Marrying Mr. English: The English Brothers #7 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 11) (15 page)

Alex Gordon was right. She was young and beautiful, and Tom was quickly heading into his mid-thirties. Right now, he was different from other men she’d met, and maybe that made him seem unique or special to her. But sooner than later, she’d be able to move fluidly in his world of privilege. How long until she realized that she could have any man in his social set? Any of his peers, including the younger ones? The richer ones? How long until she realized she’d made a bad deal and wanted out? Wanted someone younger and cooler?

He quieted his mind as she spoke again. “It’s Alex, right?”

“It is,” he said, his voice low and suggestive.

“I like the name Alex.”

“There’s a lot more to like than my name, kitten. I promise you that.”

“Alex, do you know how Tom and I met?”

“Sure. In Vail.”

“On the slopes?” she asked.

“I’m assuming. Or through friends.”

“Through friends,” she repeated, laughing softly. “How about my education? What do you figure?”

“Bryn Mawr? Vassar?”

She sighed. “Are either of those near Princeton?”

He chuckled as though she’d made an amusing remark. “So you went to Princeton.”

“No, Alex. I didn’t go to Princeton.”

There was a pause, and Tom’s lips twitched as he remembered the first time he’d ever seen his wife, giving a forward skier hell when he’d had the indecency to proposition her at Auntie Rose’s. By the tone of her voice, he was fairly certain he knew what was coming next, and he exhaled softly, relaxing against the wall behind him to enjoy it.

“Alex, when Tom and I met, almost two weeks ago, I was a waitress in a twenty-four-hour diner in Vail. I
guess
you could say we met through friends. My cousin was trying to, well—let’s just be honest here—
bang
Tom’s friend Van. She was a waitress too.”

“Fine,” he said tersely. “Have a laugh at my expense.”

“I’m not having a laugh. I’m from Romero, Colorado. You’ve never heard of it. The extent of my education is some night classes at Colorado Mountain College. You’ve never heard of
it
either. We have no mutual friends. And I certainly didn’t go to Princeton.”

“Well,” said Alex, and Tom imagined him fumbling now because there was no way to mistake the sincerity in Eleanora’s voice. “I just . . . I assumed . . .”

“Alex? Can I give you some advice?”

“Well, I . . . I guess so.”

“Don’t assume. It makes an ass out of you and me,” she said, and Tom had to bite his lip to squelch a guffaw of laughter.
Poor Alex Gordon
. “The reason I married Tom English, the reason I fell in love with him, and the reason I will stay faithfully married to him until the day I die, despite our age difference and our wildly dissimilar backgrounds, is this: Tom saw beyond a waitress uniform. Tom didn’t give a, forgive me,
shit
about my lack of connections, and my crappy, incomplete education was never a blip on his radar. He treated me with respect from the start. And though I’m sure he
noticed
my ass, he
touched
my heart. And he was the first man . . .” She laughed softly, and Tom wondered what was coming next. “. . . who didn’t treat me like meat.”

He got the joke and laughed silently to himself.

“In short, Alex,” she finished, “he wasn’t a jerk.”

“I never said he was,” Alex rallied back defensively. “Tom’s a fine—”

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Don’t be a jerk, Alex. You’re what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-one,” he confirmed, his voice strained. “Almost.”

“Almost twenty-one,” she repeated gently, and Tom imagined her smiling at Alex Gordon, showing him a little mercy. “You still have time to learn how to
stop
being a jerk before it’s too late. Don’t squander it, huh?”

“I think I’ll go back in and join the others,” said Alex, his voice low and embarrassed.

“That’s fine. But to answer your question? I say no, Alex. Thank you for asking, but I’m happily married to my husband, so no, I’m not interested in leaving him here and going off with  you.”

Tom heard her heels move on the hardwood floor, and she rounded the corner, standing before him in the dim hallway, her eyes widening in surprise to find him suddenly in front of her.

“Tom,” she whispered.

“You’re fucking amazing,” he murmured, grabbing her arm and pulling her against his chest.

