Loving Jessie Read Online Free PDF Page A

legs and big brown eyes. He’d just never updated his mental image to encompass the very attractive woman he was holding now.
    Jessie’s eyes darkened suddenly. “Are you all right?Gabe told me you were hurt. Shot. He said you were going to be okay, but I was so worried. You should have come home. I have a great recipe for chicken soup with lots of garlic. I know a bullet wound isn’t the same as a cold, but I’m sure chicken soup would help. I mean, if it discourages cold germs, it would probably scare off other kinds of germs, too. And vampires, of course. No vampire would come near someone after they’d eaten my soup. Not that you have to worry about vampires, unless you were in Transylvania, which you weren’t.”
    His hands resting on her waist, Matt stood looking down at her as the rambling flow of words washed over him. Here was the sense of homecoming that had been missing until now. She might have seemed momentarily a stranger, but this was the Jessie he remembered, mouth moving a mile a minute. His own mouth started to curve.
    She was frowning and patting her hands gently over his shoulders as if seeking signs of injury. “Should you be up and walking around? Did you drive down from Seattle alone? You should have flown. I could have picked you up in San Jose, if Gabe couldn’t do it. That’s so typically male, not admitting when you need help. You should ha—”
    Warm, male laughter stopped her in midword. Jessie lifted her eyes to Matt’s face and felt the tension she hadn’t even realized she was feeling suddenly ease. He’d looked so serious when she first saw him, his eyes shadowed and wary. It had made him seem like a stranger, though she hadn’t really realized it until the shadows retreated and the wariness disappeared in laughter. This was the Matt she remembered. His smile had never been as easy as Reilly’s, but just now he’d looked… Jessie groped for the right word. Haunted. In those first moments, before he’d smiled, he’d looked haunted, almost lost.
    Or maybe she’d imagined it, Jessie thought, leaning back against his hold so she could look up into his face. There was nothing haunted about the man smiling down at her now.
    “Was I babbling?” she asked, grinning.
    “Olympic quality,” he told her solemnly.
    “It was just such a surprise to see you.” She could feel the solid thud of his heartbeat beneath her palm, the warmth of his skin through the fabric of his T-shirt. Her expression sobered. “How are you? Really?”
    “I’m good. Really.” He saw the doubt in her eyes and grinned ruefully. “One small bullet hole. Hardly worth mentioning.”
    “Gabe said they had to airlift you out of Kosovo,” she said, her eyes still worried. “He said you lost a lot of blood.”
    Uncomfortable with the concern in her eyes, Matt shrugged and stepped back, surprised to find that he missed the feel of her under his hands. “It sounds worse than it was,” he lied. “And I’m practically good as new now.”
    Jessie didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t push for more information, for which Matt was grateful. He couldn’t have told her much, anyway. He had few memories of the first few days after he’d been shot. He would have given a lot to be able to say the same for the time before the bullet had slammed into him.
    Seeking a distraction, he glanced around the café. It had seen some renovations since the days when he and Reilly made a career of sitting at the counter and ogling girls. The yellowing linoleum that had been older than he was had been replaced by crisp black-and-white checkerboard flooring, and the booths, which had been half faded red plastic, half duct tape in his day, were now a clear turquoise, trimmed with shiny chrome. But the wall behind the counter was still covered with a huge mirror, and the space over the jukebox was still hung with an eclectic collection of autographed celebrity photos. From here, he could see Ricky Nelson jostling for position