(originally posted June 27, 2009 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HEATHER!)
“There is no disguise that
can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.”
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Renee had showered but was lingering in a robe, her hair still wet, when Joanne returned from her turn in one of the luxurious Wheeler bathrooms. “You seriously can’t wear that to the theatre,” she teased as she came into the room, towel drying her short no-fuss hair.
“I’m not sure I feel up to going,” Renee mumbled, not meeting Jo’s eyes.
“Why?”
Renee bit her lip, hesitating before answering, “Jim and I broke up last night.”
Jo lowered the towel from her head and stared at Renee. “What? He hasn’t said anything about it to me.”
“We didn’t want to say anything until after today, for obvious reasons.”
“But why? I thought you two were happy? You obviously care about each other.”
“That’s just it,” Renee said. Her voice was squeaking as she tried to keep from crying. “I know Jim cares about me but he doesn’t love me, and he won’t let me love him.” She got up quickly and crossed to the dresser, where she pulled a tissue out of a box and dabbed at her eyes.
Jo didn’t have a lot of girlfriends. Blubbering emotion wasn’t really her thing. She ran a brush through her damp hair and tried to come up with something sensitive, something a sympathetic girlfriend might say. Finally she said, “Renee, Jim’s my best friend, but I’m not blind to his issues. I’m really sorry you two couldn’t make it work, but I know him. If you feel guilty about it, then he’s going to feel guilty about it.”
“But I do feel guilty. Maybe it would’ve worked out. We were comfortable with each other. Maybe we could’ve learned to really love each other.”
“Jim’s nothing if not passionate. He doesn’t learn to love. He loves. Comfortable is how you feel with your best friend. Comfortable is how you feel with the person you’ve been married to for fifty years. Old tennis shoes are comfortable.”
Renee nodded her agreement, but the truth didn’t appear to lessen her heartache.
“Listen, I don’t think watching Eliza swoon about how she could’ve danced all night is the way to go tonight,” Jo said briskly. “It sounds to me like you need to get seriously shitfaced.”
“What?” Renee looked mildly shocked and Jo had the good grace to look contrite.
“Sorry.” She shrugged and admitted, “I guess I just don’t relate very well to women. A night out with the girls will probably do me some good, too. So let’s go get you good and ... inebriated, okay?”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Good. Then you’ll get drunk fast. We’ll scalp the theatre tickets for drinking money. After you’re trashed, we’ll get Hallie good and drunk so she stops moping about her year-old divorce. Then we’ll get Sally good and drunk because ... well, she has to put up with Mart.” She flashed an elfish grin at Renee and was pleased to see her smile tentatively back.
“Then we’ll get me good and drunk because I can’t let you three have all the fun. Then we’ll crash at Sally’s brother’s place and whatever money we have left, we’ll give to him to pay for someone to come in and clean up all our vomit.”
Renee blanched, but still managed to come up with enough sarcasm to reply, “How can I say no to that after you’ve painted such a lovely picture?”
“To
know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.”
Henry Ward Beecher
After a rousing game of Progressive Rum, which Mart was overjoyed to win, the seven Bob-Whites settled down in the family room to talk. Now spread out from Indian Lake to New York City to Chicago, working, finishing school, and starting families, they realized it would be harder to get all seven of them together as often as they had when they were teenagers, and they treasured their time together.
“So,” Dan began ominously, pulling Trixie down onto his lap, “now that everybody and their uncle knows the Mangans’ secret, what about the rest of you?”
“You mean everybody and your uncle, don’t you?” Brian ribbed.
“We already know your secret, Dan,” Mart snickered. “Remember?”
“Yes, of course I remember. I think you told everybody.”
“I didn’t tell a single Bob-White about your secret,” Mart protested. When Jim cleared his throat loudly, he added, “Not on purpose, anyway.”
Jim stretched out on the floor and put his hands behind his head. “Well, I for one am surprised that Trixie kept the secret so long. Neither she nor Honey—” The remainder of his comment was muffled underneath the pillow Trixie tossed over his face.
