♪♫••═════ CHAPTER 17 ═════••♬ ♭
Pouring spiced creamer into her cup, Olivia stirred, without a word, and I knew what she was thinking. 'And look how that worked out.' But, Jack was not like Kel. In just a couple of days of being with him, and a couple of weeks on the phone, I found him to have an integrity that so many men were lacking. He just needed to understand that when he took me seriously, I would take him seriously. Actually, what he needed to understand was that he wanted something serious with me, the thought pricked. Regardless, I thought maybe it was important that he see that I had options; that I was not some desperate white trash mom, or some grown up groupie.
“Fine,” Olivia drug the word out, and promptly punched in the call to her husband. Less than an hour later, it was set up; a double date with the four of us, Olivia, Michael, Joel, and me; an innocent meal at an upscale Italian restaurant. Reconciled to the date, she took in my appearance and asked, “Want to raid my closet?”
I did more than borrow a slinky black dress from my friend. Olivia sat with Tristan the next day while I sat in a salon having professional highlights streaked through my hair, and a trim to the long layered length. On the day that Jack was to arrive, I did my own nails while Tristan napped off his Tylenol. The physical therapy session that morning had shown optimistic improvements. Tristan was moving about with his crutches better than ever before, and, seeing that, put a happy spark in my eyes.
Jack sent a text that he was on the ground and I knew that soon he would be in a rent car navigating an electronic map to our little house. Pulling a clean shirt from the dryer, I tossed it to Tristan, who was in his tiny recliner with his tablet.
“Why do I have to wear this?”
“Because Jack is coming over and you need a clean shirt.”
At the reminder of Jack's visit, his eyes lit, but he stubbornly pushed the shirt away. “I want my red shirt.”
As always, the red shirt with the flaming guitar across the front. Pulling at the skirt of the borrowed black dress, which had a tendency to hitch up, I rooted through the drier for the requested shirt. He had just pulled it over his head when the door bell chimed.
Shoving the two shirts Tristan was not wearing, deep down in the side cushion of the couch, I pulled my skirt to where it touched a few inches over my knees, and crossed with a click of my heals across the hall floor to the door.
Peeking though the peephole was a mistake. The effect of seeing him never lessened, and I froze for a moment taking in the same basic ensemble as both visits to the hospital; jeans, teeshirt, jacket, and hair in a ponytail. A couple of necklaces, one long and one short, was a new addition, as well as an onyx looking stud in each ear.
Arcing the door open, I stepped back with a smile of greeting, but he hesitated a moment before stepping over the threshold, his dark eyes heating up, as they moved on me from head to toe, lingering here and there. A flush flamed my entire body when his gaze hit mine again, with a distinct spark of admiration.
As he passed, I received a husky, “You are so rocking that dress, Mariss...”
When he paused, in my personal space, I felt a kiss coming on, and I used closing the door as a diversion, hollering down the hall to Tristan. “Look who is here!”
Tristan, as it turned out, was avidly watching our exchange and for the first time in his young life, his expression was not transparent to me. There was nothing I could even liken it to.
Jack went directly to Tristan, bumping fists in the manner that he had taught him the day in the hospital, and they immediately began to chatter, as long-lost friends. Jack's eyes continually strayed my way as I moved around making sure to stay in his line of vision. Bending, I picked up hot wheels cars, and filled Bally's water bowl, bending again to set it on the floor.
Currently, the canine was on the other side of the patio door, and not happy at being on the wrong side of the glass, especially with a stranger so close to his young master. The dog, being a frisky lab, always needed several minutes to calm down, before being brought in, when someone visited. Hooking a finger in her collar, I released her into Tristan's care, then retreated to the kitchen. With much importance, he introduced his pet to Jack, then asked, “Exactly how much bigger is Bally than Rusty?”
“How about I bring Rusty to visit Bally one day and we can see?”
