“No, of course not. It wasn’t like that. We haven’t even…” Adam shut his mouth. Perhaps telling his cousin that he and James hadn’t even made love with their woman yet was more information than Caleb needed.
“Since I didn’t receive any phone calls from home this morning telling me I’d be picking up a new cousin, am I to assume that Aunt Maria doesn’t know you’re married?”
Adam closed his eyes. “Oh, hell, I forgot. We tried to call home this morning before we left for the airport, but we couldn’t get through.”
“May I suggest you do so, now? Your house hasn’t been lived in for a while, and of course, there’s the matter of the unprepared master suite. It would be nice, don’t you think, if your bride didn’t have to make up the bed up herself, first?”
Adam cursed under his breath. “Yes, of course, you’re right. We’ve both been so anxious to marry our woman, to bring her home with us, we didn’t think beyond the very basic details of getting it done.”
“Does Pamela know how inept the two of you are when it comes to daily life and social interaction?”
“We did confess that to her when we proposed. She didn’t appear to be bothered at all by the news.”
Caleb chuckled. “The woman must be crazy in love with you both, then.”
Adam really hoped that was so. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
Adam picked up the receiver and began the process of calling his parents’ house, and this time, the call went through. At the sound of his mother’s faintly accented hello, Adam smiled.
“Hola, mi madre querida.”
“Adam! You are in Dallas, sí?”
“Yes, we just landed a few minutes ago.”
“Caleb is on his way to get you and your brother. James is there?”
“He’s not right here but has also arrived safely. At the moment, he’s just down the concourse, and Caleb is standing beside me. Mother, we have a surprise for you. You recall we mentioned Pamela? Pamela Franklin?”
“Since she was practically all you spoke of when you would call over the last few months, yes, of course.”
“She came with us. Mother…I married her last night. It was a small ceremony, at her father’s home.”
“Oh! Oh, I think I’m going to cry! That’s…oh, Dios mío! She is there, and you are leaving now to come here! I will gather your aunts, and we will go to your house. We need to air it and tidy it, and we must put sheets on the bed in the master suite…and we must plan the ceremony, sí?”
“James and I want to hold off on the ceremony. We…we rushed her into this, and now…now we need to court her properly.”
“Ah, mi tonto hijo, I know how you sometimes are…”
“Ham-handed? Clumsy?” Adam might wince at having his mother call him foolish, but he really couldn’t deny the charge.
“And yet, she said yes, your Pamela. To you both?”
“She did, and yes, to us both. But it’s a bit complicated. She knows that we’ll have a ceremony and that in the eyes of the family we’re both of us her husbands.”
“Perhaps you need the counsel of your fathers. Sí, you must speak with Warren and Douglas. You will come here for supper tonight. Just the family—us and your grandparents. Now, travel safe. We have much to do here. Tell Caleb to take his time, sí? Adios!”
Adam blinked. He looked over at Caleb, who was grinning. “It sounds like Aunt Maria is excited,” Caleb said.
“She told me to tell you to take your time.”
“That’s easy enough to do. Have you had lunch? How about a stop at Annie’s?” Adam knew the small restaurant not far from the airport. On the route to Lusty, it wouldn’t take them out of their way, and it would be a good way to take a few moments, some coffee or sweet tea, before heading home.
“Good idea.” Hopefully that stop, and Caleb’s usual careful pace behind the steering wheel, would give his mother and his aunts and cousins enough time to do whatever it was they needed to do. Other than putting fresh linens on a bed that currently only held a bedspread and pillows in shams, he didn’t know what the big deal was.
No one had been living there, making a mess, after all.
Caleb nodded behind him, and Adam turned to see James and Pamela approaching. He felt the smile that took up residence on his face. He’d never been a dour man, but he knew he’d been smiling more in the last few days than he had for all his life.
Pamela walked right up to him, and he didn’t care that they were out in public. He put his arms around her and brought her close. He kept his kiss light. He didn’t want to neck in public the way he’d seen some of today’s teenagers do. But he’d needed this contact.
He raised his head, and his smile widened in response to her blush. He reached down, took her left hand, and brought it to his lips.
“Caleb suggested we make a stop at Annie’s, a restaurant run by a friend of his mother’s. It is nearly a three-hour drive to Lusty.”
“I haven’t been to Annie’s in a while,” James said.
Adam looked at Pamela, who looked from him to Caleb. “That sounds good. I could use a good cup of coffee.”
Caleb proved he was the smoother of the cousins. “Well then, let’s do that.” He offered his arm to Pamela, leaving Adam and James to gather the luggage from the sky cap and follow out to the car. “While we head there, I’ll tell you about when Jonathan, my brother, and I, made a special trip to this very airport two years ago to pick up our Bernice, who’d flown in from New York City. That was our first stop, then, too.”
“Sounds like a family tradition,” Pamela said.
Adam knew her well