“I know you all know our secret,” Dan interrupted impatiently. “I’m talking about your secrets. Surely, Trixie and I aren’t the only ones with secrets. I think it’s confession time.”
“Yeah,” Trixie agreed enthusiastically. “I want every one of you to tell us something that none of the rest of us knows about you.”
It suddenly got very quiet in the Wheeler family room. Nobody met anybody else’s eye and there was some shuffling of feet amid the quiet contemplation.
“Well, Honey doesn’t have any secrets,” Brian said assuredly, pulling her swollen feet into his lap for a massage. “She tells me everything.”
“Not everything,” Honey mumbled and blushed deeply as her friends all turned to stare at her in astonishment. “Before we moved to Sleepyside, when I was in one of those horrible boarding schools, I ... I shoplifted from a trendy boutique in the city.”
“What?” Trixie yelped. “Madeleine Grace Wheeler stole something?”
Honey nodded. “We were on a day trip from the school and we were allowed one hour to shop on our own. My friend Jocelyn and I were in this boutique and she dared me to steal a necklace.”
“You never take dares, Honey,” Diana said in disbelief.
“I know and I wasn’t going to. But the saleslady was coming over and I got all jittery and accidentally dropped the necklace into my purse. Then I was too scared to pull it out in front of her, because she’d think I was shoplifting.”
“You were shoplifting, young lady,” Mart scolded, wagging his index finger at her in a mocking reprimand.
“But I wasn’t planning to! Jocelyn pulled me out of the store before I could change my mind and—”
“Ohmigosh,” Trixie breathed, “My own partner a jewel thief! That would’ve gone over well in the agency.”
“Oh, Trixie,” Honey giggled, “It didn’t have any jewels on it. It probably wasn’t worth more than fifty dollars.”
“I can’t believe you never told me,” Brian said, trying to look shocked and offended, though his dark eyes twinkled merrily.
“It’s not like I was purposely keeping it from you. If you had asked me directly, ‘Sweetheart, have you ever shoplifted?’, I would’ve said yes.”
Everybody laughed and Brian leaned across the couch to kiss his pregnant, shoplifting wife.
“All right, who’s next?” Trixie asked.
After a moment of silence, Mart ventured, “Can it be something really big and semi-serious, or will you all be mad at me?”
“How serious?” Brian asked, his jaw suddenly a bit tighter.
“Moms and Dad know, but nothing came of it, so I didn’t tell any of you.” He paused to take a breath then said, “While I was in Africa, I almost got married.”
Six pairs of eyes stared at Mart. Six mouths hung open in complete amazement. Nobody could think of anything to say, so Mart continued. “Her name was Abena and she lived in one of those tiny little villages I worked in while I was in Ghana.”
Diana finally found her voice. “Was this before or after you and I broke up?”
“Shortly after, but it’s not like I was in love with her, Di. It wasn’t like that at all. She had a son—Kontar—who had a defective heart. They were trying to get Kontar to the United States to have surgery, but the costs were astronomical to send both of them and Abena didn’t want to be separated from her son. There was all this red tape, just hideous amounts of it, to get them both into the States, so I offered to marry her and cut through all that crap.”
Honey, her hand instinctively and protectively over her belly asked, “What happened? I mean, you didn’t marry her, right? Did Kontar…?”
Mart smiled. “Doctors Without Borders got them to a hospital in Italy at reduced cost. Abena still writes to me from time to time and Kontar is doing well.”
“So, did Doctors Without Borders step in before or after Abena had to turn down your sorry little proposal?” Dan teased.
Mart flushed but laughed good-naturedly. “Shortly after I asked her, lucky for her.”
“Well, now I don’t want to tell my secret,” Diana said with a pretty pout. “Who can possibly top that?”
“Come on, Di,” Trixie implored. “Dan and I actually got married. Our secret was way better than Mart’s.”
Diana laughed and said, “All right. This happened our senior year in high school. Do you remember that Friday in March when I was sick and didn’t come to school?”
