The Man She Married

by Muriel Jensen

  Jackie, with four children at home, laughed as she picked a slice of Canadian bacon off her pizza and popped it into her mouth. “It’s just the beginning of a plot,” she said after she’d swallowed, “to keep you off balance. And it continues in ever more sophisticated ways as they grow up. I got a call from the Maple Hill Store yesterday.” She smiled as everyone leaned closer to hear her story over the men cheering. “Hank and I have a tab there, and the girls have heard us use it enough times that when they were walking back to school after lunch the other day, Rachel picked up snack treats for their classmates and told Harvey to “put it on the tab.”

  Mariah laughed. “Clever little devil.”

  Jackie cast her a dry side glance. “Yes. Apparently she’d volunteered me to make treats, then when she realized she’d forgotten to ask me until the last minute and knew I’d be upset, she complained to Erica, who got the idea about charging treats.”

  “That shows great resourcefulness,” Camille said with a laugh. “And a willingness to help one another. You have more good things going on there than bad.”

  Haley poured pop into her glass from the large pitcher in the middle of the table. “And early experience with the proper use of credit is good for any woman.”

  Jackie looked horrified. “She bought junk food for her friends!”

  Haley blinked at her vehemence and indicated the empty pizza pans. “Didn’t Gideon and Prue just do that for us?”

  All the women laughed as Jackie swatted her sister-in-law’s arm.

  Haley turned to Prue. “Bart says you two have the A-frame looking great already.”

  “It’s a wonderful house,” Prue agreed, taking the pitcher from her and topping up her own glass. Then she reached across the table to fill her mother’s and sister’s. “And I found some great things at the Bargain Basement. I just have to put some finishing touches around—pictures, flowers.”

  “When’s Gideon’s aunt arriving?” Beazie asked.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “And she thinks the two of you are still together?” Haley asked.

  Prue nodded and grinned at everyone. “And if you help us carry on the charade,” she said, “there’ll be Chinese food for you when she leaves.”

  Mariah waggled her eyebrows. “Wow. How long do you think we can make this work for us? If we convince her you’re sexually insatiable, will you take us to the tea shop for chocolate torte?”

  At the same moment that the women squealed with laughter, the men fell silent. They obviously heard the “sexually insatiable” comment. Seven pairs of male eyes stared at the women.

  “Who’s sexually insatiable?” Bart asked from the other end of the table.

  “No one,” Jackie replied deflatingly. “It’s just a fantasy.”

  Hank laughed. “It certainly is. And not fair taunting us with the suggestion that it exists.”

  The men at the next table got to their feet and cheered a play, redirecting the Wonders’ attention to the television.

  “Boy, are they touchy,” Paris observed, rocking the still-sleeping baby.

  Jackie leaned her chin wearily on her hand. “I work long hours, and with four children we have to schedule the time to be romantic. Romance shouldn’t require so much effort.”

  Mariah nodded. “I know what you mean. We don’t have little ones like you do, but that’s almost worse. It’s hard to find a quiet moment when they can’t just walk in on us.”

  Beazie indicated her baby. “I’m so sleep-deprived, I wouldn’t know a lascivious suggestion if it fell on my head. I’m sure it’s the same for Haley. And you have to put out a newspaper every week. I’d fold if I had to do that.”

  “Henrietta’s a few months older than baby Evan,” Haley said. “She’s starting to sleep through the night and, of course, my mom’s a big help. It’s those late-night deadlines that make me want to sleep for a week—without a man.”

  The sharing went on—the offering of advice, the tricks that worked and didn’t, the comparing of experiences. Prue admired their openness and their lack of judgment. She’d been on fund-raising committees with Mariah and Jackie, but hadn’t really experienced their friendship in a personal way. She felt warmed by it.

  She looked across the table at her sister and found that Randy and her mother had changed places so that Randy sat beside Paris and, with an arm around her, stroked the baby’s head. They talked quietly, anticipating, she imagined, the time when the baby in her arms was their own. Prue turned away.

  Beside them, Jeffrey and Camille were checking their watches, taking a last sip of their coffee, their eyes smiling into one another’s as he helped her on with her jacket. They were so happy together, she thought, they were like the characters in a novel whose love had gone unrequited over most of a lifetime until fate finally brought them together once more.

  Prue experienced a strange sort of disassociation from her mother and her sister. For a year they’d been all each other had. They’d comforted each other, spurred each other on, cheered their victories and softened their defeats.

  But now her mother and her sister each had someone, and Prue was the odd woman out. Their unity would never be challenged, but their lives now had a different emphasis than hers.

  They had families.

  She’d almost had a family, but instead she now had an act, a fantasy.

  A lie.

  The impromptu party began to disperse when her mother and Jeffrey left. Prue and Gideon thanked everyone again, and she watched him give Paris a quick hug, then shake Randy’s hand.

  “I’m so glad you’re my brother-in-law again—” she heard Paris say softly “—if only for a while.”

  “Me, too,” Gideon replied.

  Paris hooked her arm in Prue’s as the four headed out to the parking lot. “Did I tell you I’m selling the cab?” she asked.

