Love Untold

Love Untold: Chapter 32

Love Untold: Chapter 32


On the way home, they stopped at Best Buy to purchase in-wall speakers for her new stereo system and many other counterparts that Chrissie couldn’t put a name to.  She might own her own interior design business, but any type of electronic addition for a client was taken care of by the proper professionals.  Back at the house, they continued their playful bantering and easy-going teasing while hauling in her new cabinet, but Chrissie started to get more and more nervous.

She was in love with this man...after only two weeks!  And she didn’t know what to do next.  Sex?  A more intense make-out session, picking up where they left off from that morning?  Or just a cozy, romantic dinner...without Dena?

Or start with the dinner and see what happens?

Heavens!  She could barely focus on anything all day, and Race started to notice.  He caught her watching him, and he actually took a daring step toward her before shaking his head and wandering off to the basement.  Chrissie spent most of the afternoon in her office, going through her work emails and catching up on some things that had been pushed aside all week.  She was glad that part of her life had not changed.  She didn’t know what she’d do if she had woken up and discovered that she was a housewife or a teacher or -- shudder -- a secretary or something else besides an interior decorator.

Going through some files on her computer, she comes across a video, simply titled: wedding.  Curiosity getting the better of her, she clicked it.

At first, she didn’t recognize anyone in the video, but then she saw the back of her mother’s head and Dena walking down the aisle on the arm of a man that resembled Race, but taller and blond, and she gasped.  This was her wedding.  Too soon, the camera zoomed on her, drifting down between the rows of church pews in the wedding dress that hung in tatters in her closet.  She almost didn’t recognize herself.  There was joy and happiness and love written all over her smile.  And when she approached Race, dressed impeccably and handsomely in a charcoal gray tuxedo, her smile grew even wider.

Chrissie watched the ceremony, tearing up as they spoke their vows in hushed whispers, eyes only for each other, and felt her heart skip a beat as Race kissed her with abandon.  In fact, as she continued to watch the reception and the festivities of the wedding video, she lost count of the many times the camera caught Race kissing her.  The Chrissie sitting at her desk two years later got lightheaded as though he sucked the breath out of her right then.  

As the video ended with them running towards a limo with bubbles floating everywhere, she sat back in her chair and got a gushy warm sensation in the pit of her stomach.  Oh, yes...dinner and then see what happens.  She clicked the play button on the computer again.  

*****

Race paced the basement floor.  Chrissie had been acting strange since coming home, and he was just arrogant enough to hope it was because she wanted him.  He saw the desire in her eyes, but he didn’t want to scare her by acting on that, so he’d been hiding from her ever since.  However, his stomach was growling something fierce.  They skipped lunch, and now he was hungry...for food, too.

He trotted up the stairs thinking he might coax her into having an early dinner somewhere nice and quiet and dark.  The door to her office was ajar, and he peeked inside.  She stared at her computer monitor, going from smiling to frowning to laughing all within seconds of each expression.  What was she watching?

He knocked quietly.  She jerked her head up and hurriedly clicked off of whatever captured her attention, smiling like a cat who just caught the canary.  “Yes?”

“What do you want to do for dinner?” he asked, moving into the room and around the front of the desk to see the computer screen.  It only displayed her desktop, but there was a tab at the bottom displaying her video player.  “Whatcha watching?”

She bit down on her bottom lip.  She’d been doing that a lot lately, and he knew it was because she was nervous about...well, about a lot of things, probably.  Finally, she sighed and moved the mouse cursor over.  “Our wedding,” she admitted.  “I came across it while trying to catch up on some things for work.”

“Oh, yeah?”  He hunkered down beside her as the video resumed.  There they were, dancing to “Lay It Down,” and him stealing kiss after kiss from her lips.  That had been a very good day.

She smiled at him.  “Now, I understand why you didn’t mind me playing that while I’ve been sleepwalking.”

“I like that song,” he replied simply, loving how the couple in the video saw no one but each other.  Would Chris ever look at him that way again?

She tapped the mouse again and the video disappeared.  “What do you want to do about dinner?”  She swiveled in her chair to face him, and her knees bumped into him.  He grasped her thigh to steady himself, realized what he grasped and let go, falling on his butt anyway.  Chrissie giggled.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, pulling himself upright by the arm of her chair.  “And I thought that -- if you don’t mind -- I could take you out for dinner...just the two of us.”

Chrissie groaned.  “We’ve been out all day.  I’d rather stay at home, and I’ll even make dinner for you.”

His eyes narrowed a fraction, but he smiled.  “Is this part of that payback you were talking about?  Because I had something else entirely in mind.”

She rose slowly to her feet.  “And what would that be?”

There it was again.  That flickering of desire in her clear, blue eyes.  It made his brain stop working for a second.  “I’ll take another one of those kisses,” he said, quietly provoking her to respond with her own teasing remark.  Instead, she rose up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to the underside of his jaw.

“How’s that?”

“It’s a start,” he said thickly.  “But I did spend over three hundred dollars today.”

She dropped to her heels of her bare feet, and he mentally slapped himself.  Way to go, dumbass.  “Chris...I didn’t mean...”

“Three hundred dollars?” she asked.  “And what is one of my kisses worth to you?”

Now that was a loaded question.  A penny?  That would get him ninety thousand kisses, but they were valued as so much more.  “Um...they’re priceless,” he answered, thinking he got out of that one by the skin of his teeth.

