Chaste

by Lydia Michaels

  Sheilagh smiled softly. “The bet was a stupid thing and if I’d known you better I never would’ve done it. I think it’s cool you really waited all this time to have sex. I wish I did.”

  She didn’t want to intrude on Sheilagh’s personal business. “Well, it wasn’t always easy. Especially when I really got to know your brother.”

  Her sister-in-law winced and crinkled her nose. “Ew. I’ve heard enough about Kelly’s sexcapades. Let’s keep the details of your newly found sex life to yourself.”

  Ashlynn giggled. “Okay.”

  They sat for a few seconds in silence. “You’re thinking about my brother naked right now, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry.” Ashlynn shook the images in her head away. That fast, her body heated at the vivid memories. “Did you really bring me girl clothes?”

  Sheilagh nudged her shoulder. “Of course. That’s what sisters are for.”

  Kelly’s sister brought six dresses and several boots. As she spread them across the bed, Ashlynn examined the boots. “I can’t wear these. I’ll break my neck.”

  “That’s why I brought these. Tah-dah!” She lifted out a pair of paisley cowboy boots stitched with lavender and brown thread. The heels were small and not as frightening as the pointy-toed boots on the bed.

  “Are they in style?”

  “I spent two hundred bucks on these suckers. They’re in style. Try them on with this dress.”

  Ashlynn took the brown wrap dress and boots and went to the bathroom to try them on. Even though Sheilagh was built a bit curvier than her, the dress fit because of the adjustable tie at the waist.

  “You look fabulous!” Sheilagh squealed as she entered the bedroom. “Now for your makeup.”

  “I don’t want too much.”

  “You don’t need much. You’re skin’s flawless. We’ll just put some mascara on your lashes to accent your eyes and some gloss on your lips. That should do the trick.”

  Ashlynn sat on the bed and removed her glasses. It was difficult not to blink when Sheilagh put the mascara wand near her lashes. They giggled and a pleasant, unfamiliar warmth spread in Ashlynn’s chest. She never did this kind of stuff with Roy, of course, and her mom passed away before she was old enough to wear makeup.

  “Thank you for doing this, Sheilagh.”

  She smiled. “You’re welcome. Part your lips like this.”

  She did as she was told and Sheilagh slathered fruity stuff over her mouth.

  “Now blot.”

  She pressed her lips to the tissue offered. Sheilagh held up a small mirror and Ashlynn put on her glasses. It was subtle, but pretty. She liked it.

  Her fingers fluffed her hair and she frowned. Sheilagh dug in the box and produced a thin headband with an ivory flower on the side. “Here. Try this.” Kelly’s sister fluffed her hair to one side and fit the band behind her ears. “You look great.”

  When Ashlynn stood in front of the full-length mirror her throat tightened. She looked like herself, but pretty. She turned and hugged Sheilagh. “Thank you!”

  Kelly’s sister laughed. “You’re welcome. Let’s go show Kelly.”

  “Wait.” The other woman looked back at her. “There’s a man. He works for my dad. His name’s Brad and he’s new in town. You should call him.”

  Sheilagh smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

  “But I thought…”

  “It isn’t that simple. See… Did you know we all knew you had a crush on Kelly since high school? All of us but Kelly, that is. Most of the time he’s an idiot.”

  Her face heated. “No. I didn’t think I was that obvious.”

  Sheilagh nodded, but Ashlynn didn’t see any judgment in her eyes. “I know what that feels like,” she whispered. “I’ve been in love with the same guy for almost five years.”

  “Then why don’t you go after him?”

  She shook her head. “Because he’s in love with someone else. It’s complicated. The worst part is, I can’t tell anyone about it, so please don’t say anything. I’m sure Brad’s a nice guy, but I’m not there yet. Maybe someday I will be.”

  Ashlynn nodded. This was this first big girl secret she’d ever been told. This was a major milestone. “I promise I won’t say anything.”

  Sheilagh beamed. “Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

  “If you change your mind, just say the word and I’ll introduce you.”