“Of course,” Honey answered. “I only remember because you’re never sick, Di. And that was the day of the big pep rally for the basketball team before they headed to the state finals and I knew you didn’t want to miss it.”
“Well ... I wasn’t exactly sick.”
“Good grief,” Mart groaned. “She’s gonna get back at me for almost getting married by telling me she eloped in Atlantic City with some stud.”
“No, that was Trixie and me,” Dan countered with a grin.
“Hush, you two,” Trixie scolded. “I want to hear Diana’s secret.”
“Well, that day I took the train into the city ... and auditioned for a Broadway musical.”
“No way!” Jim shouted in surprise. “Which musical?”
“Rent.”
“Rent!” shouted six voices.
”That’s a huge hit on Broadway, Diana,” Brian said. “I’m impressed.”
“Well, it was only off-Broadway when I auditioned and apparently, I wasn’t even good enough for off-Broadway.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Di,” Mart interjected. “Aren’t there only like six people in the cast or something? I’m really proud of you for trying.”
Diana’s cheeks turned pink and she threw her arms around Mart in a grateful embrace. “Thank you,” she murmured as she kissed him chastely on the cheek.
“All right, since Diana was so open about her failure,” Brian teased, “I guess I’ll share mine.”
Trixie snorted. “What? You got an A– on a pop quiz? You never fail anything.”
“Yeah, way to make your younger siblings look bad,” Mart joked.
“For your information,” Brian huffed, “it wasn’t an A–.”
“Egads!” Jim exclaimed in mock horror. “Was it a B+?”
“No ... an F. I flunked Biochemistry the first time I took it.”
“Brian! You never told me that!” Honey gasped.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly something to write home about now, was it?”
“There’s more to this story,” Trixie guessed. “Seriously, Bri, you never would’ve failed under normal circumstances. Tell us the rest of it.”
“Honestly, it was the hardest class I took all through med school. It didn’t even seem to apply to medicine at all while I was taking it. Anyway, I was squeaking by with a C or a C+ at best—”
“Gleeps!” Mart interrupted, slapping his hand to his forehead. “To think of all the times Trixie would’ve loved to be ‘squeaking by’ with that kind of grade in Algebra.”
“Shut up, Mart,” Trixie laughed. “Go on, Brian.”
“Even if I passed the class, I knew I’d want to take it again.”
“There’s the Brian Belden we know and love,” Jim chuckled.
“Anyway, near the end of the semester, a few of my classmates were having a party at their place. They all knew they were failing the course and decided to just blow off the final.” With a sheepish shrug, he concluded, “I let them talk me into it, so I flunked the class.”
“Do Moms and Dad know?” Mart asked.
“Watch out, Doc, he loves blackmail,” Dan warned.
“Yes, Moms and Dad know,” Brian quickly answered. “I told them after I graduated med school.”
“And what did you get the second time you took the class?” Diana asked knowingly.
“A B+,” Brian mumbled and everybody laughed at their overachieving friend. “I believe that leaves you, Mr. Frayne,” he continued, deflecting his embarrassment by turning the focus on his best friend.
Jim waved his arm nonchalantly before letting it fall across his face. “I don’t have any secrets. You all know every bit of my dark and dirty life.”
“Come on, Jim,” Honey pleaded. “You must have one secret.”
“Tell us one of them,” Diana implored. “Just one tiny, inconsequential little secret.”
With a resigned sigh, Jim raised himself up on his elbows said, “Renee and I broke up last night.”
The silence was even more noticeable than it had been when Mart spilled his secret. It was certainly far more uncomfortable. Finally, a tearful Honey asked, “What happened?”
Jim shrugged. “It just wasn’t working out. It wasn’t anything bad. We’re still friends.”
All was quiet again for what seemed to them all like an interminable amount of time. Finally, Diana got up off the couch and went to kneel down at Jim’s side. She gave him a fierce hug and said, “I’m so sorry, Jim. We all are.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry, too; I didn’t mean to ruin anybody’s evening. It’s been such a nice day. Let’s not talk about it. Let’s go back to a happier subject.”
