother Nature,” Jesse corrected her with a chuckle. He turned to face the fire, resting his left forearm across his bent knee and gazing into the blaze. It cast a golden glow across his face, delineating the harsh angles of it, emphasizing the dynamic lines of his nose and chin, the planes of his cheeks and brow, and making his hair seem impossibly blacker in contrast.

  His smile gratified Robin. She’d been smart to build a fire, to warm this outlander who didn’t know how to dress for a New England winter.

  She still harbored many questions about Jesse. She had peppered him with questions over dinner, and he’d answered them without hesitation, yet he remained an enigma to her. She wanted to know more; she needed to. She needed to know, among other things, why he’d chosen to live in Connecticut, a part of the country with a climate that required clothing he didn’t own and driving skills he’d had little chance to master. He had said he was ready for a major change, but a three-thousand-mile change? “There has to be more to it,” she murmured, surprised to hear herself verbalizing her thoughts.

  Jesse eyed her, perplexed. “More to what? Mother Nature?”

  She laughed and turned to stare at the fire. When Jesse had enough of her questions, she supposed, he’d let her know. But although he wasn’t complaining about her probing, she couldn’t look directly at him when she said, “There has to be more to your decision to move to New Haven. It couldn’t have just been the job. There must be openings in every city in the country for lawyers willing to do legal aid work. You didn’t have to move so far away from home.”

  She could feel his eyes upon her, studying her profile as she continued to face the fireplace. He lapsed into thought for a moment, then said, “I think I did have to.”

  “Why? You lived in L.A. for so much of your life. Your family was there, and your roots.... I’d give my eye teeth for the chance to have lived in one place for so long, to really become attached to it. I’m beginning to feel attached to Belleford, but it’s taken me nine years.”

  “Maybe I want to become attached to Belleford, too,” Jesse said.

  Robin laughed again, and Jesse joined her. Belleford was a nice enough town, with some beautiful neighborhoods and a breathtaking coastline bordering Long Island Sound. But it was too modest to deserve the sort of instant attachment Jesse was talking about. “It isn’t Belleford,” she argued him, finding the courage to look at him while she dug into his psyche. “And it isn’t New Haven. You weren’t coming here—you were only trying to get as far from L.A. as possible.”

  Jesse conceded with a nod. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “Of course not. Except...” She hesitated, then plowed ahead. “I can’t believe your job was the only reason you left.”

  His smile faded. He gazed into the fire, staring at the hypnotic flickering of the flames, evidently finding them easier than Robin to look at. “What are you getting at?” he asked, his tone low and even. “Do you want to know if I left a woman behind? I did.”

  That hadn’t been what Robin was getting at, at least not consciously. Without giving it much thought, she had assumed that Jesse would have been seeing women—or, for that matter, a specific woman—wherever he’d lived. But since he’d introduced the subject, she wasn’t about to let it drop. “You came here to recover from a broken heart?” she asked, then felt her cheeks darken with color at her relentless prying. “It’s none of my business, Jesse. I don’t know why you’ve put up with so many questions from me—”

  He touched her shoulder reassuringly. Ignoring her apology, he said, “I didn’t have a broken heart, Robin. Just like you and your ex-husband, we grew apart.”

  “Were you married?” she asked, although she felt safe in presuming that he hadn’t been. If he had, he would have said so the evening she’d told him about her divorce.

  He shook his head, confirming her guess. “Anne and I were pretty serious, but it didn’t get that far.”

  “Was she in show-biz?”

  “She was a television producer.”

  A television producer. Robin imagined someone rich and suave, ambitious and successful. Someone with a magnificent wardrobe, who’d never wear a dress that made her look flat-chested. Someone who wasn’t flat-chested. Someone whose hair didn’t require twenty minutes with a curling iron to be thick and wavy and lustrous. All in all, Robin concluded, someone who was brainy and gorgeous and everything Robin wasn’t.

  She was so busy wrestling with her insecurities that she missed part of what Jesse was saying: “...For G.C.E., too.”

  “Hmm?”

  “She was one of the producers of Blessings at Noon. We met through work. We were together, on and off, for about four years. But she bought into the whole scene and I didn’t, and finally we were forced to admit that the differences between us were irreconcilable.” He paused, then angled his face to view her. “What’s the matter, Robin? You wish I hadn’t brought it up, don’t you.”

  “It isn’t that,” she said quickly. “It’s just...I can’t help wondering what you’re doing here with me when you could be with some glamorous lady who produces television shows.”

  He gazed steadily at her, neither smiling nor frowning, simply looking, absorbing her with his eyes. “You know what I’m doing here with you,” he said.

  He was with her, she reminded herself, because he thought she’d saved his life.

