Double Wedding Ring (9 page)

“I love you, Tag,” she whispered. “Nobody's going to keep us apart.”

The words were oil on the fire inside him. He pulled her tightly against him, aching to feel her soft curves and grateful when she let her coat fall open. The pin from her corsage jabbed him in the chest, but he barely noticed, he was so enthralled in the pleasure of feeling her against him once again.

“I love you, Susie. I've been crazy from missing you.”

He didn't know exactly how it happened, but as they kissed and murmured, he gradually realized that his hand was grazing the top of her thigh, above her stocking, exploring the forbidden territory of garters and silken flesh. Susan sighed and he felt heat against his fingers. Susan whimpered and thrust the heat against his palm. Tag followed instinct and found the damp softness of her. He explored, the pressure building within him. She cried out then, softly in the darkness, and Tag felt himself gripped in shuddering release.

Instantly humiliated and frightened beyond words, Tag drew his hand away from her dangerous heat. She murmured an incoherent protest, reached for his hand. But Tag took her by the shoulders and pulled her firmly away from his chest.

“Susan, we can't do this. Don't you see? This isn't right.”

In the darkness, he saw her lower lip tremble. “You're afraid of what my mother will do, aren't you?”

“No. Listen to me, Susan. I'm afraid of what
we'll
do.”

“I'm not.” Her chin went up defiantly, one of the many Susan-gestures that he loved.

“You're barely sixteen. I don't want us to spoil it by...making a mistake. I want it to be perfect.”

She crossed her hands across her chest and glared out the front windshield. “And when will I be old enough for it to be perfect, Eugene?”

“When you're old enough to marry me, that's when.”

Her shoulders lost their stiffness and her chin came down a notch. Slowly she turned to look at him again. “You mean that?”

“I mean it.”

Susan's mother fought them all the way, of course, but Tag also wouldn't agree to sneaking around, either. By the end of Susan's junior year, Betsy Foster had just about given up her ranting and raving, probably because everybody in Sweetbranch had gotten so tired of it nobody listened any longer.

Tag worked construction every day, enjoying the hard labor, barely noticing as his eighteen-year-old chest broadened and hardened. He learned that a lot of the men he worked with were like his father, too ready to drink when their fears threatened to confront them. And he made up his mind not to be like that, ever. He worked hard and saved his money and stayed out of his father's way. What money he didn't save he gave to his mother. And what time he wasn't working, he spent with Susan.

He taught her to drive his noisy old Ford with its crotchety stick shift, laughing with her the first four times she rolled all the way back down the hill at the stop sign on Cottonwood Way.

They visited Crash at his first apartment in Birmingham, after he flunked out of junior college and started working for the electronics nut who kept saying computers were the future.

They celebrated her seventeenth birthday, and his nineteenth. They visited the hospital when Tag became an uncle, both feeling funny over such grown-up stuff. Feeling funnier yet when they both looked at the tiny, red-faced baby in the crib and glanced at each other, each realizing the other had been entertaining possibilities.

They fished in Willow Creek on Saturdays with old Bump Finley, who had turned up, as Tag's mama put it, like a bad penny, to move in with his brother's family around the corner on Dixie Belle Lane. He'd left town decades ago in a fit of temper, folks said, and now he was back, having lost his job and his retirement benefits in another fit of temper. But Tag and Susan learned to love the cantankerous old man, who sometimes gave a reluctant chuckle as the young couple splashed and cavorted in the creek Bump vowed was sacred ground, set aside for fishermen only.

Susan taught Tag to dance—real one-two-three slow dancing—in her family dining room the weekend her parents went to New Orleans for a Shriners' convention. He stepped all over her feet, and she laughed as delightedly as if he was Fred Astaire.

The weekend they brought Elliott's remains home from Vietnam she also held his hand, squeezing it tight every time he thought he was going to lose his cool in public.

And he watched her make steady progress on the Double Wedding Ring quilt while they daydreamed about the future. They talked with delight about how poor they would be. About how hard they would work. About how wonderful it would be in that little married students' apartment off campus with nothing but hand-me-down furniture and their quilt to keep them warm.

And they waited and hungered and sometimes got carried away by the desire that grew stronger every day. But never too carried away.

Now, as Tag lay on the ground and watched darkness settle over Sweetbranch, he wondered how much longer he would have to wait. How many more years it would be before their dreams would start coming true.

He heard the crackling of a footstep in the woods and looked up in time to watch her slip between the trees. She was smiling expectantly, her hands behind her back.

