A Wife for One Year

by Brenda Harlen

  The first major event of the day was the Independence Parade, typically led by local businessmen in period dress to represent each of the Founding Fathers. Then came high school marching bands and majorettes, equestrian riders, tumbling troupes and city officials waving from antique cars. There were also dozens of floats—many of them homemade, as well as fire trucks, pipes and drums bands, church groups, Cub Scouts, local sports teams, motorcycle clubs and service veterans.

  The parade started at the college, proceeded east on College Street, south down Queen, then west on Plymouth, crossing over Main to finish at Arbor Park, where there was face painting and balloon animals for the kids, food vendors for the hungry and market stalls for the shoppers.

  The forecast was for sunny skies all day, but when Kenna came out of her bedroom in a white halter-style sundress with a short skirt that swirled around her knees and thong-style sandals on her feet, Daniel found himself hoping for rain. A cold rain that would force her to put on a jacket to cover up some of the tantalizing skin that was on display—and stop him from sweating every time he looked at her.

  Over the past few days, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time reminding himself to keep his hands off her. But not touching her had done nothing to lessen his desire for her. Even knowing all of the reasons that they needed to maintain the boundaries they’d reestablished couldn’t stop him from wanting her.

  They managed to squeeze through the crowd and secure a viewing spot in front of the Sweet Dream Inn near the end of the parade route. After the procession had passed, they followed everyone else to the park. Because it was inevitable that they would run into friends or family, they walked hand in hand, maintaining the illusion that they were happy newlyweds.

  Not that he was unhappy. On the contrary, his marriage to Kenna had given him exactly what he wanted, at least with respect to his business venture. Garrett/Slater Racing was no longer a dream but a reality. His personal life was another matter entirely.

  His friendship with Kenna seemed to be back on solid ground, and he was grateful for that. But living in close proximity with the woman who was his wife and having to pretend that he didn’t want more from her than the friendship they’d always shared was a lot more difficult than he would have imagined.

  As they meandered through the crowd, they stopped now and again to exchange a few words with people they knew. They crossed paths with Lisa Seabrook, a former runner-up for the Miss North Carolina title whom Daniel had dated a few years back—when she was still Lisa Jensen—and her husband, Warren; chatted with Jennifer James—better known as JJ, the event planner who had helped with his parents’ fortieth anniversary in May; and briefly discussed vacation plans with Elaine Cole, the principal of South Ridge High School, who was enjoying her first full week of the summer holiday.

  “There’s Becca,” Kenna said, spotting her sister in line with a group of friends waiting to get ice cream.

  “She’s maneuvering well on her crutches,” Daniel noted.

  “She’s had a lot of practice,” Kenna told him.

  “When does she start physio?”

  “Not until the cast is off—hopefully in another couple of weeks. Of course, Sue Ellen has already told her she better figure out the bus route because she’s not giving up any shifts at the diner to chauffeur her around.”

  “Which means that you’ll rearrange your schedule as much as possible to be the chauffeur.”

  “I don’t mind,” Kenna said. “I remember how much I hated taking the bus when I was a teenager.”

  “But you took three different buses every day to get to school,” he remembered.

  “Yeah,” she said, and sighed.

  “What did I say that put those shadows in your eyes?”

  “It wasn’t you. I was just thinking about the call I got from Dean MacLennan. Becca’s midterm marks weren’t high enough to get her in. Technically, her application should be rejected, but he said he’d take another look after her final exam results are in if she’ll also write an essay outlining her reasons for wanting to attend Hillfield.”

  “So why do you sound worried?”

  “Because I’m not sure she does want to attend Hillfield. She just filled out the application to get me off her back.”

  “You can’t make her choices for her,” he reminded her gently.

  “I know. I also know that Hillfield would be really good for her, but I don’t think she’ll even consider it so long as Todd’s in the picture. Not that I was going to admit that to Dean MacLennan.”

  “I’m surprised the dean didn’t try to bribe you,” Daniel said. “Guaranteed acceptance for Becca if you’d be willing to teach at your alma mater.”

  Before she’d taken the job at South Ridge, he knew that she’d interviewed at Hillfield Academy and been offered a position. There was no doubt that the money and the working environment would both have been better than what she had at SRHS, but she’d chosen to go back to the south-side high school because she believed the students there needed her more.

  “He did,” she admitted to him now. “But, recent evidence to the contrary, I’m not easily bribed.”

  “You were easy,” he teased. “Just not cheap.”

  “Imagine if North Carolina was a community property state,” she bantered back.

  He just grinned and swung a companionable arm across her shoulders. Her very warm shoulders. He lifted his hand and noticed her skin was showing definite signs of being in the sun.

  “We should find some shade,” he suggested. “Your skin’s looking a little red.”

  “I brought the sunscreen so I could reapply, and I completely forgot.” She dug into her purse for a travel-size bottle and handed it to him. “I can’t reach my back—can you do it for me?”

