Time to Control (28 page)

Eddie banged out the front door after
me.
 
“Schroeder, baby, wait
up.”
 
I left the porch, and started
running.
 
His long legs caught up to
me before I reached the garage, and he wrapped his arms around my waist to stop
me.
 
“Honey, where are you going?”

“I don't know, I'm just – oh
God, they're watching through the window.”
 
Karrie's curious face had appeared briefly at the window behind her
seat, but someone pulled her away.
 
I pulled out of Eddie's arms, ready to run again.

“No, in here,” he said, grabbing my
arm firmly and going into the garage.
 
He flipped the light on, revealing workbenches, stand saws, various
pieces of unfinished furniture, and stacks of wood to finish the furniture
with.
 
I wandered over to one of the
benches to look at the small whittled figures sitting on it.

“This is Dad's workshop,” Eddie
said, unnecessarily.
 
“I finally
convinced him to retire a few years ago, and he's taken up making
furniture.
 
He sells it at a nearby
shop.”

“You support their retirement?
 
Financially, I mean?”

“Is there a problem with that?
 
Dad is happier working with wood than he
ever was with the insurance agency.
 
And Mom is loving making quilts and helping take care of Tony's
kids.
 
I'm not going to just let my
money sit in the bank and accumulate when I can help my family do what they want
to do.”

“And Tony?
 
And Becca?”

“I helped them with their
house.
 
Tony is the head coach at
the local high school.
 
He makes
enough to support them, but I insisted on the house.
 
I told him that he can save up the
purchase price of the house and pay me back, but there was no way I was going
to let him pay three times the amount of the house in interest for no
reason.
  
Becca works part time
at the vet clinic so she can get out of the house some.”
 
Eddie stared at me, playing with a
carved knight.
 
“Chris is showing
some talent at playing chess, so Dad's started making him a set for Christmas.”

“At five?”
 
I turned to look at him.

“He'll have it for years.
 
He'll grow into it.”

“Your dad's good.”
 
I ran a hand over a wooden rack.
 
“What's this for?”

“It's a quilt rack.
 
Mom makes about one a year, and Dad will
normally toss a rack in with the sale.”

“For free?
 
It's so ornate to be given away.”
 
I traced the lines of the vines that
detailed the sides.

Eddie chuckled.
 
“I think her quilts are going for twelve
hundred right now.
 
It's hardly
being given away.”

“Wow.”
 
I sat down on Phil's workstool, the only
seat I thought was safe.

“What's going on, Schroeder?”
 
Eddie asked, patiently.

My eyes filled with tears.
 
“I'm sorry.
 
I didn't want to lie to them.
 
I like them, and they deserve the
truth.
 
Well, as much truth as we
can admit to.”

“I thought you didn't want to tell
people we eloped?
 
That they
wouldn't believe it?”
 
His voice was
level, and didn't give away any emotions.

“You think I believe it?
 
We may be having as much sex as
newlyweds, but honestly, we are acting more like people who just met and got
married.
 
I didn't know what your
parents did, for crying out loud.
 
I
didn't know how many nieces and nephews you had.”

“So being married for the same amount
of time we supposedly have been dating makes not knowing better?”

“Oh crap.”
 
I slid off of the stool and went to curl
up in a ball on the floor.
 
Eddie
grabbed me before I sat in the sawdust, and took a seat on a bench that I hoped
would hold our combined weight.
 
“I
screwed everything up again, didn't I?”

He kissed my forehead and held me
close.
 
“Baby, you didn't screw
anything up.
 
You didn't want to lie
to them, and that's fine.
 
I wasn't
all that comfortable with it personally, but for you I would have done it.
 
You didn't want anyone to know we were
married yet.
 
That's fine.
 
I was going to support you in that,
because that's my job as your husband.”

“To lie for me?”

“No, to support my wife.”

“To lie for me.”

“Schroeder.
 
Will you listen to me?
 
You thought people would believe that we
were engaged better than that we were married.
 
We couldn't tell them we went back in
time and got married, and explain the lack of official documents.
 
Being engaged worked fine.
 
Eloping works fine too.”
 
He rubbed my back, and I relaxed into
him a bit.
 
“Besides, now you don't
have to feel weird about sharing my bed with me.
 
Now they know we are having sex.”

“Oh God.”
 
I buried my head in his neck.
 
“So now what?
 
How do we climb ourselves out of the
hole I've dug us?”

The bench creaked ominously, and
Eddie quickly set me on my feet and stood up.
 
“What do you mean?”

“Well, how do we get a marriage
certificate?
 
Bloody hell, how do we
backdate a marriage certificate?
 
We
can't have our anniversary be on a different date than what's on paper.”

“Schroeder.”

“God, why do I keep doing
this?
 
I open my big mouth, lose it,
and screw everything up.”

“Sweetheart.”

I paced, kicking scraps of wood
around on the concrete.
 
“I claim to
want control over everything, when I can't even control my mouth.
 
Damn it all!”

“Schroeder.”
 
Eddie grabbed my head with his hands and
made me look at him.
 
“You want a
marriage certificate dated on the right day?
 
That's not a problem.”

“What, you know someone who can
falsify documents?”

“No, I know someone who can travel
back in time.”

“Damn it.”
 