“I thought you'd never get here,” he said.

“I stopped by the house. I have a surprise.”

She swept her arms around in front of her and the quilt came tumbling open, falling in a rose-and-green-and-white sweep to the moss-covered ground. She smiled at him over the edge she still held in her arms. “I finished. It's ready now and it won't be long until—”

Her happy smile, her hopeful words, brought every fear in Tag's heart bubbling to the surface. He turned away, dropped his head into the hands that rested on his knees.

“Tag, what's wrong?”

And she was beside him, her arm around his shoulders. Just her nearness eased some of his fear.

“I've been drafted.”

“Drafted? But—” She sank onto her knees. He looked into her confused eyes, watched as realization slowly crept into their smoky gray depths. “Drafted?”

He nodded. “I've got two weeks.”

They were silent, communicating their misery and fear with their eyes.

“Will you...will they...you won't have to go to...?”

“There's only one reason they draft anybody, Susan. Everybody's going to Vietnam.”

“Oh, Tag!”

She threw her arms around him, and they held each other for a long time, until darkness was all around them. Moonlight sparkling off the creek was their only light.

Tag drew strength from holding her. Enough strength, at last, to draw the little fuzzy box out of his jeans and place it in her hands. She hesitated, then opened it. The tiny chip of a diamond barely twinkled in the moonlight.

“Oh, Tag! It's beautiful!”

“I wanted...hoped you would want to...make it official before I go.”

Her bright smile returned. “Oh, yes! How soon can we do it, Tag? While you're in boot camp, I'll get us a little apartment and before you go, we can be together every single minute and—”

He chuckled at her typically Susan, full-steam-ahead solution to every problem. “Whoa, now. I just meant we'll be engaged. That way it'll be official that we're going to get married as soon as I get home.”

She closed the ring box with a snap. “Engaged? Tag Hutchins, I don't want to be
engaged.
I want to be
married.
If you're going off God knows where, I want to be your wife!”

The strength of that devotion, Tag knew, was all he would need to see him through whatever lay ahead. He smiled.

“Susan, you're seventeen. You have another month of high school. Your mother would—”

“My mother can eat gravel in her grits for all I care! I'm not letting you go off without marrying you first. And that's that!”

He took her in his arms, but she held herself rigid. “It's not the right thing to do. Don't you see that, Susan?”

“How could it possibly be the wrong thing for us to get married?” she wailed.

“Because you're too young. Because I won't leave you here trying to act like a grown-up married woman all by yourself. Because I want it to be
right
when we do it.”

“It would be right, Tag. It couldn't be anything but right. Why can't you see that?”

And she kissed him then, fiercely, as if she could make him see just how wrong he was. Her lips were hard and insistent and urgent against his, and he met them with all the emotions he'd bottled inside himself since opening the letter the afternoon before.

She threw herself into his arms as they kissed, her fingers winding through his hair, her legs tangling with his. All Tag knew, as they fell back onto the quilt, was that he never wanted to let her go, that he couldn't bear the thought of letting her go.

“I love you, Tag,” she whispered against his jaw while one of her hands slipped up under his T-shirt and clutched at his chest.

“Oh, God, Susan, I love you, too.”

She looked into his eyes then, and pulled away from his embrace. Before he could ask what was wrong, she was unbuttoning the little brown shirt that was part of her Dairee Dreme uniform.

“Susie...”

“Just hush, Tag Hutchins,” she whispered with the stubborn set to her chin that he knew so well. But he had trouble watching her chin, for her shirt was off and she wore nothing beneath it. All he could see were her small, perfect breasts with their dusting of freckles, puckered into small, tight points.

Knowing better, he reached out and felt one of those small, tight points with the tips of his fingers. Susan closed her eyes and gasped.

Tag pulled his hand away. “We can't do this, Susie. We've waited all this time. We have to—”

“If you're going to make me wait to be your wife, we're at least going to know there's something real between us, Tag. You're taking something with you. And I'm keeping something here with me.”

She slipped her skirt down around her ankles, then stepped out of a scrap of yellow bikini panties. Tag groaned at the nest of pale curls between her legs.

“Susie, are you sure you know—”

“I'm sure.”

She dropped to her knees once again and pulled his head to her breast and Tag was lost. He took her nipple in his mouth, swirled his tongue around it, groaning again, but deeper this time as he felt her open the zipper on his jeans and take him in her long, elegant fingers.

He knew then it was going to happen because there was no way he had the strength to stop himself any longer. So he touched her, there between her legs, and felt the hot, damp place where he'd wanted to be for so long. He touched her, heard her breath become ragged and quick.