  She didn’t wait for a reply but turned so that he was facing her back. Her slim, shapely back.

  “Daniel?” she prompted.

  He flipped open the cap and squirted lotion onto his hand.

  It’s Kenna, he reminded himself. My best friend.

  The internal reprimand was supposed to refocus his thoughts, to remind him of the boundaries of their relationship. Unfortunately, his body chose to focus in another direction, and stirred in response to the reminder that she was also the woman who had been gloriously naked in bed with him not so long ago.

  He laid his palm on her back, and she gasped in protest as the cool lotion contacted her heated skin.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  He squirted some more lotion on his palm, but rubbed his hands together to warm it a little before he slicked it onto her skin. His hands moved over her, massaging it in. His thumbs followed the ridges of her spine, then his hands stroked outward, over her shoulders, down her arms.

  “Oh, that feels good,” she told him.

  Yeah, it did. And he knew he could help both of them feel a lot better—

  Nope—not going there.

  He lifted his hands away. “That should help,” he said, handing her back the lotion.

  “Thanks.” She dropped the bottle into her purse, then bent down to adjust her sandal. As she did, her bottom brushed against his already semi-hard and aching groin.

  She quickly straightened up and turned to face him, a questioning look on her face.

  He shrugged. “I’m human, and you’re soft and warm and sexy.”

  “You give more mixed signals than a turn arrow pointing the wrong direction on a one-way street.”

  “I never said I didn’t want you.”

  “You just don’t want to want me,” she remembered.

  “I’m trying not to blur the lines of our relationship.”

  “What relationship would that be—our friendship or our marriage?”

  “Both.”

  “Your call,” she said. “But from
where I’m standing, the lines are already blurred.”

  “Because we had sex?”

  She nodded. “You can’t undo that, no matter how much you might want to.”

  “I don’t want to,” he told her.

  “So why are we both fighting against what we want?”

  “Up until two weeks ago, you were a virgin,” he reminded her. “And while I hope you enjoyed the experience, I have trouble believing that the one experience was so earth-shattering you can’t wait to repeat it.”

  “That’s my point,” she told him. “I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman with exactly one sexual experience. I’d kind of like to expand on that.”

  He scowled. “What are you saying?”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever have a normal relationship with a man. Every time someone touched me, I thought about Blake’s hands on me, because that was the only experience I had.

  “Now that I’ve been with you, I know sex is about pleasure. And I was hoping that having more pleasurable sex would help me feel more comfortable about physical intimacy, so that the next time I’m with someone else, I’ll be able to relax and enjoy it.”

  His brows drew together. “Let me get this straight—you want to have a lot of sex with me so that you’ll feel comfortable having sex with other guys?”

  “I’m not planning on having sex with anyone else while we’re married,” she said, as if that should appease him.

  It didn’t.

  “I can’t stand the idea of you being with anyone else,” he admitted.

  “Make up your mind,” she suggested. “Now you don’t like the idea of me having sex with anyone else, but a couple of weeks ago you weren’t too pleased to find out that I hadn’t had sex with anyone else.”

  “I was just surprised to learn that my wife was a virgin,” he reminded her.

  “You used to tease me all the time about getting naked, and now that I want to get naked, you’re backing away.”

  As he’d said to her at the beginning of this insane conversation, he was only human.

  “Not anymore,” he promised, and pulled her into his arms.

  Chapter Eleven

  Finally, Kenna thought, as Daniel’s mouth crushed down on hers.

  But her eyes had barely started to close when a familiar voice called out, “There are the happy newlyweds.”

  Daniel lifted his head and looked into Kenna’s eyes. “I’m going to kill him,” he muttered.

  The “him” in question was his cousin Ryan.

  “I’ll post your bail,” she promised.

  But lucky for Ryan, he wasn’t alone. He’d brought his cousin Tristyn as part of his search party.

  “Search party?” Daniel said.

  “The moms said no one could eat until everyone was there, so we split up into search parties.”

  “For real?” Kenna asked.

  Tristyn’s dark green eyes sparkled as she nodded. “We headed north, Braden and Dana went south, Justin and Jordyn took east, and Lauryn and Rob west.”

  “You should text the others to let them know we found them,” Ryan told his cousin.

  “We weren’t lost,” Daniel pointed out.

  “But you weren’t at the picnic site, and the rest of us are hungry.”

  Daniel looked at Kenna, sincere regret in his eyes. “I guess we better go eat.”

  She took his hand. “If you play your cards right, maybe I’ll go home with you later.”

  * * *

  It was a tradition for all of the Garretts to gather in the park for a potluck meal—not just Daniel’s parents and his brothers, but all of his aunts, uncles and cousins.

  Kenna had always thought it was interesting that David Garrett had three brothers and that each of those brothers had three children. The oldest of his brothers was Edward, and Kenna had met him and his wife, Mary, only once, several years ago, when they came to Charisma for a visit before heading off to see the world. Unfortunately, they ran into a storm as they were sailing around Cape Horn and they both drowned, leaving behind their three sons—Matthew, Jackson and Lukas—in Pinehurst, New York.

