Only Forever (12 page)
He buried his face in the curve of her neck when it was over, still trembling and breathing raggedly. Vanessa caressed him gently, wanting to soothe him.
Her body was utterly relaxed, but her mind was active. “I did promise my grandparents that I would come home for Christmas,” she said. “They want me to bring you.”
Nick sighed, his breath warm against her flesh. “Okay, but don’t make any plans for next year without consulting me.”
“Yes, sir!” Vanessa laughed.
He raised his head and gave her a sound, smacking kiss on the mouth. “Don’t give me the old ‘yes, sir’ routine,” he said, trying not to grin.
“You’re going to be nothing but trouble, woman, and you know it.”
Vanessa was nibbling at his neck, giving him back some of his own. “Um-hmm,” she agreed “trouble.”
Nick groaned as she slid downward beneath him, tasting first one of his nipples and then the other. “Give me a break,” he pleaded. “I’m Italian, not superhuman.”
Vanessa giggled beneath Nick and the covers. “Same thing, to hear you tell it,” she said. She didn’t stop, and Nick was finally forced to submit to her attentions.
He was a very good loser.
The train pulled into Spokane at 11:50 p.m. on December 23rd, and Nick and Vanessa caught a cab to her grandparents’ house.
Golden light spilled onto the snow outside their windows. “They’re waiting up,” Vanessa said, touched. “That’s so sweet.”
Nick paid the cabdriver and collected his suitcases, obviously nervous. “What if they don’t like me?” he asked.
Vanessa smiled, pulling him toward the front door. “After the buildup Rodney’s been giving you, they won’t be able to help it,” she said.
Her grandmother hurled open the door just as they reached it and hauled them inside. The Christmas tree glittered in front of the window, piled high with gifts, and a cheerful fire danced in the Franklin stove.
“So this is Nick?” Alice demanded looking him over.
“Number fifty-eight,” John said reverently, extending a hand to his future grandson-in-law.
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “What will that make me—Mrs. Fifty-eight?”
Only Rodney laughed at her joke. He’d always been a sport.
Nick and Vanessa were properly welcomed with eggnog and cookies, then sent off to their respective beds. For the first night in weeks, Vanessa slept soundly, and visions of sugarplums danced in her head.
When she awakened, her grandmother informed her with glowing eyes that Nick had gone out shopping with Rodney. “He’s a fine man,” she added, pouring coffee for Vanessa and herself. “You don’t need to worry with that one.”
Vanessa nodded, her eyes shining as she sat down at the table with Alice. “I love him so much,” she said.
Alice’s mind had turned to more practical matters. “What about that job in San Francisco?”
“I called and told them I’d changed my mind,” she said.
“You’re going to stop working then?” Alice asked, trying to be subtle.
Vanessa shook her head, smiling. “I love working. I got in touch with the people at
Seattle This Morning
while I was in town, and we’re going into production right after the first of the year.”
Alice sighed. “Does that mean there aren’t going to be any babies?”
Vanessa patted her grandmother’s hand. “There will definitely be babies,” she promised. A quick mental calculation indicated that there might be one sooner than anybody expected. She put all the inherent joys and problems of that prospect out of her mind, determined to enjoy Christmas. “Let’s go shopping, Gramma. I need to get something for Nick.”
The stores were crowded, but Vanessa still enjoyed the displays and the music and the feeling of bustling good cheer. In one shop there were enormous colored balls hanging from proportionate
boughs of greenery, and Vanessa felt like a doll standing under a Christmas tree.
She was full of joy when she and Alice arrived home with their packages to find the house crowded with relatives. All of them were gathered around Nick eating take-out chicken and reliving a certain Rose Bowl game.
There was no private time with Nick at all that day, but when Vanessa crept into the living room to put the gifts she’d bought under the tree he was there.
“If you were hoping to catch Santa,” he said, turning from the window where he’d been looking out at the steady snowfall, “you’re too late. He’s already been here.”
Vanessa went to Nick and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “Mistletoe alert,” she said, just before her lips touched his.
