Читать книгу The One Winter Collection - Rebecca Winters - Страница 19

CHAPTER NINE

LIZZIE DIDN’T KNOW how she could thank Jesse enough for what he’d done. To train as a barista just to help her out wasn’t something she’d ever imagined Jesse would do. It had caused a radical shift in her opinion of him.

‘You saved the day,’ she said as they shut up shop at four p.m. Everyone else had gone home and they were the last two remaining in the café, empty now but somehow still echoing with the energy of all the meals cooked, eaten and enjoyed. Bay Bites had been well and truly launched. They’d even sold two paintings. She looked up at Jesse. ‘Did I tell you how much I appreciate what you did?’

‘Only about a gazillion times, but you can say it again if you like,’ he said with the laid-back smile that had appealed to her from the get-go.

‘So here’s my “thank you number gazillion and one”,’ she said. ‘No matter how good a job we did with the food, our opening day would have been a fail if we hadn’t had good coffee.’

‘It was far from a fail, Lizzie,’ Jesse said. ‘I think you can chalk up your first day as a success.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she said quickly. ‘We don’t want to jinx ourselves.’

He quirked a dark eyebrow. ‘I didn’t put you down as superstitious.’

‘You know how theatre people are full of superstitions? So are restaurant people. No one would be surprised if I had the building blessed, maybe brought in a feng-shui expert. Or burned sage to get rid of any bad karma from the previous business on this site. Maybe even hung crystals in strategic places. And don’t even think about whistling in the kitchen. Especially a French kitchen.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

She shook her head. ‘A lot happens in restaurants. First dates. Break-ups. Celebrations. Illicit liaisons. They leave energy. We want good energy. Opening day of a new restaurant is rather like the opening night of a new play. The cast. The audience. The need to have butts on seats. So let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic about how today went and leave it at that.’

He laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll grant you that. But I still say—’

Lizzie swiped her thumb and first finger across her lips to zip it. ‘Don’t say it or I’ll blame you if anything goes wrong.’

Jesse pretended to cower. Lizzie laughed and ushered him through the back door to the car park. She punched in the alarm code, followed him out and locked the door behind them.

For the first time an awkward silence fell between them. The door that led upstairs to her apartment was only a few metres to the left. Did she invite him upstairs? Be alone with him again? She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how exciting his kisses had been. How much she’d missed him. How maybe she had misjudged him. Would it be wise?

She gestured to the door. ‘I can offer you a coffee but I suspect that might be the last thing you want to face right now.’

‘I wouldn’t say no to a beer,’ he said.

‘I’ve got some in the fridge upstairs. I could do with one too.’ She gave a sigh that was halfway to a moan of exhaustion. ‘There’s nothing I want to do more than take off these clogs and kick back.’

The apartment over the café was compact but Sandy had done a wonderful job of refurbishing it for her and Amy. With polished wooden floors throughout, it had been painted in muted neutral tones with white shutters at the windows. Furniture comprised simple, comfortable pieces in whitewashed timber and a plump sofa and easy chairs upholstered in natural linen. The living room window framed a magnificent view of the harbour. The effect was contemporary but cosy and Lizzie’s heart lifted every time she came through the door.

‘You’ve settled in,’ Jesse said as he followed her through to the small but well-equipped kitchen.

‘I just need to get a few more personal touches in place before Amy gets here. Is it “thank you number gazillion and two” if I say how much I appreciate the work you did here?’ she said. ‘Sandy told me how much of this place is due to your efforts.’

‘Enough with the grovelling,’ he said with a grin. ‘Just get me that beer.’

Lizzie grabbed two beers from the fridge and cut lime quarters to press into the bottle necks. She handed one to Jesse and carried her own through into the living room. ‘No food to offer you, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘It’s all downstairs.’

‘I’ve been snacking on stuff all day,’ Jesse said. ‘I don’t need any more. How do you stay so slim working with all that delicious food?’ He cast an appreciative eye over her figure.

