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Jess was watching him. Her dark eyes were so perceptive. They were bottomless and warm and incredibly gentle.
“Why do you hide?” she asked quietly.
His first thought was, God, she knew. But how could she possibly know? She was speaking figuratively, not literally. “I think of it more as trying not to make waves,” he said. “Or trying to be invisible.”
“Why?” she asked.
Why? What could he say to her? He’d already told her too much. Again. What was it about this woman that made him break his self-imposed rules over and over again?
Jess searched Rob’s face. For a few moments, he’d let his guard down, and she’d been able to see an array of emotions cross his face. But now again, his eyes were guarded, his expression closed.
Invisible. That was a good word for the way he held himself, for the way he made himself blend in. Except right from the start, Jess had been able to see past that. But, clearly, she was the exception. Not everyone would take the time to search for the real man.
“What if,” she said softly, “you’re busy being invisible, and your perfect match—your soul mate, so to speak—can’t see you? What if she walks right past?”
This conversation had long since gotten out of hand. Rob forced himself to smile. “I’m not too worried about that,” he said, trying to make his voice sound light. “Look, I’m going to the bar. Can I get you something to drink?”
Jess shook her head, no, and Rob just barely made it over to the bar. What if he was invisible and his soul mate could see him? He glanced back at Jess as she sat next to Kelsey and she gave the little girl a hug. She looked across the room at him and smiled, and he could barely breathe. How could he have a soul mate? At times he felt he didn’t even have a soul.
By the time the bartender served him a glass of soda, and he walked back to Jess and Kelsey, he was able to smile again.
“I’m going to start singing. Give me a kiss,” Jess said to Kelsey, leaning over to smooch her daughter’s smooth cheek.
“Break a leg.” Kelsey didn’t even look up from her coloring book.
“Don’t drink more than one glass of root beer for each set.”
Kelsey carefully selected a turquoise-colored crayon from her box. “What if I’m thirsty?”
“Water has been known to quench thirst.”
Jess stood up, tilting her head to look up at Rob. Their gazes locked, and she felt a dizzying warmth that started deep in the pit of her stomach and spiraled upward.
For once he was close enough so that all she would have to do would be to lean forward, and his arms would go around her. And then if she lifted her face to his…
He wanted to kiss her. Jess knew just from looking, from the way he gazed at her mouth, from the heat and longing in his eyes.
But it was crazy. They were standing in a room filled with people—including her six-year-old daughter.
She wanted to kiss him, too, but instead she touched his arm, letting her hand slide down to his hand. The sensation was shockingly intimate as he intertwined their fingers. Jess felt herself sway toward him.
This was crazy. Still gazing into her eyes, he reached out, cupping her face with his other hand. She stood on her toes, lifting her mouth to his.
Their lips met, featherlight and gentle. His mouth was warm and sweet, and she wanted more.
But she pulled away, shaken by the intensity of her desire. His breathing, too, was unsteady as he stared at her.
“Wow,” Jess finally said. She managed a shaky smile. “Can you hold that thought for about—” she glanced at her watch “—four hours?”
But it was as if Rob didn’t even hear her. “I’m lost,” he murmured, shaking his head slowly. “Dear God, I’m totally lost.”
Jess glanced down at Kelsey, who was taking great pains to appear absorbed by her coloring book. Which meant she hadn’t missed that kiss.
That kiss… He had kissed her. She felt a sudden burst of intensely perfect happiness. With a flash, she could see herself with Rob and Kelsey, laughing together in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Cooking breakfast. She could picture them taking trips to the beach, gazing up at the stars on a clear night. She could imagine a future filled with laughter and song.
“I’m lost,” Rob whispered again.
Not me, thought Jess. I’m found.
HE WAS CONFUSED.
It was an odd feeling.
For so long, he’d known exactly what he’d needed, and exactly what he had to do to get what he needed.
He still knew. But never before had the temptation to do otherwise been so powerful, so sweet.
Rob looked down at Kelsey, still coloring away in her book. She was part of the temptation. With very little effort, he could slip into the role of father. Father, husband, lover, friend. Soul mate. He could be normal, have a healthy family, make brothers and sisters for this little girl, make babies with her vivacious, beautiful, heart-stoppingly sexy mother.
Jess.
She stepped gracefully onto the small stage. Picking up her guitar, she sat on the stool, crossing her long, slender legs as she adjusted the microphone.
