Well, this got my dander up and I said, “Well, then don’t speak to me the rest of the night and you can go on your honeymoon alone.”
We arrived at the reception a little late, as I had a little brown bag with a container of hot chicken noodle soup and crackers. I remember Shay saying as he handed me the bag from the Long Noodle Cafe, “You’re spoiled and I spoil you too much. You’re going to get over that.”
Ha, I thought to myself, as long as I’m getting my way, I’m going to keep milking it.
The reception was wonderful. Shay and I left about 10 p.m. so we could go change clothes and leave for a week in Colorado. We wanted to drive as far as the Colorado state line that night, but we made it forty miles up the road, to Plymouth, Nebraska. Ended up getting a room at the Heritage Motel. I was surprised to see our room had two queen beds. I guess we were just lucky to get a room at all that time of night.
Before the wedding, Shay’s mother had gone shopping with me in Lincoln at a nice department store. Maggie was a class act. She insisted I buy a black nightgown for my honeymoon, a peignoir set. But I had different plans and chose a beautiful white, pure silk, spaghetti-strap, floor-length slip with a slit up the right thigh. The floor-length duster was a matching silk lace. Oh, it was beautiful, but Maggie was disappointed. She thought Shay deserved the best, which in her opinion was the sexy black set. Well, I thought I knew Shay a little better than his mother at this point—at least in the romance department—so I went with the white. My hair at this point was snow-white, platinum—my skin golden brown from the sun. The white just popped.
Before leaving on our honeymoon trip, I had packed three candleholders, along with nine tall tapered white candles. Each holder held three candles. We set the candles up now and lit them. I sat one on the vanity that would be directly behind me when I came out of the bathroom in my gown.
I bathed, put on fresh lotions and my new perfume Shay loved, then my white silk gown. The sleeves of the robe tapered out wide like a triangle, falling fluidly. Shay had called the motel office and requested soft music piped into the room.
I was ready to make my appearance, so I stepped out of the bathroom. All the lights were out except the candles. The song “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” was playing and I raised both of my arms very slowly to about six inches above my head with the absolute grace of a ballet dancer so my whole silhouette was showing. I remember so clearly, Shay was sitting on the bed with just gray silk pajama bottoms on—something I’m sure Maggie had bought him, but he looked so sexy. I don’t think I will ever forget Shay’s face in that moment. He looked completely startled. As I started to walk towards him he stood up. I had never, ever heard Shay stammer for words, but now he said:
“I-I-I thought you were an angel. I don’t mean you just looked like one, for a minute I thought I was hallucinating, Callie. I looked up and I thought I saw an angel standing in the room. You took my breath away. You’re still taking my breath away!”
“Well, Shay, I think this is where you hold me in your arms and we dance to this sweet music,” I said softly.
Thinking back on that night, I realize that when I was standing in front of the candles in the dark, raising my arms slowly, the candle glow just may have given the illusion of an angel for a second, especially since Shay was so tired. I think maybe for a second he did think he saw an angel.
He gently put his arms around me in his usual way, one arm on my back, the other cradling my neck, holding me ever so gently.
“Would black have been sexier?” I asked him with my head against his chest.
He stopped dancing for a minute and pulled his head back to look into my face.
“Princess, you look like a real angel. I would never have wanted to see you in black. That’s for common lovemaking. I am so blown away by your beauty. You’re just like a fragile china doll. I’m afraid to touch you because I’m afraid you’ll break. How does one make love to an angel?”
“Well, are we going to make love?”
“No, not just yet, I want to look at you.”
“Well, here, Shay, let me take the robe off.”
After I took off the robe, Shay just gently held me. We weren’t even moving to the music anymore. Eventually we made it to the bed, where Shay said, “Leave the gown on for awhile, I want to hold you in that beautiful nightgown.”
I lay in his arms and he kept gently kissing me, running his hands over the soft silk gown. He must have kissed me for over an hour, moving me into different positions. Eventually we were lying so close you couldn’t have slipped a dime between us. Shay was on his back, cradling me in his arms.
I’ll bet he must have said, “Oh, I love you so much, princess” at least fifty times, but I guess one can never hear that enough.
***
We’d had a very long day and at 4:30 a.m. I woke up in Shay’s arms. We had both been so exhausted that we’d just slipped off to sleep. Shay was still sound asleep. Now I must admit, I did sort of think we might make love that night, but as luck would have it, we both fell asleep in each other’s arms. It did seem very precious.
After lying there for a few minutes, I oh-so-gently slipped out of Shay’s arms without waking him. The candles had burned down on their silver trays. I was still so tired and, boy, did I ever need some good sleep, so, since there were two queen beds in the room, I quietly opened the second bed, slipped off my gown and crawled in. I was asleep in minutes.
