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01 Eylül 2023, 22:07
A Comforting and Forbidden Love
1
'Jake, it's for you...'
'Who is it?' Someone's foot had nudged him awake and he stirred.
'I don't know, mate. All I know is the woman sounds upset...you breaking someone's heart again?'
He took the handset that was held out to him.
'Jake Robbins speaking...hello?' he said suspiciously, holding his hand over the mouthpiece. Who the hell called on a landline these days? Even more to the point...'What's happened?'
'Hello Jake...I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Linda Thompson...your mother Kath's sister. I live in Norwich too...'
'I remember you...but, why call me on the landline?' he blurted out, his tone suspicious. He scrolled through his memories to place the woman who's voice could be heard, soft and faltering.
'Your mother had this one number only for you...far as I can tell...' Jake heard the break in her voice. 'Jake...Jake...the thing is...that your mother passed away last night. It seems she had incurable cancer but kept it quiet, even from me.'
'Why do that?'
'She was a proud woman...your adoptive mother...Kath was.'
'Are you the same?' he challenged, not fully in control of himself as the memories of Kath came rushing in like the tide, 'Are you going to tell me how she was before all this? I never heard from her...she'd gone to a bad place after Steven left her...you didn't think to ring me before...before she went?' He finished, having accused her of denying him a last chat with Kath.
'I was in a difficult place too...you know, Jake?' she retorted, the way she said it getting through to him.
'Yeah, I guess so. Sorry...it may have eased her...to see me for one last time.' He felt choked from hearing the news.
'Yes I know, Jake...but...but she's at rest now. And...and she loved you...said I should contact you and be family to you, company...somehow.' Jake heard her sniff before the sobs and tears came. 'Sorry, I can't help it...after all that's happened, I've got this to deal with now.'
He felt a pang of conscience too, now, for talking to Linda in this way. 'Sorry...I haven't been so good for her either. I kept in touch but didn't go to see her as often as she deserved. I should have done. Might have made the last few weeks better for her...'
'You've already said it, Jake. Don't be hard on yourself...she always remained proud of you and loved you. What are you doing now...work I mean?'
'I drive...local stuff to deliver. I got my HGV licence a week back...'
'Wow, that's just wonderful!' Linda laughed, brightening. 'More money, I guess...'
'Yeah, I reckon there's that too. I get the chance to get out of this...' he was about to say, 'shithole of a flat,' but held back. 'I can get a better place...'
'And live on, eh?'
He'd taken to liking the lightness in her voice, kept on wracking his brains to remember every detail of her. All he could drag up was a youthful interest in her, in a nicely packaged woman with blonde hair and a ready smile, a bit of a looker but nothing special. Yeah...she had a bod, did Linda, even if her face looked a bit hard, her mouth only too kissable if she'd only relax and not look so suspicious of men. Kath had told him, some time ago, that she'd been messed up good by some in her life.
'Yes, there's that too. But...listen, Linda...what about the funeral?'
His question brought her down with a bump. 'Oh, yes...it's in a week's time. Give me your mobile number and I'll text you the details. I'll also have it for the future...'
Where was this going now? 'Yeah...I guess that's right.'
'We're the only ones left...with any links to those days. I don't know whether that's occurred to you, yet?'
'No...sorry...it hasn't.' He caught the others signalling; making the drinking gesture...then bopping about mouthing 'boogey nights'...then...Jake stifled a laugh on seeing the mime theatre just for his eyes. 'I'm sorry, but I've got to go, Linda...'
'Wait...I haven' got your mobie number, Jake!' He recounted it slowly and he didn't have to repeat it, which was a plus in the woman's favour. 'Jake...it will hit you over the next few hours. You're not alone, are you?'
He sighed. 'No, I'm not alone...and, I'll get through.'
'You know where I am now...if you want to talk, okay?'
'Yes...and thank you.' His mobile trembled and he looked at the screen. Linda was as good as her word in sending him her contact details. It was all that he could think of, and to say, to close the call. But,, he didn't let the others know that the text was accompanied by a picture of Linda with a wistful smile and look directly at him. Even in the circumstances and after hearing her news, he's begun to think that she's help him through...and...and he'd do the same for her.
His friends joined him, joshing and trying to take his mobie off him and to see what had hooked him.
'That was heavy, man...'
