Beloved (22 page)

294

Beloved

Diana Palmer

295

"It's decaf, darling," she teased.

The endearment caught him off guard. His breath caught
in his
throat.

The reaction surprised her, because he usually seemed so
un
assailable. She wasn't quite sure of herself
even now. "If you
don't like it, I won't..." she began.
                                                 

"Oh, I like it," he said huskily. "I'm not
used to endearments,
that's all."

  
"Yes, I know. You don't use them often."

   
"Only when I make love to you," he returned.

   
She lowered her eyes. He hadn't done that since the day they
got engaged, when the brothers had burst into their lives
again. She'd wondered why, but she was too shy to ask him.

"Hey," he said softly, coaxing her eyes up.
"It isn't lack of
interest. It's a
lack of privacy."

She smiled wanly. "I wondered." She shrugged.
"You haven't
been around much."

"I've been trying to put together an office staff
before I'm
sworn in the first of January,"
he reminded her. "It's been a rush
job."

"Of course. I know how much pressure you're under.
If you'd
like, we could postpone the wedding," she offered.
                       

"Do you really want to be married in a maternity
dress?" he
teased.
                                                                                             

  
Her reply was
unexpected. She started crying. He got up and pulled her up, wrapping her
close. "It's nerves,"
 
he whispered. "They'll pass."

She didn't stop. The tears were worse.
"
Tira
?"

"I started," she sobbed.
"What?"

She
looked up at him. Her eyes were swimming and red. "I'm
not pregnant." She sounded as if the world had
ended.

He pulled out a handkerchief and dried the tears.
"I'm sorry,"
he whispered, and
looked it. "I really am."

She took the handkerchief and made a better job of her
face,
pressing her cheek against his chest. "I
didn't know how to tell
you. But now you know. So if you don't
want to go through with

it..."

He stiffened. His head lifted and he looked at her as if
he
thought she was possessed. "Why wouldn't
I want to go through
with it?" he
burst out.

   
"Well, I'm not pregnant, Simon," she repeated.

   
He let out the breath he was holding. "I
told you I wasn't
marrying you because of the baby. But
you weren't completely
convinced, were
you?"

   
She looked sheepish. "I had my doubts."

   
He searched her wet eyes slowly. He held her cheek in his big,
warm hand and traced her mouth with his thumb. "I'm sorry that
you aren't pregnant. I want a baby very much with
you. But I'm marrying you because I love you. I thought you knew."

   
Her heart jumped into her throat. "You
never said."

   
"Some words come harder than others for
me," he replied. He
drew in a long
breath. "I thought, I hoped, you'd know by the
way we were in bed together. I couldn't have been so out of
control the first time or so tender the next if I hadn't
loved you
to distraction."

"I don't know much about intimacy."

"You'll learn a lot more pretty soon," he
murmured dryly. He
frowned quizzically. "You were
going to marry me, thinking I
only wanted you for
the baby?"

"I love you," she said simply. "I thought,
when the baby came, you might learn to love me." Her face dissolved again
into tears.
"And then...then I knew there
wasn't going to be a baby."

He kissed her tenderly, sipping the tears from her wet
eyes,
smiling. "There will be," he
whispered. "One day, I promise you,
there will be. Right now, I only want to marry you and live with
you and love you. The rest will fall into place all by
itself."

She
looked into his eyes and felt the glory of it all the way to
her soul. "I love you," she sobbed.
"More than my life."

The wedding, despite the warring camps of its
organizers, came
off perfectly. It was a media event,
at the ranch in Jacobsville,
with all the
leading families of the town in attendance and
Tira
glorious in a trailing white gown as she walked down the
red
carpet to the rose arbor where Simon and all
his brothers and the
minister waited.
Dorie Hart was her matron of honor and the other
Hart boys were
best men.

The service was brief but eloquent, and when Simon
placed the
ring on her finger and then lifted her veil and kissed her,
it was
with such tenderness that she
couldn't even manage to speak af
terward. They went back down the aisle
in a shower of rice and rose petals, laughing all the way.

