by T. L. Haddix
He just looked at her and raised an eyebrow. Blushing, she put a knee on the bed. “I didn’t want to bother you, and I didn’t want to push myself on you by just jumping in and taking up half the bed.”
Ethan didn’t speak. He just pulled the covers back. After a brief hesitation, she slid in and turned the lamp off. He pulled the covers up around them with a small groan. Moving carefully, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. With a tired sigh, he relaxed against Beth. He was in pain, but was happier than he had been in a long time.
~ * * * ~
Much to Ethan’s surprise, he had fallen asleep almost instantly, not awakening until early the next morning, when Beth switched the lamp on. She got out of bed and quietly padded into the bathroom, and he eased onto his back. He evaluated his soreness and decided it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.
Carefully, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. When he stood, his nerves got the message that he was awake, and with a swiftness that shocked him, his wounds started throbbing. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the bedside table where Beth had put the medication, and quickly downed two of each of the pain meds in addition to his antibiotic. The bathroom door opened, and as Beth came out, he limped his way past her and inside. After using the facilities, he washed his hands and headed back into the bedroom.
She was sitting up on her side of the bed, watching him. “Pain very bad this morning?” Her voice was still husky from sleep.
“Bad enough.” He eased down on the mattress and stretched out on his back with a sigh, the pressure of his weight actually providing some relief from the pain. He looked at Beth and held his right arm up, and she quickly burrowed close as he drew the covers up over them.
“Are you tired?” Her hand traced a restless pattern across his chest.
“Not really. You?” She shook her head. Sensing that she had something on her mind, Ethan waited. After a couple of minutes, she spoke.
“What do we do now?” She rose up on her elbow and looked down at him. He felt his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. When she saw his expression, she blushed and groaned, burying her head in his shoulder.
“Not that!” She laughed through her embarrassment. “You’d tear your stitches out, and don’t even try to tell me you feel like making love. I know you’re hurting.”
With a wide grin, he shook his head. “Sweetheart, I’m free for the first time in years to admit how I feel about you. I’ve been celibate since we were together the last time, and I have you in my bed, all warm from being asleep. I’m not hurting that bad.” At his words, a troubled look crossed her face and he frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Didn’t you and Ruby... you know. Weren’t you with her?”
“Oh, Beth. God, no. No, we didn’t ever get to that point.” He tipped her chin up so that he could see her face. “We never even came close. Tell me you haven’t thought that all these months.”
She shrugged, a shadow in her eyes, and didn’t speak. Ethan felt a shard of guilt slice into his heart as he pulled her close for a tight hug.
“It’s okay if you did, I guess. I would understand.”
“I wasn’t seeing Ruby for that. She didn’t interest me in the least, sexually. Or any other way, really. She was just an ego balm, I guess you could say. A stupid, stupid mistake. I promise you, I never so much as kissed her.”
She raised her head to look at him, and when she saw that he was telling her the truth, she relaxed. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
Ethan ran his fingers along her hairline and cupped her jaw. “As far as that subject goes, I’ve never brought any woman to this house,” he confessed. She was as surprised as he figured she would be. “I didn’t buy it from Mom and James until after the whole engagement thing, and all the relationships I had after that were pretty shallow.”
“So where would you go? Their place?”
He flushed, uncomfortable. “That or to a hotel. It’s also been a while since I’ve had an intimate relationship.”
She raised her eyebrows and studied him. “So I’m the only woman you’ve ever brought home? Not that you exactly brought me here, that time we were together.”
“You’re the only one, Beth. You always have been.”
Leaning down, she placed a soft kiss on his mouth. She backed off, and rested her head on her hand. “How long is a while?” She stared at him as his blush grew.
He groaned and rubbed his hand down his face. “It’d been about a year, maybe a little longer, when we were together.”
To Ethan’s surprise, Beth’s smile widened. She rose up and kissed him again. “Thank you.”
“What for?”
She just shook her head and snuggled back down into his arms. “So, again, what do we do now?”
“What exactly are you referring to?”
Beth stayed where she was, curling her body closer to his as she spoke. “About us. Our situation, status, whatever you want to call it. Where do we go from here?”
He was quiet for a moment, running his hand over her back and arm as he thought. “Well, where do you want to go? We have several options that I can see. It just depends on what you want.”
She rose back up and watched his face carefully. “What are our options?”
“There’s dating, which is something we’ve never tried. Living together, which would probably end very badly for one of us - the one who recently reconciled with the other’s brother, I’d guess. We could just be friends with benefits.” He grinned as she gave him a gentle jab in the ribs and rolled her eyes.
“What else?” she asked, growing serious. “I feel like there should be another option.”
“There might be, now that you mention it. It’s a permanent option, though. Something that should only be considered under certain conditions.”
“What conditions?”
He touched her cheek. “Well, let me see. Love, first and foremost. The kind of love your parents seem to have, my parents seem to have. Then there’s trust. That’s pretty important, too. How am I doing so far?”
Her smile was soft. “So far, I agree with everything you’ve said. What else?”