  They packed up her things. Sheilagh insisted she leave the dresses, the lip-gloss, and mascara. They went to find her husband. Kelly was watching TV in the den. He looked up and did a double take.

  Standing, he went to her and grinned. “Wow. Beautiful, but I already knew that.”

  Ashlynn dropped her gaze to the floor. “It was all Sheilagh. I think she should move in with us and dress me every day.”

  Kelly’s smile dropped to a frown. “No.”

  “So unappreciated,” Sheilagh sighed. “Okay, lovebirds, my work here is done. Enjoy your evening. I’m going back to my parents’ house to contemplate my desolate dating life and think up names for all the cats I’ll someday own.”

  Ashlynn hugged her again. “I could give you Josh’s number,” she whispered.

  “Nah, still not who I want.”

  When Sheilagh’s SUV pulled away she turned to Kelly who was already holding her coat. “Shall we go, my beautiful wife?”

  She grinned. “We shall.”

  At dinner Kelly was a complete gentleman. He held her chair, helped her with her coat, and spoon fed her bites of his tiramisu, which was much better than the scoop of vanilla ice cream she’d ordered.

  After the restaurant, they stopped at a coffee house in town. Kelly remembered she took her coffee with cream and she noted he drank his black.

  “Tell me about your mom,” he said as they sat in a cozy booth by the window.

  Snow had started to flurry and it was quite scenic under the streetlight. “Her name was Bethany and she always smelled like cookies. I remember she made the most amazing oatmeal cookies. The trick is the nuts.”

  He smiled. His arm rested over her shoulder, fingers making slow swirls on her arm. “I love oatmeal cookies.”

  “I’ll have to make them for you. I have all her recipes. That’s how I learned to cook.”

  “It’s nice you shared that passion with her.”

  “She sewed too. My mom could make anything. She made her own wedding gown and the quilt on our bed.”

  “Your wedding gown.”

  She nodded. “Yes, mine.”

  As the long minutes passed they talked about all sorts of things, Kelly’s parents, his siblings, even some of the women he dated.

  “The other night,” he said as the waiter dropped off their tab. “You said you loved me for a long time. How long?”

  She examined the curve of her coffee cup. “A while.”

  “Since when?”

  She slowly met his eyes. “I remember the first time I saw you. You’d just come from the gym and you were laughing. I stopped right in my tracks. You were so…alive. It had been a few years since my mom passed and I remember watching you and thinking I wanted to feel that alive.”

  “I remember the first time I heard your voice,” he surprised her by saying.

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “We were in Trig and I dropped my pencil. I thought you had the sexiest voice I’d ever heard.”

  She laughed. “No, you didn’t.”

  “I swear.”

  She held up her fingers in the shockabra formation. “Scout’s honor?”

  His fingers mimicked hers. “Scout’s honor.”

  She looked around at the empty shop. “I think they want us to go.”

  He tossed another twenty on the table. “When did you realize you loved me?”

  She licked her lips nervously. “I—there are varying levels of love. I think I loved you the moment I saw you. I fell in lust the moment you kissed me. When you rescued me, I fell hard—major hero w
orship. Then that night you held me as I cried. I know you thought I was crying about what Evan did, but I was really crying because I knew I was hopelessly in love with you and couldn’t have you. But it wasn’t until you called Italian Mary to fix my mom’s dress that I fell irrevocably in love with you.”

  “You already agreed to marry me by then.”

  “I know. I knew you’d be a good husband.” He smiled and she said, “I also really, really wanted to see if all the rumors were true.”

  He gasped. “You wanted to get in my pants!”

  She laughed. “A little.”

  His shoulder nudged hers. “I wanted to get in yours too. As a matter a fact, why don’t we get out of here and go take our pants off somewhere.”

  “I’m not wearing pants.”

  “Even better.”

  When they reached the house Kelly got her door. “Watch your step.” They hung up their coats and Kelly kissed her softly. “Thank you, Ashlynn.”

  “For?”

  “Believing I would be a good husband and telling me when I wasn’t doing such a good job at it.”

