Sweet Hush

by Deborah Smith

  “You need to stay away from the flower arrangements. The fumes off the florist’s glue are making you hallucinate.”

  “Don’t you understand? The longer we keep the façade going, the better the chance Nicholas will come home alive!”

  She had me, again. “Then my size nines and I will be there. With bells on.”

  “Cow bells, most likely,” she sniffed, but her voice wobbled.

  In the next moment, she was crying, and so was I. We hugged each other.

  Jakobek, where are you?

  THE PRINCE AND I were in a private jet over the Atlantic Ocean, headed toward Washington. Mostafa might be a crazy mofo, but he was a smart one. His men had sky-hopped us all over the Middle East and Europe in a series of jets owned by an increasingly obscure network of his allies, so our trip from the cave back to civilization couldn’t be traced back to Mostafa. In the meantime, I still wore my dusty, bloody, sweat-stained camos, and all I’d had was a spit bath in the jet’s toilet. Add to that two sets of scabby knuckles, a swollen lower lip, a crusty head gash, a bruise the size of an apple on one cheek, and enough beard stubble to scrub the chrome off a fender.

  The wedding was in two hours. I needed that much time just to scrape the sand out of various crevices. “How about radioing the White House now?” I asked an unfriendly Air-Mostafa flight attendant armed with an Uzi. “We’ll be over the U.S. eastern seaboard soon.”

  “My orders are ‘No contact.’” Scowling, he waved the Uzi at me, then at the prince. “I’ll drop you both off at a Washington airport. Then you’re on your own. Make your own calls. For now, shut up, return your trays to their locked and upright positions, and finish your peanuts.”

  I looked out the jet’s window. Hush took sacred vows seriously. She’d promised to marry me for better or worse, and she would. I just hoped I’d get there in time.

  And that she could stand the smell.

  TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S daughter was married in the East Room of the White House. So was Lyndon Johnson’s. Lincoln’s body lay in state there. So had John Kennedy’s.

  I tried not to think about the funerals.

  The huge, gold-and-white, chandeliered room was filled with flowers, candles, and several hundred people who had no clue that the groom was missing and might be dead. About half of Chocinaw County was there. Gruncle sat on one of the front rows beside Davis and Eddie, holding Eddie Hush. Nearby, a grim-faced Edwina and her sisters commandeered a combined Habersham-Jacobs contingent. Al, stony-faced and listening for any word on Jakobek via a hidden earpiece, sat with Logan, waiting to step forward as Jakobek’s best men. Smooch and Lucille were the maids of honor. Puppy, grinning in a puffy taffeta dress, was ready to throw silk apple blossoms in my path.

  My own Reverend Betty, dressed in white robes with an apple-red sash, beamed at everyone from behind a beautiful altar covered in silk apple blossoms. Her gospel choir stood on a dais at the right side of the room, singing an old mountain hymn titled “Fruit of the Valley.” When they stopped, an opera soprano stepped onto a dais at the left side of the room and began singing a wedding aria in Italian.

  I stood in an anteroom, dressed in the most beautiful wedding gown and veil I’d ever imagined in my life, clutching a spray of apple branches, my head bowed, praying and crying. I didn’t care about the ceremony, the wonderful dress, international relations, or Al’s re-election campaign. I only cared that Jakobek had not made it back in time, and that fact meant he must be badly wounded, imprisoned somewhere, or dead.

  When the soprano finished yodeling in Italian, I jerked my head up and wiped my eyes. Mascara came off in gobs. The first, heart wrenching strains of the wedding march rose from an orchestra. “When they start the wedding march,” Al had said, “I’ll walk up to the altar and call it off. Then I’ll explain to the guests. And to the rest of the world.”

  That was it. The signal. The last deadline. The game was over. There would be no wedding. Jakobek was hurt, dying, dead. My heart was breaking.

  Suddenly I knew what I had to do. Jakobek’s business was my business. I was the one who had to stand up for him, proudly, honorably, bravely. I wrapped my arms around the spray of apple branches and headed for the door that would lead me up the aisle to announce that I planned to turn over every grain of sand from Istanbul to Riyadh until I found Jakobek, dead or alive. At first, everyone’s attention remained focused on the front of the room, where Al leapt out of his seat and began running toward the altar. But as I careened into the giant room heads started turning my way, too. Al saw me and began waving his long, lanky arms then jabbing a finger at his earpiece. I stopped, put a hand over my heart, and danced from one foot to the other. The orchestra squeaked to a stunned stop. Apparently, the President was showing off a new dance or having a public conniption fit. And so was I.

  Silence—horrified silence—filled the East Room.

  Al laughed and yelled at me, “Head for the South Lawn! The Marines have him and he’ll be here in about sixty seconds by helicopter!”

  I dropped my bouquet, hiked my skirt, kicked off my pumps, and ran for the front doors.

  GOD BLESS CELL PHONES and jar heads. Marines, that is. The moment I’d gotten my hands on a baggage handler’s phone on the tarmac at Reagan, I’d put a message through to the White House. Since the Marines handle the President’s flights to and from the White House grounds, they sent one of their big choppers. Before long I was climbing the stairs into one whirlybird while the prince waved goodbye from the steps of a second one. “I own a casino in Atlantic City,” the prince yelled. “Bring your new wife! My treat! Anytime!”

