Illegally Wedded

by Jennifer Griffith

  “They smell like you.”

  She laughed. “You never quit, do you?”

  “That’s one thing you’ll learn about me, Piper—I’m no quitter.”

  Through the door bustled Birdie, wedding dress draped over her outstretched arms, camera in one hand.

  “Here we are. Slide it on, and I’ll start shutter stopping.” She waved the phone.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Zach, this is Birdie, my neighbor. Birdie, my husband—Zach.” Piper waited while they exchanged greetings, small talk, and minor gushing from Birdie about how good-looking Zach was, and how lucky, and how he’d better treat Piper right or an octogenarian would be hunting him down in the night. He took it all in stride.

  “Birdie is a genius. Not only did she make this gorgeous dress I wore for our wedding, she also reminded me of how important it is that we get some photos of the big day.” She tried to nudge him with her eyebrows to help him understand.

  “Uh, I mean—pictures?” Zach frowned.

  “I know, I know,” Birdie said. “No man’s man likes a photo shoot.” Birdie had taken him by the shoulders and was already posing him near the wall. “I’m just glad you’re in a suit. It looks good. Did you just come from a funeral? Because things happen in threes—weddings, funerals, births.”

  At this Birdie let out a cackle, Zach gave a courtesy laugh, and Piper’s face went red hot in the bathroom where she was sliding the brocade gown over her head, wishing she could see the look on Zach’s face as he got the photographer’s teasing treatment. He probably hated her so much right now.

  “Births. Now, that’s an idea,” he said instead, shocking her and turning her blush into a crimson stain. “I’d like that a lot.”

  Piper came around the corner in the gown just in time to see Birdie noodling close to Zach.

  “Glad to hear it. People these days get married and wait so long to have babies. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. Maturity? Because if so, they’ll never live long enough to see kids, let alone grandkids.”

  Zach’s eyes shot up and met Piper’s. She couldn’t read them, but she did see them sweep over her in that gown again, pleasure making his lids go heavy. Or was that desire? If she’d been crimson before, she was probably pushing burgundy with embarrassment now.

  “Oh, Piper. Come over here. Now, grab those flowers. They’re perfect. Same color as Zach’s suit here.” And they were. A deep blue. “I just love bluebonnets, don’t you? You gather these yourself, Zach?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Oh, the Texas ma’am. Piper had always loved it. If I end up getting shipped off to New Zealand, will anyone say ma’am?

  “And now, let’s recreate the moment. There, in front of that pretty painting.” She posed the two of them in front of an oil painting Piper had done in her first year at UT, before culinary school, when her parents’ wise insistence rescued her from a life of mediocre art projects. In fact, the painting was so middling, she’d opted to just leave it for the next tenant.

  “There, Zach. Take Piper around the waist like so.” It went on until Piper and Zach were entwined in one another’s arms, their faces barely a breath apart. “Now, look into one another’s eyes. Yes, like that. Put the lovelight in them.”

  Piper obeyed, the ring this man had chosen for her hanging heavy on her ring finger, her skin tingling under the pressure of his hand on the small of her back. I’m breathing the air he exhales. All discomfort at being photographed had left Zach’s face. Instead, an intensity flowed from him through her body, the same pulsar waves as when they’d first seen one another, an undeniable energy.

  The clicking of the camera each time the shutter snapped faded away.

  “I’m going to kiss you, Piper.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s for the camera.”

  “Of course.”

  Her eyes fluttered shut, and Zach’s mouth closed in on hers, a tender pressure soon replaced by a heat. Did the sizzle come from herself or from him? Synergy. Piper let it flow into her, through her, up and down and inside and out. Zachary and Piper, and the kiss of magical intensity.

  It could be a movie title. It could be the best painting she ever tried at art school. It could be the most delicious dessert Du Jour ever served.

  “Okay, okay, you two, it’s been a full three minutes. I’ve got my shot, or three hundred of them.” Birdie snapped her fingers. “Newlyweds. Please.” The front door latched shut. Time slid past.

