Her Good Thing

by Vanessa Miller

  “About that,” Danetta said with a look on her face that told Marshall he was not about to like what she had to say next.

  “About what?” he asked as he sat back down in his seat and focused on her. She nervously played with her napkin until he took it out of her hand. “Talk to me, baby. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, I really hate disappointing you,” she said slowly. “But I think you were right about us not having sex the other night, and I’d like to wait until after we’re married.”

  He had begun sipping his champagne, but with Danetta’s final words, the liquid sputtered out of his mouth as he asked, “Is this a joke?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on, Danetta. Are you still trying to pay me back for the other night? Because if so, it’s not necessary. You’ve won, baby. I want you and only you and I want to show you, tonight.”

  She put her hand in his and squeezed. “I used to think that the only problem I had with you was that I couldn’t trust you with my heart. But this thing with my aunt helped me to see that you were never the real issue. No matter what you would have done, I still wouldn’t have been able to trust you or anyone else, because I had lost my faith in God. Now that I’ve got it back, I want to do this thing right.”

  “We are doing it right, baby; I just put a ring on your finger,” he explained.

  “I want our union to be blessed by God. So, I’m hoping and praying that you will come into agreement with me on not making love until we get married.”

  “We must be leaving for Las Vegas in the morning; is that what you have planned?”

  “No, silly, I want a real wedding.”

  “And I want to be with my woman, so we need to find a compromise in here somewhere,” Marshall stated.

  * * *

  The compromise came in the form of a short engagement. Marshall and Danetta said their vows three months after getting engaged. Marshall had threatened to go to the justice of the peace every day of those three months. So, needless to say, Marshall rushed through his vows, kissed his bride and then walked her to the back of the sanctuary for the receiving line. Once they had shaken all the guests’ hands, Marshall handed Danetta’s bouquet to Aunt Sarah and whispered in the woman’s ear, “We’ll see you later.”

  Sarah looked up at her new nephew and smiled. “Don’t you get yourself lost, boy.”

  He had a devilish grin on his face as he grabbed Danetta’s arm and escorted her to their waiting limo.

  “That boy is up to something,” Aunt Sarah said as she made sure the guests had directions to the reception hall.

  Inside the limo, Marshall opened a bottle of champagne and poured the liquid into two glasses. He passed one to Danetta, who was not a drinker, but it was her wedding day. She took the glass from her husband and said, “Thank you, Mr. Windham.”

  “You’re welcome, Mrs. Windham.” He held up his glass in a toast and said, “To us.”

  “To us, indeed, baby,” she said as she drank the intoxicating liquid. Then she noticed that the driver turned left when he needed to turn right for the reception hall. She tapped on the window.

  Marshall pulled her back. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s going the wrong way.”

  “No, he’s not. I told him to take us home first.”

  Home for Danetta beginning today was Marshall’s house. It was the bigger of the two, so they had agreed that she would move in after the wedding. “Home? Marshall, we don’t have time to go home.”

  “Relax, baby, your man has this covered.”

  She leaned back in her seat and sipped from her glass, wondering what craziness Marshall was trying to pull. She didn’t have long to wait. When Harry, the chauffeur, pulled up to their house, he opened Danetta’s door and she got out and stood on the lawn, smiling as she looked at the sign that hung above the door, which said, ‘Welcome Home, Mrs. Windham’.

  Marshall got out of the car and walked over to her. She turned to him and asked, “Is that what you wanted me to see?”

  Marshall picked her up like a man who’d eaten all his spinach and walked her to the front door. “No, baby, what I want you to see is inside.”

  Laughing, Danetta yelled back to Harry, “Don’t leave us. We’ll only be a minute.”

  “That’s what you think,” Marshall said as he pushed the door open, carried Danetta over the threshold and then put her down in the foyer.

  “Marshall, quit playing. We have over two hundred guests waiting for us at the reception hall.”

  “Baby, your man has been waiting, too. You’ve got the ring, so now it’s time to sing for daddy.”

  She backed away from him, giggling, but still trying to get away. “You are such a baby, you’ve only been waiting three months, Marshall.”

  He menacingly followed her, backing her toward the direction he wanted her to go. “Try ten years, dear wife. I’ve waited ten years for you, and I’m not about to wait a minute longer.”

  She backed into the stairs. She turned and noticed that a trail of rose petals were scattered all over the stairway. Astonishment written all over her face, she turned back to Marshall. “What did you do?”

  “Follow the trail and find out.”

  “Do I hear music?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Curiosity got the better of her and she began climbing the stairs. The trail of rose petals continued at the top of the stairs. The music was louder now; it was a soft, seductive instrumental that was causing Danetta to think about more important things than a reception hall full of guests. She followed the trail to Marshall’s bedroom which, of course, was now their bedroom.

