Danger, Sweetheart Part 25

"Point made, my G.o.d, stop it." He poked her in the ribs, smiling when she giggled. "I'm half-afraid this is the fever dream. That I'll wake up and you'll be back to hating me again."

"n.o.body hates you. Not even Margaret of Anjou."

He had been leaning in for another kiss and snickered against Natalie's mouth. The snickering turned into kisses, and though they didn't exactly insert Tab A into Slot B, they explored each other's bodies with gentle hands and light touches, and sighed into each other's mouths, and at one point she was trembling so hard she thought she might die from it, and what a sweet death it would be, and Blake whispered over and over, "Natalie Lane, Natalie Lane, I love you. I love you." And maybe Blake was right to worry; maybe this was the fever dream. In which case, Natalie hoped they never recovered.

Oh, that's not healthy, was her last drowsy thought. But she couldn't work up enough concern to truly fret and so slept instead.

Thirty-eight.

Gary worked tirelessly, which Natalie and Blake giggled over and chastised each other for. "It's awful: He's scared to death; he thinks you really tried to kill him."

"I know; I've tried to approach him to apologize, but he just runs away from me and works on something else."

Dr. Wen came, examined, p.r.o.nounced Blake much improved, left.

Harry kept sending up the most delicious invalid food Blake had ever tasted. "What, exactly, is my incentive to get better?" he asked, moaning around a mouthful of poached egg. Harry had gently simmered the farm-fresh eggs, with their bright orange yolks, in water. When the yolks were runny, but the whites were firm, he slid them onto two thick slices of perfectly toasted homemade potato bread, then topped them with chopped prosciutto. The day before he had simmered a gorgeous chicken soup all afternoon on the stove, tormenting everyone with working nasal pa.s.sages, and Blake's bowl was thick with noodles and fresh vegetables and meat so savory and tender it nearly dissolved in his mouth. The Darrel twins had dropped off five pounds of strawberries, so the household enjoyed fresh fruit smoothies for breakfast (blended with yogurt, ice, orange juice) and strawberry milk shakes (berries + homemade frozen custard = oh my Gawwwd) for dessert.

"Just when I thought he couldn't top the chilled cuc.u.mber soup." He slurped down the rest of the egg. "I'm sorry; I'm aware this is disgusting to watch."

"It's not disgusting to watch. I'm glad to see you feeling better."

"And I repeat, where's the incentive to get well? I have you all to myself; my mother and grandmother are getting along; Gary is doing an insane amount of work; Margaret of Anjou almost doesn't loathe me...." He paused, finished his toast, considered, and then said in all seriousness, "I think these last two days have been the happiest in my life. Isn't that wonderfully insane?"

"No. And the incentive is missionary for intimacy, me on all fours for intensity, me on top for fun."

He had frozen in mid-chew, then gulped and managed, "Fun?"

"I just really like to bounce around up there, y'know? Have a good time. You can hang on to my hips and watch. Jeez!" She dived and barely caught his plate in time.

"Sorry. I lost all sensation in my hands because the blood left my fingers and rushed somewhere else. Now I feel vulnerable and scared. Hold me?"

"I still want to hear how you're going to have my baby."

"Practice," was the solemn reply. "Hold me? Never mind. I'll hold you. It's easier to hold you when you're naked."

"A-hem."

They looked over and Blake saw the color rise in Natalie's cheeks. He'd been so busy picturing her charms bouncing around that he hadn't heard his mom and grandmother come up the stairs. "Away, harpies!" he commanded. "I'm not well enough for visitors."

"Shut up, boy; say h.e.l.lo to your guest."

Roger, the last one up the steps, peeked around Blake's mother and waved. "Hiya, Blake. Feelin' better?"

"You can't take the White Rose of York!"

"Blake Tarbell!" his mother hissed.

"h.e.l.lo, Roger, I'm feeling quite a lot better, thank you so much for asking, and if you touch my piglet I will break this plate over your head. Then I will unleash my love, Natalie Lane, upon you and you will feel as if the Furies are plucking at your internal organs. Death will be a welcome respite."

"I don't know if I'd do all that," she confessed, elbowing him. They had been sitting on his bed, knees touching, while they ate breakfast. Now Natalie stacked their plates and beckoned the visitors closer. "We were just-"

"Yes, we heard your plans for the afternoon," Ruth said, eyes gleaming as she smiled. "So sorry to interrupt."

"Liar."

"Well, yes."

"So guess who I ran into?" Roger said, making himself comfortable in one of the several chairs Natalie had brought up when townies starting showing up to pay their respects and wish Blake a speedy recovery.

"Sandy Cort," Blake replied at once.

"Dang, you're good. Said you and your grandpa got into it downtown the other day."

