Fix You (24 page)

             
“No, thanks. I…” She couldn’t, it turned out, casually enjoy his presence.

             
As if he could sense that, he shifted and propped an arm on the back of the sofa, facing her. Jess stared mindlessly at the TV, pulse fluttering, the weight of his eyes pulling at her until it was all she could do not to turn her head. The silence stretched, so thin, so flimsy, until it was transparent and useless between them; she said what she’d wanted to say all night: “Why are you here?”

             
For once, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand; the transparency was too obvious for that. “The same reason you want me to be here,” he said quietly, voice a deep, soothing murmur.

             
Her breath caught when he brushed her hair aside and spread his big hand between her shoulder blades. It was a benign touch, no different from all the times her dad had insisted on patting her on the back like she was one of the boys; but the man who belonged to this hand
was not
her father, and even this innocent contact reminded her, painfully, how much she ached to be touched, even like this.

             
He moved lower, thumb tracing across the clasp of her bra.

             
“Jess.”

             
She tried to steel herself against him as she turned, but when her eyes collided with his in the semi-darkness, when she saw the intensity in them, logic abandoned her. If he leaned forward, if he tangled his hand in her hair and tried to kiss her…she’d let him.

             
The sudden, starling knowledge of that terrified her.

             
Jess bolted to her feet, tipping forward and catching herself against the coffee table with spread palms. Her pulse drummed erratically in her ears and she sucked in a huge, gasping breath. She
wanted
him to kiss her, and that was too stupid for words. Too reckless to even be acknowledged. As Jo had suggested more than once, she’d lost her damn mind.

             
“Whoa, hey.” Chris stood beside her, made a reach for her that she dodged wildly.

             
“No,” she faced him through a fallen curtain of her hair, hand raised to stave him off. “
Please
don’t touch me,” she said, and watched his expression go from surprised to wounded.

             
His jaw set. “Why not?”

             
“Why…
why not
?” His audacity brought her indignation bubbling back to the surface and she latched onto it, needing a port in the storm that was ripping through her. If she couldn’t understand him, couldn’t trust him, couldn’t set aside her past, then she could be furious; she sunk her teeth into that. “Because I don’t even
know
you,” she said, voice hardening. “And I’m supposed to, what, let you paw all over me?”

             
“But you know me well enough to leave your kid with me?” he shot back. He didn’t raise his voice, but the hardness in it gave her gooseflesh.

             
“Well,” she fumbled, “that was because - ”

             
“Because it suited you then, huh? You want me right up until you don’t want me and then it’s ‘get lost?’”

             
“This has nothing to do with
want
. How was I supposed to know that you offering to help me would lead to…to…you …
collecting physical payment
.”

             
“I’m sorry,” he held up his hands, palms-out, “am I forcing myself on you all of a sudden? Don’t act all innocent, sweetheart. You’ve been sending me signals all day.”

             
“
Signals
? For the love of…” Hot, frantic tears scorched the backs of her eyes; she felt her face twisting as she fought to hold down the sob that wanted to come tearing up out of her throat.

             
“I was trying,” she said in a strangled voice, “to be nice to you. Because you were nice to me. I wasn’t sending you any damn signals! Why…
why
…can men not just be
nice
?! Why do you always have to ruin everything? Huh? Why are you all always such assholes?!”

             
His brows were angry black slashes down low over his eyes. “You - ”

             
“And I’m not,” she interrupted, “being passive-aggressive, for your information. I’m being very
aggressive
.”

             
“I noticed.”

             
“Well aren’t you observant!”

             
“And you,” he said in the calmest of voices, “are so bitter you can’t even see straight.”

             
Jess blinked, swallowed around the lump in her throat. “What?”

             
“You,” he said, taking a step closer and invading her personal space, forcing her head back on her neck so she could maintain eye contact, “are bitter, and paranoid, and mad at the world.”

             
She took a deep breath, struggling to maintain her righteous front. “I have a right to be.”

             
“You do,” he agreed, face softening a fraction, “but it’s not fair to dump that all over me. I didn’t cheat on you. I didn’t break your heart. I’m not a damn thing like your ex, so stop comparing us.”