  After an indeterminate amount of kissing time, which is outside the realm of real, measurable time, Piper came up for air. Zach’s eyes looked like he’d been drinking something eighty-proof for an entire weekend, glazed and half-lidded. Piper wiped the side of her well-exercised mouth, catching her breath, her heart like a bunny’s.

  “I don’t know what it is, Piper, but your kiss. When we kiss…”

  “Even more intense than yesterday.”

  “Did you feel that yesterday, too?”

  “At the cathedral? Uh-huh.” Piper knew the priest had noted the amperage as well. “I might need to wear rubber-soled boots if we ever have to do that again, just to keep from electrocuting myself.” Her fingertips and face were still buzzing from it, and she could feel a big Danger, High Voltage sign flashing above Zach’s head.

  “Yeah. Can tomorrow be the third date, too?” He came in for another taste of her mouth, but Piper leaned away. Married, alone in a furnished apartment, no excuses not to…and after that last jolt, she might not be able to keep her guard up.

  “We’d, uh, better go if we’re going to get everything done.” She pressed him away, each inch he slid from her waist and skin like a scalpel’s cut. I never want to leave his arms. Was it ever like this before, with any other man? Or ever between any other couple—ever? She couldn’t imagine this intensity existing elsewhere and not being weaponized. This energy was military grade.

  But I hardly know him. I’ve never even met his family. She’d met other guys’ families, even Chad’s, after a while. Chad’s mother loved Piper, gushed over her, even though nothing was ever official between them. She could tell Mrs. Floyd had designs.

  I married Zach without meeting his parents. Or even knowing if he had siblings. Everything was upside down.

  His kiss had turned her inside out.

  Zach’s fingers, the last vestige of their embrace, finally peeled from around her waist, and he took one last deep breath before shaking himself awake. He snatched up the crate of books like he’d been bench pressing twice that weight for years and headed toward the door.

  “Change and I’ll meet you downstairs. I hope you like the place I found. It was the only thing available to move into immediately.”

  Visions of raw light bulbs swinging from bare cords, ratty Linoleum, and badly painted pink oak paneling filled her mind. But newlyweds had to live somewhere gross; it was foreordained to be so.

  “I’ll miss you,” Piper said a couple of minutes later to Birdie, as she handed over the dress. “I can’t believe I’m going.”

  “What I can’t believe is how long it took you to marry that Zach Travis.”

  “Five days not fast enough for you?”

  “Make him happy. He’s a good one. Making the good ones happy is a sure path to your own happiness.” Birdie hugged her—hard. “I’ll post the photos to your social media page after I edit out the ones that are too hot for prime time.”

  Piper’s face flushed. Uh, yeah. There might be a few of those.

  “When will I see you again?” Since living in this neighborhood, Piper had grown to love the faces of the newspaperman, the hot dog cart guy, the woman running the flower shop. But Birdie was her most precious possession here.

  “Tell you what. I’m on a wait list for VIP tickets to a concert. You’ll never guess which one.”

  Not hard to guess. “Neil Diamond?”

  “The very. If it happens and I get backstage passes, you promise to come with me?”

  “Promise.” Pipe
r put up a pinkie finger, and the two of them latched. It was sealed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Stop joking.” Piper waved Zach onward. The house where he’d just pulled into the driveway looked like one of those black and white TV show houses from the 1960s, perfect and immaculate and…home, had plopped down in the middle of the Texas Hill Country. “What are we doing? Visiting the set of The Donna Reed Show?” She’d watched a lot of TV Land reruns as a kid. Her parents had gone through a My Three Sons phase.

  White picket fence, roses, ivy, white paint with green shutters and stone accents, two dormers, front porch complete with a swing—it was all there. And it wedged its way into her heart instantly.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Holy cats, yes, I like it. But who lives here?”

  “We do. As of five-thirty this afternoon. I signed for us. Who’s Donna Reed?”

  “We do?”

  “The moving company will deliver our boxes from both our apartments in about an hour and we can unpack. It’s not the biggest, but it does have two bedrooms. It was the only place I could get on zero notice. It’s furnished, plus it has a tree house out back.”