“Good answer,” she said with a grin and kissed his jaw again.  “That’s for being sweet.”

“I’m also charming, semi-patient, and sexy,” he teased her.  “What do I get for those?”

“Dinner,” she cheeked and sauntered out of the room, throwing devious smiled over her shoulder.  He’d have been right on her heels if he could make his legs work properly.

It was almost like his wife had come back.  He was just getting used to his new Chris, and then she teased him that way, and he didn’t know what to think now.  He knew that she still hadn’t gotten her memory of him back, little things she’d said and done triggered that certainty, but he couldn’t help feeling hope and terror for the things to come.

When his body started to listen to his commands, he exited her office and found her in the kitchen, rummaging through the pantry and refrigerator.  He decided to go ahead and move the stereo upstairs and install it in her new cabinet while she started their dinner.  He hooked up two small speakers that he could hide out of sight behind some books and tucked the cables under the couch and rug until the guys from the electronic store could get there.  Afterward, the smells of homemade chicken fettuccine filled the house.  Chrissie was chopping raw vegetables for the salad when he entered the kitchen.

“What can I do to help?”

She glanced at him, perturbed, for a second, but she hid it with a smile.  “You can run to the liquor store.  Mom nearly drank us out of house and home while she was here.”

“What would you like?”

There it was again.  That irritated flicker.  “What would you like?”

He shrugged.  Pairing wines with food was not his best talent.  “I don’t know.  What’s good with chicken?”

She sighed.  “Get some Chardonnay,” she said and turned back to her chopping.  He grabbed his keys and wallet and drove to the liquor store down the street, wondering about the glimpses of annoyance.  Did he say something?  He scanned his memory, going over every nuance, every word, every glance.  Nope, there was nothing there.

“Chardonnay, Chardonnay,” he chanted, going up and down the wine aisles of the store.  “Shouldn’t these things have labels or something?”  Thankfully, one of the employees noticed his flustered ramblings and asked what he was looking for.  “Chardonnay,” he answered, and the young man asked, “What year, and oaked or unoaked?”  Race looked at him like he was speaking Russian.

“We’re having chicken for dinner,” he said, hoping that might clarify and narrow down his selection.  The man smirked and handed him two bottles to choose from.  Race bought both and snatched a bundle of roses from the flower bin next to the register, specifically placed there for men like him who were going home to wives or girlfriends...whether to make up for some wrong-doing or just to get lucky.

After only two weeks, lucky was far fetched for him, but he might get a cuddle session out of it.  As he sat in the parking lot, waiting for the car behind him to back out so he could, he dialed Dena’s phone.  “I don’t care where you go, or who you spend it with,” he told her when she answered, “but don’t you even think about coming home tonight.”

Dena laughed and hung up.  On the way back to the house, his stomach started fluttering and clenching crazily, and it worried him.  Please, please, don’t get sick tonight.  He could puke all he wanted tomorrow, but not tonight.

Then he pulled into the drive and realized, he was nervous.  He felt like he was about to embark on his first date ever, and that made him smile.  When was the last time he felt like this?  Probably the night he asked Chris to marry him and he decided he wasn’t taking no for an answer anymore.  That had been a night to remember.  Too bad, he was the only one who did.

*****
Eighteen months back...

He waited impatiently for the sound of her key in the back door, so when Chrissie walked into the candle-lit house after working a long day to finish a design job, his heart picked up speed, and his mind imagined how she was smiling when she saw the thick, velvet ribbon tied to the door knob.

“Race?” she called out, but he didn’t answer her.  He stood behind the door to her bedroom, closing his eyes and listening.  He spent hours planning this night, something romantic, unique and unforgettable.  He knew the moment she read the first note stuck to the ribbon, “No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.”  Follow me.

“Race?  What’s going on?”

He breathed in calmly for a second and then heard her giggle.  She reached the second note on the ribbon, the one in the dining room.  “I love you like a hungry man loves cheesecake.”

“Okay, I’ll play along,” she called out, “but there better be a cheesecake at the end of this ribbon.”

Her footsteps reached the living room.  “Dear Lord,” she groaned, and he smiled because she read the third note, “Come on, Baby, light my fire.”

She rounded the corner to the hallway and stopped right outside the door to the bedroom.  Race peeked through the crack and watched her frowning as she read the final note, “It’s rude not to share...”  

She was too beautiful to be real sometimes, and he had to hold himself back.  He was serious this time.  She would wear the ring dangling in the middle of the bed from the long string of ribbon, or he’d make love to her until she didn’t have the energy to resist him any longer.

Of course, thinking of making love to her washed a whole other set of emotions down his body.  

Chrissie  walked into the bedroom, her finger trailing on the red ribbon, right up to the bed, where another card said, “So, share your life with me.”

She saw the engagement ring hanging in mid-air, and Race quietly approached her from behind.  “Marry me, Chris,” he said one final time.  She didn’t even turn around.

“No cheesecake?”

“Dessert comes later,” he said, smiling at the back of her head.  She nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll marry you, but you promise me that I can have cheesecake afterward.”

“It’s a deal,” he said and reached around her to yank the web of ribbon off the bedposts and untie the ring.  He slipped it on her finger.  She admired it in the candle light before she turned to him.

“I love you,” she whispered, and he lowered his mouth to hers, whispering back, “Not nearly as much as I love you.”

She laughed, and he stripped her down to nothing but the ring on her finger and proceeded to love on every inch of her body into the early morning hours.