After a brief pause, Dan said, “Okay, let’s get back to the secrets.”
“But we’ve already told all our secrets,” Honey said.
“We’ve told secrets that none of the rest of us knew. But what about a secret only one of us knew about? Perhaps a secret about ... Martin Harold Belden.”
“Dude, what’re you doing?”
“Mart, you spent the last six months torturing me. I changed the oil in your car. I changed the fan belt in your car. I washed and waxed your car at least three times. I helped you move. I brought that monstrosity of an 8 Ball table up to your house. I helped you paint. I ate baby food because of you.”
“You mean you didn’t do that willingly?” Trixie asked.
“Are you kidding me? Mart has been holding our secret marriage over my head since February. It’s time for a little payback.”
“Mart has a secret that only you know about?” Brian asked skeptically. “Bigger than almost getting married?”
“Maybe not bigger, but a lot more embarrassing, and a lot more enjoyable for me to relate.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Trixie said eagerly.
“The day after Mart gets back from Africa—”
“Dude!”
Dan quickly stood up and moved out of Mart’s reach. “He wants to eat at all the places he missed so much while he was overseas. So the first thing we do is go to Wimpy’s at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Wimpy’s isn’t open for breakfast,” Diana said.
“Yeah, Mart actually called Mike and asked him, as a special favor, to open early for him. Mike fixed him a double cheeseburger with all the fixings, fries and onion rings, and a chocolate malt. At eight in the morning.
“Then we go into the city, presumably to do some Christmas shopping, but while we’re there, Mart has to have two Gray’s Papaya hot dogs for lunch, fully loaded of course, with about a gallon of soda to boot. Then he stops at a street vendor’s to get one of those pretzels that are bigger than your head. Lastly, and this is all before noon, mind you, he stops to get New York Cheesecake, only he can’t decide between strawberry or blueberry, so he gets a slice of each.”
“I hate to point out the obvious, but we all know the guy is a human garbage disposal,” Jim said dryly. “What’s so secret about that?”
“Oh, I’m not done,” Dan said wickedly.
“Yes, you are,” Mart said, lunging at his best friend.
Fighting off Mart’s attempts to silence him, Dan continued, “So, stuffed to the gills, Mart and I go to FAO Schwartz. He wants to get a present for this little boy from Ghana—Kontar, whose story I now know, so that was a really nice thing to do, Mart—but he gets a little sidetracked. Inside the store, because it’s Christmas and the kids are all bouncing off the walls anyway, is a giant inflatable moonwalk … which Mart decides he needs to try out.”
Five Bob-Whites groaned and Honey and Diana covered their mouths in empathetic nausea.
“All right, they get the point. I don’t think we need to continue,” Mart mumbled, his face bright red.
“Oh, I think I do. I don’t think they quite comprehend the magnitude of your vomit.”
“I can’t believe you threw up on the moonwalk!” Trixie gasped, holding her sides as she collapsed on the floor in laughter.
“Not just the moonwalk, my wife. Your brother puked on at least two unsuspecting children as well.”
“I only puked on one little boy,” Mart insisted, pausing before adding sheepishly, “He puked on the other kid.” As everybody laughed, he glared at Dan and said, “You are now my ex-best friend, Mangan.”
Dan flung an arm around Mart’s shoulders and in a very loud stage whisper said, “At least I didn’t tell them that you also hurled in the Salvation Army bucket as you were being kicked out of FAO Schwartz.”
Mart made a face and nodded slowly as his family and friends continued laughing hysterically. “That’s fine. That’s fine. You’re all going to hell, but whatever. Daniel, you will pay for this, I promise you.”
“Yeah, I know. Revenge is sweet. And you know what? It really is. I could get used to this.”
“Love withers
with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement.
To make love a
prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever.”
Leo F. Buscaglia
Thank goodness Trixie was still in the truck. Thank goodness it was dark. Once again, Dan was channeling his wife and he could barely keep his feet still in anticipation of the surprise he was about to unveil for her. Blowing out as much of the pent-up energy as he could, he arranged his face in an expression of serious frustration and went back to where Trixie sat behind the wheel.
