Jessie Slaymaker's Rules of Engagement (The Jessie Slaymaker Series Book 2) (8 page)

‘Spoilsport,’ he said, smiling as he pulled her back towards him for a hug.

‘I really love it here,’ Jessie sighed in his arms, putting extra emphasis on the word
love
.

‘Me too,’ he said simply, clearly not catching her drift.

Jessie’s free time disappeared within the blink of an eye. They tried to do something each day, whether it had been visiting markets, temples, or museums or trying out different beaches. Jessie had especially liked the beaches. She felt so relaxed out of the constant buzz and activity of the city. Plus, it was always a pleasure to see Jack strutting around in nothing but his swim shorts for most of the day.

Although she didn’t want to think of it that way, they had reached Jessie’s final weekend of freedom. She had to work on Monday and be all properly behaved and intelligent again. The thought scared her after her relaxed fortnight of bliss with Jack, when she’d barely even read the front page of a newspaper, never mind reached the financial news. She felt totally out of the loop, and that was a daunting feeling as she mentally tried to prepare herself to get out of holiday mode and into work mode.

Her growing anxiety wasn’t aided by the fact that they’d both drunk more wine than they should have at dinner. Jessie and headaches were not a match made in heaven. She’d woken up early on the Saturday morning, and feeling mildly panicked, had booted up her laptop and had set up camp on the sofa to try and do some last-minute cramming for Monday.

‘Come back to bed,’ came Jack’s voice from the doorway between the bedroom and the living room. Jessie looked up to see him holding a hand out towards her, wearing his irresistible trademarked scruffy hair and a sexy crooked smile. But that was about all that was usual about Jack’s appearance. ‘What are you doing anyway at this time of the morning?’ he added, nodding in the direction of her laptop.

‘Jesus,’ Jessie exclaimed as she looked at him with wide eyes. She couldn’t quite believe what she was looking at. She shot up off the sofa, then stopped, unable to get any closer. He still looked like sexy Jack, other than the fact that his naked torso was covered in huge, unsightly red spots.

‘What?’ Jack asked, seeing the alarm on Jessie’s face.

‘How long have you had those?’ Jessie asked, pointing at his arm, which was sporting the same spotty pattern as his chest. She didn’t dare step any closer, let alone touch him.

‘Holy fuck!’ Jack exclaimed as he looked down to where Jessie was pointing. He was momentarily stunned, frozen to the spot, before a horrified look settled on his face and he stumbled off to the bathroom to see the full extent of his malformity.

‘I told you I was sick,’ Jack said as he studied the rash on his chest closely. Jessie watched him from the doorway, still not that keen on getting too close.

‘When?’ Jessie asked blankly.

‘The other day,’ Jack replied as he studied his arm.

‘That was a hangover,’ Jessie pointed out, folding her arms across her chest. ‘And that was ages ago.’

‘Fuck. It’s everywhere,’ Jack said, twisting his torso to inspect his back in the mirror.

‘It looks like…’ Jessie began, then squinted at his back and looked more carefully. ‘But no, that’s not possible… surely,’ she added, taking a step closer.

‘What? What do you think it is? Is it meningitis? I need to find a glass,’ Jack rolled off in a single breath, an edge of panic in his voice, now the initial shock had subsided.

‘Well, to be honest, it looks a lot like chickenpox,’ she said with hesitation. ‘But you can’t have it twice. We’ll get a doctor round. Perhaps it’s shingles instead.’

‘Um… but what if I haven’t had it?’ Jack asked plainly.

‘Shingles?’ Jessie called as she went back to her laptop to look for health care providers.

‘No. Chickenpox,’ Jack said with little patience as he came back into the living room.

‘What do you mean?’ Jessie semi-laughed. ‘
Everyone’s
had chickenpox.’

‘I think I should call Mum.’

In less than a minute, Jack had his own laptop open and had connected with his mother on Skype. Cicely Davenport was most unlike Jessie’s mother in that she was something of a technophile and knew how to work her phone and her computer as well as any self-respecting teenager. Jessie’s mum, by contrast, only carried a mobile phone on the premise that it was for
an emergency,
should she have one, and on that basis she never had the damn thing switched on. The thought that someone might want to talk her when she
wasn’t
in the middle of an emergency had never crossed her mind.

