Suddenly Sexy (15 page)
Authors: Linda Francis Lee
Tags: #Women television journalists, #Man-woman relationships, #Single women, #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Adult, #Fiction, #Athletes, #Texas, #Love stories
*Â *Â *
Jesse paced back and forth across Katie's kitchen. He was going towring her neck the second she arrived.
Even hours after
Getting Real with
Kate
had aired, he still couldn't
believe what he had seen on morning television. His Katie on the
screen, sexy, sensual, andâ Good God, he couldn't believe those shoes.
When she had come around from behind the counter and the camera got a
full shot of her, he had spit
out a mouthful of Cheerios.
He swore she did it just to drive him insane. She'd no doubt be pleased
to learn that it was working.
And who wouldn't be going over the edge
when faced with this constant battle? One minute he wanted
to protect
her and keep her safe, then the next he wanted to pound hard and deep
inside her.
Yes, he had lost it. He was losing his mind over a woman he didn't want
to want.
The front door creaked open, then closed with a whispering click. Then
silence as someone tiptoed
across the entry hall as unobtrusively as
possible. As well she should, he thought grimly at the memory
of
today's segment of
Getting Real
.
But the she he expected wasn't Katie at all. Travis stood in the foyer,
frozen at the sight of him, his golf bag still hanging from his
shoulder, surprise, guilt, and a suspicious red welt playing havoc with
his face.
"What happened to you?" Jesse asked with sharp concern.
"Me?" Travis asked gingerly. "What happened to me?"
Jesse could practically see the gears in the boy's head working fast to
come up with a story.
"You've got a red mark on your face."
"Ah, I... fell. Yeah, that's it! I fell."
"On your head?"
"Well, I was . . . getting a ball from the pond."
"Oh, really?" Did the kid think he was born yesterday?
"Yeah, you see, I didn't want to lose the ball. So I reached and
reached and the next thing I knew I fell in."
"But you aren't wet."
His nose wrinkled. "It happened hours ago. I'm dry now."
Jesse stared at the boy, then sighed. "Travis, you can talk to me if
something is wrong."
"Really?" Travis asked, not looking convinced as he headed to the
kitchen.
"Really."
"Okay. I want to quit golf."
"Quit?" His head spun as he tried to think like a father. Not a natural
task for him for many reasons.
"So soon? You've hardly given the game a
chance."
"I bet I'd be better at chess than I thought," the twelve-year-old said
with complete seriousness.
"Or that chemistry stuff you mentioned.
Experiments, mixing ingredients. Sounds like fun."
"You can't just quit," Jesse stated, walking over to the pantry to get
Travis a snack.
"Why?"
Good question. His first instinct was to say,
I said so
. But that would
rank right up there with grounding for no good reason. So he tried to
think like a good father, but he hadn't a clue what a real father would
do. He could hear his own father. "
You
want to quit? No problem
."
But Jesse had learned a person couldn't be a quitter, at least not if
he wanted to amount to anything. Just like he couldn't quit now as the
PGA Championship approached. He had to force himself back out to
the
course; he couldn't use Travis or Katie as an excuse not to persevere.
"Why don't you tell me what's really wrong, Travis? Is it harder than
you thought? Is the coach bad? Hell, I don't know how he can be any
good if all he knows is baseball. I'll talk to him. In fact I'll call
him Monday morning."
"Oh, that's okay. No needâ"
The quiet click of the front door opening again caught their attention.
Someone else was trying to sneak in.
"What is this?" Jesse asked, glancing at the ceiling like he was
looking for guidance. "All of a sudden everyone decides to come in the
front?"
Jesse returned to the living room and found a second person tiptoeing
toward the back hallway.
"It's about time you got home."
Katie froze, then pivoted to face him. She smiled a big guilty smile.
But Jesse knew it was an attempt
to cover nerves.
"All I want to know," he enunciated carefully, "is what the hell has
happened to everyone around here?"
Jesse didn't know how to explain the frustration that raced inside him.
His concern for Travis that he didn't know how to show. His feelings
for Katie that he didn't know how to deal with.
He watched as every ounce of Katie's nervousness whisked away.
"Nothing has happened," she shot back.