She grinned at him. “You heard all of that?”

“Every word.”

“And?”

“I’d take you up against this wall if we were alone,” he said, his lips landing on the hot skin of her throat. He skimmed them to her ear, biting the lobe, his cock hardening as she gasped.

“Let’s go,” she said, her voice a cross between a whimper and a sigh. “I don’t care if it’s rude. I want to go home. I want you.”

Pulling her against his side, he escorted her back down the hallway to the dining room. “Neville, thanks so much for your hospitality tonight, but my wife has a bit of a headache. I think we should head home.”

“Yes, of course,” said Neville, standing up and offering his hand first to Tom, then to Eleanora. “Can I get you some aspirin for the ride home, my dear?”

“No, thank you. Nothing that a few hours in bed won’t fix,” she said, darting a quick glance to Charity before smiling warmly at her father. “Thank you for having us. Dinner was delicious, and the company was . . . interesting.”

They said the rest of their good-byes quickly, and Tom retrieved their coats on the way out the door, holding her hand as they walked down the icy path to his car. But Alex Gordon’s words circled in his head:
He’s old. He’s dull. You’re too young and too foxy to be tied down.
He needed to be sure that her response to Alex wasn’t just loyalty and bravado.

“I
am
older than you,” he said, starting the engine.

“Yep.”

“And though I don’t like to think of myself as dull, I did drag you out to the middle of nowhere, Connecticut, to embark on an exciting career of teaching English.”

“Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up,” she said, giving him an annoyed look before turning back to the windshield.

“I think we should talk about it,” he pushed. “I think—”

“I mean it, Tom. Shut up until we get home, or I might hit you and make you swerve off the road, killing us both, which would be a really bad start to the New Year.”

Grumbling softly, he drove home the rest of the way in silence, pulling into the driveway in front of their house and cutting the engine. He looked over at her in the dim light provided by the moon and stars, but her expression was set in stone as she stared out the windshield.

Exiting the car, he rounded it and opened her door, helping her out.

As she stood up before him, she drew her palm back and let it crack across his cheek.

“What the . . . what the
hell
?”

“Do I have your attention?”

He winced. “Fuck. Yes. That hurt.”

“Good. And if I allude to the New Year’s I smacked your face, do you think you’ll remember it fifty years from now?”

He rubbed his cheek, which burned despite the subzero temperature. “Uh, yeah, I think so.”

“Great,” she said, slipping her hand under his to cup his cheek with her bare palm, caressing it gently. “Then listen to me, husband.” Her face was bright and serious as she searched his eyes, seeking collusion. Her other palm landed on his other cheek, and she cradled his face, forcing his gaze. “I don’t care how long I’ve known you. I know your heart as well as my own. I don’t care how much older you are than me. It’s just a number and completely irrelevant. And I cannot imagine a day when I think you’re dull. Aside from the fact that I want to be in your bed every minute . . .” She stepped closer, and Tom opened his cashmere coat, wrapping it around both of them and holding her tight. “. . . I think you’re fucking brilliant and fascinating, and I will never, ever get tired of you.” His heart pumped like crazy, his ears drinking in the paradise of her words. “I love you. And fifty years from now, if you ask me these questions again, I will give you the same answers I gave you on the night I smacked your face. Because I will feel exactly the same. Got it?”

He gripped her so tightly, it was a wonder she could draw breath, but she did. Her chest swelled with air, her breasts pushing into his chest as she rested her cheek on his shoulder.

“I’m an idiot,” he sighed, resting his cheek on her hair.

“You’re a newlywed,” she countered gently.

“So are you.”

“And the raw hamburger fiasco is still very fresh,” she reminded him. “We’re finding our way, but I just . . . I have this feeling, and it’s so strong, Tom.
So strong
.” She took a big, deep breath and sighed with contentment. “We’re going to make it. I know it. We’re going to be okay.”

