Hideaway Cove (A Windfall Island Novel) (13 page)

Her gaze shifted back, ran over the three embroidered letters—initials, she corrected, a large, ornate S, flanked by a smaller E on the left and an A on the right.

S, she mused, running a finger over the fine stitching that hadn’t been done by any machine. The edging of the blanket had to be silk, not polyester, but the letters kept gnawing at her, especially the S. The larger size likely indicated a surname, but she could recall no surnames starting with S in the family lineage, at least not that she knew of…

And it hit her.

Stanhope
.

E for Eugenia, and A must be for Eugenia’s middle name. She’d have bet her life on it…

Her life.

Benji
.

Stunned, terrified, she pulled the paper and ribbon back around the blanket and stuffed it into the trunk. She shoved the garbage bag full of clothes on top of it and shut the lid, jerking her hands back.

“What?”

Jessi tried to stand, made it halfway before her legs gave out. She sank down onto the chest, her mind spinning.

“Jessica?” Hold came over and took her hands, the hands she’d been wringing. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She shook her head. So much had changed, and now this. She could be related to Eugenia Stanhope, and that put her—and Benji—in danger.

She flew into Hold’s arms, just wrapped herself around him and held on. He slipped one arm around her waist, tipped back her chin with the other so she had no choice but to look into his face. And lie to him.

“I can’t…I’m not ready for this, Hold.”

“I can see that, sugar, and feel it. You’re shaking.”

And that was a pretty extreme reaction to sorting through her mother’s possessions. If Hold wasn’t questioning it yet, he would be if she didn’t get a handle on it.

She kissed him as lightly as she could manage when it felt like her world was crashing in on her. Then she pulled free, bending to gather up the remains of their picnic. Hold took the tray from her. She picked up the throw and followed him out, pausing as she pulled the door shut behind her, cool relief washing over her when she heard the lock click into place.

And yeah, she felt terrible, lying to Hold, or at least keeping the truth from him, even more terrible hiding behind the memory of a woman who’d always been straightforward and honest. Still, she knew her mother would understand the imperative to protect.

And if she was being brutally honest with herself, she wanted time. With Hold. Time that didn’t center around the search for Eugenia.

She was stealing that time, Jessi knew. Telling Hold about the blanket now meant shattering this little bubble of happiness and peace she’d allowed herself. It meant bringing reality back in, calling everything she’d ever believed about herself into question.

She really didn’t want Hold digging into her family history until she’d had a chance to work her own mind around it all. She tended to be emotionally driven, but just now she needed to put her feelings aside and think logically about ramifications and repercussions—for herself and Benji. To take a good hard look at her life and begin to make adjustments.

She’d only keep the blanket a secret for a day, she rationalized—less than a day, really, just an afternoon.

And a night.

Soft gray light and the sound of running water dragged Hold halfway to consciousness. He pulled a pillow over his head and cursed the guest in the next room…except, he thought as the fuzz of sleep began to fade and his wits to sharpen, he wasn’t at the Horizon. He was at Jessi’s house, in Jessi’s bed.

Alone.

He flopped over onto his back, blinked eyes that felt like they were full of sand, and figured he must be getting old when the temptation to drift off nearly outweighed the reality of a naked, wet, willing woman just feet away.

But then, he thought with a lazy grin, the naked, willing woman had spent the night in his arms, and there’d been precious little sleep. He sat up, groaning a little as sore muscles protested. A few steps took him to the door of the tiny bathroom off the barely bigger master bedroom.

He walked into the billowing steam, eased back the shower curtain printed with swimming fish and shining suns, and stepped into the tub. And just took a moment to enjoy.

Jessi stood under the spray, her petite little body slicked with water and soap, her face lifted into the spray as she rinsed her hair.

Hold ran a finger down the trail of bubbles running along the elegant length of her spine. Just as he got to some interesting territory, she shrieked and whirled around, brandishing a plastic bottle like a club.

Hold lifted his hands, palms out. “Please don’t squirt me to death.”

