by Cara Adams
She hung the towels on the rail in the bathroom then padded out into the hallway, heading for the back of the house, hoping to find the kitchen. A hot drink would be really good about now. The ceiling was slightly different heights, which indicated the single room had once been several rooms, but the effect of the large living area was one of spaciousness and welcome. Gowan was stirring something that smelled good in a pot on the stove and he—or possibly Maitho—had lit a fire in the huge fireplace at the other end of the room.
The kitchen area was quite small but on the other side of the dividing counter was a much larger casual living room which had a sliding door out onto a deck at the side, and the hearth on the other wall.
“That smells wonderful.”
“Pea and ham soup. And there’s a loaf of garlic bread warming in the over to go with it.”
“Wonderful.”
“Did you call your friends to tell them you’re safe and dry?”
“My phone’s dead. I think the rain killed it.”
“Rice,” said Maitho, walking into the room and bending in front of the fire to add another log of wood to it.
“What?”
“When your cell phone gets wet you should put it in with rice. The phone will start working again because the rice absorbs the water,” explained Gowan.
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. Where’s your phone?”
She took it out of the pocket of his—or possibly Maitho’s—shorts and swiped her finger across it hopefully, but the screen remained black. Sighing, she handed the cell phone to Gowan who opened the pantry door, took out a canister labeled rice, and slid her phone deep inside it.
“How much rice does it take?”
“I have no idea but more must be better, right?” He grinned at her.
Maitho came up behind her and handed her his cell phone. “Call your friends and tell them you’re okay while I get out the bowls and plates.”
“Who is this?” Keisha’s voice was terse.
“Sorry, Keisha, it’s Dera. I’m using Maitho’s phone because mine got wet.”
“Put it in a bag with some rice.”
Okay, so everyone knew about that except her. “I just did. I’m calling to let you know I’m fine. I’m waiting until the rain stops.”
“Honey, if you’re with Gowan and Maitho and happy about that, don’t hurry back.”
As Dera went to speak, Siyandra called out, “Have fun!” then Keisha clicked off the call. Dera giggled and handed Maitho his cell phone back.
“They told me to put my phone in a bag with some rice.”
“We already told you that,” he said smugly.
“Soup’s ready. Go sit at the table and I’ll bring it over.”
The warm bread and hot soup were exactly what she needed to heat her up from the inside until she was toasty all through. The men had finished eating, and Dera was down to her last few mouthfuls when the trumpet voluntary music blared out. Gowan slid his cell phone out of his pocket and clicked though a few screens, texted an answer, and put his cell phone away as Maitho said, “I thought you agreed to stop using ‘The Prince of Denmark’s March’ as your ringtone. Everything about it is an argument.”
“I know almost nothing about music, but I thought that tune was called the ‘trumpet voluntary.’ Lots of people my parents’ age used it as their wedding march.”
“That’s the whole point, Dera. Jeremiah Clarke wrote it to be played on the organ at St Paul’s Cathedral—”
“Not on a trumpet?”
“No. That’s the first point. It was to be played using the trumpet stop on the organ,” interrupted Maitho.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. It gets worse. For years and years everyone said it was actually written by Henry Purcell, who was far more famous than poor old Jeremiah Clarke,” said Gowan.
“So why do you have it as your ringtone?”
“To annoy me, of course,” answered Maitho.
Both men were smiling broadly and suddenly Dera did see. “You don’t really argue about music at all, do you? It’s just a game you play.”
“That’s very perceptive of you, Dera. We did argue as kids, but we haven’t for a long time now.”
“We just like taking the opposite sides in conversations,” added Gowan.
“Playing devil’s advocate.”
“Exactly. What would you like to do while we wait for the rain to stop and your clothes to dry?”
“I left them in the sink. They aren’t going to dry anytime soon.”
“Would you like me to put them in the dryer? And we could watch some movies or something?”
“I’ll go and get my things.”
“I can do that for you. Why don’t you choose a movie?” said Maitho, bouncing out of his chair and exiting the room.
Dera didn’t really want to just sit down. She’d been looking forward to being outside and moving around. Outside was no longer an option, at least until the rain eased off, but there must be something they could do that didn’t involve sitting. Or sex. She was nowhere near ready to get that close to these men. She hardly knew them yet. She wandered around the large room, but neither the books on the shelves, nor the stack of DVDs called to her.
“I’m sorry we don’t have more appropriate movies for you,” said Gowan.
“It’s not that at all. It’s just that I’m not really in the mood to sit in front of the screen all afternoon.”
“Do you like looking at old things? Unpacking old boxes?”
Dera stared at him. He looked almost hesitant as if the words had come from his lips before he’d thought them through. But the idea of sorting through old boxes of possessions did appeal to her. “Yes. I’d like that. Are these your parents’ things or someone else’s?”
“Mostly from my family,” said Maitho, coming into the room. “This was my family’s home, but a lot of the furniture in it is from Gowan’s home.”
“How did you decide whose house to live in? In fact, how did you decide to become a pair and marry the same woman?” Suddenly it was tremendously important to learn all about these two men. Maybe she did hardly know them yet. But she definitely liked them and wanted to know more about them and now was the perfect time. Who knew if she’d ever have an opportunity like this again?