“I can’t tell what’s wrong with it. It’s too dark to really see anything.”
“Do you want me to come hold the flashlight for you?”
He loved how consoling her voice sounded. Don’t worry, Dan. Nothing will spoil our wedding night. We’ll figure something out. I love you.
“Nah. I saw a house about half a mile back. I’ll just walk up there and see if I can use their phone to call Uncle Bill.”
“I can’t believe both of our phones are dead!” Trixie exclaimed, a trace of her frustration bursting free.
“Well, I can believe your phone is dead,” Dan teased, reaching out to tug affectionately on her curls.
“Brat.” As she reached for the door handle, Dan grabbed her hand. “What?”
“Why don’t you stay here? No sense in both of us going.”
“Stay here? Are you crazy? A broken-down truck out in the middle of nowhere? This is the perfect setting for a horror movie, and the one left behind always gets attacked by the homicidal maniac. You don’t want to lose your bride on your wedding night, do you?”
He knew she was teasing, but her eyes were wide in feigned terror and she looked perfect for a part in the next Friday the 13th movie … whatever numbered sequel they were on now. “Seriously Trix, just stay here, ‘kay?”
“And what if you fall and twist your ankle or something? Or what if they won’t open the door to a strange man on their porch? You need somebody sweet and innocent like me by your side.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’m very charming.”
She pulled free of his grasp and reached for the door handle again. “I’m coming,” she stated firmly.
“No, you’re not,” he replied with equal determination.
“Dan, what’s the matter with you? What’s the big deal if I come or not?”
With most women, his plan might have worked, but he had to marry the most persistent, tenacious, doggedly stubborn woman on the planet.
With an exaggerated sigh of annoyance he asked, “How about you understand that I’m trying to give you a hint, stay here, and not mess up my surprise?”
“Your what?”
He reached out and tweaked her chin and grinned at her. “Do you really think I’d take you on our honeymoon in Uncle Bill’s broken-down pick-up truck, when you’ve got a perfectly good, practically new car we could use?”
With a chagrined smile, she leaned back against the seat and said simply, “Oh.”
“Now, Mrs. Mangan, I’m going to go ‘get help’,” he said dramatically, using air quotes to emphasize his words. “You stay here and I’ll come back very soon to get you, okay?”
“O-kay,” she responded in a smart alecky tone. “But hurry up, because I’m still worried about axe murderers.”
Dan snorted. “Yeah, if I was an axe murderer, I’d be worried about you.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and he pushed his head inside the cab of the truck to give her a kiss. “Be right back.”
He was true to his word, fairly flying down the small footpath through the woods to the little clearing where everything was already almost set, thanks to the Webster brothers. All he had to do was get the small fire started and open up the tent that had been carefully zippered shut to prevent any little woodland creatures from making themselves at home on their wedding bed before they arrived.
Jogging back toward the truck, he wasn’t at all surprised to see that Trixie, no longer able to contain her curiosity, was standing at the rear of the truck. She was peering over the tailgate into the truck bed, probably looking for clues that would tell her what her husband was planning.
Turning off the flashlight, he stepped onto the grassy shoulder of the road to muffle his footsteps and proceeded to sneak up behind her. He was almost to her when she spun around with a snarl. “Forget it, axe murderer! My husband will be back any minute!”
Dropping his voice an octave, Dan said hoarsely, “Oh, and you think he’ll protect you from me?”
“No, I’m saying you can have him instead, if you just let me go.”
Laughing, Dan leaped forward and pinned her against the tailgate, lowering his head to capture her lips with his.
After a long, thoroughly satisfying embrace, he pulled back and whispered, “Wanna come with me?”
“Always,” she replied with a naughty grin that almost had him blushing at the double entendre he had unwittingly blurted out.
He handed her the flashlight and the duffle bag she had packed for their wedding night, and pulled out the small cooler he had stashed in the back of the truck. Taking her free hand, he led her down the footpath to the campsite.
“That's
the only place to live ... where the stars are so close over your head
you feel
you could reach up and stir them around.”