She put the conditioner beside the shampoo, on a little shelf built into the tile. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Not anymore.” He grinned. “But I’m having a hard time waking up.”

“Hmmmm. I can see that.”

“Then I’m too far away,” he said, and would’ve remedied the situation if Jessi hadn’t set a hand on his chest.

Instead of nudging him back, she used it to steady herself while she lifted to her toes and kissed him in a cloud of warm spray and lemon that must have come from her soap or shampoo. The scent of it, of her, went straight to his head. Not so much, though, that he failed to notice her hand drifting down, over his belly, and lower—

Hold caught it before she could divert any more of the blood supply from his brain. The long night didn’t seem to have sated his hunger for her. He wanted her just as desperately this morning, but the new day brought what might be the end to their affair. Benji would be back before long, and with him Jessi’s sense of obligation to an idealized version of motherhood.

Now, this moment, he intended to commit to memory every glorious inch of her, to savor each sigh and moan, the way her body fit to his and how she gave so sweetly. So when she wanted to dive in to another kiss, when her hands were everywhere, when she plastered her wet, invitingly slippery body against his, he said, “What’s your hurry?”

“My really small hot water heater,” she murmured back.

“If you can tell how hot the water is, I’m doing something wrong again,” Hold said, his voice strained when she curled her fingers around him, her other hand slipping down to cup him.

“Tell me that when you have icicles hanging off your—”

He silenced her with a kiss, his mouth brushing hers once, twice, then deepening to mate, to war as she kissed him back with a hunger that staggered him. He boosted her up; she wrapped her legs and arms around him, threw her head back when he took her breast into his mouth, when he sucked hard as he slipped inside her. He braced her against the wall, both hands under her backside. She hissed out her breath—the coldness of the tile, he decided—then drew it back in when he started to move.

When she breathed again, it was on a moan, and the moan was his name. Her lips were against his neck, and the sound of her pleasure seemed to resonate through him, to mix with the feel of her against him, around him. The scent of lemon, the heat of the water beating down on him, and the pleasure winding, tighter and tighter until it felt like every bit of him was drawn together into one single point of heat and light, burning like the sun inside him.

When Jessi gasped, when he felt her orgasm tear through her, that sun exploded, filling him with that light, that heat, and so much ecstasy he could only stand there and let it fill him. Let her fill him, he thought as the waves of pleasure ebbed, softened, and left him standing there under the cooling spray of Jessi’s shower, with her draped limply over him and his legs threatening to give out any second.

“Jessica,” he said, the word little more than a rusty scrape of sound rattling its way out of his burning throat.

She seemed to get the message, though—at least she stirred enough to unwind her legs from around his waist. Her arms stayed around his neck, even after her feet touched down. She held on, swaying a little and making him laugh since he was hardly steadier.

What he was, Hold decided, was freezing.

“Just in the nick of time,” Jessi said, even her voice shivering. She lifted her arms from around his neck, wrapped them around herself instead until she stepped out of the shower and pulled a big, fluffy towel around her shoulders.

She tossed him a smile and hurried into the bedroom. The faint sound of dresser drawers opening and closing floated to him over the hiss of the shower head. He didn’t feel the water go to ice, still dazzled by her smile, by the joy she sparked in him. Emotions tangled up inside him—too many to sort out—but for one that ran through all the others, a bright thread leading him to one undeniable conclusion. No matter what else happened, they weren’t finished with one another, he and Jessi. Not by a long shot.

Ravenous, Jessi opened her fridge and grabbed some eggs while she listened to the water running overhead. That shower had to be ice cold, she thought, but if Hold felt half as amazing as she did, he’d never notice the chill.

And amazing, she decided, didn’t even come close. The word hadn’t been invented that described how she felt. Her body actually…
hummed
was the best she could come up with. She felt relaxed, happy.

She and Hold were…She didn’t know what they were, but she wasn’t going to waste any time or effort trying to label it, either. No expectations. She’d promised herself that last night. No hoping, no planning, one day at a time because, she knew, odds were high there’d be no future with Hold Abbot. Even so, it would hurt when he left.

