§ § § -- January 17, 2001
Leslie was aware, but still close to slumber yet. She registered the sound of soft music drifting in from somewhere, and had a half-formed thought about forgetting to set her alarm before memory came back. She dared not open her eyes, waiting fearfully, trying to decide if she could prolong the dream…and then the mattress shifted under her, and surprise made her eyes pop wide.
A split second later Christian's eyes opened too, and they stared at each other with new wonder and an enormous sense of relief. "It wasn't a dream!" Leslie exclaimed softly in delight, beaming at him.
Christian grinned and said almost simultaneously, "It really happened!" They laughed softly then, just for the sheer joy of being together, and snuggled up to each other. Christian reached down and tugged the covers up over them, cradling Leslie close and lazily stroking her back. She closed her eyes again and smiled to herself.
"I spent all those years waking alone in my bed in Sundborg," Christian told her after a little while, his hand moving in slow circles, "wishing I could do exactly this, needing you there and missing you desperately. There was always a big empty space in my life and my heart. Now that space is full, and it feels wonderful."
"You've filled that same void for me," Leslie said, her head tucked under his chin, basking in his warmth surrounding her. "I hope I never, ever, take this for granted. You're a living, breathing miracle for me, Christian, my love."
"Hmmmmm," he murmured, still a touch drowsy. To Leslie it sounded as if he were smiling. "This is all I need. I feel so fulfilled, I couldn't possibly find room for any more, so I have no problem with waiting to have children."
A sense of sudden panic washed over Leslie; Christian obviously felt her tense in his arms, and he drew back to stare at her. She closed her eyes, trying to avoid his gaze and wishing with a sudden blind terror that she'd brought up the subject after all, instead of stepping around it all the time they'd known each other. It had never really come up, but she had never dared introduce it.
Cautiously Christian asked, "Leslie, my Rose, is something wrong?"
She bit her lip and opened her eyes, but still couldn't meet his gaze. "We might be waiting a very long time. I…I'm not even sure if it's possible. Teppo and I tried all through our marriage to have a baby, but I just couldn't conceive. Maybe I can't have children at all…" Leslie's voice thickened and faded out altogether, and she lifted herself and flopped onto her stomach, turning her head aside to hide the tears in her eyes.
Christian hoisted himself up on one elbow and regarded her with some worry, looking for the right thing to say, reaching out to lay a hand on her hair and gather some of it in a loose fist. "Do you think that's so very important, then?"
"Don't all men want sons?" Leslie mumbled without moving her head.
"It never seemed to bother Arnulf," Christian said lightly, but his attempt at humor fell far short of its mark and a tear dripped from her eye. In the gentlest possible tone, he went on: "Do you think that's the reason I married you? Do you think that's why I fell in love with you, because I thought you could bear my children? Listen, my darling, I'm old enough now that I'm used to being childless, and I can go either way. If you do get pregnant one day, I'll be very happy; but if you never do, I won't mind at all. It would mean I'd never have to share you." A faint, half-choked giggle erupted from her and he relaxed at last, hitching himself up against her side and wrapping a protective arm around her. "Let me make this crystal-clear to you, my Leslie Rose. You are the most important thing in my life—not your ability to have babies. It doesn't make any difference to me whether we ever become parents. As long as I have you, I'm happy, now and always. I waited too long for you to let something like that bother me. Now, do you feel better? I hope so…I want to resume our honeymoon." He tilted his head to one side and moved it in almost under her chin till she had to look at him, and in spite of herself she started to laugh. He grinned back, relieved.
Leslie turned to him and burrowed into his arms, hugging him hard. "We should've talked about it before, I know," she admitted apologetically, "but I was afraid it'd drive you away if you knew I might be, well, barren."
"Why would you think that?" Christian asked curiously.
She sighed. "Teppo was determined that he'd get me pregnant by hook or by crook, and his family was bothering him about it too. It seemed to get more urgent the longer we were married. Maybe we were trying too hard, but I started feeling like a failure."
"That, you were not," Christian stated flatly. "Did he know you felt that way?"
Leslie shrugged. "I don't know. He never blamed me, but I think toward the end he was getting obsessed. His family was having gradually more influence on him. My only ally was his oldest sister—she was my age. The rest of his family was undoubtedly overjoyed when I left the country after he died. I don't honestly think they ever liked me…I can only guess why. Maybe because Teppo's father died here…I don't know."
