Page 30 of Laying His Claim
He looked at her for so long that she felt a fluttering in the pit of her stomach. “Nice.” Moving to her side, he took a deep inhale. “That duck smells like heaven!”
“The secret is a little of honey in the marinade. Not much, just asoupçon.That’s what my grandmother always told me.” She paused, stopping dead, fingers clasped around a large spatula, as the full impact of her words hit home.My grandmother, she’d said. She’d remembered her grandmother’s words!
“Justin!” she squealed. “I remembered!”
For a moment, she could have sworn he paled. “What did you remember?”
“My grandmother’s recipe for duck! I mean, I remember that this recipe is hers! Isn’t that amazing?” In her delight, she threw herself into his arms. He was taken aback for a second, but then his arms closed around her waist, and he held her close. He felt so good. He smelled so good. She discovered that she was lifting up on tiptoe, pressing her lips against his, and he was kissing her back, first tentatively, then deeply. After days apart, the contact almost shorted out her brain. She parted her lips, inviting him in. Then the realization of what she was doing dragged her back to her senses, and she pulled away. Her breathing was ragged, and she could have sworn that the kitchen had gotten way hotter. Without saying another word about the kiss, or even acknowledging it had happened, she laid out the ingredients for the salad and handed him a large crystal salad bowl. “All yours,” she said abruptly.
By tacit agreement, they went to work side by side. Needing to fill the void, she asked him about the trip, and he began telling her of the sorry state of the family’s restaurant and the badly burned kitchen. “They think it’s arson,” he said. “But we can’t figure out who or why. It’s driving me crazy. I feel so bad about it.”
“Why do you feel bad?”
“Because of how it will affect the employees. If only I’d known. If only there was a way to have prevented it from happening.”
Jalissa stopped her chopping, set down her knife, and turned to face him. “You can’t blame yourself for everything that happens, Justin. You can’t carry so much guilt around. It will weigh down your soul.”
“Guilt,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Huh.”
What did he mean by that, she wondered—and what exactly was he referring to?
* * *
Justin eased the car into ‘park’ outside his brother’s house, noticing as he did so that Tyler and Kaiya were already there. He was almost reluctant to go inside, because it meant that he would have to release Jalissa’s hand, which was lightly resting on his thigh and had been for most of the drive over. Her hand felt so warm in his, and the contact with her skin so fulfilling that he was afraid that if he let her go, he might break the spell that had surrounded them in the few days since he returned from Ottawa.
The last few evenings had been so comfortable that he was reluctant to leave for work in the morning and eager to get back home when the day’s work was done. It was as if that evening they’d shared in the kitchen had opened up a new doorway for Jalissa and him, and they had wandered through it.
In that spontaneous moment, she’d thrown her arms around him and kissed him, and he knew that the connection between them was real. He’d felt it, and so had she. He had taken to coming home as early as he could, and dismissing Lorena earlier than usual so that he and Jalissa could see about the task of caring for Seb together. Lorena looked none too happy about that, so he was certain to let her know that her salary wouldn’t be affected.
The past few evenings had been spent in comfortable familiarity; together they made dinner, ate, fed Sebastian, and settled in his nursery to read him a bedtime story. As soon as he was asleep, which was usually quite quick, bless him, they went out to the living room and sat side by side on the couch to watch a little TV. Sometimes the news, sometimes a gory horror movie, which he discovered Jalissa loved. Often, she would lay her head against his shoulder. Oftentimes, when he bent forward to kiss her lightly, she kissed him back.
He couldn’t be happier.
He looked down at her in admiration as he reached over and unbuckled her seatbelt; her knee-length wool dress was a deep burgundy, trimmed with pewter buttons, conservative yet sexy. Only Jalissa could make such a thing possible. “You look amazing tonight,” he said softly.
She beamed.
Without another word, he pressed a soft kiss against her cheek, and then exited the vehicle. He walked quickly around to the other door and opened it, then reached in the back to extricate Sebastian from his car seat. He had dozed off on the way over, but seemed to sense the excitement and was instantly awake.
Finn and Kalilah greeted them at the door with enthusiastic hugs and kisses. Justin threw an admiring glance at Kalilah; she was barely showing now, but they were right when they said that pregnancy could leave a glow on a woman’s face. She looked happy and in love, both with his brother and with her role as a mom. He wondered what Jalissa would have been like if she had been conscious during her pregnancy.
The other couple was waiting for them at the table, with a stack of board game boxes piled high. It was game night, and although Justin wasn’t exactly a team player, he looked forward to the intense competition and camaraderie. Besides, the games were seldom finished; usually game night degenerated into an evening of good food and wine, gossip and conversation.
They decided that Pictionary was the order of the evening, and while Kalilah’s eldest daughter, Lili, eagerly took charge of Seb, they got down to some serious playtime. Justin listened as Jalissa gleefully recounted her experience with remembering her grandmother’s recipe for duck. While the others shared their excitement, he brooded, not sure that he was as happy as they were. He knew it was selfish—he even hated himself for it—but the fact that Jalissa’s memory was slowly seeping back into her consciousness was a threat to the fragile domestic happiness he’d managed to create with her and their son.
What would happen when Jalissa found out that he had lied to her?
“Justin!” Kaiya chided him. “Are you paying attention? I drew you a perfectly good frying pan, and you let the timer run out!” She was his Pictionary partner tonight, as they’d split up the couples to eliminate the unfair advantage of husbands and wives reading each other’s minds through that psychic connection couples seemed to develop.
He realized he’d been sulking, and in his inattention, he’d lost his team a point. “Sorry, partner. I’ll do better next time.”
She chucked a pistachio at him, hitting him square in the forehead. “You’d better!”
One of the hints was ‘baby carriage’, which, of course, sent the women into a flurry of conversation about Kalilah’s pregnancy. “I hope you’re keeping a pregnancy journal,” her sister warned her.
“Of course! I’m jotting down every little detail. I’m even gluing little mementos into the pages, like the first ultrasounds.”
“Have you taped down your pregnancy test?” Kaiya laughed, and a collective response of “Ewwww!” went around the table.
