Suddenly a Bride

by Ruth Ann Nordin

  The pain in Chris’ chest worsened. She wouldn’t keep what he bought her even though she kept what Randy gave her?

  “What?” she screamed. “But we don’t have $35,000!” She gave Chris a look that told him she wasn’t happy with him before she shouted into the phone, “You bet we’re returning them! I just got rid of my last credit card. I refuse to be in bondage to another one!”

  Chris thought he could get upset since she’d so blatantly rejected him, but the pain in his chest sharpened and all he could do was sit there, hoping massaging it would make the pain go away as it’d done before.

  “Where’s the jewelry?” Caitlyn asked him.

  He tried to answer but the words wouldn’t come out. It felt as if his heart was splitting in two, and he could feel the bond between them wavering.

  “Chris?”

  “In the nightstand,” he managed. “By my side of the bed.”

  She ran to the bedroom.

  Gritting his teeth as the pain spread outward to other areas of his body, he became aware that the bond wasn’t only wavering but it was dimming. He knew what was happening; he just didn’t want to believe it. He’d heard of men who died from broken hearts on his world, but he couldn’t believe a thing like that could literally happen. He clutched his chest and tried to steady his breathing. If he could just get enough oxygen, it might ease the pain. Then he could sit and talk to her and figure out exactly what was going on. It couldn’t be as bad as he feared. Surely, she could love him and not want to marry him in front of other people or wear the ring and necklace he bought her. As much as he tried to reason these things to himself, the bond grew weaker.

  Caitlyn returned with the jewelry box in her hand. When she saw him, she dropped the phone and box and ran over to him. He tried to speak but couldn’t. He felt her hands on his face and chest while she called out something he couldn’t decipher. His vision blurred, but he was sure she ran back to the phone. She returned to him while she talked into the phone and checked his pulse. Then everything grew dark and silent, and the only thing keeping the bond intact was the fact that she was holding him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Caitlyn couldn’t believe this was happening. After the ambulance came and took him to the hospital, she had to wait while the hospital staff tended to him. It brought back all the trips to the hospital she and Randy went to, and she couldn’t stop crying because she worried the doctor would tell her the same thing he’d told her the last time she’d been here: that her husband was dead. She couldn’t go through this again. She thought Chris was so healthy he wouldn’t have a heart attack. With the way he made everything on his world sound, she figured he’d outlive her.

  Sniffing back her tears, she called Mark, grateful Chris had programmed the number into her phone. When Mark picked up, she asked, “Is there something on this planet that makes your kind sick? Like germs in the atmosphere or something?”

  “No,” he replied. “Our bodies are physically compatible with Earth. Why?”

  As much as she tried not to cry, her voice broke when she said, “Chris just had a heart attack.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks but they kept coming. “I don’t get it. This morning, he was fine, and then when I got home, he collapsed on the floor and…and now he’s at the hospital, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She sat down in the waiting room and ignored the looks she got from others who entered through the door of the emergency room. “I don’t know what to do, Mark.”

  “Which hospital are you at?”

  She told him.

  “I’ll be right there. If you get a chance to talk to him, you need to tell him you love him, okay? I’ll explain why when I see you.”

  She thought that was a strange thing for Chris’ friend to say but agreed and hung up. She debated calling her mother and letting the meddling woman know what she’d done but resisted the urge to go into a meltdown in front of other people. It was bad enough she couldn’t stop crying and they kept glancing her way.

  “Mrs. West?” a nurse called out.

  Standing up, Caitlyn hurried over to the desk. “Yes?”

  “We need you to fill out these forms.”

  Disappointed that she hadn’t been called back, she took the clipboard with the papers on it and returned to her seat, trying her best to answer the questions on it through the blur of tears that made it hard to read anything. Her hands shook so badly her writing turned out to be more of a scribble, but she managed through it and went to return the forms when they said she could see Chris.

  As she followed the nurse through the emergency corridor, she asked, “Is he okay?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine. We gave him some medicine, so he’s asleep but he’s stable,” she answered with a sympathetic smile. “We’ll know more when the test results come back.”

  Nodding, Caitlyn thanked her and entered the small room the nurse pointed to. The nurse closed the door and Caitlyn turned her attention to Chris who was, indeed, asleep while an IV pumped fluid into his arm and a machine monitored his heart. Reminding herself that the nurse said he was okay now, she gathered enough strength to pull up a chair next to his bed.

  She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I love you, Chris. I don’t want to spend my life without you. I know everything happened so fast, what with you being from another planet and all, but you filled a void in my life no one else can.” Sighing, she brushed the hair from his eyes and caressed his cheek. “Please don’t leave me.”

  Another tear trickled down her cheek so she brushed it away. A knock at the door caught her attention. After she called out for the person to enter, the door opened and Mark indicated that he wanted to talk to her outside the room. With a nod, she stood up and kissed Chris on the forehead.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told him.

  When she left the room, Mark closed the door and led her outside the building where they could talk in private. She didn’t expect him to act so serious, and this worried her. Was he about to give her bad news?