She met his eyes from all the way across the room and smiled.
She was temptation incarnate. She was unlike any woman he’d ever known—except maybe his own mother. But his mother was just a shadow. An elusive, ghostly memory from his early childhood, hovering just out of range of his peripheral vision.
Jess was real.
She was flesh and blood.
Blood.
His stomach hurt and he tried to stop thinking, stop feeling.
He watched Jess nod to the bartender, and the man faded out the taped music that had been playing. Softly, she began to play, taking the introduction around twice as her fingers warmed up.
As she started to sing, her voice was soft and light. Even through the sound system, it barely cut above the noises of the bar. She kept her eyes down, singing the first verse of the song almost as if to herself, and slowly the crowd quieted down. They had to quiet down if they wanted to hear her smooth, rich, alto voice at all. By the time she was ready to sing the refrain, Rob could’ve heard a pin drop. She looked up at the audience then, smiling as if they were all friends who just happened to drop by while she was singing in her living room. She looked around, meeting the eyes of individual people in the crowd.
“It’s just a simple country waltz,” she sang. “The kind you hear all the time. So darlin’, let this dance be mine.”
Jess let her eyes rest on Rob as she sang the second verse. “The music pulled us out across the floor. You held me oh so tight.” Her voice caressed the notes as she looked into his eyes.
God, how he wanted her. He wanted to kiss her, to devour her, to fall back on his bed with her, her body underneath his. He wanted to lose himself in her, to hear her cry out his name.
His hands were clasped tightly in front of him on the table, and he looked down, away from her for a moment, closing his eyes briefly. When he looked up, she was still watching him, and he knew she couldn’t help but see the heat in his eyes.
“Your smile, it set my heart on fire,” she sang, her own desire thickening her voice. “I hoped that you’d be mine, and stay and dance with me all night.”
Her eyes were telling him that she was singing this song for him. She was giving him an invitation to become part of her life tonight. But not just tonight. Every night. Jess was not a one-night woman. Her invitation would last from now till death do us part.
Death.
God, if she only knew…
JESS STEPPED OFF the stage and nearly ran right into Stanford Greene.
“Evenin’ Miss Jess,” he said, in his thick southern accent. He was standing much too close—they were nearly nose to nose. His eyes watched her unblinkingly. She was reminded of the baleful stare of his father, sitting in his wheelchair, out on the porch.
“Stan!” she said in surprise. She took a step backward, trying to achieve a more normal distance between them. He never seemed aware of anyone’s personal space. “What are you doing out here?”
He shuffled toward her, his hat in his fat fingers. She moved back another step, bumping against the hard wood of the bar. All this time, and the man still hadn’t blinked.
“Ah came to hear you sing. Mama sent me over. She thought it might be a good thing for me to get to know you a little better. Us both being unwed, you with a small child to raise…”
Jess carefully kept her face neutral. “Oh,” she managed to say.
He leaned closer to her and spoke conspiratorially. “I think she wants a grandkid of her own.” A thin strand of the greasy hair that he kept combed across his bald head was dislodged, and it hung down in front of his left ear, almost to his shoulder.
Jess wasn’t sure what to say. “Well,” she hedged. “That’s nice…”
“Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t move. His watery eyes moved down to her low neckline.
Jess tried hard to keep her voice pleasant. “Um, Stan, have you got a table, a place to sit?”
“No, ma’am. Ah have just arrived.”
Jess grabbed the empty bar stool next to her gratefully, patting the smooth seat. “Well, here you go. Why don’t you sit right here, order yourself something to drink? I’m going to start singing again really soon, and right now I have to go check on…on Kelsey,” she said, clutching at her daughter as an excuse, “so I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Stanford Greene, Jess thought, shaking her head as she made her escape, easing her way through the crowd. Did Mrs. Greene honestly think that Jess and Stan… No, it was too awful to consider. What was that saying—not if he was the last man on earth?
Just as Jess approached Rob and Kelsey’s table, a strong hand seized her above the elbow.
“Jess! Darling! Taking your union break, I see.”
She froze. The slightly bored, cultured voice was unmistakable. She slowly turned around.
Ian. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned nearly all the way, and a scruffy pair of safari shorts. His shoulder-length blond curls looked as if they had exploded around his face, and his pale blue eyes were rimmed with red. Her ex-husband had been drinking.