He pushed her back onto the quilt and threw his own clothes into the pile with hers. He kissed her then, all over, although she tried in her impatience to hurry him. By the time he finished kissing her, touching her, she was writhing and calling out to him.

“I'm going to go crazy, Tag, if you don't love me soon.”

He knelt and let the tip of his erection touch the hot, wet place between her legs and struggled not to come right then. “It might hurt,” he said. “I don't want to hurt you.”

She arched up until the tip of him was just inside her. Then she wrapped her long, slim legs around his waist and pulled him into her in one swift lunge. She cried out and so did he. He held her buttocks in his hands, holding her still against him until he could be sure he wouldn't explode and spoil everything.

When they started moving together, slowly, tentatively, Tag watched her face until he was certain she wasn't hurting. Watched until her nipples puckered once again and a slow flush covered her freckles and her eyes grew hazy. Then he could contain himself no longer.

Afterward, he stayed inside her, growing hard again before he had fully lost his first erection.

When the moon went down hours later and they folded the Double Wedding Ring quilt and walked to the edge of the woods, he kissed her one more time before she ran back to her house to sleep alone.

“I'll be waiting, Tag. Wherever they send you, however long it takes, I'll be waiting for you.”

Tag held on to those words for a long time, hearing them over and over in his heart like a prayer; they saw him through times when faith in Susan was the only thing sustaining him.

M
ALORIE FOLLOWED
her grandmother to the car, wishing Addy Mayfield hadn't been available to stay with Susan. Wishing she knew where to find the gumption to stand up to Betsy Foster.

“I don't
want
to go to church with you,” she would say. “I don't
want
to get to know anyone in this town. I don't
want
to get a life.”

In your dreams.

For, as she buckled Cody's carrier into the front seat, Malorie knew the bitter truth. She was no more able to stand up to Betsy Foster than her mother was. She didn't even have the courage, at this moment, to brush Cody's soft cheek with the back of her hand, which she ached to do. And all because she didn't have the nerve to risk one of her grandmother's stern, disapproving glares.

Nagged by the certainty that she deserved her misery, Malorie climbed into the back seat as her grandmother started the pristine six-year-old Cadillac. Although Reid Foster had been dead and his dealership in new hands for five years, the new owners still treated Betsy Foster like a queen when she came in for service.

Cautiously, the way she approached everything in life, Betsy backed the car down the driveway toward the street. She had almost reached the end when the roar of a motorcycle destroyed the Sunday morning serenity of Mimosa Lane.

Betsy braked to a stop a bit too abruptly. Malorie looked over her shoulder to discover that Tag Hutchins' big black bike sat squarely in the Foster drive. It idled noisily. Tag stared through the rear window, one arm resting on the helmet that sat on his thigh. With the other hand, he slowly revved the bike's engine.

Despite herself, Malorie smiled. Her boss was not like anyone else she'd ever known. He, too, intimidated her. But somehow she didn't mind that as much as she minded being intimidated by her grandmother.

Betsy shoved the Cadillac into Park. “Well, of all the nerve!”

Malorie half expected her grandmother to get out of the car and confront Tag Hutchins. But she didn't. Instead, after a moment, Tag swung one long leg over his bike and slid off. Dangling his helmet from a thumb, he approached the driver's side window, leaned over and peered into the car.

“Mornin', Miss Malorie.”

Malorie smiled. His words were polite, courtly even, but his voice was, as always, as rough as a gravel road. Indeed, Tag looked rough all round this morning. Heavy stubble darkened his lean face, his too-long hair was rumpled and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Good morning, Mr. Hutchins. You're looking well today.”

He chuckled, something he rarely did. The deep, pleasant sound ended abruptly as he turned his eyes back to the woman behind the wheel.

“Thought you deserved fair warning,” he said, his voice matching the coldness in his eyes. “I'm going to see Susan again. Now that I know...where things stand with her.”

A thrill of uncertainty traveled up Malorie's spine. What was it he'd said? See Susan
again?
How odd that no one had told her.

Mostly, though, she loved the way he was speaking to Betsy Foster. As if daring her to be her usual cranky self. Malorie shoved her hands into the folds of her loose gauze dress and clenched them tightly, waiting for Betsy's reaction.

“You'll do no such thing, Eugene Hutchins. You've set her back already.”

Malorie opened her mouth to protest, but had no opportunity to speak.

“She's a grown woman now, Betsy. You can't stop me.”

