Page 7 of A Complicated Bride

“Say, doesn’t Hamlin have a community theater? Wasn’t it called the Hamlin Players?”

“Yes, why do you ask? You make my head spin with your changes of subject.”

“I know—let’s get you home to your babies.”

“Don’t worry—my mother is on duty. It’s a deal we worked out. I bake at the Inn in the afternoons and she plays with the babies.” She took my hand.

“I’m finishing up the baking now—I can stick uncle Billy with the clean-up and we can go home now—to my new home I mean.”

It was hard to stand in the light of the beaming joy that transformed her already gorgeous face, but it erased whatever fissures of fatigue that had settled around her eyes and shouted at me in rebuke—this is what you’re throwing away potentially. Maybe.

No. definitely not. The deflation of that understanding actually buoyed me into applauding my decision with more genuine confidence, not that propped up pep-talk think it and it will be true variety of vapory confidence.

“How could I resist the prospect of seeing the dream mansion made real by babies in diapers with toy blocks and stuffed animals strewn around.” I crinkled my nose and could smell the delightful diapers until my enthusiasm to see a dream become reality bubbled up into a giggle.

Julie shared the giggle and took my hand like we were twelve again, hopping to the door to make our escape into reality instead of those possibilities we’d looked forward to back in the day.

She stopped short ahead of me on the landing before we hit the stairs.

“You might want to change out of that… suit.” She said the word as if it were an unfamiliar costume worn by an alien from another galaxy.

I felt like an alien wearing my accountant suit here.

“Right—I think I have some baby-proof clothes in my thrown together jumble. Hell—I mean heck—it doesn’t even matter any more.” I turned and went back to my room, unbuttoning as I went.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Julie asked with harmless unsuspecting curiosity.

“I quit my job. I’m no longer an accountant at Teddy’s accounting firm.” I turned when I heard silence for a response, my blouse hanging open and my skirt falling to the floor.

“I couldn’t very well continue to work for a man I’d just jilted, could I?”

Julie’s mouth was open and her mind absorbed the reasonableness of my assertion, but it didn’t ease the concern lurking beneath.

Or maybe the concern was lurking beneath my reasonable explanation.

“You’re right. I guess this is all more complicated than I realized.”

I translated that to mean that she hoped I realized what a complicated mess I’d gotten myself into.

“I realize it’s complicated.” It was unnecessary. Julie didn’t need to hear the words.

But maybe I needed to say them. And to hear them.

Then I thought of the smell of sweet pie and the feel of a hard toned chest under my hands and against my cheek and whatever the complications were got tangled around a man I didn’t know.

“Maybe we should invite your friend Brad to come over too.” I stripped down to panties and bra as I said the words and felt sinful and hot. Turning my attention to my luggage, I yanked the zipper open as if it contained the key to the puzzle of my happiness, a secret locked away for eons. Like the lost arc…

“You like Brad.” The words were whispered like we were two girls sharing secrets in the shared four-poster bed in the middle of a summer night.

“Not… no. I don’t even know him. It seems like the polite thing to do. He seems.. interesting, sure.”

I stumbled in my head and my heart floated around in my chest a bit, but my voice held steady as if I were playing the part of Queen Elizabeth.

My dear cousin of the midnight secrets shined her fourteen-year-old half-giggling smile at me, unfooled. But really, did I like him?

“No,” I said for real this time. “But I do think he’s a stud and I could use some inspiration for new possibilities about now.”

She laughed and hugged me.