by James, Sandy
I took a long, steadying breath. “I’m not marrying Mark because I need a self-esteem boost. And I’m not marrying Mark because David dumped me.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’m marrying Mark because, for the first time in my life, I’m in love—a mature love that gives and takes. He’s good for me, Julie. And he’s good to me.”
“Need any help with wedding plans?” she said, brushing away a tear.
I could feel one slipping down my own cheek. “Sure. Carly and I are going dress shopping this weekend. Want to come?”
“Maybe. Will you ask your mother and father to come for the ceremony?”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I hadn’t even told them I was dating Mark, let alone marrying him. Mom would take one look at him and tell him he was too good for me.
“I’ll invite them, but they won’t come—not back to Indiana in the dead of winter. Besides, I think they’ll be content if I just email them some pictures.”
“Have you met his parents yet?” Julie asked.
“Not yet. They’re living in Florida.” I chuckled. “I wonder if they’re in the same retirement complex as my parents.”
***
As the days before the wedding passed in a dizzying blur, Patrick called almost every night, hoping I’d changed my mind and that I might at least wait a few months.
Every night at supper, Carly filled me in with updates on the wedding plans. She’d booked the judge, the florist, the cake, and the reception caterer. Mark started calling her “J-Lo.” I wasn’t sure she got The Wedding Planner reference because she told him to quit telling her that her butt was big.
Nate and Kat had all but disappeared, and of all the family issues, their continued silence worried me the most. Nate had always been the kid who needed to touch base with me often. I wasn’t at all used to being shut out, especially when he got this quiet. Silence usually meant something was wrong. He didn’t return my messages, and I was getting more and more frustrated.
As Carly and I cleaned up the supper dishes, Mark came back into his house after running the trash outside, put his arms around me, and started tickling me. I almost dropped the last of the plates I was putting on the top shelf before I collapsed against him in a giggle fit. Carly smiled over at both of us.
“I can’t believe we’re getting married next weekend,” he said when he finally stopped torturing me.
“Well, you are,” Carly replied in a parental voice that brooked no argument. “Everything’s ready.” She lost herself in her thoughts for a moment. “Except we need to pick our dresses up from the lady doing the alterations on Thursday.”
“And you need to go study for your biology final, young lady,” I scolded, hoping she realized I was mostly teasing.
“If I get another high test grade, my friends will never let me live it down. They think you give me good grades ’cause you’re marrying my dad,” she grumbled.
“We know better,” I replied. “We know you study, and we know that you’re way too smart to only be fourteen. How many days until your birthday?”
She flashed me her braces. “Fifteen days ’til I’m fifteen. I really need to go study. Faith has probably sent me a million text messages.” Carly disappeared down the basement stairs to her bedroom.
I knew it was probably time for me to be heading back to my own house. In the weeks that had passed since Mark proposed, I’d developed a habit of spending the evenings with him and Carly, then I’d go back home before it got too late. But it was getting harder and harder to leave.
If he wasn’t called out on the job, he usually slept at my place on Fridays and Saturdays. My frazzled nerves needed to see him more often. I knew it was my ridiculous insecurity and my fear that he might suddenly change his mind about marrying me, but I needed his reassurances that he still loved me. Not that he’d given me any reason to feel anything but loved.
Maybe I was just needy.
“I guess I better go.” I wondered if I sounded as dejected as I felt.
“Stay,” Mark said as he came behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “We can watch TV.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back into his embrace. “I have papers to grade.” He kissed my ear, then ran that incredible tongue around the ridges. Shivers raced over my body. “Carly is here. We can’t—”
“Carly is studying. Do you think she’s going to disappear after we’re married? We’re going to live here, Jackie. She’ll get used to it. Hell, I think she’s already used to it.”
“We’re going to live here?”
Julie had been right. I really needed to sit down with Mark and make some important decisions—decisions like where we’d live, what we would do about insurance, what would happen to our kids if something happened to one of us. It had simply been so much easier to ignore all that adult stuff and plan a pretty wedding. What we should have been doing was planning our life together.
Now my lack of attention was coming home to roost.
“I assumed. I mean, my house is paid off. Don’t you have a mortgage?”
“Yeah, but my garden’s there. And all my stuff’s there. Where would I put it here?”
“We’ll make it fit, babe.” He kissed my neck. “Everything about us fits. Perfectly.”
I normally loved his cute little innuendos, but I was having a hard time keeping my panic at bay. “Can’t we be serious for a second? I don’t want to sell my house. I might... I might need to... What if things don’t work out?” I couldn’t believe I’d said that aloud, but once out in the open, the notion needed some serious consideration.
Mark came around to stare down at me. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”
I shrugged before I could stop myself.
“You can be such a piece of work. You still think I’m only in this for some short-term kicks, don’t you? You want to keep that house so you have someplace to go when I leave you.”
I stood there as quiet as a mute.
“Don’t you?” he shouted, causing me to wince.
“I just don’t see why I should sell my house. We can move some of my things here—”
Mark stomped out of the kitchen into the family room and plopped down on the couch. Grabbing the remote he began to flip through channels too fast to even know what he was watching. “I’m getting tired of you not having a lick of faith in me.”