'Tell me about it. My adoptive mother's gone and died...' To their surprise, his friends saw him blink back tears. Bursa Escort (http://www.bursasosyal.com) 'Leave me for a minute or two...will you? I've got to get my head around all this...what it could mean and who I have left, now.'
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2
He'd always gone by the name of Jake, but his family name was Jacob Robbins, a kid abandoned when he was only eight and taken into care. That didn't last long, as Kath and Steven Parsons took him in, first as foster parents then adopting him. He'd been given the choice and kept his own name. That way, people stopped digging into your past and you got on with your life in ways that you soon learned.
Kath and Steven had put him on the right road, and he'd had a good family time of it until Steven just left them. So, he and Kath had to make a go of it, somehow. He'd done the technical college course in vehicle maintenance and engines, and got work soon after he'd got his HND, a diploma that carried some weight. He'd never really looked back after that time, had a way with the girls and lived it all out, and that didn't just mean work.
Lately, it had been all work.
And now, he'd been to his first funeral and it hurt to know that the woman lying in that box in the chapel, of the crematorium, had been his mother, by adoption. He'd known nothing else so he'd invested everything in her and Kath's ways. The few folks that knew them saw that they had formed a special bond.
He met Linda's look upon him and saw her soft wobbly smile. It had all been too much for the woman who was not as he remembered her. Linda was almost as tall as he was, just under six foot, was statuesque and still a looker, just as he'd seen on his mobile. He didn't see her so often that he'd have remembered whether Linda was slim or, as he saw now, a tad curvaceous even in her dark blue skirt and jacket, matched by a pale blue blouse. It all went well with that blonde hair; neatly cut in what he'd heard others call a bob cut. There were moments, even with mourners all around them, and him having to concentrate on what was being said to him, that he looked at Linda and thought she had something about her. When she did meet his look she'd siled softly but did not hold her look on him for long.
He didn't have anything suitable to wear for a funeral, so he'd worn his cleanest pair of jeans and a dark jacket that went okay with a white, button-down collared shirt, along with the only tie he'd got in his closet and had packed.
That Linda; she had straightened him all up as they met at the parlour, and before they followed the coffin into the chapel, arm in arm. He'd liked her perfume, the warm touch of her fingers to his throat as she fastened his tie, even more. There was nothing heavy about those touches, but just enough to remake the bond between them.
'I'm so glad you're here with me. I really couldn't have faced this on my own,' she had whispered and confiding in him once again.
Now, they're back in Kath's house and she's sitting on the sofa with a somewhat lost look in her eyes. She fidgets with her necklace and when she looks away, takes in their surroundings, he takes in her appearance once more. Her skirt has hitched up a bit and he sees some thigh; Linda making no move to straighten or pull down the hem. Her feet are neat; he could see that even in those clacking low-heeled shoes she had worn at the funeral.
'Well, you're no longer alone, Linda...I'm with you,' he'd replied, and she nodded, seemed pleased that he had told her that. He'd stopped thinking of her as an 'aunt' the moment they had met, again, and after some time. They'd fallen into just taking each other in. and wondering what Kath's death now meant for them.
A couple of hours later, and the wake finished at Kath's little bungalow, with its carefully tended garden, they could finally close the door on the last of the mourners.
They sit at opposite ends of the sofa, in the small living room, with its tiled fireplace and the grate neatly polished, a pot with fake flowers set on the hearth. It's a far from pretentious place but it was home for Kath.
'We got through that okay,' she smiled wanly. 'Thank you for being here with me...sorry if I keep saying it, but it's true.'
He shrugs, has to pick up on her ways and deal with a woman somewhat older than him. 'Yeah...that's the last of them gone. I didn't know that Kath was so popular...and you know I wouldn't have stayed away if she'd been so alone.'
Linda nodded in agreement. 'She got involved...charity stuff and the local church...served lunch at the old folks' home and at Christmas too. You know the kind of thing?' She forced a smile. 'They'll miss her, and...I'll...'
Linda now dabbed at her eyes with a tangled web of tissues and Jake moved to be closer by her side. She broke down in tears as he drew near to her.
'Here, take this,' he said gently on holding out a handkerchief. It was more a colourful trucker's bandana than one of those white cotton squares that were next to useless in his line of work.
She attempted a smile in Bursa Escort Bayan (http://www.bursasosyal.com) gratitude for his consideration.
