by Lilian Darcy
The waiting room was filling fast, and Tara and Rip weren't yet back, so Jo and Shelley did the only thing they could do. They saw patients, with Shelley working in Rip's office and directing questions to Trudy or Merril whenever she needed to.
At some point, suddenly, Jo realised that it wasn't Shelley seeing Rip's patients any more, it was Rip himself, and that Shelley must have gone to meet Lloyd and the baby. But the clock only said a quarter after two, so she had almost another four hours of this—of hearing his voice, glimpsing him, not being able to talk.
Finally, at ten after six, they were done.
'I'll lock,' Trudy said, in a grim, don't-you-dare-argue kind of voice.
Argue?
It was the last thing Jo wanted to do.
'Are we going to talk?' she asked Rip.
'Try suggesting anything else and see where it gets you.'
'Go!' Trudy pushed them out the door. 'Rip, when you came out of your office after we heard those brakes squealing over lunch and I saw your face when you thought it might be Jo...' She lifted her hands. 'Do this right!'
Shelley's direct manner seemed to be catching.
'Intending to, Trudy. Let's walk,' Rip said to Jo, dropping his voice. His brown eyes held a smoky, suffering look in their depths. 'I couldn't sit in that cafe again. I need some air.'
'Where is she? Tara,' Jo corrected herself. She hated the she, the Other Woman she that should be spelled with a capital letter also. 'Where's Tara?'
'Checked out of her hotel and on the road by now, I should think.' Rip touched Jo's back lightly as she went down the steps ahead of him. 'And I hope!'
'To where?'
'I didn't ask. Her parents in Boston maybe. She has options.'
'That's what Shelley said.'
'You told her about all this?' He paused in his stride. They were just about to cross the road, heading for the street that led up the hill past Nina's place.
'I offloaded a bit, yes.'
'What did you say? No, forget what you said. You had every right to offload.' He began to walk again. 'Let me talk, first. Jo, this has been impossible. It might still be impossible.'
'To be a father to someone else's child?'
'You think that's why I sent her away? Because I didn't want to step in and take on Serrano's baby? No! I didn't need to hear about her pregnancy to understand my own heart. I'd already realised that there was no chance for Tara and me. It hit me like a ton of bricks last night when I left a message on her— That's not important.'
'No?' she said mildly.
'OK.' He gave a short nod. 'I owe you the detail, don't I?'
'Think so, Rip.'
'I left a message on her voicemail asking her to call me back, and she didn't because she wanted to give me a scare. And I'd forgiven that sort of thing from her so many times before and suddenly it was more than something to forgive about her, it was something I just—didn't—like—about her, more than just a quirk, the whole package, way too indicative of who she was at heart. I didn't even want there to be a chance for Tara and me any more. I wouldn't have taken that chance if it had been handed to me on a plate, with every promise under the sun from Tara about how she'd changed and what she'd do differently. That was the big change in my thinking, and it unlocked everything else. The only chance I want is with you.'
'Oh, Rip...'
'There's a whole lot more to say but the bottom line is I love you, and if I hadn't been so stubborn about not repeating my mother's serial mistakes, I might have realised it long ago.'
'Long ago?' She squeezed his arm. 'You first kissed me last week.'
'Hey, please! The week before last.'
He kissed her again now, and she laughed because who kissed a woman on her eyebrow? They had to stop so he could find some better places, which didn't take him long. Actually kissing those places took longer. The light began to fade.
'I loved you before I kissed you, Jo,' he whispered. 'We were both just too distracted to notice.'
'You think so?'
They kept walking.
'Both too comfortable with each other, and it all changed in our hearts too gradually, until—'
'Until the day you quit smoking.'
'Don't you feel as if it's been forever? Forever in a good—the best—the very best way. I can't remember when I didn't feel like this.'
She laughed. 'Yes. You too? I've been backdating you, like a dodgy patient history. You know...' She parodied her own professional manner. 'When did you first notice these alarming symptoms, Mrs X.?'
'When did you first notice these alarming symptoms, Dr Middleton?'
'The wanting-to-kiss-you symptoms?'
'Those, and can I ask? Are there any others?'
'Oh, lots! They're all fabulous, but I can't begin to describe them.'
'Marry me, and we'll have plenty of time.'
'Marry you?' Even now, with him looking at her like this, eyes ablaze, in the middle of a Harriet, Vermont sidewalk late on a Monday afternoon, Jo hadn't expected it, not so soon.
He saw it in her face. 'Didn't you think I was sure? Are you not sure yourself?'
'Oh, Rip! Yes, I'm sure.'
'So am I...'
And those were both statements that bore repeating several times just to be on the safe side. They reached her house, but weren't ready to stop walking just yet. Still laughing and crying, Jo saw something on the porch, through the tears in her eyes, and went to check.
'Look, someone's sent you flowers,' Rip said lightly.
'Who, I wonder?-' she murmured, bending to pick up the card.
'Me, actually.'
'They're beautiful!'
'Leave them. They'll keep. Let's keep walking.'
'Tell me why you're so sure, Rip.'
'That we should keep walking?'
'Sure about us. You knew that's what I meant. But the walking is nice, too.'
'Why I'm so sure? Because of how I feel. Because it's .you. Because of who you are. Because this time it won't be me doing all the work, determined to do the work because if I don't do it—if / don't do it, because no one else is going to—that'll mean failure. It took me way too long to realise a marriage couldn't work that Way—too much of a reaction against the effort my mother never managed to put in. The commitment and the effort can't be all on one side.'
'At the moment, it doesn't feel like a huge effort, I have to say,' Jo murmured.
