Turning Thirty-Twelve (20 page)

“That’s not fair,” I snapped. “It was a blind date. I didn’t know it would be Mark. And we did go out. And we fell in love.”

“He’s rushing you,” Julie countered, the pit bull part of her personality asserting itself. She had a good hold on the notion that I was doing the wrong thing, and she wasn’t going to let it go. “Guys who lose their wives feel some weird drive to get remarried really fast. I read about it on some website.”

“Me, too,” Suzanne chimed in. “Oprah said if they had a happy marriage, they dive right back in within a year. But it doesn’t always work as well the second time.”

“Elaine died more than two years ago,” I said, hoping this topic would drop soon.

Abby let a heavy sigh hang in the air. “I think it’s romantic. Even if it is awfully fast. You love him, Jackie? Don’t you?”

I closed my eyes for a moment and massaged my forehead with my fingertips. I knew I should have expected this. They were my friends, and they were obviously looking out for what they thought was in my best interests. Had I been sitting in any of their chairs, I would’ve given all the same advice, pointed out all the same pitfalls. But I was the one who was being badgered, and my already emotionally overwrought mind couldn’t take much more.

I sighed. “Look, I appreciate all the concern, but I’m marrying Mark on Christmas Eve. Please stop trying to talk me out of it.” Julie opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “If you’re not going to say something nice, please don’t say anything.” That did it. She was pissed. I was amazed steam wasn’t literally pouring out of her ears. “Julie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I’m not running your life, Jackie. I won’t say another word. Not another damn word. Just don’t come crying to me when things go sour.”

“I appreciate that vote of confidence,” I sarcastically replied. “Think he’ll leave me for a younger woman too?”

What the hell was wrong with me? Julie and I never fought. We were always on the same team. I loved her like a sister.

“I think we all need to go to neutral corners for a few minutes.” Suzanne shifted her gaze between Julie and me. “We’re all friends here. Remember?”

“I’m sorry, Julie,” I said, feeling extraordinarily stupid and more than a little immature.

She gave me a curt nod that said this was far from over.

I nodded back and finished my lunch without another word to any of them.

I didn’t have to wait long for Julie to finish what she’d started. She met me at my classroom door right after last bell.

I offered the olive branch. “Julie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat at lunch.”

“I know. You’re under a lot of stress. Do you want to talk about it now, or are you still in your defensive mode?” She sat down in a student desk and stared up at me.

“Shields are down right now,” I replied with a soft, nervous chuckle. “You just took me by surprise.” I turned another student desk around and faced my best friend. “I guess I hoped you’d be happy for me.”

“Oh, Jackie. I
am
happy for you. But I’m concerned, too. You’ve only known Mark since August. That’s not very long, and... Well, I know you don’t have much self-esteem. I don’t want you marrying Mark if you’re only doing it because you’re grateful for the offer. You know, I could really kill David for doing what he did to you—making you feel like you’re not worth anything.”

I took a long, steadying breath. “I’m not marrying Mark because I need a self-esteem boost. And I’m not marrying Mark because David dumped me.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’m marrying Mark because, for the first time in my life, I’m in love—a mature love that gives and takes. He’s good for me, Julie. And he’s good
to
me.”

“Need any help with wedding plans?” she said, brushing away a tear.

I could feel one slipping down my own cheek. “Sure. Carly and I are going dress shopping this weekend. Want to come?”

“Maybe. Will you ask your mother and father to come for the ceremony?”

I hadn’t even thought about that. I hadn’t even told them I was
dating
Mark, let alone
marrying
him. Mom would take one look at him and tell him he was too good for me.

“I’ll invite them, but they won’t come—not back to Indiana in the dead of winter. Besides, I think they’ll be content if I just email them some pictures.”

“Have you met his parents yet?” Julie asked.

“Not yet. They’re living in Florida.” I chuckled. “I wonder if they’re in the same retirement complex as my parents.”

***

As the days before the wedding passed in a dizzying blur, Patrick called almost every night, hoping I’d changed my mind and that I might at least wait a few months.