"Apparently I was feverish even then. It's the only explanation for why I didn't wring his wattled rooster neck."

Shannah burst out laughing, checked herself, and tried to reestablish her stern mind me, boy expression.

"Before he left he was tellin' everybody that he guessed you were a real man on account of standing up to him, and maybe Shannah hadn't done such a bad job."

"Oh-ho," Natalie said. She had such a mischievous look on her face Blake almost forgot his deep regret at letting Mitch.e.l.l Banaan live to see the sun come up. "So that's how he's playing it."

"I don't understand." Nor did Blake care, but he did adore that expression on her face, and resolved to do whatever he must to cause it to reappear.

"His little ambush didn't go how he planned, so he's putting the 'you stood up to me; that was the test' spin on it. You know, pretending that he provoked you to make you stand up to him, as opposed to what really happened: You were disgusted with him, unafraid of him, and he knew it, and everybody knows it, and he's humiliated while pretending he's not. He won't be back. Uh, sorry, Shannah, I didn't mean-"

"That," Blake's mother replied, "is a dead-on a.n.a.lysis. Why in the world are you apologizing?"

"Social pressure," she confessed, and now it was Blake's turn to poke his elbow into her side. "Oof! I didn't know you were back, Roger. That was a quick vacation."

"Oh. Yes. The ticket was nonrefundable, so I didn't want- But it wasn't as much fun as- I mean, I didn't know how long your mama was going to visit, and didn't want to miss- I can go back anytime."

My, my. Roger, you balding dog, you've got designs on my mother. That alone would be intriguing enough, but from the way his mom was blus.h.i.+ng and looking everywhere but at Roger, it appeared to be mutual.

Blake supposed if he were a better son he would be overprotective and bristling and give off a strong you hurt her, I'll kill you impression. But the thought of his lonely mother liking someone, and someone as pleasant as Roger, was a welcome one. Now that Blake had Natalie (I cannot believe she loves me I should fall prey to infection every week) he wanted nothing more for his mother (and yes, Rake, too, terrible as the man was) than the happiness he had been fortunate enough to find. Stumble into. Blunder onto. Whatever.

"Yes, but where do you go when you visit these places?"

"Oh, just..." Roger made a vague gesture. "You know."

Not at all, actually. Perhaps the townspeople are right; perhaps he is a former spy disguised as a former pig farmer.

"About the White Rose of York." Roger cleared his throat and the rocking chair creaked as he fidgeted. "Didn't come here to s.n.a.t.c.h her back. It's fine if you want to keep her; I just didn't have the heart to let her starve when her litter rejected her. But what will you do with her? I mean-" He looked around the attic. "What happens next? Where will you go? Will you go? I only ask because of the piglet."

"He can go anywhere he wishes," Shannah replied quietly. She went to his dresser, plucked up his checkbook, then walked to the bed and handed it to him. It didn't actually confer any privileges on him-his mother didn't have signatory power on that account, thank you very much-but Blake understood the symbolism of the action. "And do anything he likes. He's a grown man with a trust fund of several million. It's not for- It's not for anyone to say what he'll do or not do."

Wrong, Blake thought. As far as he was concerned, Natalie Lane had a say. But no one else. Well. Maybe Rake. And his mother. And the nuclear option. At the least, Blake would bend an attentive ear to their advice in the future. He was not unaware that his own arrogance played as much a part in landing him here as his mother's.

"Ah!" he said, not hiding the pleasure in his tone. He waved the checkbook like a flag. "No longer grounded! To celebrate my good fortune, I shall throw a kegger party tonight when you aren't around, Mom."

She didn't smile. "I was wrong."

His own smirk faded. "Mom, I understand why you did it. I'm not holding you up to shame."

"I was wrong," she said again, as if he hadn't spoken. Guess some things never changed, and thank goodness. And is she really doing this in front of everyone? "Wrong to judge you and wrong to penalize you for what my family did." She was! She had an audience and didn't give, as Natalie would put it, a ripe s.h.i.+t. "My family-you have to understand. It's not that they didn't love me or take care of me. My sibs certainly turned out fine. I turned out fine. It's just ... the minute things get hard-and they almost always do-my family quits on whatever it is. Farms, businesses-"

"Daughters," he suggested quietly.

"Yes," she replied, and sniffed. She looked at the floor for a moment, thinking, then looked up, and they locked gazes again. "And I swore-I swore on my life and yours and your brother's, I swore I'd never, ever pull a Banaan. That's what they actually call it here, did you know? If you give up on something, you're pulling a Banaan. You heard about Heartbreak, how it came to be built and why they call the barn Main One-"

"Yes indeed. One of our relatives."