  A treehouse! Piper stood, mouth agape, as Zach got her door, and she wandered, eyes wide, up the brick path to the front door.

  “One huge drawback,” he said. “The kitchen is small.”

  “That’s fine,” Piper said, taking in the house as she walked in and looked it up and down. “I have a big kitchen at work.”

  Floral wallpaper shrank the hallway, but the living room had a vintage velvet sofa, a grandfather clock, a baby grand piano, and a china hutch. She floated through the house, agog. She’d died and gone to the 1950s version of heaven.

  “There are two bedrooms. I’ll take the smaller one.” Zach pressed open a door to a tiny room with a crib set up in it. “It’s, er, a nursery. As you can see.”

  But that wasn’t what Piper saw. What she saw was pure enchantment, and it swept her away, like a flash flood into a happy memory in her past.

  Zach was still talking.

  “You can have the master.”

  Piper wandered into the tiny room, no bigger than a walk-in closet, and basked at the mural dancing all over the walls. Someone, someone gifted, had covered every surface of the walls with a fairy kingdom—castles and flowers and fairies with crowns and wings and pretty little faces. Piper’s heart lit with delight.

  “My mother would love this.” Her mother would go crazy over it and try to paint a little Rivendell castle into the mural, for sure.

  “The master is a lot nicer. The bed looks great.” Zach cleared his throat. “Er, I mean, comfortable. For sleeping, I mean. Of course.”

  She ignored his awkward half-innuendoes.

  “Really? Oh, but I like the small room.” The fairy room provided her a dose of home and nostalgia and love. Love—she loved it. The paintings of the mountains dripping with flowers and ferns, the floating little winged creatures with the bright eyes, the greens and blues and purples—they touched a memory deep inside her—of childhood and the happiest times.

  “It’s fine, really.” Zach talked as if he thought he was being magnanimous. “Obviously I won’t sleep in the crib, but I’ve got an air mattress for now. It’s going to work out.”

  “But, Zach? Can I?” It seemed childish to beg, but she ached for this room. “Can I please have the fairy room?”

  He looked at her long and hard, and then broke into a confused laugh.

  “If you actually want the fairy room, of course you can have it.”

  “I do.” Piper exhaled, a memory swelling too large inside her not to share came bursting out of her. “My mother painted my bedroom with fairies when I was a little girl. I think that was right after she first read the Tolkien books.”

  Zach nodded.

  “Happy hobbit connections. I get it.” He nodded some more. “You never stop surprising me.”

  Happy flutters still in her heart, they continued the tour.

  “Here’s the linen closet. And the master bedroom.” ” He pushed the door open to the adjacent room, and it loomed wide and expansive, decorated in a classic blues and whites. It was so pretty it snatched away Piper’s breath. “I told you it was bigger. And pretty.”

  “It’s like the Wedgwood china of bedrooms.” She wandered in, fingered the Martha Washington bedspread, white with little nubby yarn in a pretty sunburst pattern, soft and clean, like the curtains and the dappled light coming through the French doors leading to the sitting area porch with wrought iron patio furniture beneath the towering oak tree out back.

  “I can tell you like it.” Zach edged closer to her. “Have you changed your mind?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Well, if you get cold or scared in the night, you can always come in here. I’ll be waiting.”

  This flirt, which she knew was just that, jolted her out of her elf-laden, Wedgwood fantasy world.

  “Uh, that reminds me.” She turned to face him, careful not to look him straight in the eye. He was like the opposite of Medusa—where she’d turn someone to stone, he could turn her into a quivering pudding of longing. “We need to talk about a few things.”

  Zach sat down on the bed and patted beside him for her to come and sit.

  Danger. But she sat anyway, possibly a few inches too close. It’s a little cool in this house. I need a bit of his radiant warmth to keep me from getting a chill. Right.

  “I agree. We’ve bitten off a lot here—more than we can chew, possibly.” He licked his lips, and she stared at his tongue a second. Then she refocused.