Every night at supper, Carly filled me in with updates on the wedding plans. She’d booked the judge, the florist, the cake, and the reception caterer. Mark started calling her “J-Lo.” I wasn’t sure she got
The Wedding Planner
reference because she told him to quit telling her that her butt was big.

Nate and Kat had all but disappeared, and of all the family issues, their continued silence worried me the most. Nate had always been the kid who needed to touch base with me often. I wasn’t at all used to being shut out, especially when he got this quiet. Silence usually meant something was wrong. He didn’t return my messages, and I was getting more and more frustrated.

As Carly and I cleaned up the supper dishes, Mark came back into his house after running the trash outside, put his arms around me, and started tickling me. I almost dropped the last of the plates I was putting on the top shelf before I collapsed against him in a giggle fit. Carly smiled over at both of us.

“I can’t believe we’re getting married next weekend,” he said when he finally stopped torturing me.

“Well, you
are,
” Carly replied in a parental voice that brooked no argument. “Everything’s ready.” She lost herself in her thoughts for a moment. “Except we need to pick our dresses up from the lady doing the alterations on Thursday.”

“And you need to go study for your biology final, young lady,” I scolded, hoping she realized I was mostly teasing.

“If I get another high test grade, my friends will never let me live it down. They think you give me good grades ’cause you’re marrying my dad,” she grumbled.

“We know better,” I replied. “We know you study, and we know that you’re way too smart to only be fourteen. How many days until your birthday?”

She flashed me her braces. “Fifteen days ’til I’m fifteen. I really need to go study. Faith has probably sent me a million text messages.” Carly disappeared down the basement stairs to her bedroom.

I knew it was probably time for me to be heading back to my own house. In the weeks that had passed since Mark proposed, I’d developed a habit of spending the evenings with him and Carly, then I’d go back home before it got too late. But it was getting harder and harder to leave.

If he wasn’t called out on the job, he usually slept at my place on Fridays and Saturdays. My frazzled nerves needed to see him more often. I knew it was my ridiculous insecurity and my fear that he might suddenly change his mind about marrying me, but I needed his reassurances that he still loved me. Not that he’d given me any reason to feel anything but loved.

Maybe I was just needy.

“I guess I better go.” I wondered if I sounded as dejected as I felt.

“Stay,” Mark said as he came behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “We can watch TV.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back into his embrace. “I have papers to grade.” He kissed my ear, then ran that incredible tongue around the ridges. Shivers raced over my body. “Carly is here. We can’t—”

“Carly is studying. Do you think she’s going to disappear after we’re married? We’re going to live here, Jackie. She’ll get used to it. Hell, I think she’s already used to it.”

“We’re going to live
here?
”

Julie had been right. I really needed to sit down with Mark and make some important decisions—decisions like where we’d live, what we would do about insurance, what would happen to our kids if something happened to one of us. It had simply been so much easier to ignore all that adult stuff and plan a pretty wedding. What we should have been doing was planning our life together.

Now my lack of attention was coming home to roost.

“I assumed. I mean, my house is paid off. Don’t you have a mortgage?”

“Yeah, but my garden’s there. And all my stuff’s there. Where would I put it here?”

“We’ll make it fit, babe.” He kissed my neck. “Everything about us fits. Perfectly.”

I normally loved his cute little innuendos, but I was having a hard time keeping my panic at bay. “Can’t we be serious for a second? I don’t want to sell my house. I might... I might need to... What if things don’t work out?” I couldn’t believe I’d said that aloud, but once out in the open, the notion needed some serious consideration.

Mark came around to stare down at me. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”

I shrugged before I could stop myself.

“You can be such a piece of work. You still think I’m only in this for some short-term kicks, don’t you? You want to keep that house so you have someplace to go when I leave you.”

I stood there as quiet as a mute.

“Don’t you?” he shouted, causing me to wince.

“I just don’t see why I should sell my house. We can move some of my things here—”

Mark stomped out of the kitchen into the family room and plopped down on the couch. Grabbing the remote he began to flip through channels too fast to even know what he was watching. “I’m getting tired of you not having a lick of faith in me.”