‘I learned early on to only have very small servings—just tastes really. Then there’s the fact that cooking is hard physical work. I’m standing all day every day.’

She flopped down onto the sofa and kicked off her clogs. ‘My feet are killing me. They’re always killing me. My feet, my knees, my back. It’s so good to sit down.’

She wiggled her toes, rotated her ankles, but it didn’t do much to ease the deep, throbbing ache in her feet. Damaged feet were an occupational hazard of being a chef.

Jesse sat down on the sofa next to her. ‘Let me rub your feet for you.’

Lizzie’s gaze met his and there was a question in his eyes that asked so much more than she knew how to answer.

She knew saying yes to his suggestion would be going beyond the bounds of their tentative friendship. But she longed to have his strong, capable hands on her feet, stroking and massaging to ease the pain. Stop kidding herself: she longed to have his hands on her body, full stop. She had gone beyond denying her attraction to him. But was this foot massage a good idea?

‘There’s some peppermint lotion in the fridge,’ she said. ‘It’s more soothing when it’s chilled.’

Jesse returned from the kitchen with the peppermint lotion. He sat down on the sofa again, put the container on the coffee table. ‘Swivel around on the sofa and put your feet across my legs.’

It seemed an intimate way to start a foot massage but she didn’t protest. The alternative was to have him kneeling at her feet and that wouldn’t do.

Her feet were so sore that Jesse’s first firm, sure strokes were painful and she yelped. ‘Just getting the knots out,’ he explained. He then settled into an easier rhythm, probing, stroking, squeezing with his strong fingers and thumbs, smoothing in the cool, sharply scented lotion.

She moaned her pleasure and relief. ‘This is heaven, absolute heaven. Where did you learn to massage like this?’

‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘I’m just giving you what you seem to need.’

‘Oh,’ she said, not meeting his gaze.

She didn’t know what to say to that. What she did know was she had to keep thoughts of other needs, and the way Jesse might meet them, on a very tight rein.

Her whole body thrummed with the pleasure of what his hands were doing to her heels, toes, soles. She’d never thought of feet as sensual zones but what Jesse was doing was nothing short of bliss.

‘I’m just going to lie back and enjoy every minute,’ she said, settling further back into the cushions, shifting her feet to fit more comfortably on his thighs.

‘You do that,’ he said in that deep, resonant voice that had become so familiar. Everything was beautiful about Jesse. His face. His voice. His hands—especially his hands. She moaned again as he massaged the pain away so that now his touch brought only pleasure.

She closed her eyes, zoned out into another world that focused on the rhythmical stroking of Jesse’s hands on her feet; the scent of peppermint mingled with the faint aroma of coffee that clung to him; the sound of their breathing, his strong and steady, hers becoming slower, calmer. She could hear the tick, tick, tick of the kitchen clock in the silence of the apartment. Please don’t stop—don’t ever stop.

Eventually, when her feet felt utterly boneless, he finished by stretching out her toes one by one, squeezing her feet one final time, then stroking right up to her shins. ‘Done,’ he said.

‘Mmm...’ she murmured as she drowsily sat up, swinging her feet away so she sat near him on the sofa. He might have been massaging her feet but her entire body felt relaxed. ‘You’re a man of many talents, Jesse Morgan. I guess that’s “thank you number gazillion and three”. I...’

Her voice got lost in her throat at the intensity of Jesse’s expression. She gazed into his face for a long moment, those incredible blue eyes fringed with black lashes, the dark eyebrows, his chiselled mouth. She knew she shouldn’t use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe a man but there wasn’t another word that worked as well. Handsome. Good-looking. Striking. He was more than all of those combined. A wave of intense longing for him surged through her.

Now was her chance to move away. To get off the sofa and make an excuse to go into another room. Even to yawn in an exaggerated manner and tell him she needed her beauty sleep and it was time for him to go home.