‘Jack, darling. Put some clothes on,’ came Cicely’s opening greeting as she clapped eyes on her nearly naked son, sat on the sofa wearing only his boxers. ‘I know I’m your mother and I’ve seen it all before, but honestly,’ she tutted.

‘Mum, this is important,’ Jack said, ignoring her request for decorum. ‘I’ve had chickenpox before, haven’t I?’

‘Hmm. Well, your brother caught it the first month he started at big school but no, you never got it for some reason. Heaven knows I tried to expose you to it, but it just never seemed to take to you. It must be down to your quirky immune system. You get that sort of thing from your father’s side, of course. Why? Have you got it?’

‘I think so,’ Jack said glumly.

‘Let me see,’ Cicely said, as Jack held his arm in front of the camera for her inspection. ‘Oh, you’d better see a doctor,’ she said at length.

‘Well thanks, Mum,’ Jack said. ‘I could have figured that much out for myself.’

‘Less of the attitude, if you please. You called me, remember?’

‘I’ll speak to you soon,’ Jack said more softly.

‘You take care, my darling,’ Cicely said, her tone gentle now after delivering her slight reprimand. ‘And do give my love to Jessie. Wish her luck for Monday, won’t you?’ she added.

‘She’ll be fine, I’m sure. She’s getting really excited about her first day, researching online all morning. I’m sure she’ll be running the place in no time at all. I’d better go and see that doctor, Mum. Love you.’ Jack ended the call.

Throughout the entirety of Jack’s conversation with his mother, Jessie had been hovering around in the background awkwardly, not really knowing if she was invited in, nor if it was really appropriate for her to intrude on mother and son. Although she hadn’t participated, she had been listening.
How would you know how I’m feeling?
Jessie wanted to shout at Jack. It wasn’t like they’d done much talking about what she was anticipating on her impending first day of work in a more senior role in a new country. Their time together, as wonderful as it had been, had been focused on sightseeing and in the pursuit of pleasure.

And with Jack making wildly exaggerated comments like
she'll could be running the place
, Jessie began to question if he even had any idea what it was she did for a living. She was a research economist within the bloody research department, for heck’s sake. There was absolutely no power whatsoever in that.

Jack was feeling sorry for himself. He’d been to the doctor’s, who had confirmed that Jessie and his mum had been right: he
did
have chickenpox. He’d also been told off by the doctor, as he was deemed highly contagious and should really have stayed at home. And now he was to be quarantined for the next few days, until the awful pox had worked its way through his system. He wasn’t a good patient at the best of times, but being told he shouldn’t leave the apartment made him feel like a prisoner. Again. Pretty much like the last time he’d been in Hong Kong, stuck with Sonia Shum. It did not bring back happy memories. This—coupled with an exquisitely annoying itch that he knew he shouldn’t be touching, let alone scratching—was driving him insane.

For her part, Jessie was doing her best, but he knew he was being a grump, despite the wonderful time they’d been having until he’d been struck down with his lurgy. Jessie had spent the weekend coming and going, stocking the place up with groceries so he wouldn’t starve once she started work, and generally waiting on him hand and foot. Thankfully Jessie had already had chickenpox when she was young, so she could stay with him without risk of contagion. He didn’t know what he would have done without her.

It was Sunday evening, and Jessie, after a day of running errands and non-stop activity on her part, had finally sat down to relax with him on the sofa and watch some television.

‘If we ever have children, they’re getting exposed to chickenpox as soon as it starts the rounds at school,’ Jessie said, putting her feet up. ‘As soon as there’s a whiff of the pox going round, I’ll be there with little Jack junior, begging for contamination,’ she laughed.

‘If we ever have children eh? I didn’t know you were planning that far ahead already,’ Jack teased, smiling at her. He was feeling a bit better that evening.

‘Steady on there, Davenport, it was only a figure of speech,’ Jessie said, her cheeks colouring slightly.

‘We’ve never really talked about children,’ Jack said, thinking aloud.

‘No. But it is still early days for us,’ Jessie replied quickly, turning her eyes back to the television.

