Ready for Marriage? (24 page)

Kate lay awake, torn between wanting to go to Trent and wishing he would come to her. She’d been the one who had decided they shouldn’t share a bedroom while Christa and Brenda were in the house with them. But tonight was different. First of all, Brenda wasn’t here. And secondly, Trent had proposed. She was wearing an engagement ring.

But you haven’t said yes
, she reminded herself.

Was she allowing three little words to keep her from accepting, from grabbing everything she’d ever wanted and holding on tight? What did it matter that Trent hadn’t told her he loved her. He’d shown her in countless ways. Not only did he make her feel loved and
cherished every time they made love, but he’d done everything in his power to give her whatever she wanted. He’d let her have her way about their relationship and about dealing with Christa and Brenda and even Aunt Mary Belle.

And don’t forget that he bought this house nine years
ago—bought it in the hopes you’d come back to him.
And he kept it, remodeled it and held on to it all this
time. And he gave it to you—in writing, putting the deed
in your name
.

How much more did a man have to do to prove his love?

Kate slipped out of bed, picked up her satin robe and put it on. Just as she headed for the door, she heard a soft rapping.

“Kate,” Trent whispered her name.

She opened the door to him. He stood there in the dark hallway, wearing his pajama bottoms and silk robe, loosely belted. He looked as if he’d gotten no more sleep than she had.

“I was coming to you,” she told him.

“Christa is sound asleep. I peeked in on her on my way to your room.”

“Couldn’t you wait till morning to find out my answer?” she said teasingly.

“I can wait for your answer.” He shut the door behind him, then reached out and pulled her up against him, enfolding her securely in his embrace. “But I can’t wait until morning to make love to you.”

“I feel the same way.” Rising on tiptoe, she draped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

That was all it took for him to lose control. His mouth devoured hers and his hands went crazy, rubbing, caressing, massaging her back, her hips, her buttocks.
She gripped his wide shoulders as he deepened the kiss and when his sex thumped against her belly, she yanked off his robe and tossed it to the floor. Within minutes, he’d stripped her, then he discarded his pajama bottoms. They tumbled together onto her bed, touching and tasting each other, their bodies eager to join. She took the dominant position, mounting him, bringing him fully inside her, to the hilt. And then she began a fast, frantic pace, wanting him desperately. Needing him. Loving him. Always. He clasped her hips and urged her into a frenetic rhythm. Hard and fast. Hot and wet. They went at each other as if their very lives depended on this single mating.

Trent grunted. Once. Twice. And then he came.

Kate’s own climax came on the heels of his, fast and furious. Pleasure almost beyond bearing. She melted into him, their sex-damp bodies sticky and hot. He stroked her buttocks as she kissed his neck.

“Kate. Kate…”

“I love you, Trent.”

“I—”

The scream filled the entire house, as if the child’s voice was magnified a thousand-fold. Kate shot straight up, her heart racing maddeningly. Oh my God, it was Christa!

“It’s Christa,” Kate told him as she got up, found her robe on the floor and slipped into it.

“She’s crying. Listen.” Trent followed Kate’s lead and put on his robe, too.

“She must be having a nightmare.”

Kate ran out into the hall and straight to Christa’s bedroom. Trent came in right behind her. She rushed over to the bed where Christa thrashed about, moaning and groaning and clawing at the air. Acting purely on
instinct, Kate crawled into bed with her child, pulled her into her arms and held her close.

“It’s okay, baby, Mama’s here,” Kate said as she caressed Christa’s head and neck and back. “You’re safe my darling. No one can hurt you.”

Trent stood beside the bed. Springtime moonlight poured through the windows, filtered only by the delicate white lace curtains. His gaze connected with Kate’s and they exchanged concerned looks.

The more Kate petted Christa, the tighter she clung to Kate and the calmer she became until finally she quieted. Her eyelids fluttered. Kate kissed her forehead.

“That’s it my sweet baby, rest. Mama’s here and I’ll never let anything or anyone hurt you ever again.”

Christa opened her eyes and looked right at Kate. “I had a terrible dream.”

“That’s all it was, sweetheart. Just a dream. You’re fine now.”

