by Xander Hades
Unfortunately, this became the first thing to go wrong. I wasn’t going to be able to order invitations on this short of notice, so finally, I sent someone out to wake up a designer as it had gotten pretty late. The poor girl that showed up thought she was going to be killed. When she found out that she needed to design something sweet and romantic on the fly she dug into it with all the fervor of a die-hard romantic. She even managed to hook us up with a printer. Nico was kept running, working out the details. He came to me with the final design for approval. I pretended not to see the phone sticking out of his pocket that was quite clearly still in mid-call to a number that read in New Orleans. I made note of the number, approved the invitation and sent him on his way. Mission accomplished.
The designer stayed making wedding favors. She even got the boys learning how to put a twirl in the ribbons. It was quite a sight to behold, coming into the dining room and seeing a dozen burly thugs putting candy into tiny baskets and crimping the edges just so. By this point, one of the goons was so smitten with the designer that I half expected another wedding to come out of the ordeal. I made a mental note to make sure the girl was properly thanked.
Of course, I wasn’t relying on the grapevine to feed all the information down to New Orleans. I personally faxed an invitation to Fingers, just to make sure he got the message.
But I also faxed one to Hoodoo.
And one to LA.
I spent the next few days and most of the nights making calls and throwing money at every hurdle. Being a man, some details of the wedding were noticeably absent. Like a wedding dress. The cake we had kinda sorta worked out, though I wasn’t sure the bride was going to be a fan of triple chocolate even if all the boys voted in favor of it. But I did get three caterers and all the booze in New Orleans.
I was in over a quarter million on the day so far. I wasn’t even sure I had a bride.
By the time we got down to the final details we were all beat. Rico went home to his wife and no doubt spent most of the evening laughing about what a crazy mess his boss was. Most of the boys went out to drink. Marty had the night shift. I fell asleep at my desk, my head on the blotter and dreamed.
It was more a memory than a dream. I could feel her under me again, feel the heat of her skin, the burn of her kisses, the scratching trails her fingernails left on my back. I could feel her softness, her breath on my neck as I lay on top of her.
In my dream, the world ran around us, cars and planes and people walking past us. We were in the field where the horse was shot, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, in her father’s office and she held me as tightly as I held her and we merged, flowed, flesh joining, her softness my hardness becoming one.
I kissed her when our release came. In the logic of dreams, we shared a single, powerful orgasm. We were on a stage, a thousand people silently waiting for us to climax, for the seed to be planted.
We called out in a single voice because we’d merged, somehow, though it all made wonderful sense in the dream. We became a single entity, one merged of pleasure and pain and trust. When we came we burst apart in a blinding brilliant light and reformed.
We became our child.
Sounds stupid, but dreams often are. I woke up with my head on the keyboard of my laptop having filled 300 pages with the letter “Z.”
I was also hard as a rock.
I fought the urge to call Rico. Tomorrow was soon enough to tell him he was right.
I was in love with the girl.
Damn it.
Chapter 21
Michael
At 3 AM, I got Marty out of the kitchen and in very explicit terms told him that I needed him to call over to the D’Angelos. I told him to wait until I was in the car and out of the driveway at the very least. I made a big show of accidentally leaving my cell phone on the table in front of him so he could quite honestly say that there was no way to call and make me come back. I figured that it’s one thing to tell a man he can’t come visit his fiancé, it’s quite another to try and tell his man that his boss needs to turn around when he’s already halfway there and can’t be reached.
Dominic had two men in the yard all night Mostly they hung around at the front gate in a booth there and watched security screens. Occasionally they took out one of the dogs and patrolled the perimeter. Dominic was a very paranoid person and probably with good reason. When I pulled up, I wasn’t sure if I’d get the brush off or a Doberman sic’d on me. But these were guys that knew me and apparently whoever Marty talked to, had gotten the word out that I was on the way over. They waved me through the gate, expressionless and bored. The dogs never so much as looked in my direction.
The door to the house opened as I got near it. A man I knew, Greg, looked at me through a crack. He wasn’t happy, and I had no doubt he was armed. But he seemed more resigned to the inevitable than angered by my intrusion.
“It’s 3 AM, Michael,” he said, with a mournful sigh when he saw me. Here was a professional thug, a bodyguard, yet I swear the man was whining.
I shot him my most affable grin. “It’s more like 3:30.”
“Marty said not to wake anyone. Are you seriously going to go up there? At this hour?”
“Greg,” I leaned in, motioning him to do the same. “Would you really keep a young man from his fiancé? That would be the height of cruelty.”
He shot me a look, not about to play my game of conspirators. “You know the old man will shoot me if she screams,” he said and opened the door. He stood back and looked at me like I was here to punish him. “Just see if the door is locked before kicking it in. Please?”
“Listen,” I said, clouting his shoulder as I passed. “By the wedding, we might all be dead anyway!”