             
“Am I supposed to believe you’re a paragon of fidelity? Forty-two –years-old and never married,” she snorted. “And we don’t know each other and there’s nothing between us and you’re making wild statements like that. How in the world am I supposed to fall in your arms when you’re feeding me pretty lines and telling me to trust you?”

             
He blinked.

             
“How,” she asked, just above a whisper, “are you any better than any of the rest of them?”

             
He didn’t have an answer for that. He scrubbed a hand back through his dark, spiky hair and studied his bare feet for a while. The muted sounds of gunfire rumbled from the TV; its shifting patterns of blue and white light illuminated the side of his face, highlighted the tension in his jaw, left shadows in the lines around his eyes.

             
“Well,” he said after a moment, sighing. “That got awful serious awful fast.”

             
“I’m in the middle of a messy divorce; I have a child; I’m trying to start my own business. I take everything seriously.”

             
Chris picked his head up and studied her. “I thought – well, the dinner and the beer, and the way you were looking at me…I didn’t imagine that.”

             
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed.

             
“You know you’re beautiful,” he said. “No way do you look like you do and don’t know that. And you’re wicked, too.” It looked like he almost smiled. “You can’t think I’m looking for some vulnerable, weak divorcee to bag because that’s not you, sweetheart.”

             
She sighed. “’Bag?’”

             
“I want you,” he said without flinching. In the near-dark, his face blue and intense, his honesty felt intimate and obscene. “What do you want me to say? Some poetic, flowery bullshit? I like you. And I want you. And I guess I just thought you were thinking the same thing.”

             
Her heart gave a great squeeze. Under her many urges to murder the man, there was a soft, vulnerable place that was touched by his bald admission. His eyes moved over her the way they always did – they saw every part of her, lingered and shifted and trailed, stroked her – and it was a way in which Dylan hadn’t looked at her in so long. Chris was envisioning her naked and imagining all the places his hands would go, predicting the reactions he wanted to draw from her. She could see all that in their serious, dark centers. And the only reason she hated him – and had for days now – was because when he looked at her, it suddenly wasn’t enough to be a mom and a homeowner and a sister and a trailblazer: She wanted a few stolen minutes to be somebody’s woman, too.

             
“I’m a mess,” she whispered. “How could you want that?”

             
His answer was silent; he moved in the last few inches that separated them and his hands found her upper arms. Caught between flight and fight, she stood rooted, not breathing, as his head dipped and his mouth fell over hers.

16

             
H
is goatee was scratchy. His lips settled over hers without hesitation. He wasn’t shy. But for a frozen handful of seconds, Jess was only aware of one thing: It had been nearly twelve years since she’d kissed anyone but Dylan Beaumont.

             
Panic flooded her veins. She went rigid and resistant. She’d never been one for the thrill of the unknown and his lips playing across hers were foreign and frightening. She’d never allowed herself a moment to imagine that, once her ire cooled and her routine began to reform, she might want someone new in her life. She wasn’t prepared for this at all.

             
Chris pulled back a fraction, his lips just barely brushing hers. “What’s wrong,” he whispered, “with having a little fun after what he did to you?”

             
Jess felt like she’d been slapped. He was right. At what point, during all his own
fun
– when he’d courted and kissed and
been with
another woman – had Dylan ever let her cross his mind? The answer was never.

             
She wasn’t betraying her husband because that was impossible.

             
She wasn’t doing anything wrong.

             
The only barrier between her and the tall, solid wall of man in front of her was one of her own making – one in her mind.

             
It was a strong damn barrier, though.

             
Chris kissed her again, with the sort of slow, deliberate pressure that encouraged a response. His hands slid up her arms, over her shoulders; one curled lightly around her throat, his thumb stroking up her pulse point. His mouth opened, his tongue traced her bottom lip…and she kissed him back.

             
Her hands were braced against his chest and she spread her fingers, flexed them and dug the tips into the hard expanse of his pecs. She parted her lips beneath the urging of his and focused every ounce of concentration on the thrilling sensation of his mouth stroking hers: the scrape of his goatee against her chin; the steady assault of his lips, the slippery length of his tongue sliding between her teeth.

