Gift of Fortune (18 page)

Martha nodded. "Very sensible. I never could see why
people made such a circus out of a simple ceremony."

"I agree with Martha. And it will stop all that nonsense
with the school board and save us a lot of unpleasantness,"
Dora said, her voice approving.

"Great for the ranch," Bob added. "Miss Ruth couldn't
have asked for a better man than Quint to run it."

"I couldn't agree with you more." Quint had proven himself to be a good manager. Maybe too good. He had a
tendency to go ahead and do things without consulting her.
That bothered her. They'd have to come to some sort of
compromise.

"We appreciate all your good wishes, but Aileen cooked
a wonderful meal-"

"Which is getting cold. Please, everyone, sit down,"
Aileen said. "You must be hungry by now."

Jennifer punched Aileen playfully on the arm. "You rat.
I can't believe you didn't even tell me, your best friend."

"Well, best friend, knowing how you are about keeping
a secret, I would have had to tell everyone."

Jennifer started to object, but ended up sheepishly admitting that Aileen was right. "I just get so excited I have
to share the news with someone. I can't help myself. Never
could. So, what did you wear?"

"A new silk dress. Pale blue. I'll show you our wedding
portrait as soon as we get it. Quint hired a photographer."

"Cool," Jennifer said, and flicked Quint a look of approval.

"I want to see it too. Me and Bob got married right after
he got back from Korea. He wore his uniform, and I had
a beige suit with the prettiest corsage pinned to my shoulder."

"And one of them funny flowerpot hats," Bob added.
"Martha, pass the potatoes, please."

"It was a pillbox hat," Martha added, with a disdainful
look at her husband. She held the bowl of potatoes for a
moment as if considering whether Bob ought to have any
after the disparaging remark about her hat. Finally she
thrust the bowl at him. "It was not a funny hat. It was
stylish. A few years later Jackie Kennedy made that hat
famous."

"Andy and I drove to Vegas on his Harley and got married there," Jennifer said. "We both wore our new black
leather outfits. It was so cool." Jennifer sighed, a dreamy
expression on her face. Then, her forehead creased thoughtfully, she said, "Isn't it weird that none of us here had a
traditional wedding?"

"I'm only sorry about one thing. No champagne. If I'd
known, I would have brought a bottle and we could have
toasted the newlyweds," Dora said.

"We can still do that. I've got a bottle chilling," Quint
said.

"You have?" Aileen asked. Her new husband was full of
surprises.

"I hid it behind the milk carton. Do we have wine
glasses?"

Aileen liked Quint's use of the word we. And that he'd
thought to buy the wine. "We not only have wine glasses,
we even have champagne flutes. We can do this in style. I
think the champagne will go great with the cake."

"The dinner was a hit," Quint said as they were cleaning
up the kitchen. "Don't you think so?"

"Yes," she said, with a smile to reassure him. If he
needed reassurance. She wasn't that good at reading Quint
yet. "Once they got over the shock of our marriage, they
enjoyed the dinner." Pausing in the act of hand-drying the
fine china plates, she said, "Actually, they took it better
than I thought they would. It was almost like they were
thinking, `We're surprised, and yet we aren't really, because we expected it.' What an odd reaction. And they all
had it, even Dora. I thought she might have a few reservations."

"Aren't you glad that they approved?"

"Of course. It'll make life easier." Deep down, had she
expected to have to defend herself to Dora? To list all the
reasons why it had been necessary to get married to Quint?
If so, why? Maybe to reassure herself yet again? Possibly.

Aileen stole a look at Quint. He didn't seem to be
plagued by doubts and second thoughts. His hands were
steady while hers were a little shaky. Not a good thing
when handling her mother's good china.

"Where do these dishes go?" Quint asked.

"In the china cabinet in the dining room. If you'll set them on the dining room table, I'll put them away tomorrow."

"You trust me with them?"

Why not, since I'm trusting you with my life, my future,
and my heart. Aloud she said, "You seem to have steady
hands." She watched him carry the tray of plates out. Then
she looked around the kitchen. Everything was put away.
Now what?