  The next-oldest brother was John, and he and his wife, Ellen, also had three sons: Braden, Justin and Ryan. Then there was David, who, with Jane, had Andrew, Nathan and Daniel. And finally Thomas and Susan, who had broken the pattern by having three daughters—Lauryn, Tristyn and Jordyn—instead of sons.

  The search parties had all returned and the tables were all set when Kenna and Daniel arrived, along with Tristyn and Ryan. Andrew’s daughter, Maura—her face painted to look like a butterfly, complete with antennae on the headband that held her wispy blond hair away from her face—came racing over to hug both Daniel and Kenna. “I’m so glad you were found.”

  Daniel just sighed.

  The senior Garrett brothers—David, John and Thomas—went to the barbecue area to get the hamburgers and sausages they’d preordered.

  The Fireman’s Picnic was another Fourth of July tradition. Members of the local ladder companies served up various barbecue items with all of the proceeds going to benefit the children’s wing of Mercy Hospital. Some families brought their own portable grills to avoid the long lineups at the Fireman’s Picnic, but the Garretts always supported the fundraiser.

  While the dads were hunting for meat, as they liked to refer to their task, the moms—Jane, Ellen and Susan—set out the rest of the food.

  There was a lot of food: tangy coleslaw, pasta salad, green salad, baked beans, spicy potato wedges, tater tots (because Maura had said “pretty please” and her soon-to-be mom couldn’t say no even though there were other potatoes on the menu) and corn bread muffins. For dessert there was ripe juicy watermelon and vanilla cupcakes festively decorated with red and blue sprinkles.

  Conversation flowed as freely as the nonalcoholic punch, and Kenna found herself enjoying the family dynamics as much as the meal. She was particularly fascinated by the men—their interactions with one another and the women. Until she met Daniel, she’d never had a steady male presence in her life. Sue Ellen had occasionally brought home her boyfriends, but none of them had hung around for very long.

  In direct contrast to that, David and Jane Garrett had been married for forty years, had raised three children together and still held hands. Kenna knew they didn’t agree on everything all the time, but at the end of the day, they supported one another and stood together—and that was the kind of marriage Kenna hoped to have with someone someday.

  In the meantime, she loved being part of Daniel’s family. His parents had always accepted her presence without question. That would change, she knew, when they ended their marriage and she was no longer just his friend but his ex-wife. Even if she and Daniel were able to maintain their friendship, as they’d vowed to do, she suspected that she would be persona non grata as far as the rest of his family was concerned. But she pushed that thought aside for now, refusing to let it put a damper on her day.

  When everyone had eaten their fill, the leftover food was packed away and blankets were spread out on the ground for the fireworks display. Now that the sun had gone down, the air was quite a bit cooler and Kenna regretted not having the foresight to bring a sweater. Until Daniel wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest, sharing his body heat.

  “I have a sweatshirt in the car,” he told her. “Do you want me to go get it?”

  “No, this is good,” she said, because the feeling of being in his arms warmed her more effectively than anything else could. And the thought of what they would do when they got home later heated her all the way to her core.

  “So I was wondering,” he said, his voice pitched so that no one else could overhear what he was saying.

  “About what?”

  “What you have on beneath that skirt.”<
br />
  She turned her head to look at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Since the morning that I inadvertently discovered your lingerie supply, I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about your underwear,” he admitted. “And even more so since I walked into the laundry room and found several interesting garments on display.”

  “Delicates are supposed to hang to dry,” she told him, grateful for the falling darkness that disguised the rising color in her cheeks.

  “I’m not complaining,” he assured her. “I just wanted you to know, since we’ve agreed that we’re no longer ignoring the attraction between us, how much I appreciate your choice of undergarments. Especially the pale pink panties with the little ruffle at the back.”

  He had to know that just talking about her underwear was turning her on, and she decided two could play that game. “You mean the ones I’m wearing tonight?” she asked sweetly.

  “Are you?”

  She tapped a finger to her lip, as if trying to remember. “Or did I put on the dark blue ones with the little strings that tie at the hips?”

  He slid his hands down her thighs to the bottom of her dress. “Are you deliberately trying to torture me?”

  “Are you feeling...tortured?”

  “Among other things,” he said, as his fingers toyed with the flirty hem of her skirt. “I think this is nearly as short as that little skirt you used to wear in high school.”

  “That little skirt was school uniform,” she reminded him.

  He nibbled on her earlobe. “I used to fantasize about sliding my hands underneath it.”

  “I’m sure you had your hands under plenty of skirts at Hillfield.”

  “But not yours,” he said, his fingertips skimming upward again, beneath her skirt this time.

  She sucked in a breath. “You seem to have found your way there now.”

  “I’m trying to make up for lost time.”