gone home, leaving the beach empty enough for her to enjoy it. If her grandmother hadn’t barged in on her within days of her leaving Allentown, she sure wouldn’t come now, more than a week later. Too anticlimactic. It just wasn’t Allie’s style.
Who did that leave?
Ryan? No, not her brother. He had to be swamped at work without her there to help. Besides, Ryan rarely “played.” Like her, he was a sober Chandler, somewhat lacking in the fun-loving spirit of their grandmother and baby sister. Working bees, that was what she and Ryan were. Not that Maddy and Allie were drones.
They were natural queen bees.
All of which, Jessica reminded herself, wasn’t telling her whose car had just pulled into her driveway.
The process of elimination had left her with one name, one person, and she didn’t know if she’d be delighted or angry to see him. If she’d tell him to go to hell or fall into his arms. If she could look at him, remember what had happened—all that had happened—and not completely dissolve into a puddle of unrequited love, confusion and more than a little guilt.
Not that she was given time to sort through these possible reactions, for, as she walked off the porch and onto the grass, Matt was coming straight at her across the lawn, looking as bad as she felt.
So accustomed to seeing him in impeccably tailored business suits, she was always rather shocked by how good he looked in casual slacks and knit shirts, both of which skimmed his tall, slim body in most flattering ways. She liked his hair, black as a moonless night, but had never before seen it looking as if he was two weeks past a good trim.
There seemed to be an added purpose in his always confident stride, as if he had come on a mission of sorts, and she wished she could see past the mirrored sunglasses into his eyes, two blue pools she considered to be the window to his calm, cool, collected, almost analytical mind.
But she couldn’t see into his eyes. She could only see the tight set of his mouth, the long strides that were rapidly eating up the distance between them. Why, he almost looked angry.
Who was he to be angry? The nerve of the man!
Jessica tilted up her chin, ready to do battle. She’d give him what for, coming down here uninvited, barging in on her solitude…looking so damn sexy and irresistible.
Damn! Her chin wouldn’t stay still; it began to wobble. Ready tears, always on standby lately, sprang into her eyes, stinging them.
Deserted by her courage, betrayed by her rampantly out-of-whack emotional responses to every stimulus from ice cream to a robin’s morning song, Jessica did something brilliant. She turned on her heels and all but ran back toward the door to the kitchen. Safety.
A bolt-hole and denial—they weren’t much, but they had worked so far, hadn’t they?
“Jessica, wait,” Matt said. “Please, Jessica.”
It was probably the “please” that stopped her. Either that or the defeated, yet still faintly hopeful, tone in his voice.
Without turning to face him, she allowed her shoulders to slump and said, “What do you want, Matt? Because if you feel some burning need to apologize to me again, I have to tell you you’ve wasted a trip. I don’t want to hear it.”
The next time he spoke, he was right behind her. She could feel the heat of his body, the warm brush of his breath against her bent neck. “How about if I apologize for apologizing? Would that work?”
Matt winced as he heard his own words, which sounded miles too flippant, even as he meant each word with every fiber of his being. He watched Jessica square her shoulders as she resumed her usual perfect posture, then whirl around to face him.
“Do you know how you made me feel, Matt?” she asked, not able to guard her own words or even to remember that they were standing in the side yard, the one facing the sidewalk and the dozens of passing tourists on their way to and from the boardwalk and beach.
“Pretty lousy, I’d imagine,” Matt answered truthfully, taking her by the elbow and trying to, gently, steer her back under the semiprivacy of the canvas-covered porch.
She shook off his arm, an expression of temper that was as out of the ordinary for Jessica as it would be for her to chew gum with her mouth open. As if Jessica Chandler had ever even chewed gum. “Lousy?” she repeated loudly. “Did you say lousy?”
Belatedly, Jessica realized that they had an audience of three small children and their quite interested mother, who was probably delighted to have some excitement in a day otherwise filled by sand stuck to her sunscreened legs, kids crying because they didn’t want to leave the beach, and the prospect of having to wash all the beach towels before returning to the beach after lunch.
Well, too bad. Jessica wasn’t feeling much like putting some high drama in the woman’s life. Let her find her own and see just how much fun it was—not.
Now it was her turn to take hold of Matt’s arm, pull him along behind her as she headed for the porch, the screen door and the privacy of the kitchen.
“Lousy?” she said yet again, as the screen door slammed back into place. “You know what? That’s the perfect word. Lousy. We made love, you regretted it the next morning, and told me so. How do you expect me to feel about something like that, Matt? Flattered?”
“I know, Jessica, I know,” Matt said, silently marveling at the sudden color in her usually pale cheeks, the hint of fire in her usually placid, blue eyes, the way her hair swirled around her face.
She looked…disheveled. He’d never seen her disheveled. She looked cute rather than coolly, icily beautiful; and eminently touchable.
He rather liked it.
“If I could have kicked myself all the way here, Jess, I would have,” he continued quickly. “The moment the words were out of my mouth I knew they were wrong. Clumsy. I meant to apologize for taking advantage of you, of your sympathy for me…and I ended up sounding like some stiff-necked, jackassed idiot.”
“No kidding!” Jessica responded, even while marveling in the new freedom she felt; the freedom to be angry and let him know she was angry. Hey, maybe some of these new, enhanced hormones weren’t so bad after all. “I think the words that really put the capper on it were when you promised me it would never happen again. Like, hey, I was sort of drunk, feeling pretty abused, so I grabbed the first woman who offered herself to me, the closest one, and used her. Do you really think I can be used, Matthew Garvey, that I would allow myself to be used? Do you know how insulting that is?”
Matt opened his mouth to say something and she rescued him, knowing he was going to put his foot in his mouth again by saying “I’m sorry, Jess.” If he had said that, he’d be history, out the back door before he knew what hit him.
But Jessica did interrupt him, did save his hide with her next words, words that popped out of her mouth before she could rethink them, edit them into something less revealing. “Well, you know what, buddy, I’m not sorry it happened. I’m not the least bit sorry. Now, what do you have to say to that?”
Matt smiled, slowly, letting the smile pass above his mouth, enter his eyes. “Thank you?” he offered, then pretended to duck.
All at once all the anger in Jessica evaporated, like dew on a hot
