Natural Attraction Read online

  “My patience is wearing thin. Tuesday, Jess.”

  “Let’s see. Tuesday might not—”

  “Tuesday.” The word came out close to a roar.

  Jessie rounded the front of the car at a trot. “Mark—” she looked down at the book in her hands “—my time’s not always my own. I can’s just drop everything to please myself.” She lifted her hands to dramatize the statement.

  “So that’s the problem. I thought you were trying to back out of our agreement, stand me up,” Mark grinned sheepishly. “It almost worked.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Mark.” Jessie laid her hand on his arm to emphasize her sincerity.

  Mark breathed a private sigh of relief. He’d been afraid she would try to back out of the relationship before it had truly begun. “I won’t make you choose between me and your family. I thought you knew me well enough by now.” He should have recognized her reticence. He’d have to get over being defensive about her children, too.

  “And I’ll lighten up.” Tension drained out of Jessie’s taut form like sand through an hourglass with Mark’s last remark. She felt giddy and suddenly at ease. “What time Tuesday?”

  “Jessie!” Her mother stood on the front stoop below the wide, wraparound verandah of the turn-of-the-century frame house that Jessie and Carl had bought two years before his death. “Is everything out of the trunk?”

  “Yes, Mother. We’re all unloaded.” Jessie surveyed her mother fondly. She was wearing a rose-pink, linen pantsuit and a silky gray blouse that matched her shortly cropped salt-and-pepper hair. And she was barefoot. Jessie couldn’t even remember seeing her mother barefoot in the middle of the day.

  “Good. Isn’t it nice we all got home so close together. I dreaded spending all evening in this big old house alone. Now we can get right at it and have the washing done in no time.” Marta turned back to the house, shaking her head over the felicitous coincidence of a nearly simultaneous return to Manchester.

  Jessie watched her in wide-eyed fascination. “I hope she’s not coming down with something. She hates to do the laundry.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine; probably just keyed up from her trip. You didn’t answer my question. What time can I pick you up on Tuesday?”

  “What? Oh, how about seven? Don’t you think she looked a little flushed?” she asked Mark seriously. “Her eyes were so bright. She might have a fever.”

  “Your eyes are every bit as bright.” Mark brought Jessie’s attention back to himself without a twinge of conscience at the underhanded tactics. “Your mother looked just fine,” he added hastily as Jessie opened her mouth to speak. He took her hand. She responded immediately to the pressure of his fingers, moving closer as though drawn to him by a magnet.

  “I can’t be away too late,” she cautioned.

  “I promise to have you safely home at a decent hour—three in the morning at the latest. Is there anyplace special you’d like to go?”

  “Anywhere at all that we can be alone together.” Jessie’s voice was husky, deep with desire and longing. Mark sucked in his breath. The rush of heat through his body was almost painful.

  “I’ll take you to the moon, give you the stars,” he began whimsically.

  “Mom!” Nell bounded down the steps like a small sneaker-shod tornado. The ancient wooden screen door slammed shut behind her with a crack like a pistol shot. Jessie jumped away. “Mom, my guppies’ve exploded. There must be a hundred babies in the tank. Come look!”

  “Great,” Lyn added, following more sedately in the youngster’s wake. “You can feed the extras to Cecelia. Mom that cat’s pregnant again.”

  “Oh, no,” Jessie moaned, resting her forehead against the door frame of the car. “We barely got rid of the last batch of kittens a month ago. I knew I should have taken her to the vet.”

  “Are all the resident pets in this household female, too?” Mark asked, astounded.

  “Almost,” Jessie admitted. “There’s Cecelia—she’s a very popular lady in the neigborhood—and her mother Frances. But Frances has been spayed, thank goodness. We’re not too sure about one of the hamsters. They’re awfully hard to tell apart. And certainly we have male guppies. How else do you account for the population explosion?”

  “How stupid of me,” Mark replied faintly, but a ghost of an irritating smile tightened around the corners of his mouth.

  “Jessie.” Marta returned with a batch of unopened letters in her hand. “It seems we’ve gotten Mr. Wharton’s mail by mistake again.”