It was around 6 a.m. when Shay woke up.
“Hey, where’s my wife? What are you doing over there, baby?” He crawled out of his bed, slipping off his PJ bottoms, and crawled into my bed. “Now don’t you be doing that ever again, princess. I plan on making love to you every night for the rest of our lives, and, woman, I’m going to make love to you every morning for the rest of our lives.”
He gently moved his body across mine—kissing and caressing me, until we were both completely aroused. Then we made love for over an hour. I don’t think we would have ever quit, except that we both climaxed at the same moment.
“Callie, you know what, you just blow my mind,” Shay said as we lay back. “I am so lucky. You are truly my dream come true. You satisfy me more than anyone ever has or ever could. I love you, princess.”
***
We must have been in a hurry to get into our room for our first night as husband and wife, because as we lay there basking in the afterglow, the maid knocked on the door. When Shay answered the door she said, “Sir, I think you left some of your luggage out here on the sidewalk.”
There they were, three suitcases, sitting right where we had put them down while Shay opened the door for me.
The Threshold
After retrieving our luggage, I put on my swimsuit and told Shay I was going swimming.
“Wait, Callie, I’ll go with you,” he said and hurried into his swim trunks.
Now there was a gorgeous sight—that body in swim trunks. This was a beautiful man. We went to the pool and lay back on some lounge chairs. After a while I got up and went over to the diving board, walked out and dove in.
“No Callie!” I heard Shay call as I sailed into the pool. “That’s twelve-foot water!”
He jumped in right after me to save me. I know what he was thinking. ‘Oh my gosh, she hates water, doesn’t know how to swim, dives into the deep end, she’s not going to make it!’
“Don’t panic,” he said as he reached me, “just don’t panic. I’ve got you.”
Then he noticed I was easily treading water, just looking at him. “Did I forget to tell you I was a lifeguard at the city pool for several summers?”
“Well, yes, smart mouth, you did fail to tell me that. Who are you? What else don’t I know about you, woman?”
“Oh, I have lots of hidden powers,” I grinned.
We both swam to the ladder and climbed out.
“I’m going to the cafe for breakfast,” I said, but Shay scooped me up in his arms and carried me toward the room.
�
�I have a much better idea, princess. Just follow my lead. We can order room service for dessert.”
Oh, I see, I thought to myself, I’m the main course!
***
After another swim and some more lovemaking, Shay loaded the car and we were off! Driving down the road in the candy-apple-red Impala, I asked Shay if we really had to go to Denver.
“Why?” he asked.
“I really don’t want to go that far away from home,” I said. “I’m homesick.”
“Well, for crying out loud, woman, we’ve been gone for less than 24 hours!”
“I know,” I said, with tears running down my face, “but please can’t we at least stay in Nebraska?”
“Callie,” Shay said, soft-voiced, with a loving look on his face, “I want to show you the mountains. I want to be the one who shows you things you’ve never seen! Please, honey, please go to Denver with me. We’ll go for one day, and if you’re one bit unhappy, we’ll go home the next day. I promise.”
“We’ll, okay,” I said. “But I’m trusting you to keep that promise.”
Denver was much bigger than I’d ever imagined! I was completely lost. I knew one thing: I didn’t like big towns. Decided that right then and there.
That night we stayed at the Brown Palace Hotel. This was a beautiful and well-known hotel, where, I learned, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” stayed only a week after she survived the Titanic disaster. It was nice—very exclusive and luxurious. After Shay put everything in our room (one king bed, this time,) he was ready to take me for a late afternoon snack. Then it was off for sightseeing.
I remember he took me to the Coors Beer Plant for a tour, where he bought me a set of twelve beautiful Coors beer glasses. They were pretty fancy for beer glasses. I wanted to go to a museum, but when I mentioned it, Shay acted like I’d lost my mind.
“How about we go to a movie, a nice dinner, and then back to the hotel for some good exercise,” he said.
“Oh, do they have an exercise room?”
“I don’t know, but the exercise I had in mind was chasing you around the bed about fifty times and then chasing you around inside the bed about fifty times.”
I just turned and gave him a grin that said it all. I liked exercising with Shay. You could get a good workout, get real sweaty and need a thirty-minute shower—of course not by yourself. I liked showering with Shay. He had just the right amount of hair on his chest. I’d lather it up and make little designs and little curls in the soap. Showering with Shay was effortless; he always soaped me up real good and enjoyed rinsing me off.
I remember saying, “I really need to bathe, how do I get the soap out from between my legs?”
I didn’t want it to burn.
Shay stood there for a second, then he slid the glass shower door open, grabbed a glass from the counter, filled it with water and sloshed it upward between my legs. What a weird feeling! It took several glasses to get the soap out, and by this time, we were both laughing so hard we didn’t even dry off. We just fell on the bed, laughing hysterically.