“I dreamed that we were all together, living here in this house and we were so happy.” Christa looked over Kate’s shoulder and reached her hand out toward Trent. “Daddy?”

Kate’s heart caught in her throat.

“Daddy, this terrible person tried to take me away, but you and Mama stopped him.” Christa laid her head on Kate’s shoulder. “Daddy fought him and saved me. And you grabbed me and held me, Mama, and told me you loved me.”

Tears poured down Kate’s cheeks. The joy bursting inside her hurt with the most intense pleasure-pain she’d ever known.
Thank you, God, thank you
. Christa had called her Mama. And she’d called Trent Daddy.

Trent leaned over the bed and wrapped his arms around Kate and Christa. “We both love you,” he said.
“Your mother and I love you more than anything, just like we love each other. One of the reasons I love you so much is because you’re half mine and half your mama’s. And you’re special, Christa, because you’re you.”

Kate reached up and caressed Trent’s cheek. “The answer is yes,” she told him.

He kissed Kate’s forehead. Christa lifted her head from Kate’s shoulder and said, “You can do better than that, can’t you, Daddy?”

“Yes, I can, young lady, but not tonight. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate properly and I’ll give Kate a kiss that will knock her socks off. But for now, we all need to get some sleep. We’ve just been through quite an ordeal.”

Trent turned to leave the bedroom.

“Don’t go,” Christa cried.

“All right, I’ll stay.” Trent walked across the room and sat in one of the two floral chintz lounge chairs flanking a small tea table. “I’ll keep watch from here the rest of the night. Now, you two girls go to sleep.”

Christa tugged on Kate’s hands. “Sleep with me tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” Kate lay down beside her daughter, then pulled the covers over them up to their shoulders.

Christa snuggled against Kate and whispered, “You’re going to marry Daddy again, aren’t you, Mama?”

“Yes, I am.” Kate hugged Christa.

“And I’m going to be your maid of honor, right?”

“Right?”

“And I’m going to be the luckiest man in the world,” Trent called from across the room.

“We’re all three lucky,” Kate said. “We’re a real family again.”

At long last.

“T
hey’re here,” Christa Winston called out to her nana and aunt Mary Belle, then she rushed off the porch and down the brick sidewalk toward her mother and father who were just getting out of Trent’s Bentley.

Kate opened her arms as Christa flew toward her.

After giving her mother a hug, Christa said, “May I carry one of them?”

Trent opened the car’s back door and looked inside, then smiled at Christa. “Take your pick. Do you want Bay or Belle?”

“Give me Belle,” thirteen-year old Christa said. “She and I will have to stick together, being sisters and all.”

Trent removed the infant carrier from the back seat and handed his younger daughter to her big sister. “We think she looks just like you did when you were a baby.”

“Which means she’s a living doll, right Daddy?” Christa beamed happily as she accepted the carrier and
headed up the sidewalk. “You should see your nursery, young lady. Mama and I went all out decorating it. Your side of the room is all pink and white. And I chose all your dolls and stuffed animals myself. We let Daddy pick out things for Bay, since he’s a boy. He’ll probably play football and baseball. But I’ll teach you to play soccer and softball. I’m on both teams, you know.”

Trent lifted his son’s carrier from the car, then reached out and put his arm around Kate. “Miracles do happen, don’t they, honey?”

“Absolutely. We are living proof of that.”

“Hurry up, you two,” Aunt Mary Belle fussed as she came toward them. “You do not want to keep that baby out in this hot July sun another minute. It’s enough to give me a heat stroke. Ninety-five in the shade today. That’s what the weather forecaster said.”

Christa took Belle inside, then Brenda and Mary Belle followed. Kate held open the door for Trent and went in behind him and Bay. Kate gasped as they entered the foyer. Blue and pink streamers hung from the crown molding and draped the staircase. Baskets of fresh flowers—in pale baby pastels—had been situated in every corner of the foyer. Kate saw plainly Aunt Mary Belle’s extravagant hand mixed with Christa’s youthful exuberance in the celebratory displays.

