The Ties That Bind (23 page)

He tightened his hold on her. "I know. I'll always trust you, Shannon. No matter what happens. You're the one person in the world I believe in. I need you to believe in me."

"I do."

"Just promise me you won't get yourself in any more situations in which you're required to go to such dramatic lengths to impress me with your valor and dedication," Garth said, smiling. "I don't think my aging constitution will stand the shock another time."

"I'd much rather impress you in other ways." Shannon's eyes shimmered with love as she looked up at him. "I love you so much, Garth." She tightened her arms around him, pressing close to the warmth and strength he offered, giving him her own feminine version of the same things.

"What about the peanut-butter crackers?" he asked, his voice tinged with sensual amusement.

"They'll keep."

"I'm glad they will," Garth said as he lifted her into his arms. "Because it's becoming obvious that I won't. Not for much longer. You have a profound effect upon me, honey. I don't know whatever made me think I could get through five days a week without having you in my bed."

Garth carried her down the hall to the bedroom and settled Shannon in the center of the bed. Then he came down beside her and slid his hand under the collar of her shirt. "Love me, Shannon. Whatever happens, don't stop loving me. I need you so much."

"It works both ways," she whispered, drawing his mouth down to within an inch of hers. "I need you, too. And I'll never stop loving you. You may be destined to make your living as a businessman, but I've got news for you, Garth Sheridan. I was right the first time I saw you. You have the soul of an impassioned poet."

"Is that right?" He began undoing the buttons of her shirt.

"Oh, yes," she assured him. "It takes one artsy type to recognize another, you know."

"Maybe that's why I couldn't resist you, right from the start. We're soul mates."

"Exactly."

His mouth closed over hers, and Shannon surrendered to the passion and the love that she knew would always exist between herself and Garth. Just before the mounting excitement captured her completely, she mentally sketched two fancifully decorated initials, an S and a G. They would be done in the Carolingian style with beautiful birds and shimmering dragons woven around them.

Then there was no other reality but the heated fire of their mutual love. Shannon touched her lover with wonder, reveling in the aggressive power of his masculinity. It was such a perfect complement to her own, very female power. She and Garth flowed together the way her intricate designs did, capturing and releasing, intertwining and shifting, spiraling and dancing. In the dark shadows of the bed a jeweled dragon chased a fairy queen and then changed into a great soaring bird that flew after a brilliantly hued butterfly. Over and around the two went, tasting each other's fiery passion, coupling and uncoupling, teasing and promising until at last the whole, beautiful picture was complete, an illuminated image of perfect harmony and pleasure.

As she clung to Garth in the aftermath of their love-making, the image of the silk-screen design Shannon had been mentally sketching returned. Before it slipped away again Shannon studied it and knew the initials would not stand alone. They would be linked together, intertwined completely just as she was forever linked to Garth.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT that
Sherilectronics
had won the
Carstairs
contract came on the same day that Shannon and Garth were married. Annie O'Connor
Turcott
insisted on preparing the wedding feast for the small group of guests, and Dan took Garth aside to give him some advice on the fine points of being a husband. Having been one for more than two weeks himself, Dan felt obligated to pass along the masculine wisdom of the ages. He accompanied his lecture with a great deal of champagne.

Shannon had watched in amusement as the two men stood talking earnestly together in Annie's fragrant kitchen.

"I think they're both going to take to their husbandly duties the way ducks take to water," Annie murmured in Shannon's ear as she followed the line of her friend's gaze.

"Amazing how adaptable the male of the species can be," Shannon responded with a grin as she sipped her champagne.

"Uh-huh. Somehow I was always fairly certain Garth would marry you. The man would never have any peace of mind if he didn't. He needs you for that, you know."

"Peace of mind?"

"Umm. You're the one who can keep that fascinating dark, brooding quality at bay. It's a part of him. It goes deep. You were right about him having the soul of a poet somewhere inside that businessman's body. With you around it won't take over his life. I rather think he was falling prey to it before you arrived and took him in hand."

"Nice to know I'm useful," Shannon remarked.

"Oh, you'll find Garth useful, too."

"Yes, I know. He's going to take very good care of me." There was amusement in Shannon's voice.

