Ashley colored. “Did Ryan tell you? I’ll kill him!”
Angelina shook her head in the negative. “Cara,” she said, “I’ve borne seven children. I know the signs. I won’t say anything until you are ready to make your announcement, and then I shall be totally surprised with the rest of them.”
Ashley laughed softly. “I can see I won’t get much past you, Lina. I was going to tell everyone last night, but then Deirdre started babbling.”
“Of course, and then afterward you could say nothing.”
“I’ll call you,” Ashley said, and then she ushered her mother-in-law into the car. She stood with Ryan as the stretch limousine drove down the hill and out of sight.
“Come in out of the cold,” he said to her.
Wordlessly Ashley reentered the house. “I think,” she told her husband, “that you’d better stay in town for a few days. I’m sure R&R could use your presence.”
“Are you kicking me out?” he wanted to know.
“Only for a few days,” she said. “Go tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go,” he said stubbornly, following her upstairs into their little sitting room. “I want to straighten this out right now.”
“Ryan, there is nothing to straighten out. I do not hold a youthful indiscretion against you any more than you hold Carson, Chandler, and Derek against me. But as I told you last night, I would have liked to have known about Bianca before I accepted her hospitality. Did she know I didn’t know?”
“Yes. A few nights before we left Venice we talked. She told me I should have told you, but that, not having done so, I had best remedy the error sooner than later,” Ryan said.
“You spoke on the terrace below our bedroom. I saw you,” Ashley responded.
“You never said anything,” he replied, surprised.
“No, I didn’t. I assumed you would speak of it eventually, and I certainly didn’t suspect you of any infidelity,” Ashley said. “I didn’t believe you were that kind of man. Now I’m not so certain about that.”
“I am not that kind of man,” he said.
“If you say so,” Ashley responded dryly.
Ryan gritted his teeth. Why the hell was she making this so difficult? So he hadn’t told her that Bianca banged him when he was sixteen. So what? “I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated.
“I’ll sleep in my old room then,” Ashley told him.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You’ll miss me, baby. You will.”
“I’ll survive,” Ashley answered him sharply. “You would be surprised at how well I can survive without your exalted presence, darling.” But she hated sleeping alone now. And she wasn’t interested in uninhibited sex on the Channel either. What she really wanted was to talk with her brother. He’d been dead for so long, but she still missed him. Ben always knew how to help her. Ashley had always used the Channel for sex, but now she wondered if she couldn’t use it to bring her brother back. Oh, she knew he wouldn’t really be there, but she needed someone of her own to talk to, not someone on Ryan’s side, no matter how nice they were.
Ben, she said to herself, I want you back. I have to talk with you. Let’s meet down on the beach. Remember that October day when we just sat and talked? That’s what I want now. For us to sit and talk. She pressed the button that let the wall covering the flat screen television open. She pressed the on button on the channel changer, programmed in the Channel, and then she hit the A button, and enter. And there she was on the beach below the bluff on which Kimbrough Hall stood. And there was her brother, Ben, coming toward her. She ran into his arms. Though he would be over forty now, he looked as he always had.
“Hey, kiddo, what’s the matter?” he asked, his blue eyes sympathetic. He led her to the bench by the water’s edge. “Tell your big brother, and I’ll try to make it all right.”
“Oh, Benji, why did you have to get killed in that damned war?” she asked him.
“Hey, kiddo, that was my fate, but you didn’t fantasize me just to ask that. What’s the problem?”
Ashley started to cry, and between sobs she told him.
Ben listened quietly, and then when she had concluded her tale of woe he said, “Kiddo, you know you can’t hold it against him that he was either too dumb or too scared shitless to tell you about the contessa. You’ve married one of the good guys.”
“But I don’t think he would ever have told me about her if his damned sister hadn’t shot her mouth off,” Ashley said.
“Have you told him about the Channel?” Ben asked her.
Ashley’s jaw dropped, but then she quickly said, “That’s different!”
“Nope, it isn’t, kiddo,” Ben told her. “Look, everyone has something in his or her life that for whatever reason they don’t want to share. It doesn’t mean they’re thoughtless or being dishonest. It just means they don’t want to share it. You going to tell Ryan about the Channel, Ashley?”
“Of course not! It’s a women’s thing. No woman who gets the Channel talks about it to a man,” she replied. “It’s an unwritten rule.”
“I rest my case, kiddo,” Ben said. “Look, Ashley, we never know what’s going to come at us in life. I never expected to die in Desert Storm. Frankie never expected to lose her husband in the attack on the Twin Towers. You don’t want to waste a moment of the time you’re given. So Ryan neglected to tell you about the contessa. Maybe he was never going to tell you about her. Call it a sin of omission.” He smiled at her. “Hey, kiddo, you love him. Now don’t waste any more time being pissed at him. I can tell you that you’ve scared him to death, Ashley. He won’t make the same mistake again.” Ben laughed, and his eyes crinkled just the way she remembered them doing.
“I miss you so much,” Ashley said. “You’re right about Ryan. He’s smart in so many ways, but where women are concerned he’s just a big dumb jock. And I do love him. I really got lucky, Benji, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, kiddo, you did,” her brother said wistfully, with a smile.
“We’re having a baby,” Ashley confided.
“Yeah, I know,” Ben replied.
“I think I got pregnant that last night in Venice,” she told him.
“Nope,” he said, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “But it was before you got back to Egret Pointe, kiddo.”
“Not that last night, but before we got back?” And then Ashley blushed a deep pink color, remembering their trip.