"Nothing? You were talking about foreplay! On TV. Good God Almighty,
Katherine, I can't believe you said
Find
yourself a strapping man with
a fine, strong putter and a good set of balls
."
Travis gasped. "Oh, man, I can't believe I missed it."
Red flashed up Katie's face and disappeared into her hairline. But a
second later, her eyes narrowed dangerously. "It is none of your
business what I was thinking, or what I was doing for that matter. I
had a show to do and I did it."
Jesse shook his head. "First you talk about sex on TV, then Travis
wants to quit golf."
Katie instantly cocked her head, her own problems forgotten. "You want
to quit, T?"
"Well, I was thinking about it," he admitted.
"Nobody's quitting anything," Jesse announced. "Not yet, anyway."
"Well, well," she said with a superior smile that really got his goat.
"Haven't you become the arbiter
of proper behavior."
"You better believe it. Someone around here has got to have a clear
head."
"What are you going to do?" she asked, her voice overly sweet. "Ground
us both this time?"
His eyes narrowed. "I'm thinking grounding isn't such a bad idea after
all. But no, that isn't my plan.
I have something better in mind. On
Sunday the three of us are going to play golf."
"Us?" Travis groaned. "The kind of us that means me playing, too?"
"Golf?" Katie demanded. "Why in the world would I do a thing like that?"
"Because Travis needs to loosen up and remember he's just a kid. And
you"âhe pointed at Katieâ
"need to get your head out of the studio and
stop worrying that you're not good enough as you are."
He saw the minute the anger drained out of her and she swallowed hard.
But that age-old stubborn
streak in her wasn't as easily squashed.
"And you think a round of golf will solve that?"
"A round of eighteen holes solves a lot of things."
"Golf isn't a cure-all, Jesse."
"Maybe not. But it's the only cure I know."
*Â
*Â *
The sun had set, the big, wide-open West Texas sky dotted with stars,*Â *
when Kate heard the sound of splashing water as she returned from a
walk. A single dive into the pool, followed by silence in the summer
night.
She still couldn't believe the
Getting
Real
segment she had done that
morning. Despite her denial to
Jesse, she had lost her mind. Yet again!
She shuddered when she remembered the line about the putter and balls.
Though truth to tell, she
also had to suppress a smile. Bad Kate.
She came through the back gate and saw Jesse's sharply defined body
cutting through the pool, his form smooth and economical, barely
causing a ripple on the water's surface while he swam laps. As always,
awareness shimmered through her. His arms glistened in the moonlight
with each stroke they took.
When he came to the end, he flipped easily,
then started back across.
She really didn't like this awkward dance they played. Awareness mixed
with restraint. Her body itched for his touch. But as much as she had
tried to be Ms. Modern
Sex and the
City
, when push came to shove and
sanity was in residence, she still couldn't get around the fact that
she didn't want to be another in the long line of women who chased
after him. She wasn't meant for Parker, but she wasn't meant for Jesse,
either.
She would have bypassed the pool and gone into the relative safety of
the house, but when she started
for the door, he stopped.
He rose up to stand in the shallow end, his hands coming up to clear
his eyes, then rake back his hair. Every time he did that, his arms up,
his fingers to his head, tangling in the dark strands, she felt that
frustrating sizzle of sensuality.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.
She shrugged, taking in the faint outline of his body partially lit by
the pool lights. She didn't know how
to put into words the unrest she
felt. The constant careening back and forth between wanting to live
freely and the old fears that any sort of wildness would ruin her.
"Neither could I," he said. He walked to the side of the pool, his
movements exaggerated by the water's resistance. "The temperature is
perfect. You should stick your feet in."
She told herself to go inside. She walked toward him instead.
At the edge of the pool, she kicked off her sandals and stepped on to
the top step, leaning her hip against the chrome handrail running down
the center, the water rushing around her ankles. She looked at him
until she had to look away.
The old cottonwood was visible against the moonlit sky, the sides of
the tree house seeming like alternating teeth cut out of a Halloween
pumpkin.
"We should finish sometime next week," he said, following her gaze.
"It's going to be great and long lasting, this time. Most regular
houses aren't built so well."
He laughed out loud, the sound echoing in the night. "We have some long
hours to go before it's secure
in the tree. At this point, a bad storm
could send it tumbling. Though I know Travis will be happy to be done
with it. He's not crazy about the saw, the hammer, or even the nails."