  She put her hand on the doorknob and he put his hand on her zipper. As she opened the door, he unzipped her dress. “Stop that.” She swatted his hands as she scurried away from him.

  He closed the door. “Nowhere to run now, baby.”

  She stood on the opposite side of the bed and looked around the room. The lights were off, the shades drawn. Fragrant candles were lit all around the room. The rose petals were piled together in the shape of hearts all over the floor and on the king-size bed that she would be sharing with Marshall. “How did you have time to do all of this?”

  “I had a wedding to attend today, so I couldn’t do all of this on my own. I hired a service because I didn’t want the candles to be lit until we were on our way home.”

  “Smart thinking.” She was swooning over his thoughtfulness, but she had to pull herself together. There was no way she could let him get away with this. “But we have to go, Marshall, our guests won’t even be able to eat until we get there.”

  “Oh, they’ll eat, don’t worry about them.” He swaggered toward her, with the look of desire in his eyes, she couldn’t turn away from him. He grabbed her hands and pulled her onto the bed with him. “Come on, Mrs. Windham, I told you I wanted to show you something.”

  She pulled back, laughter in her eyes now. “But wait a minute, Mr. Windham. If I get in that bed with you, what does this mean for us? Do you want a relationship with me? Do you want to marry me?”

  “I want it all, baby. I want it all.”

  Back at the reception hall, Aunt Sarah was wringing her hands with worry. Kevin approached her and asked, “What’s wrong, Mrs. Davis?”

  “I can’t reach Marshall or Danetta. They aren’t answering their cell phones and they should have been here by now.”

  Kevin grinned. “Oh, they’ll be here. But it will probably be a while. You might want to let the people eat.”

  Sarah grabbed Kevin’s arm and pulled him to the side. “Spill it right now, young man. What do you know?”

  Kevin raised his hands in surrender. “No disrespect, Mrs. Harris, because you raised your niece right. But you can’t keep a man waiting fo
r three months and not expect him to pull an abduction.”

  “He did what?”

  Kevin’s grin got wider. “Like I said, you might want to go ahead and serve the dinner.”

  She popped Kevin on the back of his head for grinning like a fool. “Okay, you get the microphone and discreetly let the guests know that we are going to start the reception before the bride and groom get here. And I’ll get the hostess ready to serve the food.”

  Kevin walked over to the band and asked to borrow the microphone for a moment. He then turned to the crowd and said. “Ah, yo, everybody. My boy, Marshall, is handling his business right now, so if we make y’all wait to eat until he lets Danetta out the house, you just might starve to death up in here.” Kevin laughed his head off and nudged one of the band members and then added, like he was giving the punch line of an inside joke, “I’m just sayin’, you know what I mean.”

  Aunt Sarah ran over and snatched the microphone out of his hands. “I wish you would have told me that you didn’t have good sense,” she said as she slapped him upside the back of his head again.

  They were in the limo headed to the reception hall, two hours later. Danetta’s hair was loose and her makeup needed to be retouched, but she didn’t care. She leaned back into her husband’s loving arms. “Now I see why you were so adamant about us taking our wedding photos before the wedding.”

  The grin on his face was that of a man well satisfied. “Yeah baby, I put my plan in motion a month ago.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re happy, because I am going to be totally embarrassed when I face the people we’ve kept waiting. You know they know why.”

  They pulled up at the reception hall and as they got out of the limo, Danetta noticed Ryla and Jaylen sprinting toward the parking lot. “Ryla,” Danetta called after her friend.

  Ryla turned, and saw Danetta. She handed Jaylen the keys to the car and then walked back toward her friend. They hugged. “Hey girl, showed up in time to cut the cake, huh?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” Then she asked her friend, “Why are you leaving? Stay and enjoy the rest of the evening with us.”

  Ryla leaned over and whispered in Danetta’s ear, “Noel is in there. He saw Jaylen, and I think he figured out what I did. I’ve got to go.”

  With a worried look on her face, Danetta told Ryla, “Okay, girl, I’ll call you next week to see how you’re doing.” She turned to Marshall.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” he asked. “Are you still nervous about facing our guests?”

  Danetta turned to her husband. He was everything she ever wanted and so much more. This was her good thing; what did she care if a couple of hundred people knew what she and her husband had been doing. “You know what, Mr. Windham? We don’t even have to go in there. Come on, let’s go back home.”

  “But, baby, I really want a piece of that cake,” Marshall cajoled.

  She rolled her eyes heavenward. What was she going to do with this man? One thing was for sure, she wasn’t throwing him back. So, she might as well just hang with her husband...enjoy the cake and enjoy the party. Then later on tonight, she would enjoy her man again...and again.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN: 9781459238329

  Copyright © 2012 by Vanessa Miller

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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