  “We need to lay out some ground rules. To protect ourselves.” Not sitting side by side on the softest, most comfortable bed on the planet should be a starter. Not looking at one another like we’re starving, for another thing.

  “Right. As in?” he asked.

  She gulped back all the raging confusion of desire and tried to speak like a practical person. “As in things that will keep us from getting too much in each other’s way.”

  That didn’t quite convey what she meant.

  “Like, are you saying as in, for one, we probably need to set up a shower schedule? There’s only one bathroom.” He aimed a thumb over his shoulder toward the bath.

  “Oh. I had bigger things on my list. Like boundaries. You know, physical boundaries.” Like he’d better not kiss her unless necessary.

  “All right. That’s smart. I have one. No kissing for longer than five minutes. That’s a really good rule.”

  Piper blinked, processing his suggestion.

  “Five minutes. That sounds like a good rule.” She could see the wisdom in time limits. Although three minutes, by Birdie’s clock, had been somewhere between a blink of an eye and eternity. “And we’ll use a timer on a phone, just to make sure.”

  “Right. I already have one set up. I can set it for five minutes right now. We can test it and see if we can get a sense of how long that is.” He already had his phone out and was pressing buttons.

  Wait. This was a terrible idea. What was she thinking?

  She’d resolved there should only be kissing when necessary. But figuring out time limits—that was necessary, wasn’t it?

  Now it was too late. He had a finger hovering over a start button.

  “Ready?” He pressed it and immediately put his arms around her, leaning her back onto the bedspread. “Don’t worry,” he said between soft kisses. “Nothing too dangerous can happen within just five minutes.”

  Oh, yeah? Her heart could swell into explosion zone. Her whole body could start responding to the frantic energy he poured into her. Her mouth could become his slave for life. Five minutes could accomplish a whole lot.

  His hand crept from her waist up her ribcage, where it rested and pressed. Her shoe slipped off and her toe explored his ankle, while his kisses landed on her eyelids, her temples, her forehead, the tip of her nose, and then back to her mouth, where they came with renewed blazes.


  “Zach.” She gulped air. “Zach.”

  “Mrs. Travis?” He smothered her collarbone with kisses. “Where is this heat coming from?” he mumbled.

  “Zach!” She pulled away, her face a flaming mess that matched the pulsing in her veins. “We’d better make it three minutes. Five is too long.”

  His face tugged into a wicked grin. “What happened just now was only two and a half.”

  Piper scooted to the edge of the bed and slipped her feet back into her shoes.

  “You’d better show me the garage.” Nothing too explosive could happen in a garage—unless the heat pouring off her ignited a stray gasoline can. She tugged her blouse back down and redid her ponytail. It had gotten out of whack.

  Yeah, three minutes was far too long. “Oh, look at the flowers in the back yard.”

  “We have a landscaper on duty. It’s part of the purchase.”

  “Purchase!” Piper lurched. “Isn’t this a rental?”

  He’d gone and purchased a house. For her. For them. So that she could stay here indefinitely. The sacrifice of that loomed large and brought her to her emotional knees for a second. How great was this guy? He just kept getting better. Like his kisses.

  “Rent for the first month, starting today, and we’re set for purchase closing two weeks from now.”

  Purchase. It sounded so permanent.

  “I mean, I guess that’s another thing we never really discussed. This marriage. We jumped into it, you know, so fast. We didn’t really set the terms of, well, termination.” It sounded like a death sentence saying it that way, and she regretted the word the minute it fell from her lips. She was a terminator, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, a terminator of something alive and growing and vibrant.

  Like that kiss between them. It had had a life of its own.

  His chin pushed his lower lip into a frown and he said, “We didn’t talk termination, did we?”

  She shook her head, waiting for his response. He gave her a different answer than she expected.

  “First off,” he said, “we needed the rent and then buy plan, as part of selling the marriage as serious. If we’d stayed in our respective apartments, we wouldn’t have fooled anyone. If we’d only rented, that Agent Valentine person wouldn’t have bought for a minute that our commitment to one another was serious. A full-blown house purchase was the only way.”