"Then why are you doing it?"
He came up the steps, one at a time, stopping one below her, and he
looked down into her face. "He's twelve but acts and talks like he's
thirty. Like I said earlier, he needs to have some fun. Regular, kid
fun," he quickly added. He hesitated. "Besides, I thought that when we
were finished, after he saw what he
had made, he'd be proud. You know,
give him some confidence."
Her heart lurched, and she crossed her arms on her chest. "You have the
potential to be a good father."
He laughed again. "No, I don't, and we both know it. But he's a good
kid."
"You seem to have adjusted to the reality of fatherhood."
"The thought of it still rattles me." He hesitated, then glanced at the
tree house. "And as much as I keep telling myself life is going to go
back to the way it used to be, it's not. Now I have to figure out what
to
do about it long term."
He turned back to her then, and curled his fingers around her bare arms.
Instinctively, her hands came up, her palms flattening on the hard
planes of his chestâintending to push free. His skin was hot and cold,
like electrically charged marble, and she couldn't seem to move away.
"What do you want to do?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
"To hold you."
The words were like fingertips grazing down her naked spine. She drew a
breath. "I'm talking about Travis."
He focused on his hand curling around the skin on her arm, running his
thumb over her flesh much as he had done in the cooking segment in what
seemed like a lifetime ago.
"Truthfully, I don't know," he answered her. "I wish everything wasn't
so ..."
His words trailed off, but she understood what he meant. "Complicated,"
she finished for him. "I know the feeling."
"Maybe so," he conceded, his voice a gruff whisper. "I want things to
be simpler. But there aren't any simple answers."
He watched the progress of his fingers as he ran the backs of them
against her arm. Then he surprised
her when he asked, "Why did you do
the love products show?"
She didn't respond at first, because she didn't have a clue how to
explain. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Water glistened on his body, and she watched a single drop run down his
torso to the wet swim trunks that molded to his hips and crotch. He
brought his finger to her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. When she
did, she could tell that he didn't believe her.
"Okay," she admitted, "I wanted to be sexy." Which was true. But all
she had managed to do was feel
like a traitor to herself. With every
move she made these days, she wasn't getting real, she was getting
farther and farther away from anything that had to do with reality.
His strong arm came around her body and pulled her close, her thin
cotton shirt absorbing the water on his skin. Instantly, she felt the
hardness of him and her breath fluttered.
"Doing things like talking about sex on television isn't what makes a
woman sexy," he said, his strong hand drifting lower to the small of
her back. "When a woman feels powerful, that's sexy. When a
woman isn't
afraid to be herself, that's incredible. It's as simple as that."
Kate felt her temperature rising, sexual desire riding through her.
"You said yourself nothing's simple."
His hands slid down her back to curve against her bottom, cupping her,
bringing her up against him, holding her secure. The need she felt was
exhilarating and a little frightening.
"What I said," he corrected her, his eyes darkening, "was that there
are no simple answers. There's
plenty else that is
simple and straightforward."
He leaned close then, and she knew he was going to kiss her. She
wondered for one fleeting moment if this was why she had gone for the
walk, not to get away, as she had told herself, but so she could return
and find him here, to feel his hands on her, to taste the pleasure of
his lips against her mouth.
She could feel the hard beat of his heart, felt the intensity of his
desire. He wanted her, even if at some deeper level he held himself
back.
She told herself to push him away, to latch on to the fluttering tails
of sanity as it fled. Instead, her arms curled around his neck,
unwilling to let him go.
"God," he breathed against her, making her feel alive. Desired and
wanted.
Pulsing need shimmered through her veins with an intensity and boldness
that made her heart trip. She felt consumed by his gaze, hot and
unmistakably sensual, and when he widened his stance and tucked
her
close between his thighs, she relished the sound of his deep rumbling
groan as he leaned down to
kiss her.
Just a kiss, she reassured herself. Just a simple kiss.
He nipped at her lips, sucking gently and biting, until she opened to
him. She shivered when he pressed her against the hard ridge of his
erection.
"I want you," he whispered. "I want you in a way that I have never
wanted a woman before."
And suddenly she realized that despite what he said, there was nothing
simple about this.
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