“You’re going to stay with me all night?” she whispered breathlessly.
“All night, every night, if I have to put a chastity belt on you to protect you until we’re married,” he said wickedly. “And I may. I want you excessively.”
She nuzzled her face against his shoulder. “I felt like that, too. I didn’t expect to. I’ve never known what it was to want someone until you started making passes at me.”
“I couldn’t help it,” he sighed. “I’d reached the end of my patience.”
“What do you mean?”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Later. I’ve got work to do tomorrow. We both have to get some sleep. Okay?”
She sighed, as close to heaven as she’d ever dreamed of being. “Okay, Mack.”
She let her sated body relax and curled into him, closing her eyes. He gathered her as close as he dared and pulled the covers up.
“And don’t brood over what I just did to you,” he murmured firmly. “It’s part of the courtship ritual. We’ll restrain ourselves until it’s legal. In the meantime, you and Vivian can plan the wedding.”
She moved drowsily. “Are you really serious?”
“Deadly,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing. “I wanted you when you were seventeen and I want you now. Somewhere in the middle, I fell in love without realizing it. These past few weeks have been the purest hell I’ve ever known. I don’t want to go through them again.”
“Neither do I.” She touched his face in the darkness. “I’ll be the best wife in the world, I promise I will. I’ll take care of you until we die.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ll take care of you, too, Natalie,” he whispered. “And I’ll never stop loving you. Not even when they lay me down in the dark.”
She pressed her mouth against his bare shoulder and her hands clung to him. “Not without me, you don’t. Where you go, I go. No matter where.”
He couldn’t manage another word. He kissed her forehead with breathless tenderness and wrapped her close in the darkness.
The wedding took a lot of planning. It had to be small, because Natalie didn’t recover as fast as she’d hoped to. But it had to be big enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to see them married, and that meant having it at church. They settled on the local Presbyterian church, and Natalie decided to have a traditional white wedding gown and to let Vivian be maid of honor. Mack decided to have two best men so that both his brothers could stand up with them. It was unconventional, but very much a family affair.
With Mack in a dark suit and Natalie in her elegant puffy-sleeved white silk dress with a long veil and a bouquet of white roses, they were married. They exchanged rings and when Mack lifted the veil to look at her for the first time as his wife, tears rained down her face as he bent and kissed her more tenderly than he ever had before. They looked at each other with expressions that brought tears to the eyes of some of the matrons in the congregation. Afterward, there was the mad dash out the door—done leisurely to accommodate Natalie’s still slow pace—and the rice and ribbons. It was traditional in that respect, at least, and in the reception in the fellowship hall with the cakes and punch.
“You made the most beautiful bride in the world, Nat,” Vivian said as she kissed her warmly after the ceremony. “I’m so glad things worked out, in spite of me.”
Natalie laughed warmly. “We both have a lot to learn about life. Besides,” she added, “every bad experience has a silver lining. Look at what mine has produced. And not only for me,” she added wryly.
Vivian wrinkled her nose as she smiled. “Imagine me, in nursing school,” she chuckled. “But the nurses in Dallas said I was a natural, and I think I am. I love the work, the equipment, everything. I daresay if I study hard, I’ll make a decent nurse.”
“You could make a decent doctor, if you wanted to,” Mack added as he joined them to slip a possessive arm around his new wife. “We can afford medical school.”
“I know that,” Vivian said. “But I’m not really keen on spending ten years in school, just the same. Besides,” she said with a grin, “everyone knows that the nurses are the real power in hospitals!”
Natalie laughed. “You certainly would be.”
Mack kissed his sister’s cheek. “You’ve changed a lot in the past few months,” he pointed out. “I’m very proud of you.”
Vivian flushed with pleasure. “I’m proud of you, too, big brother. Even though it took you so long to realize that marriage isn’t a trap.”
He searched her face quietly. “I was afraid that it might be too much responsibility for Natalie to take on. But uncertainty is part of life. Families band together and get through the bad times.”
“Indeed they do,” Vivian seconded. “I’m so glad we all had a second chance. Look what wonderful things we’ve done with it!”
“And the most wonderful is only a few hours away,” Mack whispered in Natalie’s ear a few minutes later as they were preparing to leave on their brief honeymoon to Cancún.
Natalie pressed her hand against his cheek and felt him lift and turn it to press his lips to the palm. “I’ve waited a long time for you,” she said cheekily. “You said you’d be worth it.”
He chuckled. “Wait and see.”
They had Vivian and the boys drive them to the Medicine Ridge airport, where they took the Learjet to Cancún. They were booked into a luxury hotel on the long island just off the mainland, with one of the most beautiful sugary white beaches in the world. It looked like paradise to Natalie.
“It’s so beautiful,” she kept repeating after they’d checked in and were standing on their private balcony. “It looks like a picture postcard!”
“You can’t swim just yet,” he reminded her. “But would you like to go and walk on the beach?”
She turned to