'Thank you...I've been through the mangle, that's for sure these past few years, what with losing my man and my daughter...and...and now my sis.' He met her tear-filled, grief-stricken eyes as Linda took it all in. She had tried to find some company after all she had been through but had been taken advantage of...so Kath had said, when he couldn't remember. 'If only we hadn't stayed away...been so stubborn these past years.'
'You can't go playing the guilt game now, Linda. It's not fair on either of us.'
'Inconvenient, I know,' she said bitterly, ''but it's the truth. I wonder just what we'll find here, among her stuff, to bring it all home to us?'
Jake hesitated before he put his arm about her heaving shoulders and drew her to him. 'Go easy on yourself, Linda. I know it's tough. But, you can't blame what's happened to Kath on either of us; or, on what you went through.'
She pulled away. 'You remember my Tom going...then my girl Sophie, do you...suddenly?'
He got up from the settee and glowered at her. 'No, not suddenly...I didn't want to talk about the detail!'
He left the room to get a drink. Brought back a glass of water and held it out to her.
'Thanks...'
'I hurt too, Linda...as you said I would when you called me.'
Silence then fell between them for quite a while.
'We're each alone now, in our own ways, aren't we? I guess we still have each other, but we'll go back to how it was before all this...you in your world and I in mine. We may live in the same city or thereabouts but we may as well be miles away...'
'You sure tell it how it is, don't you, Linda?' Jake didn't know whether to be sad for her, or to be angry, for Linda's direct ways of it with him now.
'Is this where our lives will end as well? We meet again...then we part...we split...say goodbye...move on after the loose ends have been tied up?'
'I guess that may be it...but now's not the time to talk about it. Emotions have taken a hold in you...Linda.'
'And in you too...you're angry with me.'
'I sure don't want to be...' Jake touched her cheek and was surprised at his over-familiarity, but he felt that he had to do something for her. 'I really haven't thought so far ahead. Maybe you shouldn't either?'
She sighed and looked back at him, a tremble to be seen on her lips. 'No, I guess you're right...'
He now went and got a half-finished bottle of wine from the small galley kitchen.
'Not for me,' she told him as Jake poured out a measure,; a generous one, into a wine glass with a large bowl, a nice one with a green stem.
'It may do you good...' he smiled kindly and feeling uncommon concern for her. She needed company and he'd taken to thinking that she needed his company above all else.
'I said 'no'!'
'Drink it for me...it may loosen you up and make you a little more relaxed...ease your tongue?' She saw him smile and took the glass. Jake hadn't lost his ways. 'I'll go and run you a bath...let you relax while I cook up some supper. You'll have a room and I'll sleep on the couch...nothing new there after a do like today.'
'Perhaps we'll get to talk about what's been happening in our separate lives?
'Perhaps...let's just wait and see.' He sauntered away and down the hall to the bathroom.
'Not too hot!' he heard her call out and waited for the bath to fill to halfway, pouring some of Kath's bath lotion onto the water's surface near the gushing taps. The frothy foam soon spread over the swirling water's surface. He turned the taps off. 'Linda...the bath's ready!'
'I'm here.' Linda stood there in the doorway clutching the empty wine glass. 'I needed it after all.' She now turned and he saw her blouse tighten across her breasts, the heavy roundness shaped for an instant. 'Goon...unzip me would you, Jake?'
'Oh, sure,' he replied, as if it was the most natural thing to do, the wayward ache in his belly on seeing her now taking a hold in him.
His hands trembled as he did as she had asked of him, unfastened the zip from her neck down to the small of her back. What he'd thought was a suit-blouse combination was in fact made to look like that. He turned away and began to walk down the corridor.
'Jake?' He turned, again, and gaped. Linda stood before him in her bra and panties. 'I...I won't be long; I promise.'
'Okay...' he answered, his eyes closed as if to deny, again, what the woman before him had aroused.
The sight of her fulsome figure had set his pulse racing. The woman must be in shock. He sure was. He was going to be sleeping in the same house as Linda. Just the thought of it made his prick twitch. Seeing her, just now, had started it all off in him.
'You could rub my back...if you want? We've had a stressful day. It might do us both some good if we forgot everything in any way we can?' Linda reached behind her back and made to unfasten her bra.
'I'll be back Escort Bursa (http://www.bursasosyal.com) in a few...just have your bath, please Linda?' Was she winding him up?
'And my back?' she asked softly. 'I'll call you...okay...make myself decent...somehow.'
