The Colonels' Texas Promise
Page 10
Evan started to say, It’s fine if he drinks it on the couch, but he stopped himself. Juliet obviously had house rules, and this was going to be her house. He watched Matthew leave, glad to see some of the enthusiasm he’d had for the coasters returning. The enthusiasm was for Evan’s gaming systems, not for Evan, but it was a start.
Juliet’s wineglass still sat on the counter. Evan gave it a gentle clink with his. “Tough morning?”
“He’s not adjusting well.”
“Which means what? What happened this morning?”
“Our transient lodging is suddenly exactly where he wants to be. He refused to... Well, we just had a temper tantrum.”
“We did? You did, too? Or was it just him?”
Juliet spun the stem of her glass. “I’m being serious.”
“So am I. I assume tantrums include yelling. If you yelled this morning, too, then maybe you’re feeling bad about it. I don’t know how it works, honestly, so I’m asking.”
“He refused to get dressed so that we could come here. I told him he was going to look really silly in pajamas, because we were going to stop at the Class Six store on the way to get some nice drinks.” She flashed a look at Evan. “He knows I’ll plunk his little butt in the car in his pajamas. He got dressed.”
Ah, Juliet. You’re so you. Evan tried to remain gravely parental. “The opposite of him voluntarily wearing a tie to impress you.”
“Yes, exactly so.”
“Like living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
She studied the swirling red wine in her glass. “It’s not as amusing as you make it sound.”
“When we tell him today that this is his new house, that will help. Once he can have his things delivered and settle into his own bedroom, it’ll be easier on him. He’ll get into a routine.”
Juliet stopped spinning her glass.
Evan realized he’d just told a mother how her son would react, as if he knew her child better than she did. “At least, that’s what I think. What I hope.”
“I think he’s not adjusting to the idea of me having a friend, especially one I’m suddenly seeing every day. Maybe we shouldn’t tell him anything today. He needs a little more time.”
“Friday will be here before you know it. You’ve got to—we’ve got to let him know so he’ll have time to adjust to the idea. You can’t leave this to the last minute.” Can you?
“Maybe we should wait until Thursday evening. If he’s still in this mood...” She started swirling her glass again. “We can just go to the courthouse while he’s at school. Maybe that would be better for him, or at least less embarrassing for me. I don’t want to deal with a tantrum at the courthouse.”
Evan studied her profile, beautiful Juliet, back in his life with lines of strain on her face. He could defer to her judgment about this, but would that make her happier?
All the responsibility for the decision would be on her shoulders. Evan would be no better than Rob by leaving everything up to her all the time.
They were going to be a team, starting now. “I think Matthew should be at the courthouse, regardless. Anything that’s a big event in your life is a big event in his.”
She nodded slowly. “It will change his life. It’s only right that Matthew should be there for the—the courthouse. For the judge and the legalities. He should see what’s involved.”
Even felt a cold prickle of unease. “Like a field trip?”
“The formality of a government proceeding is something he understands, since he’s grown up in the military.”
“The wedding.”
“What?”
“Your child should be there for the wedding. I don’t think we need to resort to euphemisms like ‘courthouse’ and ‘legalities.’ ‘Government proceeding’ is downright clinical. We’re talking about our wedding.” He set his wine down and took her hands.
“Juliet,” he began, but holding hands wasn’t good enough. He drew her to him, dropping one of her hands to slide his arm around her waist. She moved into his arms as gracefully as she had when they’d danced under the moon. “It’s our wedding. It doesn’t have to be in a church with two hundred guests. You don’t have to wear a white dress, and we don’t have to spend a year planning it, but it will be our wedding.”
She closed her eyes briefly, then blinked at him. “Wow. Sorry. It’s just...when you say it like that...”
He waited.
“It’s so real.”
“Yeah,” he said as gently as he could. “It’s so real.”
With the soothing theme music of Minecraft in the background, he kissed his bride.
“And please, don’t be sorry. I don’t want you to ever be sorry.”
Chapter Nine
Their wedding.
Juliet followed Evan up the stairs as her mind reeled. My wedding is this Friday.
She’d only been thinking in terms of pacts. Deals. This driving need to secure something, to take control of some piece of her future. She’d been slowly sinking at Fort Benning during the three years she’d spent picking up the pieces. She was sick of being praised for being valiant and self-sacrificing for the sake of her child, as if it was acceptable to the whole world that her life sucked and she was only able to give Matthew enough time and attention to get by. There had to be a better life out there for her. She was missing something.
Or someone.
Evan had made lieutenant colonel below the zone, a year earlier than she had. During that year, she’d watched Matthew sinking, too. There was only so long even a child could keep their faith, and Juliet believed Matthew had started to admit to himself that his father was never coming back.