  “Nell just had to run into the house and open all of them,” Lyn supplied from her perch on the porch railing.

  “Doesn’t she always?” Ann seconded from the dilapidated but surprisingly comfortable old canvas porch swing by the front door.

  “Enough.” Jessie raised a warning hand. “The postman transposed the house numbers again, Mother, that’s all. I’ll run it over later.”

  “That one’s a third notice for something or other.” Nell approached to take the treasured paperback from Jessie’s hand.

  “Do you suppose he’s actually that far behind on his payments?” Marta queried, inspecting the official-looking manilla envelope with renewed interest.

  “Is it really a third notice?” Jessie couldn’t help asking. “For what?”

  “Jessie, I’m surprised at you gossiping about our neighbors in front of Mr. Elliot like this,” Marta scolded, absently perusing the letter herself. She beamed benignly and vacantly at Mark, then went back to reading the letter. Jessie felt another wave of apprehension slide over her skin. Marta was definitely not herself.

  “Sorry, Mom.” Jessie rolled her eyes at Mark. Marta paid no attention, still immersed in the absent Mr. Wharton’s private communication.

  “Why, it’s only one of those letters bugging him about renewing a subscription to a magazine. We should just toss it away,” she murmured disgustedly. “Save him the guilt trip.”

  “Mother…”

  “Is it one of those that starts out: ‘Dear Mr. Whoever. It has come to our attention that you have relatives in the old country’?” Mark interrupted, reworking his Viennese mad scientist accent to resemble a Prussian military officer. Barely.

  “Yes, it is,” Marta nodded, pleased at his levity. “So annoying, don’t you think? I’m going to toss it in the trash. If he wanted the magazine he’d have renewed his subscription before this. I’m sure Mr. Wharton would do the same for me. Thank you, Mr. Elliot.”

  “Call me, Mark. Please.”

  “I’d like that.” Marta smiled impishly, suddenly looking half her age. “And you must call me Marta.”

  “Mother, you can’t throw away someone else’s mail,” Jessie pointed out logically.

  “Well, I’m going to. It’s the neighborly thing to do.” It was said with such conviction that Jessie didn’t dare argue with her. “Come on, girls. We’ve got work to do. You can tell me all about your trip while we sort the laundry.”

  “That does it. She’s ill. She’s back to the laundry again.” Jessie took a step after her mother and almost collided with Mark. “Mom, are you sure you’re feeling okay?” she called anxiously.

  “Why, yes, Jessie, dear. I’ve never felt better. What makes you ask a thing like that?”

  “Nothing. Go ahead. I’ll be right in,” Jessie asnwered as obediently as her daughters. “I have to go in,” she explained unnecessarily to Mark.

  “Do I get a good-bye kiss?”

  “Yes, a kiss,” Jessie said in a dreamy, singsong voice. “That’s what I need to get me through till Tuesday. Do you think you can manage a kiss that will hold me until then, Colonel Elliot?” Her eyes glowed, her lips parted appealingly in anticipation of such a caress.

  Mark bent his head, taking her back into his arms. His hands rested low on her hips, pulling their bodies together. Jessie didn’t protest, although their embrace was only partially concealed by the car. She didn’t care if the whole world was looking. “Now that’s an order I won’t have any troubl
e obeying.”

  “IS MARK GONE, JESSIE?” MARTA called as her daughter floated into the house a few minutes later.

  “Yes, Mom. He had things to check over at the magazine. How was your trip?” Jessie stared at the tremendous pile of laundry in the middle of the kitchen floor, then at her barefoot mother in its midst. “My goodness, we’ll be at this till midnight.”

  “Nonsense, Jess. It won’t take more than a couple of hours.” Marta ladled Tide with a heavy hand into the venerable Maytag, slamming the lid.

  “Mother, sit down. Leave that for the girls,” Jessie ordered propelling her mother toward the kitchen table with loving firmness. “Are you feeling yourself?”

  “I’ve never felt better. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re acting very strangely, running around confiscating the neighbor’s mail. You hate to do laundry—” Jessie gestured “—and you aren’t wearing any shoes.”

  “You aren’t wearing a bra,” Marta replied tartly. “That’s strange enough for you.”