The way Linda said it provoked him into looking her way once more along the dimly lit corridor. He really couldn't miss what she had done. Linda had unfastened her bra and simply held it in place with one arm over the swell of her breasts, her pose seeming to crush them. The woman before him must be in shock, she had lost it.
He sighed only too audibly. 'I'll be back in a minute...'
On his return she was in the bath. Linda sat up as he knocked on the half-closed door. Jake had heard the slopping of the water as she moved in the bath and wondered what would meet his gaze.
'Come in...you don't have to knock, Jake. You've seen naked women before...you must have...you drivers have them pinup calendars, or whatever, in your cabs, don't you?'
'No...this one doesn't,' he answered crisply.
His eyes took in her body, the rainbow glisten of the bubbles on her skin and the surface of the water, her knees to be seen along with the tantalising sight of her breasts coated in bubbles, yet she couldn't keep them fully out of sight.
Jake shrugged off his jacket and put it on the floor in the passageway outside, He jerked off his tie and then rolled up his sleeves.
'You getting in with me? That would be nice...we could rub each other with that sponge you've got in your hands...'
Jake laughed both in dismay and out of embarrassment. He saw her move and lean forward. With trembling hands, he set about massaging and touching her skin with the bath sponge, doing so gently in what he hoped was a soothing rhythm over her back.
'I should have known it would be this way. What you're doing...it feels nice,' she said.
'Thank you...'
Linda made to get up out of the bath. 'Hand me my towel would you, Jake?'
'Wait!' He then did as she had asked of him but turned away and averted his eyes.
'I'll...I'll be in the living room. We can talk about what to have for supper...'
He was in a bathroom with a naked woman and her he was talking practicalities. A long and different night, with a buxom woman, awaited him.
'Don't start anything. Let me think about it...Jake, love.'
'Okay...sure.'
Jeez! He was twenty-seven and here he was behaving like a pubescent kid with not a clue how to behave when a woman was coming on to him. He knew the game only too well, but to come on to his 'aunt'...even if she wasn't...seemed a step too far, the stuff of a wet dream, a forbidden hunger that gnawed at him none the less.
When she came into the living room he was glad to see that Linda wore a thin dressing gown over a nightdress of some kind. It was fastened tightly at her waist. She'd brushed out her hair, a few damp strands sticking to her skin, which she'd moisturised. He looked own and saw her feet; the toenails were neatly filed and varnished.
'Decent again,' she smiled. Linda drew near. 'I...I just need some company. Won't say or do anything you don't want...'
'Are you hungry?' Jake said on a nod of his head. 'There's food still left over?'
'People were so kind. They should have taken some away again,' she sniffed. 'Sorry...'
Something made him put his arms about her. 'It's okay... and it's a quick hug.'
'I don't mind if it isn't.' She smiled up at him and met his grin. 'Can you make me an omelette or something? The neighbours...the Shands...they left some milk and eggs for us.'
Jake loosened her hold on him, felt reluctant to do so. 'Sure. I'll make it for both of us and we can eat in here...in front of the telly. Just sit down and rest?'
Jake wasn't aware of it, but he hummed as he fixed them supper, took to thinking back on his life with Kath and how they'd toiled to get through. The woman had always been on his side and had fought for every scrap of help, and money, that had been rightfully hers...theirs, she would have said. They had gotten close; and now the woman was gone from his life and someone equally attentive was now in a room down the hall.
He loaded up a tray with two dainty mugs of tea and their supper.
Linda was seen standing in the doorway as he turned. 'It's so good of you to be here with me. You've become my rock. Here I am thinking of myself and you're hurting too...I'm sure.'
She drew closer and hugged him again, planted kisses to his cheeks but before he could stop her, Linda kissed him on the lips. He tightened his hold upon her and made the kiss last, breathed in the scent of her bath and a cheap, intoxicating, perfume.
'I...I like you doin' that...Linda,' he murmured. 'You're warm after your bath...'
'No one will know,' she whispered before breaking free.
In the sitting room again, Jake placed the tray with her light supper on Linda's lap. 'I sure don't do this all the time...' he couldn't help but laugh, casting an appraising glance her way.
'Neither do I. It makes it all the more special...' Linda made space for him. 'Sit beside me...please?' She now looked about the room and, as she moved, Jake saw how her gown showed off her figure. 'What about your supper... aren't you going to eat?'