Peter Warne, It Happened One Night
As they cleared the trees, he heard her gasp slightly and sigh contentedly, squeezing his hand just a little tighter as she surveyed the scene.
The flaps of the tent were pulled back to reveal an interior more in keeping with a desert prince and his harem than a couple of New York City law enforcement officers. Soft blankets and a pile of colorful throw pillows were covered in white rose petals, and a soft glow from a camping lamp illuminated the scene. Outside, the fire crackled invitingly despite the heat of the summer night, and two canvas folding chairs sat close by with an ice bucket in between them.
Trixie let out a soft laugh. “So, did you bring champagne and strawberries or beer and corn chips?”
“Smart aleck.” He knew she was only joking, but he still asked hesitantly, “Is this really okay?”
Blue eyes wide in astonishment, she gasped, “Of course it is! It’s perfectly perfect!”
“It’s not the Ritz-Carlton, or Aruba.”
“No, it’s not. It’s perfectly us. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get into something more … comfortable.” She stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against his cheek and disappeared into the tent, zipping the flaps shut behind her.
He had taken the bottle of champagne out of the cooler—not beer, he thought with a chuckle—and placed it in the ice bucket and was staring contentedly up at the stars when he heard the zipper sliding slowly back up behind him. The rough metallic sound was unbearably erotic and his jeans suddenly felt uncomfortably snug. He turned around, not exactly certain what he expected to see, but laughing joyfully when he saw Trixie posing seductively at the tent’s entrance, dressed in one of his oversized t-shirts that came almost to her knees.
“Love the lingerie, babe,” he murmured.
“Well, I’m guessing we’re not spending our entire honeymoon in a tent?” When Dan shook his head in acknowledgment, she added, “I’ll save the wispy, innocent bride number for tomorrow night, then.”
“Well, you look good in my shirt, anyway,” he returned, tossing her a leering grin.
“And you know what? I’m not wearing anything else.” She laughed as his eyebrows shot up in interest.
He took a few quick strides toward her before stopping suddenly a few feet short of her side. “Before I get distracted…” he began. He glanced down at her bare, tanned legs, imagined them clutched around his body, and continued, “…really, really distracted, I want to give you your wedding gift.”
“I thought the car was my wedding gift?” she asked with an enchantingly curious tilt to her head.
“It was at the time. But then I got you something else … something better.”
She frowned, her eyebrows knit together in the center of her forehead. “I got you a gift too, but it’s just a little gift. You got me a car and something better? That’s not right. Maybe I should get you a better present.”
Strengthening his resolve not to get distracted just yet, Dan closed the gap between them and took her into his arms. As he stroked his hands down her back and cupped her bottom—she most definitely wasn’t wearing anything besides his shirt—he touched his forehead to hers and whispered, “Trixie, you’re my present … for the rest of our lives. I could give you the moon and the stars and it still wouldn’t compare to that.”
He watched as a smile spread slowly across her face, a smile of such pure and complete joy that he felt a shiver race down his spine as he flashed back to her senior prom, that night he first allowed himself to fall in love with her. And just as he had that night, he now took notice of every tiny detail of her face—the placement of each freckle across her nose and the little crinkles at the edges of her eyes as she smiled up at him and the one slightly crooked tooth in her lower jaw that hadn't been worth the trouble to correct and the exact spot on her cheeks where her suddenly enchanting blush first appeared. As her gorgeous blue eyes misted over with tears of happiness, he brushed his lips across hers and murmured, “Happy Anniversary, Trixie.”
With just a trace of reluctance, unwilling to be parted even slightly from her, he stepped back and turned so that he was standing next to her. Sweeping his arm across the darkness before them, he said, “This is your present, six and a half acres of prime Westchester County real estate. You’re standing on Mangan property, my beloved wife.”
She tipped her head up to stare at him incredulously. “Really?”
He shrugged and grinned. “Well, technically, it’s the bank’s land. Actually, technically, it’s still part of the vast Wheeler holdings. But it’s ours in spirit.”
