CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Reese
The next morning I woke up with my heart more full and overwhelmed than it had been as long as I could remember. I felt warm and at peace.
I heard breathing beside me and reached out to stroke a hand down Kelly’s body. She stirred and a smile crossed her lips, fleeting and small, but enough to tell me that she was awake, so I curled up on one side and held her in my arms.
She snuggled back so that we lay with her butt pressed up against my hips, my face at her neck. I held her against me and drifted into sleep.
Later, when I woke again it was to feel her hand on my skin. She was holding my fingers in her hand, squeezing gently. I woke and quested sleepily forward, kissing her hair.
“Good morning,” I whispered. She smiled. I heard her lips move and smiled too.
“It is a good morning,” she said.
“A Sunday morning.”
“Yes.”
That was the best thing. We could lie there together and watch the sun come up and hear the city coming awake below us. I had never lived in a big city before—not a really big one anyway. The sound of traffic—the hiss and roll and honk—was new to me. I wondered how she got to sleep here nights. Though I had to admit with a blush that I had managed to do that fairly well.
I guess I was tired out.
I kissed the side of her throat and she rolled over, pushing that soft body against me. When she was facing me, we kissed. I stroked her hair.
“It’s good to be back,” I said. I meant it. I’d longed for her.
“It’s good to see you again, she mused. “And not just see you, either.”
Her hand slid down my chest and I felt it moving in a decidedly unwise direction. Unwise because I was already hopelessly hard and her touching me might make me explode right here and right now.
She held me in her palm, fingers closed around my shaft, stroking me and I gritted my teeth.
“Kelly,” I whispered.
“Mm?”
“Should we maybe…”
She laughed, a throaty giggle as she drew me towards her, her hand busy on my shaft even as she sat up.
“Do you have a good idea?” she whispered as she took me into her body. “Since this is mine.”
“Oh!” I gulped as she drew me inside. “No. No better idea.”
She gave that satisfied chuckle again, the one that was so darkly sexy. “I didn’t think you did.”
We spent most of the morning like that, exploring each other and learning new ways of pleasure. Then she rolled over and sat up.
“We should have breakfast.”
I nodded. “I guess so.”
“I’m hungry,” she said. “I dunno if it’s my imagination or something, but I’ve been so hungry lately.”
I smiled. “I wonder if it’s because…” I couldn’t stop thinking of it. She was going to have a baby!
She snorted a giggle. “Probably is.”
We both laughed. She kissed me and slid out of bed, drawing a bathrobe around that lovely figure as she headed into the shower. I stared at her and lay back, imagining her under the flowing water. I felt relaxed.
When I heard her singing in the shower I knew I’d come home. I couldn’t help smiling. I’d never felt like this before—this sense of belonging and sureness. I was here with the woman I loved. I was going to be a father. I had never imagined my life could hold so many simple, beautiful things.
I had never thought I could be so happy.
Over breakfast, we made some plans. Since I was only intending to stay a week, we had a lot to discuss and sort out. We were about to become parents!
“So,” I said as I ate a slice of toast with egg. “I guess it would make more sense for me to move to the city, right?”
She looked at me. “I guess.”
She didn’t say anything more. I started to feel a bit uncomfortable. What had I said?
“I mean,” I continued, “I don’t have any employment here in the city—not yet. But that doesn’t mean I can’t figure something out…I know a guy here, Pete Albert…he could help me sort something out, probably. And then…”
“Reese, are you serious?”
She hadn’t shouted; her voice was very calm. But I felt broadsided, like someone had clubbed me over the head.
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning. “Sure, I’m serious.”
“You really mean that you’d give everything up? Move here? So I could stay in LA?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.” I did mean it. There was nothing in my life that mattered quite as much to me as seeing her, being part of her life.
She started laughing, then. She shook her head. “Reese, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You dear, impossible, crazy…” She was laughing, but her eyes shone with tears. I was confused.
“What’d I say?”
“Reese. I love you,” she said simply. I stared at her as if she had just zapped me with a thousand volts. But she wasn’t through yet. “Reese, I love you and I appreciate, more than I can say, your offer to move. But you know what?”
“What?” I asked, unsure of what was coming next.
“I don’t like living in the city. I have never been happier, in fact, than when I was out in the countryside with you.”
“Really?”
I was laughing too now. It didn’t seem possible, but I could believe it. She was so much more well suited to living in the countryside. And even her grandpa thought so. What could I say, but believe that?
“Yes. Do I look like a city gal to you?”
I had to laugh at that. “City gals are boring compared to you.”
She smiled at me, a big, full, happy smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll try remember that.”
“Do that,” I said.
She chuckled.