The reception didn't have singers from Nashville.
Instead the
whole Jacobsville Symphony Orchestra
turned out to play, and the food was flown in from San Antonio. It was a gala
event and there
were plenty of people present to enjoy
it.

Tira
hid a yawn and smiled apologetically at her new husband.
"Sorry! I'm so tired and sleepy I can hardly stand
up. I don't
know what's wrong with me!"

   
“A nice Jamaican honeymoon is going to cure you of
wanting
sleep at all," he promised in a
slow, deep drawl. "You are the
most
beautiful bride who ever walked down an aisle, and I'm the
luckiest man alive."

She reached a hand up to his cheek and smiled lovingly
at him.
"I'm the luckiest woman."

He kissed her palm. "I wish we were ten years
younger,
Tira
,"
he said with genuine regret. "I've wasted all that time."

"It wasn't wasted. It only made what we have so much
better," she assured him.

"I hope we have fifty
years," he said, and meant it.

They
flew out late that night for their Caribbean destination.
Cag
,
who hadn't forgotten the mouse, asked for the key to
Tira's

Diana
Palmer

house and assured her that the mouse would be a memory when
they returned. She had a prick of conscience, because in a
way
the mouse had brought her and Simon together.
But it was for the
best, she told herself. They couldn't
go on living with a mouse!
Although she did
wonder what plan
Cag
had in mind that hadn't

already been
tried.

The Jamaican hotel where they stayed was right on the beach
at
Montego
Bay,
but they spent little time on the sand. Simon was
ardent and inexhaustible, having kept his distance until the wed
ding.

He lay beside her, barely breathing
after a marathon of passion
that had left them both drenched in
sweat and too tired to move.
"You need
to take more vitamins," he teased, watching her
yawn yet again. "You aren't keeping up with
me."

She chuckled and rolled against him with a loving sigh.
"It's
the wedding and all the
preparations," she whispered. "I'm just
worn-out. Not that worn-out, though," she added, kissing his bare
shoulder softly. "I love you, Simon."

He
pulled her close. "I love you, Mrs. Hart. Very, very much."

She trailed her fingers across his broad, hair-roughened
chest

and wanted to say something else, but she fell asleep in
the middle

of it.

A short, blissful week later, they arrived back at her
house with

colorful T-shirts and wonderful memories.

"I could use some coffee," Simon said.
"Want me to make

it?"

"I'll do it, if you'll take the cases into the bedroom,"
she re
plied, heading for the kitchen.

She opened the cupboard to get out the coffee and came
face-
to-face with the biggest snake she'd ever seen
in her life.

Simon heard a noise in the kitchen, put down the
suitcases and
went to see what had happened.

His heart jumped into his throat when he immediately con-

298

Beloved

Diana Palmer

299

nected
the open
cupboard, the huge snake and his new wife lying unconscious on the floor.

He bent, lifting her against his chest. "
Tira
, sweetheart, are you
all right?" he asked softly, smoothing back her hair. "Can you
hear me?"

She moved. Her eyelids fluttered and
she opened her eyes, saw
Simon, and immediately remembered why
she was on the floor.
^“
Simon, there's
a...a...
ssssssnake
!"

    
"Herman."

She stared at him. "There's a snake in the
cupboard," she re
peated.

"Herman," he repeated. "It's
Cag's
albino python."

"It's in
our
cupboard,"
she stated.

"Yes, I know. He brought it over to catch the
mouse. Herman's a great mouser," he added. "Hell of a barrier to
Cag's
social life,
but a really good mousetrap. We won't have a mouse now. Looks
healthy, doesn't he?" he added, nodding toward the
cupboard.

While they were staring at the huge snake, the back door
sud
denly opened and
Cag
came in with a gunnysack. He saw
Tira
and Simon on the floor and groaned.

"Oh, God, I'm too late!"' he said heartily.
"I'm sorry,
Tira
, I
let the time slip away from me. I forgot all about Herman until I
remembered the date, and you'd already left the airport
when I tried to catch you." He sighed worriedly. "I haven't killed
you,
have I?"

"Not at all,"
Tira
assured him with grim humor. "I've been
tired a lot lately, too. I guess I'm getting fragile in my old
age."