The entire assembly treaded upstairs, straight to the nursery. The room, a pale cream, boasted a hand-painted mural, and had been decorated in shades of light pink, blue, yellow and green. The furniture for both babies was a rich mahogany—the baby beds, chests, dressing tables and rocking chairs. Trenton Bayard Winston V’s bed was an identical Genny Lind style to his sister’s except hers had a white-eyelet-lace canopy. Where Bay had his father’s brown hair and
mother’s blue eyes, Brenda Belle Winston was her older sister’s look-alike, with Trent’s brown eyes and Kate’s blond hair.

After removing both sleeping infants from their carriers and placing them in their beds, Christa and the adults stood watching the little ones, in awe of the miracle before them.

“Babies are so amazing, aren’t they?” Brenda said. “I’d hoped to have more children after Rick, but it wasn’t meant to be.” She put her arm around Christa. “But God blessed me with this young lady.”

“And now you have two more grandchildren.” Christa looked from her mother to her father. “Isn’t that right?”

“Absolutely,” Kate said.

“And I’ll teach them to call you Nana, just like I do,” Christa told her.

“Christa, I’m not sure—”

“Of course, they’ll call you Nana.” Kate smiled at Brenda. “You and Aunt Mary Belle will share the honor of being their grandmother, just as y’all do with Christa.”

“I’ve got to phone Shelly and Alexa and tell them they can come over and see our babies.” Christa galloped out of the nursery, then called back to her parents, “Is it all right for them to come over in about an hour?”

“An hour should be fine,” Trent replied, then draped his arm around Kate’s shoulders. “Now, Mrs. Winston, I think it’s time for you to lie down for a while. You’ve had a busy day today, not to mention the fact you just gave birth to twins only a few days ago.”

“Brenda and I will go downstairs and see to lunch and field any phone calls.” Mary Belle ushered Brenda from the nursery.

Trent and Kate heard the two talking like magpies as they went up the hall and down the stairs. Christa’s nana and her aunt Mary Belle had become fast friends and both seemed to greatly enjoy living together at Winston Hall. Mary Belle had gotten Brenda involved in all her clubs and civic organizations and you seldom saw one of them without the other.

While the ladies kept busy and happy blocks away at the old family manor, Trent, Kate and Christa lived what Kate thought of as a fairly normal life here on Madison in their homey old house, with a swing on the front porch and a white picket fence. Last year Kate had thought she couldn’t be happier, that she had everything her heart desired. That was until she discovered she was pregnant—at thirty-six—with twins.

Trent marched Kate into their bedroom and all but forced her to take off her shoes and lie down. “Rest while you can,” he told her. He kissed her forehead, then turned to leave.

“Stay with me.”

“You won’t rest if I’m here.”

“I won’t rest if you’re not.”

“Okay, but no hanky-panky,” Trent said jokingly as he got in bed with her and sat, his back against the headboard.

“We’ll save the hanky-panky for a few weeks.” She snuggled up against him, placing her head in his lap. “For now, I’ll settle for some TLC. Lots and lots of TLC.”

“Ah, honey, you’re going to get plenty of tender loving care. Now and for the rest of our lives.” He tenderly stroked her head, threading his fingers through her hair. “I love you, Kate. I love you so much it hurts.”

She sighed. “And I love you the very same way.”

Life didn’t get any better than this. After years of loneliness and heartache, Kate and Trent had been given a precious gift—a second chance for a happy life as husband and wife. And as parents.

* * * * *

ANN MAJOR

lives in Texas with her husband of many years and is the mother of three grown children. She has a master’s degree from Texas A&M at Kingsville, Texas, and is a former English teacher. She is a founding board member of the RWA and a frequent speaker at writers’ groups.

Ann loves to write; she considers her ability to do so a gift. Her hobbies include hiking in the mountains, sailing, ocean kayaking, travelling and playing the piano. But most of all she enjoys her family.

Florence, Italy

‘‘C
ut them off! Then he’ll suffer!’’

Cash’s hand froze on the auditorium door that led to the parking lot and helipad outside when he heard the screams to emasculate him.

Roger, his personal assistant, peered at the swelling crowd from a nearby window and said far too cheerily, ‘‘More and more people are streaming into the plaza. Lucky for you, these are modern times and they aren’t wearing swords in scabbards. So, I think it’s safe enough for you to run for it—’’

‘‘What’s the matter with them? They’ve had months to get used to my design,’’ Cash said.