But she didn’t. Instead she reached out her hand and explored his face with her fingers, stroking the tousled hair from his forehead, tracing the line of his thick brows, the ridge of his sculptured cheekbones, the roughness of the dark shadow of his beard, until she reached his mouth. His lips were smooth and warm, the top one slightly narrower than the bottom. His eyes stayed locked on hers. He caught her fingers with his strong white teeth, nipped them gently and she gasped at the unexpected pleasure-pain.

She leaned forward and caressed his mouth with hers. His lips parted under hers and she gave herself over to the sensation of lips, tongue, taste in a slow, easy tender kiss. When he pulled her to him she sank into the embrace of his strong arms around her.

But what had started as gentle rapidly deepened into something more passionate, more demanding that had her winding her fingers through his hair to bring him closer, pressing her body to his hard strength, her heart hammering.

She had been so long without the touch of a man, of skin on skin, the heady delight of breathing in a man’s scent. And this was Jesse, who she liked so much, who she was growing to trust, who had appealed to her from the get-go. She wanted so badly to be close to him.

They were alone in the apartment. Anything could happen. But it shouldn’t. Not now. Not yet. Sex too soon with Jesse was not a good idea.

She harnessed all the willpower she could muster and pulled away from him. ‘That...that wasn’t a friend kiss,’ she said when she got her breath back.

‘No. No, it wasn’t,’ he said, his voice husky, his breath ragged. ‘I like you as much more than a friend, Lizzie. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.’

She shifted a little further away from him on the sofa. With their thighs touching she found it difficult to keep her thoughts straight. ‘Me too. I mean...there was a spark between us at the wedding. Now it...it’s grown.’

‘We got off onto a bad start with each other. You thought I was a guy who picked up and then discarded women just because I could.’

‘And you thought I was a...I don’t know what you thought I was. Someone too quick to jump to the wrong conclusion?’

‘Someone who’s trying so hard to protect herself she might not see what could be there,’ he said.

She paused to let the implication of his words sink in. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘You seem to have a distorted idea of who I am based on gossip and innuendo. I want to prove to you I’m a decent guy.’

Again she realised that some of her reactions to him might have hurt him. She hastened to reassure him. ‘You’ve shown me that in so many ways. The fact you went off and trained to be a barista just to help me is the latest example.’ She looked away and then back. ‘It’s just...just the other women thing.’

Jesse sighed. She didn’t like the sound of it. ‘I saw the way you watched me as I talked to Evie’s friend.’

‘Dell.’

‘Were you jealous?’

‘A...a little. She’s very attractive.’

‘Is she? I didn’t notice. She’s friendly, pleasant.’

‘How could you not see how cute she is?’

‘Contrary to that bad old reputation of mine, I don’t look with lust at every female I meet because I want to bed her and run.’

She managed a weak smile. ‘I never thought that for a minute.’ Though she’d certainly been told that was what Jesse was capable of. She was beginning to realise the gossips had got him wrong.

Jesse shifted on the sofa, a movement that brought him closer to her. ‘I haven’t spent much time in Dolphin Bay in recent years. I don’t like people knowing my business. It’s suited me to let them think Jesse the player has waltzed through life unscathed. If I’d brought Camilla home to marry her it would have been a triumph. But when it turned out such a disaster I was glad I’d never mentioned her. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been brought down so low.’

Lizzie was shocked at the slight edge to his voice. ‘Camilla?’ she asked.

‘She was a photojournalist who came to do a feature story on our team. We were rebuilding tsunami-ravaged villages in Sri Lanka a few years back. I wasn’t attracted to her at first but she singled me out for a lot of one-on-one photography.’

‘I bet she did,’ Lizzie murmured under her breath.

‘What was that?’ asked Jesse.

‘Nothing,’ she said and decided to keep her comments to herself. She couldn’t be jealous of someone in Jesse’s past and it sounded petty to criticise the unknown woman.

‘I spent a lot of time with her being interviewed, being photographed.’

‘And you fell for her.’

‘Hard and fast.’

Lizzie jumped down hard on an unwarranted twinge of jealousy. Her imagination was running crazy wondering what kind of photos Camilla had taken of Jesse and whether he’d been wearing any clothes. But she couldn’t ask.

