hunger, Arlen clamped down on his needs and began, by gentle stages, to withdraw himself without causing embarrassment. Damn! he thought. He’d been celibate for too long if he could lose control like this.
Before long Jessica sensed his intent, and her fear dissipated, leaving her with a dissatisfied ache and a dawning sense of wonder. He had wanted her! She’d felt the proof of it.
Arlen raised them both to a sitting position and cradled Jessica’s cheek against his shoulder, his arm around her. It was exactly the embrace she’d fantasized about on the way to lunch that day, and it was so much better than her imaginings. His shoulder was firm beneath her cheek, his distantly sensed heartbeat a steady, somehow reassuring thud. Even the faint scratchiness of his sweater was somehow stimulating. And the weight of his arm around her shoulders—there just weren’t words to adequately describe how good it felt.
“Are you all right, Jessie?” he asked presently, touching her cheek with gentle fingertips.
“Yes.” The word sounded lost and breathless against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
A long moment passed before she could find her voice. “Why not?”
“Any number of reasons.” His voice had returned to normal, and his heart rate was coming into line. “In the first place, it wasn’t very professional. I don’t think there’s a specific rule against it, since you’re not a suspect, but I still don’t think an agent is supposed to be kissing someone who’s involved in his case.”
“I won’t tell,” Jessica murmured, still too swamped by emotions to speak cautiously.
Arlen smiled and tightened his arm around her just a little. “And I won’t do it again, Jessica.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to protest, but her mind was swinging into action again, and she caught the words before she could speak them. She didn’t know this man, and if she were to think about it she would probably be shocked that she had fallen into his arms so easily after an acquaintance of a mere day. After all, she’d never before fallen into anyone’s arms.
Jessica tilted her head back and looked up at him. He was close enough at the moment that she could see him clearly without her glasses. “How old are you, Arlen?”
“Forty-two.”
His smile, she thought, looked a little sad somehow. “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” She didn’t mention the wedding ring he still wore, which she suspected was the biggest part of the problem.
He didn’t ask what she meant. He knew. “I have a daughter who’s nearly your age, Jessie. She’s twenty-three and expecting her first child. My first grandchild. And I have a son who’s twenty-one.”
“You started young.” It wasn’t a question.
“I was eighteen when Lucy and I married. Right out of high school and right over everyone’s objections.”
“Were you right, or were they?”
He closed his eyes, and his smile broadened just a shade. “We were,” he said. And he brought his other arm around Jessica, giving her a little hug. “I had a good marriage, Jessie. A very good marriage. Once in a lifetime is all anyone has a right to expect.”
Eventually, because their embrace was still too intimate both for their respective roles and for his conscience, Arlen stirred. Releasing Jessica, he handed her back her spectacles.
“I’ll go get that fingerprint kit,” he said, rising from the sofa.
She slipped her glasses onto her nose and looked up at him. “Okay,” she managed to say brightly. “I think I’ll make some more coffee. Do you want any?”
He looked down with a smile that didn’t reach his gray eyes. “I’ll pass, thanks. I need to get some sleep tonight.”
So did she, thought Jessica, but she seriously doubted she was going to get it, coffee or no coffee.
It was a night for memories, Arlen thought. It was late, and his apartment seemed emptier than usual, though not as empty as the house he’d shared with Lucy had seemed after her death. The only keepsakes he hadn’t put into storage were an eight-by-ten photo of Lucy and a slew of photographs of the children. Everything else had been put away, because a man his age had no choice but to move on.
But sometimes he remembered, and tonight, with a glass of bourbon to keep him company, he held Lucy’s photo and looked back.
He hadn’t been kidding. It had been a good marriage. Not a perfect marriage, but a good one. A comfortable one. A hell of a lot better by far than most marriages he knew about. Part of him had died with Lucy, had expired with her last breath as he held her in his arms that one final time. Afterward, he had figured he would go on as father, friend and government agent, but never again as lover or spouse. That part was gone.
Evidently, he found himself thinking as he looked down at Lucy’s smiling face, he’d been a little naive in his expectations. The feelings hadn’t died but had merely gone into hibernation. That created a whole mess of interesting problems he wasn’t sure he cared to deal with at this stage in his life.
First of all, he was about to become a grandfather. He had certain images of that role that didn’t jibe with the memory he had of himself and Jessica on her couch this evening. It also meant he was too damn old to be rolling around with a girl her age. His children were grown, and she was the right age to be having children. Damn, Jessica was only a few years older than his daughter! That realization kept drawing him up short and hard, like a yanked rein.
Setting Lucy’s picture aside, he carried his drink into the kitchen and dumped it down the sink. He’d never been much for alcohol, and at a time like this he wanted his head to be perfectly clear.
Except how clear could it be when he kept imagining pink skin and white satin, and remembering just how right a certain young woman had felt in his arms? How perfectly she’d fitted against him and how passionately she’d responded to his kiss?
And what damn difference did it make? He was an agent on a case and had to remain professional. Whatever had gotten into him tonight had better not get into him again. That was the beginning, middle and end of it right there.
She was too young for him, Jessica thought as she lay in the middle of her four-poster bed and stared up at the patterns made by the moonlight on her ceiling. Of course he would think so. How could he not? She and men had spent her entire life avoiding one another, so how could she possibly know the right things to say and do to make it clear that she didn’t feel young? It had probably been that very inexperience that had caused him to draw back from her tonight. She didn’t know how to kiss, how to please, how to entice. Discovering that, he’d naturally lost interest.
But, of course, it was all for the best. He still wore his wedding ring. Whether she felt young or not, Jessica definitely didn’t feel up to dealing with the ghost of Arlen’s wife. She had a very healthy respect for the power of ghosts. Hadn’t she watched her mother languish and drink herself to an early grave over the death of Jessica’s father? And, oh, what a slow death that had been, finally leaving the mother dependent on the daughter who was still only a child.
Arlen seemed to be holding up a lot better than her mother had,