Pausing my stir, of the pot of gumbo on the stove, I evaluated that statement. Bring Rusty to see Bally, as opposed to Bally to see Rusty? Jack had not said a thing in all of our conversations about the paternity test, that according to the legal documents should be scheduled no later than next week. The only thing he had ever said about Tristan and Los Angeles had included me, in a casual statement, 'We should take him to Disneyland, and Legoland, does he like legos?'
“Okay guys, who wants a bowl of gumbo?” Switching off the burner, I reached for flatwear and dishes.
“Me! Me!” Tristan affirmed, with much enthusiasm, then his voice went down a few decibels as he asked Jack, “You want some, right?”
“Gumbo?” Jack hesitated, and when he sent a dubious glance my way, it automatically slid down to my legs, then up again to my chest, before hitting my face.
“My mom makes the best chicken gumbo. It has sausage in it too!”
“Well,” Without breaking his gaze, Jack replied, “If your mom made it, I know it's the best. I will have some of that.”
Although I was getting off on his stares, I knew them for what they were. Right now, he was getting off, himself, in that ego way of males; appreciating a woman dressing up just for them. At the same time, whether it was a conscious thought or not, it was probably cheapening his view of me, to think that I was trying too hard at this stage of whatever our relationship was.
“Want to eat in there?” Once I had two bowls filled, I made the offer, knowing that Tristan was initially embarrassed anytime he had to walk with crutches in front of someone who had yet to see it.
The bending move was perfected, after all I was on the down slide to thirty, and I used it, yet again, to place the bowls on the sofa table.
Turning, I intercepted Jack's eyes on my backside, and sweetly smiled as I ventured, “Were you planning on hanging out here for awhile, tonight?”
Dark eyes melded with mine, then dropped to his bowl where he picked up the spoon. “I plan on hanging out here, as long as you want, tonight.”
The husky drop of his voice made the inference clear. If my phone had been in my hand, I would have swiftly canceled my devious plans of the night and ecstatically let myself hang over him, or him over me, all night.
Tristan, once again, picked up on the change in atmosphere, and regarded us with unreadable eyes as he engulfed his meal. Steeling myself against those same dark eyes in his daddy's face, I proceeded with phase one.
“Cool! I thought, as long as you were here with Tristan, I would go out for a couple of hours.”
Nonchalantly, I added a cup, and a glass of sweet tea to the table, remaining bent a couple of extra seconds in the pretense of rubbing a smudge on the table with my finger. Only my nerves kept me from laughing at the various incredulous looks that crossed Jack's fine face. After the initial shock, he seemed confused, and finally furious.
“THAT's why you are so dressed up?!”
Shooting a protective look to our son, I returned, “Yes...This is not my normal gumbo getup...”
Interpreting the look at Tristan, he straightened from his sprawl on the floor requesting, “Can we talk a minute?”
My eyes went to the large wall clock over the television, as I agreed, “Sure but I only have a few min--”
My words cut off in surprise when he grabbed my wrist, towing me to the hall. With a look back into the den at Tristan, he entered the first door which was my bedroom. This venue surprised him enough that he dropped my arm. Pausing, he took it in for a few seconds; my made bed with the many pillows propped on the headboard, and the neat dresser with a few photo's of Tristan tucked into the mirror frame.
“You want me to babysit?!” His brown eyes were thunderous with an emotion that made me hot with longing, and wary at the same time.
“No,” Carefully I cultivated my words, “It's not actually babysitting when it's your child.”
“No. Marissa. No, I will not 'hang out' here, while you go out.” Sarcastically, he stressed the 'hang out' part, and tilted his head awaiting my response.
“Why? Jack, you're doing fine with him,” Deliberately, I misinterpreted his adamant refusal. “You are all he talks about lately, and he is getting around great, you won't have to do anything except give him a teaspoon of Tylenol if he begins hurting. I will be gone two hours max, back in time to get him to bed. And,” I reassured, pretending to misread his annoyance, “I'm only a phone call away. I know I shouldn't have asked, but it's been so long since I've gone out, and the stress lately is just..I need to get out for a while.”
