Natural Attraction (28 page)

I see the shock on his face.  I then watch his face soften as he realizes there is no way he can blame a sweet and innocent sixteen year old girl for letting a small piece of information slip in a conversation.  Especially considering it was doubtful he had prewarned her not to mention his ex-wife in the same way he had no doubt done with his parents and siblings.

I tentatively decide my decision to be honest has paid off.  Keeping my gaze on his eyes I plead with him.

“Please don’t blame her or tell her I told you.  I promised I wouldn’t say it was her and I don’t want her not to trust me.  She’s a lovely girl and I felt such a strong connection with her today.  It was nice.  Please don’t wreck that for me.  She meant no harm.”

Jax nods, blinking slowly.  His fury clearly over as fast as it has arrived. 

At least I now know Jax is in the fast to anger and fast to forgive group of personalities.  This is just another thing to like about him because I don’t like people who fester on anger and let it dictate their lives. 

My preference is that if you are angry, just get it out there and get it over with. 

“I’m going to take a shower and clean up.”  He turns towards his bedroom door.  “Let me think about how to go about this while I shower and I promise I will tell you about her when I get out.  You can shower in the other bathroom at the same time if you like.”

This seems like a good plan after a hot day in the sun putting a fence up, so I nod my agreement as he heads to
his shower to think about the conversation he will soon be having with me.

Jessica

Jax must have some serious thinking to do. 

I know this because I have finished showering and I am already dressed in a fresh t-shirt and running shorts.  I have even had time to blow-dry my hair out long and straight around my shoulders.

I have now returned to the kitchen to find he is still not out of his bedroom.  Not too sure what to do while I wait, I opt to start making a salad to go with a quiche Ro has left on the bench for Jax and I to eat for dinner. 

Thinking back to the delicious salad that Jax made for us the night before, I end up digging deeper and deeper into his vegetable crisper.  I do this to make sure I have gathered as many colors as I can.  Perhaps I can make the salad and he can make the dressing?

I am finishing tearing some iceberg lettuce onto two plates when Jax’s bedroom door finally opens and he wanders out.  His hair is still damp and he is wearing a long pair of khaki cargo shorts that hang low on his hips.  He is shirtless and his feet are bare. 

I can see every firm muscle clearly defined on his chest.  I glide my eyes over his hard pectorals down to the softly rolling mounds defining his powerful abdominals.  My eyes move to the delicious grooves that dive down his stomach towards the top of his shorts.

I hear myself gasp slightly as I take in the view and decide it is illegal how good-looking this guy is without his shirt on.  I see a glimmer of
a smile raise the edges of his lips as he looks across at my efforts to make a salad.

“You’re not gunna fry lettuce for dinner are you?”  He teases, grinning as he looks at the array of vegetables I have laid out on the bench.

“No I’m not.” I grin back as I drag my eyes away from his body to concentrate on salad making.  Picking up a carrot in one hand and a cucumber in the other, I peer at them carefully, wondering how to prepare them for my salad.  I have only ever eaten salad out of a bag or container or one that has been served up on my plate by someone else.  Slicing or dicing carrots and cucumbers is a bit out of my league.

Jax watches me peering at the vegetables and decides to take pity on me.  Heading to a drawer under the counter, he rattles around for a few seconds and then hands me what looks like a plastic loop with a blade attached to it.  It has a short, orange handle attached to one end.

“A carrot curler.” He announces as I put the vegetables down and take the weird looking tool from his hand. 

I raise my eyebrows at him and peer closely at the carrot curler, clueless as to how to use it.  Do I poke the vegetables through the loop?  It looks a bit small so I’m not sure they will fit.

“Here let me show you.” 

He gently takes the curler from my hand and grabs the cucumber first. 
Running the tool down the length of it, long curly strings of cucumber start to peel away magically. 

With a few quick sweeps he builds a small mound of curled cucumber.  Splitting the mound in two, he places some on each plate.  He then hands me the curler back. 

“You can do the same to the carrot if you like.”

Grabbing the carrot I start scratching away but I cannot get the strokes long enough to do decent curls.  All I end with is a pile of carrot splinters.

Jax smiles at me again and moves to stand behind me.  Gently wrapping his arms around mine, he helps me hold the carrot with one hand and then helps me hold the curler with his other hand.

All thoughts of the carrot and the curler leave me as I feel the hard warm muscles of his chest push against my back.  My senses are assaulted with the spices and headiness of his freshly applied cologne.  I involuntarily take a huge breath through my nose as I
savor the smell of Jax against me.

“You smell nice too,” he chuckles as I realize I have been sprung not concentrating on curling carrots.  Clearly not as distracted as I am, he deftly drags my hand along the carrot to produce a couple of perfect curls.  Letting go of me, he steps back as he says softly, “I think you’ve got it now.”

I smile back up at him and give a few more unsupervised swipes on the carrot to produce a couple more perfect curls.  He’s an excellent teacher.

“Too easy huh?”
  He grins at me and starts looking at the array of vegetables I have laid out on the counter.

He picks up a big, orange, gnarly root looking vegetable that I have pulled out of his crisper and chuckles. 
“Yam.  How were you planning on preparing that for a salad?” 

“Um…”  I look at him helplessly having no idea.  “Perhaps you have another
tool?”

He looks at me and I watch his dimples explode on his cheeks as he tips his head back and starts roaring with laughter. I watch his abs rippling as he tries to smother his laughter to talk.

“Yam is sweet potato babe, and you boil or bake it.  It’s not something you slice up raw to put in salads.” 