Christian ruminated a bit. "Don't take this the wrong way," he said presently, "but it's my suspicion that if he'd lived, you two would have eventually divorced."
"Oh, don't apologize," Leslie said. "I've come to the same conclusion. We loved each other, but we were really young and a lot of problems kept popping up." She yawned and curled up against him when he lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head, and rested her head on his chest. "Couldn't we talk about something else?"
Christian pulled one arm out from under his head and wrapped it back around her. "Why talk at all?" he countered, but his suggestive mien was spoiled by a yawn to answer Leslie's. She snickered and closed her eyes, and his chuckle produced a gentle vibration in her. "Oh, all right. Jet lag wins again."
Their thoughts drifted, as they do on the downhill slide to slumber, and then Leslie muttered sleepily, "I wish we had met after you were widowed the first time."
"You were only fifteen when that happened, my darling," Christian pointed out humorously. "Your father would have had something to say about that."
"Well, I still would have waited," she said.
"Then you would have waited even longer than you actually did…at least five years, assuming we might have married when you were twenty," he said.
Leslie lifted her head to stare at him, just in time to catch him hastily closing his eyes before letting out a loud, fake snore. "You big phony," she exclaimed and burst out laughing, setting him off as well. Christian half sat up, rolled toward her and caught her underneath him, their laughter playing out as he dipped his head and kissed her.
"What was that you were saying about jet lag?" she murmured against his lips when he came up for a momentary breath.
"Jet lag," Christian announced quietly, "is not going to interrupt me on my honeymoon. I refuse to let it."
"Good," Leslie breathed and pulled his head down to kiss him, happily surrendering to his lovemaking.
Half an hour later they looked at the clock on the nightstand, expressed sheer amazement at the late hour, and decided they should have some breakfast. They dressed at some leisure, watching each other with frequent dreamy smiles, then wandered barefoot and hand in hand to the kitchen. It was a very pleasant surprise to find it fully stocked, and they decided scrambled eggs and waffles would suit their appetites. Christian set about the swift and expert preparation of the former, surprising Leslie enough that she stopped and watched him with great interest.
Christian eventually noticed. "Get to work, Mrs. Enstad," he teased, making her grin, and eyed her with amusement. "Don't tell me you've never seen a man cook."
"You lose," said Leslie. "I've seen Katsumi's husband, Kazuo, cook at the hotel. It's you I've never seen cook. I didn't even know you could."
"I was widowed for sixteen years," Christian told her, "and living on my own, without benefit of a personal cook; and I liked it that way. Then I found myself saddled with Marina, and she turned out to be one of those hopeless types who burn water." He stilled in front of the stove and slowly turned to regard her with a sort of humor-touched dread. "Herregud, is this leading to an announcement that you can't cook either?"
"No, it isn't," Leslie said with a smug little grin. "Mom and I used to bake sometimes, before she died. Then I moved to Fantasy Island, and my culinary education fell by the wayside, so that when I left for Finland with Teppo, I had to buy some cookbooks and fly by the seat of my pants in the kitchen. And let me tell you, it's all but impossible to find English-language cookbooks in Tampere, Finland." Christian laughed, and she continued, "So for the next five years I rotated our meals among seven or eight recipes, and I suppose I was lucky that Teppo always seemed to be hungry. Honestly, the man ate anything I put in front of him." She rolled her eyes, escalating Christian's laughter. "So after Teppo was killed and I came back to Fantasy Island, I decided it was time I had that hole in my education filled in and got Mariki to give me some lessons now and then. I'm no gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm reasonably competent. Give me a waffle iron, if there happens to be one around here, and I'll show you—Mariki divulged a few secrets, and I can make her Belgian waffles without too much trouble."
"Without 'too much' trouble?" Christian echoed. "That implies that there is in fact some trouble involved. Maybe I'd better supervise."
Leslie playfully stuck out her tongue at him. "You stick to your eggs, my beloved husband, and I'll show you what I'm capable of." He grinned at that, saluted, and went back to preparing the eggs.
They ate at the counter island that separated the kitchen from the small dining room, perching on barstools, and Christian was honestly impressed at Leslie's waffles. "At last, after twenty-one years, I can split the cooking duties with someone," he said, reaching out and affectionately chucking her under the chin. "You've taken a load off my mind, my Leslie Rose. I wonder what other hidden talents I'll discover in you?"