  If she had, it hadn’t been through any intentional act on her part, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to accept the responsibility his statement implied. She had heard it said that when you saved another person’s life, you owned that person’s life, and it was yours to look after forever. The very idea made Robin uncomfortable.

  Yet she didn’t exactly want to shirk the responsibility Jesse was giving her. She wanted to keep him safe, to protect him, to build fires to warm him. Deep in her heart, she wanted to believe that, however inadvertently, she had helped him to survive the crash.

  The fact of that crash was brought home to her as Jesse shoved up the sleeves of his sweater and revealed the flexible brace supporting his sprained wrist. “You shouldn’t have been lugging around the tree today,” she said. If she was going to accept responsibility for his life, then she had a right to scold him for taking unnecessary risks with it. “You ought to give your wrist a chance to heal.”

  His gaze traveled from her to his arm and ba
ck again. His smile reached his eyes, imbuing them with a captivating radiance. “If you’re really so worried about making it better,” he goaded her, “you can kiss it. I saw you heal Phil with a kiss after he took that tumble in the parking lot yesterday.”

  Such an innocuous request. But Jesse’s words echoed inside her: You know what I’m doing here with you. Perhaps he was with her because she’d saved his life, and perhaps he was with her only because he wanted to seduce her. Asking her to kiss his sprained wrist sounded more like the latter, and she faltered for a moment, mulling over how best to deal with a seduction attempt. He’d taken her out for dinner, after all, and then returned with her to her house. Wasn’t sex next on the agenda?

  “I think,” she said, fighting against the waver in her voice, “that making an injury better with a kiss works only when you’re related by blood.”

  “Let’s try it and find out.”

  Despite Jesse’s light tone, despite the laughter dancing in his eyes, Robin understood his intention. She might be rusty when it came to male-female games, she might be inexperienced, but she wasn’t an idiot. She sensed in his attitude not the overpowering need that had compelled him to kiss her the last time they were alone, but rather a strong, healthy, male hunger, controlled but very real, very present.

  “If I do try it...” She faltered again, unsure of how receptive she should be to his overture. She was just as attracted to him as he was to her, just as eager to recapture the passion they’d shared on his porch a few nights back. But she was nervous, too, and she bought time by pointing out, “Making an injury better with a kiss is a miracle cure. You’ve got to admit you believe in miracles, or it won’t work.”

  His eyes met hers. Perhaps he understood her hesitancy; perhaps he thought she was testing him. His smile vanished but his gaze intensified, searching her face for a clue of how to proceed—if he should proceed. “I’ll admit that I do believe in miracles,” he said quietly. “Not divinely inspired ones, but—I believe that people can create their own miracles.” He raised his wrist in front of her, daring her to create a miracle for them.

  She shyly touched her lips to his exposed thumb. “There. All better?”

  “Miraculously.” He ran his thumb gently over her lower lip, tracing the full curve of it. “Should I say halleluiah now?” He moved closer, his face a breath away from hers. “Am I supposed to sing your praises before heaven and earth?”

  “No,” she answered on a sigh, her entire body attuned to him, yielding, welcoming the kiss she knew was coming. “You only have to believe.”

  “I believe,” he murmured, molding his mouth to hers. His tongue traced the line his thumb had sketched over her lips, but didn’t venture further. Before she could relax fully in the heavenly sensations his kiss elicited, he drew back, patiently waiting for a cue from her to continue.

  “I guess some things are allowed,” she mumbled with a hazy smile.

  “What?”

  “Well, you weren’t allowed to drink,” she said. “But even ultra-religious people must be allowed to kiss. You didn’t wait until law school to learn how to kiss, did you?”

  A soft laugh bubbled up from his chest. “I always assumed this was allowed. Even fundamentalist Christians have sex. Where do you think baby fundamentalists come from?” Refusing her a chance to reply, he took her lips with his again. This time his tongue penetrated her mouth, conquering her with an intimacy that was both shocking and tender. Her tongue met his. Kissing Jesse this way, not in desperation but in sheer pleasure, felt as natural as talking to him, arguing philosophies with him, teasing him about his beliefs.

  He had said he believed. As his kiss deepened, as her flesh melted in the heat of it, she believed, too. She believed that some things defied logic, and that, logical or not, Jesse was the man she wanted to make love to her, now, tonight, the man with whom she wanted to end her long years of solitude.

  Her arms circled around his shoulders as he bowed to her, urging her down onto the carpet beneath him. Her hair splayed out about her head, and his fingers twined through the blond tresses, reaching for her earlobes, for the smooth skin of her throat, the nape of her neck. Without breaking the kiss, he shifted above her, his chest moving against hers, his hips settling provocatively between her thighs. She reflexively arched her back, pressing her breasts into his chest, and he groaned.