“She's barely competent. You don't want a thing to do with her.”

The words cut Malorie, and she could see Tag flinch at them, as well. “You leave that to me to decide.”

He turned to leave, but Betsy Foster wasn't finished. She twisted and called after him in a shrill voice Malorie had never heard her use. “I will not abide trouble from you, Eugene. Stay away from my house or I'll have the law on you. You hear me?”

Tag's only response was to swing into the seat of his bike, bring the engine to a deafening roar and wheel around in a U-turn. He exited Mimosa Lane in a flurry of noise that made Cody whimper and Betsy flush an angry red. Malorie tried to unclench her fists but couldn't quite manage to relax.

As she gave one more sideways glance in the direction of Tag's grand exit, Malorie noticed Bump Finley and his young nephew and niece, Krissy, all dressed for church, standing on the corner, also staring after Tag. Malorie almost smiled again, knowing how much her grandmother would hate having an audience to such a disorderly little scene.

Betsy rolled up her car window and backed out as if nothing had happened. “Stop whining, Cody. It's just a big noise and nothing for you to be afraid of.”

Malorie pursed her lips and realized her nails were cutting into her palms. As the Cadillac purred up Mimosa Lane, she tried to swallow the questions she knew would not be welcome. Halfway to church, she discovered a small pocket of courage deep inside her that said she didn't care whether her questions needled her grandmother or not.

“What have you got against Mr. Hutchins?”

“What I think about that man is none of your affair.”

Malorie felt a knot of apprehension growing within her. She plunged forward, before her courage was overcome completely. “Why don't you want him to see Mother?”

“I know what's best for Susan. I'll thank you not to question that.”

Anger shot through Malorie with a force that surprised her. Frightened at what the unexpected anger might produce, Malorie decided she'd better keep quiet until it was gone. She forced herself not to think about the ugly way her grandmother had characterized her mother as mentally incompetent. She forced herself not to think about the way Betsy Foster thought she had the God-given right to make the rules in everyone's life.

She definitely wouldn't think about times she had let her grandmother call the shots in her own life. At the time, she had assumed her grandmother was right, that Betsy Foster had only Malorie's best interests at heart. Now she wondered. Now that it was too late to turn back.

She didn't protest when her grandmother insisted on leaving Cody in the church nursery, although Malorie had hoped to hold the little boy on her lap, taking comfort in his warm, plump body and his unwavering affection. She simply listened to the sermon and sang along with the hymns. After the service, her grandmother took her by the elbow and maneuvered her through the clumps of people gathering in the churchyard.

“We'll fetch Cody in a minute,” Betsy said. “I see someone I want you to meet.”

I don't want to meet anyone.
Malorie protested loud and clear in her own mind. But as everyone had always done with Betsy Foster, she kept her mouth shut. Betsy stopped beside two women, a smiling auburn-haired woman named Rose who had once been her mother's best friend, and an ebony-skinned woman with an abundance of braids and bright-colored clothes with an ethnic flair.

“Maxine Hammond.” Betsy interrupted the two women without hesitation. “This is my granddaughter, Malorie. I'd like her to help you with that Christmas charity project of yours.”

Maxine arched a brow at Betsy, directed a regal smile at Malorie and said, “But does your granddaughter wish to assist in our project?”

Malorie sighed. “Hi. I'm Malorie. I'd be glad to help.”

“Would you, indeed?” Maxine exchanged a look with the other woman. “What do you think, Rose? Do we have need of such an
eager
young recruit?”

“I think we can use all the help we can get if some of the kids in this county are going to have a merry Christmas.” The calm assurance that Rose Finley McKenzie emanated made Malorie instantly envious. “Why, Betsy, I'll bet you're planning to write a big old check to see to it we can get a few more gifts from Santa, aren't you?”

“Well, I—”

“Uh-oh.” Rose gestured over Betsy's shoulder. “My Uncle Bump's headed this way and he's looking awful grouchy. You didn't do anything to set him off this morning, did you, Betsy?”

Betsy frowned and glanced around. Sure enough, Bump Finley was headed in their direction. Malorie had met him only briefly, at a wedding years ago and once or twice when he'd brought Rose's son over to play with Cody. With his flyaway white hair and colorful suspenders, he had always struck Malorie as funny and grandfatherly. But right now, as Rose had noticed, he looked very determined and very displeased.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Betsy said. “Jacob Finley and I have nothing to say to each other.”

Bump Finley obviously had other opinions on the matter. He walked right up to Betsy, favoring a bad right knee, and took her by the elbow. “You and me's got a bone to pick, woman.”