He laughed and held her very close. “I love you,” he said.
Vanessa pretended to pout. “Oh, yeah? Where’s my present?” she demanded.
Nick took a small red velvet Christmas stocking trimmed in white fur from a branch of the tree. “Right here,” he said.
Vanessa’s hand trembled as she pulled a small box from the stocking and looked inside. Nick’s
gift to her twinkled even in the relative darkness of the living room, and she drew in her breath.
“It’s official now,” he told her hoarsely. “I’m asking you to marry me, Vanessa. Will you?”
She looked at the ring and then up at Nick and she nodded, her throat too constricted for speech.
He took the ring from its box and slid it on to the proper finger. Christmas magic seemed to shimmer all around them, and it made a sound, too—like wind chimes in a soft breeze. Vanessa hurled her arms around Nick’s neck and held on.
Nick stirred a cup of coffee and leaned on the breakfast bar in the kitchen of the house he and Vanessa had bought soon after they were married. His eyes were trained on the television set that hung under one of the cabinets along with the coffee maker and the can opener.
As many times as he’d watched Vanessa do
Seattle This Morning
, he was never bored. If anything, he found her more appealing now that she was obviously pregnant and so, apparently, did her viewers. The ratings were sky-high.
The theme music filled the kitchen and there was Vanessa looking like a shoplifter trying to
make off with a basketball. Nick smiled and took a sip of his coffee.
“Good morning, Seattle,” she said. “This is Vanessa DeAngelo, and today we’re going to talk about…”
Nick heard the buzzer on the drier go off and wandered into the utility room to take his shirts out before they could wrinkle. He put each one on to a hanger and then meandered back into the kitchen. Once Vanessa’s show was over, he’d go down to the restaurant, but for now he was a house husband.
He grinned, watching out of the corner of one eye as Vanessa chatted with a group of haggard-looking men. Nick wondered what disaster they’d survived, but he didn’t stay to find out. He took the shirts upstairs and hung them in his side of the closet. Then, after peering into the master bath, he shook his head.
As usual, Vanessa had left the place looking like a demilitarized zone. He picked up her towels, hung up her toothbrush and scraped her hair-brush, makeup and other equipment into a drawer.
By the time he got back downstairs, a commercial was on. He was just pouring himself a second cup of coffee when the telephone rang.
“Yo,” he said into the receiver, waiting to see what Vanessa’s subject for the morning was. She’d told him, but he’d been half asleep and the information had slipped his mind.
“Nick?” The voice belonged to Gina. “I’m calling to remind you about the baby shower. You’re supposed to get Vanessa to the restaurant by seven. Can you handle that?”
Nick chuckled, thinking the whole thing sounded like a scene in an espionage novel. “I think so,” he said as Vanessa came back on the screen, smiling and telling everybody to stay tuned.
Nick had every intention of doing just that. “Don’t worry, Gina,” he reassured his sister. “All systems are go.”
“Great,” Gina said. “What are you doing?”
Terrific. The kid felt sociable. “I’m trying to watch Vanessa’s show,” he answered pleasantly.
“Oh. Well, goodbye, then.”
“See you tonight,” Nick responded.
After laying the receiver back in its cradle, he went over to the TV set and turned up the volume slightly.
“Don’t you think this is a case of plain and
simple hypochondria?” Vanessa was asking of one of her guests.
The man looked, as one of Nick’s many aunts liked to say, as if he’d been dragged backward through a knothole. “Absolutely not. If my wife gets a cold, I get a cold. If she stubs her toe, mine hurts.”
Nick grinned. The world was full of nut cases.
“When my wife was pregnant,” offered the next guest, “I was the one who suffered morning sickness.”
Just then, Vanessa was shown in full profile. She was probably going to have twins, Nick thought, and just that morning she’d been a little on the queasy side.
He slapped one hand over his mouth and ran for the bathroom.
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ISBN: 978-1-4603-0927-8
Only Forever
Copyright © 1989 by Linda Lael Miller
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