Chapter Two
Gowan had to work hard not to show any emotion when Dera asked her questions. He’d planned today as an outdoor adventure, showing her around the farm and helping her look on this place as her home. All those plans had derailed when the downpour began. Even their picnic was a soggy mess he’d had to throw out. Plan B, hastily constructed while he’d heated the bread and soup for their lunch, had consisted of them sitting in front of the television watching some movies together and him hoping to find out what sort of things she preferred. That she would want to know all about them had never occurred to him. Possibly it should have. It was only fair after all.
“For me it was a matter of looking around the community and deciding who I liked enough, and respected sufficiently, that I was prepared to work at making a life with them so we could both have a future. The only person who came to mind was Maitho.”
“We’re the same age and have known each other all our lives. We were never best friends, but we’ve always gotten along with each other. I guess you’d say we’re highly compatible. Which is not to say we don’t disagree, but that we know we’ll be able to find a middle ground we can walk together,” added Maitho.
“And the house?” Dera asked. She looked so cute sitting there in his shirt and Maitho’s pants and socks, her shiny black curls still a bit damp and her body swamped by the too-large clothing.
“Ah that’s easy. It was all about location. This is a much more suitable street for you to live on, much closer to everywhere you need to go, and not surrounded by empty homes.” Gowan stood up and waved to Maitho to start bringing down the boxes. Maybe she’d get tired of looking at things after just a couple
of boxes, but if it’s what she wanted to do that was fine by him. All the stuff needed to be sorted and thrown out, rehoused, or put neatly back in the roof space. Even one box tidied would be genuine progress.
Hours and hours later, they finished sorting the last box, Dera writing neatly on the lid in magic marker, “Curtains, Cushions, for Thrift Store.”
“Oh wow, look at my hands. I need another shower,” she said, laughing, climbing to her feet without using her hands, and heading back to the bathroom. Gowan guessed she just planned to wash her hands, not actually shower, so he left Maitho to carry the final box out to the garage while he went into the kitchen to wash his own hands, before closing the access to the roof space and putting the ladder away.
He opened the freezer and took out two large pizzas, putting them in the oven to heat. While they were warming, he pressed the button on the coffee maker then took out the plastic bag of fruit, the only part of their picnic which had survived the deluge.
Maitho went and washed his hands then grabbed plates and mugs, which he took over to the table as Dera joined them. She sat in the same chair at the table as previously and said, “Thank you for sharing your family history with me. It was cathartic in a way. We had to sell our home when my mother became ill. It was the only way we could pay the medical bills. There was only enough left over for us to share a very small apartment so we couldn’t save very many keepsakes at all. I chose the things that meant the most to her, such as the photograph albums from when Dad was still alive.”
Gowan realized he didn’t know anything about her mother. “Where is your mother now?”
“Oh, that was a really awesome coincidence. One of her closest friends was widowed and decided to move to a seniors’ village and wanted someone to share the apartment there with her. With Mom settled, I was able to look for work somewhere away from our neighborhood. But there were hundreds of applicants for every vacancy until I came across the advertisement for the mail-order brides.”
Gowan watched her eat her pizza. Her teeth were very white and bit neatly through the pizza. He noticed she never complained about the flavor and he hadn’t asked her preference either. She just ate what was served to her as she’d done with the soup. It was wrong of him. He should have asked her preferences first. But it was a really telling comment about her. It proved she was worth her weight in gold, if some of the stories he’d heard from human men were true. Stories of women who refused to eat anything but the tiniest bite of lettuce, or demanded that everything be one hundred percent pure and organic, or would only go to a certain few restaurants they trusted.
“I’m sorry. I should have asked if you liked pizza,” he said.
“Oh, that’s not a problem. If it’s food, I’ll eat it. Which reminds me, Maitho, why do you like pink so much?”
“To me, the color symbolizes women. I don’t know if it’s because in the stores little boy clothing is blue and little girl clothing is pink, but to me, pink has always symbolized women. I liked your pink shirt much better than Gowan’s yellow one,” he said, shaking his head at her outfit.
“But it goes so well with the primrose towels in the bathroom,” she teased.
“They were my mother’s guest towels. We’ve been saving them for you,” explained Gowan.
“I’m honored.”
He nodded at her but inside him his heart swelled with pride. She was the perfect woman for them both. He could find nothing to complain about in her thoughts or behavior. She was fun to be with yet still the perfect guest and fit them both perfectly. Now all he had to do was get her into their bed so they could show her how well they’d love her if she gave them the opportunity. The only problem was, he hadn’t figured out how to do that just yet.
She stood up from the table and walked across to the sliding door, opening it a bare inch. “I think the rain has stopped. Are you able to take me back to the women’s barracks now, please?”
“Why don’t you stay until your clothing is dry?” asked Maitho.
“By then it might be raining again. That rain came out of nowhere and there’s no guarantee it won’t be back again.”
