She shut the door before she gave into her urges. To take her mind off her troubles with Henry, she packed up more boxes then got on her computer and ordered maternity clothes. Lots of maternity clothes. When that didn’t work she met Spence for dinner. He ate crab and lobster and she ordered steak, medium-well, because she’d read that pregnant women shouldn’t eat shellfish or rare meat. They talked about growing up across the yard from each other and she felt herself relax more than she had in weeks.
Later that night, as Spence pulled his car to a stop in front of the carriage house, he turned to her and said, “I was thinking about something the other day.”
She was almost afraid to ask. “What?”
“My brother and sister are having a baby. That makes me both a maternal and paternal uncle. I bet there aren’t too many people who can say that.” He thought a moment. “Well, not in this generation of Whitleys, anyway.”
He made her laugh and she would have invited him inside, but she knew he didn’t want to be near his mother. Not even in the same zip code, which was fine with Vivien. Spence had exhausted her brain and all she wanted was her bed. The minute her head hit the pillow, she fell into a deep peaceful sleep until the doorbell woke her the next morning. She grabbed her robe and walked down the stair. Her hair was a mess and she needed a shower. She was going to have to insist—again—that Henry call or text before he came over, but it wasn’t Henry standing on her porch, sunlight glistening within the deep luster of the family pearls.
“I wanted to hand deliver this personally.” Nonnie shoved a white envelope at her.
“What is it?”
“You’ll have to open it to find out.” She turned on the heels of her sensible pumps and moved toward the garage, the tail of her peach scarf flapping in her wake. Vivien watched her jump in her Cadillac before she stepped inside the house and closed the door. She looked at the envelope in her hand, almost afraid to open it, afraid Nonnie had found some way to evict her.
It wasn’t an eviction notice, though. It was a card with a stork holding an umbrella on the front, and It’s a Baby Shower printed across the top. Inside the card, Nonnie had written the time and date and location for the baby shower of Vivien Rochet and baby Whitley-Shuler.
She wouldn’t have been more surprised if the card had turned into dynamite and exploded in her face, Wile E. Coyote style.
A baby shower? For her? This had to be a joke.
It wasn’t a joke. Just a really bad nightmare. Vivien sat on a white wicker chair, surrounded by cupcakes with candy rattles, stacks of gifts wrapped in baby-shower paper, and the Episcopalian ladies from her mother’s church. They all wore sun hats and sipped tea in Nonnie’s rose garden like this was all somehow normal.
“Your mother would be so happy,” one of them said. “It’s not like in my day, when girls got sent off if they got pregnant.”
That comment brought a round of commentary ranging from the morals of society today to who’d been sent away “in their day.”
“Oh” and “uh-huh” were Vivien’s contributions to the conversation. She kept her smile in place. She was an actress. She could do this.
“I remember my first child. I was so sick I had to get better to die,” someone else said, which turned the conversation into a competition over who’d been the sickest.
“Oh.” Vivien drank tea and ate a cupcake and wondered what the hell was going on. She glanced at Nonnie several chairs away, but her smile was stuck in place, too, like she wasn’t anymore a happy hostess than Vivien was the guest of honor.
They were both faking it, tacitly keeping up the charade as Vivien opened gifts of handmade quilts and knitted booties and a kit to mold her baby’s hands that looked so creepy she hid it beneath a blanket.
“When I gave birth, I didn’t take drugs to block the pain. I had my children the way God intended. Just me, the doctor, and several nurses.” She paused her childbirth horror story long enough to take a sip of tea. “And the woman screaming down the hallway like someone cut her arm off.”
“I tore something fierce.”
“Uh-huh.” Vivien tried to block those comments from entering her brain as she blessedly opened the last gift. A handheld breast pump.
“You’re going to nurse that baby, aren’t you?”
She feared an incorrect answer. “I believe so.”
“Good. Best to get your nipples all toughened up now as later.”
She raised her hands to her breasts. She didn’t want tough nipples. Now or later. What was wrong with these women? Was Nonnie’s purpose in having this party to torture Vivien with harrowing stories from old church ladies? If it had been her goal, it was working.
She folded the wrapping paper because they seemed to expect her to keep it. She’d been at the party for two hours now and figured it was time to make her escape. She gave a tired sigh and even faked a big yawn to set up her getaway.
“Thank you ladies so much,” she said sincerely.
“You have one more gift,” Nonnie pointed out.
Vivien glanced around, expecting to see another gift wrapped in paper, but the only thing sitting on the table was a wooden box. “This?”
“Yes.”
The box barely filled both palms and had different wood inlays. It was beautiful, but when she tried to open it, she couldn’t. She turned it upside down and looked at it from every angle. She shook it and heard something rattle inside.
“What is it?” someone asked.
Vivien smiled. “It’s a puzzle box.” Henry. It suddenly became clear who was really behind the baby shower. “If y’all will excuse me, I need to rest.” She thanked everyone again and carried as many gifts as she was able across the yard. The wooden box sat on top of the breast pump, and once inside the carriage house, she tossed everything but Henry’s gift on a clean spot on the sofa, then moved to the kitchen table. She sat in the same chair she’d sat in as a girl, and skimmed her fingertips across the wood, which had been carefully sanded until it was as smooth as satin. She’d been fairly good at opening Henry’s boxes as a kid, but after an hour, she figured she must have lost her touch. She slid one piece of tiger wood one way and walnut another. One strip up, another down. Back, forth—up, down, and just when she felt like getting a hammer and smashing the beautiful box, she heard a soft click. A victorious smile curved her lips and anticipation pumped through her veins.