Tom kissed the top of her head and looked up at the sky. He couldn’t ever remember a sky so clear—there were so many millions of stars, they almost blended, twinkling and resplendent, into a bright and hopeful eternity.

“I want to make love to you,” he murmured close to her ear. “I want you whimpering beneath me. I want you crying out my name. I want to be . . . one.”

She tipped her head back, looking up at him with dark, wide eyes. Then, without a word, she took his hand and led him into their little house, where she answered his every want with her own, and promised her love was his until the end of time.

Weeks passed quickly once the boys returned to Kinsey, and Eleanora, who simply wasn’t cut out to be a lady of leisure, convinced Tom how much happier she’d be with a part-time job. She found one at the village pharmacy in Cornwall, working as a clerk and cashier five days a week. She arrived at work at seven thirty after dropping off Tom at Kinsey, and left at two o’clock, two hours before she had to fetch him from school, which left time for keeping their house and running errands.

This morning, the first Friday of February, was one of those especially beautiful winter mornings when one could be tricked, just for a day, into thinking that spring is imminent. Despite the seven or eight inches of snow on the ground, the sun was shining and high when Eleanora woke up, and the weather forecast called for a high of fifty-seven degrees. She left her coat at home and opted for a turtleneck and sweater, delighting in the unseasonably warm day.

Tom kissed her passionately in the parking lot at Kinsey, and she accused him of having spring fever.

“You know the boys have their noses pressed up against the windows watching us,” she said, feeling dizzy and breathless as she grinned at him.

“Where else are they going to learn how to kiss a woman?”

“Ah, I see. You’re giving them a lesson?”

“On loving? No, baby. That’s the lesson you’re giving me.”

“What’s gotten into you? Spring fever?”

“It
does
feel like spring today,” he said, threading his fingers through her hair and pulling her closer. “Kiss me again.”

His lips touched down on hers, demanding and hungry, and she closed her eyes, letting herself be swept away by the strong pressure of his lips, his hand in her hair, his other hand holding her jaw. He stole her thoughts and her breath, leaving her befuddled and gasping when he finally pulled away with a satisfied grin.

“No flirting at the pharmacy,” he said, winking at her.

“With whom? Old Mr. Jenkins? Not even.”

“I love you tons,” he said, picking up his briefcase from the floor.

“I love you back,” she answered, waving at him as he left her.

And then
it
happened again.

Again
, because it had been happening a lot lately, this sudden feeling that the world was spinning. It was almost how Eleanora felt when she’d had too much to drink and lay down on her bed. The world would spin and spin, leaving her slightly nauseous and a little worried. She closed her eyes and clutched the steering wheel, and after a moment, just like the other times, it passed. She shook her head and sighed. Tom
had
just kissed the life out of her.

Grinning at her reflection in the rearview mirror, she backed out of the Kinsey faculty parking lot and headed to the Cornwall Pharmacy.

As she got out of the car, her purse strap broke, and her bag landed in the muddy snow of the parking lot. Bending over to pick it up, she heard the unmistakable
rrrrrrip
sound of her pants splitting down the backside.

“Oh, come on!” she exclaimed, standing up quickly to be sure no one saw her underwear. She twisted to try to see the damage, but couldn’t. Cradling her broken purse in her arms, she closed the car door and trudged into work.

Once inside, she put the contents of her purse in a shopping bag and took off her cardigan sweater, tying it around her waist. That would just have to do until she could change later, and clearly she needed to lay off the recipe books filled with rich foods. Lately, she’d been trying out all sorts of not-breakfast-for-dinner recipes on Tom, and though she wouldn’t say she had a knack for making the dishes
look
good, they certainly
tasted
terrific.

“Morning, Ellie!” yelled Mr. Jenkins, waving at her from the pharmacy, located just behind and above the cashier area.

“My name’s Eleanora,” she said under her breath, smiling cheerfully and waving back. He couldn’t hear her from behind the high plexiglass wall that separated the store from the prescription drugs. He’d been calling her Ellie since the day she’d accepted the job, and she didn’t have the heart to correct him anymore. His ears turned bright red whenever she did, so she could tell he didn’t mean to keep making the mistake.

