Smooth Talking Stranger

ELEVEN

If i'd been thinking rationally, i never would have allowed it. Jack's mouth brushed slowly over mine before settling with gentle pressure. I moved against his unyielding weight until I found some perfect, unexpected alignment that sent heat jolting through me. My knees gave out, but it didn't matter because he was holding me so securely. One of his hands came up to my jaw with extreme care.

Every time I tried to finish the kiss, he pressed harder, coaxing me to stay open, tasting slowly. This was so different from what I was accustomed to, it seemed like something other than kissing. I realized that my kisses with Dane had become a form of punctuation, the quotations or the hasty dash at the end of a conversation. This was softer, more urgent and relentless. Wild, fresh, tumbling kisses, eroding my balance. I groped Jack's shoulders, my fingers curving over the hard nape of his neck.

He took a quick breath and reached down, his hand sliding over my pajama bottoms as he coaxed my hips high and tight. The full-on pressure of him was stunning, galvanic. He was unbelievably hard. Everywhere. He was in control, infinitely stronger, and he wanted me to know it.

He kissed me until the sensations flowed in directions I couldn't go, spilling and sliding darkly. As I felt a desperate ache cambering low in my body, I finally understood that if I slept with this man, he would take everything. All the defenses I had built would be destroyed.

Shaking, I pushed at him and managed to turn my head long enough to gasp, "I can't. No. That's enough, Jack."

He stopped at once. But he kept me against him, his chest moving hard and fast.

I couldn't look at him. My voice was hoarse as I said, "That shouldn't have happened."

"I've wanted this since the first second I saw you." His arms tightened, and he bent over me until his mouth was close to my ear. Gently he whispered, "You did, too."

"I didn't. I don't."

"You need some fun, Ella."

I let out an incredulous laugh. "Believe me, I don't need fun, I need-" I broke off with a gasp as he pressed my hips closer to his. The feel of him was more than my dazzled senses could handle. To my mortification, I hitched up against him before I could stop myself, heat and instinct winning out over sanity.

Feeling the reflexive response, Jack smiled against my scarlet cheek. "You should take me on. I'd be good for you."

"You are so full of yourself… and you would not be good for me, with your steaks and power tools and your attention-deficit libido, and… I'll bet you're a card-carrying member of the NRA. Admit it, you are." I couldn't seem to shut up. I was talking too much, breathing too fast, jittering like a wind-up toy that had been wound to the limits of its mechanism.

Jack nuzzled into a sensitive place behind my ear. "Why does that matter?"

"Is that a yes? It must be. God. It matters because-stop that. It matters because I would only go to bed with a man who respected me and my views. My-" I broke off with an inarticulate sound as he nibbled lightly at my skin.

"I respect you," he murmured. "And your views. I think of you as an equal. I respect your brains, and all those big words you like to use. But I also want to rip your clothes off and have sex with you until you scream and cry and see God." His mouth dragged gently along my throat. I jerked helplessly, muscles jolting with pleasure, and his hands gripped my hips, keeping me in place. "I'm gonna show you a good time, Ella. Starting with some take-no-prisoners sex. The kind when you can't remember your own name after."

"I've been with Dane for four years," I managed to say. "He understands me in a way you don't."

"I can learn you."

It seemed as if something inside me had started to unravel, weakness spreading, all my body tightening against it. I closed my eyes and bit back a whimper. "When you offered me the apartment," I said weakly, "you implied you had no ulterior motives. I don't appreciate the position this puts me in, Jack."

His head lifted, and his lips brushed the tip of my nose. "What position would you prefer?"

My eyes flew open. Somehow I managed to twist away from him. Half-sitting, half-leaning on the arm of the sofa, I pointed to the door with a trembling finger. "Go, Jack."

Jack looked as sexy as hell, rumpled and aroused. "You're kicking me out?"

I could hardly believe it myself. "I'm kicking you out." I went to get my glasses, fumbling to put them back on.

His mouth had turned sullen. "There's more we need to talk about."

"I know. But if I let you stay, I don't think we'll do much talking."

"What if I promise I won't touch you?"

As our gazes caught, it seemed the entire room was filled with volatile heat. "You'd be lying," I said.

Jack rubbed the back of his neck and scowled. "You're right."

I tilted my head toward the door. "Please go."

He didn't move. "When can I see you again? Tomorrow night?"

"I have work."

"The day after?"

"I don't know. I've got a lot of stuff to do."

"Damn it, Ella." He went to the door. "You can put it off for now, but you'll just have to deal with it later."

"I'm a big believer in putting things off," I told him. "In fact, I even put off procrastinating."

