The Top Gun's Return

mouth and let the tears come.

Gulping sobs, she felt her way to the huge bed and sank onto it. Shaking, bereft, she reached blindly for something to hold on to-a pillow-and found herself hugging a large plump Teddy bear instead.

She stared at it in surprise, and then a gust of laughter replaced her sobs. Intermittently laughing and sobbing, she gazed at the fat brown bear while she mopped at her tears with the sleeve of her sweater. Whose idea had it been to leave her such a thing? she wondered, poking and tugging distractedly at its cheery yellow bow.

Heavens, she'd never been the Teddy bear type, even when she was little. Joy, now- she was the one for bears. Joy Lynn, Ms. Sophisticated New York Career Person, had bears all over her apartment. She had them on her bed and her sofa and her dressertop. She had one sitting on the back of her toilet, for heaven's sake.

Jessie had been…well, somewhere between the baseball mitt and the Nancy Drew type, which was a hard place for a Southern girl raised in the seventies to be. In fact, come to think of it, she'd had a hard time fitting into any recognizable niche, growing up in Oglethorpe County, Georgia.

Until Tristan Bauer had come along. Right then, for the first time in her life, she'd known exactly who she was and where she belonged.

She lay back on the bed, hugging the bear to her chest. With her eyes closed she could see him walking away from her, not the way he'd looked tonight, thin and worn, steps uneven, but on a night half her lifetime ago, striding down the second-floor walkway of a Florida beachfront motel, tall and strong and straight, head set with that proud and arrogant tilt, radiating self-assurance in almost visible waves.

And she, leaning against the wall outside her door because she feared her legs weren't going to hold her up if she left it, and her lips still throbbing from his kiss and her insides turning upside down, had called out to him. 'You don't have to go, you know.'

At the top of the stairs he'd paused to look back at her, one hand on the railing, smile tender, eyes dark with regret.

'You can stay if you want to,' Jessie had said to him in a husky, grown-up voice that hardly trembled at all. Lauren Bacall, sexy and sleepy-eyed. But inside her head she was crying in panic, If you leave me now, I'll just have to die.

He sauntered back toward her while her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest, and when he was close enough to touch her he stopped. Smiling wryly, teeth white against his dusky skin, he murmured, 'Darlin', much as I wish I could, I don't have any protection, and I'm pretty sure you don't, either.' He lifted a hand and lightly brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Then he turned away once more.

And she'd known-she'd absolutely known-that if he went ahead and walked away from her then, it was going to be forever, that she was about to lose her one and only chance for true love and lifelong happiness. The man was gorgeous, and this was Florida, spring break. There had to be hundreds-no, thousands!-of girls out there on those beaches more beautiful, more sophisticated, more prepared than she was. If she let him slip away tonight she was gonna lose him-simple as that.

Trembling, she'd heard herself say, 'I'm on the pill.' In the comparative innocence of that long-ago time, pregnancy had been the only concern on both their minds.

He turned back to her once more, looked down into her eyes and smiled. Then he tucked his finger under her chin, lifted it and kissed her, pressing her back against the wall until she felt the whole hard length of him against her. He kissed her in ways she'd never known before, then took her room key from her nerveless fingers and unlocked her door. Somehow or other they found their way inside.

The door had barely closed behind them before he was taking off her clothes-not that it was a hard thing to do, a tug on the tie of her new beach coverup, another on the string of her new matching bikini-and kissing her all the while, until her mouth felt hot and swollen and her breathing was only desperate sips, caught between whimpers. He kissed her throat until the pressure made her pulse pound like a bass drum, then moved his mouth downward, kissing his way across the tops of her naked breasts. Hot as she was, her nipples went puckered and hard as if she had a chill, until he began to warm them, pulling one deep into his mouth and sucking and stroking it with his tongue while his hand covered and chafed the other, and she thought she couldn't possibly stand so much…so much feeling. Then his mouth moved to the other breast while his hand came to warm the one his mouth had abandoned, and she moaned and drove her fingers into his hair and clutched him harder against her, pleading for…she didn't know what.

His hands stroked down her sides, hooked under the strings of her bikini bottoms and yanked them down, and the heat bubbled up in her like a geyser. Her legs buckled, and he caught her hips and held her while his mouth pressed kisses across her belly, and then lower. And…oh, no-lower. His tongue slipped into her, and she uttered a sharp, shocked cry. She gripped his shoulders and sagged against the wall, legs spasming as his arms held her captive and his tongue moved rhythmically inside her.

Her mind left her. Later she would marvel and wonder at what had happened to her, stunned to think that she, Jessica Ann Starr, had allowed a man to do to her what he'd done. Stunned to discover her body was capable of such sensations. But then, utterly mindless, she'd gasped as her body jerked out of her control and he'd surged upward to wrap her in his arms and hold her while she sobbed and quaked through her first-ever climax.

Before reason could return and find her perched on the brink of utter humiliation, she was lying in a tumble of sheets, and Tristan's hard, hot body was covering hers and he was kissing her again-her belly, her breasts, her mouth-and the bubbling, searing heat was spreading once more beneath her skin. His hand stroked her thighs, coaxed them apart and cupped the moist, pulsing place between. A finger gently probed while he kissed her mouth deeply…and then he held her intimately in the warmth of his hand, raised his head and looked into her eyes.

'You're a virgin, aren't you?' he said.

Breathless and belligerent, she'd replied, 'What if I am?'

He'd laughed softly and kissed her again. Sometime later, breathless and trembling now himself, he'd lifted his head again to ask in a broken whisper, 'Are you really on the pill?'

She'd told him the truth, but by then it was too late, and neither of them cared.

Seven months later, while Tristan was on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, Jessie had been rushed to the base hospital for an emergency Caesarean. The baby, a girl, had weighed a little over three pounds, and since Tristan hadn't been there to say otherwise, Jessie named her Samantha June.

That's who the bear's for, Jessie realized as the pounding heat ebbed from her body. Whoever was responsible for warming her quarters with flowers and a fruit basket would have known Tristan had a teenage daughter. The Teddy bear had obviously been meant for Sammi June. And they'd forgotten to call her.

She sat up, hands smoothing the bear's fur and straightening the yellow ribbon around its neck. She felt terrible, ashamed; she was a miserable excuse for a mother. She'd meant to phone Sammi June while Tris was here. Of course, she hadn't known he was going to be with her for such a short time, but the truth was, she'd forgotten. She'd been so focused on herself and on Tris. She'd been selfish, thinking like a lovesick girl instead of somebody's mother.

Placing the Teddy bear back in its nest amongst the pillows, Jessie wiped her face with the sleeves of her sweater and reached for the phone.

Chapter 4

Sammi June set the computer on Hibernate, shut it down, stretched, then shoved back her chair and bent over to slip on her running shoes. She tied the laces and grabbed up her fanny pack as she stood, shaking the cramps out of her legs. She was halfway out the door, buckling on the fanny pack as she went, when the phone rang. She said a bad word and thought about ignoring it; she was starving, and on Sundays the cafeteria's hot food line closed early. And frankly, after working on that stupid psych paper all day, she was not in the mood for yogurt.

But then a little shiver ran through her, and before she could stop it came the thought: What if it's my dad?