Lost and Found (33 page)

“Excuse me, but I don’t consider marriage a ‘little’ complication. That’s a huge, major, humongous complication.”

“You’re right. It is, but only if I still had any kind of relationship with my wife. The truth is that I don’t. I don’t think I ever did.”

“Then why did you marry her?”

“You’ll think I’m a ridiculous cliché if I tell you.”

“I already think that. Spill it.”

“Pretty simple really. She got pregnant during our senior year in high school. Or at least she said she was pregnant. We’d only been out once, but I believed her when she said the baby belonged to me, so I did what I thought was right: I married her. Turns out the whole mess was a scheme to get at my family’s money.”

“Jesus, where did you grow up? Falcon Crest or
Melrose Place
?”

He laughed dryly. “Sometimes I wonder that myself, but no, that’s really what happened. Of course, Kerry didn’t count on me becoming a cop.” He smiled wryly and shook his head. “That didn’t fit in with her image of being independently wealthy at all. Instead of entertaining and doing charitable work between trips to the spa and the plastic surgeon, she ended up moving out here where she knew no one, with a husband who worked eighty hours a week. She was miserable until finally I was promoted to Detective three years ago and she decided she’d had enough and split.”

Jessie couldn’t bear the bitterness in his voice or the remote expression on his face as he looked distantly out at the water. She placed one hand on his thigh to get his attention. “I’m sorry she did that to you, Duncan. I really am.”

He looked down at her soft white hand on his leg. “Don’t be. It’s in the past. All I care about now is that you forgive me for being such a scumbag. I should have told you first thing.” Threading his hand through her fingers on his thigh, he brought her hand up to his cheek. “Can we start again, Jess?”

Jessie hesitated. This couldn’t be happening. She must be bewitched or temporarily insane. Was she actually considering risking her heart again? Was she really that stupid? Apparently she was. “Can you promise to be honest with me from now on?” She asked.

His smile was blinding in the faint light. “I swear I don’t have any more deep, dark secrets, but yes I promise, but only if you’ll promise me something.”

She returned his smile, but there was still some wariness in her eyes. “What?”

“You have to promise me that you won’t run every time I do something stupid. Because I can guarantee you that I’m probably not done messing up. I’m out of practice with this whole relationship thing, and that means a lot of screwing up is in our future.”

She gulped at his use of the words ‘our future’ but didn’t want hope to get the best of her. Maybe he hadn’t meant to say it like it was a foregone conclusion that they would be together in the future. “But no more wives, right?”

“No more wives, though I should probably tell you that the one you were so unfortunate to meet the other night is still around and looking to extort some money from me.”

Jessie raised a speculative eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, now that I want a divorce, she thinks it’s time to negotiate for my release. She wants me to pay her a huge amount of money to sign the papers.”

“How much is a huge amount?”
 

“Ten million dollars.”

“You’re kidding me!” Jessie choked out. “You don’t have that kind of money, do you?” She seemed more horrified by the thought rather than excited.

“Me personally, no, but Kerry knows how much my grandmother is worth, and wants me to hit the old girl up for the mother of all loans.”

“You’re not going to pay her off, are you? That seems ridiculous.”

“If I want to get rid of her, I have no choice.”

“There must be another way.”

“Hey, I’m open to suggestions. It doesn’t do much for my ego to hear that my wife feels entitled to ten million dollars for putting up with me for ten years.”

“You’re right, she should have asked for more,” Jessie said, smiling teasingly at him.

“If you’re making fun of me, that must mean we’re okay. Are we, Jess?” He asked, pulling her toward him with a wicked smile.

Instead of answering she sighed against his mouth as he leaned down to kiss her. His lips were more than okay as she kissed him back.

“Answer me,” he said after a minute, tickling her ribs a bit as he lifted her onto his lap. She attempted to squirm away, but he held her tightly, nuzzling his rough evening beard against her soft cheek. She squealed, but still wouldn’t answer, so he leaned her back until she was about to fall straight back onto the rust-colored cobblestones behind her.