  I gave him a thumbs up and ducked inside the chopper. A Marine captain barked, “Sir! Deodorant, Sir!” and sprayed me with cologne.

  Then we headed for the White House.

  IT TOOK AL, LOGAN, and a Marine from the honor guard to hold me back long enough for the big helicopter’s blades to stop turning. By the time the door opened and the steps were lowered I was off and running, with most of the wedding guests behind me. Judging from the way Jakobek launched himself out the helicopter’s door, he hadn’t been much easier to hold back.

  I bit back a sob at how he looked, but after he smiled at me, nothing else mattered. We were in each other’s arms a second later. He picked me up while I kissed every hurt spot on his face and then some. He kissed me for a full minute then looked at me with tears in his eyes, but smiling.

  “I had a lousy bachelor’s party,” he said.

  I laughed, cried, and nuzzled lipstick all over his beard stubble.

  When we finally turned to face several hundred wedding guests, a teary, smiling, but sardonic Edwina stood at the front of the crowd, her arms crossed over her chest. “My perfectly planned wedding is a shambles, you know. What do you intend to do about it?”

  The Rev. Betty stepped up. “I recall you two plantin’ an apple tree on that knoll over yonder, last winter. I say there’s no better place to hold a ceremony than right there, right now.”

  I looked at Jakobek. He looked at me.

  “Yes,” we said together.

  HAWAII. Land of pineapples, tropical jungle, private resort villas where Presidential influence gets a nephew and his new bride the five-star treatment, and sand. Lots of sand, on beautiful beaches.

  “I think I’ll stay right here for the week,” Jakobek said lazily, in our huge, canopied bed overlooking a water garden. “I don’t like sand, right now.”

  I curled, naked, along his side. “I don’t care if we ever set foot outside this room.”

  He pulled me closer. We lay quietly, nuzzling each other, me being careful to avoid the bruises and cuts. “You need to heal,” I said. “You’ll need your strength. You’re a married man. You have a lot of chores to do, now.”

  Jakobek turned me onto my back and looked down at me somberly. “I know Mother Nature may
not be on our side, and we agreed that it’d be a miracle for us to have a baby at our ages, but by God—” his voice became tinged with humor, beneath his serious eyes—“since we’re not leaving this room for the week, we might as well concentrate on seeing if we can make a miracle.”

  I reached up, and cupped his face in my hands. “It’s been a week for miracles, and so. .Jakobek . . . you bee charmer . . . Mother Nature is already on our side. She was on our side when you left for the Middle East. I was just waiting until you came back, to tell you.”

  He studied my expression with a bewildered look, then realized what I was saying. I watched in soft awe as a very different kind of healing spread across his damaged face, from the inside out.

  “It’s good to be alive with you and our baby,” he whispered.

  I smiled.

  Miracles do happen.

  (Please continue reading for more information.)

  Sweet Hush

  Readers Group Guide

  1. The Jacobs are loosely modeled after some familiar First Couples. Who do you think they most resemble?

  2. Deborah Smith never mentions the President’s political party by name. Which party do you think he belongs to, and why?

  3. In Sweet Hush, Nick Jakobek is a Lt. Colonel, and happens to be the President’s nephew. In real life, do you think a prominent military officer could stay on active duty after a close member of his family is elected President?

  4. Hush embodies a stand-by-your-man philosophy (regarding her late husband, Davy) that is often portrayed in novels set in the south. Can you think of other literary examples of stoic southern wives?

  5. The book’s Georgia mountain setting, with its apple farm, is described in loving detail. Southern writers seem to put a lot of importance on “place” as a vivid influence on the lives and motives of their characters. Do you think this is primarily a focus of southern writers, or do writers from other regions display the same fondness for “Going home, to Tara.”

  6. Hush’s relationship with her son, Davis, is both trusting and over-protective. Discuss other notable examples of mother/son conflicts in fiction.

  7. Hush and First Lady Edwina Jacobs have a deliciously wicked “friendship” built on mutual antipathy, yet they are alike in being strong, compassionate women. What makes you uncomfortable about the portrayal of women’s roles in modern fiction? Do modern female characters often seem too strong, or still not strong enough?

  8. Hush and Nick’s romance is mature but also vibrantly reckless. What is your idea of the perfect man? And what would he have to do to win your devotion?

  9. Do you believe in love in first sight, which seems to happen to Hush and Nick?

  10. If you suddenly became nationally—and even internationally—famous—as Hush does after her son marries the President’s daughter—what do you think would be the worst drawback to that fame? What would be the best thing about it?

  About Deborah Smith

  Deborah Smith is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of A PLACE TO CALL HOME, A GENTLE RAIN, and many others. She has written over forty novels including series romance, women’s fiction, mainstream fiction and fantasy. As editorial director and partner in BelleBooks, a small publishing company she co-owns with three other veteran authors, Deborah edits and writes for a variety of books including the Mossy Creek Hometown Series and the Sweet Tea story collections. She also manages BelleBooks Audio. You can now purchase audio downloads of Deb’s newest novels, read by the author. Visit Deb at www.deborah-smith.com or www.bellebooks.com. Send comments to her at BelleBooks@bellebooks.com.