“Morning, Eleanora,” said Kristin, Eleanora’s coworker and Mr. Jenkins’s youngest daughter.

“Hey, hot stuff,” she said, smiling at the sweet-natured redhead. She reminded Eleanora a lot of Evie, and since Kristin was her only real friend in the area, she meant a lot to Eleanora.

“One of us is
hot stuff
,” said Kristin, dropping her eyes to Eleanora’s breasts, which strained against her simple light-blue turtleneck shirt, “but it ain’t me!”

Eleanora looked down at her chest, noticing how her breasts spilled a little over the cups of her bra, creating two crests of extra boob. She groaned. Further evidence that she needed to lay off the rich dinners.

“I think I need to go on a diet.”

“Bet Tom doesn’t mind,” said Kristin, winking at her friend. “Hey, Dad asked us to restock the feminine hygiene supplies. You want to do it? Or should I?”

“I don’t mind,” said Eleanora, grabbing the big box of tampons and pads from the counter. “You can work the register.”

“Want to have lunch later? We could swing over to the deli and grab sandwiches?”

Eleanora grinned and nodded. “Sure. Sounds good. But stop me if I order anything but Tab and salad.”

She headed over to aisle four and knelt on the floor with a price gun, her easy exchange with Kristin making her mind segue to Evie’s latest letter from Hong Kong. Evie had definitely made the right choice for her life. She liked working for Mr. and Mrs. Holmes and had definitely fallen in love with the children she was minding. She’d also fallen in love with Hong Kong, which she described with childish delight in every letter—the food, the language, the people, so different from those at home.

Evie had also fallen head-over-heels in love with Van. Not that Eleanora was surprised, but part of her wished she’d been there to see the process of Van and Evie truly falling for each other. And in such a romantic place too. Evie gushed about the harbor lights at night, the clubs where Van took her dancing, and the posh hotel suite where she stayed with him one night a week. She reassured Eleanora that he was taking good care of her, and Eleanora believed her, laughing and crying as she read each letter. She laughed because she was happy for Evie, and cried because she missed her cousin so terribly.

For someone who’d had relatively little family in her life, Eleanora longed for family in an increasingly painful way. She wished that Evie and Van could meet her and Tom for dinner on the weekends, or that when she had big news, she could run to Evie’s house and burst into her kitchen to share it. She grieved that she was so alone in the world and that Tom, in standing up for their marriage, was now as alone as she. Where would they go for holidays? What would they tell their children when they asked about aunts, uncles, and grandparents?

Tears welled up in Eleanora’s eyes, and she looked down at the tampon box in her hand, running the price gun over the box, and placing it listlessly on the shelf. Her eyes lingered on the box, widening as a thought came together in her head at an alarming speed, bearing an extremely alarming meaning.

Ripping the tampon box back off the shelf, her heart rate tripled as she held it in her trembling hands.

She hadn’t bought tampons since December. Since before she had met Tom. Because—
oh my God! How did I miss this?—
she hadn’t had a period since then.

Letting the box drop from her shaking fingers, she counted back. She’d had her period in December, right? Right. She and Evie had been on the same cycle, and she remembered Evie commenting happily that they wouldn’t have their periods on New Year’s Eve . . . which meant she’d gotten it just before meeting Tom. And she’d met Tom, let’s see, one, two, four, six,
ohmygod
, almost nine weeks ago.

Nine weeks without a period.

She didn’t notice that her hands had somehow drifted to her belly, covering it protectively as she put other details together in her head—her occasional dizzy spells, her expanded waistline, her overflowing breasts.

“But we were careful,” she whispered. “He always pulled out.
Always.
”

Except, Eleanora was a bright girl, and she knew—as well as anyone else—that even if you were supercareful about pulling out, there was always that small chance that a swimmer or two could get away.