Children
. That was something to talk about. And think about. Jack was in his thirties, yet the idea of having children had never really entered his head. It wasn’t something he’d ever really yearned for, just something that he unthinkingly figured would automatically happen one day. He would have said more, but then he looked across at Jessie and saw her staring fixedly at the TV, and thought better of it. She obviously wasn’t in the mood to have this discussion yet. And she was right. It
was
still early days in their relationship.

‘Oh, by the way, the airline called,’ Jack said, changing the subject without subtlety.

‘When?’ Jessie asked, her eyes lighting up with a mixture of relief and excitement.

‘This morning, when you were out shopping,’ he replied. Of the two suitcases that Jessie had left England with, only one had managed to find its way to Hong Kong a couple of days after they’d arrived. Until now, the other had remained MIA.

‘What did they say?’ Jessie asked keenly.

‘Well, there’s good news and… less-good news.’

‘Good news first,’ Jessie said impatiently. It was just typical that the case she was still missing was the one she really wanted.

‘They’ve located your case.’

‘Thank God. When will they drop it off?’ Jessie asked eagerly. ‘I dread to think what the state of my new work dresses will be in after all this time.’

‘Ah. Well, that’s the less-good-news. You see, for some reason your case ended up in a regional airport in Outer Mongolia. They don’t have regular scheduled flights from there, so you may have to wait a bit longer. They said they’d call again in a day or two when they have more information on timescales.’

Jessie sighed. ‘Oh, well. Que sera, sera.’ She gave him a small smile and a shrug.

That was one of the reasons why he liked Jessie so much. She didn’t let the little things bother her, even if he did know how secretly desperate she was to have all her clothes back so she could look and feel the part come Monday. Jack knew there was far more to Jessie than just clothes and appearance. She would
be
the part and impress everyone, no matter what she wore to the bank.

As far as Jessie was concerned, this whole living-together thing had not been what she’d expected at all. She’d expected more frustrations and difficulties in learning to share her space all the time with another person. Granted, her experience of living with Jack had been short, but so far it had been surprisingly sweet, and it had only been the last few days that had been mildly annoying, on account of Jack being sick.

But even though she’d had a great time with Jack these past two weeks, Jessie was ready for a change of scene and to finally begin work. That would have been true regardless, but playing nursemaid for the entire weekend had brought that feeling home. Jack was not a model patient and had become increasingly moany and demanding over the course of the weekend. One minute he wanted food, then it was a magazine, and then a good book. By the close of play on Sunday, even Jessie, with her usually endless supply of patience, was struggling not to roll her eyes at him.

And although Jessie regarded the Internet as a truly magnificent thing, she started to question that assessment when Jack took it upon himself to look up copious amounts of information on adult chickenpox and then, intentionally or not, develop every single symptom known to man that had ever been associated with the virus. Over the course of the weekend he’d developed a cough, a sore throat, feelings of nausea, a constant headache, and a temperature,
and
he ached all over. Every time he complained of something new, Jessie wanted to tell him that he’d only developed this latest symptom because he’d read about it on the Internet, and maybe, just maybe, was there any chance that some of the things he thought he was feeling were psychosomatic? But of course she said no such thing. She did what most people would do in a similar situation: she realised how lucky she was to be the healthy one, and bit her tongue.

She had also been slightly peeved at his delay in relaying the message to her from the airline. Nothing in the grand scheme of things had changed, and her luggage still wasn’t where it was supposed to be, but she still felt he should have mentioned it sooner. As silly as it sounded, these mild irritations made her realise that the honeymoon period couldn’t last forever.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind me going into work? I can stay, if you want,’ Jessie offered, sounding earnest. Although she didn’t know what she would have really done had he actually asked her to stay. It was something of an empty offer, if ever there was one.

‘You go. I’ll be fine,’ Jack replied weakly from his sickbed.

‘Well, only if you’re sure,’ Jessie said, leaning over and giving him a quick kiss. Although it pained her to say so, her gorgeous Jack wasn’t looking his best. In fact, he looked positively rough. His skin was pale and his eyes were dull. His rash hadn’t made its way to his face as of yet, but a sickly smell pervaded the area around him.