‘Her time with us was limited,’ Jesse continued. ‘It was a pressure cooker environment. I managed to get hold of a sapphire ring. I proposed. She laughed. Then turned me down.’

‘She laughed?’ Indignation for Jesse swept through Lizzie.

‘Seemed what I’d thought was a serious relationship was a casual fling to her. She already had a fiancé at home in London. That was the first I’d heard of him. She had never told me she was anything other than single.’ The delivery of his words was matter-of-fact, emotionless, as if he didn’t care. But the rigid line of his mouth told Lizzie otherwise.

‘You must have been devastated.’

He shrugged. ‘You could say that.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She went home to London to marry the poor sucker.’

‘And you never saw her again?’

He paused. ‘Not from choice.’

‘What...what do you mean?’

‘She showed up in India at the start of this year to do a follow-up feature.’

‘On you?’

‘On the organisation I worked for. I wanted nothing to do with her.’

Something about the tone of his voice made her ask, ‘But she wanted you?’

‘To take up where we left off. Another fling. She was married by then and prepared to betray her husband.’

Under her breath, Lizzie uttered some choice swear words in French.

‘I don’t dare ask what that meant,’ Jesse said with a shadow of his grin.

‘Don’t,’ said Lizzie.

‘Probably nothing I wouldn’t have said myself,’ he said. ‘I told her what I thought of her and got transferred to another site.’

Lizzie put her hand on his arm. ‘I hate her on your behalf,’ she said vehemently. ‘How dare she do that to you? And what an idiot to...to have let you go. I would have...’ Her voice tapered off as she realised what she had said. What she had revealed. ‘I...I mean—’

Jesse cradled her face in his hands, dropped a kiss on her mouth. ‘That’s sweet of you,’ he said.

She managed a weak smile. ‘I...I think you’re kinda wonderful. I can’t imagine every other woman wouldn’t think so too.’

‘I’m glad you think I’m wonderful.’ He rolled his eyes in self-mockery.

‘You...you must know I do. I don’t mean that as a joke.’

Her breath hitched with awareness of how attractive she found him but it was so much more than the way he looked. ‘I missed you terribly while you were away in Sydney. It...it scared me. The thought of what it would be like when you leave for your job.’

‘I missed you too. I thought about you every minute of that four-hour trip to Sydney and all the way back.’

He took her hand in his, twined his fingers through hers. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

* * *

Jesse tightened his grip on Lizzie’s hand. ‘What’s to stop us being more than friends? From seeing what else we could be to each other if we gave it a chance. What are the real issues—issues that can’t easily be resolved? Can we discuss that?’ They could beat about the bush for weeks over this—and he didn’t have weeks.

She answered the pressure of his hand with hers. ‘There’s the fact we don’t live in the same country for a start. You seem to be in a different place every few months.’

‘That’s the nature of my current job.’

‘Current? There’s something else in the offing?’

‘A job that would still involve travel. But I’d be based in Houston, Texas. That is if I choose to take the job.’

She released her hand from his, smoothed her hair away from her forehead in a nervous gesture that was becoming familiar. ‘Texas is a long way from here. Even further than the Asian countries you seem to work in now. That’s a real issue.’

‘In the short-term. Long-term, Houston is a good city to live in. With plenty of good restaurants.’

She found her favourite errant lock of hair and twisted it around her finger. ‘But there’s not just me to consider. There’s Amy. She needs stability in her life. She’s already been uprooted from France, then from Sydney. And her father still wants her with him every long school vacation. I don’t want to disrupt her again.’

‘Does it make a huge difference where she lives when she’s only five years old?’

Lizzie threw up her hands in an exaggerated shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m still learning to be Amy’s mum. Trying to do my best for her when at times it’s been quite difficult. I can’t tell you how much I miss her when she’s away, like now. But, for her sake, I do everything I can to keep up the relationship with her papa. She loves him and she loves her French grandparents.’

‘I can understand that,’ he said. That didn’t mean he had to like the guy.

