It was only Dean, complete with jumpsuit and Elvis wig, but without the dark glasses. A long red scarf whipped in the wind. There was a neatly folded pile of clothes in his hands; jeans and a denim jacket, scuffed boots and Jimmy’s black cowboy hat.
“You forgot these,” he said, apparently not a bit embarrassed to have interrupted as he dropped the clothes onto Jess’s lap. She managed to free her hand in time to keep the bundle from slipping to the floor. “And this.” He tossed a manila envelope to Jimmy. “It’s got the new tour dates, and you’re clear from June to October, just like you wanted. Ready to tell me what’s up?”
“Major production,” Jimmy said with a smile. “I’ll tell you all about it after the first of the year.”
Dean grumbled. He didn’t like not knowing everything, but Jess knew there was no other choice but to keep Dean in the dark. As soon as he knew about the baby, it would turn into a marketing tool. The tabloids, the magazines, a few colorful announcements on every social media outlet.
“Merry Christmas, Dean.” Jimmy reached across Jess to grab the door handle and close off his A&R man and the cold wind.
Dean caught the door before it could swing closed. He leaned into the truck and smiled wickedly. “If you guys are gonna break with tradition and have sex regularly after nearly three years of marriage, do us all a favor and get a room. Better yet, go home.”
Dean started to close the door, but pulled it back at the last moment. “Tell me the truth. It’s the outfit, right?” He directed his question to Jess. “There’s something about white bell bottoms that makes a man irresistible.”
Jimmy reached across Jess once again, grabbed the door handle in his hand, and pulled. Dean’s only choice was to back up or brace for the blow of the door against his body. He jumped back quickly. His mischievous grin never faded.
Chapter Six
Jess waited anxiously. There had been invitations, most of them delivered personally and to her alone, but she’d never been to Jimmy’s house. He’d thrown a big Sunday-afternoon barbecue shortly after buying the place, and had invited everyone at Vandiver Records. He threw, she heard tell, quite a party.
She’d almost gone to that barbecue. Jess couldn’t remember now if it had been laundry or a headache or a really good old movie on TV that had made her change her mind at the last minute. She recognized now that she’d searched for and found an excuse to stay home that Sunday. Maybe Mrs. Courtney was right. Maybe she’d been hiding for a long time.
His home was a sprawling ranch house north of Nashville, set on forty-five or so acres. There was an old barn, a small bunkhouse, a corral in need of repair, and green, rolling hills that seemed to wave on forever. At least, that was what Lorraine had told her.
Jimmy planned on starting a horse ranch here, someday, when his career waned and he had the time to devote to an obsession other than his music. He’d told her that much one afternoon shortly after the barbecue she’d missed, as he’d pressed for a decent excuse. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t see Jimmy completely away from the music business. It was too much a part of him.
They pulled into a circular drive, and he stopped the truck directly in front of his home.
Their
home. Surrounded by trees, it was a sizable two-story house situated in the middle of nowhere. It was simple and rustic, open and inviting, an oasis not far from the city and yet so distant. There was nothing ostentatious about Jimmy’s ranch house. It suited him.
Before her there were a few steps, a small porch, and heavy-looking double doors, each sporting a wreath of real pine, gold bows, and lacy angels of cream and white and gold. There was a Christmas tree, bright with tiny red and green lights, in the picture window beside the front door.
She was still staring at the house when Jimmy appeared at her door and opened it.
He helped her from the truck, taking her hand and, as she slid down, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“You’re worried about tomorrow, aren’t you?” Jimmy said as they hurried to the door to escape the bitter wind.
Jess shook her head.
“Everything’s planned perfectly. The airport vans will deliver everybody no later than two o’clock.” He unlocked the front door, and together they slipped into a warm, cozy house. “The turkey will be ready by three, and Florence promised that everything else would be ready before she left this afternoon. Stuffing, squash casserole, green beans, pumpkin pies. All we have to do is heat and serve.”
