A Stranger In Texas

The pair reached his floor. Jessica located his room on the discreet gold rectangle with black lettering and numbers. She compared the key and told him, “From the elevator, you turn left.”

He replied, “Yeah.” And he looked at her face. He was taller than she. He was a dominant male. How strange to feel that. He’d always thought of women as equals. The wreck had thrown him back into his basic male thinking. He was dominant.

At his room, it was Jessica who unlocked his door. She opened it inward, effortlessly, and he seemed to drift beside her into the room.

She looked around. It was very neat and orderly. She checked the bath and it, too, was pristine.

The accommodations were always that way.

Jess went to the bureau and opened the drawer to put in his newly purchased underwear. She removed myriad straight pins from the new shirt. She got them all. She would. Then she hung the shirt in the closet.

She put his shaving kit in the bathroom.

Then she came back into the bedroom with a glass of water, which she handed to him. She watched as he put the pill into his mouth and drank the water down.

With care, he put the glass on the table by his bed, as she pulled the coverlet back and turned down the sheeted blanket. He was watching her as if in a trance.

She hesitated and her lips parted. He took her hand into his. They were facing each other. She almost smiled and she watched mesmerized as he took a step nearer.

He regarded her very seriously. His breathing was harsh. He carefully, gently took her into his arms and…he really kissed her!

She was thrillingly shocked and her nose drew in air as her mouth opened to his tongue. Her eyes widened in surprise as her body curled against his rigid one.

What on EARTH!

And his hunger grew. He really didn’t let go of her as he discarded his jacket and stepped on the heels of his shoes to get rid of them. He was out of his sports shirt by dragging it off over his head and his trousers were no problem. Unzipped, they were peeled down…along with his underwear.

He was going to…? She was shocked as she felt a strange fever build inside her body. Her breathing was odd. She looked at him and realized he was not in control of himself. But he was only positive. He wasn’t hurting her. He was just very determined. Yeah, he was. And she was…?

She wanted him. It wasn’t compassion for his present, awful circumstances. It was him. She wanted this man. How shocking.

Why had this never happened before now? The two times she’d been involved with some man, it hadn’t been this way. It had been rather abrupt and messy.

Why this man?

By then, he’d taken her dress off over her head and her slip straps were down her arms. Her bare chest was tightly pressed against the hair on his chest and it felt…marvelous. She gasped. But she pressed against him.

He growled in a guttural voice, “So you want me.”

And pressing her round breasts in a rubbing swirl against him, she moaned!

It was as if she was an entirely different person. How could this be? She wasn’t this kind of a woman. She barely—well, that was obvious—she was bare. But she hardly knew the—

Her back was on the bed. He moved her knees as he looked down her, and he lowered himself into her cradle.

He was very good but he was quick. It just so happened that she was triggered and it was an explosion of passion! Not of love but of body hunger. Passion.

No, it was release. Surcease.

How incredible.

And she knew she was at best a distraction. A substitute. A brief replacement. It wasn’t she who was the recipient of his frantic, denying love.

With the emotional storm past, he dragged from her limp body and fell to the side of her. And he was out cold.

Two (#ulink_32a5dea8-71ca-5c2d-9be3-f2cd6ce43c7d)

For such a careful woman, it was a shock to Jessica to get up from the bed and look back at the man who had escaped into deep, exhausted sleep. She looked at him. He had a beautiful body. Her hands lingered on him.

Hesitating, she gazed at him. Finally, she carefully straightened him enough so that she could gently cover his body with the sheet and blanket.

Her own body was outrageously pleased and satisfied and murmuring. How could a body be separate from the mind? Well, however that was done, she was witness to her body’s obvious greed. She wanted to get back into his bed. How shocking!

Jess’s mind could have bandled Zach’s maneuvers, but it had blinked out. Her body had just…taken over. It had gone along…for the…ride?

It had most certainly been a ride. Wow. His poor dead wife. She’d never have that lustful man again.

Ummmm. How nice it had been with Zachary Thomas! How marvelous her body felt from its coupling with his. In the several times in the last five years when she’d tried it, it had never been the same for her as it had been with Zach.

She’d thought the whole experience had been lied about. But it was all true. She’d just found that out. It really was magic! It was only an awkwardly managed coupling, but how amazing.

It had to be this one man.

She looked on him, sleeping soundly. He was really something. He was out cold and snoring, a nice, comforting little bubble of sound. Her mother had always told her that a man’s snore was something to investigate.

Her mother had never meant for Jessica to find out in just this way. And it came to Jess that this might not have been the right time of the month for her to have been so recklessly careless.

Yeah. There in a stranger’s hotel room, she rearranged her clothing and tidied her hair. She couldn’t do much for the whisker burn. Although she looked for a face salve in the kit acquired in their shop, apparently whisker burn had never been a problem for men.

Jess rubbed her abraded face with some ice from the container so carefully filled by room service.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She could get out of the hotel. She could have—she should have left at six when she was supposed to leave. But they were shorthanded, and she’d agreed to spell Vera while she had dinner. What a rash decision for her to have made.

She wondered if the ghost of Zach’s wife had watched them—and if she had understood his grief. Any woman married at least twelve years to such a man would have understood him. Jessica did and she’d known him a much too brief time.

Then she realized that if she had been known to Zach, he wouldn’t have taken her. Now, that was a curious thing to consider. How could she be sure it was so? It was.

Jess discreetly left the hotel and walked toward her little house only four blocks away. There was an old, pin oak tree, which dominated the entire yard. But the pecan trees found the shade nice.

The house was hers. She’d paid for it when her redheaded, great-grandmother had left Jess her fortune. Being the person she was, Jess had split the money with her two surviving siblings. One of her brothers had died.

Jess’s little house was wood and painted white. It was a one-story frame house with roof peaks, and it sat on a corner. It was perfect for a single woman.

The porch curled around the house so that someone in a rocker could move to sit in the sun in winter and in the shade in summer. There were roses. Winter roses. TEXAS can be counter to the rest of the country. It’s where the sun spends the winter.

Any number of women had sought to share Jessica’s house. And it would have been noisy and fun to have had housemates living with her, but Jessica liked being alone in such a small, friendly town.

As Jess went up her walk, the cat was sitting on the porch with his tail curled around him in a patient manner. He gave her a growly smothered sound just like any male who is irritated with his slave being late to get home and therefore late in fixing his supper.