  “Do you want to sit?” He motioned to a bench.

  She shook her head and crossed her arms to get ready for whatever he had to say. “No. I’m fine standing.”

  “Okay. How much do you know about the bonding that occurred when you became Chris’ life mate?”

  Taking a deep breath, she thought over everything Chris had told her. “Well, uh, it’s permanent. It allows him to know when I’m ovulating, which is why I got pregnant right away. It ensures fidelity since anyone who touches me or Chris with sexual intent will get burned.” She shrugged. “That’s all I really know about it.”

  “It also makes some men from our world emotionally vulnerable to the woman they’ve bonded with. If we don’t feel loved, the life-mate bond can be severed, and if that happens, we die of a broken heart. This is why I didn’t request a life mate when I came here. I needed to be sure the woman I picked wanted to be with me before establishing a bond with her. Chris chose to have his life mate selected for him.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would feeling unloved have anything to do with his heart attack? We’ve been getting along great, and I told him this morning I loved him.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “No. Everything’s been wonderful. Well, except for my mom, but that has nothing to do with Chris.”

  “Tell me about your mom.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “She’s pulling the same stunt she used to pull when I was married to Randy. She arranged for a wedding behind my back, and when I told her I didn’t want it, she called Chris up to give him one of her sob stories.”

  “Could one of these sob stories imply you didn’t love him because you didn’t want to have a wedding?”

  Her jaw dropped. “I wouldn’t put it past her to sink that low. Are you telling me he believed her?”

  “I was at the wedding rehearsal today, and a rumor was going around you married Chris because you got pregnant.”

  She rolled her eyes. �
��I can’t help it if babies grow faster in the womb on your planet than on mine.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt you got pregnant after the bonding took place. Once we have sex with a woman, we’re bonded to her for life, and that bond marries the couple into a permanent relationship. But your family doesn’t know this, so your mom was trying to convince everyone there that this was a renewal of your wedding vows and that you and Chris had eloped to Las Vegas six months ago without telling anyone. She was horrified the rumor about your marrying Chris because you were pregnant even started, but I know who started it. It was someone named Andy.”

  Caitlyn groaned. “Andy was my brother-in-law. He wanted to be with me, but I picked his brother instead and he’s been making snide remarks about me ever since.”

  “Well, Andy implied that you might divorce Chris someday.”

  Heat rose to her cheeks as her anger resurfaced. “What?”

  “I told Chris to talk to you and get that all resolved.”

  “He didn’t have time. When I came home, he was on the phone with my meddling mother, and I had to hang up on her. Then I found out he spent $35,000 on a wedding ring and necklace my mother picked out, and…” She gasped. “Oh no.”

  “‘Oh no’ what?”

  “Chris kept saying he wanted a wedding, but I thought it was because he wanted to please my mom.”

  “Your mother made weddings sound very important at the rehearsal. According to her, it guarantees you love Chris.”

  That was why he was arguing with her over having the wedding. She groaned. “I suppose when I told him we were returning the ring and necklace, he took that to mean I didn’t love him?”

  “Chris is more sensitive than some men on our world, so I would assume he took that the wrong way. I don’t blame you for returning $35,000 worth of jewelry. I knew he was picking out a wedding ring, but I thought he wouldn’t go higher than a couple months’ worth of salary.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted it because my mother picked it out. I already know she’s the one who talked him into that outrageous price. It’s because Lexie’s fiancé spent $30,000 on her ring, earrings, and necklace. You see why my mom has to be stopped? She’s impossible. And no matter how much I tried to stand up to her in the past, it didn’t work because Randy would take her side.” Running her fingers through her hair, she asked, “You don’t think Chris will do the same thing Randy did, do you?”

  “Not if he knows how much it’ll mean to you that he doesn’t.”

  She hoped he was right because Randy didn’t listen to how important it was to her that he side with her.

  “He will, Caitlyn. He wants nothing more than to see you happy, and your mom doesn’t make you happy.”

  “No, she doesn’t.” Taking a deep breath, she wiped the rest of the tears from her eyes. “Is there anything else I need to know about Chris so he doesn’t have another heart attack or some other health issue?”

  “Just assure him you love him when you have an argument.”

  She chuckled. “You haven’t had fights with a woman, have you?”

  He shook his head.

  “When you do, you’ll understand when you’re in the heat of the moment, you don’t feel like saying ‘I love you’. Chris needs to know that fighting is normal. It doesn’t mean you don’t love someone; it just means they are annoying you at the moment.”

  Mark laughed. “I guess I’ll learn that when I get a life mate.”

  “You want to see if he’s awake?”

  “For a moment, but he’ll need to be alone with you so he can feel secure in your bond again.”

  Nodding, she led him back inside the building and to Chris’ room. When she opened the door, he opened his eyes. Relieved to see that he was awake, she ran over to him and held his hand.

  Chris’ eyebrows furrowed. “Where am I?”

  “In a hospital,” she said. “I called Mark to find out what was happening to you. You scared me, Chris. I thought I was going to lose you.”

  “You did?” he asked her, squeezing her hand.

