Eve’s Wedding Knight

He’d thought about it-what to give Eve for Christmas. Thought about it so hard, it had kept him awake nights. First, he’d think about that pearl choker Cisneros had given her, and then he’d think about what Birdie had told him about the gift not being important as long as it came from the right person. Then he’d wonder what in the world made him think he was the right person…for her?

The truth was, they were day and night-she was brightness, sunshine, warmth, laughter, gaiety, fresh air; he was dark and moody a lot of the time. Often he worked in an atmosphere of secrecy and danger. He didn’t smile nearly enough-all his friends said so. What made him think someone as rare and beautiful as Eve Waskowitz could ever be happy…with him? He’d tried and tried to think of just the right gift to give her, just to prove he could make her happy. But each idea he’d come up with, he’d discarded.

Now here it was, Christmas morning. Heartsick, he opened his mouth to tell her the truth-that he had nothing whatsoever to give her. But before he could say a word, she gasped, “Jake-”

Thinking she was in pain, he bent over her, heart pounding. Her face was turned toward the window, where the sun, breaking through clouds, had just touched the frozen land with gold.

“Oh, Jake…look.” There, outside the window, a spider’s web left from summer sparkled and shimmered in the sunlight… a web woven of diamonds. “Did you ever see anything so beautiful?”

But his throat had closed. How could he answer her? He needed just one more miracle.

And he got it He laughed out loud, and in a voice vibrant with unheralded joy and sudden understanding, said, “Hey, Waskowitz, what do you think? I ordered it just for you. Merry Christmas…”

She stared at him, eyes bright with tears and dawning wonder. And then she smiled with such radiance, it all but stopped his breath, as she murmured, “Oh Jake, it’s perfect, the most wonderful gift you could possibly have given me.”

He kissed her tear-wet and trembling lips, and with infinite care, stretched himself alongside her in her hospital bed. They lay together, holding hands and watching the jeweled spider’s web dance and sparkle in the morning breeze, until Mirabella and Summer and the rest of the family came to join them.

Epilogue

Eve’s second wedding took place in early spring, in the gardens on the estate of her sister and brother-in-law, Summer and Riley Grogan. It was a most untraditional wedding, in many ways.

For one thing, the bride was on crutches, and wore a bulky blue cast on her right leg.

“But that’s tradition,” Mirabella pointed out. “It’s something blue.”

Yes, and her dress was borrowed-from her sister Summer-Eve having declared that she’d spent enough on her first wedding gown to finance the economy of a small Third World country. And yes, she did wear something old-a pearl necklace, not a three-strand choker of perfectly matched pearls with a diamond clasp, but a modest single strand Jake’s father had given to his mother on their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

As for something new…

Well, there was her new family, of course-Jake’s mother and father, his sister Rhonda and her fireman husband, Ted, and their two well-behaved little boys, who had escaped a late-March snowstorm in the northeast to come and tell her with their smiles and hugs how happy they were to welcome her as a part of Jake’s family. And there were new friends, too-Birdie Poole and his wife, Margie, and their kids, as proud and pleased as if they’d engineered the whole thing.

And the tiny being growing deep inside her was new, but for the time being it was her secret…hers and Jake’s. It would be the last secret in the Waskowitz family, Eve vowed.

The Sisters Waskowitz. Eve was certain no bride had ever had a more unconventional trio of bridesmaids: Bella and Charly, both juggling babies, burp cloths spread over their shoulders, and Summer visibly pregnant. And then there was Helen the flower girl, in her Marvin the Martian sneakers, and the Chihuahua, Beatle, dancing like a pixie around their feet.

And here was Jake, his somber dark eyes gazing into hers with so much love, it almost took her breath away. As a blues harmonica played hauntingly, they pledged to each other from their hearts the vows they’d written together, based in part on something Jake had told her that Birdie had once said to him.

“… To always take care of each other… to be to each other a mate, a partner and best friend… and to never let a day go by without letting you know how much I love you…”

Could any wedding, Eve wondered, be more perfect? More right…for her? This was her family, the people she loved more than life, and who loved her, as she was, with all her faults.

It was a day filled with sunshine and flowers and bursting with new life and promise, a day so lovely, it made her heart ache and tears spring to her eyes. For a moment, just a moment, she felt a twinge of the old sadness.

But then Jake looked into her eyes and squeezed her hand and smiled his rare and wonderful smile, and she knew that now he would be there to share it with her. That the “wild lonelies” were gone forever.

And that at last, after a lifetime of searching, she had found in him her Place of Belonging.

KATHLEEN CREIGHTON

has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.

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