Simon helped her to her feet, but he was watching her
with a curious intensity. She made coffee while
Cag
got his scaly friend
into a bag and
assured her that she'd have no more mouse problems.
Tira
offered him coffee, but he declined, saying that he tad
to get Herman home before the big python got irritable.
He was
shedding, which was always bad time to handle
him.

"Any time would be a bad time for me,"
Tira
told her husband
when their guest
had gone.

"You fainted," he said.

"Yes, I know. I was frightened."

"You've been overly tired and sleeping a lot, and I
notice that
you don't eat breakfast anymore."
He caught her hand and pulled
her down onto his
lap. "You were sure you weren't pregnant. I'm
sure you are. I want you to see a doctor."

"But I started," she tried
to explain.

"I want you to see a doctor."

She nuzzled her face into his throat. "Okay,"
she said, and
kissed him. "But I'm not getting
my hopes up. It's probably just
some female dysfunction."

The telephone rang in Simon's office, where he was winding
up his partnership before getting ready to
move into the state gov
ernment office that had been provided
for him.

"Hello," he murmured, only half listening.

"Mr. Hart, your wife's here," his secretary
murmured with un
usual dryness.

"Okay, Mrs. Mack, send her in."

"I, uh, think you should come out, sir."

"What? Oh. Very well."

His mind was still on the brief he'd been preparing, so
when
he opened the door he wasn't expecting the
surprise he got.

Tira
was standing there in a very becoming maternity dress, and
had an ear-to-ear smile on her face.

"It's weeks too early, but I don't care. The doctor
says I'm
pregnant and I'm wearing it," she
told him.

He went forward in a daze and scooped her close, bending
over
her with eyes that were suspiciously bright.
"I knew it," he whis
pered huskily.
"I knew!"

"I wish I had!" she exclaimed, hugging him
hard. "All that wailing and gnashing of teeth, and for nothing!"

He chuckled. "What a nice
surprise!"

"I thought so. Will you take me to
lunch?" she added. "I want
dill pickles
and strawberry ice cream."

Beloved

"
Yuuuck
!"
Mrs. Mack said theatrically.

"Never you mind, Mrs. Mack, I'll take her home and
feed her,"
Simon said
placatingly
. He
glanced at his wife with a beaming
smile.
"We'll have Mrs. Lester fix us something. I want to enjoy
looking at you in that outfit while we eat."

She held his hand out the door and
felt as if she had the world.

Later, after they arrived home, Mrs. Lester seated them
at the dining-room table and brought in a nice lunch of cold cuts and
omelets with decaffeinated coffee for
Tira
.
She was smiling, too,
because she was
going with them to Austin.

"A baby and a husband who loves me, a terrific cook
and housekeeper, and a
mouseless
house to leave
behind,"
Tira
said.
"What more could a woman ask?"

"
Mouseless
?"
Mrs. Lester asked.

"Yes, don't you remember?"
Tira
asked gleefully. "
Cag
got
rid of the mouse while we were on our honeymoon and you
were
at your sister's."

Mrs. Lester nodded. "Got rid of the mouse.
Mmm
-hmm." She
went and opened the kitchen door and invited them to look at the
cabinet.
They peered in the door and there he was, the mouse,
sitting on the counter with a cracker in his paws, blatantly nibbling
away.

"I don't believe it!"
Tira
burst out.

It got worse. Mrs. Lester went into the kitchen, held out
her hand, and the mouse climbed into it.

"He's domesticated," she said proudly. "I
came in here the
other morning and he was sitting on
the cabinet. He didn't even
try to run, so I held out my hand and he
climbed into it. I had a
suspicion, so I
put him in a box and took him to the vet. The vet
says that he isn't a
wild mouse at all, he's somebody's pet mouse
that
got left behind and had to fend for himself. Obviously he
belonged to the previous owners of this house. So I
thought, if
you don't mind, of course," she added kindly, "I'd
keep him. He
can come with us to
Austin."

301
Diana Palmer

Tira
looked at Simon and burst out laughing. The mouse, who
had no interest whatsoever in human conversation,
continued to
nibble his cracker contentedly, safe
in the hands of his new owner.