  Mark walked over to them and tapped Chris’ chest. “Next time you feel any discomfort there, you have to talk to Caitlyn. You can’t keep your feelings to yourself, okay?”

  “Okay,” Chris replied.

  “I’ll leave so the two of you can talk.”

  “Thanks, Mark,” she called after him as he closed the door behind him. She sat down and rubbed Chris’ arm. “Why didn’t you tell me you could have a heart attack if you don’t feel loved?”

  Chris shrugged. “I thought it wasn’t possible. I heard stories from my world, but I thought the stories were exaggerated because it didn’t seem physically possible that emotions could lead to a fatality.”

  “If there’s something bothering you, you have to tell me, okay?”

  “Your mom said not to tell you about the wedding because it was supposed to be a surprise. She said it would make you happy, and I wanted to make you happy.”

  Sighing, she kissed his hand. “Chris, my mother’s surprises don’t make me happy. They never did. She used to manipulate Randy into surprising me, and it caused a lot of problems between us.”

  “You had problems with Randy?”

  “Of course, I did. Every couple has their problems, but that doesn’t mean they stop loving each other. I love you, Chris. Nothing’s going to make me stop loving you. I’m sorry you thought I stopped loving you earlier tonight.”

  He swallowed and said, “I heard some women fall out of love with their husbands and thought when you didn’t want to have a wedding, you didn’t love me enough to say vows with me in front of your family and friends. Then you didn’t want my ring and necklace.”

  “It wasn’t the wedding or the jewelry I was opposed to. It was my mother’s wedding and her jewelry I didn’t want. Do you understand the difference?”

  “I think so. I told her she should let you pick out your own dress. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have wanted the one she picked for you?”

  “No.” Rolling her eyes, she could only imagine what kind of dress her mother would pick for her. “She knows her tastes aren’t like mine, and yet she keeps imposing her will on me. I don’t want her to run our lives.”

  “I don’t want that either.”

  “So you understand why we can’t go through with the wedding and why I can’t keep the jewelry?”

  “Yes.”

  Sensing, his hesitation, she asked, “What is it?”

  “I want a wedding, and I want to give you jewelry, at least a ring. You had those things with Randy. Don’t you want them with me?”

  For the first time, his desire to wear jeans, t-shirts, and a goatee made sense to her. “Chris, are you worried that I loved Randy more than I love you?”

  “You chose to marry him. With me, it just happened to you.”

  Unable to stop her wry grin, she said, “Yeah, but what a way for it to happen.”

  His lips turned up into a smile and he chuckled. “You were so beautiful in that diner.”

  “You know, if you had asked me out, I would have said yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. You were one of the nicest men I’d ever met. You didn’t need a hormone to convince me to be with you. Well, I wouldn’t have had sex with you like I did, but I would have gone out with you.”

  His smile widened so she leaned forward and kissed him.

  “We’ll have a wedding, and when we return my mom’s ring and necklace, I want you to pick out what you’d like me to wear.”

  “I’d like that, Caitlyn.”

  “I don’t want my mother to be a part of it, though. I want to let her know that she can’t keep meddling in our lives. She won’t like it when she finds out, but I need you to be united with me on this. Maybe knowing we will do things our own way without her opinion will get her to stop controlling our lives.”

  “I won’t let her talk me into anything else.”

  At that point, Randy would hesitate, but Chris didn�
�t and that made her hopeful that this time her mother wouldn’t come between them. “Thank you, Chris.”

  The door opened and the doctor walked in. Still holding Chris’ hand, she turned her attention to the doctor who offered a smile. “How are you feeling?” he asked Chris.

  “Great,” Chris said, running his thumb over the back of her hand.

  The doctor flipped through his chart. “I can’t explain it, but all the tests came back negative. There’s nothing I can find wrong with you. I still want to keep you here overnight to monitor how things are going, and we’ll run a couple of more tests to make sure everything’s working as it should.”

  Chris looked disappointed but nodded.

  Caitlyn was so relieved to hear he checked out okay that she didn’t care. She’d spent many times by Randy’s bedside in the hospital, watching as the Chemo treatments sapped him of his strength. She never wanted to go through anything like that again.

  “We’ll get you upstairs in a bit,” the doctor said before he left.

  After a moment of silence, she asked, “Chris, is there anything else bothering you?”

  “No. Well, kind of.”

  “What is it?”

  He gave a slight shrug. “I shouldn’t be jealous of Randy, should I?”

  “Of course not.” She squeezed his hand. “I loved Randy, and I think of him with fondness. But that has nothing to do with my feelings for you. I love you because you’re you.” She paused. “Chris, what if we have more than one child? Will you love one and not the other?”

  “No. I’ll love them all.”

  “It’s the same thing with you and Randy. I loved him the way he was, and I love you the way you are. I don’t want another Randy.”

  “But you have his things in that trunk.”

  “A trunk?”

  “The one at the bottom of the closet.”

  “Oh.” She blinked in surprise. “I forgot all about it.”

  “You put his picture in there and gave me his clothes from it.”