Lizzie shifted on the sofa; the movement took her further from him. ‘I guess we’ve already segued into the next issue that might stop us being together—my daughter. Bringing a man into our lives would have ramifications I haven’t really thought through. All I know is Amy has to come first.’

‘It’s not an issue for me,’ Jesse said. ‘You and Amy come as a package deal and I’m okay with that. We’d have to play it by ear what my role would be with Amy.’

‘You know I’m not looking for a father for Amy?’

‘I get that.’

‘She has a father. Philippe has his faults but he loves his daughter.’

‘You said he wants custody?’

‘He and his parents want her brought up French. His parents love her too. And she loves her grand-maman and grand-père. They’re wealthy. They think they can give her a good life.’

‘Not as good as with her mother.’ He felt a fierce surge of protectiveness towards both Lizzie and Amy.

‘That’s another point I have to consider. Amy is the reason I’m in Dolphin Bay. Thanks to Sandy I’ve got a job and a home and family nearby. Your mother has said she’ll help me with Amy. The local school seems good. I wouldn’t give all that up easily.’

‘You’d have to weigh up the pros and the cons of another possible change.’

‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’d have to do.’

He spoke slowly. ‘And I have to think about what a possible commitment would mean for me.’

Her quick intake of air told him he’d hit the mark with that one. He knew about the wagers laid on his ongoing bachelor ways. He knew even Sandy called him a ‘commitment-phobe’. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d warned her sister off him.

‘Did what happened with Camilla make you...make you back away from relationships?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Yeah. It did. Just when I’d...I’d got over the fire.’ Lizzie was the first person he had confided in about Camilla and now this. If he wanted to take their attraction further he owed it to her to be honest.

‘The fire that burned down the guest house? When...when you lost Ben’s first wife and little boy.’

‘It affected us all. We probably should have had trauma counselling. But Morgans don’t go in for that. You know what happened to Ben. He was so deep in despair no one could reach him. Until Sandy came back.’

‘Thank heaven,’ she said.

‘Mum doted on her little grandson. Dad as well. She went extra dotty over dogs after we lost Liam and Jodi.’

‘And you?’ Lizzie’s eyes were warm with compassion.

‘I was gutted.’

‘But everyone was probably so concerned for Ben they didn’t think about the effect on you.’

‘And rightly so. But seeing what happened to him made me decide it was never going to happen to me.’

‘If you didn’t love, you couldn’t lose.’

‘Something like that. By the time I met Camilla my defences were cracking. I’d realised I had to take my own risks. Make my own way.’

‘And then you got hit with Camilla’s betrayal.’

‘And went backwards.’

Lizzie’s smile was shaky at the edges. ‘We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? Both scared of what happened to us in the past happening to us again. Me with Philippe. You with Camilla.’

‘I don’t know that I’d use the word “scared”,’ he said.

Jesse thought of the defences he’d thrown up around the idea of a committed relationship with a woman. The job. The travel. His ongoing career.

Mentally, he pulled himself up. Stop kidding yourself, mate.

Work was the wimp excuse. The wussy versus the brave. From somewhere deep inside him he had to drag out the truth. At the wedding, he’d felt a real connection to Lizzie that he had never felt before—a connection that had been severed with a painful cut by the way she’d behaved. Now he realised that link could easily fuse together again. Go further with her and he could get hurt.

And there was nothing wimpy about avoiding the kind of hurt that could destroy a man. Like the pain he’d felt when Camilla had ended it with him so brutally. Like when Ben had lost his family.

But Ben had found new happiness with Sandy. All around him were people in settled, fulfilling relationships. And he was headed for thirty, older and wiser, he hoped. He realised just telling Lizzie about Camilla’s behaviour and hearing Lizzie’s outrage on his behalf had done him good.

It had also made him realise how very different the two women were. He doubted that blunt, straightforward Lizzie had it in her to be as devious as Camilla. What good reason—what real, valid reason—was there left for him not to be brave when it came to Lizzie?

‘What are we waiting for to happen?’ he asked her. ‘If we don’t take this chance while we’re actually both in the same country, will we live to regret it?’