A weathered cork sat inside the box lined with green velvet. It had turned a darker brown and was a little shriveled, but the name Moet & Chandon was still clearly visible.
Vivien reached inside and pulled out her mother’s cork. The one she’d searched for in the bed of red impatiens. To anyone else, it was nothing. Just a weathered piece of nothing. To Vivien, it was everything.
Henry turned off the shop lights and locked the door behind him. Vivien’s baby shower should have been over hours ago. He had no idea what usually took place at a baby shower, but he hoped like hell his mother had behaved herself.
As if thinking of his mother had conjured her up, Nonnie’s Cadillac turned into his driveway. After his little chat he’d had with his mother, he hoped she’d been nice to Vivien. Or had, at least, faked it. If not, he was going to stick to his promise of cutting her out his life.
The car pulled to a stop and the door swung open. Instead of his mother’s tall, boney frame, Vivien stepped out.
“You wouldn’t happen to know why your mother threw me a baby shower, would you?”
“Wouldn’t know a thing about that.” For a second he thought something must have gone wrong, but she smiled and the knot between his shoulders relaxed. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because she’s such a warm-hearted woman.”
“Thank you,” she said through her smile. “But next time, don’t leave the guest list to Nonnie.”
Next time.
She held out her hand and the old cork he’d found for her rested in her palm. “Thank you for this, too. This is the best gift anyone has ever given
me.”
“It’s not exactly gold.”
“It’s better.” She stared at him, solemn as a judge. “I love you, Henry.”
He placed his hand on her arm and slid it up soft skin to her shoulder. “Are you just saying that because I’m charming and rescued your cork before the new owners moved into the row house?”
“No. I love you because you’re a good man and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop loving you.”
He pulled her against his chest where she belonged and looked down into her upturned face. “I’ve missed you like crazy. You’re sunshine and honey. Whiskey in a teacup, and everything I want in my life.” He pushed her hair behind her ear. “I love you, Vivien Leigh. I loved you before the baby. I love you even more now. I would do anything for you. Give you anything. I want you. I want us. I want—”
“Shhh. . . . Henry.” She rose onto the balls of her feet. “Just kiss me.”
Henry, being a Southern gentleman, gave the lady what she wanted.
Chapter 22
The Diary of Vivien Leigh Rochet
Keep out! Do NOT read under Penalty of Death!!
Dear Diary,
I’d forgotten that I’d written you so long ago until I found the three spiral notebooks in the back of my closet. I started with the first and read every word. I’d forgotten the thirteen-year-old girl who wrote about drama and heartache. I remember her now and it’s a little embarrassing to be reminded of my apparent obsession over getting breasts, boyfriends, and my future husbands. I didn’t marry Justin Timberlake. I married someone better.
SHOCK ALERT #1 Spence Whitley-Shuler is my brother!!!! He won’t do my chores,☹ but he gives the best hugs. ☺ He’s not as stupid as I used to think, just restless.
SHOCKER ALERT #2 Henry Whitley-Shuler is my husband!!!! He can fix stuff ☺ and he smells good.☺☺ He’s not as scary as he used to be, just more handsome.
SHOCKER ALERT #3 The Mantis is my mother-in-law. ☹☺ To date, she has not bitten anyone’s head off—that I know of!!! She’s not as mean as she used to be, just resigned to faking it.
SHOCKER ALERT #4 Henry and I are having a baby girl. We’re naming her Macy, after Momma. I had to learn to accept momma’s faults and love her for who she was to me. She was a kind and loving woman whose big dreams set my feet on the path to my life today.
Dreams that Came True List
1. I am an actress—duh
2. Pool
3. Wear bra like other girls
4. I know my daddy’s people
5. The man who loves me and doesn’t give stuffed dogs and lifesavers to other girls
About the Author
RACHEL GIBSON began her fiction career at age sixteen, when she ran her car into the side of a hill, retrieved the bumper, and drove to a parking lot, where she strategically scattered the car’s broken glass all about. She told her parents she’d been the victim of a hit-and-run and they believed her. She’s been making up stories ever since, although she gets paid better for them nowadays.
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By Rachel Gibson
Just Kiss Me
Lola Carlyle Reveals All
It Must Be Love
Military Men Series
What I Love About You
Blue By You
Run To You
Chinook Hockey Team Series
Any Man of Mine
Nothing But Trouble
True Love and Other Disasters
The Trouble With Valentine’s Day
See Jane Score
Simply Irresistible
Writer Friends Series
Not Another Bad Date
Tangled Up In You
I’m In No Mood For Love
Sex, Lies, and Online Dating
Lovett, Texas Series
I Do!
Crazy On You
Rescue Me
Daisy’s Back in Town
Gospel, Texas Series
The Trouble With Valentine’s Day
True Confessions
Truly, Idaho Series
Tangled Up In You
What I Love About You
Truly Madly Yours
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
just kiss me. Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Gibson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2016 ISBN: 9780062247438
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062247421
first edition
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