“You showed up, Jamie. Part of you trusted me, despite what you read online, or what Mark—who you do know and trust—told you.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and breathed deeply.
She’d spoken softly, easily, without anger or venom. Didn’t she always? Hadn’t she always spoken to him from the heart, without weighing the calculated gain or risk of what her words might cost her, like so many other women before her had done? Not for the first time, or even the tenth, Jamie wondered how he’d gotten so lucky to have been in the right place at the right time to meet Jessica. And how he could have been stupid enough to doubt her.
“Something in your heart still believed in me, Jamie. In us. And even though it feels a little like you’ve sliced my fingers off, I just want to be with you. I’m not sure what it means, or how I’ll feel tomorrow, or even in a few hours. But right now, I’m not ready to walk away from us.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
THERE WERE THINGS that Jessica was very good at. Dedication to her craft was at the top of the list. Working with others and melding together in a musical environment was another. But lying ensconced in Jamie’s arms and trying not to love him was not anywhere on the list. That particular part of her was gawking at the list like the list was a leper. Jamie had offered to make up the guest room for her, but that felt too far from him. She was glad Jamie hadn’t tried to be intimate with her before he’d fallen asleep. She somehow knew he wouldn’t. He seemed as content to hold her as she was to be wrapped in his arms as he drifted off to sleep, and this…His soft breath against her neck, his chest pressing against her back with each inhalation, the soft hairs on his legs tickling the backs of hers, this felt right.
Her eyes were used to the darkness after she lay awake for almost three hours. During that time she’d discovered things about Jamie that endeared him to her even more. He was a man of gentle, understated comfort and luxury. The king-sized bed was strikingly masculine and dark, with touches of ornate carvings along the ridges of the substantial headboard, which matched the long dresser and the taller one between the windows. His burgundy comforter and cream-colored sheets were soft as satin, though made of something altogether different and lovely. Probably Egyptian cotton with an impossibly high thread count. The comforter was as thick as two high-end comforters others might buy from expensive stores in New York or Paris, but the simplicity of the other elements in the room made them feel understated and modest. From the frosty sconces above the bed and the shaggy, deep throw rug at the foot of the bed to the photographs atop the dressers that told of his years before his parents died, his bedroom felt like a world in and of itself. Like his private hideaway, and in Jamie’s arms, she felt like she belonged right there with him.
She turned to face him, and in his sleep he tightened his grip around her with a sated sigh. He’d looked so sorrowful when he’d explained all that he’d gone through, and the reality of his doubting had cut her to her core. But apparently her core wasn’t as thin as other women’s, because beneath the swollen, raw flesh of that cut, lay something too thick to damage with misunderstandings, the very foundation of what made her the determined cellist that she was. Beyond the pushing and micromanaging of her mother, beyond the desire to please her, lay her heart. And no matter how much prodding and encouragement she was given, it was her heart that she played with, just as it was her heart that had her reaching her hand up to stroke Jamie’s cheek.
Lying there in the dark had allowed her to discover things about herself, and she hadn’t even been looking. Apparently, she didn’t have to look, because her heart led those discoveries as if it were weaving fine fabric, replenishing the frayed edges and thinly worn center of her being, repairing the pieces of flesh that had been cut through with Jamie’s admission.
He was right. It would have been easier for him to say he’d only doubted where she worked, but Jamie was a moral, ethical man, good-natured and thoughtful through and through. Hadn’t he proven that with the way he took care of Vera? The way he took care of her, up until that very last day? Jamie wasn’t about the easy way, and she could see by the way his friends protected him—even if Mark was a mean jerk—that he’d earned that love and dedication moment by moment.
She ran the pad of her thumb over the prickly and soft edge between his scruff and his bare cheek. A low, sweet moan slipped from his lips, and again he pulled her closer. In his cotton tee and her panties, she couldn’t feel the planes of his bare chest. Carefully, trying not to move too much and rattle him awake, she slipped the shirt over her head and placed it beside her, and lay against him. Her eyes welled with fresh tears again, but the pain from earlier was gone. She pressed her lips to his, selfishly drenching herself in his taste, his scent, his slumbering softness, and, moments later, his strength as his body awoke and his embrace tightened. His breathing became more urgent, and the muscles in his chest, legs, and all the delicious places in between hardened.
His hand slid up to the back of her neck, sending pinpricks from his touch to her toes as he deepened the kiss, and she fell into it. Opening to Jamie again was easy, because she’d never been closed, not any part of her. He breathed air into her lungs, stroking the hairs on the back of her neck, loving her mouth, deeper, more intensely, as salty tears slipped between their lips.
He drew back, inhaling as he touched his forehead to hers and exhaling her name. “Jessie.”
Her name carried so much love, it brought certainty. With her heart in her throat, she managed, “I know why I couldn’t leave.”
His eyes opened, hooded, cautious, as he kissed tears from her cheeks.
“Because I’m yours, Jamie. I think my phone had Jamie radar when I threw it over the deck.”
“Even after…?”
She touched his cheek again. “Even after. Maybe because of.”
Their lips met again, sweet and loving, as their bodies and minds overcame the crinkle in time that had parted them, filled it in and smoothed it out with every caress, every kiss. Her hands traveled down the familiar planes of his back, hard and warm, to the curve at the base of his spine, where she pressed, bringing his hips to hers.
“Jessie,” he whispered, as he trailed kisses over her dimples, down her chin, to the hollow of her neck.
“There’s no going back for me. The moment we make love, Jessie, I’m yours again.”
Mine. The most beautiful word she’d ever thought.
“You’ve always been mine, as I’ve been yours. We just took forever to find each other.”
And as they came together, she knew there was no threat of drowning when she was with Jamie, only a sea of pleasure, a world of love, and a promise of truth.
Chapter Twenty-Three