AFTERGLOW (27 page)

"Actually," he said, his brain going into overdrive, "you were so anxious to get me to Nevada and married that I got a friend of mine who owns a private plane to fly us. Don't you remember at all?" Lawyers, he thought, had the right idea about getting themselves off uncomfortable hooks. Ask a question back. Chelsea was looking thoughtful.

"I do remember a loud burring sound and some bumping around. I guess it was the engines of a small plane, huh?"

"Sounds like it was," he said smoothly, and quickly added, "Since we're in first class, we'll get free champagne. You want to indulge in something other than white wine?"

"Fine with me," Chelsea said.

"You know what we can do during the flight?"

She shot him a sexy look, and he shook his head. "Get your one-track mind on different appetites. We need to discuss where we want to go on our real honeymoon."

"Hawaii," she said firmly. "Maui, to be precise. I haven't been there yet."

"You got it. I've never been to Hawaii."

"I go visit Tom Selleck on the tube every week, but it's not exactly the same thing."

"No lusting after other men now, Chelsea."

"I won't have the time or the energy," she said, and accepted a glass of champagne from the flight attendant.

They toasted each other, then David said, "When will you be free, as in between books?"

"In a couple of months.
I'm
on the last third of the San Francisco trilogy. And guess what, David?"

"Hmm?"

"My hero is a doctor and his nickname is Saint. He's wonderful, needless to say."

"Mark I or Mark II?"

"Definitely Mark II. Well," she added on a wicked grin, "maybe there's a little dash of Mark I in him. But, as I said, he won't be tucked away for about two months yet."

"I'll set up my time, then. Do you have a good travel agency?"

They continued mundane talk, then Chelsea grew silent. David waited a moment, then said, "What's up, honey? You getting post-cold feet?"

She gave him a dazzling smile and shook her head vehemently. "Oh no, husband. I was just thinking about all my writer friends. What Dorothy Garlock, for example, will say about my runaway elopement to Las Vegas is nearly beyond my imagination. Much less Linda Howard and Fayrene Preston and Ann Maxwell—she's Elizabeth Lowell, too, you know—and Laura Parker and Candy Camp and Iris—"

"My God," he said, interrupting her seemingly endless list. "How many phone calls are there going to be?"

"I can't forget my friends Marilyn Staggs and Jean Weisner in Houston. They own bookstores." She moaned. "I think announcements will be the best way to go. I don't think I could take all the verbal abuse I'd get over the phone."

"That's another thing, Chels," he said. "Whose phone?"

She gave him a blank look.

"I mean, where are we going to live?"

"Oh," She looked at him helplessly. "Marriage leads to more consequences than my poor brain can manage."

"My commute from Sausalito to the hospital is only thirty minutes. If you'd feel better about staying at your condo, that's fine with me."

"I
love the city, too, and your place." She sat thoughtfully silent for a while, then announced in a firm voice, "I have the most portable profession in the world. All I need is my computer and
I'm
set. There's no need for you to be driving an hour a day."

"Are you thinking of what we could, ah, accomplish in that hour?"

"You got it," she said, grinning. Her hand roved slowly up his thigh.

He clasped her hand, halting her upward motion. "I can take tomorrow off and we'll move you to the city. All right?"

She nodded, but he could tell she wasn't terribly excited by the prospect.

"Would you like to sell your condo or rent it out?"

"Sell, I guess. Then why don't we buy a house in San Francisco? Maybe an old Victorian in Pacific Heights or Sea Cliff, though
I'm
not very handy. Are you?"

"No," he said firmly, "not at all handy."

"We'll have to pool our resources and see what we can come up with."

They made the necessary phone calls that evening from David's apartment. It became obvious to Chelsea after her talk with her parents that her dad was disappointed. She said after setting down the receiver, "I've got to think about this." She clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap. "David," she blurted out suddenly, "would you mind if we got married again, for my parents' sake?"

If he could have yelled for joy, he would have. For a moment he simply couldn't believe that she, bless her innocent heart, had suggested the solution to the problem, and so quickly. He'd planned to speak to her parents, as a matter of fact, say in two or three weeks, and have them request another ceremony. He'd dreaded it, just imagining their reaction to what he'd done. He swooped down on her, lifted her bodily off the floor and swung her around. "Do you know how marvelous you are?"

"Well, maybe," she said, looking down into his smiling face. She added, frowning a bit, "You look like a Cheshire cat." That gave him a moment's pause, but her mind was in high gear, and she quickly went on. "There won't be a problem with our marriage license, will there? As in having two of them?"

"Not a single one," he said smoothly, removing that Cheshire cat look, whatever that was.

"And you, you gorgeous man, must have a wedding band.
I'm
not letting you out of the house without one."

"You're right," he said. "I have to fight the women off all the time. A wedding band might protect me."

"Harrumph," said Chelsea.

"Let's go make love," David said, swinging her up into his arms.

"More controlled experiments for science?"

"You got it, Cookie, although I prefer uncontrolled."

