Chapter One
6:03pm 23rd December
He had the tuxedo that she had wanted in the back of the bright blue T-Bird convertible. It was black, naturally, elegantly like one worn by James Bond in the latest movie, and very expensive. It had been made for him by a tailor, who usually worked only for European royalty, but she had insisted on the best, and they had the money between them to afford it. He didn't mind spending so much on their wedding when she was so obviously delighted by it all. His mother, too, had been thrilled by a big splashy wedding for her eldest son, and had flown all over America searching the fashion shows of all the most famous designers to find the perfect hat to wear to the wedding.
His father had been more taciturn, but Shawn knew he too was happy that Shawn was marrying the girl they had all thought him destined for his entire life.
He smiled at the thought of her blue eyes, her bright smile, her laugh that had charmed everyone including his notoriously hard to please great grandmother Alice. She had been a little difficult to convince at first, but when she saw them together, her heart had melted and she had consented to the marriage happily. That in itself had been a major achievement. His great grandmother could be as cantankerous as a skunk with a hangover on a dreary February morning.
The radio was playing 'Whatever' by the Butthole Surfers, and Shawn was singing, or rather yelling, along when he realised that the thumping noise he had been hearing for the past couple of minutes was not in fact coming from the speakers but from his car. The engine spluttered and died.
Sighing with annoyance and frustration, Shawn coasted over to the side of the snow covered road and popped the bonnet open, staring down at the engine and wondering why it had to breakdown on the lonely highway instead of where he usually drove it around Salem and the surrounding area where there were always plenty of mechanics and garages ready to fix his baby. She hated it when he called his car his baby, or worse still Ingrid after his favourite actress, but he refused to stop. She got to call her cat 'Mr Snuggles' and he got to call his car Ingrid. Of course, he didn't tell her that he usually called the cat Bacardi Breezer after the cat in the ad which hers so closely resembled, but he felt that little titbit of information might send her over the edge and him out on the street for a night or two at least.
He remembered the day he had bought her Bacardi as a kitten, Christmas Eve the year before. A tiny scrunched up ball of grey fur with two big blue eyes looking out and what he later came to realise was his 'I own you' look, the one that declared complete and utter obedience to the cat's will.
Flashback
"Oh, Shawn, he's so pretty. Thank you." Kisses were rained down onto his face as his girlfriend hugged him tight. "I love him already. I think I'm going to call him Mr Snuggles."
Shawn choked down a laugh, his face becoming redder by the minute, but she luckily attributed it only to the embarrassment of being kissed so exuberantly in public. Shawn didn't really appreciate public displays of affection, and she decided as he was being so 'not' sweet to her, she might as well spare him. With a final grin, she swept both Mr Snuggles and her kitten into her arms and hugged them close, wrapping the cat in the warmth of her knitted jumper.
"Thank you," she whispered in his ear with a smile that stretched across her pretty face and warmed his heart. "You always know how to make me feel so very, very happy. I love you."
Mr Snuggles had been squashed between them, and the feel of claws in his skin told him that the kitten was hanging on for dear life half crushed under Shawn's girlfriend's sweater. 'The poem was right,' Shawn though irrationally through the warm haze in his mind. 'Girls really do have kittens growing under their sweaters.'
End of flashback
He couldn't wait to get back to Bacardi. The cat was more his, if he was ever anyone's, than his supposed mistress's, and it was with a persistent head rubbing against Shawn's leg that always greeted him when he came home.
Home, he wasn't going to get home if he didn't get Ingrid started soon. It was already getting dark and the highway suddenly seemed both lonelier and colder than it had before. He thumped Ingrid's engine, carefully listening to the echoes through the metal. She was in big trouble, and if Ingrid couldn't take him home, it looked like he wasn't going. His fiancée was going to be furious.
"Can I help?" he hadn't even heard the red convertible pull up beside him, and he banged his head as he jerked upwards.
A beautiful girl with large blue eyes was looking at him from the other side of the car. She smiled, her smile seemed to make the very snow around them turn into diamonds and the murky grey sky become a brilliant blue, and Shawn forgot he was engaged, forgot he was supposed to be in love with someone else, and fell madly in love with Blue Eyes, as he nicknamed her instantly.
"You don't happen to know anything about cars, do you?" He grinned at her, and she shook her head, giggling a little.
"About as much as you seem to know about not talking to strangers!" She laughed. Angels laughed like that, he thought. It was a glorious sound, like sunshine liquefied into sound.
"Touché," he conceded the point, grinning at her all the while. "But if you told me your name, we wouldn't be strangers."
"And I would still know nothing about cars," she evaded.
He rubbed the back of his neck and gave her a bone-melting smile. "But I would know something about you."
"No names," she replied, her blue eyes glinting happily at him.
His grin widened, and he waggled his eyebrows at her, "Really?"
"Certainly," her smile widened even more. "Now do you want a ride or are we going to stand here freezing our asses off until next Christmas comes?"
"I would love a ride," his mouth said, but his eyes sent her a rather different message.
"Come on," she moved quickly away to her own car, her hips moving sensually through the frozen air.
"Wait, where are you heading to?" She turned as he called the question after her, locking up his Ingrid as he did so.
"A motel about two miles that way," she pointed the direction he had been driving in and he couldn't help but smile at her expression, much like that of a child's at Christmas. "They have the best eggnog this side of Exeter."
He was barely listening to her, too fascinated by the way her mouth moved to really comprehend her words. "Sounds great."
Then he followed her, opening the car door for her and watching her swing her endlessly long legs into it and slide them under the steering wheel. She was so beautiful.
"Just let me get my tux," he said quickly, racing back to Ingrid and grabbing the suit that had lead to their meeting without the slightest twinge of guilt about abandoning his fiancée while he got a ride with Blue Eyes.
"You're a real gentleman, do you know that?" she asked as he quietly opened the door and slipped inside.
"Well my mother didn't raise me to be no rascal, Ma'am," Shawn joked in a deep Southern accent that caused shivers to run up and down Blue Eyes' spine.
"Hush, Rhett," she simpered like Scarlett O'Hara, "what will the neighbours say?"
Shawn glanced out the windscreen and found that the neighbours were in fact a nanny goat chewing on a hedge and a rather amused looking robin.
"I do beg your pardon, Bonnie Blue Eyes, but I did not realise we had company," he hadn't dropped the accent, and she shifted slightly closer to him as she revved the engine and raced into the dimming twilight.
"Oh, I don't think they'll tell," she flashed a not so innocent smile at him, and as he roared with laughter, she tossed her hair, and he realised that no matter where he went, or what he did, he would never find another girl he would ever love like he loved her.
"Would you have dinner with me?" he asked as she pulled up outside of the motel, his brown eyes sparkling with love and hope.
She hesitated, biting on her lower lip, then let out that champagne laugh of hers again. "Of course. Would sir prefer to dance with his dinner or watch George Clooney kiss Jennifer Lopez throughout?"
"Dance, definitely, Blue Eyes," he laughed too, and caught her hand in his. The electricity between their two bodies was intense. Thunderbolts raced from him to her and back again. Nothing had ever felt so natural before in his entire life. "Come on," his mouth said, but his eyes proclaimed, 'I love you.'
"Coming," she sweetly answered, while her blue eyes answered. 'I know. I love you too.'
In the heat of passion ignited between them, Rhett forgot he was Shawn Douglas Brady, and that he had a fiancée waiting for him in Salem, knowing nothing but the pleasure of being with Blue Eyes. After all, there was nothing holding him to the life back home when he was with her, and it was still twenty-four hours from Salem.