  “You can tell me too, Kelly. I’m new at this too.”

  “I love you.”

  Warmth spread in her chest. God, she adored him. She squeezed his hand. “We’re a partnership, Kelly. We have to believe in each other.”

  His lips pressed to hers as he backed her toward the stairs. “Can we please have make up sex now? I’ve been dying to get you out of this dress since my sister left.”

  “I don’t know what make up sex is, but okay.”

  He lifted her in his arms and took the stairs two at a time. “Well, first it’s slow and deep, where we whisper all kinds of sweet things to one another and then once that’s taken care of and we’ve each gotten the edge off, we do very naughty things.”

  “We always do naughty things.”

  He tossed her on the bed and gave her a cheeky smile. “I know. That’s what confession’s for.”

  He stripped off his shirt and pulled off her boots. As he fell on top of her they laughed and kissed and there was nowhere else she wanted to be other than in his arms.

  He filled her in one hard thrust and Ashlynn arched into him, her fingers digging into his strong shoulders. As he rocked over her, his eyes remained focused on hers. “Love me always, Ashlynn. No matter what. I know we’ll face rough times and I won’t always be the best husband, but I need to know you’ll always be here.”

  Head tipping back, she moaned as he pressed deep. “Yes, Kelly. I’ll never stop loving you. You’re my husband and I want you forever.”

  They made love as though the night was endless, their own personal secret in time. When they finished, they talked softly, lips lingering on curves and fingers caressing slowly.

  Ashlynn was in awe of the man lying beside her. She’d never expected him to come to her in such a way, raw and wanting, needing her as much as she needed him.

  The sun was coming up over the snowy fields when they finally fell asleep holding one another. She knew then, with a conviction she hadn’t felt before, that Kelly McCullough was a man of his word and he would never stop loving her, his wife.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ashlynn waited in the paper gown the nurse had provided, her nerves bouncing with excitement. Yes, she’d spotted, but her period was late and light. After reading numerous parenting magazines, she knew that could be a sign of pregnancy. Her breasts were tender and she was certain this was it.

  The door opened and the doctor stepped in. “Hello, Ashlynn. How are we feeling today?”

  “Hi, Dr. Marcel. I’m good.” She smiled, barely able to contain her excitement to hear the news.

  “Did your Christmas go well?”

  Ashlynn’s Christmas had been wonderful. Roy joined her and Kelly and all the other McCulloughs for a feast intended for kings. They’d gone to midnight mass as a family, taking up the majority of the church. The following morning, Kelly gave her a beautiful necklace with an emerald pendant. The only thing missing was the pitter-patter of little feet and the sight of dollies and tinker toys under the tree.

  “Our holiday was lovely. And yours?”

  “Very nice. Thanks for asking.” She settled into the office style chair by the counter and placed her palms on her knees. “Well, your blood work looks great and your urine came back clear.”

  Ashlynn’s heart plummeted. “I’m not pregnant?”

  Dr. Marcel smiled sympathetically. “Not yet, but give it time. You’ve only been trying for a few months. Some women find it takes years to successfully conceive. Let’s take a look and make sure everything’s healthy, hm?”

  Ashlynn eased back on the table and placed her feet in the metal footrests. The doctor poked and prodded at her parts as Ashlynn pretended she was somewhere else. A moment later the sound of Dr. Marcel snapping off her gloves and tossing them in the receptacle told Ashlynn the exam was complete.

  “You may sit up.”

  Ashlynn covered herself and waited as the doctor made notes in her file. She was still recovering from the sting of bad news. Already Ashlynn had imagined a nice dinner with her husband, full of baby carrots, baby back ribs, and other baby themed foods. She’d fantasied about breaking the news and imagined him scooping her up and making love to her right there in the kitchen as they celebrated their family soon to come. That wouldn’t be happening now.