A wry smile. "The only Banaan to ever stick to anything, and it cost him his happiness. He was our cautionary tale, you know? He was the lesson: see what happens when you don't know when to walk away? And we've been giving up ever since. It's practically on the f.u.c.king family crest."

Holy G.o.d. Blake could count on one hand how often he'd heard his mother drop the f-bomb.

"I wouldn't let it happen again," she finished. "And you paid for it. I have no excuse."

"With respect, Mom, I must disagree." This, as he realized on the street while confronting his grandfather, put his mother's horrified rage in an entirely new light, why her calls to Blake in Vegas were getting increasingly desperate and strained. She was seeing her family history unfold yet again and would have wanted to do whatever she could to change it and not count the cost until late in the game. "Or perhaps we must agree to disagree, like we did the second time George W. Bush got elected-"

"He did not get elected a second time!" she screeched in response.

Ah! There's the mother I grew up with.

"I understand, and I'm sorry for giving in to what appears to be the Banaan genetic flaw-"

"It was a terribly unfair thing to do to you. I'm so sorry, Blake."

Blake worked to hide his astonishment. Apologies were as rare as the f-bomb. Not that she didn't feel remorse, but Shannah tended to demonstrate her apologies: being extra nice, buying him something she knew he wanted, bending a few household rules. She would show, never tell. She had paled a bit when he didn't immediately reply, and he cursed himself for the lapse. "Mom, I-"

"Forgive me," she whispered as a lone tear tracked down her soft, barely wrinkled cheek.

"For heaven's sake." He tossed back the blankets and stood, squashed the dizziness that made the room jump for a second, then pulled her into a hug. "I forgive you, and you'll forgive me, yes? And then we can plot your father's kidnapping and mutilation."

"Agreed," she said, and laughed while the last tear escaped her eye.

"Welp," Roger said, getting out of the chair, "don't want to tire you out. Sandy Cort made me promise to visit you and so I have."

"You two make each other promise things often, don't you?" Blake asked.

"Yep." Roger grimaced. "He's the one got me into my hobby in the first place." Then, to Shannah, he asked diffidently, "Walk me out?"

"Yes. Of course." She kissed Blake's cheek and stepped out of the hug. "Back in a few minutes."

"See you around, Vegas D-"

"Don't!" Natalie shrieked.

"-ude. What?" Roger glanced around, surprised. "That's what we call him. The kids at the bus stop started it; they love that d.a.m.n truck you're always tooling around in. The loud horn, y'know, you're always honking it for 'em."

"I don't mind," he replied, outwardly fl.u.s.tered and secretly pleased. He loved that horn. He was giving serious thought to buying the Supertruck outright. Or did they make them in hybrids? A hybrid Supertruck with a tremendous loud horn would be spectacular.

"Right, well, they started calling you Vegas Dude and the name stuck after a bit."

"I thought it was Vegas Douche."

"Oh. Well." Shrug. "A few people call you that. No one whose opinion counts, though, so that's all right."

"I guess it is," he replied, amused, and watched Roger escort his mother down the stairs. Then: "Is it too soon to ask for more poached eggs?"

Thirty-nine.

Outside, they visited the White Rose of York and then Shannah walked with Roger to his truck. Once there, he seemed to be having difficulty saying whatever was on his mind. He plucked his phone from the front pocket of his bib overalls and looked at her, then at the phone, then back up at her.

"Roger?" She made her voice as gentle as she could. "Is something wrong?"

"Noooo. I don't think. I guess it depends on if you like it."

"All right."

"My last vacation." He did something to his phone, then thrust it at her so quickly she fumbled and nearly dropped it. "Cripes! Sorry. There. Look now."

She did, and it took a few seconds for her to realize what she was seeing.

"Are you ... Is that Brad Pitt?"

"Not the real one." He looked away for a second, then met her gaze with a sheepish smile. "I, uh, I love museums. All kinds, but especially that kind. That's where I was, the Hollywood Wax Museum. I sort of play G.o.d there."

This was it. She was about to have the stroke her family had long predicted. Though they hadn't predicted a happiness stroke.

"I like to rearrange the exhibits when the staff isn't looking," he practically whispered. "In my head canon, Brad Pitt adopted a pack of orphans with his life partner, Jamie Foxx. Plus, I always thought Sandra Bullock and Elvis Presley deserved a chance to be together. And at the museum, they are. I, um, I know that's strange."

Her lips were moving. Her voice box was vibrating; she was making noises. Speaking, probably. She had no idea what she was saying until he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers in a firm, unapologetic, wonderful kiss.

"Oh, good," she murmured against his mouth, which was now curved into a delighted smile. "I told you to kiss me. I was wondering what I was saying."

"You told me to kiss you," he agreed. "Best order I ever got in my life. You gonna tell me to do that again? I'd sure like that."