by Peggy Webb
“So did you.”
“I’m getting ideas right now.”
She marched across the tiles and firmly closed the door in his face.
“Not until after I eat,” she called through the door.
When she emerged from the bathroom, scrubbed and shining, Paul was initiated into the joys of fastening a woman’s back zipper. That small chore took ten minutes because he kept stopping to lower the zipper and kiss the smooth skin underneath.
“Paul, that’s the fifteenth time,” Martie finally protested.
“Are you counting?”
“Yes. You’re dealing with a starving woman.”
“Is there no romance in your soul?”
“I’ll tell you after dinner.”
“Then put your shoes on, angel. I know just the place.”
Paul made her close her eyes as the elevator whisked them to the roof of The Peabody.
“Give me your hand, angel—and don’t peek.”
“I don’t hear any dishes rattling,” she said as they stepped off the elevator. “I don’t even smell food.”
“You will.” He led her to the center of the roof, where a wrought-iron table had been set for two. Candles flickered on the white linen cloth, and a smiling waiter stood beside a serving cart waiting for Paul’s signal to uncover the steaming lobster. “You can open your eyes now.”
Her eyes sparkled as she viewed the private paradise he had created. Twinkling Christmas lights festooned the rooftop, and a hundred heart-shaped mylar balloons, each proclaiming, “I love you,” floated above them.
“Balloons! Paul, I adore balloons.”
He untied one of the rainbow colored balloons and secured it to her wrist.
“I’m going to fill your life with balloons and Christmas lights and music.”
Her arms wrapped around his neck.
“You already have, Paul.”
At a signal from Paul, the waiter punched the start button on a tape player and strains of Stardust filled the air.
“May I have this dance, Mrs. Donovan?”
“Now and forever, Reverend Donovan.”
As they waltzed around the roof, the balloon on her wrist came untied and floated upward toward the stars.
CHAPTER TEN
The magic of their honeymoon was still with them when they returned to Pontotoc. Paul scooped her into his arms and carried her over the parsonage threshold.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Donovan.” Still holding her in his arms, he bent his head and gave her a very thorough welcome-home kiss.
“I wanted to do that the first time you entered this parsonage as my wife.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked.
“Foolish scruples.”
“I’m glad all that’s behind us, Paul.” She peppered his face with nibbling kisses. “Reverend Donovan, did anybody ever tell you that you’re good enough to eat?”
“Did anybody ever tell you that you have the appetite of a truck driver?”
“We’ve been home only two minutes and already you’re becoming a mundane old married man. Not an ounce of romance in your soul.” Playfully she nipped his ear.
“I take that as a challenge, madam.” With long strides he carried her to his bedroom and kicked the door shut behind them. “I’ll show you romance,” he said, and lowered her to the bed.
“How about Christmas lights and music?” she asked as he undid the buttons on her blouse.
“This is a package deal.” He lowered his mouth to hers, and there were no more words as the Reverend Paul Donovan properly welcomed his wife home.
o0o
After the lights had stopped spinning and the music had become a quiet melody in their hearts, Martie ran her fingertips lightly across his bare chest.
“Does this mean I get to move into your bedroom?” she teased.
He propped his hands behind his head and smiled lazily at her.
“I’ll think about it.”
“If your answer is no, I could always rejoin Booty and the band or take up bullfighting again.”
Her eyes sparkled with mirth, and she thought she had never been as happy as she was at that moment. She was married to the man she loved, and nothing would ever keep them apart again.
Never one to dwell on the past, she didn’t think about the gossip and public opinion that had parted them once before; she looked ahead, counting all the ties that bound them together.
His arms snaked out and pinned her against his chest.
“Do you know how many nights I’ve wanted to kick down that wall that stood between us?”
“Do you know how many nights I lay awake in my bed hoping you would?” she replied softly.
He crushed her to his chest and buried his face in her hair. “Now that I have you, angel, nothing will ever come between us again,” he vowed.
A loud pounding on the parsonage door sent Paul scrambling for his pants. “Stay here, Martie. I’ll see who it is.” Hastily he donned his shirt and shoes and left his wife among the tumbled bedcovers.
Martie heard the door slam, heard the deep rumble of Paul’s voice as he welcomed their guest. She smiled. Bending over the edge of the bed, she picked up her lace teddy and twirled it around her fingers.
“I’m just a girl . . . la, da, dee, da. . . .” She sang and hummed and whistled as she dressed, stopping every now and then to stretch her arms over her head like a contented cat. Suddenly she stiffened.
“A dis-grace!”
The voice was unmistakably Miss Beulah’s. Martie stood very still in the middle of the room, angry color flooding her cheeks as she caught snatches of Miss Beulah’s tirade.
“Posing half-naked . . . an embarrassment to the entire community. . .”
Her first impulse was to rush down the hall and confront the indignant woman, but then she heard Paul’s voice, quiet and reassuring. She couldn’t hear his words, but she knew that he would be trying to make the best of a bad situation. She stopped her headlong rush to the door and finished dressing. There was no point in making things any more difficult for him than they already were.