1
'Jake, it's for you...'
'Who is it?' Someone's foot had nudged him awake and he stirred.
'I don't know, mate. All I know is the woman sounds upset...you breaking someone's heart again?'
He took the handset that was held out to him.
'Jake Robbins speaking...hello?' he said suspiciously, holding his hand over the mouthpiece. Who the hell called on a landline these days? Even more to the point...'What's happened?'
'Hello Jake...I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Linda Thompson...your mother Kath's sister. I live in Norwich too...'
'I remember you...but, why call me on the landline?' he blurted out, his tone suspicious. He scrolled through his memories to place the woman who's voice could be heard, soft and faltering.
'Your mother had this one number only for you...far as I can tell...' Jake heard the break in her voice. 'Jake...Jake...the thing is...that your mother passed away last night. It seems she had incurable cancer but kept it quiet, even from me.'
'Why do that?'
'She was a proud woman...your adoptive mother...Kath was.'
'Are you the same?' he challenged, not fully in control of himself as the memories of Kath came rushing in like the tide, 'Are you going to tell me how she was before all this? I never heard from her...she'd gone to a bad place after Steven left her...you didn't think to ring me before...before she went?' He finished, having accused her of denying him a last chat with Kath.
'I was in a difficult place too...you know, Jake?' she retorted, the way she said it getting through to him.
'Yeah, I guess so. Sorry...it may have eased her...to see me for one last time.' He felt choked from hearing the news.
'Yes I know, Jake...but...but she's at rest now. And...and she loved you...said I should contact you and be family to you, company...somehow.' Jake heard her sniff before the sobs and tears came. 'Sorry, I can't help it...after all that's happened, I've got this to deal with now.'
He felt a pang of conscience too, now, for talking to Linda in this way. 'Sorry...I haven't been so good for her either. I kept in touch but didn't go to see her as often as she deserved. I should have done. Might have made the last few weeks better for her...'
'You've already said it, Jake. Don't be hard on yourself...she always remained proud of you and loved you. What are you doing now...work I mean?'
'I drive...local stuff to deliver. I got my HGV licence a week back...'
'Wow, that's just wonderful!' Linda laughed, brightening. 'More money, I guess...'
'Yeah, I reckon there's that too. I get the chance to get out of this...' he was about to say, 'shithole of a flat,' but held back. 'I can get a better place...'
'And live on, eh?'
He'd taken to liking the lightness in her voice, kept on wracking his brains to remember every detail of her. All he could drag up was a youthful interest in her, in a nicely packaged woman with blonde hair and a ready smile, a bit of a looker but nothing special. Yeah...she had a bod, did Linda, even if her face looked a bit hard, her mouth only too kissable if she'd only relax and not look so suspicious of men. Kath had told him, some time ago, that she'd been messed up good by some in her life.
'Yes, there's that too. But...listen, Linda...what about the funeral?'
His question brought her down with a bump. 'Oh, yes...it's in a week's time. Give me your mobile number and I'll text you the details. I'll also have it for the future...'
Where was this going now? 'Yeah...I guess that's right.'
'We're the only ones left...with any links to those days. I don't know whether that's occurred to you, yet?'
'No...sorry...it hasn't.' He caught the others signalling; making the drinking gesture...then bopping about mouthing 'boogey nights'...then...Jake stifled a laugh on seeing the mime theatre just for his eyes. 'I'm sorry, but I've got to go, Linda...'
'Wait...I haven' got your mobie number, Jake!' He recounted it slowly and he didn't have to repeat it, which was a plus in the woman's favour. 'Jake...it will hit you over the next few hours. You're not alone, are you?'
He sighed. 'No, I'm not alone...and, I'll get through.'
'You know where I am now...if you want to talk, okay?'
'Yes...and thank you.' His mobile trembled and he looked at the screen. Linda was as good as her word in sending him her contact details. It was all that he could think of, and to say, to close the call. But,, he didn't let the others know that the text was accompanied by a picture of Linda with a wistful smile and look directly at him. Even in the circumstances and after hearing her news, he's begun to think that she's help him through...and...and he'd do the same for her.
His friends joined him, joshing and trying to take his mobie off him and to see what had hooked him.
'That was heavy, man...'
