Reluctant Consent (2 page)

“I
broke it off!”

“Stick
it back together!” Tullamore made it sound like she’d broken her favorite, dime
store knick-knack.

“Or
marry him just for a little while.”
 
Lawrence’s voice was jovial, meant to be heartening.
 
 
“A year or two?”

“Ah
Ah Ah.” Stipulations against divorce.”
 
Millicent snapped the locks on his case and lovingly picked up his
coat.
 
He shook it.
 
“Staggered penalties based on time
married, etc.”

 
“I won’t marry him.”

“Oh
surely?”
 
Uncle Tullamore
probed.
 
“Your brothers,
Denise?
 
With Lucille and Benson?”

Lawrence
continued to be hearty. “He’ll be happy to take you back.
 
Something in it for him, right, Millicent?”

Millicent
shook his head.
 
“No.
 
Beyond three juvenile delinquents and
an unemployed wife with a derelict property.”

“A
wealthy, unemployed wife!” Tullamore threw in.

“Impossible!
 
Totally out of the question.”
 
Denise resisted the impulse to
shriek.
 
“There must be a way out.”

“You
can file a legal action of course.”
 
Millicent thrust one arm into his coat.
 
“But in the meantime, the conditions of the will—“

Denise
sank back onto the foosball table and rocked forward.
 
She wrapped both arms around her stomach.
 
To start with she’d find a killer
lawyer.

“Do
I have time?”

Millicent
handed a packet to Lawrence.
 
“There are copies for each of you there.
 
And some extra if you wish to use them?”
 
He gestured towards the door barring
the relatives, before turning and loping towards the tall windows forming a
back wall of glass.

“You
have five days. Sorry to be a coward, but --“He nodded his head in the
direction of the hall door and shrugged before shoving open the French doors.
He clattered across the terrace and walked briskly across the lawn, heading for
his car at a fast clip.

Denise
moaned.
 
Her heart pounded in her
chest. She doubted she’d be able to draw sufficient air into her lungs to
sustain life.
 
She adored her
brothers.

She
could admit that like herself, her brothers had not been raised with
long term
self-discipline as a goal.
 
Her parents were benevolent and clearly
loved them.
 
She knew that.
 
But they had no desire to be parents or
to deal with the mess children could and did cause.
 
They all ran wild.
 

She
herself had only gradually realized that some limits would have been
useful.
 
She had a growing
awareness it was a miracle she wasn’t a complete ass.
 
Her brothers could certainly use some guidance.
 
But Aunt Lucille and Uncle Benson-dam
and sire of The Robo Children-were not the answer.

 
And her? She not only had no idea how
to parent adolescent boys, she absolutely couldn’t marry Andrew.
 
She hated him.
 
He didn’t have any respect for
her.
 
There was a small matter of
pride, for one thing.
 
And there
was the other matter.
 
One she
couldn’t exactly share with anyone.

He
had insisted she listen to several short talks; she’d day dreamed through
them.
 
Later, he’d delivered one
lecture she hadn’t even begun to take seriously.
 
And then he tried to spank her.

***
     

She’d
stared at him, on that particular day, dumbfounded.
 
Her mouth even hung open slightly.

    
“Now!” He
barked.
 
“Over my knee!”

She
giggled.
 
“This is like, a
game?
 
To be sexy?”
 
She laughed cheerfully.
 
“Sorry. Not my thing.”

    
Andrew let out his
breath slowly, leaning back against the leather couch, placing his long, slim
hands on his knees and looking levelly at the woman he loved.

“We’ve
had this discussion, Denise.”

“You
told me you were a spanko?”
 
She
frowned at him and then walked into the kitchen.
 

He
heard the frig open.
 

“No,
you didn’t, Drew.
 
That’s the kind
thing a girl would remember.”
 
Strolling back into the room she set a glass of ice on the table and
unscrewed the cap to the plastic bottle of Pepsi.

“No,
Denise.”
 
Andrew kept his voice
even as he got up and moved towards her.
 
Putting his hands around her upper arms he drew her close to him and
kissed her forehead.

“You
agreed to marry me, right?”

Denise
snuggled against his chest.
 

“I
told you, I’m what’s considered an old fashioned man.”

She
cocked her head back and ran her hand up his cheekbones and then trailed a
finger over his lips.
 
“You are old
fashioned.
 
You open doors, you
pull out chairs --”

“I
expect to be obeyed.”
 
He moved her
hand away from his mouth and looked down at her, keeping his face calm,
patient.

One of her beautiful long brows quirked.
Andrew moved them towards the couch.
 
He wasn’t backing away from this.
 
He’d known what kind of relationship he wanted for years. If she was
going to marry him, they needed to settle this now.
 
He’d been afraid she’d blown off their conversations.
 
She had a tendency not to hear what she
didn’t want to. That was one of several habits he intended to relieve her of
pretty quickly.

“I
told you I expect to be the authority in our relationship.”

She
snorted.
 
“I remember you telling
me you were older, more experienced, and you do know more about stuff than me.
 
Thank god.”