But she knew how that felt.

Still, she didn’t love Hold—and if the word
yet
popped into her mind, well, she thought as she cracked eggs into a bowl, hearts broke every day. And then they healed.

She’d been through that before, too. And she’d survived it—survived and thrived. She’d get through it again, if she had to.

Hold slipped his arms around her waist, wrapped his big body around hers, and whispered in her ear, “I hope you’re making omelets, sugar,” which she barely heard over the sudden lurch and pound of her pulse.

She tipped her face to his, smiling, even if she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I had a feeling. Any particular preference on what you want in yours?”

“Whatever you were having a couple weeks ago that smelled like Heaven. Although I have to point out it didn’t smell as good as you do right now.” He nuzzled her neck, and the pleasant little tune that had been humming through her body shimmied its way up to a peppy salsa.

She nudged Hold back, although it was the last thing she wanted to do. “If you want to eat any time soon, I’ll need something besides eggs.”

He stepped back. “Food now,” he said and added a wicked grin to his raised hands, “and later—”

“Work,” Jessi said firmly.

“Work?” His hands lowered, his grin notched down to devilish. “Now I’m work, huh?”

“In a sense,” she teased. “I have a lot to catch up on, and since you were the distraction, you get to help.”

“What makes you think I won’t be a distraction today?”

“Because if you are I’ll have to kick you out.”

His hands went up in that warding gesture again, although this time it was meant to say,
I’m innocent
. “No distracting going on here. Though I have to point out that I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know,” Jessi said on a sigh. She chose bottles from her spice rack, sprinkling in a little oregano, some parsley, just a touch of garlic into the eggs. “You can’t help yourself. You’re like catnip, not to cats, of course, but you can ask any adult female and I think they’ll all agree you’re pretty irresistible.”

Hold stuffed his hands in his pockets, grinned. “Catnip, huh?”

“As if you didn’t know,” she muttered, sending him a look that wiped the smug expression off his face. “You’re well aware you can get any woman you want into bed, and I’m including the happily married and the way-past-romance groups.”

“Nobody is ever past romance,” Hold said.

“In my imagination they are.” Jessi set an omelet pan on the burner, sidestepped to get a hunk of parmesan out of the fridge. She dropped four slices of bread into the toaster, then handed Hold the butter dish and a knife.

“Plates are there,” she said to him, indicating the cupboard. “Glasses next to the sink, juice in the fridge. Make yourself useful.”

“Sugar, you don’t know how useful I want to be.”

“I think I have an idea,” Jessi said, “but how about we have breakfast first.”

The omelet tasted every bit as good as it smelled, and took about two minutes to wolf down, after which Jessi took to her feet, whisking around the kitchen to put things away and pile dishes into a sinkful of hot, soapy water.

To avoid him, Hold decided.

He caught her on one of her mad dashes, pulled her close, kissed her. Stepped back. “Again with the hand on the chest,” he said, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. “Jessica.”

She looked up, met his eyes for the first time that morning. “Hold. Benji is coming home…Well, I don’t know exactly when.”

And she didn’t want him walking in on the two of them in an awkward situation. “You don’t think Maggie will call and warn you?”

“It may not occur to her.”

And she needed to establish some distance. He understood that—even if he didn’t like it.

“So,” he plucked the omelet pan out of the dish drainer, snagged a towel from the stove handle, and set to drying as she washed. “What’s this paperwork you threatened me with? Or would you rather tackle the attic today?”

“Paperwork, definitely,” she said, adding quickly with a fleeting glance into his face, “It has to get done.” She shrugged. “The attic has waited this long.”

“It can wait a bit longer,” Hold finished for her, but he was puzzled.

Dealing with her mother’s things had to be so much harder in reality than in theory, so he understood how she could be gung-ho one minute and shaking the next.

Seeing her still so skittish about it today surprised him. Jessi was a woman of deep feelings. She was open with her body and with her heart—sexy, warm, and loving, but not one to let sentiment drive her. She was a pragmatist. A realist. A single mother had to be both, he figured.