“Okay,” she screamed, oblivious to the startled old lady walking her Pomeranian a few feet away. “We’re okay, just don’t drop me,” she said, breathlessly.

“Never,” he said, pulling her back up to him. He kissed her until she was squirming in his lap again, but this time in desire. He looked at her for a moment very seriously. “I won’t ever drop you, Jessie. I swear.”
 

Hypnotized by the intense look in his eyes, Jessie touched his face, and said, “I know you won’t.”

He nodded and then reached down to squeeze one of Jessie’s denim-clad buttocks playfully. “I seem to recall saying something to you about what would happen if you ever wore jeans in front of me again. Do you happen to remember what that was?” He asked, mock seriously, raising one thick black eyebrow suggestively as he lifted her into his arms and carried her toward his apartment building.

Chapter
25

An hour later, Jessie was in heaven. Not literally, but close enough. She was stretched out lengthwise on Duncan’s huge bed, with just a sheet over her bottom half, while Duncan sat on the edge and massaged some kind of silky, sweet-smelling lotion into the tight muscles of her back and neck. He’d borrowed the bottle from Theresa’s bathroom, and it smelled like apricots and freshly-cut grass. Jessie thought about asking what the name of the lotion was, but she couldn’t summon up the energy. His large hands felt so good kneading her flesh, all she could do was sigh and moan occasionally. Actual words were completely beyond her.

Their flight to his bed was interrupted by the fact that
Duncan
had run out of the apartment without his keys. They’d been forced to track down the nosy superintendent, Ted, to be let in.
Duncan
had wanted to try to break in through the roof, but Jessie had talked him into trying the less insane approach first, and he’d actually given in despite his misgivings. He didn’t want the gossip-mongering superintendent to report to the rest of the building that
Duncan
was being visited by two very different women just a week apart.
 

He didn’t relish the idea of his neighbors whispering about his visitors. He could just see the disdainful look of the old ladies in the elevator if it got around that he had both a blonde and a red-head sleeping in his apartment, with a brunette claiming to be his wife, making the occasional midnight house calls. He’d be facing the cold shoulder ever time he stuck his head out of his apartment in no time.

Under his hands, Jessie muscles eventually began to loosen and become pliable. She was a very tense person—her back incredibly stiff and unyielding. She didn’t cringe from his impersonal touch, but she seemed confused by it, like she couldn’t understand why he’d want to touch her unless it was sexual. At first, she had been very reluctant to let him massage her, preferring instead to return his caresses, but he’d been insistent, and eventually she’d allowed him to stroke her neck while she sat in front of him with her hands firmly in her lap. From there it hadn’t taken long to convince her to strip and let him continue his ministrations on her shoulders and back.

Duncan
had discovered massage a year ago when he’d dislocated his shoulder in a tussle with an extremely obese, suspected child molester. After the initial injury had healed, he’d still experienced some stiffness in the joint and Kevin had recommended a massage therapist.
Duncan
had been reluctant, unsure what to expect, especially knowing Kevin’s taste for women.
 

In
Duncan
’s line of work, he’d encountered some rather sleazy ‘full-release’ massage parlors, and despite his two years of abstinence he had no desire to visit an establishment like that. Kevin had reassured him with a laugh that a massage therapist was something very different from the girls who worked in the parlors. Massage Therapists were licensed for one thing, he’d said, and required at least two years of training for another. Still,
Duncan
imagined some tiny oriental girl walking on his back or a giant blond man pounding on his naked flesh enthusiastically with ham-fists.

As the tenderness in his shoulder persisted, he’d finally taken Kevin’s advice and visited the office of the woman he’d recommended. Gladys, the Massage Therapist, was hardly what he’d imagined. She was in her late forties with a loud laugh and short salt and pepper hair, and she’d quickly had him sending Kevin a case of champagne in gratitude. Six months later, his shoulder was healed, but he still visited Gladys weekly. Until meeting Jessie, massage had been pretty much his only recreation, and he wanted to share it with her.