Her eyes welled with tears as she flicked her glance to the nearby pregnancy tests, stood up, and plucked one from the shelf. She hid it under her sweater and beelined for the bathroom, avoiding Kristin.

After she’d peed in a cup, dripped three drops of urine into a test tube, added a chemical included in the test, and shaken it up, she set it back in the test holder and hid it under the sink, in the back corner, behind the extra toilet tissue. In two hours she’d know for sure.

But as she walked back into the store, headed for aisle four, her heart already knew. She was pregnant with Tom’s baby—with their first child—and though she was frightened on one hand, her heart swelled with the sort of love she’d reserved heretofore for Tom. A baby that was half him and half her, and all theirs. It was so marvelous, so amazing and miraculous, she gulped over the growing lump in her throat, biting her lip to keep from giggling or crying.

A little Elizabeth
, she thought, kneeling back down on the floor.
Or a little Barrett
.

She’d never met anyone named Barrett, but it sounded very grand, and it seemed only right that their child should be named after Elizabeth Barrett Browning. After all, their mutual love for her poetry had lit the fire of passion between them from the very beginning.

She sat back on the pharmacy carpet, placing her hands tentatively on her still-flat abdomen, and summoned Tom’s favorite words by Browning, which he shared with her frequently:
You were made perfectly to be loved—and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.

Yes
, thought Eleanora, gently rubbing her tummy.
I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long, little baby.

She felt a bewildering, joyful burst of happiness bubble up inside her, spreading from the very depths of her heart to the tips of her fingers and everywhere in between.

She and Tom were going to have a baby.

***

On his lunch break, Tom opened his checkbook, as if waiting a few hours before looking at it again would somehow make a thousand dollars magically appear.

It didn’t.

The balance read exactly as it had earlier in the day, after he’d paid their rent and January bills: $708.27. That’s what they had. That’s
all
they had.

Tom, who had never lived in the real world, had thought that five thousand dollars would last for months. But he hadn’t counted on deposits for the phone, water, and electric service. He hadn’t anticipated that even the cheapest furnishings would cost over a thousand dollars, with extra for delivery. How could he have known that when Eleanora complained of sinus pressure and he told her to see a doctor, that it would end up costing over two hundred dollars for the visit and her prescription antibiotics? Not to mention the cost of clothes and groceries, shampoo and deodorant, snow shovels and garbage bags and someone to tote the garbage away. It all cost something. And it added up so quickly, it made Tom’s head spin.

The reality was this: living on one thousand dollars a month was
only
possible if there were no unforeseen expenses, no unpleasant little surprises. One doctor’s visit, or transmission problem, or long-distance phone call, could bury the month.

He took a deep breath and sighed, closing the little bankbook and shoving it back inside his desk. It worried him that they had no savings, no recourse should an unexpected expense suddenly appear. And living in Weston didn’t exactly afford Tom lucrative opportunities to make more money. It had hurt his pride a little when Eleanora decided to go back to work. Not that he didn’t respect women in the workforce—he did. But the women of his social class didn’t work much anyway, and they certainly didn’t work once they were married. It shamed him that he and Eleanora found themselves in a circumstance wherein her small income was actually helpful.

Taking his lunch out of the bottom drawer of his desk, he looked at the outside of the brown paper bag and, despite his worries, couldn’t help but grin. She’d drawn a smiley face with the words “I love you silly” written underneath. Inside, Tom found his regular lunch: a ham sandwich, a thermos of chicken noodle soup, and an apple. Though Kinsey subsidized lunch for the faculty, he’d still have had to pay forty dollars a month, which simply wasn’t worth it.

He unscrewed the top of the thermos and took a spoon from his top drawer, looking out at the asphalt basketball court as his soup cooled a little. Generally, the boys huddled in bunches, trying to stay warm for the thirty minutes they spent outside. But today they were enjoying the brief burst of sunshine and warmth. Some played basketball on the slushy blacktop while others seemed to be playing tag. He wished he could share their lightheartedness, but his thoughts wandered back to his bankbook, and he huffed softly. What was the answer?