"Don't knock it," her friend advised. "Being useful to each other is part of being married."

"I can't imagine where you and Dan picked up all this insight into marriage so suddenly."

"Comes naturally," Annie assured her. "Wait and see."

"Does Dan fuss about everything from the locks on the doors to the kind of car you're allowed to drive?"

"Sure. But I'll be the first to admit I tend to fuss about how much coffee he drinks when he's writing and how he shouldn't lift the garbage sacks the way he does with his bad back."

"I guess it works both ways," Shannon mused complacently. Now that she and Garth would be sharing their lives completely, she thought she could take his tendency toward
overprotectiveness
in stride.

"Garth seems a lot more interested in his wedding than he does in the fact that his company got that bid, by the way," Annie commented, glancing at where the groom stood talking so seriously to Dan.

"The
Carstairs
bid was just a stepping stone to smaller and more important things," Shannon said.

"Much more important things." Her eyes filled with love as she excused herself and went to join her husband. Garth waited for her across the room, his crystal gaze alive with the fierce emotion he felt toward his wife.

"I am now an expert on marriage," he warned her with a promising grin.

"Is that right? Taking lessons from the expert?" Shannon smiled at Dan.

"That's right," Dan assured her grandly. "I was just telling Garth that he shouldn't wait to start a family. He's going to be forty in a couple of years and you're nearly thirty. I think the two of you should hop to it without any unnecessary delay. Nothing like a family to settle a man down."

Shannon was about to make a pithy reply to that when she was interrupted by a loud, strident voice behind her. Turning, she took in the sight of the redheaded apparition dressed in black and red. Only Verna Montana would wear black and red to a wedding. Her hair, a little too red to be natural, was a cloud of wild curls that framed the thin, elfin features of her face. She was fifty going on thirty, and she had indulged herself in a fair amount of champagne.

"A firm hand on the reins is what it takes to settle a man down," she declared in ringing tones. "Handle him the way Kate handled
Petruchio
, Shannon, and you'll do fine. Good move getting him to marry you, by the way. Enormously clever. But it's only a first step. You can't let up now or he's liable to run loose again."

Garth looked at the woman. "Do we know this lady, Shannon?"

"This," Shannon announced, "is Verna Montana."

"The perpetrator of that fiasco masquerading as a modem-day version of The Taming of the Shrew?"

"One and the same," Shannon admitted, wondering if Garth was about to revert to his antisocial ways.

"My Shrew was a brilliant departure from the usual male-biased version," Verna said grandly.

"Your Shrew was an abomination. A total hash. Absolutely idiotic."

Shannon groaned and looked to Dan for support, Dan lifted one shoulder helplessly.

"You obviously have no understanding of the art of the theater or the importance of interpretation when dealing with the classics," Verna informed Garth.

"That's probably true," he agreed. "But as it happens, I owe you a profound debt of gratitude, Ms Montana."

Verna blinked in astonishment, clearly halted at the beginning of the lecture she had been about to deliver. "You do?"

Garth reached out and took Shannon's arm, folding it possessively against his side. "The night I saw your version of the Shrew was the night I first-"

Shannon rushed to cut him off, remembering in horror what had actually happened that night after the play. "Garth, don't you dare say it. Not in public. I would never forgive you!"

"It was the night," he continued relentlessly, "that I first realized I was falling in love with Shannon."

Shannon lifted her eyes skyward in relief. She had been afraid he was about to say something far more embarrassing. From the look in his eyes, she could tell he was definitely thinking of that night in far more earthy terms.

"Ready to leave, sweetheart?" he asked blandly as Verna beamed.

"Definitely."

"Then let's get going. I think it's time we were on our way."

"Before you say something you shouldn't?" she whispered as they began saying goodbye to their guests.

"I'm reformed," he told her. "The perfect party guest."

"Fat chance."

"You're looking at a new me."

"Pity. There were several things about the old you that I rather liked."

"Well, you're in luck. Some things never change." He swept her out the door, laughter and passion and love in his eyes.

Shannon's expression echoed his. They would build their future together, a future that would bind them as inextricably as the letters S and G on the framed silk-screen print that was waiting back in Shannon's cottage.