He’d never been aroused by Gladys, not even remotely, but ever since his first massage he’d secretly thought about how great it would be to explore massage with a woman. Not just as foreplay, but as a way of giving pleasure to one another, and enjoying each other. Since he’d met Jessie, he’d been dying to try it out on her.

Looking down at the pale, smooth flesh of her back he thought he might have made a mistake. Her skin was so fair, even this late in the summer; he could see the faint tracing of veins under her skin and the elegant bones of her shoulders and ribcage. She was so delicate and feminine. He ran both hands down her back, and found that he could easily span her waist with his dark hands. The temptation to slip those hands downward under the sheet and cup her curvy ass was almost more than he could stand.

He’d planned to do this for at least a half-hour, until she was completely relaxed and tranquil from the pleasure, but ten minutes into the massage he was aching with desire for her. Knowing that she was naked under the sheet was driving him wild to possess her, despite his pure intentions. Worst of all, her small sighs and moans of pleasure seemed to be whispering along his nerves directly to his cock, which was already hard and twitching with eagerness to proceed to some serious foreplay.

“Oh God.” Oblivious to
Duncan
’s struggle, Jessie sighed into the pillow as he dug his blunt fingers into her lower back again. “That is so good.” Her voice was muffled, but very husky, just like when they’d made love.

Duncan
closed his eyes and swallowed. He couldn’t take much more of this. He kept his eyes closed and tried to concentrate on his hands, finding the spots on her back and neck that were tight with tension.

Drops of perspiration broke out on his forehead as he tried to keep his mind clear of lascivious thoughts. Breathing deeply to calm himself, he opened his eyes and noticed that the sheet had eased down her body to expose one of the perfect, round cheeks of Jessie’s ass. He hadn’t moved the sheet. Had Jessie done it? He closed his eyes tightly, but the image of her sweet bottom seemed to be imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He opened one eye. Nope, he hadn’t imagined it. There was a large, black beauty mark the size of his smallest fingernail on the fullest portion of her bottom. He was completely charmed by that small imperfection, hypnotized by it.

“Jess, are you aware that you have what appears to be a bull’s eye on your ass?” he asked with a grin, gliding his slick fingers down to her bottom until he touched the mark.

Roused from euphoria, it took Jessie a second to realize what he was talking about. “Bull’s eye?” She asked in a puzzled voice, raising her head slightly to look down over her shoulder. Then her entire body went stiff, and she jerked her arm down to pull the covers up to cover the offending mark. “I forgot about it,” she mumbled into the pillow. “Don’t be grossed out, okay?”

Duncan
laughed, but stopped immediately when she turned to glare at him. “What kind of moron would be grossed out by something like that?” He tried to pull down the sheet to take another look but she had a death grip on it.

“Elvin Preston,” she said through gritted teeth, looking straight ahead.

“Who the hell is Elvin Preston?” He asked, trying not to let his amusement leak into his voice.

“Elvin Preston is the boy who told everyone in our swimming class that I had a dead fly on my butt,” she said, turning her head to look at him reproachfully.

Duncan
couldn’t help it; he started laughing. “When was this exactly?” He asked between chuckles.

Careful to keep her sheet in place, Jessie got up on her knees, and punched him hard in the shoulder.
 

“Ouch,” he said, but continued to laugh.

“Grade three, and it’s not funny,” she said, exasperated with him. “I’ve worn shorts over my bathing suit ever since, just in case my bottoms ride up.”

Duncan
stopped laughing, but the smile never completely left his face. “Jess, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed, but it’s just ridiculous that you’d feel embarrassed about it. You’re hardly the elephant man.” She looked at him doubtfully. “C’mon,” he said, trying to look innocent. “Lie back down and I’ll finish your massage.”