My hands were shaking, and my heart was racing in my chest. I was going to pick her up from the airport, and I knew that I didn't have much time to make this work. If I was going to convince her to stay with me, I had a lot of convincing to do while she was here. And she wasn't going to be here long.

“Jeanine, it is good to see you.”

I went to hug her and then stopped. This wasn't the same sort of meeting as before. I had forgotten that she wasn't happy to be here. Last time she was. We had been waiting for it for so long. Things were definitely different this time and I was going to have to act accordingly.

“I can't say that it's good to see you, Craig. I don't know what you did to get me back here, but it's not going to work. As soon as our time is up, I will go back to the judge and get my divorce. All you have done is pushed back the inevitable. You can't bully me in to being your wife.”

From the way she was talking, I knew that I had a long way to go. I didn't blame her, not really. I knew that I deserved her anger, but I was hoping that we would start off on a better foot. I know that we both had a lot of talking ahead of us, if we're ever going to work this out.

“We can talk about this later. I don't want to do this in front of everybody at the airport. If we get our court order to stay with each other, then we're just going to have to get along with it the best that we can. I assure you that this wasn't my doing.”

She looked at me like she didn't believe me, and the truth was that she shouldn't. This was my doing, all of it and I didn't regret it not one bit. I knew that I wanted to be a part of her life, and if that meant pissing her off a little bit, I was okay with that.

I took her bags from her, and she gave me a dirty look. I had a long way to go.

Bringing the car with me, I took her over to it and put her things in the trunk. I was hoping that a little bit of time together would soften her heart, but at the moment she wouldn't even look at me. She was still mad and I was going to have to figure out how to make it better for her. I didn't want her to be mad at me anymore. We only had a couple of weeks until we had to go back to the courts and she had to take a test. The clock was ticking.

I took the long way home, just because I knew that this was going to be the closest I was going to get to her for a while. In the house, she would most likely be hiding in her room, not wanting to come out. At least in the car, she was so close and I could feel her presence more.

When she finally said something about how long it was taking to get there, I just told her that I was just taking a different route.

“I thought you would like the ride better this way. It has more of the coastline and the ocean that you like so much. Would you like to stop for a swim? It is a perfect day for it.”

She told me that she didn't want to go, but I could see her eyes said she did. She was most likely turning it down so that she wasn't having any fun. That was the whole point of it, to push away all thoughts of us together. I wasn't going to let that happen though, I knew that I had to remind her why we had gotten together in the first place. We had many conversations over several months, and I remembered all of them. I knew Jeanine, better than I knew anyone else in my life.

“Well, you know that it's right there if you want to go. I will take you wherever you want to go, just let me know. There is still much of the island that you didn't get to see because you left early.”

She wasn't going for it. I had known that Jeanine wasn't going to. It was going to take more than a couple of minutes for her to get over all of this. She had sought the divorce, instead of going along with it like I promised her I would, instead I made it harder for. She was mad at me and she had many reasons to be.

“Fine, we will be at the house in a minute. I have set up the room next to mine, just like you like it. Although, you know you're more than welcome to stay with me. I think it would be better if we stayed together in the same room, like we are married, like the judge wants us to.”

“I don't really care what the judge wants. It is bad enough that I am down here. He is certainly not going to tell me whose bed I can sleep in. I've never in my life been so humiliated, so I don't really care what he wants. If you wanted to tell it to the judge, you go ahead. This is all ridiculous and you know it.”

“It is, but I didn't think it would turn out like this. I told you before that divorces are pretty much unheard of in my culture. Maybe now you know why. They want to save the union, as much as they can.”

“I could see that point of view being valid if the union was a legal one. If this was America, this wouldn’t even be a legal marriage to begin with. It was under false pretense, and you know it.”

I wasn't going to argue that point with her because there was no reason to. She was right, naturally, but it didn't mean that I wouldn’t do it all over again in a heartbeat. I knew that sounded horrible, especially how it all turned out, but I wasn't going to apologize for wanting her as badly as I do.

“But this isn’t America Jeanine.”

She gave me a look and I knew that this is going to take longer than I had hoped for. I didn't mind though, not really, I am very patient when I needed to be. This was one of those moments and I knew that I was going to have to do the best I could to delay the inevitable.

Jeanine did pretty much what I thought she would do. She holed herself up in the room for the first day, and then only came down for dinner time. And even then, I had to send Lisbeth up there to get her. I knew that they had something going on, that they didn't get along very well, but Lisbeth was up to date on what was going on. She was reminded well to keep her mouth shut.

When Jeanine finally came down, she wasn't too happy to see me. I could tell that she was mad to be here and again, I didn’t really blame her.

“Do you really expect me to just sit here and pretend like nothing happened?”

“Not at all. I know that you want to have it out with me. I can see it on your face. I am more than willing to.”

“You’re giving me permission?”

I agreed with a nod of my head and that seemed to enrage her even more.

“I don’t need permission!”

She was so lovely when she was angry. Her face was bright red, and I could tell that she was doing her best to try to control herself. But Jeanine wasn’t very good at that, not at all.

And I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that tad-bit. That was something I knew was better to keep to myself. She already thought that I was controlling the situation too much. I was really going to have to work on that.