'Tell me about it. My adoptive mother's gone and died...' To their surprise, his friends saw him blink back tears. Bursa Escort (http://www.bursasosyal.com) 'Leave me for a minute or two...will you? I've got to get my head around all this...what it could mean and who I have left, now.'
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2
He'd always gone by the name of Jake, but his family name was Jacob Robbins, a kid abandoned when he was only eight and taken into care. That didn't last long, as Kath and Steven Parsons took him in, first as foster parents then adopting him. He'd been given the choice and kept his own name. That way, people stopped digging into your past and you got on with your life in ways that you soon learned.
Kath and Steven had put him on the right road, and he'd had a good family time of it until Steven just left them. So, he and Kath had to make a go of it, somehow. He'd done the technical college course in vehicle maintenance and engines, and got work soon after he'd got his HND, a diploma that carried some weight. He'd never really looked back after that time, had a way with the girls and lived it all out, and that didn't just mean work.
Lately, it had been all work.
And now, he'd been to his first funeral and it hurt to know that the woman lying in that box in the chapel, of the crematorium, had been his mother, by adoption. He'd known nothing else so he'd invested everything in her and Kath's ways. The few folks that knew them saw that they had formed a special bond.
He met Linda's look upon him and saw her soft wobbly smile. It had all been too much for the woman who was not as he remembered her. Linda was almost as tall as he was, just under six foot, was statuesque and still a looker, just as he'd seen on his mobile. He didn't see her so often that he'd have remembered whether Linda was slim or, as he saw now, a tad curvaceous even in her dark blue skirt and jacket, matched by a pale blue blouse. It all went well with that blonde hair; neatly cut in what he'd heard others call a bob cut. There were moments, even with mourners all around them, and him having to concentrate on what was being said to him, that he looked at Linda and thought she had something about her. When she did meet his look she'd siled softly but did not hold her look on him for long.
He didn't have anything suitable to wear for a funeral, so he'd worn his cleanest pair of jeans and a dark jacket that went okay with a white, button-down collared shirt, along with the only tie he'd got in his closet and had packed.
That Linda; she had straightened him all up as they met at the parlour, and before they followed the coffin into the chapel, arm in arm. He'd liked her perfume, the warm touch of her fingers to his throat as she fastened his tie, even more. There was nothing heavy about those touches, but just enough to remake the bond between them.
'I'm so glad you're here with me. I really couldn't have faced this on my own,' she had whispered and confiding in him once again.
Now, they're back in Kath's house and she's sitting on the sofa with a somewhat lost look in her eyes. She fidgets with her necklace and when she looks away, takes in their surroundings, he takes in her appearance once more. Her skirt has hitched up a bit and he sees some thigh; Linda making no move to straighten or pull down the hem. Her feet are neat; he could see that even in those clacking low-heeled shoes she had worn at the funeral.
'Well, you're no longer alone, Linda...I'm with you,' he'd replied, and she nodded, seemed pleased that he had told her that. He'd stopped thinking of her as an 'aunt' the moment they had met, again, and after some time. They'd fallen into just taking each other in. and wondering what Kath's death now meant for them.
A couple of hours later, and the wake finished at Kath's little bungalow, with its carefully tended garden, they could finally close the door on the last of the mourners.
They sit at opposite ends of the sofa, in the small living room, with its tiled fireplace and the grate neatly polished, a pot with fake flowers set on the hearth. It's a far from pretentious place but it was home for Kath.
'We got through that okay,' she smiled wanly. 'Thank you for being here with me...sorry if I keep saying it, but it's true.'
He shrugs, has to pick up on her ways and deal with a woman somewhat older than him. 'Yeah...that's the last of them gone. I didn't know that Kath was so popular...and you know I wouldn't have stayed away if she'd been so alone.'
Linda nodded in agreement. 'She got involved...charity stuff and the local church...served lunch at the old folks' home and at Christmas too. You know the kind of thing?' She forced a smile. 'They'll miss her, and...I'll...'
Linda now dabbed at her eyes with a tangled web of tissues and Jake moved to be closer by her side. She broke down in tears as he drew near to her.
'Here, take this,' he said gently on holding out a handkerchief. It was more a colourful trucker's bandana than one of those white cotton squares that were next to useless in his line of work.
She attempted a smile in Bursa Escort Bayan (http://www.bursasosyal.com) gratitude for his consideration.