“Good, there’s a bright side.” Greg pointed a thumb at the steps. He went back into the dark shadows of the house like a rejected ghost and I went up the stairs as quietly as I was able.
They had replaced her door, that was nice to see. It hadn’t been painted yet and the primer grey looked pale and odd in the immaculate hallway. I studied it for a moment, allowing myself a brief fantasy about what waited on the other side. If life were like the movies it would play out all soft and romantic with her in something alluring and filmy, wind blowing from somewhere so that the cloth would billow around her, revealing more than it covered. She would come to me, arms open, whispering sweet nothings and we’d spend the rest of the night making mad passionate love.
But with my luck, this would probably play out more like an episode of “I Love Lucy.”
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I loved this woman, which wasn’t a hard thing to remember. I also reminded myself that this was the bedroom of a rather headstrong young woman, who knew just what she did and didn’t want.
And it would be my job to make sure she wanted me.
I gave a firm nod. I could do this.
Remembering Greg’s remonstration, I reached for the doorknob, aware that in this house it was highly likely I was being watched from the shadows. With a cheery wave for whatever lurked in the darkness, I turned the handle.
It wasn’t locked.
I breathed again.
The door swung open without a sound. I found myself in the room, debating whether to just turn on the light or to go for broke and just crawl into bed with her. The light seemed safer. I’d be less likely to be kneed in the groin if she saw who was there.
Or more likely, depending on her mood.
I shut the door behind me, and found the light switch.
Deanna woke instantly. I had a momentary glimpse of her body sprawled tangled in the sheets. Somehow in that instant that the light came on, she shot up in bed, pulling the sheets over her nudity. Mouth opening to scream, until her saucer-wide eyes recognized me.
“Michael?” She shook her head, one hand coming up to rub sleep from her eyes, as though trying to make sense of what she saw. “What… what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“I came here to… “
I came here to…what?
Funny how I knew what to say on the ride here. I even knew what to say as I climbed the steps. I could even say I knew what to say right up until I saw her laying there sweetly covered and confused. She looked so vulnerable, so beautiful, every word I ever knew flew straight out of my head to be lost forever.
I walked to her dresser without another word and picked up the statue I had carved for her so long ago. I brought it over to her and sat down on the side of the bed.
“Michael? What is it?” Confusion was being replaced by anger. Bright spots colored her cheeks, as she drew away a little, trying to distance herself from me. I noted the movement in sadness, but pressed on regardless. I would leave afterward, if need be. But I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d said my piece.
“You called this ‘crap’, as I recall,” I said holding it so she could see it. “And yet you kept it all these years.”
“I was pretty pissed.” Her brows knit trying to figure out why I’d woke her to discuss an insult. Her gaze dropped and she sighed a little, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry.”
“You never looked at it, did you? I mean, really looked.”
She flopped back against the pillows, throwing her hands up in frustration. “What’s your point?”
The sheets had fallen, exposing her to me. I had held those breasts many times, felt the heat of her breath and the willowy strength of her back and I still found myself tongue-tied at the beauty of it.
I swallowed hard. “I just wanted to know why.” I traced the chains that bound the angel to the base. “This is the best thing I ever made. It took forever. There was never anyone else that would ever have it. Even while I was carving it, I had you in mind.”
“I remember,” she said softly. “You said that it was a symbol between us, that it was our pact.” She looked at me with eyes bright from unshed tears. “I remember every moment.” She bit her lip and turned her face away.
“But you didn’t say anything…” I said, trying to piece it out.
“I did!” She protested, sitting up. “I did! I thought it was wonderful, it was the best present I had ever gotten. It was from you. Something you made, not bought, or worse, had one of your men ‘stop by the store’ for it like all my other birthday and Christmas gifts. Why do you think I still have it? Even when we… when I thought you were using me and I lied about being… even then, I couldn’t get rid of it. It meant too much, it means too much.”
That’s when it hit me. “You never looked,” I said, flipping the box upside-down and handing it to her. “At the bottom.”
Deanna looked at me like I had gone insane, then looked down at the object in her hands. “What am I supposed to see?”
I leaned in and traced the arrow carved there. A round, semi-circle pointing left.
“So? I thought that was cute, like she needed to go counter-clockwise. What about it?”
I grabbed the angel’s body and twisted the base. It had been there for years and it didn’t want to budge, but finally, it spun. She gasped and reached out to take if from me.
“DON’T BREAK IT!” She cried and those unshed tears began to fall. Then she stopped as I removed the base from the angel.
“I used the top of a peanut butter jar,” I explained and showed it to her. I had nailed a lid upside down on the base of the statue and used that to create threads in the upper part. That part I had hollowed out.
I set the base down and took her hand and held it out, palm flat. I tipped the angel over her hand and a small velvet pouch fell out into her grasp.
She looked to me, to the statue, to me and then back to the statue. It was like watching an owl. With trembling fingers, she tugged at the bag and very carefully pulled the top open to look inside.