You’re better off without him, Juliet had wanted to say, but Matthew couldn’t know that, not unless he had a better father to compare Rob to. Juliet knew she was better off without Rob, because she knew there were better men out there. One in particular, and he was not at Fort Benning. She’d formally put in a request for Fort Hood.
She’d taken a calculated risk to find out if Evan remembered their pact, because it would mean stability for her son. Support for herself. She’d thought of practicalities.
But Evan had said our wedding, and suddenly she’d thought of hearts and flowers and promises, pretty gowns, optimism...romance.
She didn’t feel like a bride. Not once as she’d managed all the army regulations to get her relocation and promotion in sync, not once as she’d imagined living with Evan, had she thought anything so girlishly glamorous as I’ll be a bride.
They’d reached the top of the stairs. They were standing in a little hall. She heard Evan’s voice, but her brain swirled with white lace and promises. Did she want them? Should she want them? Was it bad that she’d forgotten them?
“This is the first bedroom. Since it’s the closest to the front door, I’ve been keeping some sports equipment here. The garage is like an oven most of the year. You can’t keep leather baseballs and gloves in an oven.”
Our wedding.
She followed him into the room like an automaton. Sports equipment was separated into piles along the bedroom’s longest wall. The sight triggered a memory that broke through the haze. Evan had piled his baseball gear just like this in one corner of his dorm room, glove always draped over the end of the bat. He’d tossed everything else except his hard plastic batting helmet. That was placed right-side up every time, just as it sat now. Evan didn’t want the top all scratched up. She was going to be the bride of a man she knew so well.
She held his hand as they left that room and went to the next.
“I have a spare bed in this one for guests, but we can move it. How many beds do you have coming?”
She cleared her throat. This was familiar ground. Household goods, permanent addresses. She’d thought this type of thing through. “Just two. Matthew’s twin and my queen.”
“I can’t keep it this nice with just me living in it. Yesterday, while we were riding roller coasters, there may have been an entire team of maids in here.”
“Yesterday? You didn’t even know I was going to barge into your life Friday afternoon. How did you get a cleaning service lined up for Saturday morning?”
“A few phone calls, a neighbor with a key to let them in. I wanted you to be impressed with your new house. Did it work?”
He’d gone to so much trouble for his bride. “The house is really nice.”
“I’ll carry you over the doorstep on Friday.”
It was so sweet. A wedding, a bride carried over a threshold, that first flush of infatuation. She’d give him her heart and feel so happy, bluebirds might as well flutter around her.
“And this is the master bedroom.” Evan turned on the lights. A king-size bed dominated the room, its wood headboard modern and masculine. They would spend their wedding night in that bed, making love.
It was all so real now.
But it wouldn’t last. He’d tell her she was beautiful and special, and he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her. They’d have sex nearly every night for a month, and she’d believe it was true love that would last forever, but it was only sex. She’d be a little less beautiful as the months went on. Then, finally, she’d find out she wasn’t special at all.
And it would kill her.
“I don’t know about this,” she said, sounding all breathy and shy, like the virgin bride she was not.
“About what?”
“I had so many things to take into consideration. I didn’t really think about that part of the equation.” She tried to shake off that haze of white lace and romantic expectations. There was a good reason she’d avoided bridal hopes this time around.
“Juliet, what’s wrong? What equation?”
Get your act together. You knew this was going to be a factor. You can handle it. You’ve learned your lesson. It’s not love. It’s just sex.
But she was going to need time to keep the two separate, because with Evan, a long history of friendship and trust had to be taken into account. Friends with benefits. Other people slept with their friends and stayed just friends. They didn’t fall in love. She could do it. She just needed a little time.
“I don’t know that I can just move into your house and your—your bedroom, just like that. I have a hold on a house just two streets over. I could sign a nine-month lease. We don’t have to rush.”
“You picked out another house?”
“I needed a contingency plan. I didn’t want Matthew to have to keep living out of a suitcase any longer than necessary. If you’d said no, then I was moving into a permanent residence this week anyway. I had to think of Matthew’s needs.”
“But I said yes.”
She studied his bed a moment. “Matthew and I could each have our own bedroom here.”
“No.”
“At least at the beginning. At least for a few months. This is about being a family. I don’t want to add distractions. Maybe after a few months...” She made the mistake of looking into her friend’s achingly familiar, wonderfully unchanged, blue eyes. Maybe after a few months, I’ll be able to have sex with you without falling madly in love with you.
He was studying her intently. “How do you see that arrangement playing out? Matthew gets all comfortable with us being housemates who live in our little bedrooms all in a row, and then one day Mommy just ups and moves into my bedroom? Or do you imagine that I’m going to sneak into your room at night and leave before Matthew wakes, until the day we get caught?”
“Like I said, I didn’t really think about it. I’m focused on a stable family for Matthew.”