He kept talking, about congealed salad and fruit compotes, but Jess was only half listening. Jimmy led her through the front door and a wide foyer into a huge room, a great room that was long and tall, with beamed ceilings and a stone fireplace and a collection of mismatched chairs that were somehow harmonious, arranged, as they were, around a long sofa. The room was illuminated only by the soft red and green lights on the Christmas tree.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Jess whispered. It was truly magnificent, warm and flawless and... and somehow home.
The quiet beauty was disrupted when a large black dog burst into the room from the other end. Dog? It looked more like a wolf, with black eyes and pointed ears, and that pink tongue flapping as it ran toward Jess and Jimmy on powerful legs.
“There’s my Rudy,” Jimmy said, dropping down to greet the frantic animal. Not a wolf, Jess decided, but a dog after all. Maybe a Black Lab.
Jimmy knelt there and allowed the dog to place its paws on his shoulders and nuzzle against his neck. His hands settled against a silky black coat, to pet the large and beautiful animal in a hearty greeting. Jimmy practically cooed at the dog, who danced on its hind legs and wagged a bushy black tail. In a moment the animal was satisfied, and dropped to all fours.
Rudy lifted those black eyes to Jess and cocked his head. Apparently he had been trained not to greet her with as much enthusiasm as he did Jimmy.
Jess reached down and scratched the dog between the ears as Jimmy stood. The animal reacted at once to her touch, relaxed visibly as she stroked the silky coat.
Jimmy took Jess’s coat and hung it on the coat-rack in the foyer. She smiled as she watched him; that long and lean body encased in white, the bell bottoms flapping around white patent-leather boots. Dean had tried from the beginning to get Jimmy into some kind of costume, and he’d finally managed just that—for a single night.
The top A&R man at Vandiver Records was as flamboyant as Jimmy was down-to-earth, and he was into “the show.” The lights and the costumes, the backup dancers, pyrotechnics if the time and the song were right.
Some artists were willing to be led down that road. Jimmy wasn’t. He loved the music, not the show.
Since he was no longer the center of attention, Rudy left the room—at a slower pace than he’d entered. He disappeared around the corner, and a moment later Jess heard the flapping sound of plastic against a solid surface. A doggie door big enough for Rudy?
Sharp barking from the backyard confirmed her suspicion. It sounded like Rudy had found a squirrel or a possum to play with.
Jess turned to the Christmas tree, a tall and perfectly shaped spruce that was decorated with gold balls and a handful of mismatched ornaments in addition to the red and green lights. It was lovely, but it surely hadn’t been professionally decorated. The lights were not perfectly balanced in distribution, and there was a spot bare of ornaments near the window. One of the ornaments, an angel playing the harp, had slipped and somehow hung almost upside down. The tinsel looked as if someone had started carefully, hanging one strand at a time, and ended by throwing handfuls at the tree. The winged angel on the top of the tree was slightly canted to one side.
The imperfect Christmas tree looked like something she and Jimmy had decorated together, and she wished for a memory of that time, a tiny remembrance of some sort.
Jimmy came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, resting his head lightly on her shoulder. “Now,” he whispered into her ear. “Where were we?”
They hadn’t said much on the way home, hadn’t said much at all since Dean had interrupted them. Jess had tried to sort out her thoughts—trying to decipher what was real and what was not—and Jimmy had driven much too fast, and with all of his attention apparently on the road.
His hands slipped beneath her sweater and settled over bare skin. Those hands were warm, gentle, comfortable on her flesh. For Jimmy, this was another night with his wife. For Jess, it was their first time together. She wanted it to be perfect, but what if she said or did something wrong? What if she spoiled this?
She turned in his arms slowly and lifted her face. The desire she’d seen earlier was in his eyes, and there was something more.
Love
. She recognized the love, felt it, but it didn’t scare her the way it had when she’d seen the first twinkling of that emotion in Jimmy’s smiling eyes.
Their mouths came together, Jimmy leaning down and Jess standing on her toes.
Her lips parted, eager, anxious lips that savored the taste of Jimmy’s mouth.
His hand found the bra clasp at her back, and without pausing a beat he flicked it open. Being free of the restraint was liberating, and then Jimmy slid a hand beneath the silky material and closed it over her breast.