“I have faith in you!”
He scoffed and kept changing channels. His agitated breathing was loud enough for me to hear.
I stamped my foot. “I do! I have faith in you!” I knew I was shouting, but the lid had blown off the pressure cooker, and there was no containing the explosion. He wanted to know what was wrong, then, damn it, I’d tell him. “I don’t have faith in me!” Words tumbled out of my mouth—there was no stopping them. “You’re too good a man to be stuck with someone like me. I’m stubborn. I’m temperamental. I’m... I’m... Argh!” I threw my hands up in frustration.
Mark threw the remote at the chair and walked over to me. Fists firmly planted against his hips, he glared down at me.
I rattled on. “I’m such a bitch when I want to be. I’m getting old. Things are sagging all over the place. And you’re... you’re... still so handsome. So... so... perfect.” Shaking my head, I felt the torrent of words finally sputter to a halt.
He tugged me into his arms. “I’m not perfect.” A chuckle rumbled his chest. “At least not all the time.”
I snorted and shook my head. “No, you’re not.”
“I’m stubborn, too.”
With a sniffle, I nodded and let a small, nervous laugh escape my lips.
“I’m temperamental, too.”
I nodded against his chest. He smelled like Polo Black again. God, I loved that cologne on him.
“Nobody’s perfect, Jackie.” He pulled away to kiss my forehead. “Not even me. Except in bed.”
I had to laugh at his ability to relate any conversation to sex.
Mark hugged
me a little tighter. “I know you’re scared. And I know trust takes time, but I need you to understand. I’m not leaving you. You won’t ever have to go back to your house because I’m not leaving you.”
“I trust you, Mark. I do.”
“How about we keep the house for now? Would that make you happy?”
Suddenly, it didn’t matter. Selling my house didn’t matter. The insurance didn’t matter. Where we lived didn’t matter.
Mark mattered.
I didn’t need a safety net because he was walking the tightrope right beside me. If we fell, it would be together—because, for once, I wasn’t alone. “I’ll call the realtor tomorrow.”
He kissed me. One of those deep, consuming kisses that always made me forget myself. In a daze, I let him lead me upstairs to his room. It was our room, really. I had left so much of my stuff behind, I could have moved in and never have to go back to fetch anything from my house.
Pinning my back against the door the moment it was shut, Mark took total control. I rejoiced in his insistent hands on my body, covering my breast, cupping my butt. Warm kisses against my neck, my ear, and covering my mouth, demanding my response. Clothes fell away in small piles, some ripped, and some discarded. When we were gloriously naked, he wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me. Shuffling across the carpet to the bed, he dropped me on my back so my legs hung over the side.
He didn’t even give me a chance to protest, but fell to his knees and buried his mouth between my legs. Separating my folds, his tongue tickled my sensitive bud before he drew it between his lips and sucked.
Had anything ever felt so glorious? I writhed and moaned, and when he stabbed his tongue inside me, I finally grabbed a throw pillow to hold over my face to keep from screaming too loudly. Hopefully, Carly was listening to her music. At least she was in the basement.
In all the years of my marriage, David had never done that for me, never given me such a wondrous gift, although he’d expected similar attention from me. He told me a blow job was his favorite birthday present.
Mark was right. He wasn’t David, and judging Mark as the same type of man was an insult.
I would never make that mistake again. Ever.
The man was thorough, loving, and he had me bucking beneath him in a very short time. I shouted my orgasm into the corduroy pillow and could hear his satisfied chuckle over the noise of my own heartbeat echoing in my ears. But he wasn’t done.
Mark tugged the pillow out of my clutches and tossed it aside. Then he lifted me by the hips and entered me in one, dominant thrust that rattled my teeth. The man instinctively knew when I liked it rough, and, man, could he deliver. If he hadn’t covered my mouth with one of his hypnotic kisses, I would have had to grab the pillow again.
He created such a flurry of sensations. The taste of me lingering on his lips, the glory of him driving into me so hard and fast, the delicious heat of his body pressed to mine. I hadn’t even come down from the first release before he sent me soaring back over the moon with him following only a moment behind.
I didn’t even mind when he collapsed on me like an enormous lump. It was nice to know I could do that to him—that I could make him so sated he couldn’t hold himself up.
Mark groaned and rolled to his side. We just lay there side-by-side with our legs hanging over the end of the bed.
“God, we’re greedy,” he said with a chuckle. “I can’t keep my hands off you.”
“Like a couple of pigs at a full trough.” Rolling to my side, I threw my arm over his strong chest. “But I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. You’ve spoiled me, you know.”
“Spoiled you?” He turned his head enough to look into my eyes.
“Spoiled me. You’re so...so...good at this, I expect it to always be satisfying. I don’t have to pretend.”
“David wasn’t—”
“You’re breaking rule number one,” I interrupted before I began to giggle as his hand wandered up to tickle my ribs. “Stop. Stop.”
With a wicked smile on his lips, Mark rolled over and began to torture me with tickles. “Say it. Say I’m the best ever. Say it.”
“Yes!” Tears ran down the corners of my eyes. “You’re the best. You’re the best.”