“Jacob Finley, I suggest you let go of my arm right now and—”

“And I suggest you hush your mouth and come along or I'll speak my piece right here in front of God and ever'body.” His watery green eyes shifted in Malorie's direction.

With a heavy sigh, Betsy Foster said, “Ladies, if you'll excuse me, it appears Jacob intends to do what he does best—behave unpleasantly. I will spare you all the scene.”

Although Rose and Maxine chuckled as the two walked away, Malorie heard the sharp exchange between the pair.

“You have gone too far this time for sure, Jacob!” Betsy Foster hissed.

“Just because you do it with ever'body else, don't think you can steamroll all over this old coot, too,” Bump replied, not bothering to lower his voice. “I saw the way you were acting this morning, and I aim to tell you what I think about the way you try to run the whole goldanged world.”

Malorie felt her face growing warm and wished she could slink away. Whatever must these people think?

She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and looked up into Maxine's warm eyes. “Pay them no mind. None of us do. They have bickered for years.”

“They have?”

Rose laughed, a throaty, delightful sound. “The way I heard it from my mama, they bickered the whole time they were sweethearts. Breaking up didn't even slow ‘em down.”

“Sweethearts? Grandmother?”

Both the women, who looked about the age of Malorie's mother, laughed.

“We were all young once, my dear,” Maxine said. “Now, if you are indeed willing to help us provide Christmas for needy children in our area, we would be most appreciative of the help. In fact, we have our first meeting in—” she glanced at her watch “—about ten minutes.”

Finding she was grateful for an excuse not to accompany her grandmother home, Malorie agreed to stay for the volunteer committee meeting. Betsy picked up Cody, and Malorie followed Maxine and Rose into the Fellowship Hall in the basement of the church. In minutes she felt at ease with Rose and Maxine and was soon laughing along with their humor, which was alternately sharp and wry.

“So you see,” Rose said, finishing a story about her twice-a-week commute to the University of Alabama, where she was working on a degree, “I had to tell that uppity young'un that he might be the graduate assistant and I might be a freshman, but I just happened to be full grown when Vietnam was going on, while he was likely still in diapers. So if he was as smart as he pretended to be, he'd better be listening to me.”

Laughter died on Malorie's lips when she caught sight of Sam Roberts lounging against the table in the center of the room, talking to the group of six others who had already congregated for the meeting. Out of the uniform he wore each day when he worked with Susan, he looked more disconcertingly human than usual. His smile looked warm, and not just professionally encouraging. His eyes were bright, his fair hair rakish with his casual tweedy slacks and collarless shirt.

She wished she hadn't been reminded quite so unexpectedly that Sam Roberts was not just a physical therapist. He was also a man.

She almost turned and left the room. But Maxine was looking at her quizzically. And, worst of all, Sam had turned at the sound of their laughter. He had seen her, too. She didn't like the welcoming look in his eyes.

“Ah,” Maxine said as she saw where Malorie's gaze had landed. “I see you know at least one of our volunteers. This is excellent. Sam will be glad to take you under his wing, will you not, Sam?”

Sam smiled and pulled an empty chair away from the table and offered it to Malorie. “It would be my pleasure.”

Malorie had no choice but to sit next to Sam. The chairs, she discovered, were crammed too close together around the unsteady folding table. Sam's sport coat was draped over the back of his chair and his crisp white sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms. She noticed, as she had before, the strength in those arms. She told herself she noticed only because she was grateful to know her mother was in such capable hands.

Malorie pulled her own arms closely against her body and waited for the prickly sensations to leave her.

“They're all nice people here,” Sam whispered as the others scraped chairs on the linoleum floor and took their seats. “They'll like you.”

Malorie frowned and turned to retort that she wasn't worried about not being liked by this roomful of small-town strangers. But as she looked into Sam's eyes, she found herself drawn deeply into their dark depths, and she couldn't quite mouth the flippant words. She found she didn't mind that he seemed to see her fear.

She smiled at him and nodded. But she didn't relax her arms. She didn't loosen her hold on all she'd bottled up inside.

* * *

B
Y THE TIME
M
AXINE
Hammond had outlined plans for the church's Christmas charity project, Sam had pretty much decided he had fallen in love.

Falling in love with the daughter of one of his patients gave him a few moments of uneasiness. But Sam figured he had waited a long time to fall in love—not that there hadn't been plenty of other women along the way—and he had no intention of letting anything interfere now that he'd found the magic that kept so much of the world in turmoil.