There was no more wondering if this was real or a dream. It had to be real. If it wasn’t real, her heart would break. She could feel Jimmy’s hands on her flesh and the quickening of her heart, she could taste Jimmy’s lips, she could hear the rasp of his jumpsuit against her skirt, she could smell the Christmas tree, and when she opened her eyes she saw Jimmy as clear and real as when he’d kissed her beneath the mistletoe. All five senses were in working order.
She slipped both hands between their bodies, and found the zipper with trembling fingers. One hand slid downward between his chest and hers, opening the zipper as she went. The other hand found his chest, the warmth of his skin and the beat of his own heart.
They moved in a slow harmony as sure as one of Jimmy’s songs. He unzipped her skirt and it fell to the floor, where she kicked it away, along with her shoes. She slipped the white fabric from his shoulders and down his arms. The kisses continued, light and then demanding. Jimmy pulled the sweater over her head and peeled away the emerald green silk bra he’d unfastened only a moment earlier. And then his warm, moist lips closed over a nipple. Jess nearly buckled with the sensations that surged through her.
That warm mouth left her breast and trailed slowly downward. With every move of those lips against her flesh, with every gentle touch of his hands, Jess melted a little more.
His fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her panty hose and emerald green panties, and he slipped them down and away.
There was no awkwardness in their easy movements, no fumbling uncertainty. Jimmy knew her body, knew how and where to touch her to push her to a point where all she felt and all she knew was him.
There were, no doubt, a number of perfectly good beds in this house, but somehow she knew it was right that they make love here, on the floor and by the light of the Christmas tree.
With a boldness she’d never known before, Jess slipped her hand into the jumpsuit that was halfway off and closed her fingers around the part of him that had been persistently pressing against her through layers of clothing. Jimmy moaned, a low groan deep in his throat that Jess instinctively answered.
His tongue invaded her mouth, deep, hard, and insistent. She was ready to feel Jimmy inside her, wanted him to ease the ache with another, more intimate invasion.
With both hands, she slid the jumpsuit over his hips and down. Jimmy kicked the white boots away, and discarded the costume as he lowered Jess to the floor.
“This is a Christmas tradition I’ll never give up,” he said, towering over her, covering her completely. The lights from the tree lit one half of his face for her, and she traced his jaw as she lifted her lips to kiss him again.
He didn’t enter her immediately, but touched her intimately with his fingers, stroking and teasing until she was ready to fracture into a million pieces.
When she couldn’t take any more, Jimmy took his hand away and pressed gently and surely until he was inside her. For a long moment he was still, and then he began to thrust his hips against her, to stroke her with plunge after plunge.
As when they’d undressed one another, there was a synchronization in their movements that was as much a part of the act as the meeting of their bodies. He knew her, and against all odds she knew him just as well. Somehow. Some way.
Magic
.
When the climax came, as he seemed to drive deeper than before, Jess clutched at Jimmy and lifted her hips. An uncontrollable cry left her lips, a cry of love and pleasure and brilliance. She felt his own completion in the tightening of his muscles and the release deep within her body, in the waning waves of her own.
He didn’t leave her, but settled his head against her shoulder and kissed her neck softly, as if he had no energy left. Jess smiled as she threaded her fingers through his hair.
“Tradition, huh?” she whispered weakly.
Jimmy lifted his head to stare down at her. A lock of dark hair had fallen over his forehead, and she reached out to push it back. How many times had she felt compelled to do just that, and then stopped herself because that simple movement revealed too much?
“I love you,” she whispered, knowing it was true, knowing it had always been true. Even on that first date, the one that had scared her to death because she’d promised herself she’d never let herself fall for any man so hard or so fast ever again.
“I love you, too,” he whispered, kissing her softly. “From the moment I saw you, I knew it was right. You were damned stubborn, Jess. There was a time when I almost gave up on us.” He stared down at her, unsmiling. The lights from the tree lit his face strangely, made him appear, for a moment, less than substantial. It was just a trick of the light, she told herself, but she touched his cheek for assurance. She held on a bit tighter, not ready for him to fade away. In spite of the odd light, he felt real enough.