“Yeah.” Ben chuckled. “It was then.” He put his arm around her and gave her a loving squeeze. “Well, I’ve got to be going now, kiddo.”
“Can we talk again?” Ashley asked him.
He shook his head. “You’re not on the Channel this time, little sister. You’re dreaming,” he explained. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise. The folks who run the Channel aren’t on my boss’s invite list. But the place is harmless for most women. They don’t linger that long as a rule.”
“But I distinctly remember turning on the television and programming you in as a new fantasy,” Ashley insisted.
“Did you, Ashley? Maybe you were just too tired and upset to realize what you were doing.” He stood up, and she did too. Then Ben Kimbrough bent down and kissed his younger sister gently. “So long, kiddo. Oh, Granddad and our folks say hello.”
And before Ashley could say another word her brother began walking down the beach, disappearing into a mist that had suddenly come in off of the water. “Ben,” she said softly, but he was gone, and the mist was surrounding her too. To her great surprise she awoke. The flat-screen television was still hidden behind its wall. The remote lay on the nightstand next to her bed. Beyond her bedroom windows the day was gray, and she could see that snow had begun to fall.
Ashley slowly got out of bed. Ben! She had spoken to her brother. She had! She smiled. And as always his advice had been good. It was good now. She was going to take it, because she didn’t want to end up like Deirdre, foolish and bitter. Glancing at the clock on the mantel, she saw it was about to strike six a.m. Ashley opened t
he door to her old bedroom and hurried down the hall to where Ryan lay sleeping in their own bed. Entering the room, she slipped into bed beside him, and at once his arm encircled her.
“Am I forgiven then for being a coward and a jerk?” he asked her.
“Only if you make mad, passionate love to me,” Ashley told him.
“Thanks, baby, and I do apologize,” he said. “How did I ever get so lucky?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I think we both got lucky. Now cut the talk, darling, and let’s have a little more action, please.”
He laughed happily. “Anything you say, baby. Anything you want,” he promised her, grinning.
“Now, will you look at that?” Ashley said. “You’ve finally got it, darling. You finally understand how it works in a modern marriage. I am the mistress. You are the slave. Now pleasure me, my darling, and then we have to decide when to go into the church so this child of ours will be one hundred percent legal and legitimate.”
He kissed her a kiss that Ashley could have sworn curled her toes, and she felt him harden against her. “Yes, mistress,” Ryan Finbar Mulcahy said to his wife, his hands beginning to roam over her body.
Ashley purred with her total satisfaction as both outside and inside the storm built and increased in its intensity. She had to remember tomorrow to cancel her subscription to the Channel. It was unlikely she would ever need it again.
EPILOGUE
Benjamin Kimbrough Mulcahy was born on the nineteenth day of August, a week before his parents’ first anniversary. Everyone remarked on his bright blue eyes, which several months later at his baptism were still an unrelenting blue.
“The blue of his namesake,” Ashley said quietly.
The baby was baptized in St. Anne’s, the same church where his parents had spoken their vows some months before. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and the hall was filled to capacity with Angelina and her family. Michael O’Connor, now a freshman at Princeton, stood as godfather to his cousin. His mother, Frankie, was the baby’s godmother.
Back at the house afterward, Angelina noticed a pair of very rococo antique silver candlesticks on the dining room table. “I have not seen those before,” she said to her daughter-in-law. “They’re beautiful, and quite valuable, unless I miss my guess.”
“They belong to your grandson,” Ashley said. “A gift.”
“From whom?” And then, carefully inspecting the candlesticks, she smiled. “Bianca di Viscontini?” she said, recognizing the Italian workmanship of the candlesticks.
Ashley nodded. “We sent her a birth announcement and told her that Venice could still claim to be the most romantic city in the world.”
Angelina laughed. “Well,” she noted as she looked at her newest grandson, “certainly no one in this family can deny that.”
And Ashley replied softly, “Romance, Lina, can be wherever you make it.” Yes, everyone could believe that little Benji had been conceived in Venice, even Ryan. But Ashley knew better. She knew because her brother had told her, and Ben had never lied to her. Her son had been conceived aboard a jetliner over the Atlantic, or possibly Montauk Point. She had joked to herself about calling him Mile High, or Skylar. He had been created from the love she and Ryan had for each other, and from the delicious sudden pleasures that they always seemed to find with each other.
Her husband came up, slipping an arm about her waist. “Ready for another?” he teased Ashley, and turning, she whispered something in his ear. Ryan Finbar Mulcahy actually blushed and chuckled. “Anytime, baby,” he said. “Anytime!”
Grandfather Kimbrough had been right after all, Ashley thought with a smile. There really was a happily ever after.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bertrice Small is a New York Times best-selling author and the recipient of numerous awards. Her previous erotic contemporary, Forbidden Pleasures, won the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf award for Long Contemporary in 2006. In keeping with her profession, Bertrice Small lives in the oldest English-speaking town in the state of New York, founded in 1640. Her light-filled studio includes the paintings of her favorite cover artist, Elaine Duillo, and a large library. Because she believes in happy endings, Bertrice Small has been married to the same man, her hero, George, for forty-four years. They have a son, Thomas; a daughter-in-law, Megan; and four wonderful grandchildren. Longtime readers will be happy to know that Nicki the cockatiel flourishes, along with his fellow housemates: Pookie, the long-haired greige-and-white cat; Finnegan, the long-haired bad black kitty; and Sylvester, the black-and-white tuxedo cat, who is now the official family bedcat.
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