“Oh, damn.” She quickly glanced at Kelsey. The little girl’s smile had faded, and she was coloring again, giving her book her total, undivided attention.
“A gracious greeting as usual,” Ian said, slipping his arms around her waist. Jess turned her head away before he could kiss her on the mouth. Instead he kissed her just underneath her ear, letting his lips trail down toward her throat.
She tried to break free, but he held her too tightly. “Ian, stop it,” she whispered. If she struggled too hard, there’d be a scene. Lord, if there was one thing she didn’t want tonight, it was one of Ian’s scenes.
“Delicious,” he murmured, still nuzzling her neck. “Absolutely delicious. Don’t you think, Robert?”
Rob. He was coming to her rescue.
“That’s enough, Ian,” Rob said evenly, pulling Jess gently away from the other man.
“Yes, sir,” another man added. “Don’t be obnoxious, Ian.”
It was Frank Madsen—Rob’s friend from his office. No, not his friend—an acquaintance, Rob had called him. Jess hadn’t noticed Frank at first, standing quietly behind Ian.
“You don’t mind if we join you?” Ian asked mockingly, pulling another chair up to the table and sitting down. “You all know Frank Madsen, right? Of course you do. I first met him at one of your gigs, Jess. And he works over at that computer place with Robert, isn’t that correct?”
Jess smiled tightly at Frank as he shook hands briefly with Rob. She had to get Ian and his abusive mouth away from Kelsey. “Actually, Ian, I do mind—”
He tossed a ring with two keys onto the table. “Here are your car keys, Robert,” he said. “Thank you so very much.”
Jess looked up at Rob in surprise. “You lent Ian your car?” she said.
I’m sorry, his eyes said. His arm was still protectively around her, and she felt her pulse quicken from the warmth and solidness of his body next to hers. “He had some kind of emergency,” Rob told her quietly, “and I didn’t need it…. He was going to drop it off tonight, so I called and left a message on his machine that I wouldn’t be home—that I’d be here, with you.”
He clearly hadn’t expected Ian to come all the way out here to return his car—and to hassle Jess. But despite the words of warning he’d given her recently, he obviously didn’t know Ian very well. Certainly not well enough to lend him his car. But Rob was always loaning people his car. Jess remembered a few months ago she’d heard that he’d even let Stanford Greene borrow it.
“I told you just to leave it in the driveway,” Rob said to Ian. “With the key under the mat.”
Ian shrugged expansively. “I thought I’d do you a favor and bring it out here.”
“I have to get ready for my next set,” Jess said abruptly. “And no doubt Ian has someplace else to be…?”
“Actually, no,” he replied, sitting back in his chair and stretching his legs out underneath the table. “Frank and I were just talking, weren’t we, Frank?”
“Ian—” Frank said in a warning voice, shaking his head. He met Jess’s eyes apologetically. He was older than the rest of them, in his midforties at least, with straight golden brown hair and rather nondescript hazel eyes. He was tall, quite a bit over six feet, with a paunch starting out front. He looked like a former football player gone to seed, still quite handsome, but fading around the edges.
“I was wondering just how many men in this place want to make it with my ex-wife,” Ian mused. “I’d guess there are three right here, sitting at this table.”
Kelsey put down her crayons and stared at her father, hostility on her small face.
Rob squeezed Jess’s shoulder, then crossed around to Kelsey, digging several quarters from his pocket. “C’mon, Bug, why don’t you go play a video game?”
“With you?” Kelsey asked hopefully.
Rob glanced across the table. Jess nodded once. Yes. She wanted Kelsey away from there. She could handle Ian, particularly with Frank nearby.
As Rob led Kelsey away, Ian laughed. “Look at that guy, auditioning for the part of ‘Daddy,’” he mocked. “Isn’t that sweet? It makes me want to puke.”
“Ian, please leave,” Jess said quietly. She could feel the bartender watching them, his sharp eyes picking up the undercurrents of trouble.
Frank stood uncertainly near the table, unsure whether to sit or stand or leave Jess and her ex-husband alone.
Ian leaned forward. “Can you believe I saw Stanford Greene sitting at the bar?” he said, his voice lowered to a loud stage whisper. “How on earth did you persuade him to leave his mommy’s basement? Really, Jess, he’s not quite your type. I just can’t imagine the two of you together. Well, actually, I can, and it’s really rather hideous—”
Frank made his decision. “Ian, leave Jess alone. Let’s go. I’ll drive you home.”
