But this time, I wanted inside her, my name on her lips when she came, and after she came, and then the next day. I wanted one night after another, waking her up to satiate my need and waking her up to satiate hers. I wanted mornings and afternoons too.
“Hey, Raquel!”
Someone’s voice penetrated my single-minded concentration, but just barely. Not enough to stop me from pulling down the cup of her bra and swirling my tongue around the stiff center of her breast.
She panted, watching my tongue circle her. Her hips shifted, rubbing impatiently against the erection barely contained behind the fly of my jeans. I shuddered, drawing her nipple into my mouth.
“Raaaaqueeeel?” the voice tried again.
“No, no, no,” Rae whimpered, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt as I began lifting myself up. “Ignore him.”
“Charlotte is here. And she brought the kids,” the voice said, an unmistakable hint of urgency behind the words.
I stiffened, reality crashing around me as the blanket and the picnic and the crushed bag of chips came sharply into focus.
I looked at Rae. She looked at me.
“So whatever you two are doing,” a second voice added, “you might want to put it away.”
Chapter 19
*Raquel*
“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”
Sophia Loren (attributed, but later denied)
“Jackson James! Well, what a surprise.” Charlotte said this around the world’s largest, most self-satisfied smirk in the history of smirking. “What are the chances?”
“Charlotte,” he responded evenly in his delicious voice, but his eyes told a different story. His hands were stuffed deep in his front pockets and his shirt was untucked.
I knew—if he felt anything like I did—he was in a fair amount of pain. The pain of a frustrated, unmanifested-yet-definitely-imminently-possible reconciliation.
As soon as Dave mentioned the kids were present, Jackson and I had jumped away from each other, frantically working to straighten our clothes and hide all signs of hanky-panky. I experienced trouble switching over from Jackson-reconciliation-hopes to Charlotte-and-the-kids-fun-times. I knew I looked at him hungrily, because I was currently calculating how long we need to be sociable before we could leave.
And then what, Rae? This was the question.
We still had a lot to talk about. I’d told him how I felt. I’d told him I wanted to try being together for real. He hadn’t responded with words. Getting busy on the picnic blanket hadn’t been my intention. But it seemed like every time we were alone, we made out instead of making up.
“Has it been a bad day or a good day, Jackson?” Charlotte asked lightly, looking like she couldn’t be more pleased no matter how he answered.
He didn’t answer.
“Are you here to check on your plot, Jackson?” Kimmy Mitchell wandered over to the blanket and plopped down, picking up the bag of chips I’d assaulted earlier.
“Your plot?” I snuck a glance at him, but his eyes were narrowed on Charlotte.
She was still smirking. “Oh! That’s right. I’d forgotten all about your plot. How silly of me. And what a coincidence that it’s right here, where we are standing, right now.” She wasn’t even trying to lie believably. She looked like she was trying not to laugh. “How are your plots, Jackson? All my plots are going swimmingly.”
“What’s blooming?” Joshua Mitchell, the second oldest and a sensitive, sweet soul, took the bag of chips from Kimmy and gently opened it for her.
“Wait, what plot are we talking about?” I addressed this question to the kids since I wasn’t sure Jackson was capable of conversation yet. His body had been quite primed for other activities when we’d been interrupted.
“Jackson watches over the land for the rangers and takes notes about the plants and such.” Joshua opened the picnic basket and riffled through it as his baby brother toddled over.
“You do?”
He gave his eyes to me, the heat behind them tempered but still present, and I longed to pull him away from here, someplace private, for hours upon hours so we could figure things out between us. Maybe we needed to be placed in cages so we couldn’t touch each other.
Great. Now I’m going to have cage fight sex fantasies about Jackson tonight.
“Something like that,” he finally said, a barely-there smile softening his features and making me melt.
Note to self, buy a cage.
“Nonscientists, or future scientists—” Jackson absentmindedly ruffled the toddler’s hair and then helped Frankie sit as he knelt next to the basket “—can adopt plots of land in the park. All you have to do is stop by every two weeks between spring and late fall, write down what’s there, keep track of the tree line, the foliage.”
“It helps the rangers understand how the weather makes the plants grow.” Joshua handed a plate to Kimmy, then to Jackson, then to himself. “Momma? Are you eating?”
Charlotte grabbed her second youngest, pulling the ponytail out of Sonya’s hair and redoing it. “No baby, we’re not staying long.”
“Oh? That’s too bad,” I said. It wasn’t too bad. It was great news. And now I felt like a jerk. I lowered to my knees, accepting a plate from Joshua.
“Yes!” Kimmy—who had just spotted the main course in the basket—sent me a hopeful look. “Is this for us?”
“What is it? What did she make?” Charlotte, looking undecided, hovered at the edge of the blanket.
Kimmy turned over her shoulder. “Pesto primavera,” she announced, pronouncing the words perfectly.
“Then I guess we will be staying after all.” Charlotte immediately sat and reached out a hand. “Gimme two plates, Josh. One for me and one for your little sister.”
“Pesto primavera?” Jackson’s eyes skimmed over me. “What’s that?”
“It’s a fancy name for spaghetti with this green slimy sauce and vegetables, and you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten Rae’s pesto primavera.” Charlotte raved, and I knew her compliment came from the heart. The last time I’d made my mother’s recipe for her, she’d eaten three servings. “Wait a minute. Haven’t you been to Italy, Jackson? And you’ve never heard of pesto primavera?”
“We didn’t eat out much, and I was only there for a short trip to see the baby,” he replied, passing out the forks and napkins to the kids. Frankie sat down on Jackson’s lap, like it was the most natural thing in the world, as he directed his next comments to me, “My sister lives there for now, and we all went out when my nephew was born.”
“Does your sister work outside the home?” I asked, realizing I didn’t know very much about Jackson’s family.
“Yes.”
“What does she do?” Kimmy reverently passed me the container pesto primavera, and I peeled back the lid.
“She’s an heiress,” Charlotte said matter-of-factly.
Jackson sent her a flat look. “She teaches. She’s a math teacher. Wherever she goes, she teaches at a local school.”
“She’s an heiress,” Charlotte whispered loudly. “That’s how she can afford to go wherever she wants.”