“Honesty, respect, consideration. Enjoying being with the other person. A willingness to work through good and bad, sticking with it no matter what.”
“What about kids?” Beth asked. “Sometimes people can’t have kids, or don’t want kids when other people do.”
“I love kids, and I wouldn’t mind having a houseful. However, I’m not a dynasty builder. If we never had kids, I’d be okay with that, too.”
“I lost an ovary in the shooting. If we had to adopt? How do you feel about that?”
Ethan spoke past the lump in his throat. “How we obtain children doesn’t matter to me. The how isn’t as important as the why.”
She laid her head back down on his shoulder, and he took her hand in his. He laced their fingers together, and pressed a kiss to her forehead as he rose up on his elbow with a groan. Looking down at her, he touched her face with his hand . She nuzzled his palm and pressed a kiss to its center. Giving in to his emotions, he decided for once to just ask for what he wanted, and he spoke.
“Marry me.” His heart hammered in his chest as he waited for her answer. She raised her hand and traced his cheekbones with her fingertips, moving down along his jaw and over to his chin. He ducked his head to kiss her fingers, and caught her hand with his own. Just as he thought she wasn’t going to answer, a slow smile spread across her lips.
“Ask me again,” she whispered as she tugged her hand free. She sank it into his hair. “I want to hear you say it again.”
Ethan complied. “Beth Hudson, will you marry me? Be my wife?”
Beth tugged his head down to hers and just before their lips met, she whispered her answer.
“Yes, yes, and yes. There’s nothing I want more. When and where?”
He sank into the kiss and it was a long time before he raised his head. He cleared his
throat and rested his forehead against hers.
“When and where? Think your parents would object to this weekend, right before Sunday dinner?”
Her eyes grew large when she understood that he wasn’t joking. “You’re not serious?”
“I’m very serious. How about it? Unless you want a big wedding?”
After a minute’s consideration, she shook her head. “You know, I really don’t. We’ve been through enough of a circus-like atmosphere. You could have died yesterday if things had been just the least bit different.” She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer of thanks that he hadn’t been injured more seriously. “I don’t want to wait until Sunday. Can we do it today? Indiana doesn’t have a waiting period. We could just show up Sunday and announce it.”
“You don’t think our families will kill us?” he asked, skeptical.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I think they’ll understand, and if not, they will eventually forgive us. After all, isn’t it supposed to be easier to beg for forgiveness than ask permission?”
With a laugh, he agreed. He glanced over at the clock and saw that it was only six thirty. “The courthouse opens at eight o’clock. Do you have your birth certificate?”
“I can get it. It’s at the house. You?”
“Downstairs in the safe.”
As they looked at each other, reality started to set in. “We’re seriously considering this, aren’t we?”
Beth nodded and touched his face. “I want to do this, but we have to be together on it one hundred percent.”
He cleared his throat. “Then I guess we’re getting married today,” he told her as he bent to press a soft kiss onto her lips.
~ * * * ~
It was an incredibly simple feat to accomplish, as it turned out. Ethan dressed in his best suit, and they hurried over the guest house, where Beth got cleaned up and into her nicest dress. They drove into Leroy and sneaked into the courthouse, where they made their way to the Clerk’s office. Applying for the license, as giddy as children at Christmastime, they surprised the Clerk by asking him to marry them then and there. After a few pointed questions, he consented to perform the ceremony and, in very short order, Ethan and Beth were man and wife.
After leaving the courthouse, the jeweler was their next stop, where they chose a set of wide, plain gold bands. By the time they finished with that, Ethan’s wounds were causing him quite a bit of pain, and Beth insisted on taking him home. After she got him settled comfortably on the couch, she sat beside him and just looked at him, smiling.
“What?” Ethan returned the smile, but she just shook her head and played with his wedding band.
“Just enjoying looking at my husband. After everything we’ve been through, did you think we’d make ever it to this point?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t dare even hope we would. I still expect to wake up and find out that it’s all been a dream, that you aren’t really here.”
Beth felt tears well up in her eyes at his words. She leaned her forehead against his and closed her eyes, happy to just be with him.
“I guess we’d better just keep on dreaming, then.”
He laughed and kissed her gently. “I guess we had.”
Chapter Sixty Four
Leroy being a small town, it didn’t take word long to spread through the courthouse about the wedding. When Chase went in to the Clerk’s office at lunchtime, one of the women working there asked him what he thought about the surprise nuptials.
“What surprise nuptials?” He looked through the paperwork he was there to file, distracted. As she realized he hadn’t known about Ethan and Beth’s marriage, the woman grinned. She grabbed the marriage certificate from the short stack where it was queued to be filed and handed it to him.
“Those surprise nuptials.”
He read the information with a frown, which quickly flattened out into a shocked expression. He looked up at her. “Is this a joke?” A smile played at the corners of his mouth, widening into a happy grin when she shook her head. “No kidding, then. Any chance you can make me a couple copies of this?”
Happy to comply, she moved to do as Chase asked. He finished the business he was there for and headed downstairs, calling Jason on his cell phone.
