Sudden Pleasures

'Very well,' Ashley agreed. 'Tomorrow I will return to my old bedroom. You can have this. And, Ryan, you are not to tell anyone that I am pregnant. I had intended announcing our happy news tonight, until your sister decided to drop her bombshell.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'It would have been a bit anticlimactic, wouldn't it?'

'I'm going to bed,' she replied, and she slept as far away from him as she could that night, taking the bolster that usually lay at the head of their bed and running it lengthwise like a barrier between them. But the real barrier was the fact that he was a fool, Ryan knew.

***

The next morning they joined their guests for the breakfast buffet before the limousine arrived to transport them all home. The chatter was light and inconsequential. And afterward Ryan's eldest sister, the formidable Bride, took Ashley aside.

'I want to apologize for my sister,' she began. 'Okay, so we all were counting our chickens before they hatched, and Ryan's marriage took us by surprise. Especially as neither of you made any bones about the fact that it was to save yourselves, and not true love. But we're not fools. Well, maybe Dee is. We can see that you and Ryan do love each other at this point, and we don't want to see either of you unhappy because Dee can't get over her past. She hurt a lot of people last night. I'm sorry. The rest of us feel terrible about what she did. I hope you won't hold it against us. This was really a wonderful Christmas, and to be honest, we haven't had such a nice time in years. Any of us.'

'Apology accepted,' Ashley said. 'And don't worry, Bride. I'm not going to throw your brother out. But he is going to get a very hard lesson in sensitivity training. I do love the big lug.'

Bride smiled warmly. 'Geez,' she said. 'You really are the right wife for him, Ashley. He needs someone who won't put up with his crap. We're with you all the way.' And Bride Mulcahy Franklin actually hugged her sister-in- law.

'What's that all about?' Ryan murmured to Frankie.

'I think your wife has just joined the enemy,' Frankie replied with a grin. 'Serves you right too, dummy.'

'No lectures, kid,' he growled at her. 'You don't want me poking into why you buy sexy apparel from Lacy Nothings now, do you?'

'You'll know soon enough,' Frankie said mysteriously.

'Hey, Uncle Ryan, could I talk to you a minute?' Frankie's son asked.

Ryan looked to his youngest sister.

'Oh, go ahead,' she said. 'He'll never let you be until he does. Make it quick, Michael. The car is here, and we've got to go.'

Ashley bade each of her guests good-bye, and Deirdre burst into tears as she faced her hostess.

'I'm so sorry,' she sobbed. 'It's the change. It makes me do cruel, stupid things.'

'It's okay, Dee,' Ashley assured the woman, but she thought, I'll probably never really like you for what you did last night.

'I don't know why I said what I said,' Deirdre sobbed. 'Robert is mad as hell at me now, and I don't blame him. I really am sorry.' Then she joined the rest of them in the limousine.

Ashley almost felt sorry for her as her sisters moved away from the weeping Deirdre, and she heard Bride tell her sibling to belt up and stop howling.

'Can you ever forgive him?' Angelina asked before she too entered the car.

'Of course,' Ashley murmured low. 'But not until I've taught him a lesson about trust. You trusted your husband, didn't you? And he you?'

Her mother-in-law nodded. 'Trust is every bit as impor tant as love and sex,' she answered. 'Don't be too hard on him, cara . Men have many virtues, but usually common sense isn't among them. And men, for all their sizes and ages, never really grow up. They are all boys at heart, no matter how old they get. Trust me on that one.' She kissed Ashley's cheek. 'You will go into church before the baby is born, won't you? It would make me very happy if you did.'

Ashley colored. 'Did Ryan tell you? I'll kill him!'

Angelina shook her head in the negative. 'Cara,' she said, 'I've borne seven children. I know the signs. I won't say anything until you are ready to make your announcement, and then I shall be totally surprised with the rest of them.'

Ashley laughed softly. 'I can see I won't get much past you, Lina. I was going to tell everyone last night, but then Deirdre started babbling.'

'Of course, and then afterward you could say nothing.'

'I'll call you,' Ashley said, and then she ushered her mother-in-law into the car. She stood with Ryan as the stretch limousine drove down the hill and out of sight.

'Come in out of the cold,' he said to her.

Wordlessly Ashley reentered the house. 'I think,' she told her husband, 'that you'd better stay in town for a few days. I'm sure R &R could use your presence.'

'Are you kicking me out?' he wanted to know.

'Only for a few days,' she said. 'Go tomorrow.'

'I don't want to go,' he said stubbornly, following her upstairs into their little sitting room. 'I want to straighten this out right now.'

'Ryan, there is nothing to straighten out. I do not hold a youthful indiscretion against you any more than you hold Carson, Chandler, and Derek against me. But as I told you last night, I would have liked to have known about Bianca before I accepted her hospitality. Did she know I didn't know?'

'Yes. A few nights before we left Venice we talked. She told me I should have told you, but that, not having done so, I had best remedy the error sooner than later,' Ryan said.

'You spoke on the terrace below our bedroom. I saw you,' Ashley responded.

'You never said anything,' he replied, surprised.

'No, I didn't. I assumed you would speak of it eventually, and I certainly didn't suspect you of any infidelity,' Ashley said. 'I didn't believe you were that kind of man. Now I'm not so certain about that.'

'I am not that kind of man,' he said.

'If you say so,' Ashley responded dryly.

Ryan gritted his teeth. Why the hell was she making this so difficult? So he hadn't told her that Bianca banged him when he was sixteen. So what? 'I'm not going anywhere,' he repeated.

'I'll sleep in my old room then,' Ashley told him.

'Go ahead,' he said. 'You'll miss me, baby. You will.'

'I'll survive,' Ashley answered him sharply. 'You would be surprised at how well I can survive without your exalted presence, darling.' But she hated sleeping alone now. And she wasn't interested in uninhibited sex on the Channel either. What she really wanted was to talk with her brother. He'd been dead for so long, but she still missed him. Ben always knew how to help her. Ashley had always used the Channel for sex, but now she wondered if she couldn't use it to bring her brother back. Oh, she knew he wouldn't really be there, but she needed someone of her own to talk to, not someone on Ryan's side, no matter how nice they were.

Ben, she said to herself, I want you back. I have to talk with you. Let's meet down on the beach. Remember that October day when we just sat and talked? That's what I want now. For us to sit and talk. She pressed the button that let the wall covering the flat screen television open. She pressed the on button on the channel changer, programmed in the Channel, and then she hit the A button, and enter. And there she was on the beach below the bluff on which Kimbrough Hall stood. And there was her brother, Ben, coming toward her. She ran into his arms. Though he would be over forty now, he looked as he always had.