Should she say good night and go up to her room? Pretend this was just like any other evening they'd spent together and not her wedding night? If only she had more
experience with men, if only....Quint returned, cutting
short her fruitless dithering.

"Looks like we're all done in here," he said.

Aileen nodded. She folded the dishtowel and then shook
it out and refolded it again. Before she could repeat the
process, Quint was by her side. He took the dishtowel from
her hand and laid it on the counter.

"You're nervous," Quint said with a frown. "You were
not nervous around me before, not even that first night
when I was a total stranger and barged in on you, bold as
brass, and demanded a room in your house."

Aileen shrugged, careful not to meet his eyes. "You were
only my partner in the ranch then. Nothing else."

"And now I'm your husband, and that makes you nervous?"

"Why wouldn't it? It adds a whole new dimension to our
relationship."

Quint shook his head, a little bewildered. "Women sure
are complicated. Correction, some women are."

"Meaning me?"

"Meaning you."

"Why? Because I'm not sure that getting married was
the right thing to do?" Quickly Aileen shook her head. "What am I saying? It was the right thing to do. Of course,
it was. We had no choice."

"But you wish we'd had a choice?" Quint asked softly.

"Sure. Don't you?"

"Let me ask you something. Do you think that you and
I could have shared this house forever, with you upstairs
and me downstairs, without anything happening between
us?"

Aileen didn't know what to say. When she remembered
all the dreams she'd had about Quint, she felt blood rush
to her face.

"We're attracted to each other. If you deny that, you're
lying to yourself."

When she didn't say anything, but looked at him with
wide, wondering eyes that he thought held a trace of panic,
he added, "Oh heck, Aileen. What I mean is, I'm not going
to drag you by your beautiful hair to the nearest bed, so
relax. I like my women warm, willing, and showing some
initiative."

"Oh."

"Well, it's been a long, full day. I'm turning in." Quint
bent down and placed a kiss on her forehead.

Aileen watched her husband walk out of the room. On
her wedding night. With just a kiss on her forehead. Once
again her feelings were all over the map, ranging from relief to disappointment to worry. Quint's words, showing
some initiative, scared the living daylights out of her. What
exactly did that mean?

Here she was, a well-read, educated woman, who was
abysmally ignorant about male-female relationships. It
wasn't that she didn't know about procreation, but knowing
the biological facts didn't help one bit when she faced
Quint. When she looked into those mesmerizing green eyes of his, she understood why women swooned. At least those
in novels did. Or used to. In the nineteenth century.

Get a grip. Swooning hardly qualified as showing initiative. It probably hadn't even occurred to Quint that she
lacked experience.

Aileen massaged her temples. Maybe reading or rereading some of the great love stories would give her a clue
about this man-woman conundrum. But not the Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary kind of novels. Those ended tragically. What she needed were modern love stories, featuring
heroines who knew about initiative. When she realized she
was thinking of consulting books, she rolled her eyes. She
was taking the intellectual approach. Or, as Quint would
say, she was being "teachery."

When she got home from school the next day, Quint
joined her immediately. He must have been waiting for her.

"So, how did it go? Anybody give you a hard time?" he
asked, while pouring her a cup of coffee.

"It went more smoothly than I'd hoped."

"That's good." He handed her the coffee.

Aileen sat down and with a sigh slipped her feet out of
her pumps. She inhaled the aroma. "You must have just
brewed this. I sure can use it. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Quint poured himself a cup and sat
down at the table across from Aileen. "Tell me what happened."

"I went to the office to check my mailbox. The sub had
left me notes, as I'd asked. I'll have you know that my kids
behaved reasonably well, which is good, since I'd threatened them with a week's worth of lunch detentions or the
loss of a big toe, whichever they preferred."

Quint grinned. "You're a toughie, aren't you? I bet the
kids like that even if they pretend they don't."

"I don't know about that," Aileen said. "Anyway, there
were a few people in the office, which was perfect. Too
many and my announcement might have been lost in the
noise, and too few, they'd have asked questions. I was just
steeling myself to speak when the principal came in. This
was ideal. So I said to the secretary that she might want to
change the name on my box, as it was now Fernandez. I
told her I was sorry that my married name would mess up
the alphabetical arrangement of the boxes. I handed her my
signed absence form and left."

