Amanda was tucked up under the covers like the grandmother in the fairy tales when he came out of the bathroom. He didn't usually bother wearing anything in bed, but this was not the usual situation so he'd pulled on pajama pants in deference to his wife's modesty. Despite that, she was watching him with a slightly panicky expression as he walked toward her.
"What big eyes you have," he teased.
"The better to see you with," she answered without thinking.
He stopped and struck a pose. "So you like what you see, Mrs. Stetson?"
She flushed scarlet with mortification. "I didn't mean – I mean, yes, of course, but I wasn't looking. It's just what the grandmother says…"
"Amanda," he chuckled. "I was kidding. Stop looking so scared." He paused as he pulled back the covers and prepared to get in the bed. "You're not, are you? Scared of me, I mean?"
"No, of course not." She didn't look entirely convinced though and he grinned as he slid in to join her.
"Well, you could have fooled me – you're looking at me like I'm about to tie you to a railroad track and twirl my mustache." He held up his hands. "Look, no cuffs this time."
"Sorry," she muttered, sliding even deeper under the covers. "This is just really weird."
"Not really – from what I've heard, this is exactly what married life is like – two people on opposite sides of a bed not touching each other."
"That is not what it's like!" she retorted.
"Oh really?" he said, reaching to turn off the light. "Then why did you get divorced?"
"That's a very personal question," came the terse response.
"We're pretty much past that, aren't we?" Lee settled back on the pillow, and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the faint waft of the already familiar floral scent that was drifting across the bed. "How much more personal can we get at this point?"
There was something about the darkness, she thought, and the warmth in his voice that made it easy to talk to him. "It wasn't for any big reason really, we just grew apart. Joe's living in Africa now – has been for a few years. He's a lawyer for an aid agency and he was almost never home. I got tired of it all."
The mattress dipped as she shifted nervously and Lee crossed his arms, trying to tamp down the flashes of memory he was getting of her body against his.
"So Boring Dan seemed like a better idea?"
"Dean," she corrected him. "And he's perfectly nice."
"But boring?" he couldn't help teasing her as he rolled onto his side to stare at her profile which he could now make out as his eyes adjusted to the dark.
"Not boring, steady."
Lee gave a mock shudder. "That sounds even worse – what does he do? Let me guess? Accountant? Pharmacist? Oh no, please tell me he's not a grocery store manager!"
He could see her lips twitching despite herself. "He's the Channel 12 weatherman actually."
"Wait – the guy that does those ads with the clown?"
"That's the one."
"Seriously? You were going to downgrade from a lawyer to a clown's sidekick just because you wanted someone steady?"
She turned her head to glare at him. "Stop saying it like that's a bad thing! Just because women read novels about marrying movie stars or war heroes or James Bond, that doesn't mean we don't really want a nice dependable guy."
She couldn't quite read the glimmer that came into his eyes at that moment. "So you never wanted to marry James Bond then?"
"Of course not," she retorted. "I'm sure accidentally marrying a film producer is as close as I want to get to that."
"I'm sure you're right," he chuckled. "So what do your sons and mother think of Dan?"
She turned to glare at him again but didn't bother to correct him. "They like him just fine, thank you."
"That's not really much of a ringing endorsement," he pointed out. "Dotty doesn't seem like the kind who'd want you to settle for 'just fine'. She seemed to like me more than that." He smirked at the grimace that crossed her face.
"She wants me to be happy and if I'd been able to be happy with Dean, then that would have been enough for her."
"Because she's got your back."
Amanda abruptly twisted onto her side so she could look at him properly. "Lee? When did you lose your mom?" she asked.
"When I was five." He'd answered before he even thought about it and heard her tiny gasp of distress. "Was I that obvious?" he asked in a wry tone.
"I caught you with your guard down earlier," she shrugged. "I'm sure you're usually better at hiding it. And I have boys so I know what you're like when you're hurt. I'm sorry about that comment earlier though – that's awfully young to lose a parent."
"Both of them actually – car accident. But you couldn't know and I've had over 25 years to get used to it," he said in a tone clearly designed to make her drop the subject.
"So who brought you up?" she asked, ignoring it.
"The United States Air Force mostly, in the form of my uncle."
"You didn't like him." She wasn't asking – she was much too good at reading him. There was definitely something to this mother's intuition thing.