  “Oh,” Jessie sputtered, the wind effectively taken out of her sails. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

  “I may be old enough to qualify for Social Security and a Senior Citizen discount at the movies but I’m neither blind nor senile, Jessie. Of course I noticed. And I saw you kissing Mark Elliot out there behind his car. That’s the same way you used to behave with Carl—sneaking around corners…staring off into space.”

  “My Lord, does it show that much? Do you think the girls suspect? Oh, Mom. What if it’s true? Do you think I might be falling in love with him? Is that possible?” She dropped a soiled beach towel back into a pile of clothes, not realizing she’d given the statement veracity merely by voicing it aloud.

  “I think you’d better tell me all about it,” Marta suggested, resting her chin on her hands. Jessie outlined her feelings as succinctly and as lucidly as she could manage. Marta seemed to understand. “Far be it from me to pass judgment, but Mark Elliot doesn’t seem like the kind of gentleman who’d kiss a ‘friend’ like that.”

  “But all he asked me to be is his friend.”

  “Maybe I am reading too much into it,” Marta admitted. “Or maybe I can spot the symptoms more easily because I’m in the same condition myself.”

  “You’re in love? With a man?” Jessie croaked, grabbing the back of one of her prized pressed-oak kitchen chairs for support.

  “No, with a baboon,” Marta answered tartly. “Of course, a man. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “No, certainly not,” Jessie lied. Her father had been gone nearly a dozen years and her mother had never expressed an interest in another relationship. “It’s just so out of the blue, that’s all. I’ll need a little time to get used to it. Who’s the lucky fella?” She hoped her voice sounded normal. Marta looked as happy, as easily hurt as the twins would be.

  “Hiram Parker. Do you remember him?” Jessie shook her head. “No, I suppose you don’t. He had children closer to your brother’s age.” She flicked her hand across her forehead. “My wits have gone begging. Tim and Helen send their love. They want to know when you’re coming out to visit.” Jessie’s older brother was line foreman in a large farm machinery plant near Lancaster. He also farmed her mother’s small acreage on shares. The earnings helped his growing family of five and supplemented Marta’s income nicely.

  “I thought we’d go home for Thanksgiving if that’s all right with you,” Jessie replied absently, piling blue jeans back into a duffel to take to the Laundromat for washing in a heavy-duty machine. It would save hours of time and wear and tear on Jessie’s overworked washer and dryer.

  “I might be busy over the holidays, dear,” Marta returned coyly, rising from her seat to help Jessie steady the duffel. “Hiram and I are considering getting married then. Here in Manchester. He lives in Florida now. We’ll be going down there for the winter.” Her hazel eyes were full of concern as she watched Jessie closely, trying to gauge her reaction to the news.

  “Married!” It was Jessie’s turn to sink into a chair, still clutching a pair of Nell’s jeans. “Move to Florida!”

  “Yes, dear. You aren’t angry with me for deserting you and the girls, are you?”

  “Mom, don’t even think such a thing.” But she was, a little. She’d never thought of her mother wanting to have a home of her own again. She’d been such a comfort, such a help to Jessie for so long. Had Jessie been selfish to assume they’d be together forever?

  “I can’t help but worry, Jess. It’s all so sudden and so wonderful. I feel like a twenty-year old again. But I’m worried about you and the girls.”

  “Don’t be. We’ll just miss you so terribly, that’s all. Hiram Parker must be some kind of man to sweep you off your feet like this.” Jessie strove to move the subject along as smoothly as possible. The whole situation would take a lot of adjustment regardless of her assertion to the contrary. If her laugh was strained and high pitched, Marta pretended just as hard not to notice.

  “He’s such a wonderful man. He was a nice boy and he’s grown into a wonderful man,” she repeated.

  “This is all so sudden.” Jessie looked heavenward as if for divine confirmation. “Imagine. We’ve both been alone for so long, lonely so long,” she added more softly, cocking her head at Marta’s round petite figure. Her mother nodded shyly. “And bingo, just like that we each find somebody! Both of us,” Jessie finished on a lighter but still wondering note.