She got up from the sofa, walked across the room, stood with her back to him for a terrifyingly long moment. Then she turned to face him again, took the steps to bring her closer to him again. He got up from the sofa to meet her.

‘I’ve had a horrible thought,’ she said, still keeping a distance between them.

‘Tell me,’ he said, bracing himself for her words.

She tilted her head to one side. ‘What if we walked away from this and kept up the pretence we were just friends, then the next time we met was at one of our weddings to someone else?’

A shudder racked him at the thought. ‘That is a horrible thought.’

‘Too horrible to contemplate,’ she said. ‘I don’t know that I could bear it.’

‘Me neither. I say we forget the pretence of friendship. If there’s something real between us then we can address my job, your jealousy and any other barriers we’ve put between us.’

She covered the distance between them in a few steps, opened her arms and put them around him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I say yes. We give it a go.’

He drew her tightly to him. This. This was what he wanted.

* * *

Lizzie stood close to Jesse in the circle of his arms. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt this mix of happiness and anticipation. Facing the future—even if they were only talking the immediate future—felt so much less scary when she was facing it with Jesse. She could almost feel those barricades she’d put up against him falling down one by one with a noisy clatter.

Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. ‘One more thing. There might be a puppy to throw into the mix of things we have to consider.’

He groaned. ‘You’ve been talking to my mother.’

Lizzie pulled away from him so she could look up at his face but stayed in the protective circle of his arms. ‘How did you guess?’

‘Her house is full of foster dogs and she’s always on the lookout for homes for them.’

‘Amy would love a puppy. So would I. My father would never allow us to have pets. I always wanted one.’

‘Needless to say, we always had dogs when I was growing up. How could I not love them? I admire Mum for her commitment to rescues.’

‘I hear a “however” there,’ she said. These days, she picked up on the slightest nuances in his voice.

‘Some of the parts of the world I’ve worked in, children live worse lives than our pampered pooches. It’s charities for kids I support.’

Was Jesse saying the things he knew she wanted to hear? She shook her head to rid herself of the thought. She had decided to trust him.

‘Are you too good to be true, Jesse Morgan?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I’m just me, Lizzie—take me as you find me. I didn’t tell you that looking for praise,’ he said. ‘But it’s a good way to segue into the fund-raising dinner the dog shelter my mother supports is having on Saturday night.’

‘Maura did mention it, so did Sandy. But I said no. I can’t afford a late night when I’ll have such an early start next day. I’m expecting Sunday to be one of our busiest days at the café.’

‘What if you made it an early night?’ he coaxed. ‘Just come for the dinner and then I take you straight home?’

Her smile was teasing, mischievous. ‘Are you asking me on a date, Jesse?’

‘I guess I am. Surely it can’t be all work and no play for you.’

‘No, but—’

‘Where’s the “but”, Lizzie? You can’t use the “just friends” argument any more.’

‘I...I don’t want everyone in Dolphin Bay knowing our business.’ She would never forget that dreadful moment at the wedding when that raucous crowd had discovered her and Jesse kissing on the balcony.

‘I understand. And feel the same way. So we keep it private,’ he said.

‘Even from my sister and your brother?’ Sandy was the last person she’d want to know about the change in status of her relationship with Jesse. She didn’t want any more warnings or disapproval. Not when she’d decided to switch off her own inner warning system when it came to Jesse.

‘If that’s what you want,’ he said. ‘I’ve never confided in Ben about my relationships.’

‘And Amy too, when she gets here on Wednesday. Until...until we know for sure where we’re going.’ If Jesse were to be a part of her life, they would have to introduce the idea to her daughter with great care.

‘Fine by me,’ he said.

He cradled her face in his hands. Kissed her briefly, tenderly. Even on that level of kiss, he was a master.

‘I’ll come to the fund-raiser with you,’ she said. ‘To everyone there we’ll just be friends, but to us—’

‘We’ll be finding out if we can be so much more.’

‘Yes,’ she said.