Bring Me Home for Christmas

though she had time for a leisurely bath and relaxation before he returned, she went to the phone and called her mother. “Mom, tell me the story of when you fell in love with Dad…”

    Beverly fell in love with Alex Timm when she was twenty-one. She was at an Army-Navy game in Philly. She was a senior at George Washington University and it was a big game. Beverly’s dad had been Navy, so she was tied to that team and had driven from Virginia with a bunch of girlfriends.
    “Your dad’s ship was dry-docked in Baltimore and he was at the game in uniform—those beautiful Navy whites. I know I shouldn’t tell this to my daughter, especially since I keep advising you to stop being so ridiculously romantic and use your head, but I think I fell in love with him the second I saw him. I was certainly down for the count when he and his friends took me and my girlfriends out after the game. I’d just never met anyone like him. He was…how can I put it? