Read Online Jingle Bell Rock by Linda Winstead Jones - Free Book Online

and dropped to all fours.
    Rudy lifted those black eyes to Jess and cocked his head. Apparently he had been trained not to greet her with as much enthusiasm as he did Jimmy.
    Jess reached down and scratched the dog between the ears as Jimmy stood. The animal reacted at once to her touch, relaxed visibly as she stroked the silky coat.
    Jimmy took Jess’s coat and hung it on the coat-rack in the foyer. She smiled as she watched him; that long and lean body encased in white, the bell bottoms flapping around white patent-leather boots. Dean had tried from the beginning to get Jimmy into some kind of costume, and he’d finally managed just that—for a single night.
    The top A&R man at Vandiver Records was as flamboyant as Jimmy was down-to-earth, and he was into “the show.” The lights and the costumes, the backup dancers, pyrotechnics if the time and the song were right.
    Some artists were willing to be led down that road. Jimmy wasn’t. He loved the music, not the show.
    Since he was no longer the center of attention, Rudy left the room—at a slower pace than he’d entered. He disappeared around the corner, and a moment later Jess heard the flapping sound of plastic against a solid surface. A doggie door big enough for Rudy?
    Sharp barking from the backyard confirmed her suspicion. It sounded like Rudy had found a squirrel or a possum to play with.
    Jess turned to the Christmas tree, a tall and perfectly shaped spruce that was decorated with gold balls and a handful of mismatched ornaments in addition to the red and green lights. It was lovely, but it surely hadn’t been professionally decorated. The lights were not perfectly balanced in distribution, and there was a spot bare of ornaments near the window. One of the ornaments, an angel playing the harp, had slipped and somehow hung almost upside down. The tinsel looked as if someone had started carefully, hanging one strand at a time, and ended by throwing handfuls at the tree. The winged angel on the top of the tree was slightly canted to one side.
    The imperfect Christmas tree looked like something she and Jimmy had decorated together, and she wished for a memory of that time, a tiny remembrance of some sort.
    Jimmy came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, resting his head lightly on her shoulder. “Now,” he whispered into her ear. “Where were we?”
    They hadn’t said much on the way home, hadn’t said much at all since Dean had interrupted them. Jess had tried to sort out her thoughts—trying to decipher what was real and what was not—and Jimmy had driven much too fast, and with all of his attention apparently on the road.
    His hands slipped beneath her sweater and settled over bare skin. Those hands were warm, gentle, comfortable on her flesh. For Jimmy, this was another night with his wife. For Jess, it was their first time together. She wanted it to be perfect, but what if she said or did something wrong? What if she spoiled this?
    She turned in his arms slowly and lifted her face. The desire she’d seen earlier was in his eyes, and there was something more. Love . She recognized the love, felt it, but it didn’t scare her the way it had when she’d seen the first twinkling of that emotion in Jimmy’s smiling eyes.
    Their mouths came together, Jimmy leaning down and Jess standing on her toes.
    Her lips parted, eager, anxious lips that savored the taste of Jimmy’s mouth.
    His hand found the bra clasp at her back, and without pausing a beat he flicked it open. Being free of the restraint was liberating, and then Jimmy slid a hand beneath the silky material and closed it over her breast.
    There was no more wondering if this was real or a dream. It had to be real. If it wasn’t real, her heart would break. She could feel Jimmy’s hands on her flesh and the quickening of her heart, she could taste Jimmy’s lips, she could hear the rasp of his jumpsuit against her skirt, she could smell the Christmas tree, and when she opened her