Martie paced the floor as the conversation in the kitchen droned on and on. Portions of Miss Beulah’s angry conversation punctuated her restless march in the room that had recently been a little bit of heaven:
“. . . it’s shameful . . . a minister’s wife . . . exercise book, my eye!”
Finally she could stand to hear no more. Slamming the bedroom door shut, she covered her ears. It just wasn’t fair, she thought. Why did her exercise book have to come out now? That had to be what Miss Beulah was ranting about. Jazz Your Way to a Perfect 10, complete with the Reverend Donovan’s new wife in scanty attire.
She wished she could turn back time and undo that book. A year ago she’d never dreamed that she would be married to a minister and that Miss Beulah would be using her book to crucify him.
She balled her hands into fists and swatted them helplessly into the air. When she had told Paul about the book, she had anticipated the controversy it would create; she just hadn’t realized it would be this soon. It had been so long since she’d written the book and she’d been so involved with Paul that the publication date had completely slipped her mind.
The gray carpet, already worn threadbare from Paul’s pacing since his marriage, took an additional beating as Martie waited for the conversation in the kitchen to come to an end. At last she heard the door slam then the squeal of tires as Miss Beulah screeched out of the parsonage driveway.
Martie raced down the hall and stopped just inside the door. Paul was sitting quietly at the table thumbing through her book. She saw the mixture of emotions that crossed his face— admiration, pride, bewilderment, and something almost like anger.
“Paul?” she called tentatively.
He looked up.
“This must be the book you told me about.”
She crossed to the table and sat down opposite him.
“Yes. I wrote it while I was still in Texa
s. Obviously, it’s caused quite a furor in Pontotoc.”
“A tempest in a teapot.” He flipped to page twenty-five. “I’m particularly fond of this picture.”
“That’s a position I call the hamstring stretch.”
“I’m more interested in the way that red leotard fits than in the exercise,” he said, smiling.
“Apparently, so was Miss Beulah.”
Paul closed the book and walked around the table. He leaned down and pulled Martie into his arms.
“There’s no need for you to fret about Miss Beulah. From what I can see, this is nothing more than a good exercise book. Miss Beulah will have completely forgotten it in a couple of weeks.”
“But Paul, she had no right to stir up trouble for us,” Martie protested. “I’m getting more than a little tired of being the brunt of her rumors and innuendos. And I’m going to march right over there and tell her so.”
“I understand how you feel, angel, but be patient with her. She’ll come around. It takes Miss Beulah a while to accept newcomers. I think she feels a moral obligation to put you through a test before she will accept you as a part of Pontotoc society.” He brushed his lips across the top of her hair. “We’ll weather this storm together.”
“I don’t want to be put through tests. I don’t want to weather storms.” She pulled out of his arms and marched around the kitchen, flailing her arms in the air as she talked. “I don’t want to be patient. I want the whole world to let me alone so that I can enjoy my husband.”
She stalked outside, slamming the door shut behind her. She was so angry that she didn’t notice the chill November air or the paintbox western sky or the mockingbird pretending to be a jay. Her mind was turned inward, railing against convention and a fishbowl existence.
Miss Beulah had been the cause of this marriage in the first place, and now she was trying to split them apart. She was nothing but an old marriage pooper. Why did she have to run to Paul with her warped opinions and harsh judgments? Why didn’t she turn her imagination somewhere else? Why didn’t she take up needlepoint or ceramics or bullfighting? Why didn’t she plant a turnip patch and leave them alone?
Martie’s shoes slapped angrily against the pavement, and she didn’t realize how far she had come until she was past the courthouse. Suddenly she felt the chill and wished for a sweater. She wished she had stayed in the warm kitchen with Paul, secure in the circle of his arms, instead of bolting in her typical, impulsive fashion.
She turned back toward the parsonage, and her feet flew down the sidewalk as she ran home to Paul. Her cheeks were wind-whipped and red as Winesap apples and she was panting for breath when she burst through the kitchen door.
Her eyes swung frantically around the empty room. Paul was not there. He was probably so disgusted with her that he was scouring the country for another parish to serve. He might even be investigating missionary service in the Arctic.
“Paul?” she called.
There was no answer. She made a quick tour of the parlor. Her heart sank at the sight of the empty room. She had half expected him to be watching the evening news. He was probably already on his way to Iceland or Siberia, winging high in the sky, forgetting that he had ever known a honky-tonk woman named Martie Fleming.
She ran her hand lovingly over the garage sale end table. Did he know that she loved everything about him, even his beat-up furniture? She had to find him. A daily devotional book clattered to the floor as she nearly overturned the end table in her hasty exit from the room. She ran down the hall, calling his name as she went.
Suddenly she stopped, having heard the distinct sound of water running. Paul had not run off to Iceland or Siberia or the Arctic. He was in the shower!
She was too happy even to chide herself as she burst through the bathroom door. She was so happy that she didn’t think about her clothes or her shoes or the ribbon in her hair.
Smiling joyously, she pushed open the shower door.
“Paul!” she cried. “You didn’t leave me!”
She wrapped her arms around his soapy chest in an exuberant bear hug.
