Hundreds of Emails later, Stone and Anne posed behind a bamboo-embossed Marvel of Excess wedding cake that featured a sugar crane complete with an actual feather plume, faux twenty-four karat gold branches and pink peonies. Fort Benning lay two miles west of the antebellum mansion that hosted their reception.
"That ridiculous cake, a freaking chinoiserie chintz print ..." Anne muttered to Captain Stone Koufax as they held the traditional first pose for their guests to snap pictures.
"Hey, the icing's cool. Like a piece of Mama's bedroom wallpaper."
Is he kidding, Anne wondered as she searched his eyes.
A one-hour hookup and letters, Cliché 101. A mail order bride ... romantic in a Wild West way.
But the guys are so sexy in their uniforms, Anne thought as she gazed at the new lieutenants and tough captains. "Rowdy," she murmured.
A college senior working toward French and sociology degrees, in her mind Anne taunted the scene: the Georgia bakery's tacky creation, the non-denominational military wedding chapel, and the forty-eight hours leave her new husband managed to finagle.
She smiled for the cameras.
Fueled by cocktails made with blueberry jam and tequila their first dance ended before the music as Stone whispered, "I love you."
Anne nestled into his chest but surveyed the dancers that surrounded them as she swayed. "I get off on soldiers but no deployments ... Another war might be the end of us."
"Youdon't mean that. We're married." Too much booze to steady her nerves, Stonethought. Afghanistan's snakes only hibernate ... as they hide from the Eagle. Ordid she mean that threat?
YOU ARE READING
Anne
ContoMisplaced passions and unexpected consequences chase a couple from Panama City Spring Break to hades and back. Yeah, the boy said, "No," until the man Afghanistan etched into steel hollered, "Hell, yeah ..." Her? No matter how close she comes to h...