“Michael…”
My name came out as a soft gasp.
“It was Grandma’s,” I said by way of explanation. “Dad had it locked away, but I took it. He never missed it, and it’s mine now anyway.”
The single diamond ring in the pouch was nearly 100 years old. Grandpa was still an up and coming member of The Outfit in those days, but he was able to get her a nice stone and the setting was white gold with filigrees. I guessed you’d call it vintage, but to me, that only increased the beauty of it. I remember my Grandmother wearing it, the pride she took in it.
I took it from her hand. She was shaking.
“All this time,” she whispered.
“It was never for anyone else to have,” I said, tugging on a strand of her hair. “Just for you.”
I slipped the ring on her finger. “Deanna. Don’t marry me for the sake of The Outfit. Don’t marry me for your father or mine. Marry me because I see you. Because you see me. Because despite the fact that we both know what the other one is deep inside, there is no one anywhere that either of us would rather be with.”
I touched her chin with my forefinger, raising her eyes to meet mine. “Marry me because I love you.”
She stared at me, trying to read my eyes, trying to see behind the mask, but this time, in this important place, I didn’t have one. My eyes were wide open.
“You mean it,” she whispered, her hand twisting in mine, as if to hold the ring on it forever.
“Every breath of it.”
She looked at the ring on her finger and the tears came. “All these years.”
“It was in the safest place imaginable.”
I would say that when 120 lbs. of naked girl wraps herself around you, the chivalrous thing to do is to fall over into bed with her.
Chivalry isn’t dead.
Chapter 22
Michael
Later that day, I discovered that a group of men cannot plan a wedding. I know this because Deanna came to my house later that morning and announced it as a truism. And kept repeating it like a mantra. Over and over again.
She wasn’t too upset, to be honest. Until she heard about the cake.
“DOUBLE CHOCOLATE? REALLY? ARE YOU MAD?” She looked from one to another as though waiting for one of the guys to say “joke!” No one did.
I’ve seen Rico face down three armed men, Marty once drove a car through a hailstorm of bullets. Neither one of them could meet her eyes.
I was in the office making other arrangements when she saw the proposed wedding dress. I heard her from the kitchen. I think her father might have heard her and his house was several miles from mine.
I hung up the phone, sat back and waited. The door to the office burst open and an absolutely livid Deanna stormed in, mouth agape. God, she was beautiful. “Wa….. How in the…”
“RICO!” I called out. This was not something for a single person to fix. Especially when that person had caused the problem.
Rico was always right there when you needed him. Except for this time. He’d take a bullet for me, but to enter a room with Deanna in that state was too much for anyone. He hovered in the doorway, looking at us uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure if he needed to call the other guys in for backup. I wasn’t altogether sure he shouldn’t.
“Tell whoever you got making the cake that we need a second cake.” I said. “White, with white frosting, have him contact Deanna for details.”
“Yes sir,” he said and practically ran from the room.
“THERE ISN’T TIME!” Deanna wailed. “There’s no time to make new plans! This is a complete mess and the wedding may not mean anything to you, but it’s about all I have left and the whole thing is designed by half a dozen…. MEN!”
She collapsed in the chair across for me in a storm of tears. This was becoming quite the common experience lately – to reduce Deanna for tears. I really could have sworn she’d never cried once back when we were children. She must have been trying to make up for lost time.
The problem was, I had no idea what to do about it. I shoved a handkerchief at her, and for a moment I thought she might deliver it back, only nowhere I was going to want to have to retrieve it from. Maybe I backed away a little bit. I’m not swea
ring to anything.
“Boss,” Rico said from the hallway, well out of reach of Deanna. It seemed we were all learning a thing or two. “Baker says there’s not enough time. It can’t be done!”
“Tell him I’ll double his price.”
“He says ok.”
I didn’t even want to deal with the looks Rico was giving me at this point. He’d been on me about the budget more than once in the last few days. He understood my reasoning. I understood his desire to keep the family fortune intact. So long as we each pretended to the other that we were listening, the standoff would probably get us up to the honeymoon.
“Two cakes?” Deanna looked at me, tears forgotten, handkerchief clutched in a soggy wad in her hand. “Just how many people are you planning on?”
“Close the door,” I told Rico who saluted and disappeared. I moved around the desk to come kneel by Deanna. “I meant what I said, I want to marry you because I want to marry you. The ceremony… “ I shook my head. “that’s not all you have left. I don’t want you to be a silent appendage. I couldn’t stand that. I need a partner.” I looked into her eyes “I need someone I can count on, someone who wants to work with me.”
“Then why won’t you tell me your plans?” Her eyes were filled with hurt and a whole ‘nother slew of unshed tears. I sighed a little. I was going to have to tell her. I’d known I would have to at some point but had kind of been hoping we’d get a little closer to the ceremony before she needed to know the whole plan. Somewhere around “I Do” might have been better.