“Oh.” I drag my face from his abs to his eyes.  “No wonder I had no idea what it was.  It needed
cooking. 
We’ve already covered my lack of cooking skills.  Old ground, move on.”

He grabs the offending yam and puts it back in the fridge returning with a white salad onion.  “Here, slice this thinly and I’ll julienne some capsicum.” 

Relieved that I have been assigned a simple task, I take the onion and set about chopping it up on a wooden board.  In the time it takes me to slice the onion, Jax juliennes a red and yellow capsicum.  He also makes tomato wedges and finishes whisking some oil, garlic, herbs and lemon juice together for a dressing. 

Boy is he fast in the kitchen.

While he carefully arranges the salad on our plates, I carve two big hunks of quiche and serve them up as well.  Deciding it is still warm outside, we opt to eat inside at the kitchen table where it will be cooler.

Most of our meal is eaten in silence as we think about our activities of the day.  We also brood about the impending conversation Jax has promised to have with me. 

After finishing eating and quickly tidying the kitchen, he gently takes me by the hand and leads me into the lounge room.  Much to my surprise he does not lead me to the couch to be seated.  Instead, he guides me over to the wooden cabinet where all the photos of his family are displayed.  He bends to open the top drawer.

Placing his hand in the drawer he slowly lifts out a large photo frame and hands it to me.  Looking up at him I can see that his eyes are laced with pain as he watches my face and my reaction to what I am about to see.

Setting my face into a neutral look, I look at the picture in the frame.  It is a picture of Jax in a gorgeous black tuxedo.   He is standing, beaming, next to the most stunningly beautiful bride I have ever seen. 

She is small, tiny in fact.  Very much like a pixie with her white blonde hair ornately wrapped over her head in fine braids that loop together at the back.  Massive bright blue eyes stare back at me from a face that is glowing with pure joy. 

This is a happy couple indeed.

I look up from the photo to see Jax still studying me carefully.  Unsure how to start the conversation I opt for the easy question first.  “What was her name?”

“Jessica.”  He whispers her name reverently.  The pain in his voice as he whispers her name gives me the first confirmation that this was the woman he loved.

He bends back to the drawer and gathers two more pictures and hands them to me. 

One is of Jessica sitting on a big gray Arabian, not unlike Maverick.  She is wearing a fluorescent bib with the number 254 on it.  The other is of her gardening in front a brick veneer house. 

I notice the house is different, it is not this house. 

“She died.” Jax whispers breaking into my thoughts as I study the pictures.

I gasp as I realize what he has just said.

Oh my god.

No wonder he didn’t want to talk about her before.  It must be dreadful to love someone and then they die when you are still young.  I put the two pictures I am holding back in the drawer.  Wanting to hear more about her and how she died, I gently take his hand and lead him to the couch.

“Tell me about her,” I encourage softly as we sit down.

He nods but then does something unexpected.  He leans across and lifts me to place me facing him in his lap.  Leaning back, he looks into my eyes and starts to tell me her story.

“I met Jess when I was twenty-two years old.  We met at Luke’s house.  She was Teagan’s’ older sister by just one year.  I think I fell in love with her the moment I saw her.  She was a delicate little pixie and my protective instincts kicked right in the second I saw her. 

From the first time I saw her, to the last time I saw her,
I felt like my heart was being ripped out if I had to spend any time away from her.”

Well that explains his desperate bid to keep me close. 

I sit quietly as I wait for him to continue.  His eyes are blank, I can see he is struggling to tell me what he needs to say.

“She was heavily into endurance rid
ing when I met her and she soon had me roped in to be her strapper.  Nearly every second weekend of the year she toured around the endurance circuit having a fine old time.

Not know
ing much about horses at the time, I was happy enough to tag along because I loved camping.  I also loved visiting new places, especially with Jess.  She taught me how to strap and she taught me the basics on feeding and caring for horses.”

Well that was a surprise too, for some reason I thought Jax had been born riding a horse.

“We married and bought a house together.  A small brick veneer on twenty acres that was suited to the half dozen horses we had at the time.  Jess trained ‘em during the day while I went to work at Walker Civil.  We loved life and we were considering starting a family.”

Jax stops and I watch him chew his lips nervously.  I decide to remain silent and wait for him to continue.  I watch him blink slowly a few times before he takes another big breath and continues.

“She died at an endurance ride riding a young horse she had been only been training for a few months.  He was a big, jumpy, grey gelding, not unlike Maverick.  From what I have learned in the last three years working on my natural horsemanship, I should never have let her take him out on a ride the way he was.  Unfortunately at the time I didn’t know any better. I was just a guy whose wife rode horses and I didn’t even ride myself.  I didn’t understand how dangerous green horses could be, and I didn’t understand what a horse does when it panics and it thinks it’s going to die.”

I watch him battle with himself as he stops to breathe again before he tells me more of her story.  I lean in and kiss him gently on the lips, offering myself to him and hoping he understands that I care about what he
is telling me.

His soft lips respond to mine briefly before he gently pushes me away.

“Let me finish this.”

I nod and lean back, looking into his beautiful eyes as I see the shine of glossy tears starting to gather in the outer corners of his eyes.  I lift my hands and gently wipe the tears away.

“She had just come back in off the second leg of her forty kilometer trainer and she was still sitting on her gelding leaning over to receive her time docket from the steward.   I was standing about fifty meters away, halfway between the timekeepers and our camp, ready to help her dismount and start strapping her horse for her.

Neither of us
were focussing on anything other than the job at hand of getting her time docket and then strapping her gelding.  You only get thirty minutes to strap before you have to present to vets to successfully to finish a ride.  It’s easy to get stuck focussing on that.