"You have the rest of our lives to find out," Leslie said comfortably, evoking a warm smile from him. "I've been thinking…did you bring those sketches of your dream house with you? I'd really like to see them."
"I did, actually," Christian said. "I noticed last evening that the limo driver took all four of my suitcases out of the trunk of the car, so every piece of property I have that came here with me is in this house, and that includes the sketches. Once we finish here, I'll unearth them and we'll give them a once-over."
They washed dishes together; and while Leslie put them away, Christian went through his luggage till he found the papers in question and brought them out to the living room. Leslie came out of the kitchen and settled on the large plush sofa beside him, watching him arrange the various sheets across the coffee table. The movements of his hands distracted her; she glanced at the surprisingly well-executed drawings, at his hands with their long fingers, at the gold band set with an inlaid square diamond bracketed by tiny rainbow gems that adorned his left ring finger, and felt a jolt. It still hadn't sunk in that this man she had yearned for and missed for so long was at last her husband, and the realization made her stomach go light with wonder.
"Where are you, my Leslie Rose?" Christian teased softly, and she became belatedly aware that he'd paused and was watching her.
"Caught me dreaming," she said lightly and grinned. "I was just thinking again how incredible it is that we're married."
"I think we're going to have a lot of that for a while," Christian said smilingly. "Come up here and take a look at these, hm?" She scooted up to the edge of the cushions and leaned against him when he slid his arm around her, both perusing the assorted ideas he'd mapped out. "This one here," Christian began, pointing at the leftmost rendering, "is the outside front of the house. What do you think?" He picked up the sheet and handed it to her.
"This looks like fieldstone," Leslie commented in surprise.
"Why the odd note in your voice?" he asked.
She grinned. "Because of that pile of rocks you grew up in. I figured you'd go for wood, brick, glass…anything but stone."
Christian laughed loudly. "You might have a point there, and to be honest I never thought of that myself. But there's a difference. This is a much more natural look—quite similar to the façade at Rogan and Julie's bed-and-breakfast. The castle is built of hewn stone blocks." Leslie nodded comprehension and studied the drawing more seriously this time while Christian waited for the verdict.
"It's very pretty," Leslie said. "It seems compact with the gambrel roof and this vague chalet look about it, but it soars at the same time. So how about the inside?"
"That's the rest of these," Christian said, indicating the other drawings. "This is very loosely based on a house I saw in Switzerland when my parents were considering sending me to a boarding school there." Leslie stared at him and he smiled. "I never went, don't worry. I'll tell you about it sometime. I came up with the interiors on my own." He gave her the first-floor plan; while it was obviously not done by a professional architect, it was a detailed rendering with ruler-perfect lines and precise measurements in the metric system that Christian had naturally learned in school. There were two stories to Christian's dream house; the first floor contained only two rooms, the kitchen at front and a huge living room in the back with sliding glass doors leading to a patio. Christian watched as Leslie reached for the second-floor drawings, and grinned when she drew in a soft breath of wonder. "You like that, then?"
"It looks amazing," she said. The front of the second story held a spacious bathroom with a double sink, directly over the kitchen, and next to that an extra room; the bedroom was in the back over the living room and had its own glass doors that led to a deck. "Only one small problem. You labeled all this in jordiska. What's this word mean?"
Christian chuckled. "My apologies. Maybe I'd better teach you my language. That means 'library'; it could also be a den, a place for us to keep our computers, you to read if you like, me to work if the occasion calls for it. And if we do have children, we can add an extra wing—these two sketches here." He showed her the two-story optional wing with two bedrooms and another generous bathroom on the top story, and a large guest suite at the back of the bottom floor with the front area reserved for storage space. "I'm really looking forward to speaking with Mr. Roarke and beginning to map things out. You can have time to think about what you'd like to add or change in the meantime, and…"
"We have two entire weeks to ourselves," Leslie scolded him with a twinkle in her eyes, "and here you are already jumping off to the future. Don't go so far so fast. I'm still trying to get it through my thick skull that you're really my husband."
"Hm," Christian murmured, focusing on her. "Then what are we to do for two weeks alone, here, isolated from all the world and with no way to leave this house?" There was a suggestive look about him that made her lower her chin and eye him through her bangs, doing her level best to look serious but failing considerably.
"You mean you can't figure that out for yourself?" she asked, her lips twitching.
Christian began to grin. "Well, in actual fact, I have some very inventive ideas…"
"I bet you do," Leslie said, her own grin getting its way. "Show me one…"