He stopped tickling me and kissed my forehead. “Told you so.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Carly shot me a frown. “Quit picking at the flowers or there won’t be anything left of your bouquet.”
“Sorry.” I pulled my hand out of the cascade of silk roses I’d been clutching in my hands like a lifeline. Glancing down at the floor, I noticed bits of baby’s breath and red petals lying in a small puddle at my feet. “Sorry,” I said again, giving Carly an apologetic look. “You look awfully pretty.”
She flashed an enormous smile. “Thank you. So do you.”
Standing there in her tea-length red dress, she looked a lot older than fourteen. She’d wanted a strapless, but I insisted on something less revealing. At least this dress had capped sleeves and only revealed a little shoulder. Kathy was supposed to wear one exactly like it, but she hadn’t come up to see me before the ceremony, choosing instead to stay at her father’s side.
“Jackie, leave the bouquet alone.”
“Sorry.”
Three seconds later, I was picking at it again.
I should have expected the attack of nerves. I was getting married, for pity’s sake. It was something I had sworn I would never ever do again. I had a vivid memory of a summer lunch with my friends where I pledged I wouldn’t be a wife again. I didn’t want the hassle. I didn’t want some man to run my life, to call the shots, to make me hate myself again.
But Mark Brennan wasn’t “some man.”
Carly came over, took the roses from my hands, and handed me a huge wad of tissues. “Shred those instead.” She was definitely fourteen going on forty.
“Are you going to be a psychologist when you grow up?” I asked with a nervous chuckle.
“There are enough crazy people in this family, I oughta consider it,” she replied with a smile. Then she glanced at her watch. “Won’t be long now. Relax.”
The bedroom door opened to reveal my frowning oldest son. Patrick was so handsome, so grown up in his black suit, ready to stand in for my father. Mom and Dad said they might visit in the spring and to have a nice wedding.
And people wondered why I had low self-esteem.
My heart was heavy, knowing Patrick didn’t approve of this marriage. No matter how much his acceptance meant, his disapproval wasn’t going to make me change my mind. I hoped he would follow through and give me away when the time came.
“You ready?” Pat asked, not a note of emotion in his voice. He might as well have been leading me to the Green Room at San Quentin.
I placed a hand on his arm. “Pat...”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to argue.”
“I don’t, either. I wanted to thank you.”
His eyes widened. “Thank me?”
“I know this is hard for you, but I want you to know how much I appreciate you being here, giving me away.” I stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
He blushed and stared at his shoes. “You know how I feel, but I couldn’t not be here for you.” His eyes finally found mine, and I could see the little boy for a quick second—the little boy who was always going to be there was hiding just behind the man he’d become. “Mark’s an okay guy. I just want him to be good to you. I love you, Mom.”
Tears formed up in my eyes. It was way too soon for tears. I tried to choke them back, but a couple leaked out anyway. “I love you too.”
I dabbed at my eyes with the shredded tissues. No black blobs were left behind, so at least my waterproof mascara was holding. Thank heaven for small favors.
“We need to go. The judge is here and Mark is waiting.” He opened the door and gave me a sassy smile. “It’s not too late to call it off. Sure I can’t change your mind?”
I shook my head. Taking one, l
ast look in the mirror, I felt pretty for one of the few times in my life. My ivory dress brushed the floor. Light caught the bits of beads that dotted the skirt, making them sparkle. I adjusted the off-the-shoulder sleeves, smoothed the front of the dress, and took a deep, steadying breath. It didn’t help calm me much.
Pat escorted me from the bedroom. Lifting the hem of my dress I started down the stairs before I suddenly realized I’d left my bouquet. Carly was right behind me, holding my roses.
“Got your back,” she said with laughing eyes and a grin full of braces.
One day those dark eyes and that beautiful smile would devastate some poor guy, and his life would never be the same.
“Thanks.” I made my way down the steps.
When I reached the ground floor, I stopped to take in the whole setting. Carly had done a beautiful job planning this wedding.
The family room was awash in Christmas and candlelight. Carly and I had decorated for the holiday, even though no one was really living here now. I’d moved in with Mark the day after I put the house up for sale. We’d sold the couch, recliners, and tables, so the room was empty. It was a perfect place for a small gathering.
There was a Christmas tree in one corner, covered in red and gold bows, lights twinkling in the dim room. Garlands of pine covered the fireplace mantle and glowed with the light from a dozen red candles. Soft music floated around us.
Julie, Abby, and Suzanne were there. Julie looked a bit misty-eyed as she leaned against her husband’s arm. Abby was beaming. So was Suzanne. They would finally be able to tell everyone they were trying to fix up on one of their blind dates that they’d made a successful match. I took strength from having my friends close. It was almost like having real sisters.
I nodded to a couple of police officers Mark had introduced to me one night at dinner. I felt bad that I couldn’t remember all their names. One escorted a woman I assumed was his wife. She gave me a goofy little half wave that reminded me so much of myself, I instantly liked her.
Mark stood next to a local judge I’d met when I had her twins as students a few years ago. The blond judge smiled at me and nodded, clutching a small white book.