  The doctor closed the file and faced her. “Everything looks good. Your uterus is healthy and I don’t see any reasons you should have difficulty conceiving. Now, I’ll be seeing you again if you suspect you’re pregnant, but otherwise I don’t need to see you until your next annual appointment. However, if more time goes by and you still aren’t having any luck, you may want to have your husband visit a specialist. I’m going to give you a card for a colleague of mine. I wouldn’t rush into anything, but you’ll have it in case Kelly wants to have some tests run on his end.”

  Ashlynn took the card and held it in her lap since at the moment she was without pockets. It was just a question of timing. She was healthy and she doubted Kelly was anything but. The man was potent in all things regarding sex. They’d just have to wait another month or two.

  As she drove home, Ashlynn stared blankly at the white covered farmland. Perhaps she couldn’t grow anything in the winter. Kelly came home around five, which had become his routine.

  When he arrived she was watching a Lifetime movie in the living room cuddling one of her mother’s quilts. Bending low, he kissed her. “Hey, love. You tired?”

  She turned off the television, which was only depressing her more and invited him under the blanket. He kicked off his boots and joined her, pulling her close.

  “I went to the doctor’s today.”

  “The lady doctor?”

  “Yes.” She giggled at his grownup terminology. “She said everything looks good. Sometimes it just takes longer for women to conceive.”

  He pressed his lips to her hair and hugged her. “It’ll happen.”

  She considered the card Dr. Marcel had given her. “She gave me a number to a specialist—”

  “A specialist? You said everything was fine.”

  “He’s a specialist for men.”

  Kelly was quiet a moment. “Love, I assure you everything’s in top working order down there. Now, if you’d like to perform an inspection I can take off my pants, but I know for a fact I don’t need to see a specialist. My plumbing’s fine. We just need to give it more time.”

  Ashlynn let the subject drop, but it continued to weigh on her over the next few weeks. She and Kelly had sex almost every day, sometimes more than once. If everything was in working order, she should be pregnant by now.

  * * * *

  By February, when she still was not expecting, she was glad to see the arrival of some out of area produce. Perhaps she was stressing her body out with all this obsessing. She’d even picked up one of those basal thermometers at the drug store, which frustrated Kelly.

&
nbsp; He sympathized when she cried. After so many months of having sex without protection, the feelings of failure were inevitable. He threw the thermometer away and made love to her. It was intense and reaffirming. The entire time he kept his eyes on hers and she sensed he was putting all his focus on giving her a child.

  As spring arrived she became more involved at work and that helped take her mind off other issues. Kelly had done as he’d said and cut his hours at the pub back to forty a week.

  Lisa, the new manager at the farmer’s market, was doing well with her new position. Ashlynn was always a little overzealous when it came to her store. It had been hers and only hers since the day she’d opened it. Letting go of her control and learning to delegate tasks without micromanaging was indeed a challenge, but Lisa was great, and Ashlynn was trying to stick to her lighter hours.

  Her mornings still started at dawn. She toiled in her gardens and soon would be cutting off her outside suppliers and lugging truckloads of homegrown produce to the market.

  Kelly had taken up making dinner since by evening she was exhausted. On the weekends when her husband spent most of his time at the bar, Ashlynn, Sheilagh, and Mallory would go to the diner for supper and follow up with wine at the house. Mallory of course did not drink because she was still pregnant.

  It was difficult sometimes, hearing about the twins and seeing Mallory swell with her and Finn’s third child. Over the winter Ashlynn had watched Liam for Samantha and Colin. She loved that little bugger and his chunky thighs. It filled her with sadness when he turned six months and Sam announced he would be starting at the day care where the Lula went. The seasons were changing and her schedule would, again, return to the busy way it always was in the warmer months.

  Perhaps having a child wouldn’t weigh on her mind so much if the married McCulloughs didn’t breed like rabbits. Even Kate had announced she and Ant were trying for their fourth. Ashlynn knew it would crush Kelly if Kate conceived before them, but she wasn’t very hopeful they’d get there first.

  Something was definitely wrong. Ashlynn knew it in her gut. She could grow almost anything, except a baby. No matter how her husband reassured her, she sensed no amount of sex would change their circumstances.