“And
I told you there would be consequences when you disobeyed me.” Andrew cut her
off firmly.
 
He wasn’t going to
rehash this.
 
Now
or ever.

She
gave a little laugh and tried to pull away from his hands.
 
“Really, Andrew that’s kinda
creepy.
 
Enough.”

“It
is
enough.” He moved quickly and
pinned her across his lap, both hands imprisoned in one of his behind her back,
his strong arm resting against her back and pinning her in position.
 

She
fought back immediately, at first with words along the lines of “this isn’t
funny” moving quickly to the insulting and obscene, and finally on to the physical.
 
Through it all Andrew remained silent
and unmoving.
 
As far as he was
concerned, he behaved heroically, steadfastly ignoring the impulse to settle
her down fast with a few sharp smacks.

Eventually
she gave up and lay still, fuming.

 
“I will let you go, Denise.
 
But I have some things to say and
you’ll listen to me first and then you need to make a decision.”

This
provoked a new round of verbal abuse and physical resistance.
 
Andrew waited it out.

“I
made my position clear several times, Denise.” He began speaking again only
after she rested quietly for a moment across his lap.
 

Honestly,
he was too tense to enjoy the splendid sight of her bottom lying across his
knee.
 
He loved Denise, and
although he’d known this moment was inevitable, he wanted – desperately --for
it to be over, and a success.
 
Meanwhile, thousands of evolutionary years of DNA thundered through his
bloodstream and he ached to throw her on the bed and fuck her.

“I’m
sorry you chose to minimize the message-and you did minimize it!” He increased
his grip on her wrists, sensing she was ready to break into speech.
 
She did comply-he noted-and said
nothing in response to his non- verbal warning.

“I
recorded the conversations, Denise.
 
Listening to them would be a good idea.
 
Not paying attention to what people are saying is one of
your chief faults.”

“You
fuckhead!”

Andrew
took a deep breath.
 
When he was
very young his parents had ignored verbal protests as long as he or his sibs
moved towards compliance.
 
Of
course when they were older, they’d been expected to be responsible for their
mouths as well.
 
This was his model
for introducing discipline to Denise.
 
He thought it was pretty damn generous of him considering
she’d just called him ‘fuckhead’.

“I’m
the authority in our relationship and when you disobey me you will be punished
however I deem suitable. And that includes corporal punishment.
 
If you decide that isn’t acceptable –“
“It sure as fuck isn’t!” Her words were slightly muffled by her position, and her
hair.
 
Andrew was human.
 
He grinned.

“I’ll
let you up.
 
But make no mistake,
Denise!”
 
He tightened his grip
again.
 
“Refuse discipline and our
relationship
is
over.”

“Fine,
Fuckhead!
 
Like I’d marry a
perv!”
 
She gave a kick to
accompany her words.
 

Andrew
held her calmly until she stilled.

“Are
you sure?”

“Yes!”

He
released her and stood up in one fluid motion, moving directly for the door.

“I’m
very sorry, then.
 
I love you. ” He
looked her steadily in the eye, reaching behind him to open the door.

She
had flounced -- there was no other word for it -- out the door that day and
once clear had screamed back over her shoulder:

“Freak!”

***

Upstairs,
in the bedroom she grew up in, Denise wore a path around the room, weaving
between bed and sofa, desk and entertainment center. A loom protruded into the
room in a manner that made it challenging to get to the bathroom, and a huge
crate that had once housed an orphaned wild raccoon and later turned into a
storage facility loomed over the head of the bed.

 
It never occurred to her to accept the
will’s directive and marry Andrew the Penis Head, but she did wonder what on
earth had possessed her mother.
 
There was no use blaming her father or wondering about his
motivation.
 
The man had made it a
religious practice to agree with anything his wife suggested. So it would be stupid
to wonder why he hadn’t put his foot down for something as minor as forcing
their only daughter to marry a Neanderthal from the Stone Age.
 

Denise
reached for her phone and spoke the second it picked up. “I have to know the
best- the absolute King of Killer Estate Law-dude in town.”
 

“Jesus,
Denise.
 
Hang on.”
 
A thunk indicated the phone had been
thrown and footsteps slowly dwindled away.
 
She worried the feet wouldn’t return.
 
They did.

“You
could have broken my eardrum.”
 
On
the other end of the connection Robert, her life long sidekick, stuck a bony
finger in his ear and wriggled in an experimental fashion.
 

“Did
I?”

“No.”

 
“Then find me the name of a Killer Law
Dude!”
 

She
explained the situation tersely though she left out the sick part about
Andrew.
 
Robert whistled.
 
While he didn’t know the exact reason
Denise had decided Andrew was a Penis Head, it was completely clear she
couldn’t marry him as long as she thought of him that way.

“Damn.
 
Rock and a Hard Place.”

“Name
of Killer Law Dude!”
  

***

At
first, when the relationship imploded, Denise thought she might die.
 
She’d been convinced she was
passionately in love with Andrew and devastated when the relationship
ended.
 
For days she couldn’t eat
or sleep or function and eventually she’d decided to completely banish the
entire episode from her life.