“Okay.” I was studying my fiery red nails as I awaited his next tirade, and when the response was that agreeable, my chin came up, seeing sympathy in his eyes. “Sure, it's fine. And how about the three of us go out tomorrow night?”
My head was reeling in confusion as I crossed the drive to Micheal’s Volvo. Carefully, I stayed on the concrete so that my heels wouldn't sink in the grass and twist my ankle the way my plan twisted around on me tonight. Was phase one a success? It did not feel that way.
Two hours later, my keys jangled as I unlocked the front door. The dinner was enjoyable. Michael and Olivia as a couple were a blast, and Joel was everything Olivia had promised that day. However, I couldn't keep my mind from Jack, and when Joel made a coffee or nightcap invitation, I politely refused.
Bally met me, jumping around in a typical four legged greeting, and down the hallway, Jack roused from his place on the couch. Seeing me, he reached for the remote, muting the t.v. Seeing him heated me up in all the right places.
“Hi,” With a genuine smile at the view of him on my couch, I asked, “Did I wake you?” He said he had been channel surfing, and I wondered, “Tristan already in bed?”
“The Tylenol seemed to knock him out. He fell asleep in his chair, and I ended up carrying him to bed.”
That image inflated my heart, and in case my feelings were showing in my eyes, I dropped to the couch beside him, pretending an interest in a t.v. advertisement.
“Did you have a good time?” His words were soft and curious.
“Yeah. It was good to get out.” Liar. I had really wanted to stay in. With him.
He asked who I had been with, and I answered honestly, then he asked if I was seeing Joel. Each question seemed brotherly, and swallowing my disappointment, I replied, “No. Not yet anyway. This was my first time to meet him.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What did you think?”
“About Joel?”
Heaven help me, when his eyebrows raised in that mocking way that Tristan's did when having to explain himself, I almost threw myself on him. My words came out almost a whisper, “I don't know yet.”
“Did he kiss you goodnight?”
“Why?” Now I was incapable of anything above a whisper.
His hot brown gaze held mine helpless, and with his next words, I lost whatever phase or battle this was.
“Because. You are too beautiful to not be kissed goodnight.”
As his head tilted to mine, my heart began to thump harder than any drumbeat in any of his songs. How in the name of heaven could each kiss be better than the one before it? That was my last rational thought.
Stubbornly, I held back my response, not so much because I had the willpower, but because allowing him to convince me to kiss him back resulted in a fiery feeling that I had never felt. I succeeded in this for less than a minute, then my sigh mingled with his breath when I gave over to the tease of his tongue, and my fingers curved automatically into his hair.
The kiss continued, robbing me of any rational thought, and sending every cell in my body screaming for more. My back hit the cushions of the couch, and his weight continued to press. Frantically, I ripped the band from his hair, desperate to feel it between my fingers like that day in a tour bus, ages ago.
My breath reduced to pants, and when his lips and tongue touched the crook of my neck, I groaned. The thin clingy material of the dress was barely a barrier between the denim that had grown increasingly harder against my leg. Bringing a knee up slightly, I shifted, and feeling that movement, he did the same until his hardness cradled perfectly against my softness, and our moans into the current kiss were synonymous.
The tantalizing tunnel of his hand, from my knee to my thigh, and almost hip, beneath the dress had me sucking in a startled breath. The silky strands of his hair dragged across my face as he pulled his kiss from my lips and took it to the depths of my neckline. Tracing his tongue on the skin just beneath that loose fabric barrier had me shifting instinctively against his jeans seeking the relief contained by a zipper, and in this heavenly delirium, his name pushed through my lips.
Bringing himself face to face again, his dilated gaze moved over mine, and our lips brushed together. Smiling and speaking against them, he rumbled, “Goodnight Mariss...”
For several stunned seconds, I lay, incredulously watching as he clipped his phone onto his pocket, and searched out the keys to his rental car. Dark strands of hair were wild about his face, and as if feeling my observation of them, he raked his hand through the mane taming it only slightly.
“Wait,” Jumping up, I closed my fingers over his arm and letting my look drop to his jeans, teased, “You can't leave... like that...”
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