'But you know, Jo. You know about the commitment, and the effort. When you agreed to go skiing, even though I'd given you no reason to think we'd have a good day, you took a deep breath and did it. You didn't throw a tantrum and demand to be taken home. You know about the courage and the trust. Tara never did. She only knew about the games and the self-interest.'
'There was more to your marriage than that, Rip. You would never have married her in the first place if there hadn't been.' Jo felt able to say this now, with his arm around her, his head leaning down to her shoulder, all the evidence that he just couldn't let her go and didn't want to.
'Oh, of course there was. In the beginning, anyhow. She always used to remind me of my favourite cousin Lena, I think that was part of it. Lena was a year older than I was, and I was an only child, so I was lonely sometimes. Her visits always had an aura of mischief and magic. We had these crazy adventures, and I forgave the way she teased me because of that. And I think I saw a lot of—' He stopped. 'Why are we still talking about Tara?'
'We're not.' Jo hugged him. 'We're talking about Lena. Much more interesting. I'll look forward to meeting her.'
'I want to talk about us.' He tightened the hug, nuzzled her neck.
'That's a pretty interesting subject, too...'
They covered a lot of ground in a very short space of time—practical details at first, such as which house they would live in. Hers, they decided. His they would offer for sale or rent to Shelley and Lloyd, because of the option of building a studio-cum-office at the back for Lloyd to work in.
Then the deta
ils became less practical...
The honeymoon destination was a contentious issue. Jo wanted Paris, and Rip wanted the Caribbean. They talked about a compromise, then they decided they'd go for both.
Paris late in the spring, after a wedding they didn't want to wait long for or make too elaborate, and the Caribbean next winter, because even though Vermont was a very good showcase for cold things, a hot sandy beach had its attractions, too.
That cute baby Hayley had put a few ideas into Jo's head, and Rip seized on the ideas with such enthusiasm that Jo suspected she had a good shot at being pregnant by the end of the day.
They reached Rip's house.
'You have flowers on your porch, too,' Jo said.
'Also sent by me.'
'You sent yourself flowers?'
'No, I sent you flowers, more flowers, because I hoped we might end up either at your place or mine, but I didn't know which it would be—I didn't realise we'd walk past both—and I really wanted you to have flowers, because it was easier to organise over the phone than, oh, the moon and stars.'
'You want me to have those?'
'There are so many things I want you to have, Jo, I don't even know where to start.' He turned her into his arms, ready to kiss her again.
'So you started with flowers?' she whispered.
'Five years in partnership, and we're still just at the start of everything. Don't you think that's great?' he whispered back.
She did.
EPILOGUE
Rip and Jo had a three-tiered, three-flavoured Vermont ice-cream cake for their spring wedding. They had rain in Paris for their honeymoon, along with chocolate croissants and art museums and window-shopping under a big umbrella, and a whole lot of other things which meant the rain didn't matter at all. By December, on the follow-up honeymoon in the Caribbean, they got sunshine, and they were back to ice cream.
Cravings for ice cream, to be specific.
Midnight cravings for strawberry and coffee and something with nuts in it, satisfied only by a desperate last-minute call to room service before it ceased operation for the night.
'I'm sorry, Rip,' Jo said. 'You're probably dying to get to sleep.'
'I'm not dying to get to sleep,' he answered.
'How can they tell you it's going to take forty-five minutes to deliver ice cream? I hope that's forty-five minutes before it gets scooped out, not forty-five minutes melting in a bowl on the way from the kitchens.'
'I'm not sorry at all.'
'No?'
'It's another incentive for us to stay awake.'
'What's the first incent— Oh!' She grinned and her eyes lit up, which gave him a wash of relief because he'd wondered if he was being a little optimistic on that front at this hour of the night.
Jo was three and a half months pregnant—beyond the nausea and crippling fatigue she'd experienced over the past couple of months and into the hungry stage, but a little unpredictable when it came to certain other appetites.
Since Rip currently considered her to be the most beautiful example of the female form he'd ever seen in his life, with her ripening breasts, lustrous hair and newly rounded stomach, his own appetite was pitched at a steady 'off the chart' and he suffered from the unpredictability at times.
Suffer? He didn't suffer! Not in any serious sense. Their marriage was glorious.
He'd received a birth announcement from Tara back in September, the same day that Jo had taken her positive pregnancy test. Tara had had a baby girl. He was happy for her, and he hadn't given the news more than three minutes' worth of thought since. The baby wasn't his, and Tara just wasn't important any more.
This was important.
Jo was important.
'I don't think we'd better count on the whole forty-five minutes,' she said seriously. 'Last night, with the banana split with almonds and hot fudge, they said twenty, and they were quicker.'
'So we're trying for a speed record?'
'Think so.'
'Does that mean I don't have time to watch you undress?'
'I'll undress fast.'
'Not so it's a blur, Jo, because I like—'
She grinned again. 'I know what you like...'
She did. That was the great thing about her. She knew what he liked, and she wanted to give it to him—the meals he liked, the conversation he liked, the particular way of removing that little, snug-fitting, blue cotton knit, vest-style pyjama top that he really, really liked and would have to say goodbye to soon until after the pregnancy.
No strings attached with any of the giving. No return favours expected later. No leverage, or pay-back, or manipulation hidden beneath.
He was the luckiest man in the world, and he planned to spend the rest of his life valuing the luck and sharing it with Jo. No games this time around. Only sharing and generosity instead. Sharing the good and the bad, just as they'd promised during their simple wedding ceremony.
Now, with their hotel room window open to let in a milky Caribbean night, they shared twenty-seven minutes of love-making—not really a speed record, by the way— and when the ice cream arrived three minutes later, they shared that, too.
'I'm very, very happy, Jo,' Rip told his wife.
'So am I,' she whispered back, then she kissed away the taste of strawberry from his lips.