Closer to My Heart (7 page)

He shook his head. “Just…working something out in my head.”

She nodded, but remained silent. She didn’t want to break the spell weaving its magic between them. She knew if she was patient, he would reach out to her, even now, with the simple act of trust of taking her hand. He hesitated for a moment before he put down the bag and sat down next to her. He groaned as his unstretched, tight muscles pulled against his bones. Their morning exercises were good for his rehabilitation, but they were also a pain in the neck.

“You’re too young to ache, Lucas,” Jane teased.

“All this running lately is affecting my body.” He looked away, and then busied himself by getting their lunch set out. Man, he didn’t want to talk about his aches and pains with Jane. Not today.

She put sunscreen on her face while he shook off his maudlin mood. He settled onto his side propped up on his elbow as she was putting the cap on her Coppertone. With her Helen Kaminsky Australian sun hat in place and a grin on her face, they dug into their meal.

He was so totally masculine, so handsome and relaxed as he reclined in the sun. The turkey sandwiches they’d chosen were great, and Lucas polished off both the chips and pretzels. Zeke, a friend of Jane’s from the bakery, had thrown in a huge fruit cup full of grapes, melons, strawberries and bananas, which Jane and Lucas fed to each other. They ate lazily, talking about their lives and things they liked to do. Neither was stunned to find they had a lot in common, though they had already discovered lots about each other during the past few weeks. And at times they were content to sit quietly.

Jane had gotten a job right out of university, when she was just 22, with Condé Nast and had worked with them around the world for four years writing for publications like
Bon Apetít
,
Condé Nast Traveler
,
Vanity Fair
,
Wired
and
Architectural Digest
.

“That’s why I know so many quirky things around the house and garden,” she laughed. All the research she’d done through the years had sunk in and most were now her hobbies.
Condé Nast Traveler
had been one of her favorite publications because it really let her travel the world and meet really cool people.

Life on the road had appealed to her in so many ways, at first. Well, that and the men she worked with. She’d learned to surf in Hawaii and Tahiti with Lane; her sailing knowledge was forged with Gray in New Zealand and the Greater and Lesser.

Those relationships had been temporary and hot, but they taught her valuable lessons. Like for some pretty shallow, yet practical, reasons she had been addicted to the adventures easily gained as a travel journalist. Lane and Gray were both still single and kept in touch by Christmas cards. Thom had married Ruth last year, which was kosher with their six month old twins, and their budding family spent two weeks each year with Jane at her house on the North Carolina coast in a little town called Duck. It hurt to admit, but sometimes she couldn’t help but wonder what if. What
if
she had said yes when Thom had asked? He’d seemed so fly by night…so unreliable as a partner. But, he wasn’t lying when he admitted that he was ready to settle down.

She frowned a bit, and jumped when Lucas brushed his fingers down her arm. He smiled down at her, and pulled her to her feet. Together they packed up; Jane put away the blanket and Luke tossed the trash in the can. He had the gall to eat three of the four chocolate chip cookies and complain that he was full. They put the bag in the car, and held hands while ambling through the gardens.

Even when they had to move single-file to cross the Zig-Zag Bridge their fingers were tightly entwined. Lucas hadn’t felt this free and peaceful in two years. His heart was full, his burden light, his enjoyment complete just listening to Jane’s melodic voice and watching her animated face as she talked. She laughed at the silly stories she told about herself, never minding that the joke was often on her.

“Oh, God,” she was saying through hysterical laughter that had tears streaming down her cheeks. “That boy was so embarrassed. I think it was his first date, too, and when we saw my friend Jennifer across the restaurant, I skipped gleefully across the room and sat in a chair close by her. My velocity must have been pretty strong on that slick, polished floor and when my bottom hit the seat the chair took off.”

She stopped walking to double over laughing, crossing her arms over her belly.

“Ahh,” she took a deep breath. “Well, when the arm of my chair knocked the arm on Jenn’s, my chair tipped over the opposite direction. I had on a mini skirt—because, after all, that’s what any ninth grader wears on her first date—and my legs went straight up in the air with my new red polka-dotted panties flashing the whole world. Good Lord, it was totally humiliating.”

“What did your date do?” Lucas was laughing too, and his laughter drove her on.

“David? Well, he’d been slower off the block from me when we saw the rest of the group, but as soon as I went down he turned the other way and went into the bathroom.”

They passed by the Iris Fountain and were headed to the Pergola, where the wedding had wrapped up and the photographer was getting some parting shots of the guests.

“He left you?” Lucas asked incredulously. Jane nodded, wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes.

“Well I would’ve done the same.” He slapped Jane on the ass and quickened his pace.

“Oh!” She had to run to catch up with him. She didn’t want to interrupt the wedding proceedings, so she was as quiet as possible.

He knew her silence was killing her. He’d pay for that later.

Good.

Neither wanted the afternoon to end. They’d been at the park for almost three hours and walked the entire square footage of the Sarah B. Duke Gardens. Truthfully, there was no reason to stay any longer.