We sat there for a long while with the scent of coffee between us, the sunshine warm on the table and painting dark bars of shadow on the floor. I looked up at her and that sweet smile and knew I had never felt more content.
“Well, then,” I sighed.
“Mm?” She was sitting with her coffee, blowing on the residual steam.
“Well, I suppose we need to think about what we’re doing, huh?”
She chuckled. “Well, it’s not like we don’t make good choices without thinking at all.”
I laughed. “Well, I guess that’s true.”
“Well,” she said after a pause, head on one side, contemplatively. “I guess there are a few things we have to consider. I get good health coverage with my job, and paid maternity leave. So I think just quitting before my baby is born wouldn’t be smart, right?”
“Right.” I nodded, drinking the residue of my coffee. “Smart thought.”
“Thanks.” She gave a grin. “I get them sometimes.”
I laughed. “Well, if you stay here until after the birth, I’m staying here too.”
“Reese…” she said with a concerned look. “No. Sweetheart, what about the farm? Your plans…” she trailed off.
“Well,” I said with a grin. “I don’t need to be there every day. I still have big plans there; don’t worry. But I can at least spend the last three months here with you. If you’ll have me, that is.”
She snorted. “Of course I will.”
“Okay. Then that’s settled,” I said. In my mind, it was.
“But Reese,” she said, finishing the last of the toast. “What about keeping an eye on…” she trailed off as I grinned.
“I think we have the perfect person to keep an eye on things.”
As I said it, she realized who I meant. “You mean Grandpa.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She started laughing. “Reese, it’s perfect! It is just perfect. We couldn’t have planned something so perfect.”
“No,” I said. “We couldn’t.”
We both laughed. We sat at the table a while longer, making our plans and I made more coffee so that we could enjoy the peace and quiet and the ideas for the future.
“So,” I said, standing and stretching and tidying up the breakfast plates, “what do we do in LA in the afternoons?”
She grinned. “I can’t wait to show you.”
“Oh?” I chuckled. “That sounds really interesting.”
She pulled a face. “Not that, Reese. We spent the whole morning doing that already.”
I laughed. “Well, I suppose I can focus on something else that’s fun and wonderful and awesome…but I can’t think of anything that comes close.”
“Nor can I,” she said as she rinsed the dishes in the sink. “But we might as well have a look around.”
I nodded. “Let’s. I’d like that.”
So that was what we did.
Reese stayed for a week. On the last full day, which was a Friday, he came back with a big smile. He had been out when I returned from work, which was unusual. I wondered what he’d been up to.
“Kelly!” he said happily. “Can we go to the park tomorrow?”
I raised a brow. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“No reason,” he said lightly. I frowned. What was he up to.
The next morning, after making love and breakfast, we sat having coffee.
“Let’s take a picnic with us,” he suggested. “When we go to the park. Sounds good?”
“Yeah!” I nodded. “I’d like that.”
When he said a picnic, I had assumed he meant sandwiches and maybe a bottle of lemonade. But I found to my surprise a sumptuous picnic basket, complete with pink champagne.
“Reese…” I frowned as he rummaged in the cupboard under the sink, finding things to add to the basket. Things I guessed he must have bought the previous afternoon and concealed about the kitchen. My kitchen.
“There we go,” he said, giving me a big smile. “All ready.”
“Wow,” I said, eying the hamper sideways. “You’re fancy.”
“Well,” he said with a blush. “I do try.”
“Yes, you do.” I kissed him and an hour later we were heading out the door to the park.
We found a nice place under the trees in the shade. It was a blazing, warm July day and I was wearing a sundress, a big pair of sunglasses and open-back shoes. He was wearing a plain white short-sleeved shirt that looked smoldering on him, and casual black pants. He spread the rug out under the tree and I sat.
While we ate, we laughed and talked about when we had met. It seemed at once so recent and also like it had happened ages ago, part of another life. I was warm and pleasantly full and cheerfully sleepy from the champagne.
“You have a grass-blade in your hair,” he said, reaching to pick it out. I giggled.
“Thank you,” I said and his hand brushed my face, making my tummy tingle. I chuckled and he chuckled too as I squeezed his fingers. We both laughed.
He reached into his pocket. “Kelly,” he said quietly.
“Yes?”
When I saw what he was holding, I started crying. It was a jeweler’s casket. I knew what he was going to say and I sobbed and sobbed.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” I was laughing, then, and crying and I embraced him and, still laughing and crying, said it again. “Yes. Reese…Yes!”
He hugged me and we kissed and we were both tearing up. I don’t know what the people passing by thought, but they looked shyly away as if intruding on a special moment. They were, I guess.
It was the most special moment of my life so far.
I was in love with Reese. And we were getting married.