  Lifting his mouth, he slipped his hand between their bodies and roamed downward to stroke the rounded swell of her breast. Despite the layers of cloth separating his palm from her skin, he easily located her nipple and centered on it, causing it to stiffen against his fingers. The heat roaring through her flesh and gathering below her abdomen had nothing to do with the fire in the hearth. It was a result of Jesse, the weight of him on her, his sensitive caresses igniting a blazing yearning within her.

  She slid her hands down to his waist. Through his shirt, she explored the sleek, firm muscles of his lower back, the tension in them as his hips shifted above hers again. She felt his arousal, hard and unyielding as he moved against her, urging her legs to accommodate him.

  “Where’s your bed?” he whispered, the hoarse rumble of his voice burning against her ear as his lips grazed her hair.

  Upstairs. Her soul cried out in a silent answer. Take him upstairs. Yet the words wouldn’t come. Twisting beneath him, she glimpsed the staircase across the room, the polished railing that would soon be draped in garlands, the steps rising to the second floor, to her bedroom, to the bed in which she’d slept alone for three years. Once more she tried to speak, but her lips refused to shape the words, her lungs refused to support them.

  Jesse gently nudged her face back to his. He peered down at her, his eyes smoky, his lips parted as he struggled with his erratic breath. “Are you worried about Philip?” he asked.

  Philip could sleep through a train wreck. Concern about disturbing his rest—or even about disturbing his emotional stability, if by some fluke he discovered his mother in bed with Jesse—wasn’t what was holding her back. She shook her head, afraid to trust herself to say anything until she knew exactly what it was she had to say.

  “Tell me, Robin,” Jesse prompted her, sensing her confusion. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “I’m not...” She swallowed, then forced herself to speak. “I’m not sure that I love you, Jesse. Not yet. I mean, I like you a lot—a lot—but I’m not sure whether it’s love yet. And if I don’t love you...we can’t. I that must sound ridiculously outdated, or immature, or—”

  He cut off the spate of words with a brush of his fingertips over her trembling lips. Then he leaned back, scrutinizing her, his expression revealing nothing. For a long time the only sounds in the room were his labored breathing and the crackle of the fire. “I guess that leaves me with two options,” he granted.

  “Oh?”

  “Either I can say, yes, it’s outdated and immature, and we both want each other, so let’s get it on.” He smiled crookedly. “Or else I can be a gentleman, respect your feelings and go home.”

  “There’s a third option,” Robin told him. “You could convince me that I do love you.” And it wouldn’t take much persuasion on his part to convince her of that, she acknowledged. He was such a good man, so thoughtful, so caring, considerate enough to suggest leaving when they were both feeling this searing desire for each other. He was so generous, accepting her endless questions, providing answers for questions she hadn’t even asked. How could she not love him?

  It wasn’t that she didn’t; it was only that she wasn’t sure. She’d been single for too long, and her experience so far with Jesse didn’t fit any of her expectations about how love was supposed to develop. More than that, she felt ignorant, nervous, frightened by the prospect of making love with someone who wasn’t Ray. She didn’t love Ray anymore, she hadn’t loved him for a long time, but she’d never loved anybody else. She was too old to remember how you were supposed to go about falling in love. And she was much too old—or old-fashioned—to
think that love didn’t matter when it came to sex.

  “I can’t convince you that you love me,” Jesse said gently. “It’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself.” He rose languorously to a sitting position, his aroused body obviously reluctant to give hers up, and then helped her to sit as well. The flickering light from the fire played across his features, highlighting his eyes for an instant and then casting them in shadow.

  “Are you angry?” she asked timidly.

  “Angry?” He looped his arm around her shoulders and cuddled her to him, then planted a kiss on the crown of her head. “No, I’m not angry.”

  “But you think I’m outdated and immature—”

  “I think you’re a very wise woman,” he said. “If you want to know the truth, Robin... I want your love as much as I want you.”

  His words were so touching, Robin nearly shouted, “Yes! I love you!” How could she not love someone who wanted her love so much?

  Love was more than being wanted, she admitted. For her, at least, it took time, commitment, knowledge and understanding. She was willing to invest the time and the commitment. She was willing to do whatever it took to know Jesse fully, to understand the man at her side. But right now, as she nestled into his shoulder and shared the fire’s beauty and warmth with him, she admitted that she didn’t yet know everything she had to know about him—and she definitely didn’t understand everything she had to understand. He was so complex, so strange, in many ways as alien to her as a creature from Gleek.

  But in time, she vowed, in time she would know him. In time she would understand.

  Chapter Eight

  “LET ME EXPLAIN this one more time,” Jesse said, his patience strained to the breaking point. “Gerald Selby had nothing to do with the outbreak of violence. His commanding officer knows that, you know it, and I know it. Selby has never had anything to do with the sailors under investigation. He’s a good kid, and it would mean the world to his mother if you could grant him his Christmas leave.”