Well damn! She’d outmaneuvered them this time but they’d make sure there was another opportunity. In fact her clothing and cell phone gave him the perfect opportunity. “Can we take you out for a proper meal tomorrow night? We’ll give you back your clothing and cell phone then.”
“That’d be nice, thank you. And maybe you will have heard back about me doing some translation work as well.”
“Can you read Arabic?”
“Not a lot. Being cursive makes it tricky, and it doesn’t seem to be transliterated very often, either. I speak it well, but don’t write it or read it nearly as fluently.”
She took off Maitho’s socks and ran barefoot to their truck, climbing in the backseat while Maitho jumped into the driver’s seat.
“You said you learned it from the children in your old neighborhood?” he asked her.
“That’s right. About sixty percent of the families originally came from the Middle East. They came from quite a few different countries, and often had been enemies of each other back in their homeland, but in America they spoke Arabic together and became a community. I ended up playing with the girls simply because so many of the neighborhood boys refused to play with females. All the girls stayed together and I became really good friends with many of them.”
“Do you miss them?” Gowan asked, struck afresh by how much she’d given up to come to his home.
“They’ve all been married for a long time. Most of them have a houseful of kids now. But we still keep in touch on Facebook even though my life has been very different from theirs for the past half dozen years.” She giggled as Maitho pulled up the truck in front of the community hall.
“What’s so funny?” Maitho asked.
“A lot of them share a husband with two or three other women. Whereas I’ll have two husbands. Thank you for spending the day with me. I’ve enjoyed it very much.”
She opened the door and was gone before Gowan even had his seatbelt off to help her.
* * * *
Maitho checked the clothing in the dryer, removed Dera’s panties and bra, untangled the legs of her jeans, then switched it on again for another ten minutes. He smoothed his palm over her lingerie, wishing it was her body he was touching, but still enjoying the soft, warm cotton beneath his fingers.
“Are you working on a way to get Dera into our bed tomorrow?” he asked Gowan.
“That’s next. Right now I’m writing a shopping list so we can feed her properly.”
“Yeah. When I saw you preparing the soup, I guessed those ham and cheese baguettes we’d made for lunch hadn’t survived the journey. We should have used Ziploc bags instead of paper ones.”
“Next time we need to remember to check the weather report before we leave home,” added Gowan.
“Although, actually, it worked out pretty well. Dera enjoyed herself and we did, too. But yeah, interspecies dating isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies, that’s for sure.”
Gowan turned and looked him directly in the face. “We were incredibly lucky she didn’t scream abuse at us or get all hysterical in the storm. If she’d been terrified or something, Cooper could have banned us from choosing a bride at all.”
Maitho’s gut clenched in fear. “Shit! I never thought of that, but you’re right. It could have been the end of all our dreams.” He dropped into a chair, suddenly horrified at how close he’d come to potentially losing the woman of their dreams, the woman who represented a happy future for them both. There were twelve pairs of bachelors and only nine women. Cooper could so easily have told them they’d destroyed their chance of mating a woman. Maitho felt almost sick at how close they’d been to disaster. If Dera hadn’t been so strong and brave—Shit!
“Do you think your boss will want another translator? And how would you feel about working with her?”
“I think more important is how you’d feel a
bout it. We wouldn’t be together as such, since my office is in the farm building and she would be working from home, but you’d be in town all day while neither Dera nor I would be. Unless she gets a part-time job in Coopersville as well, maybe.”
That was something else Maitho hadn’t thought about. Fuck! He’d had thirty-two years to think of everything and today he was striking out everywhere. “I trust you, and I trust her. Even though I don’t know her very well yet, she gives off a really pure sort of vibe. Everything she says is straightforward and honest. But what about the work? You always seem very busy.”
“There’d definitely be two days a week of work. I could easily spend all my time translating written material and leave the audio tapes for her to do. That takes me fifteen, sixteen hours a week, no worries. It just depends whether they want to employ an extra person. I know they’ve been looking for a Spanish translator as well. I wonder if any of the women speak Spanish?”
“We can ask Dera tomorrow when we take her out to dinner.”
“Good plan. We need to ask her about her favorite foods as well before we go shopping.”
Maitho stopped to think. Finally he said, “You know, we learned a lot about her this afternoon. We learned she cares about family, history, and the ancestors, and respects all people. We learned she holds no bitterness in her at all, despite having to sell up her home and leave behind most of her possessions. We learned she loves her family and friends so much she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to get them the help they need. We couldn’t have chosen a more wonderful woman, no matter how hard we’d looked for her.”
“That’s all true, and I want her with every fiber of my being, just as you do. But is she being nice to us because she has good manners, or because she’s really interested in becoming our mate?” asked Gowan.
“Yeah, there is that.” All Maitho could do was hope she was as attracted to them as they were to her. He couldn’t explain it, but when he’d seen her, he’d wanted her. Oh, not just with his dick, although his dick would really like to bury itself inside her hot wet cunt. But also with his heart. There was something about her that raised the tiny hairs on his arms and turned his guts into a tangle of longing to make her his. It had to be love. It was so much more powerful than lust. He’d lusted after women before but his emotions had never been involved as completely as they were now. If Dera said no, he was pretty sure his entire world would collapse.