He gently tugged her over until she was standing in front of him, leaning back against his chest. He rested his chin on top of her curly head and explained. “Matthew Wheeler wanted to give us the land as a wedding present, but … well, my manly pride couldn’t accept that. He understood. After all, a man takes great satisfaction in working hard to build a home for his family. So, we compromised. I’d buy the land from him, and allow him to cut us a really sweet deal as our wedding gift. When we get back from our honeymoon, we’ll all go down to the bank and sign the papers. That is, if you approve.”
“And we’ll build our house here,” she whispered, squeezing his arms happily.
“Well, that’ll take a little longer, but yeah. I figure in two or three years, we’ll have saved enough money to get started on it and by the time we’re ready to start a family, we’ll have our own little version of Crabapple Farm.”
He loosened his grip on her as he felt her start wriggling so she could turn and face him.
“You’re wonderful, you know that?” she asked, putting her arms around his waist and pressing her body against his. “My present is so dumb compared to this. I’m just going to have to make it up to you … somehow.”
He waggled his eyebrows leeringly. “I’m sure you will, but I still want my present. Don’t back out on me.”
“I couldn’t,” she said with a teasing grin up at him. “It’s too late and very shortly, it’ll be obvious.” Before he could open his mouth, she said hastily, “No, I’m not pregnant.”
“Good,” he said with a chuckle, “because the house is nowhere near done.”
She pulled free, took his hand and led him into the tent. Taking her lower lip between her teeth, she looked up at him hesitantly, almost shyly, before releasing his hand and leaving him to cross over to the other side of the tent, where the camping lamp cast its inviting glow on her. Keeping her back to him, she slowly lifted the shirt up and over her head and well before it cleared her tousled curls, he saw.
Sucking in his breath, his dark, intense eyes were drawn instantly to the elegant, flowing lines of black ink tattooed at the small of her back. It was a Chinese symbol. He didn’t know Chinese any more than she did and yet it was alluring, captivating, and downright sexy. And he was certain it hadn’t been there the last time he saw her naked.
Which was when? His brow furrowed for a moment, and suddenly he understood why Trixie had been so insistent on “keeping their marriage bed pure” in the two weeks before the wedding. At first, he thought her parents had said something and then he thought she was just being ridiculous. Hadn’t they been living together, married even, for a year? And sleeping together for four? Now he realized she had wanted to keep her secret until just this moment.
He was so turned on he couldn’t move for fear of bursting way too prematurely.
Unfortunately, she must have misinterpreted his silence, because he heard her let out a long, shaky sigh as she turned to face him. “You don’t like it?” she asked in a small voice, doubt written in her wide blue eyes.
“God, Trix, no. Just the opposite. It’s incredibly sexy.”
A tentative smile crept back across her face. “Really?”
He nodded, almost too overcome with emotion for words. “What does it say?” he managed to croak out.
Widening her smile, she answered his question with one of her own. “What does yours say?”
She had been fascinated by the tattoo on his bicep almost from the first moment she had laid eyes on it. It must have been that spring or summer after he had first arrived in Sleepyside, when heavy outer layers gave way to short-sleeved t-shirts. Mr. Maypenny hadn’t been very happy to see it. He thought it was a “gang sign” and had told Regan about it. Uncle Bill wasn’t happy either, until Dan showed it to him. It had been a part of his history with the Cowhands, but when they wanted him to get a tattoo of a snake or a knife or something similarly menacing, he had chosen the simple Irish phrase “go deo” and pawned it off on his fellow gang members as meaning “Go to Die”. But though his uncle had little in the way of training or practice in speaking his ancestors’ native tongue, he knew immediately upon seeing the tattoo what it meant, and Dan had told him it was in tribute to his mother, Bill’s sister, Cathleen.
And now it was for his bride.
“Forever,” he murmured. She knew what it meant and he knew now that hers, though in a different language, meant the same.
He crossed to her and kissed her tenderly, caressing her lower back as together they sank to their makeshift bed and celebrated forever.
“True
love stories never have endings.”
Richard Bach
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