Finding Jessie: A Mystery Romance (12 page)

She poked a bare foot out and said, “But kind sir, I cannot help you fetch your books from outside. For I have no shoes to wear and you have used that fact to keep me a prisoner in your house for nearly a month!”

Sam clapped his hand to his forehead. “Ugh! I am so thoughtless, Jessie. Why didn’t you ask me before this? It didn’t click with me, past that first night, that you didn’t even have any shoes!”

“They came off when I was swimming in the river to the buoy, after the accident.”

“On some level, I knew it, but it just completely slipped my mind. Why didn’t you ask me to get you some shoes?”

“Maybe I didn’t want to take the chance that I would go gypsy on you.”

“Did you really think you might leave me?” he teased.

“Not once, Sam. I’m just teasing. Not once did it ever cross my mind to leave your wonderful house. Not since I knew that we loved each other.”

He nodded his acknowledgment but did not tell her that he loved her. “When did you know you loved me?”

“Since that time I saw you in New Hampshire.”

“Last summer? I’d never even met you then!” He kissed her then, harder than he usually did, until they were both gasping. He was thinking of putting his hand on her breast. He managed to stroke her shoulder and her body language invited more.

Startled, she broke apart from him at the sound of a thunderclap outside.

“Uh-oh, I think you had better get your books inside before it is too late.”

He’d never unloaded faster! Afterward, when the car was emptied, the rain began in earnest. He told her to put on a pair of his socks. He drove them to discount shoe store in the neighborhood and carried her in stocking feet, from the car to the door of the shoe store and put her down.

“That was romantic, Sam.”

“There was broken glass in the parking lot. I didn’t want you to hurt your feet.”

“Is your back okay?” she asked.

“So far, so good.”

She smiled and he opened the door for her. He told her to pick out what she wanted. As they walked through the shoe store, looking for the row that carried her size, the sales clerk came up behind them and said, “Excuse me, miss, but you can’t walk in here barefoot.”

“I have socks on,” she replied and picked up a pair of tennis shoes to try on.

“You have to be wearing shoes when you come in here,” he protested. “You can’t come in here barefoot off the street ”

Sam was frustrated. “Excuse me, but this woman has no shoes.
At all
. Is this not a shoe store?” he thundered, and Jessie hid a smile at his protective demeanor.

“Yes, this is a shoe store, but there are health department laws and consumer laws—”

“This is a shoe store. I am going to buy her shoes. Do you think you could possibly show us some shoes?” He hated to pull the card, but he added, “I’m a lawyer.”

The clerk gulped. “Of course, I’m sorry.” And to Jessie, he said “I’m sorry, miss, but how did it happen that you have not one pair of shoes?”

Her eyes measured the young man.

“I was driving in my motorhome, with everything I owned in it, when a drunk driver in a big rig rammed me from behind and I crashed into the river. I lost everything.”

“My goodness.”

“And then, I came home to my dear friend without a cent in my pocket.”

The clerk flushed. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Please come in and take as long as you like to choose some shoes. I’m kind of ashamed. I thought you might be the kind of thieves who come in barefoot and walk out with shoes. I see I misjudged you both.”

In the end, they bought two pairs of tennis shoes for Jessie, and a pair of winter boots with fur at the top. And lots of socks. And fuzzy slippers.

Now that Jessie had shoes again, she had mobility.

Back in the car he asked, “What are you smiling about, Jessie? The shoes?”

They looked at each other at the stoplight, by the low light of the dash.

“I’m smiling because you carried me across the parking lot. It’s the most gallant thing a man has ever done for me. I felt special.”

He reddened. “Of course you’re special!” In his mind he said,
I love you.

“Thank you!” she said. “Good to know.”

When they got home from the shoe store, Jessie ladled out the thick stew, and served them with cheddar-garlic biscuits that she had baked from scratch. Instead of eating in the kitchen, she laid linen napkins on the dining room table, and put out silverware—that she had polished that morning—upon the snowy linen napkins. She pulled the blue calico Staffordshire china from the credenza in the dining room—the big tureen was a beautiful frame for the stew she had made.

They ate quietly in the formal room, smiling at each other occasionally. He was awed by her efforts.

After dinner, when she was clearing the dishes, he helped her wash and dry them and put them away in the credenza again.

“That was a lovely dinner, Jessie. Thank you.”

“I have chocolate cupcakes for later.”

“Oh, my goodness. All that for me?”

“Yes. But I eat them, too.”

He moved up behind her so that he was against her back while she looked out the window over the kitchen sink, watching the rain streak its tears down the panes of the beveled-glass windows in the old house that he loved.