My heart wasn't in the curse this
time.
 
“I'm a moron.
 
I forgot.”

He grinned.
 
“You forgot the reason we got married in
the rant about getting married?”

“I never claimed to be
logical.
 
Why the hell are you with
me?”
 
I looked at him tiredly.

He tilted my head up and kissed
me.
 
“Because I love you.
 
Now concentrate.
 
I don't know if we can do a specific
date and location.
 
May 20
th
, Las
Vegas?”

“Wait, is that realistic?
 
We were in New York.”

“And there's a waiting period in
New York.
 
You can't get married
right away.”

“Preventing people from marrying
three days after meeting?”

He chuckled.
 
“No, it's New Jersey with the three day
waiting period.
 
New York is
twenty-four hours.”

“And you know this how?”
 
Suspicion laced my voice.

He looked abashed.
 
“Fan mail.
 
From The List.
 
Several women were glad to offer ways to
end my bachelorhood.”

I forced a smile on my face.
 
“I want our marriage announced by the
people who wrote The List.
 
That's
the only way we can get them to stop.
 
So, with New York.
 
We could
work with that.
 
We got engaged on
Friday, married on Saturday?”

“Or we could have decided to get
married, flew to Vegas, and flew back the next morning in time for you to catch
your flight back.”

I looked at him, my heart
pounding.
 
“We're really going to do
this?
 
Get married again?”

“I'll marry you as many times as I
need to.
 
I love you, and want to
spend the rest of my life with you.”

It wasn't quite a proposal, but I
didn't get one the first time around, either.
 
I kissed him.
 
“Okay, let's go.”
 
I held up my hand, and seconds later we
were in Las Vegas.

We materialized in the middle of
the Strip, and were cussed at by pedestrians having to suddenly walk around us.

“Wow,” I said, looking around,
impressed.

“Have you been here before?”

“No, never.”

“It's an experience.”
 
He grinned at me.
 
“Where do you want to get married?
 
Paris?
 
Venice?
 
Luxor?
 
New York, New York?”

I scrunched my nose.
 
“We just decided against New York,
remember?”
 
I looked up and down the
strip.
 
“How about Excalibur?”

“That's awful cheesy.”

“Says the man who got married
during that time period,” I whispered to him.
 
I needn't have bothered – the busy
sidewalk was too loud for anyone to overhear.
 

He looked down at me.
 
“That's a good point, sweetheart.
 
It's actually appropriate.
 
Shall we?”
 
I took his offered arm, and we walked
down to the large gray castle.

The concierge's desk had all the
information we needed, and we made a reservation for the chapel for later in
the evening.
 
I grabbed a brochure
of the available costumes for rent to look through while we went to get a
marriage license.

“Crap, did you check the
date?”
 
I asked as we finally
arrived back at the hotel after an hour wait for the license. For as easy as TV
and the movies made marriage in Vegas appear easy, it wasn't.

“Little late now, huh?
 
And yes, I did.
 
Did you decide what we're wearing, since
our jeans are not appropriate enough for you?”
 
His eyes danced with humor.

“They don't have what we wore,” I complained.

“We were married as commoners, in a
mass wedding.
 
That doesn't really
fit with what they are trying to do here.”

“Still,” I grumbled.
 
“Probably the Lady Waiting in Burgundy
for me and the Red Knight for you.
 
They are the least cheesy looking.”

“Not the most historically
accurate?”

“Hey, if I'm going to dress up and
I get to choose my outfit, I'm going with something I look good in.”

“You look good in anything,
babe.
 
And nothing,” he added,
waggling his eyebrows.

The ceremony was simple and sweet,
rather like the first one.
 
Two
guests waiting for the next wedding volunteered to be witnesses, and the
minister exchanged our vows in mere minutes.
 
Posing for the photos took the rest of
our alloted half an hour, and Eddie's money got us the copyright for the photos
so we could make copies ourselves.
 
We sent the cd via mail to Eddie's apartment.
 
He said that since he had been out of
town so often recently, it could be already sitting in his mailbox and he
didn't know it.
 
I tried to wrap my
brain around that concept, but quickly gave up.

We returned to the present, and I
gave Eddie a long kiss.
 
“There was
something we forgot to do.”

“Mmm, what was that?” He laid a
series of kisses along my jawline.

“Spend the night in a hotel
room.”
 
My eyes flashed wickedly.

He brushed off a workbench, lowered
my jeans, and lifted me onto it.
 
“We'll have to remedy that now, won't we?”
 

The flush of emotions from getting
married again so quickly and the thrill of discovery heightened our desire, and
it didn't take long to consummate our modern marriage.

“They are probably wondering about
us,” I panted as soon as I gathered enough air.
   
He agreed, and helped me
down and adjusted his clothing.

When we returned to the dinner
table, his mom got up to get our plates out of the oven, where she had placed
them to keep the food warm.
 
I was
touched; my parents had just let the food get cold when one or the other had
left the table.
 

“Welcome to the family, Aunt
Schroeder,” Chris piped up, and the ice was broken.
  

“Eddie, can I see you upstairs for
a few minutes?”
 
I waited at the
door of the living room after I finished helping his mom with the dishes,
interrupting him in the middle of a game of Clue with his eldest niece and
nephew.