“Matthew, again.”
“Matthew, always. He has no one else.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m an adult. He’s a child. That’s the difference.”
“Families aren’t built on marital celibacy. We’re getting married and we’re sharing a bed. That’s a normal family, and that’s what you want for Matthew, and that’s what matters most. Isn’t it?”
She couldn’t bear the hard look on his face, the way his eyes narrowed as he looked at her with something too close to anger.
“Isn’t it? This whole marriage is for Matthew’s benefit, isn’t it?”
“It’s about us as a family. Three of us.”
Silence fell. Her whole world was in the balance as she watched him gauging her, weighing her. Something in those blue eyes flickered.
“Yes. This marriage will begin a new family of three.” Then his arm was around her waist, pulling her close as if he had the right. “But from the very beginning, you’ve been half of every kiss. Can you remember them? Go back, way back, to school. It started with kisses on the cheek, too many to count, too quick in passing, just friends. Good luck on the test, thanks for the ride, don’t be late for the game.”
A million kisses. A familiarity she hadn’t fully appreciated until he was stationed thousands of miles away.
“But when it comes to real kisses, you and me, mouth on mouth, those you can count, Juliet.”
He held her so close, they could have kissed. Instead, he looked into her eyes. “There was the first one, the kiss the night before our graduation. It was a farewell, or an awakening. A promise made. A promise we’re keeping.”
With every word, the chemistry between them built. She wasn’t sure how. He only held her to him with one arm as he spoke, but his height or his size or the absolute authority in the way he spoke made her so very aware of the physicality of him, the reality of a man made of muscle and sinew, flesh and blood, a beating heart.
“Then the kiss in my office, your return to me. Everything was still there. Everything. The kiss in the hotel parking lot the next morning, just to be sure I hadn’t dreamed you. At the amusement park later, relaxed and sweet. Patient, because we knew more private kisses were in our future. Are in our future.”
She could hardly breathe. He held her, but she felt like he was laying her on his bed, undressing her, exposing her.
“A moment of selfish desire, that kiss in the front seat of your car. I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t breathe, I wanted you so badly. You remember each one of those kisses, Juliet. You were half of every single one. This is going to be a real marriage. Celibacy won’t be part of it, not from the very first day.”
He finally kissed her, bending her back over his arm, making her feel secure rather than unbalanced, as skillful as ever. His other hand traveled down her body in one sure stroke from her throat to her breast to her waist, as if he knew her body already, as if they were lovers who’d already shared every touch there was to share. She wanted it, every word, every kiss, every touch. She craved it, she loved it, she loved him, so much—
Too much.
I can’t. Not again.
She pushed away and turned her back, frantic to get her bearings. She was standing in a friend’s army quarters on a Sunday afternoon. She was wearing jeans and a sweater and comfy loafers. There was nothing magical to this, nothing mystical. Two adults who liked one another could have sex, could enjoy sex, without losing their heads and their hearts. As long as she didn’t fall back into wishing for a fairy-tale love, it wouldn’t hurt again when the passion faded and the love disappeared with it.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.
“You made a good point. We won’t have separate beds. I’ll—I’ll
do my best.” She looked at the bed instead of him. “I’m just not very good at this.”
“You said that before.” In her peripheral vision, she saw him hold his arms out, palms up, baffled. “I don’t know what that means. Are we talking about something...medical?”
That startled her into looking at him. “Nothing like that.”
Tell him. You owe him.
“I’m not good at the whole friends with benefits thing. I think friendship is better without sex. And sex shouldn’t get confused with friendship. Or kill it.”
He was quiet again, trying to figure her out, she just knew it.
“Honest,” she said. “That’s it.”
“I guess it’s a good thing we’re not going to be friends with benefits, then.”
“We’re not?”
Did she sound disappointed? Probably, because Evan’s lips quirked in a bit of a smile.
“We’re not. We’ve never been friends with benefits, and we’re not going to start now. We’re going to be husband and wife.” He took her in his arms again and kissed her, their sixth—seventh?—real kiss. She’d lost count.
He read her mind. “We’re going to kiss so many times, we’ll lose count, because you aren’t going to be a friend I shack up with now and then. You are going to be my wife, whom I live with and sleep with and kiss every day. My one and only.”
The sadness swamped her. Yes, that was what they’d go to the courthouse and say. My one and only, forsaking all others—and it would be true for a little while. When it ended, she’d be ready this time. She would be on guard.
She wanted to tell Evan that they needed to be careful not to destroy their friendship, so they would still have something for the long term, but Matthew came up the stairs, calling her name.
“Mom? Where’d you go?”
As she stepped into the hall, she glanced at Evan one more time. He was watching her with an expression she rarely saw on his face. He looked sad.
So maybe she didn’t need to explain anything to him at all.
* * *