Take Her to HeVan (Nephilim Book 6) (18 page)

She left a message for Mr. Edwards with his admin. She wanted to know if those two men had gone to see him. She also wanted to know if he were going to be able to get her proxy marriage to Jake annulled. If she did, would she still marry Karlo?

The one thing she was sure of, kisses aside, she was sleeping alone until she made up her mind. She wasn’t about to let Karlo and Charl seduce her into doing what they wanted. Not until she was ready.

The days passed, it had been nearly a week since Karlo had regained his memory. Marla was still sleeping alone. It was Friday and she was ready to take a chance. She didn’t want to leave Earth, and she believed Karlo and Charl would find another woman when they heard her decision.

She was selfish though, she wanted a special night with both of them before she told them. She’d made reservations at the best restaurant around and was planning an evening of seduction for Saturday night. Both Karlo and Charl spent time with her every day. They hugged her and kissed her and generally kept her in a constant state of semi-arousal.

The healer and his wife, along with a group of other Nephilim, would be arriving on Sunday, so tomorrow night was their last night alone. Both the old bunkhouse and all the rooms in the main house would be full. Well, they would all be full if she kept insisting Karlo and Charl not share a room with her.

She had decided to have an affair with her alien hunks. They had to stay on her ranch until the shuttle was repaired. At least she’d have that time with them. After that, they could leave and continue looking for female Nephilim descendants to take back to HeVan with them.

Part of her mind was angry for wasting this past week. She knew she had really needed that time to come to terms with everything. How many people could handle meeting beings from another planet and have a sexual relationship with one? It was definitely something to tell her grandchildren about…or maybe not. They’d probably call her crazy and stick her in the old folk’s home.

After lunch, the guys had gone back to do more work on the shuttle and she was still taking it easy in the house, when she heard the delivery truck arrive. Well, it looked like zero hour was here. The new king-sized bed she’d bought online was sure to be all the proof her guys would need to know her decision. Now the trouble would be getting them to hold off until after dinner.

Stepping outside the house, she saw Karlo and Charl coming over from the hay barn to see what was up. Which reminded her, the field that burned wasn’t her only hay field. She had other crops she needed to bring in. The problem was, did she have enough room in the barn with the shuttle in there?

She saw Karlo confront the driver and hurried to interrupt.

“What do you want?” she heard him ask belligerently as she stepped up. Knocking him on the bicep with the back of her hand, she turned to the driver.

“Hi, you have a delivery for me?”

“Yes. Uh, my other guy couldn’t make the truck. I’m going to need some help with the unloading,” the driver said.

Karlo turned to Marla. “Is he the one?” he asked, his voice still hard.

“Huh? What are you asking?”

“You said you had a fantasy about the delivery man. Is he the one?”

Blushing beet red, she spoke quickly and furiously, “No, he isn’t. And I don’t appreciate you embarrassing me like this either. You two help him; it all goes upstairs in the master bedroom. I’m going to visit my alpacas.”

She quickly walked away. She knew she didn’t want to speak to either of the two brothers right now. She might just change her mind about tonight, too! She couldn’t believe Karlo had asked her about that. She fumed all the way to the pasture where the alpacas were grazing. She was still there an hour later, long after she’d heard the truck leave.

She felt someone coming up behind her and turned her head. Charl stopped next to her. “Neither one of us has forgotten what you said. We are both still jealous of this delivery man you spoke of. And if the man…Monk were to come, we would happily convince him you are ours. We will not share you with anyone else.”

She smiled for a moment. “You only want to share me with each other, right?”

“Yes. Since you bought that large bed, I believe you’re ready for us to share you.”

“I had made some plans. I’m just not sure you both deserve them.”

“What can we do to make it up to you?” Charl asked, reaching out to take her in his arms.

Marla wound her own arms around Charl’s neck. “For the rest of the weekend, the two of you have to do everything I ask. No arguments, no discussion, and no complaining. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” he said. She still didn’t understand they were willing to follow her for the rest of their lives. She would learn.

“All right, this is going to be fun. Come on; let’s go back to the house. I want to make sure you put everything right where I want it.”

Jumping up, she kissed his cheek then moved back and started walking back to the house.

She spent the next hour having them move out the old furniture. The master bedroom hadn’t been used since her grandmother was alive. Her grandfather had moved to the downstairs bedroom after his wife’s death because he said it was easier on his legs. Marla always believed it was because he couldn’t stand sleeping in their bed without her.

They were moving the old double bed out and the new king-sized bed in. Luckily, the room was quite large. She had them move furniture around for over an hour. The deliveryman had taken the old mattress away with him. She had them take the old headboard and baseboard and put them in the attic. The new bed had a wrought iron headboard and baseboard with scrollwork resembling vines and leaves painted green and gold.

The duvet was dark green velvet with a tracery design in dark purple and bronze. She had bought one small round accent pillow in carmine red for a pop of color. She didn’t change the dressers and other furniture. They were all antiques that had been in the family for generations. They went well with the new items.

She’d purchased all new linens because none of the sheets in the house would fit such a large bed. Marla used it as an excuse to get covers and sheets and other pillows and linens she’d always dreamed of. If she had the guys move the bed and dresser around the room more than once, part of it was design and part of it was punishment. They didn’t complain even once.

“Okay, that’s perfect. We’ll leave it like this. Now I need to go into town. I have an appointment with Mr. Edwards and we also need groceries. Karlo, since you were such an idiot earlier, you can stay here and keep an eye on things. Charl, you can come with me to carry all the grocery bags. We’re going to really stock up so we have enough supplies for all your friends. If they eat the way you do, we might have to clear out the store,” she said, only half joking. They really did have big appetites.