Cash McRay wasn’t a coward. But the roar of five thousand angry Florentines on the other side of the door threatening to cut off precious parts of his body made his blood run cold. His tall angular body felt like an immovable weight as he
hesitated. His large, size-twelve feet rooted themselves to the floor.

The death threats grew louder. Hell, maybe he should have played it safe. He’d known the design of the ultra-modern museum was over the top, but had he held back? Hell, no.

‘‘How ironic that the good citizens of Florence want me dead at the precise moment I’d begun to think I might feel like living again someday,’’ he said wryly. Unable to block the memory that had haunted so many of his nightmares, he saw his beloved Susana and little Sophie, lying so still and beyond his reach in their coffins.

Roger placed a hand on Cash’s broad back and shoved him forward. ‘‘Relax. All the cannibals want is you…on a platter.’’

Cash whirled, and Roger flashed him the winning smile that had gotten him his job a year ago. Only tonight the kid’s snowy white smile made Cash grit his teeth and ball his hands into fists.

‘‘You talk too much,’’ Cash growled. ‘‘And you smile too much. It’s dangerous. Did anybody ever tell you, you should be a model for a toothpaste ad?’’

‘‘Yeah—you! All the time. And it’s getting old.’’

‘‘I’d rather grin goofily for a living than have my testicles served as shish kebab.’’

‘‘This is good. Finally, a joke from you.’’

‘‘Life goes on,’’ Cash muttered, determined to believe it.

‘‘Especially since you bumped into Isabela Escobar in Mexico City,’’ Roger said, showing too many teeth again. ‘‘Office gossip has it you are going to propose.’’

‘‘Why do I have to be cursed with the nosiest staff in the world?’’

‘‘There have been a lot of perfumed letters.’’

Cash seethed inwardly. Whether he intended to marry her or not was nobody’s business. Aloud he said, ‘‘I can’t propose to her or anybody else unless you get me out of Florence alive.’’

Roger threw the door open and pushed him hard. ‘‘Run for it, loverboy! I’m right behind you!’’

Lowering his head and ducking behind his leather briefcase, Cash dove through the throng that was being held in check behind velvet ropes by beefy security men.

It was early April, and the night air chilled him. The parking lot was jammed. The helipad platform was a hundred yards off to the right. Policemen formed a human barricade all the way to the chain-link fence surrounding it.

When strange hands and arms groped angrily at his legs, he sprinted for the ladder to the helipad, where the black rotors of a jet helicopter chopped a violet sky. Deftly he dodged the microphones that were thrust at his tanned, aristocratic, much-photographed face.

‘‘How could you build such a futuristic monstrosity in a city noted for its architectural beauty and history?’’ a woman yelled.

‘‘Egotist! Deconstructivist! Modernist! Postmodernist!’’

A man with oily black hair rushed him. Fortunately, two guards grabbed the ingrate by the shoulders. ‘‘Florence glories in its past,’’ he yelled. ‘‘Your museum looks like a crab squatting on a giant toilet!’’

Roger smiled and shouted glib answers in his horrendous Italian to the red-faced fellow.

‘‘Did your billionaire daddy bribe the city officials to pick your insane design?’’ someone else yelled at Cash.

‘‘Avant-garde, please,’’ Roger corrected, his toothy grin as bright as ever.

Stung by the reference to his father, Cash hesitated on the third rung of the ladder and turned just as a rock bounced off his left shoulder.

‘‘No comment!’’ Roger yelled from a few feet behind him as a hand yanked one of his expensive Italian shoes off. ‘‘Climb, Cash, before the natives down here strip me naked! I’m right behind you.’’ More fabric ripped. ‘‘Ouch! Let go of
my trousers! Hey! The bastard almost got me. Climb! You’re not the only one they want to barbecue.’’

Chain links chimed as a dozen men fought their way over the makeshift fencing. Before the rabble-rousers could reach the ladder, Cash and Roger were in the helicopter. Dozens of flashes went off in their faces. Then the heavy door slammed as the police pulled the climbers off the platform.

Cash leaned back and sighed. Then he jammed his hand in his trouser pocket to make sure the velvet box with Isabela’s engagement ring inside was still there.