“Can we get some ice cream while we’re out?” he asked as they climbed into the car.

Jane looked at the hopeful expression on Luke’s beautiful face. He’d been fairly quiet since lunch, and just seemed content to have someone to listen to. To not be alone. He smiled and answered if she asked him something directly, but mostly he was quiet. He seemed sad, yet he didn’t complain. It seemed that whatever bothered him was deep down inside. So if ice cream would make him happy, then ice cream he would have.

“Let’s head over to Ninth Street. They’ve got a Ben & Jerry’s.”

He closed his eyes for a second, and turned to smile at her. It was glorious, and it made her heart beat so fast in her chest that she thought it would explode. He bent to brush his lips across hers, leaving them tingling.

“Oh, yeah. That sounds great.”

Car Guys
was on the radio when she started it up, but he reached over and turned it off. The trip to Ben and Jerry’s was brief, and the silence in the car was peaceful. About halfway there he reached over and took her hand, pulling it across the console and cradling it in his lap.

“Your skin is so soft,” he said quietly. He was looking out the window and didn’t really notice that he’d made that comment out loud.

Jane got a single scoop of Charlie Brown in a sugar cone, and Lucas got a scoop of chocolate chip and a scoop of banana in a waffle cone. She laughed at his enthusiasm over dessert. A couple of times, he’d stolen quick bites of her ice cream, but wouldn’t share anything with her at all.

While they sat on the benches in front of Ben & Jerry’s, five or six children stopped in front of her to say hello and hug her. She was always gracious and obliged them with a nod of their parent’s heads. She signed autographs for a couple of them.

“What was that about?” Luke grinned at her blush while they walked hand in hand back to the car.

“My fans,” she said and laughed sheepishly. He let it go for now.

“Come on,” she said when they were standing in the parking lot next to her car. “Can you help me get a little more sunscreen on? I’ve got a Frisbee in the car.” She pointed across the street to the empty fields on Duke’s North Campus.

She reached down to her waist to pull her tank top over her head. Luke’s eyes bulged wide at the sight of her scant bikini top.
Christ!
He’d known she’d had a killer figure, but her torso and breasts had always been covered. His imagination hadn’t done her as much justice as she’d deserved. He swallowed hard and nodded.

Jane felt like an ass standing in the parking lot in her bathing suit top and low-slung khaki shorts. She hoped all of the kids had cleared of sight.

She’d never been shy about her body or sex, but then again she’d never tried to turn on a gorgeous man desperate in the parking lot of Ben & Jerry’s either. This was so sad.

She opened the car door and leaned into the back seat to get the Coppertone out of her bag. Luke’s dick sprung to life with painful and uncontrollable immediacy at the sight of her delectable position. He groaned and flexed his fingers as his hands hung loosely by his hips. His fingers tingled. He really, really wanted to run his fingers along the curve of her bottom and up into the loose legs of her shorts…then slide them inside to the pouty lips of her sex. He licked his lips in anticipation and felt saliva pooling in his mouth. If he was lucky, and if God was with him this day, Jane would be his tonight.

Jane stood up with the sunscreen in hand and turned. “Here we go.”

His eyes were glazed over with a carnal gleam that left no question as to what he was thinking. He moved in close and pressed his nose into the curve of her shoulder. “We should’ve taken the edge off before we left your house,” he whispered. She stilled.

“So you don’t want to play at the park?” she asked nervously.

Lucas watched a small droplet of sweat trail from the hollow in Jane’s throat down through the curvy valley between her breasts. His heart was pounding and his vision was blurred. All the blood rushed south to his throbbing crotch and he couldn’t hear a word she said. Jane’s bikini top was a simple design of two small triangles held together around her sternum by a single string. Her pert breasts pressing against the triangle cups held the string away from her torso by about a finger’s width—just enough for the sweat to continue it’s trail towards her waist. Exactly where Lucas wanted to be. Then the bead dipped into her shallow belly button.
Oh, God.

He leaned into her body so he could whisper in her ear. “I’ll play anywhere you want to play, Janie.” He stressed the word ‘play’ by lightly thrusting his pelvis against her stomach. Jane was panting, beyond the capability to speak for a minute. She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Good,” she finally managed. “Let’s skip the Frisbee and go straight for the goal.”

Lucas thrust a couple more times and pulled back. He nodded dumbly and backed up to give her some space. Neither said a word on the way home, but Lucas did shove her shirt into her lap. Jane put it on and drove home as fast as she could and figured to hell with a ticket.

Lucas could hear Penny, the Basset hound, barking when they pulled into the driveway. He groaned.

Jane grinned sheepishly. “She knows it’s Saturday…she missed her jog this morning.”

Lucas chuckled, knowing he’d have to keep his cool a few more minutes. He took comfort in knowing Jane was nearly as antsy as he was, though. He grabbed the bag out of the back seat while she jogged up the steps to let Penny out, who was howling in anticipation by the time the door opened. Pop Tart, Penny’s kitten, walked onto the porch to twine herself around Jane’s legs.