Karlo walked to where Marla was fluffing up one of the pillows. “I’m sorry I acted like I did. I was so jealous. I can’t promise I won’t behave like that again. I can only promise to try. Will you forgive me?” he asked.

Marla put the pillow down and turned to face him. A quick look around and she knew Charl had left them alone to make up. Looking into his face, she saw more than guilt. She saw pain in his eyes.

She put her knee on the bed and toed off her shoes; she lay down and patted the bed next to her. When Karlo was lying down facing her, she brought her hand up and cupped his cheek. “Why are you hurting?”

“I feel as if I’ve lost you. We were so close and now you’re so far away,” Karlo said.

“You’ve both been giving me time. I needed it. I think I’ve actually taken it all really well. So you don’t get to be hurt about that. You say you would do anything for me. I needed time and you gave it to me.”

“I never said it would be easy, though. It’s not. It’s very hard not being able to hold you in my arms all night.”

Moving her hand from his face, she drilled a finger into his chest. “Neither of you has been keeping your hands to yourself. I get more kissing, fondling, and hugs than I ever did before. Both of you are not exactly keeping your distance.”

He gave her a fake pout. “We are Joined. We can’t stay away from you completely.”

She just laughed in his face. Pushing at his shoulder, she had him roll over onto his back. She followed until she straddled his hips, his cock instantly went from half hard to stiff as a pike. She slowly leaned over and placed her lips against the lobe of his left ear. She then kissed and nibbled her way over his chin and neck to the opposite ear. After having been without her for so long, he nearly came in his pants when she bit down gently.

He felt warm breath tickle his ear before she whispered. “Okay, I forgive you.”

She sat up. “I don’t want to be late for my appointment with Mr. Edwards. See ya,” she chirped, climbing off him and getting up from the bed to put her shoes back on.

“You’re leaving now?” Karlo asked. “I thought we could christen the bed.”

“Sorry, Mr. Edwards and I are specifically working on the annulment this afternoon. It’s important. So I gotta go. Remember, Huey and Louie, those two assholes have been gone since last week. New assholes could arrive at any time to cause trouble. I’m counting on you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

With a little wave, she left the room. Karlo had risen to watch her leave. When the door closed behind her, he fell back on the bed with a groan.

Charl appreciated being able to spend the long drive into town with Marla. It was his first opportunity to spend more than fifteen minutes alone with her. So he spent the drive learning as much about her as he could. He also shared a lot of himself and his history with her. She was laughing at one of his anecdotes when they parked in front of Mr. Edward’s office.

They were shown right in.

“And who’s this?” asked Mr. Edwards, after he greeted Marla.

“This is Karlo’s brother, Charl. Charl, this is my attorney, Mr. Edwards,” said Marla, introducing them. The three of them all sat and Mr. Edwards came straight to the point.

“Marla dear, after going over all the facts, I believe the best way to proceed is to apply for a Declaration of Invalidity.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s what the State of Colorado calls an annulment. When your marriage is annulled or declared invalid, it will be as if the marriage never existed,” he said.

“What’s involved? Will we have to go to court?” Marla wanted to know.

“We have to fill out a form. There are only seven reasons why a marriage can be annulled in this state. The fourth reason is where one of the parties entered into the marriage based on a fraudulent act or representation of the other party. I’ll need you to make a formal statement, which my secretary can notarize. We’ll file that with the form.

“The difficult part will come after that. Mr. O’Brien will have to be served papers informing him of your attempt to have the marriage annulled. He will then have twenty days to make a response,” said Mr. Edwards.

“I don’t want him to be aware that I know about the marriage. So long as he’s in the dark, he’ll think he’s got this ace up his sleeve. Hopefully, that will keep him from hiring more goons to cause problems on my ranch,” she said, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

Both of the men said nothing. Neither one of them had any ideas. They couldn’t get around the court-required service.

“I tell you what. Hold off for a couple of days. I know we’re in a time crunch. There’s only seven weeks until the time runs out that my grandfather gave me to marry. Hey, I know this was a fake marriage; but does it count?” she asked, getting excited.

Marla leaned forward in her chair. “I mean, the will said I had to get married. It didn’t say anything about staying married.”

“There are both pros and cons to that. Mr. O’Brien has proven he’ll go to great lengths to secure ownership of your property. It’s possible he would have a case to fight you. No, I think your best way forward is to secure the annulment and then to marry Mr. Darvik as you originally intended.

“We have the obstacle of service and along with it, the possibility Mr. O’Brien will drag out the proceedings until after the deadline,” he explained.

“Go ahead and get everything ready. I’ll call you on Monday with my decision,” Marla said.

“As you wish, and now we’ll take your deposition. If you’ll wait here a moment, I’ll have my secretary come in and act as our recorder,” said Mr. Edwards, getting up from his chair.

“Don’t worry, Marla, we will think of something. Karlo and I will not allow this person to harm you or take anything from you,” Charl stated. To himself, he vowed to make sure of it.

Their next stop was the grocery store. Marla wished there was a big box store nearby but their town was too small. She stocked up on the staples. Then, happy there was still plenty of ice cream at home from her last trip, she filled half a cart with milk, eggs, and butter, as well as other perishables.

It was a good thing she’d called and made arrangements to buy half a beef, as well as a pig and two lambs. They would stop at the butcher’s next and pick up the meat. It had been quite awhile since she had purchased this amount of supplies. She was also going to be dipping into her savings. She hadn’t expected her food budget to be so high. So she was surprised when they got to the checkout counter and Charl pulled out a wad of cash. He wouldn’t let her pay.