"What was the reaction?"

"Stunned silence while I was there. What was said
later?" She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "Anyway, in my
classroom I wrote `Mrs. Fernandez' on the board. Though
they all read it, none of my homeroom students asked about
it until Norman arrived. In my mind I think of him as Norman the Nosy. Predictably, he asked if Mrs. Fernandez was
another sub. I told him that it was my new name. He said
congratulations and in the next breath asked if he could go
to his locker. After correcting his `can I go' to `may I go'
once again, I told him he could." Aileen stopped to take a
sip of coffee.

"Go on," Quint said.

"I took attendance and reminded the kids to pay attention
to the announcements which had come on over the PA.
After the baseball team was congratulated on its victory,
Norman's voice came on loud and clear, announcing that I
was now Mrs. Fernandez. He congratulated me and invited
the students to come by my room to wish me well. At first
I wasn't sure whether I should be annoyed with Norman,
but then I realized he saved me from having to tell umpteen
people individually."

"I like Nosy Norman," Quint said with a grin.

"Actually, I do too."

"How did the rest of the day go?"

"Okay, except for a couple of snide remarks about getting married just to keep my job, which I tried to ignore."
She paused for a moment. "You know, if this marriage
doesn't work out, I'll get an awful lot of snide remarks."

"Why wouldn't it work out? We have too much at stake
for it not to work out," Quint said, his voice rock steady.

Work.

That seemed to be the operative word for the next month.
With school drawing to a close, there were a lot of afterschool activities Aileen had to attend. There were finals to
give, grades to hand in, textbooks to count and store, and
her desk to empty. At home she spent the remaining daylight hours in the garden. She had never put in such a big
garden single-handedly. When graduation ceremonies were
finally over, she heaved a sigh of relief. Now she could
concentrate on her work at home.

During the week between the end of the semester and
the beginning of summer school, Aileen washed all the
windows and the curtains. She cleaned out closets and
drawers. She waxed all the floors. She worked feverishlyin part to get the work done, in part to deal with her disappointment.

Quint hadn't come to the graduation ceremony, though
he had promised. She'd had to put up with a number of
less-than-tactful comments about the conspicuous absence
of her new husband. But what made her even more angry
was the fact that he hadn't spent any time with her. Aileen
knew how much work there was on the ranch, knew he
barely took time out to eat and sleep, but still, his total
neglect of her hurt.

By Friday there wasn't a corner of the house she hadn't
scrubbed, shined, or straightened out.

Unexpectedly, that morning, Quint joined her in the
kitchen. As he poured himself a cup of coffee, he looked
around. "Everything in the house sparkles. Any special reason for your cleaning frenzy?"

"Cleaning frenzy? Is that what it looked like to you?"

"Yes. I've never seen anyone clean like that."

Aileen shrugged. "Just spring cleaning. I usually do it
just before summer school."

Quint frowned. "I thought you said you were done going
to summer school?"

"I am. I'm talking about teaching summer school."

"Oh? You haven't mentioned teaching summer school."

Quint had crossed his arms across his chest. His green
eyes were cool, guarded. Patiently she said, "I didn't mention it because I only received the call on Wednesday telling me I got the summer school assignment."

"That was two days ago."

His accusatory attitude annoyed Aileen. "I can count. I
know it was two days ago."

"You didn't think it was important to tell your husband
that you're planning to teach summer school? That this
wouldn't affect me?"

"Don't worry. You'll get your meals on time."

"I'm not worried about my meals. I managed to get myself fed for quite a few years without your help. What I am
worried about is your failure to tell me what you're doing.
You act as if you lived in this house alone."

Aileen gulped before her voice could squeak past the
anger that tightened her throat. "I act as if I lived in this
house alone? When am I supposed to tell you anything?
You're hardly in the house long enough to gobble down
your food. Am I supposed to chase you down on the range?
That is if I could even find you, since you don't bother to tell me what section you're working. You act as if the ranch
belonged only to you!"