“I hope you don’t mind that I wanted to use the dining room. I felt like celebrating since my arm and shoulder is all better and all my burns and cuts are gone. For the first time since the accident, I feel physically healthy again.”

“I’m so glad to hear that, Jess. I was so worried about you and I hated to see you suffer so.”

She turned around in the circle of his arms and kissed him. “I know you have been a gentleman because I was so injured, and because you wanted to make sure it would work out between us. But now I am not ill, and I can say with relative certainty that our lives will work out together.”

“I think so, too,” he said.

“We’ve been together in bed for weeks, and you have been careful about not making love with me until the time is right. But tonight—Sam, tonight—would you please make love with me?”

Sam felt his heart near to bursting for the love of lovely, sweet Jessie. His desire rose in him like a searing flame licking at his groin until he nearly groaned from the anguish of wanting her.

“I’ve haven’t done this…made love…not for years.”

“I thought that might be the case. You are very hesitant about intimacy.” She paused.

“Maybe I was waiting for you, Jessie.”

“Has it really been years?”

“Yes,” he almost whispered. “But now you’re here, Jessie. I care for you. Very much.”

She said, “We’ll be gentle with each other.”

“I want to make something clear. Making love with me is not a condition of you staying here and being with me.”

“I know, and I thank you for your generosity and kindness. But I want to make love. Do you, Sam?”

He nodded and pressed against her and closed his eyes to the feeling of himself pressed firmly against him. Jessie sighed hard, as the sea did, a long slow exhale of breath of want pouring from her lungs and through the front of his cotton oxford shirt, warming him to the very core of the very root of his maleness.

“Yes, Jessie, I’ll make love with you tonight.”

And then what?
pressed the angel on his shoulder.

Chapter Seven

Not even in his wildest dreams had he seen a woman like Jessie, who shed her old-fashioned long full skirts and long-sleeved, high-necked blouse and stood before him in the dimmed lamplight of his bedroom, with the covers turned down and the plump pillows piled at the head of the bed, ready for lovemaking.

Jessie was totally naked, with her arms relaxed and her eyes closed, her feet slightly apart, so he could look at her. With her eyes closed, she said, “Tell me what you see, Sam. Do I please you?”

“Jess, you’re incredibly beautiful. More than I deserve.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Of
course
you please me. But I’ve seen you naked before.”

“You said it didn’t count because I was injured.”

He laughed and kissed her lips. “I counted the days of you here. I counted your beautiful mind and your sweetness and your loving nature that now brings me to my knees.”

Sam kissed her lips, her neck and her shoulders, and then knelt before her and kissed her belly and pressed his face into the inward curve of her abdomen, smelling and tasting that silky skin which he had not been able to touch for the long weeks that had stretched into months while she was still hurt—and while he was still unsure of himself and where he was going to go with all of this.

He felt his confidence building. He loved her and he knew she loved him. Never mind his silver hair. They were apparently meant for each other. This he knew, as well as he knew his books, or the Constitution or the Amendments, or the sound of the sea at night. Jessie was the only woman in his life that he had ever loved like this. Long past infatuation, he loved her.

Jessie backed over to the bed and led him by the hand, saying, “You’re going to hurt your knees on that hardwood floor. Come to the bed, Sam.”

He slipped out of his pajamas and under the covers with her, as he had for several weeks before. Except that now they were both naked instead of in sleepwear. And there was permission between them that they could do what they had never been able to do. Share each other. But not only permission, there was  encouragement, and there was love. He felt it from her and his heart, and other parts of him, soared.

He reclined on the bed and when she reached for the lamp switch, said, “Please don’t turn it off. I want to see you, Jess. I know you are terribly shy, but please trust me. I want to look at you in the light because it…helps me as a lover, to please you better when I can see what I’m doing and what you’re enjoying. Is that okay?”

She gulped and after a fleeting moment of panic in her eyes, she said, “Yes. I want to see you, too, Sam.”

“Look at me, then.”

She looked down at him long and slow, touching the sweep of his silvery dark hair, his eyebrows, his eyelids, even the creases at the corners of his eyes. She ran the tip of her finger down his nose and caressed his cheeks with her hand. She ran her hands over his collarbone and chest and nipples, learning his body.

He pulled her to him gently for long kisses. She sighed and so did he, so great was their desire that their sighs almost drowned out the sighing sounds of the sea that penetrated the window glass. She trembled in fear.

“I know you’re very scared, Jessie.”

She nodded. “Very.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes…it’s just the past that lurks just beneath the surface. It haunts me.”

“I don’t know what happened to you, but I have compassion for you, sweetheart. What would make you more comfortable with me?”

She bit her lip for a moment. “Don’t talk dirty. Don’t get on top of me until I relax, because I might panic. And go slowly.
Please
.”