  “I didn’t find Hiram,” Marta explained, delighted to fill Jessie in on the details. “We’d lost track of an old, old friendship, that’s all. He’d been living in California for years. His wife died, oh, about three years or so ago. I didn’t know it until the night of my alumni banquet. Lettie reintroduced us.”

  “How is Aunt Lettie?” Jessie inserted, kicking dirty socks into a separate pile as she jumped off her chair, already infected by her mother’s glowing happiness and her own inner joy.

  “She’s fine.” Marta dismissed her sister’s well-being as a topic of conversation with a wave of her hand. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Hi Parker was the best-looking boy in school. We dated for a year, then broke up just before I met your father. He was a soldier home on leave from the war. I never could resist a man in a uniform.”

  “Mom! You didn’t marry Dad on the rebound?” Jessie didn’t like the idea at all.

  “Certainly not, silly. I loved your father to distraction from the first moment we met, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Hi. He was quarterback of our high school football team, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.” Jessie’s voice was muffled as she transferred the wet clothes into the dryer. Its monotonous rumble counterpointed their words from then on.

  “I have his picture right here,” Marta revealed, going to her handbag, which was still resting on the kitchen counter above her suitcase. “Naturally, he’s changed a little—but haven’t we all?” The paunchy grandfather of eight smiling broadly into the camera bore only a slight resemblance to the rangy youth in the odd-looking old-fashioned football uniform that Marta pointed out in her yellowed yearbook.

  Jessie shook her head, bewildered by the rapid turn of events and her own internal upheaval of the past week. “You weren’t even going to go to that class reunion. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have found each other again.”

  “It’s eerie, all right.” Marta made a clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth. “It’s downright scary how happiness can rest on such a fragile foundation sometimes, isn’t it? Oh, well, no matter how it came about, I’m going to work hard to build it into something strong and lasting. Tell me you’re happy for me, Jessie, honey.”

  “How can you think otherwise? I’ll admit I was taken aback by this whole thing. But if you love him, we’ll love him.”

  “I’m so glad,” Marta whispered with a little catch in her voice. A merry giggle pealed across the room. She was close to laughing and crying at the same time. Jessie brushed an errant tear from her eyes as
well. “We’re as bad as the twins, Jess. Get us away from this house, the dishes, worrying about how to pay the bills and the laundry—” she made a face at the floor “—and we’re as silly as teenagers.” She giggled again, cupping her hands over her mouth to stifle her glee. “How are we going to tell them?”

  “Who?”

  “My granddaughters.”

  “We aren’t, at least I’m not. Not yet,” Jessie said more seriously. “Mark and I…we’re…friends. I’m not sure where this relationship is going. Let’s keep these our little secrets. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, I would—” Marta agreed, nodding reflectively “—for a few days, anyway, to get used to the idea myself. It’s been a whirlwind romance so to speak. Hi is coming up at the end of the month to meet all of you. And pop the question officially, I hope,” she added wistfully. “If he doesn’t, I may have to,” she added with more of her usual verve.

  “If he’s got any sense at all, he’ll ask you right away. I’m sure I have a bottle of champagne from a client around here someplace.” Jessie pondered a moment, then stepped up on a small stool to reach the top cupboard. Stretching her arm into the far corner, she brought out a bottle of vintage New York State champagne. “Drat, it’s warm.” She looked down at her mother, aggrieved.

  “Why wouldn’t it be warm, stuck away up there in the cupboard?” Marta shook her head at Jessie’s apparent loss of sense. “Put it in the fridge.”

  “I’d better pop it in the freezer; it’s quicker. Wait here while I unearth the wineglasses,” she directed, preparing to hand the bottle to the older woman. “We’ll drink a toast to our new friends before the girls get back from whatever it is they’re doing.”

  “Is Mark your lover?” Marta asked bluntly.

  “No,” Jessie confessed, shocked. She stepped down off the stool. She was relieved the activity made eye contact inadvisable. Mark would be a tender, caring lover, she had no doubt. But her lover? “We’re just friends.”

  “Well, then we’ll drink to your friend, Mark, and to my lover,” Marta said complacently, but deviltry sparkled in her hazel eyes.