"Let's hear it for science," Chelsea said later, so exhausted she could scarcely move. "I think we can submit this paper now with conclusive proof."

"Proof that women are as easy as men?"

"Proof that you, David Winter, are the sexiest, most talented, neatest
…
luckiest man on this continent."

"Ill drink to that," David said, and pulled her closer. He said a few moments later in a blurred voice, "Oh, damn, we'd better set the alarm clock. We need to be up and out of here early to get everything done."

Chelsea groaned. "The honeymoon's over."

"Not by a long shot, lady."

"I just wonder how long a shot you're talking about?"

He groaned. "There goes your one-track mind again."

They moved Chelsea the next day in a quickly rented U-Haul. David's apartment looked like a disaster area by the evening. He looked about ruefully. He had believed his place was large and airy.

Chelsea sat down on a packed box. "I can't believe you're going to leave me alone with all this tomorrow."

"Remember your vows. For better and worse." He grinned down at her and ruffled her curly hair. "You'll never walk alone," he said, and made a phone call, arranging for two very strong, healthy young men to arrive in the morning. "All you have to do is supervise, sweetheart."

Chelsea did, with great verve. David came home at about five in the afternoon to a very tidy apartment and a study that was no longer his.

Her computer looked quite at home on
his
antique desk, and the room was lined with bookshelves, filled with her books.

Funny about marriage, he mused. He'd pictured Chelsea in his apartment with great anticipation, but he hadn't quite gotten past that delightful fantasy to the reality of her possessions.

Chelsea saw that he was looking somewhat shell-shocked and said, "I put up temporary shelves in that closet for all your medical journals and books.
I'm
sorry about being such a space pig, but you work at the hospital and I work at home, and I can't do it in the closet."

"Fair enough," he said with a fond farewell to his formerly very neatly organized things as she shut the closet door.

It did please him inordinately to see her panties next to his shorts in the dresser drawer. He picked up the violet camisole and rubbed it against his cheek. "I shall always have salacious memories about this garment."

"That, David," she said, "is a three-dollar word. I didn't think you doctors were all that well educated."

"I
must have read it in one of your books."

She hugged him.
"I
am so happy," she said, rubbing her nose against his chest, "that I almost hurt. I wish I'd seduced you to Las Vegas a long time ago."

He felt the familiar stab of guilt. "I don't know how much longer I can live with this," he said.

"What?" she asked, looking up at him. "Live with what?"

He looked startled, then realized that he'd spoken aloud. "That is," he said, improvising with quick desperation, "I don't know how much longer I can go without flinging you on the bed."

"Well, I tried my hand at some cooking. Wanna be brave and give it a fling?"

"Before we indulge in our other appetites?"

"Hamburger Happiness," she said.
"I
don't know what that will lead to, if anything. That reminds me, I've got to talk to Sarah. I'm not at all certain that she'd want to drive to the city all the way from Corte Madera."

"Offer her the moon. If that doesn't work, offer her my poor body."

"Forget that, Champ. Hamburger Happiness. Ugh!"

He grinned at her doleful tone and followed her to the kitchen. She said over her shoulder, on a happier note, "George and Elliot invited us over to dinner tomorrow night. They send their congratulations, by the way."

"Yeah," David said. "I saw Elliot today at the pool. He was grinning from ear to ear." Indeed he was, David thought, feeling that dreadful guilt wash over him again. Delbert, Angelo and Maurice had all called him today, demanding details and chortling like comrades in arms who had just pulled off the most fantastic coup. He added over his third bite of Hamburger Happiness, which wasn't at all bad, "All the folk at the hospital want to give us a party."

"Life isn't going to be simple for a while, is it?"

"What about all your writer friends?"

"I guess I'd best go somewhere and get some announcements. I haven't the foggiest idea of where, though."

"Call George."

"No, I'll call Neff. She'll know. Lord, she lives right here in the city. I'll invite her over and rack her brain."

"Neff who?"

"Well, it's Neff Rotter, also known as Laura Matthews, Elizabeth Neff Walker—"

"How do you guys keep yourselves straight?"

"That, my husband, is a question I should ask you."

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm beginning to believe that this honeymoon is going to last a good thirty years."

"Well, if I went to all the trouble of getting you to Las Vegas, it better!"

He ducked his head down, feeling a guilty flush wash over his face.

"David?"

"Can I have some more Hamburger Happiness, Chels?"

"Brave, aren't you?"

Yeah, he thought, about as brave as a mushroom.

During the next week, he played over and over in his mind what Chelsea's reaction would be to his confession. No, sweetheart, his mind said, we're not actually married, but we will be soon, or we are now—confession time after the ceremony—so what difference does it make? I did it because I love you and you love me. I just had to get you over your nervousness about it, that's all. You jerk! You made a fool of me! Oh, David it doesn't matter. I love you. You did the right thing.
Damnation!

Phone calls came in from all over the country from other writers. He happened to pick up the phone one evening and heard, "Is this the gorgeous hunk that finally caught Chelsea?"