             
Yes
, a traitorous, titillated voice whispered in the back of her mind. And that was before the hand around her throat moved lower, his thumb trailing along the ridge of her clavicle. When he reached the narrow strap of her dress, his thumb slipped beneath it, carrying it toward the edge of her shoulder.

             
Her skin pricked with gooseflesh. She shivered. She leaned onto her hands and stretched up on her toes as he deepened the kiss, pushed her jaw wide, and plunged inside of it.

             
He tasted like beer and he smelled like the fruity soap in her shower. And he felt like six-feet-two-inches of man looming over her, giving her starved body exactly what it wanted.

             
Panic returned, a flicker of red at the edge of her senses, when the strap of her dress slid down her shoulder and his hand followed its progress. And then slid to her breast, his hand closing over it through the white satin fabric of her bra.

             
Common sense returned with devastating force. Jess sat back on her heels, their mouths coming apart with a wet smack, breath filling her lungs in a gasp. “Oh, God,” she whispered, and his hands left her immediately.

             
“You’re fine,” he soothed.

             
“None of this is fine.” She tugged up her dress strap, fingers clumsy. “Oh, God. Oh my God.”

             
“Jess - ”

             
“You should go home,” she said, staring at his chest, hating the quiver in her voice. Her words were more a plea than an order, and she hated that too.

             
He sighed, a big, tired, horse-sounding sigh like her dad and her brothers always heaved. “Are you going to be okay if I do?”

             
“Yes.”

             
He touched the side of her head and she flinched. He sighed again. “Are you going to be able to stand to look at me when I show up for work in the morning?”

             
It was an effort, but Jess managed to tilt her head back and meet his gaze, the shifting blue light dancing across the whites of his eyes. “Yes,” she said, and meant it. Somehow, she’d scrape her composure together before then.

             
He didn’t smile, but his expression was gentle. “Okay. I’ll head out then. If,” he added, “you promise you’ll call me if you…change your mind and get lonely.”

             
For some reason, she didn’t think he meant anything predatory by his statement. He seemed, in the moment, to be worried about her. Ready to kiss her again, to do all that she’d allow him to, to assure her that he did, in fact, want her, and that she didn’t have to be “lonely” unless she wanted to be.

             
“Sure,” she said, suddenly exhausted. “I promise.”

             
His hand pushed through her rumpled, wavy hair and he pulled her face up as he dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Get some rest.” And he left her standing, bewildered, in the dark. Long after she’d heard his engine start and go down the drive, she stood.

**

              Jess waited up for her sister. When the Malibu ground to a halt and the lights died, Jo and Tam spilled, laughing, out into the night and it was obvious, given the nature of Jo’s giggling, what they’d planned for the rest of their evening once they put Willa to bed. Jo saw her, though, sitting on the back steps of the main house, and Jess felt a pang of guilt as her sister handed the baby to Tam with a kiss and told him she’d be in a little later.

             
“Sorry,” she said as Jo neared her, “I didn’t mean to screw up your night.”

             
Her sister was in tight jeans and a fitted, pretty sleeveless top the color of the sky after a rainstorm, her hair loose and wavy, the silver J pendant Tam had given her for her eighteenth birthday catching a stray light fragment around her neck. She was flushed and smiling, and she shook her head as she turned and settled down on the step beside Jess. “You’re not,” she assured. “What’s up?”

             
Shame washed over Jess as she dropped her gaze from her sister’s translucent blue-green stare and studied her hands. “I made dinner for Chris tonight.”

             
“Right,” Jo said eagerly. “How’d that go?”

             
“I…” she exhaled, “I let him kiss me.”

             
It was silent a pregnant moment while Jo digested, then: “Cool,” she said, feigning casual, an excited, little-girl squeal ruining the effect.

             
Jess cut a glance in her direction and saw she was smiling. “Cool? That’s all you have to say?”

             
“What do you want me to say?”

             
“You could at least reprimand me a little.”

