After the Loving (28 page)

“My house?”

“Fine, but let’s sit on the back porch.” She wondered at that but didn’t comment. “Have you forgiven me, Velma?”

Sitting with him on the porch in the late-winter breeze, contentment enveloped her. “How could I not forgive you after you confessed publicly that you love me?”

He shrugged as if that were of no import. “I should have done that a good while ago.” He let his gaze roam over her. “So that’s it. You did something to your hair. You cut it.”

She settled in the chair and stuck out both feet. “Yep, and I also tossed out my spike-heel shoes. I’m through with needless suffering.”

Russ leaned forward, hope springing to life within him. “Why? What prompted this? Tell me.”

She looked him in the eye, making a point, he thought. “I decided that I am who I am, and if somebody doesn’t like it,
tough!
”

He could hardly contain the happiness that bubbled within him. “What brought this on? It’s what I’ve longed to hear, mind you, but how did you come to this?”

He listened to her story of her visit with her father and her reason for finding him. He had thought his own mother flaky, but compared to Velma’s mother, she was not so bad.

“Do you plan to see your father again?”

“I suppose so. I couldn’t help feeling his pain. Imagine living with that guilt and grief.” She paused, suddenly far away.

“What is it? What are you feeling?” he asked her.

“He…Father said, ‘She—Mama—was so beautiful, just as you are right now.’ I had forgotten that. And he said I looked just like her.”

He understood then why Velma had not been able to believe that he found her beautiful and physically attractive. “Of course, he loved you. He loved your mother, and he said you were just like her.” He walked to the edge of the porch and peered through the screen at two squirrels frolicking in the grass, walked back and sat on the porch swing beside her. “Does this mean you’re off that diet?”

Her fingers stroked his knee in a rhythmic fashion, communicating to him contentment, even as her smile did. “I am going to take my medicine and eat sensibly, but I have spent my last minute in that torture cell that goes by the name of gym, and as far as I am concerned, chicken breasts are extinct.”

He reveled in his own joy and laughter. Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d had no hope for reconciliation. “It’s past lunchtime,” he said. “Let’s phone for something to eat.”

“I could enjoy some fried catfish and baked corn bread,” Velma said.

“Great.” He placed their orders, went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, explaining that he hadn’t had anything in his mouth all day except toothpaste.

“I was miserable, Velma. I didn’t know how I could bear it if you lost that bid. When I realized he would win it, I couldn’t stand it. Then that guy put his friggin’ arms around you, comforting you as I should have been doing. Hell, I don’t want to think about that.”

They ate in silence, she apparently as deep in thought as he. “I’d better get to work,” he said when they finished lunch. “Can we see each other this evening?”

When she cocked her head to one side and smiled at
him, he rocked back on his heels and waited for a bit of sauciness. “Who said you have to go back to work?”

His pulse accelerated, and water began to accumulate in his mouth. “Nobody. Why?”

“Then, stay.”

He looked hard at her. “Are you aware that it’s been three weeks and four days since I last saw you?”

Her hands moved up and down her sides, rubbing, evidence of her agitation. “I thought it was longer than that, but if you insist on leaving, at least kiss me goodbye.”

“I don’t insist.” A grin played around her lips, and he couldn’t get at her fast enough. “Challenge me, will you?” he asked her.

Her face bloomed into a big smile. “Why not? It always works.” She reached for his shoulders, parted her lips, and his tongue found its home between them.

Several hours later, as he lay buried deep inside of her with her legs snug around his hips, she said, “This has developed into an affair, and I am not happy having an affair with you.”

“We can always get married,” he said, as if he hadn’t thought of it constantly during the past three weeks.

“I know we…what? What kind of proposal is that?”

He separated them, slid off the bed and knelt beside it. “I love you, and I want to marry you. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

She rolled off the bed and knelt beside him. “Oh, yes. Yes. That is, if we can have three children.”

He thought his heart would explode from the joy that filled him. “It’s what I want, honey. A family. I’ll take as many as you’ll give me. Boys or girls, I don’t care which or in what combination. I just want a family.”

“Russ, love, you can’t know how happy I am.”

“I am, too.” He attempted at first to control the mirth,
for the moment was a serious one. But the laughter spilled out of him unimpeded.

“What’s funny?”

“Us. We must look a sight kneeling here like this. When can we get married?”

“Six weeks. Okay?”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t mind if it was earlier. I’d better tell you something. I sent Iris two thousand dollars through my lawyer. Telford told me he saw her sitting with her child on the street, her things stacked around her. She’s nothing to me. I did the humane thing.”

She gripped his hand. “This gentle sweetness that you try to bury deep inside is one of the many reasons why I love you.”

“I can’t count the reasons why or the ways in which I love you. Life isn’t long enough for that. I’ll be a good husband to you, sweetheart. When you need me, I will always be there.”

“I know that, darling, as well as I know my name.”

He put her in the bed, crawled in beside her and rocked them both to ecstasy.