  Prue stopped in surprise. She’d felt fairly sure Paris would eventually want to find another line of work so that she’d be available on Randy’s days off, otherwise they’d never see each other. But she hadn’t expected that choice to be made so quickly. She felt an attachment to the cab since she, too, had driven it often.

  “No, you didn’t,” she replied. “To whom? And when?”

  “To Beth Childress, Chilly’s wife.” Paris grinned broadly. “So it’s still sort of in the family. He drove for us the night of your show, remember? She spelled him after the show for a while and liked it. The wedding’s scheduled for Saturday, and she’s taking over Friday.”

  “This Saturday?” Prue gasped.

  Paris nodded, unrealistically calm. “You don’t have to worry about a thing except being there. And if you don’t have time to make up that pumpkin brocade, don’t worry about it. Wear whatever you want to wear. I know how busy you’re going to be with Gideon’s aunt.”

  Prue felt major panic.

  “But…it’s your wedding! I should be organizing a shower, helping you plan, find a house…”

  Paris shrugged as though none of that mattered. “I don’t really care about all that. Though when I do go house-hunting, I hope you’re free to come along. But if you’re not—no biggie.”

  Prue studied her usually methodical sister in concern. “You’re very…relaxed all of a sudden.”

  Paris only smiled wider. “I know. Isn’t it great?” She patted her still-flat stomach. “I feel as though I have everything—a man who loves me and a baby coming—and my time is better spent concentrating on them rather than trying to organize a life that suddenly defies organizing and worrying about things I can’t control. And when you decide what to do after Georgette leaves, I want to be ready to help you. If you don’t mind having a baby in the studio while your PR person makes you known all over the world. Of course, that’ll necessitate you staying here rather than going to New York.”

  Prue stared at her in disbelief. Paris had done a complete about-face from the sister with whom she’d grown up.

  “No, I wouldn’t mind,” she said.
“I’d love that. And when I have to be in New York, you can fax in your work or something.”

  They hugged again, and Prue and Gideon climbed into Gideon’s truck as Paris and Randy headed for his.

  Prue was quiet all the way home, then disappeared into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee while Gideon built a fire. Then she began fussing with the basket and the silk flowers for the library table.

  Looking around for some way to help, he found a box of towels and picked it up. “Downstairs bathroom,” he asked, “or upstairs?”

  “Half and half,” she said. “I’ll need some downstairs tonight, and you’ll need some.”

  “You sleeping down here tonight?” he asked.

  She looked up in surprise. “Of course.”

  “Okay. I just wondered how we’re going to prove to Aunt George that we’re sexually insatiable,” he teased, “if we don’t get in some practice.”

  She made a face at him, understanding the reference to the conversation-stopper in the restaurant.

  “Haley’s the one who came up with that term,” she explained, concentrating hard on the flowers to avoid his eyes. “I promised to take them out for Chinese food when this is over if they play along with our charade. And she wanted to know if we’d take them to the tea shop if they convinced Aunt George that we were…sexually insatiable.”

  “Mmm,” he said, heading off toward the bathroom, then adding over his shoulder, “The tea shop does have a lot of great stuff.”

  They looked through photographs while drinking coffee and selected family photos to leave downstairs, then photos of the two of them to place on the dresser in the bedroom.

  “I’m surprised you saved those,” he said, standing back and watching, coffee in hand, as she placed them one way, then gathered them all up again and started over. “And didn’t even cut me out of them.”

  “They were in the bottom of my closet,” she said, stepping back to admire her arrangement of a cluster of photographs in the middle of the dresser and one on the end. “It wasn’t as though I had to look at them.” She touched a round frame with a photo of his parents. “And I’ll always love your mom and dad.”

  “Mom’s responsible for this game we’re playing,” he reminded her. Actually, it was his fault and not his mother’s, but her insistence that he and Prue would work it out had given him the idea.

  “If it means Prudent Designs will become a competitor in the rag trade,” she said, speaking to the tray of small plants she’d brought upstairs, “then I should be grateful.”

  She placed one of the plants in an old blue and yellow water pitcher she’d bought at the Bargain Basement.

  “There,” she said, apparently satisfied. She looked at the bare space above the bed. “Do you think there should be something up there?”

  “Like what?”

  “A picture or a tapestry?”

  “A picture of what?”

  “I don’t know. Just something to add warmth.” She tilted her head to the side as she studied the blank spot. “A quilt hanging, maybe.”

  “We can look for something when we go back to town for groceries,” he suggested.

  She nodded. “Good idea. Mariah Trent has signs and things on consignment at the Mountain Gallery. We could check there.”

  “Okay. Where are the rest of these plants going?”

  She picked up a Boston fern. “This one’s for the bathroom. It’ll love the steam.” She carried the plant into the bathroom and placed it on a shelf above the towel rack. She came back to pick up the tray. “The rest of these can go downstairs.” She smiled at him stiffly. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll just tidy up a bit down there and go to bed.”

  “Sure.” This was going to be harder than he thought. He was very much aware that he still had strong feelings for her, but they hadn’t controlled him in the old days as much as they seemed to now. He’d had so much to do then, so much responsibility that, though he’d adored her, the weight of his office had demanded much of his focus.