Isabela was dark and fiery—and so vivaciously alive that maybe she could make him forget his loss. He tried to summon her image. Instead, he saw the still, white features of his wife, Susana, and their precious little daughter, their golden heads gleaming on satin pillows. He heard his stepmother’s soft whisper behind him, ordering him to close their caskets.

‘‘You two okay?’’ Count Leopoldo’s soft elegantly accented voice was barely audible over the roar of the helicopter as it took off. ‘‘You still game for a private tour of the Galleria degli Uffizi?’’

Leopoldo, or rather Leo, and he had roomed together at Harvard.

Cash nodded wearily, his thoughts returning momentarily to the present. The Galleria degli Uffizi was one of the world’s great museums of Renaissance art. Susana had never come to Florence without going there….

He turned his head to stare out the window at his creation. In the dying sunlight, from this angle, indeed it did look like a giant golden crab squatting by twin telescopes. As he studied the slanting expanses of gridded glass and the bridges in between the rectangular columns of limestone that had been likened to a crab’s legs, he felt a pang of doubt.

The museum was the first thing he’d built since his home in San Francisco had burned. The house he’d designed for Susana had brought much enthusiasm and notoriety and many commissions from all over the world. He’d been away in Eu
rope supervising the renovation of Leo’s island retreat when his own house had burned, and he’d lost everything that mattered.

The helicopter shot straight upward into the purple dark, the whir of the rotors drowning out the noise of the crowd. Soon the people in the streets looked like ants. As the helicopter swooped toward the oldest part of the ancient city, all Cash could see were red-tiled roofs, boulevards, squares and the brown glitter of the serpentine Arno, the famous, unpredictable river that had raged through the city on more than one occasion with devastating effect. Florence had survived disasters far worse than one whimsical building.

His old friend Leo had asked if he was okay.

Cash shot Leo a furtive glance. ‘‘I forgot what fun it was to be the most hated ‘pop’ architect on the planet.’’

‘‘
Controversial
architect,’’ Roger amended. ‘‘Hell, this is good. Tomorrow you’ll be on the front page of every newspaper in Europe.’’

‘‘How can you be so damn optimistic—when people want to kill me?’’

‘‘My people,’’ Leo began, ‘‘Italians, Florentines, we are passionate idiots. You must forgive us. Today we hate you—in four hundred years we will deify you.’’

Cash glowered. ‘‘A lot of good that will do my moldering corpse.’’

‘‘He wants gloom and doom,’’ Roger said conversationally to Leo. ‘‘So, all right, Cash, I’ll give you gloom and doom.’’ His pearly smile lit the dark. ‘‘You lost the New York proposal.’’

Cash lowered his head into his hands and experienced the all-too-familiar, bleak, empty sensation of creative despair. He ran his big hands through his shock of thick black hair.

Most people wouldn’t have much sympathy for him. Even after Susana’s death, everybody had told him he was a fool to mope when he had so much to live for.

‘‘You have your talent, your name, your youth….’’
Your
money
, they’d meant.

If a man was rich, everybody thought he should be happy. They didn’t know. Money, the kind of fortune he possessed, cut him off from almost everybody, from his own humanity even, from feeling anything remotely real. He lived behind walls, sometimes in total isolation. He buried himself in his work.

But his grief was real, and he had regrets like anybody else. He’d loved his wife and child to distraction. If he’d known how little time he had with them, he would never have left them so often to work in all those far-flung places.

People thought because his picture was in magazines, he led a charmed life. ‘‘You’ll marry again,’’ they said. ‘‘A man like you…can have anybody.’’

At first he’d thought he could never betray Susana by marrying another. But nearly three years had passed, and it was getting harder and harder to live on memories. Two months ago, he’d been in Mexico City visiting his old mentor, Marco Escobar, after he’d had a heart attack. Isabela had popped into her father’s hospital room and dropped her shawl. When he’d picked it up, her hand had lingered on his. When she’d shown him sympathy, he’d felt a flicker of interest, the first since his wife’s death. And he’d thought maybe…maybe…

‘‘Your Manhattan design was great, Cash. Really,’’ Roger said. ‘‘Everybody said so. You’re just ahead of your time. Look on the bright side. At least you won’t build something that will make Manhattanites scream for your testicles on a skewer, and I won’t lose another expensive shoe. New Yorkers are a lot more violent than Italians, you know.’’