             
“For…?”

             
“For kissing my contractor!”

             
“Ah, so
you
kissed
him
, then?”

             
“No, I…” She sighed. “Stop smiling.”

             
She did. “Jess, there’s nothing wrong with kissing your contractor.”

             
“Yes there is.”

             
“Like?”

             
“For starters,” Jess snapped, “we have to work together. For months. And how can I expect him to respect me at all if I’ve been a big ol’ slut?”

             
“Oh my God,” Jo groaned. “Would you please take a time-out from being so damn practical and just enjoy the fact that a cute boy wanted to kiss you?”

             
Jess narrowed her eyes, incensed. “Life isn’t as simple as kissing cute boys.”

             
“Is that supposed to be insulting or something?”

             
She growled to herself, catching her forehead in her palms. “I am so, so - ”

             
“Retarded?” Jo suggested.

             
“Yes.”

             
“Yes, you are.”

             
“He said he ‘wanted’ me, Jo. As in
wanted
me. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

             
Jo leaned in close, eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “Buy some lacey underwear and tell him you’re open for business.”

             
“That, “ Jess said flatly, “is cheesy.”

             
“I know.”

             
She raked her hand back through her hair, gathered it at her nape and held it in her fist.

             
“I know you wouldn’t hesitate to give Dylan a taste of his own medicine,” Jo said, tone becoming careful, and Jess nodded. “So what else is bothering you about this?”

             
Jess looked at her hands again, embarrassed, not wanting to admit what she was about to. “I,” she started, wet her lips, “I – before I found out about Dylan, we hadn’t been – well, we hadn’t - ”

             
“You guys weren’t getting it on,” Jo said.

             
“Right. We weren’t. But even if we had been…I never…” She hated this break from her bluntness, her sudden verbal inadequacy. “I’ve never been with anyone but Dylan,” she said in a rush.

             
Beside her, Jo blinked. “Really?”

             
“Really.”

             
“But you were a cheerleader.”

             
Jess turned a frown on her. “And that automatically makes me easy?”

             
“No, but you were popular. Guys were drooling all over you. I always thought - ”

             
“Well you thought wrong.”

             
“Clearly.”

             
Crickets chirruped around them in the night. A bullfrog’s deep-throated call split the chattering of tree frogs and somewhere else down the cove, another answered him.

             
“I’ve only ever been with Tam,” Jo said after a long moment.

             
“No offense, sis,” Jess sighed, eyes going out toward the blue, mirror surface of the lake that gleamed in the dark, “but everyone in the world knows that.”

             
“But,” Jo went on, undaunted, “not everyone in the world knows how wonderful he is. Not everyone gets to hear him sing Will to sleep at night…or feel the way his heart beats against my hand when I kiss him…or - ”

             
“I get the gist.”

             
“No, you don’t. Jess, Tam loves me, and I know that, and I know he wouldn’t do me the way Dylan did you. On the other hand, Dylan
is not
wonderful. Dylan does not deserve to be your one and only. You can’t let that evil son of a bitch think that
he
was
it
for you. You can’t let
yourself
think that.”

             
Jess opened her mouth to respond, but said nothing. Out in front of her, stark and black against the glowing lake, was a man-shaped shadow. And it was moving toward the house.

             
She clamped a hand on her sister’s wrist and squeezed.

             
“Ow. What are you - ”

             
Jess pointed, and waited.

             
Jo sucked in a deep breath.

             
Their creeper was back.

             
They locked eyes – Jo’s were round as moons, her expression stricken – and wordlessly climbed to their feet, retreated into the house and locked the door.

             
Jo released a shaking breath. “Where’d he go?”

             
“I don’t know, he – there.” Jess spotted him between clumps of overgrown hollies at the edge of the yard, just a deeper darkness against the shadows. Her heart stalled and then leapt again, pulse thundering in her ears.

             
Suddenly, she wished she’d let Chris stay.

             
Jo had her cell phone out and pressed to her ear. Jess heard Tam answer. “That guy’s back,” Jo whispered into the phone. “Moving toward the main house.”