'Thank you...I've been through the mangle, that's for sure these past few years, what with losing my man and my daughter...and...and now my sis.' He met her tear-filled, grief-stricken eyes as Linda took it all in. She had tried to find some company after all she had been through but had been taken advantage of...so Kath had said, when he couldn't remember. 'If only we hadn't stayed away...been so stubborn these past years.'
'You can't go playing the guilt game now, Linda. It's not fair on either of us.'
'Inconvenient, I know,' she said bitterly, ''but it's the truth. I wonder just what we'll find here, among her stuff, to bring it all home to us?'
Jake hesitated before he put his arm about her heaving shoulders and drew her to him. 'Go easy on yourself, Linda. I know it's tough. But, you can't blame what's happened to Kath on either of us; or, on what you went through.'
She pulled away. 'You remember my Tom going...then my girl Sophie, do you...suddenly?'
He got up from the settee and glowered at her. 'No, not suddenly...I didn't want to talk about the detail!'
He left the room to get a drink. Brought back a glass of water and held it out to her.
'Thanks...'
'I hurt too, Linda...as you said I would when you called me.'
Silence then fell between them for quite a while.
'We're each alone now, in our own ways, aren't we? I guess we still have each other, but we'll go back to how it was before all this...you in your world and I in mine. We may live in the same city or thereabouts but we may as well be miles away...'
'You sure tell it how it is, don't you, Linda?' Jake didn't know whether to be sad for her, or to be angry, for Linda's direct ways of it with him now.
'Is this where our lives will end as well? We meet again...then we part...we split...say goodbye...move on after the loose ends have been tied up?'
'I guess that may be it...but now's not the time to talk about it. Emotions have taken a hold in you...Linda.'
'And in you too...you're angry with me.'
'I sure don't want to be...' Jake touched her cheek and was surprised at his over-familiarity, but he felt that he had to do something for her. 'I really haven't thought so far ahead. Maybe you shouldn't either?'
She sighed and looked back at him, a tremble to be seen on her lips. 'No, I guess you're right...'
He now went and got a half-finished bottle of wine from the small galley kitchen.
'Not for me,' she told him as Jake poured out a measure,; a generous one, into a wine glass with a large bowl, a nice one with a green stem.
'It may do you good...' he smiled kindly and feeling uncommon concern for her. She needed company and he'd taken to thinking that she needed his company above all else.
'I said 'no'!'
'Drink it for me...it may loosen you up and make you a little more relaxed...ease your tongue?' She saw him smile and took the glass. Jake hadn't lost his ways. 'I'll go and run you a bath...let you relax while I cook up some supper. You'll have a room and I'll sleep on the couch...nothing new there after a do like today.'
'Perhaps we'll get to talk about what's been happening in our separate lives?
'Perhaps...let's just wait and see.' He sauntered away and down the hall to the bathroom.
'Not too hot!' he heard her call out and waited for the bath to fill to halfway, pouring some of Kath's bath lotion onto the water's surface near the gushing taps. The frothy foam soon spread over the swirling water's surface. He turned the taps off. 'Linda...the bath's ready!'
'I'm here.' Linda stood there in the doorway clutching the empty wine glass. 'I needed it after all.' She now turned and he saw her blouse tighten across her breasts, the heavy roundness shaped for an instant. 'Goon...unzip me would you, Jake?'
'Oh, sure,' he replied, as if it was the most natural thing to do, the wayward ache in his belly on seeing her now taking a hold in him.
His hands trembled as he did as she had asked of him, unfastened the zip from her neck down to the small of her back. What he'd thought was a suit-blouse combination was in fact made to look like that. He turned away and began to walk down the corridor.
'Jake?' He turned, again, and gaped. Linda stood before him in her bra and panties. 'I...I won't be long; I promise.'
'Okay...' he answered, his eyes closed as if to deny, again, what the woman before him had aroused.
The sight of her fulsome figure had set his pulse racing. The woman must be in shock. He sure was. He was going to be sleeping in the same house as Linda. Just the thought of it made his prick twitch. Seeing her, just now, had started it all off in him.
'You could rub my back...if you want? We've had a stressful day. It might do us both some good if we forgot everything in any way we can?' Linda reached behind her back and made to unfasten her bra.
'I'll be back Escort Bursa (http://www.bursasosyal.com) in a few...just have your bath, please Linda?' Was she winding him up?
'And my back?' she asked softly. 'I'll call you...okay...make myself decent...somehow.'
