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If until a few moments ago Jess wished to make Reece just as upset as she was –why should she be the only miserable party here?– now, not knowing which shape that wrath would take, made her jumpy, and she stopped humming.
Her hands were so shaky that some pasta spilled onto the stove. Deeply vexed, she swore under her breath.
“Something is the matter?” Reece enquired. His voice sounded calm, if somewhat strained.
Avoiding his eyes fearing he could see how his mood was affecting her, she brushed off his concern. “No, don’t worry.” And after blotting the pasta off the stove with some paper towel, she carried the two dishes to the table.
“Bon appétit,” Reece said after she’d sat opposite to him, as far away as the small space could allow.
“Bon appétit.” Jess wasn’t hungry –she’d lost her appetite the moment Reece had started stirring the sauce, but she’d be damned before she gave him the satisfaction of seeing how profoundly distressed he’d made her.
They ate dinner in a tension filled silence, interrupted only by the clattering of their forks against their dishes and the deft ‘thud’ of their glasses on the wooden surface of the table when they drank.
“In case you’re wondering, LeeHanne and Johnny are fine,” Reece injected, interrupting the stony silence.
“I wasn’t wondering,” Jess returned a few forkfuls away from finishing her pasta, doing nothing to conceal the bitterness, as she thought about LeeHanne’s betrayal. “Although there is something I’d like to know. Did the three of you decide to play a big ugly joke on silly me before, or after her phone call last Friday night?”
“Listen, Jess,” Reece reasoned. “I know you are upset at the way we went about –”
“Upset?Upset?” Jess exploded, slapping both hands against the table top, rattling the silverware. “I’m sorely pissed off at the three of you.”
“But you shouldn’t take your anger out on Johnny and LeeHanne,” Reece went on, unfazed by her outburst.
“Then on who, you? And what should I do to get even and rid this cabin of your unwanted presence?” Leaning back against the chair, she palmed the elbow of her right arm with her left hand, tapping the forefinger of her right hand against her chin in a pensive pose. “Let’s see…Do I poison your coffee right now, and get it over and done with, or should I stab you in the back? Hard to choose,” She looked at him, pretending to be making up her mind.
Reece seemed totally unaffected by her sarcasm. He leaned against the back of his chair in a relaxed pose, incensing her temper even more.
“No, I got it. Why don’t I smother you while you sleep?”
“Like I said, I admit I didn’t play fair with you, but that was the only way I knew how to come here and talk to you.”
“Stop ignoring me.”
“It’s not you I ignore,” Reece patiently explained, regarding her angry outburst like an amateurish attempt to get a rise out of him, and possibly use that as an excuse to kick him out of the cabin. “I’m ignoring your sarcasm. It doesn’t serve any purpose, and it certainly won’t make me leave the cabin,” he finished, returning her intense stare with one of his own, reinforcing the significance of his words. “As I was saying, I replaced LeeHanne because–”
“Because, why? I don’t care Reece. The fact is you’re here, and I don’t want you to be.”
“When I went back to your apartment and didn’t find you there,” he went on explaining, still seemingly unaffected by her attitude, determined to get his motivations across to Jess whether she liked it or not.
“I said stop ignoring me,” she leashed, exasperated, springing to her feet.
“I’m not ignoring you,” he snapped, springing up too, finally giving in to his own frustration, starting a shouting match. “I’m just trying to give you the goddamn explanations you asked for.”
Jess stood her ground. “But after you’ve said your piece, you won’t go away, or leave me alone.”
“No, because you owe me an explanation too. There I was, the next evening, coming to your apartment after we’d been so good with each other, sure you’d welcome me back into your arms, because things between us had finally started to move in the right direction, and what did I find? No lights on. No Jess opening the door with a smile full of promises and eyes shining with expectancy. Only a damn locked door with a bleeding envelope taped onto it, and a short note. “Nothing has changed” Reece recited, fishing the incriminating envelope from the back pocket of his jeans, throwing it at Jess, missing her. It sailed under the table.
“How would you have felt? What would you have done, Jess, were you in my place? Tell me, please. Wouldn’t you have tried to see me by fair or foul means to confront me with the truth?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Struggling to find a comeback of some sort, Jess chanced a look, a real look at Reece, becoming rapt by the sheer display of his rage, and her brain could not conjure up a word. She’d heard it said that anger was a powerful aphrodisiac, but though she’d seen Reece in various stages of anger before, and he made her mad on a regular basis, she’d never believed it true. Until now. Surveying the taut features of his face, the tightly clenched jaw, the control he was visibly keeping on his temper, a pang of need as unexpected as it was intense, made her throb between the thighs, and robbed her of breath.
Something of what she was feeling must have shown in her eyes, because Reece, never breaking eye contact, circled his side of the table, gradually closing the distance to her.
Every fiber of her body was alert and alive waiting for his next move.
