'Now I know I'm getting to you.' She tried to say it lightly, but her eyes glistened. 'I'd like you to think I'm beautiful. I always wanted to be.'
Her hair fell over her brow, tempting him to brush at it, to tangle his fingers in it. 'The first time I saw you, when I was tired and annoyed and you were sitting in my whirlpool, I thought you were beautiful.'
'And I thought you were Jake.'
'What?'
'I'd been sitting there, thinking about my story, and about Jake-the way he looked, you know.' Her fingers roamed over his face as she remembered. 'Build, coloring, features. I opened my eyes and saw you and thought… there he is.' She rested her cheek on his chest. 'My hero.'
Troubled, he curled an arm around her. 'I'm no hero, Jack.'
'You are to me.' She shimmied up his body a bit, then rested her forehead against his. 'Nathan, I forgot the strudel.'
'Did you? What strudel?'
'The apple strudel I made for dessert. Why don't I dish some out and we can eat it in bed?'
Later, he thought, later he'd think about Jackie's idea of love and heroes. 'Sounds very sensible.'
'Okay.' She kissed the tip of his nose, then smiled. 'Your bed or mine?'
'Mine,' he murmured, as though the word had been waiting to be said. 'I want you in mine.'
Laziness was its own reward. Jackie embraced the idea as she stretched in bed. Nothing seemed more glorious at the moment than to sleep in after so many days of rising early and going straight to the typewriter.
She snuggled, half dozing, pretending she was twelve and it was Saturday. There had been nothing she'd liked better at twelve than Saturdays. But as she shifted her leg brushed against Nathan's. It took no more than that for her to be very, very glad she was no longer twelve.
'Are you awake?' she asked without opening her eyes.
'No.' His arm came around her possessively and remained.
Still drowsy, a smile just forming on her lips, she nibbled on him. 'Would you like to be?'
'Depends.' He shifted closer to her, enjoying the quiet, cozy feel of warm body against warm body. 'Did we get all the strudel out of the bed?'
'Can't say for sure. Shall I look?' With that, Jackie tossed the sheets over their heads and attacked him.
She had more energy than she was entitled to, Nathan thought later as she lay sprawled over him. The sheets were now balled and twisted somewhere below their feet. Still trying to catch his breath, he kept his eyes half-shut as he looked at her.
She was long and lean and curved very subtly. Her skin was gold in the late-morning light, except for a remarkably thin line over her hips where it remained white, unexposed to the sun. Tousled from the pillow and from his hands, her hair sprang in a distracted halo.
He'd always thought he preferred long hair on a woman, but with Jackie's short, free-swinging style he could stroke the curve at the back of her neck. He did so now, and she began to purr like a satisfied cat.
What was he going to do with her?
The idea of nudging her gently along was no longer even a remote possibility. He wanted her with him. Needed her.
He tried to think of what he would do tomorrow, a week, even a month from now, without her. His mind remained stubbornly blank. This wasn't like him. He hadn't been like himself since she'd spun her way into his life.
What did she want from him? Nathan detested himself because he knew he wouldn't ask her. He already knew what she wanted, as if it had been discussed and debated and deliberated. She loved him, at least for today. And he… he cared for her. Love was one four-letter word he wouldn't allow himself. Love meant promises. He never made promises unless he was sure he could keep them. A promise given casually and broken was worse than a lie.
With the morning sun shining through the windows and the birds singing the praises of spring, he wished it could be as simple as Jackie would like it. Love, marriage, family. He knew all too well that love didn't guarantee the success of a marriage and that marriage didn't equal family.
His parents had a marriage in which love no longer was an issue. No one would ever have accused the three of them of being a family.
He wasn't his father, Nathan thought as he held Jackie and studied the ceiling. He'd made certain that he would never be his father. But he understood the pride in success and the drive for accomplishment that had been his father's. That were still his father's. And were his.
He shook his head. He hadn't thought of his father or his lack of family life as much in a decade as he had since he'd met Jackie. She did that to him, as well. She made him consider possibilities that he'd rejected long ago with perfect logic and sense. She made him wish and regret what he'd never had reason to wish or regret before.
He couldn't let himself love her, because then he would make promises. And when the promises were broken he'd hate himself. She deserved better than what he could give her or, more accurately, what he couldn't give her.
'Nathan?'
'Hmmm.'
'What are you thinking about?'
'You.'
When she lifted her head, her eyes were unexpectedly solemn. 'I hope not.'
Puzzled, he combed his fingers through the tangle of her hair. 'Why?'
'Because you're tensing up again.' Something came and went in her face-the first shadow of sorrow he'd ever seen in it. 'Don't regret. I don't think I could bear it.'
'No.' He drew her up to cradle her in his arms. 'No, I don't. How could I?'
She turned her face into his throat. He didn't know she was forcing back tears, and she couldn't have explained them to him. 'I love you, Nathan, and I don't want you to regret that, either, or worry about it. I want you to just let things happen as they're meant to happen.'
He tilted her head back with a finger under her chin. Her eyes were dry now. His were intense. 'And that's enough for you?'
'Enough for today.' The smile was back. Even he couldn't detect the effort it cost her. 'I never know what's going to be enough for tomorrow. How do you feel about brunch? You haven't had my crepes yet. I make really wonderful crepes, but I don't remember if there's any whipping cream. There's always omelets, of course-if the mushrooms haven't dried up. Or we could make do with leftover strudel. Maybe we should have a swim first, and then-'
'Jack?'
'Uh-huh?'
'Shut up.'
'Right now?' she asked as his hand slid down to her hip.
'Yes.'
'Okay.'
She started to laugh, but his lips met hers with such quiet, such fragile tenderness that the laughter became a helpless moan. Her eyes, once alight with amusement, shuttered closed at the sound. She was a strong woman, often valiant in her way, but she had no defense against tenderness.
It had been just as unexpected for him. There had been no flash of fire, no rumble of thunder. Just warmth, a drugging, languorous warmth that crept under his skin, into his brain, into his heart. With one kiss, one easy merging of lips, she filled him.
He hadn't thought of her as delicate. But she was delicate now, as her bones seemed to dissolve under his hands, leaving her smaller somehow, softer. Woman at her most vulnerable. As the kiss spun out, he lifted a hand to her cheek, as if to hold her there, captive.
Patience. She'd known there was a steady, rock-solid patience in him. But until now he'd never shown it to