The way Linda said it provoked him into looking her way once more along the dimly lit corridor. He really couldn't miss what she had done. Linda had unfastened her bra and simply held it in place with one arm over the swell of her breasts, her pose seeming to crush them. The woman before him must be in shock, she had lost it.
He sighed only too audibly. 'I'll be back in a minute...'
On his return she was in the bath. Linda sat up as he knocked on the half-closed door. Jake had heard the slopping of the water as she moved in the bath and wondered what would meet his gaze.
'Come in...you don't have to knock, Jake. You've seen naked women before...you must have...you drivers have them pinup calendars, or whatever, in your cabs, don't you?'
'No...this one doesn't,' he answered crisply.
His eyes took in her body, the rainbow glisten of the bubbles on her skin and the surface of the water, her knees to be seen along with the tantalising sight of her breasts coated in bubbles, yet she couldn't keep them fully out of sight.
Jake shrugged off his jacket and put it on the floor in the passageway outside, He jerked off his tie and then rolled up his sleeves.
'You getting in with me? That would be nice...we could rub each other with that sponge you've got in your hands...'
Jake laughed both in dismay and out of embarrassment. He saw her move and lean forward. With trembling hands, he set about massaging and touching her skin with the bath sponge, doing so gently in what he hoped was a soothing rhythm over her back.
'I should have known it would be this way. What you're doing...it feels nice,' she said.
'Thank you...'
Linda made to get up out of the bath. 'Hand me my towel would you, Jake?'
'Wait!' He then did as she had asked of him but turned away and averted his eyes.
'I'll...I'll be in the living room. We can talk about what to have for supper...'
He was in a bathroom with a naked woman and her he was talking practicalities. A long and different night, with a buxom woman, awaited him.
'Don't start anything. Let me think about it...Jake, love.'
'Okay...sure.'
Jeez! He was twenty-seven and here he was behaving like a pubescent kid with not a clue how to behave when a woman was coming on to him. He knew the game only too well, but to come on to his 'aunt'...even if she wasn't...seemed a step too far, the stuff of a wet dream, a forbidden hunger that gnawed at him none the less.
When she came into the living room he was glad to see that Linda wore a thin dressing gown over a nightdress of some kind. It was fastened tightly at her waist. She'd brushed out her hair, a few damp strands sticking to her skin, which she'd moisturised. He looked own and saw her feet; the toenails were neatly filed and varnished.
'Decent again,' she smiled. Linda drew near. 'I...I just need some company. Won't say or do anything you don't want...'
'Are you hungry?' Jake said on a nod of his head. 'There's food still left over?'
'People were so kind. They should have taken some away again,' she sniffed. 'Sorry...'
Something made him put his arms about her. 'It's okay... and it's a quick hug.'
'I don't mind if it isn't.' She smiled up at him and met his grin. 'Can you make me an omelette or something? The neighbours...the Shands...they left some milk and eggs for us.'
Jake loosened her hold on him, felt reluctant to do so. 'Sure. I'll make it for both of us and we can eat in here...in front of the telly. Just sit down and rest?'
Jake wasn't aware of it, but he hummed as he fixed them supper, took to thinking back on his life with Kath and how they'd toiled to get through. The woman had always been on his side and had fought for every scrap of help, and money, that had been rightfully hers...theirs, she would have said. They had gotten close; and now the woman was gone from his life and someone equally attentive was now in a room down the hall.
He loaded up a tray with two dainty mugs of tea and their supper.
Linda was seen standing in the doorway as he turned. 'It's so good of you to be here with me. You've become my rock. Here I am thinking of myself and you're hurting too...I'm sure.'
She drew closer and hugged him again, planted kisses to his cheeks but before he could stop her, Linda kissed him on the lips. He tightened his hold upon her and made the kiss last, breathed in the scent of her bath and a cheap, intoxicating, perfume.
'I...I like you doin' that...Linda,' he murmured. 'You're warm after your bath...'
'No one will know,' she whispered before breaking free.
In the sitting room again, Jake placed the tray with her light supper on Linda's lap. 'I sure don't do this all the time...' he couldn't help but laugh, casting an appraising glance her way.
'Neither do I. It makes it all the more special...' Linda made space for him. 'Sit beside me...please?' She now looked about the room and, as she moved, Jake saw how her gown showed off her figure. 'What about your supper... aren't you going to eat?'