"It was mutual. He was a career military officer and a rising star and suddenly he was saddled with a kid he never wanted."
"I'm sure that's not true," she murmured. "You were family."
"Don't kid yourself. That's why I knew I never wanted a family. Every time he'd make a crack about 'just wait until you have a kid and he's just like you', it made me more certain. Life is a lot easier when you don't have to think about anyone's feelings but your own."
"That doesn't sound like he didn't like you." There was just enough light filtering in through a gap in the curtains that he could see her frowning slightly at him from her pillow. "That just sounds like he was overwhelmed with the responsibility from time to time. It's hard being a single parent."
"Especially when you're not the parent?" he asked. He sighed and went on, "You probably have a point though. I remember when I was little - really little – packages would come from all over the world with little things he bought for us wherever he was posted. I remember my mother had a jade ring that she wore all the time because she said it was the same colour as my dad's eyes."
"So, like yours," added Amanda.
He stopped, struck by that. He only had a few pictures of his parents, all of them black and white; it had never occurred to him that he must have inherited his looks from someone. "Yeah, I guess so," he agreed. "Anyway, I remember this wind-up toy he must have sent from Japan – a train with a carriage that pulled a little car full of zoo animals and they moved up and down when the train moved… I loved that thing, used to sleep with it."
Amanda gave a soft gurgle of laughter. "Phillip did that with his first baseball glove. He said he had to wear it all the time to break it in properly."
"Well, you do," nodded Lee. "It's the best way to make sure it molds to your hand properly. Everyone knows that."
"Well, it made eating spaghetti pretty tricky, let me tell you." Amanda's smile was a glimmer of light in the darkness of the room. "We had to chop up all his meals so he could spoon them in with one hand."
"Good for you. Most moms would have made him take it off, I bet."
Amanda studied him for a moment. "I bet your mom would have done the same."
Lee had a sudden flash of memory of his mother carefully tucking the covers on his bed around that train. "Yeah, I think she would have." He reached out with an absent-minded hand to push a tendril of hair off her face and tuck it behind her ear, then let his fingers rest there, playing with her soft curls. "So what made a mother-of-the-year like you marry a stranger in Vegas, do you suppose?"
"You mean other than the two-for-one margaritas?" Her accompanying laugh had an odd quality to it as if she'd been holding her breath. "I don't know really – I mean, I know that I was already feeling more and more trapped by other people's expectations. The friends I was with kept teasing me about how I needed to have one last crazy fling before I settled down again – and then there you were, with your smile and your dimples and you had this 'really great idea'…" her voice trailed off.
"And handcuffs," he chuckled. "But sure, blame it all on me."
"So why did you marry me then?" she turned his question back on him. "You say you never wanted kids or to settle down but then you marry a single mom on a whim?"
"Ah well, there you were, all lovable with your smile and your big brown eyes…" he teased, watching those exact eyes crinkle with amusement. "And it seemed like a really great idea." She stilled as his hand slid around the back of her neck and he shifted forward to drop a light kiss on her lips. "Still does actually."
He didn't move away and there was a beat that seemed to last an eternity before Amanda breathed out his name, then moved close to kiss him back. With a groan, he pulled her closer, feeling her lips part under his with a faint whimper and her hand coming up to cup his face.
The taste of her was a strange combination of familiar and new, as if his body could remember things about her that his drunken mind had forgotten. They shifted simultaneously, bringing their bodies up against the other's, the instant flush of heat and electricity unmistakable, as he pulled her over to lie partly across him, all without breaking their kiss until they finally broke apart, gasping for air.
"Oh wow," Amanda whispered.
"Yeah," was all he could manage. He stared into her eyes, trying fruitlessly to read them in the dark. "Are we… Is this okay?"
Her fingers curled into his collarbone and her breath seemed to quicken against his cheek. "I think… yes? I mean, we're married after all, aren't we? This is what married people do." Despite her obvious nervousness, he was almost certain he could hear the smile in her voice.
"We're only married until tomorrow though," he felt he had to remind her. "I don't want you to do anything you'll regret." He held his breath, praying she wouldn't change her mind, relaxing when he heard the quiet laugh bubble out of her.
"I'm pretty sure we're past regret, Lee – and besides, wouldn't it be nice to actually remember what it is we're regretting later?"
"God yes," he gasped, pulling her down to kiss her again and feeling her melt into his arms.