“I have faith in you!”

He scoffed and kept changing channels. His agitated breathing was loud enough for me to hear.

I stamped my foot. “I do! I have faith in you!” I knew I was shouting, but the lid had blown off the pressure cooker, and there was no containing the explosion. He wanted to know what was wrong, then, damn it, I’d tell him. “I don’t have faith in
me!
” Words tumbled out of my mouth—there was no stopping them. “You’re too good a man to be stuck with someone like me. I’m stubborn. I’m temperamental. I’m... I’m... Argh!” I threw my hands up in frustration.

Mark threw the remote at the chair and walked over to me. Fists firmly planted against his hips, he glared down at me.

I rattled on. “I’m such a bitch when I want to be. I’m getting old. Things are sagging all over the place. And you’re... you’re... still so handsome. So... so...
perfect
.” Shaking my head, I felt the torrent of words finally sputter to a halt.

He tugged me into his arms. “I’m not perfect.” A chuckle rumbled his chest. “At least not
all
the time.”

I snorted and shook my head. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m stubborn, too.”

With a sniffle, I nodded and let a small, nervous laugh escape my lips.

“I’m temperamental, too.”

I nodded against his chest. He smelled like Polo Black again. God, I loved that cologne on him.

“Nobody’s perfect, Jackie.” He pulled away to kiss my forehead. “Not even me. Except in bed.”

I had to laugh at his ability to relate any conversation to sex.

Mark hugged me a little tighter. “I know you’re scared. And I know trust takes time, but I need you to understand. I’m not leaving you. You won’t ever have to go back to your house because I’m not leaving you.”

“I trust you, Mark. I do.”

“How about we keep the house for now? Would that make you happy?”

Suddenly, it didn’t matter. Selling my house didn’t matter. The insurance didn’t matter. Where we lived didn’t matter.

Mark
mattered.

I didn’t need a safety net because he was walking the tightrope right beside me. If we fell, it would be together—because, for once, I wasn’t alone. “I’ll call the realtor tomorrow.”

He kissed me. One of those deep, consuming kisses that always made me forget myself. In a daze, I let him lead me upstairs to his room. It was our room, really. I had left so much of my stuff behind, I could have moved in and never have to go back to fetch anything from my house.

Pinning my back against the door the moment it was shut, Mark took total control. I rejoiced in his insistent hands on my body, covering my breast, cupping my butt. Warm kisses against my neck, my ear, and covering my mouth, demanding my response. Clothes fell away in small piles, some ripped, and some discarded. When we were gloriously naked, he wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me. Shuffling across the carpet to the bed, he dropped me on my back so my legs hung over the side.

He didn’t even give me a chance to protest, but fell to his knees and buried his mouth between my legs. Separating my folds, his tongue tickled my sensitive bud before he drew it between his lips and sucked.

Had anything ever felt so glorious? I writhed and moaned, and when he stabbed his tongue inside me, I finally grabbed a throw pillow to hold over my face to keep from screaming too loudly. Hopefully, Carly was listening to her music. At least she was in the basement.

In all the years of my marriage, David had never done that for me, never given me such a wondrous gift, although he’d expected similar attention from me. He told me a blow job was his favorite birthday present.

Mark was right. He wasn’t David, and judging Mark as the same type of man was an insult.

I would never make that mistake again.
Ever
.

The man was thorough, loving, and he had me bucking beneath him in a very short time. I shouted my orgasm into the corduroy pillow and could hear his satisfied chuckle over the noise of my own heartbeat echoing in my ears. But he wasn’t done.

Mark tugged the pillow out of my clutches and tossed it aside. Then he lifted me by the hips and entered me in one, dominant thrust that rattled my teeth. The man instinctively knew when I liked it rough, and, man, could he deliver. If he hadn’t covered my mouth with one of his hypnotic kisses, I would have had to grab the pillow again.

He created such a flurry of sensations. The taste of me lingering on his lips, the glory of him driving into me so hard and fast, the delicious heat of his body pressed to mine. I hadn’t even come down from the first release before he sent me soaring back over the moon with him following only a moment behind.