“See,” Shay said, “I told you I’d take care of you.”
And through all this buffoonery, we ended up back where we had started, thus leading to another shower.
***
We got up early the next morning, had breakfast and were off to the mountains! I thought I’d find the mountains overwhelming, but I loved them. They were breathtaking. I could feel the presence of God when I looked at them. There were small vaporous clouds that drifted mistily between the peaks and I could envision my Lord in His heavenly kingdom up there.
I loved the white-water rivers, my Indian spirit just went wild for them. Their mystical churning seemed to awaken something in me. Crystal clear, they spoke to me; a powerful message that something this beautiful and vast must be respected. I thought of the earth and how if you abused her, there would be a price to pay.
I took a lot of pictures. The day went fast and we headed down out of the mountains back to our hotel. All this time I knew Shay was wondering if he had wooed me enough to want to stay the rest of the week.
He hadn’t.
When we got back to the hotel, Shay said we’d just order room service.
I said, “Well order quick, because I want to call home and check on Kelly!”
He ordered and I called home. Mom put Kelly on the phone so she could say, “Hi Mommy,” then she said, “Hi, Daddy,” so I said, “Wait Kelly, here’s Daddy, now you can talk to him.”
Shay asked her a few questions; then I heard him tell her their little rhyme, (Three Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.) Shay loved Kelly. As far as he was concerned, she was his. And the feeling was mutual.
Mom told me that Sterling Westover had called, asking if she’d heard from me and would she ask me to have Shay call him about business. I relayed the message and Shay called up his dad and talked cattle for some twenty minutes. I could have heard this conversation twenty times and I still would not have known what they were taking about. I knew nothing about cattle and didn’t want to know.
My ears perked when I heard Shay say, “Well, I think we are leaving here in the morning. Callie’s homesick for Nebraska, so I guess we can just run up there and get things under control. I can go to that cattle auction if you can’t make it. I know what you’re looking for, and I’ll get them for the right price.
“Well, all right then, don’t worry about it. I’ll call you when we get there. Oh, wait, will you call Sherry and tell her to get the house ready in the morning? Open the windows and air it out. Also, tell her to get the groceries on the week list. Yep. Okay. Talk to you tomorrow night, might be late.”
“What’s happening?” I asked.
He told me something about a problem with the cattle on their ranch in the Nebraska Sand Hills, a ranch I knew nothing about.
“Shay, are we going there?”
“We’re going in the morning. Long drive for one day for you, Callie, but I’m needed and I’ve got to go.”
He said Sterling (he always called his father Sterling) wanted to buy X amount of cattle, but didn’t think he could get up there this week.
“Princess,” he said. “This Friday you’ll be going to your first cattle auction.”
***
We had gotten married on Saturday night and stayed that night in Plymouth. Then spent Sunday and Monday night in Denver. This meant we’d be spending Tuesday through Sunday in the Sand Hills. Shay said the closest ranch to theirs was about forty miles away, and the nearest town was about eighty miles away, except for something he called a “burg,” which he said was about twenty minutes from the ranch.
“Well, what do they have there at the burg?” I asked.
“Oh, they’ve got a gas station, a cafe, a post office, a blacksmith shop, the Gray Stone Saloon…”
“What is this, the 1800s?”
“Oh yes, also there’s the cattle sale barn and a little general store.”
What have I gotten myself into? I thought. A honeymoon in the Sand Hills; guess that would teach me to watch what I wished for. We’d be going back to Nebraska, all right. Just not quite the part I had in mind.
***
Shay said the house was closed up unless he or Sterling were there, but their foreman’s wife, Sherry, would open it up, air it out, dust it off and make the beds with clean linens. She had two grocery lists, he said. One for if they were coming for a few days, and a larger one for a week or more.
I said, “Well, I want to buy the groceries.”
“You’re not going to have time if we want to get there by dark. Look on the bright side, princess.” Shay stuck his head out the bathroom door with the shower running. “When we get there I’m going to let you shop ’til you drop!”
He pulled his head back just as the pillow I threw at him hit the door. Then I heard him yell, “Come here, princess. It’s shower time! I’ve got the glass already in here!”
After showering, we had a long roll in the hay, and while he was h
olding me in the afterglow, Shay said, “Callie, do you just have the one checking account?”
“Yes,” I told him, “the one I’ve always had.”
“Well, princess, when we get home I want you to close it.”
“What? No, I’m not closing my account.”
“Yes, you are. I’ll give you forty-eight hours after we get home to close it or I’ll close it.”
I knew he could do that, as that was the bank the Westovers used.
“I think that’s unfair of you to ask me to do that, Shay,” I said.
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