“Hey, where are you?”
“Grabbing a bite to eat. What’s up?”
Chase grinned. “Oh, just wanted to show you something interesting. When are you going to be in town?”
“I’m in town now, over at Cristos’. Where are you?”
“Heading your way.”
Cristos’ was located just across a side street from the courthouse, and it didn’t take Chase long to reach the deli. Waving at Carla Cristos, he headed straight to Jason’s table and pulled out a chair. He sat down and helped himself to some of his brother’s potato chips.
Jason scowled, but let it slide. “What do you have to show me, bro?”
Without speaking, Chase handed him one of the copies of the marriage certificate. Jason glanced over it, and his eyes flew to Chase’s with surprise.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Clerk’s office. Did you know?”
Jason shook his head, his eyes shining with excitement. “Think the folks know?”
“I doubt it.” Chase reached for the untouched half of Jason’s sandwich. Before he could take it, though, Jason moved the plate out of his reach, scowling.
“I’m not a free lunch counter. Get your own.”
“I don’t have time. I’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes.”
Rolling his eyes, Jason shoved the plate toward his brother. “So what do we do with this information? Do you think they’re wanting to keep it secret for a while, or what?”
“Probably not. They had a pretty good scare yesterday, and Beth was planning on staying with him until he was healed up. They’re both pretty traditional people. She let on like it didn’t bother her, but Ethan was a bit uneasy about her staying there. He was afraid people would give her a hard time about it.”
“Yeah, and given what they’ve been through lately, I can’t see either of them wanting the ordeal of a big wedding.” Jason smiled. “That doesn’t mean we can’t tease them about it, though.”
“You know what I think? I think Annie and Lauren probably don’t know about this, either. I’ll bet we could get quite a bit of mileage out of this if we play it right.”
They discussed options for a few minutes before they agreed on a tentative plan, dividing up responsibilities before Chase had to leave for his appointment. As he walked back to his office, he thought about how surprised his sister and Ethan were going to be and he smiled.
~ * * * ~
As Beth parked the Beast in her parents’ driveway Sunday afternoon, she expelled a shaky breath, nervous about facing the piper. Somehow, they had managed to avoid telling their friends and family about their impromptu wedding. They had expected at least one set of parents to show up and check on Ethan, but everyone had called instead. Beth speculated that they knew, but Ethan disagreed.
“They’d be over here if they knew. Besides, Mom and James didn’t sound angry, and neither did Jackie. Did your dad sound like he was upset?”
“No, but I can’t help thinking they know.”
“Nah, that’s just your guilt showing.”
Laughing, she had agreed.
Realizing it was time to pay up for eloping, they got out of the vehicle and walked to the back door. Just before they went in, Ethan tugged Beth to a stop and kissed her.
“Are you having second thoughts?”
“No, but I hope they understand. Ready?”
He gave her an encouraging smile and they went on in. They were surprised to find the kitchen empty.
“Mom? Dad?” Beth called out, her hand gripped tightly in Ethan’s.
“We’re in here, honey,” Jackie replied from the living room, and Beth led Ethan through the kitchen. As soon as they crossed the threshold into the large room, they
were met with a loud chorus of “congratulations,” and an enthusiastic crowd of friends and family cheered and whistled around them. They were pelted with rounds of confetti and streamers.
“I knew it!” Beth laughed as tears sprang to her eyes. She looked at Ethan and saw that he was just as overwhelmed.
“Did you honestly think you could keep getting married a secret in a town this size?” Jackie came to hug them both, laughing and smiling. Richard, Stella, and James all crowded in behind her, and it took a full five minutes before the room started to calm down. There were flowers everywhere, and as the crowd settled down, they moved aside so that Beth and Ethan could see the four-tier wedding cake that held the place of honor on the long table that sat in front of the fireplace.
Beth fell silent. Her hand covered her mouth as she stared at the beautiful confection with astonishment.
“Oh, Lauren. How?” She grabbed her friend in a tight hug, unable to speak.
Wiping back her own tears, Lauren laughed. “I remembered the cake you picked out all those years ago when the three of us were teenagers. When Chase told us that you and Ethan had gotten married, I knew I had to try and duplicate it, as much as I could with less than two days’ notice. Do you like it?”
Beth nodded, teary. “It’s perfect. Thank you so much.” She turned to Annie and pulled her in for a hug, as well. “And the flowers are gorgeous.”
“I tried to get as many red lilies as I could, but again, on such short notice I couldn’t get as many as I wanted to. I hope you don’t mind.”
Beth held Annie’s shoulders. “You’re kidding, right? These are gorgeous. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
The next couple of hours were filled with laughter and teasing, and very little of the recriminations Beth had feared. She had been surprised to see Gordon there, and a little worried, but he had approached her and Ethan early on. He congratulated them with such obvious sincerity that Ethan had relaxed, not ready to call the man a bosom friend, but willing to accept his presence. As things started to wind down, Beth looked around for her husband, but didn’t see him. Seeing her concern, Joely walked over.