His laugh echoed in the shower. “Why would I do a foolish thing like that?” he asked as he slipped his arms around her waist and rubbed his soapy face against her hair.
“Because I’m impulsive and irrational and totally unsuitable . . . and I can’t fry chicken.”
“I don’t care if you never cook chicken. I just want you to be the crazy, wonderful woman I married.” The washcloth slipped from his hand as he pressed her close.
She rubbed her face against his chest, inhaling the fresh, soapy smell of him. A glob of bubbles clung to her cheek as she peered up at him.
“You’re not disgusted with me?” she asked anxiously.
Tenderly he brushed away the bubbles. “About what?”
“The book.”
“There’s no reason to be. You wrote an exercise book, and I don’t know who would have made a better model for the illustrations. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all there is to it.”
The water continued to rain around them unheeded. The Reverend Donovan didn’t find anything at all strange about his wife being in the shower fully dressed. It was just one more in a series of impulsive acts that endeared her to him.
Martie squeezed her husband and planted nibbling kisses all over his wet face and neck.
“You are . . . the most . . . wonderful . . . man . . . in . . . Pontotoc.”
His hands began to trace lazy circles on her back.
“I was hoping for the whole world, but that will have to do,” he murmured.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“And you’re wet.”
She looked down at herself.
“Paul! Why didn’t you tell me that I was wearing clothes?”
“And spoil all the fun?” He took the soggy ribbon from her hair and began unbuttoning her blouse.
When she saw the quickening of desire in his eyes, she put her hands on his chest and rubbed dreamy circles as her body began to tingle with anticipation.
“Don’t you think I should be mad at you for not running after me when I left the house?” she asked softly.
The blouse splatted onto the shower floor, and his breathing grew harsh as he gazed at her breasts, full and firm and heavy with need, nipples peaked against the minuscule covering of wet lace.
“You needed to be alone,” he said with difficulty.
He reached behind her to unzip her skirt. Wet lace and straining breasts pressed against his pounding heart, and his hands fumbled with the zipper. Her hands reached behind to help him.
Martie lifted her face and looked hard at him as her skirt hit the floor with a heavy thud. She stood very still, almost without breathing, mesmerized by the promise she saw there.
“I don’t need to be alone anymore, Paul,” she whispered.
“Neither do I.”
In slow motion he slid the straps of her lace teddy down her arms. The erotic friction of his touch was heightened by the water pouring around them and the soap that still clung to his hands.
The teddy fell to the floor, forgotten, as they came together, their cries of desire drowned out by the sound of the rushing water.
o0o
As it turned out, their magic moment in the shower was the calm before the storm. Paul’s return to the pulpit was greeted with mixed reactions from his congregation. Jolene, Bob, and Sam sat on one side of the church along with a faithful group of staunch supporters; Miss Beulah and the dissidents sat on the other.
As Paul looked out over his divided congregation, he silently prayed for strength and courage and a healing miracle for his flock.
Martie felt the crackling of tension in the church and knew that she was the cause. It wasn’t just her Jazzercise book, she reasoned. It would have been merely a tempest in a teapot, as Paul had said, if it weren’t for the other things: her flamboyant clothes, her less-than-conservative ideas, the Halloween pageant.
She was a st
ranger to sadness and guilt, but both now edged their way into her consciousness. Tears filled her heart. Not for herself— she was more angry than hurt over this latest manufactured scandal. No. The tears were for Paul, for the coldness and censure of his beloved flock.
The usual camaraderie was gone as the congregation filed out of the church, tight-lipped, and headed straight for their cars. The faithful few stopped to chat and shake hands. Paul and Martie stood side by side, handling the situation with pasted-on smiles and stiff upper lips. But it took a toll on them.
o0o
Later, instead of a Sunday afternoon stroll along tree-lined streets still sporting a touch of autumn gold, they went their separate ways. Paul disappeared into his study, and Martie went to her former home to lose herself in a strenuous Jazzercise routine.
As she twisted and cavorted to the frantic rhythm of a popular rock song, she was thankful that they had decided to keep her house with its large studio. The parsonage was barely big enough for her to practice in when she didn’t want to get out, and it certainly couldn’t accommodate her classes. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as she threw herself into the routine, trying to block out everything except the music.
Baby and Aristocat sat on the floor watching their mistress, and when the record ended, Martie sat cross-legged on the floor beside her pets. She scratched behind their ears and poured out her troubles to them.
“It’s not that I’ve done anything wrong, you understand.” Baby thumped her tail to show that she did. “It’s just that I’m in trouble again.”
She propped her elbows on her knees and cupped her chin in her palms.
“What I’d really like to do is go over to Miss Beulah’s and crown her with a potted plant. Of course, Paul won’t let me. He said petunias wouldn’t become her.”
She smiled at her attentive retriever.
“Isn’t he wonderful? Always finding the humor in a bad situation. That’s just his way of cautioning me to be patient. If I were in his shoes, I would be a bear. I’d growl at the people who were saying nasty things, and I might even claw a few faces. Sometimes I think he’s too kind-hearted.”