He gave me a smoldering glance and left, carrying the empty crib box with him.

Slowly I cleared away the clutter in the kitchen and wiped the counters, and made Luke's bottles. I kept stealing glances at the phone-it was about time for my nightly talk with Dane-but it remained silent. Was I obligated to tell him what had happened between me and Jack?… Did an open relationship allow for secrets? And if I confessed to Dane about the attraction I felt for Jack Travis, what good could possibly come of it?

As I pondered the situation, I decided the only reason to tell Dane about the kiss was if it was leading to something. If I was becoming involved with Jack. And I wasn't. The kiss was meaningless. Therefore, the wisest option-not to mention the easiest one-was to pretend it had never happened.

And put off talking about it until the whole thing was forgotten.

The next day i called my sister, i was frustrated but not especially surprised that Tara was dragging her feet on giving Dr. Jaslow permission to talk to me.

"You know I'm not going to do anything that's against your interests," I told her. "I want to help."

"I'm doing fine by myself. You can talk to my doctor later. Maybe. But it's not something I need right now." There was a defensive brittleness to Tara 's tone that I understood all too well. I had felt that, lived in that feeling, for a year or so after I had started therapy. Once you started to realize that you had a right to your own privacy, you became rabidly protective of it. Of course, Tara didn't want my interference. On the other hand, I needed to know what was going on.

"Can you tell me just a little about what you've been doing?"

An unenthusiastic silence passed before Tara replied. "I've started taking an antidepressant."

"Good," I said. "Can you tell a difference?"

"It's not supposed to kick in for a few weeks, but I think it's helping already. And I've been talking with Dr. Jaslow a lot. She says the way we were raised was definitely not normal or healthy. And when your own mother is crazy and neglects you and competes with you, you have to figure out what that did to you as a child, and then you need to work on fixing it. Or…"

"Or we might end up repeating some of her patterns," I said softly.

"Yeah. So Dr. Jaslow and I are talking about some of the things that have always bothered me."

"Like…"

"Like the way Mom always said I was the pretty one and you were the smart one… that was wrong. It made me believe I was dumb and there was no chance of getting smarter. And I made a lot of stupid mistakes because of that."

"I know, sweetie."

"Maybe I'll never be a brain surgeon, but I'm smarter than Mom thinks."

"She doesn't know either of us, Tara."

"I want to confront Mom, try to make her understand what she did to us. But Dr. Jaslow says Mom will probably never get it. I could explain and explain, but Mom would deny it or say she doesn't remember."

"I agree. All you and I can do is work on our own issues."

"I'm doing that. I'm finding out a lot I didn't know. I'm getting better."

"Good. Because Luke misses his mommy."

Tara responded with a shy eagerness that touched me. "Do you really think so? I had him for such a short time, I don't know if he'll remember me."

"You carried him for nine months, Tara. He knows your voice. Your heartbeat."

"Does he sleep through the night?"

"I wish," I said ruefully. "Most nights he wakes up about three times at least. I'm getting used to it-I've started to sleep so lightly that as soon as he makes any noise at all, I'm instantly awake."

"Maybe it's better that he's with you. I've never been good at waking up fast."

I chuckled. "He gets loud in a hurry. Believe me, he'll have you popping out of bed like a toaster waffle." Pausing, I asked cautiously, "Do you think Mark will want to see him at some point?"

Abruptly the warm communication stopped. Tara 's voice turned flat and cold. "Mark's not the father. I told you, there is no father. Luke's just mine."

"I'm not buying that Luke came from the cabbage patch, Tara. I mean, someone participated. And whoever it was, he owes you some help, and more importantly he owes Luke."

"That's my business."

It was difficult to keep from pointing out that since I'd been recruited to take care of Luke at my own expense, it was partly my business, too. "There are a lot of practical considerations we haven't begun to talk about, Tara. If Luke's daddy is helping you, if he's made promises… well, those promises need to be made legal. And someday Luke's going to want to know-"

"Not now, Ella. I've got to go-I'm late for an exercise class."

"But if you'll just let me-"

"Bye." The phone went dead in my hand.

Fuming and worried, I went to a pile of bills and catalogs on the kitchen island, and found the piece of paper Jack had given me with the number for the Fellowship of Eternal Truth.

I wondered what my responsibility was. It was clear to me that Tara was not at the point at which she could make decisions about the future. She was vulnerable, and she was probably being deceived by Mark Gottler into thinking that he would take care of her, that he would provide for her and the baby indefinitely. Maybe he had preyed upon her and taken advantage, thinking there would be no repercussions because she had virtually no family to speak of. But she had me.