As Jack pulled out of the airport parking lot he groaned at the thought of the four-or-so hour drive ahead of him. His dream-filled nap on the plane had helped a little, but not as much as it might have.
"Want me to drive?" Jennifer asked.
Jack though about this for a moment, then had a better idea. "Can you conjure up a driver instead, while we cuddle and nap, and perhaps fool around a little?"
Jennifer looked at the loaded rear of the little SUV, then back at Jack with a questioning raised eyebrow.
"And perhaps, um, expand the back a bit, with a nice comfy bed in a little love nest?"
Tingle. Jennifer grinned. "Yes master." Jack suddenly found himself naked, snuggled with Jennifer under soft sheets in a bed in the 'expanded' rear of the SUV while Jennifer's 'sister' manned the wheel. Jack smiled in contentment and lazily pulled Jennifer close to kiss her.
Around three snuggly-nap-filled hours later, Jack developed a strong urge to pee. "Um, perhaps we should have her pull over. I need to take a piss." Jennifer looked at him with an expression that said he could do better.
"What?"
She continued to look at him expectantly.
"Oh! Um, can you get rid of my need to pee so that we can make love?"
She grinned, her eyes flashed, and his bladder was empty. "Not very creative considering the extent of my abilities," she lazily laced her fingers behind his neck and began to pull him down toward her, "but since it results in us doing my very favorite thing, I can't complain." Jack gently resisted her pull long enough to marvel anew at the matchless display of her long russet hair splashed across the pillows, at the golden tan of her skin contrasting deliciously against the light-cream of the sheets of their love nest, at both her brilliant green eyes and the full lips of her cute little mouth smiling up at him in open, lascivious invitation. He couldn't resist her draw for long, though, and it had almost nothing to do with her hands pulling gently on his neck. He lowered his lips to hers.
Their leisurely love making ended just in time to get magically cleaned up and dressed and zap back into the driver and passenger seats before looking for the beach house the family had rented for the week. After a couple of wrong turns they found it and pulled into the driveway. Jack looked over at Jennifer. She looked very nervous. He smiled reassuringly and said, "Don't worry, they'll love you." He had to admit that he felt some nervous excitement himself, though. He fully believed what he had just said, but he was still introducing what was in essence his life partner, eventually his wife if they formalized it that way, to his family. Who wouldn't be a bit nervous?
Leaving their luggage in the car for the moment, they climbed the stairs to the front door — like almost all houses in the area, this one was on pylons, or stilts, as his younger sister used to call them — and opened the door. "Hello?" Jack called.
"Woo Hoo!" came the response from somewhere above. "Up here!"
Jack grinned as he led Jennifer upward. "That's mom."
Two floors up they finally emerged into a large open combined kitchen, dining and den area. A slender, sprightly woman with graying brown hair was puttering around the kitchen until they topped the stairs. "Hey, mom!" Jack said.
"Jack!" she grinned, coming over to give him a hug, then held him at arms length. "Good grief, boy, what have you been doing to look so studly?"
"Mom!" Jack laughed in mild embarrassment. He indicated Jennifer. "It's all her doing. Mom, this is Jennifer Holiday. Jennifer, this is Katharine, my mother."
Katharine had turned at the introduction, and her eyes widened. "Oh, my. Yes I can see how Jack might be inspired to great efforts. You are absolutely lovely, dear." She had taken Jennifer's hand, and shook it warmly. "Welcome to our little family vacation. I hope we don't scare you off."
Jennifer blushed a bit but smiled graciously at the praise, then laughed at the welcome. "Thank you, Mrs. Phillips. That would take some doing, I'm afraid."
"Yes, I bet it would," she mused thoughtfully as she looked between Jack and Jennifer, "I'll wheedle details later." She changed the subject as she headed back toward the kitchen, "You two are probably thirsty. Lemonade?"
"That would be great, mom. How can I help?"
She waved him off, and then waved them both toward stools at the kitchen's counter-slash-breakfast bar. "You can't. It's ice and lemonade in cups. Sit. How was your trip?"
"Long, but... good," Jack said.
"'Good', eh?" she repeated, looking at him shrewdly, a look he remembered well, a look she used when she knew, somehow, that he wasn't telling the whole story, or the whole truth.
Jack grinned back innocently.
Not this time, mom. You don't want to know
. "Yep," he said out loud.
She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, "Uh, huh." She let it drop — for now - as she placed glasses in front of them. "Well, your father is taking a nap in our bedroom over there. Why he comes to the beach to nap in the air-conditioned bedroom, the same as he could do at home, is beyond me, but," she shrugged. "Um, let's see..." she ticked off on her fingers as she continued, "I believe Cindy is on the deck outside her room, reading a book. Doreen and Jonathan are taking a stroll on the beach..."
