Mermaid Page 14
Just as quietly Jillian got down to business—her business, the business of trying to get through to a child who didn’t want to be gotten through to.
She felt good all of a sudden, equal to the challenge. She felt useful. She felt whole.
“Jillian! Where have you been?” Mark’s face was gray, his eyes haunted. “I came home early because we have to talk, and you weren’t here. No one knew where you were. None of your friends, none of the neighbors. “I was...afraid,” he went on. “Afraid you’d left me.”
“No!” She went to him, slid her arms around his waist, and slowly his came around her. She smiled up at him. “Never. I’d never leave you. I had something important to do, Mark, and I didn’t expect you to be waiting. I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“You did more than worry me. You terrified me. I guess I’ve gotten used to your always being here. You’ve become so important to me that I panic if I don’t know where you are. And lately you’ve been...unhappy. It made me unhappy, too, Jilly, because I thought I was the one making you that way. Last night when I realized that you missed your job, I overreacted. I’m sorry, sweetheart. You have every right to do whatever you want to do. If you want to get another job, that’s fine. I’ll handle it. If it means sharing you with five hundred ogling men, so be it. As long as it’s me you come home to each night.”
She looked up at him and stroked his face, trying to erase the frown between his eyes, the lines of tension around his mouth. He caught her hand and kissed her palm. “I’ll always come home to you, Mark, and yes, I do want to get another job. In fact, I have one.”
He looked into her glowing face, seeing the happiness that had been missing for so long, and something inside him ripped in half. He wanted her happiness to remain on her face, loved to see her mouth curved into a beguiling smile, rejoiced to see the pink color of her cheeks, the light in her eyes.
“You won’t have to share me with five hundred ogling men,” she told him, holding him tightly, her hands moving into his hair, luxuriating in its fullness. “But if you think you can stand to share me with twenty-five hundred high school students, then you’ve got yourself a working wife.”
“Jillian?”
He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the couch where he sat down with her on his lap, her legs stretched out on the cushions beside him. He stroked down one leg then up the other, his calluses catching on navy blue nylon as his hand slid up under the hem of her dress. “Are you sure?”
She nestled into his embrace. “Is the sky blue? Is—” She kissed him for a long time and then leaned her head back comfortably on his shoulder. She glanced at her watch. There was still an hour and a half before Amber was due home from school.
He caught the look on her face and gently tipped her back until she lay on the couch, then covered her body with his own. It was a long time before they stood up and walked together, clothes bundled under their arms, into their bedroom to shower and change before the kids came home.
Standing in the pelting water, Mark smoothed her wet hair back from her face and watched as it clung to her neck and shoulders, wisping in wet curls over her high, proud breasts. Her mouth was curved in a smile, the little freckles on her nose had paled during the winter but her eyes shone, sea-green and glowing with happiness, lit with the sunshine that lived in her soul.
“Welcome back, my magic mermaid,” he whispered as he bent to kiss her. “Welcome back.”
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1989 by Judy Gill
cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4532-8078-2
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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