‘‘Maybe. But New Yorkers are a lot more receptive to modern architecture too.’’

It is always a mistake to retrace one’s steps. No sooner was Cash inside the Uffizi than he regretted coming. The walls of the museum that housed the works of the world’s finest col
lection of Italian Renaissance art seemed to close in. The musty odor of the old building and paintings suffocated him.

The memories were still too sharp; Susana’s ghost feet too vivid. Only vaguely was he aware of the dimly lit masterpieces, half hidden by glass that loomed above him and Leo in the shadowy gallery.

‘‘The last time I was here, I was with Susana,’’ Cash whispered.

‘‘I know,’’ Leo said, not without sympathy. But he was a man of the world. His first wife had died in a car crash, and he was now on his third marriage—to a beautiful Parisian model.

Leo’s heels clicked as he kept walking until they reached a certain gallery in the depths of Galleria degli Uffizi. Suddenly Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
soared above them. Outside the sun had set, and it was raining softly, a spring shower that would soon be over.

The last time he’d been here with Susana, the summer sun had been glorious outside, glorious in her hair, more brilliant and awe-inspiring even than the light in Botticelli’s famous paintings. Cash had wanted to stay outside, to walk in the sunny squares with Susana, to feed the pigeons and look at the buildings. But as always, she’d had her heart set on coming here.

He and Susana had honeymooned in Florence. Even on that visit, she’d dragged him out of their bed to visit the Uffizi Palace every afternoon, not because the building was one of the most important examples of Italian Mannerist architecture, but because she’d loved Botticelli so much.

‘‘If Botticelli were alive, I’d be insanely jealous,’’ he’d teased her once.

She’d laughed as she’d run through the galleries ahead of him. And always she’d ended up here, staring at
The Birth of
Venus
.

‘‘It’s the visual image of the birth of love in the world,’’ she’d explained, sliding her arm through his.

‘‘You’re my visual image of love,’’ he’d said.

‘‘It’s good you’re here again,’’ Leo said, interrupting his reverie. ‘‘One must banish ghosts.’’

‘‘Is that possible?’’ Cash asked, doubtful.

‘‘I could introduce you to women who are so skilled, they can make a man forget anything…at least for a while.’’

Cash thought of Isabela and hoped she would be able to do that for him. ‘‘You Italians…’’

‘‘Men are the same everywhere.’’ Leo paused. ‘‘When I saw you at the funeral—’’

‘‘Don’t.’’

Again Cash heard his stepmother tell him it was time to close the caskets—and the gallery became as quiet as death for an awkward moment.

‘‘This Venus is one of the most sensuously beautiful nudes painted during the Renaissance,’’ Leo said. ‘‘Do you know the myth?’’

‘‘The painting is nice.’’

‘‘Nice? What an awful word—too tame. You Americans overuse it.’’

‘‘The myth is not so nice. It has some really gruesome aspects.’’

Leo nodded with a grim little smile, and Cash leaned forward to read a plaque on the wall that told the story. Gaea, mother of Cronus, somehow persuaded the audacious Cronus to castrate his father, Uranus, and throw his severed genitals into the sea.

Cash’s gut tightened. Still, he stared up from the little plaque to the breathtaking nude redhead with new interest.

The testicles had floated on the surface of the waters, producing a white foam from which rose the irresistible Aphrodite he saw in the painting. The Romans had adopted the myth, and Botticelli, being Italian, had changed her name to Venus.

According to the plaque, the winds had carried the foam across stormy seas, and she was born along the coast of Cythera.
When the foam washed up on the shores of Cyprus, she rose out of the water and presented herself to the gods.

Leo broke the silence. ‘‘I always forget how breathtaking Botticelli’s Venus is. The gods fell in love with her upon first sight.’’

Maybe the mood of the painting affected him. For whatever reason, Cash pulled out a little velvet box and snapped it open. ‘‘I bought a ring…for Isabela.’’ The diamond flashed at them wickedly.

‘‘Isabela Escobar,’’ Leo purred in his velvet, accented voice.