Jack turned to Jennifer, "Cindy was married to Dad's brother until he died in the line of duty. He was an officer in the Army. She's still part of the family, though. Doreen is mom's sister. Jonathan is her husband."
Katharine continued, "Sarah, Janie, and a friend of Janie's that came with her, Lea something-or-other, are sunning by the pool. Zane is down there too, trying to nonchalantly ogle the girls in their much too skimpy bathing suits while trying to hide his boner."
"Mother!" Jack laughed in shock.
She shrugged. "It's true," she said matter-of-factly. "Boys will be boys. And girls will be girls, I guess."
Jack just shook his head and turned back to Jennifer. "Sarah is my younger sister. We've talked about her a bit. Zane is Cindy's son, her only child. Janie is Doreen's and Jonathan's daughter, also an only child. I don't know who Lea is." Jack frowned and turned back to his mother. "What about Martha and Elizabeth?" Martha was Jack's older sister, the wild sibling, and Elizabeth was her young daughter, whose arrival had tamed Martha quite a bit. Martha wasn't sure who the father was. Jack and Jennifer had discussed Martha on several occasions.
Katharine sighed. "She couldn't get the whole week off. She'll be here Wednesday."
"Oh, Okay. Well, I guess we should get our bags moved in. Where is our room?"
Katharine pointed downward. "You guys are in the back bedroom to the left when you come out of the stairs. Sorry, the old folks got dibs on the ocean-front rooms. You should still have a great view from your little balcony, though."
"Okay. We'll go get unpacked, and be back up in a little while." Jack said, gulping the rest of his lemonade before heading for the stairs. Jennifer took a final sip of hers, placed both of their glasses in the sink, and said, "Thanks for the lemonade, Mrs. Phillips," before following after Jack.
Katharine waved her off. "Call me Katherine, please. No thanks necessary, although if you can get that boy to put his dishes away after he's done with them..." she shook her head while pointing to Jennifer having done it for him. A moment later she called down after them. "Dinner is going to be simple tonight; hot dogs and hamburgers. Jonathan'll be lighting the grill when they return from their walk on the beach in a few minutes, so chow time should be in about an hour."
Jack and Jennifer unpacked casually, exchanging frequent caresses and playful grabs as they moved around their bedroom. True to Katharine's word, while their bedroom was on a corner of the house opposite from the ocean, it had a private deck on the side of the house that enjoyed a great view down the beach, and plenty of shade from another deck above. After they finished putting things away, they relaxed in the hammock on the deck, Jack feeling slightly but pleasantly guilty as they swung lazily that he wasn't helping with dinner.
"Your mom's great, I really like her," Jennifer said with a grin, but Jack could tell that there was a 'but'.
"But?"
Jennifer screwed up her face as if she was a bit afraid to go on, or that the Genie was afraid to anger her Master. "Well, she's a little... different."
"Different? How? Do you mean, like, lesbian or something?"
Jennifer rolled her eyes. "No!" But then she frowned and shrugged, "well, maybe. I don't know exactly. She's different because I can't read her like I can most people."
It was Jack's turn to frown. "What do you mean?"
Jennifer thought for a moment. "Well, this isn't the best analogy, but think of most people as, say, a college dorm room, with an open door. Just by walking by the door and glancing inside, you can see a bit about the occupants, and without an invasion of their privacy. That's what I can usually do, sexually related, with most people, just through my basic ability and without a wish or anything from you. A step further would be to stick your head in the door for a quick look. That might roughly equate to the tote board.
"Now, the next step would be a closed but unlocked door. That's kind of what I get from your mom. I can read nothing from her now. If you wished me to, I could 'open the door' and look in without harming her in any way, as the door is 'unlocked', but she might be aware of something going on, just as you would know if someone opened your actual dorm room door and looked inside. There's also the question of if that's more of an invasion of privacy. It certainly would be in the case of the dorm room, but, well," she shrugged, "perhaps that's where the analogy breaks down a bit. Beyond that, as you have mentioned before, she also certainly seems incredibly intuitive."
Jack absorbed this. "So... what would cause this 'closed door'? And as for the intuitive part, we've always written that off as 'motherly intuition'."
Jennifer shrugged. "Hard to say, at least without a wish from you to investigate, and even then my investigation would be restricted to sexual. Or protection, of course, but I certainly don't sense, or expect at this point, that your mother is any danger to you."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "I would certainly hope not!"
"I don't know if you Mom's 'closed door' and intuition are some innate ability, or perhaps something magical. I think I can say, though, that if they are magically related, it isn't Jinn-wrought."
"Huh? What else would it be?"
Jennifer lifted her head from lying on his shoulder to look at him with a raised eyebrow. "It could be many things. You don't think Jinn magic is the only magic, do you?"