  It was curious, he thought as he followed her downstairs to lock up, that now that he was a few years older, he was more a slave to his libido than he’d been as a younger man.

  Less distracting influences, he guessed. And the proximity. They’d spent so much time apart in the old days, he at the office, seldom home before midnight, she at home or at luncheons or fund-raisers. She’d often been asleep when he’d come home.

  He didn’t remember the sinuous curve of her body as she tipped her head from side to side and stretched her arms in an attempt to relieve weariness. The light and movement in her hair as she ran her fingers through it to catch it up in a clasp she had in her pocket. He guessed she was about to shower.

  He did remember the rose and lavender scent of the stuff she splashed on after she’d dried herself. It surrounded him now as he watched her cross the hall from the downstairs bedroom into the bathroom, a bath towel in hand.

  “Good night,” he called. Then he hurried upstairs, unwilling to let the image form of her wrapped in a towel, slender limbs exposed, the bloom of her breasts peeking out the top.

  “Good night,” she replied.

  The image formed anyway, and for several hours he tossed and turned. He awoke after a scant three or four hours’ sleep to the aroma of coffee brewing and the sounds of activity downstairs. Tired and grumpy, he showered and pulled on jeans and a red sweater, hoping the color would bring him to life. He reached for his watch and keys and was surprised to find only his watch on the dresser. He braced himself to spend another day of frustration with Prue and ran downstairs.

  Prue stood at the stove in beige cords and a pink sweater, her hair French-braided in a coil that stopped just between her shoulder blades. A curved silver barrette held the curly end of it. He gave himself a moment to admire her tight little backside, the edges and strings of a white apron tied around her middle providing a frame for it.

  He went to the coffeepot pretending that he hadn’t been staring at her as she became aware of him. “Good morning,” he said, pouring himself a cup. “What’s cooking?”

  “Stuffed French toast,” she replied, her manner suspiciously sparkling this morning. And that had always been his favorite breakfast. Was she up to something? he wondered. And why shouldn’t she be? He was.

  “Are we celebrating something?” he asked. He topped up the coffee cup on the counter near her elbow. “I’m rehearsing my role,” she said with a smile that had no wry innuendo in it, no suggestion of a snide zinger to follow. “I remember how much you used to like these, so I thought I’d do my best to put you in a mellow mood, too.”

  He looked in surprise at the cream cheese and strawberries on the counter. “You’ve been shopping already?”

  “I ran to my mother’s to get socks this morning,” she said. “Somehow I remembered everything else but that. It was easy to stop by the market on my way back. But we’ll still have to do major grocery shopping this afternoon. I’m sure there are things you’ll want that I don’t know about.”

  “You drove my truck?”

  She pointed to the middle of the table where his car keys rested. “Didn’t get a scratch on it.”

  “Did I leave these down here last night?” he asked, retrieving them.

  She reached into the oven for a plate she’d apparently placed there for warming, put the tantalizingly beautiful French toast on it and carried it to the table for him. “No,” she replied casually. “I went upstairs and got them off your dresser.”

  He was fascinated by the fact that she seemed embarrassed that she’d done it. Frankly, he liked the thought of her tiptoeing into his room while he slept. He’d have liked it better if the sight of him had lured her into climbing in beside him, but there was still time for that. He could afford to be patient.

  “Really.” He took advantage of her mild discomfort and said nothing more. He knew her. That would make her crazy. She liked to deal with things, put them center stage and have it out.

 
That is, she used to before the Maine Incident. Maybe that had changed her.

  “I didn’t take any side trips,” she said, going back to the oven to retrieve her plate. “I parked it far away from other cars in the parking lot and didn’t leave even a gum wrapper inside.”

  He pretended surprise at her defensiveness. “I didn’t say a word. You’re welcome to borrow my truck.”

  She sat at a right angle to him and studied him. “You used to hate it when I borrowed the Porsche.”

  “That’s because you used to pull the seat way up, put the country-western station on the radio and readjust the mirrors. And let’s not forget your tendency to drive on the sidewalk. It’s also not good form when a senator takes a supporter to lunch, reaches into the glove compartment for a pen and pulls out a tampon.”

  “I’m sorry about the tampon,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “And the other things were hardly malicious. I just forgot to change them back for you when I parked.”

  He shrugged. “At this point, I don’t care about it. And I told you to keep the Porsche after you left in it.”

  She looked momentarily nonplussed. “Then what are we arguing about?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I think that was a lot of our problem most of the time. We argued over everything—and most of it was nothing.”

  She opened her mouth to respond to that, then closed it again.

  He second-guessed her. “You were going to add—except what happened in Maine.”

  She tossed her hair—or would have if there’d been anything free to toss. The braid made her look prim and schoolgirlish and lent a sort of stubborn denial to the action. “I was, then I thought better of it. The animosity has to stop here if we’re going to get through this. It was…generous of you to do this for me.” That seemed to be hard for her to say. “And I appreciate it. I can see that you’re more…thoughtful than you used to be.” That had been hard, too. “So, I’m going to try harder to be less judgmental and more cooperative.”

  That was good news. But all he said was, “Thank you.”