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Now, in the privacy of their honeymoon-suite bedroom, listening to her reflecting on that all-important night they had spent together, Kyle started to laugh.
‘What are you laughing for?’ Star demanded.
‘I don’t think I dare tell you. Not until after we’ve consummated our marriage; that way at least you’ll have to wait to divorce me instead of merely getting an annulment...’
‘What are you talking about?’ Star asked warily. By now she knew all about his quirky sense of humour and how much he enjoyed teasing her.
‘That night you’re talking about,’ he told her more seriously, ‘I wasn’t brooding about the possibility that I might have broken any promises to myself...’
‘Yes, you were,’ Star insisted. ‘I could see it in your face. You looked so...so sad, so despondent and I knew what you must be thinking. I knew how important your insistence on not having sex without love was to you.’
‘Yes, it was important,’ Kyle agreed candidly. ‘But never anywhere near as important as you. And besides,’ he added softly, taking her in his arms, ‘I already knew that we had made love and not merely had sex...’
‘What?’ Star struggled to break free of him as she glared up at him. ‘How could you possibly have known that? Even I—’
‘You told me,’ Kyle interrupted her gently. ‘You told me when I was loving you how much you cared, how much you needed me...how much you loved me...’
‘Did I?’ Star looked uncertainly at him, inwardly digesting what she had just learnt. ‘Oh,’ she said, and then added, ‘So there was no need for me to... I didn’t have to... I could have...’
‘There was no need,’ Kyle agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t and don’t appreciate what you did and said, my darling, nor that I don’t realise how difficult it must have been for you to overcome all those inbuilt prejudices and fears.’
He bent his head and kissed her and then withdrew his mouth a breath away from hers as she struggled to speak.
‘Well, if you weren’t looking so unhappy about that, then what was bothering you?’ she asked him curiously.
‘You,’ he came back promptly. ‘You might have told me you loved me in the heat of the moment, so to speak, but I knew how much you’d hate revealing something which you would see as vulnerability and how much you’d resent me for being the cause of it. I didn’t just want your loving...your love in bed physically...I wanted it wholly and completely and I wanted you to want me in the same way. If I looked despairing it was because I was wondering just how the hell I was going to achieve that kind of miracle, and then you solved the problem for me...’
Just before he bent his head to resume kissing her, his attention was caught by something on the small table next to them. He reached out and picked it up, holding it out to Star for her inspection as he whispered in her ear, ‘It’s the room-service menu. It’s got sea-bass on it. Want some?’
‘Hmm... I’m not so sure... Perhaps I should just have a taste of yours,’ she responded provocatively.
They were both laughing as Kyle picked her up and carried her towards the bed.
The bouquet arrived with the room-service waiter and the sea-bass. Attached to it was a small card on which Sally had drawn a small cartoon character punching the air in triumph and written the words, ‘Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!’
Laughing helplessly, Star showed it to Kyle.‘Strange things, these old superstitions,’ Kyle told her, his words muffled through their shared kiss. ‘It doesn’t do to treat them lightly or to mock them. You just never know what might happen.’
‘No,’ Star murmured back happily, ‘but I think I know what’s going to happen now!’
Here’s a sneak peak at
Colleen Collins’s RIGHT CHEST, WRONG NAME
Available August 1997...
“DARLING, YOU SOUND like a broken cappuccino machine,” murmured Charlotte, her voice oozing disapproval.
Russell juggled the receiver while attempting to sit up in bed, but couldn’t. If he sounded like a wreck over the phone, he could only imagine what he looked like.
“What mischief did you and your friends get into at your bachelor’s party last night?” she continued.
She always had a way of saying “your friends” as though they were a pack of degenerate water buffalo. Professors deserved to be several notches higher up on the food chain, he thought. Which he would have said if his tongue wasn’t swollen to twice its size.
“You didn’t do anything...bad...did you, Russell?”
“Bad.” His laugh came out like a bark.
“Bad as in naughty.”
He heard her piqued tone but knew she’d never admit to such a base emotion as jealousy. Charlotte Maday, the woman he was to wed in a week, came from a family who bled blue. Exhibiting raw emotion was akin to burping in public.
After agreeing to be at her parents’ pool party by noon, he untangled himself from the bed sheets and stumbled to the bathroom.
“Pool party,” he reminded himself. He’d put on his best front and accommodate Char’s request. Make the family rounds, exchange a few pleasantries, play the role she liked best: the erudite, cultured English literature professor. After fulfilling his duties, he’d slink into some lawn chair, preferably one in the shade, and nurse his hangover.
He tossed back a few aspirin and splashed cold water on his face. Grappling for a towel, he squinted into the mirror.
Then he jerked upright and stared at his reflection, blinking back drops of water. “Good Lord. They stuck me in a wind tunnel.”
His hair, usually neatly parted and combed, sprang from his head as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Can too many Wild Turkeys
do that?” he asked himself as he stared with horror at his reflection.
Something caught his eye in the mirror. Russell’s gaze dropped.
“What in the—”
Over his pectoral muscle was a small patch of white. A bandage. Gingerly, he pulled it off.
Underneath, on his skin, was not a wound but a small, neat drawing.
“A red heart?” His voice cracked on the word heart. Something—a word?—was scrawled across it.
“Good Lord,” he croaked. “I got a tattoo. A heart tattoo with the name Liz on it.”
Not Charlotte. Liz!
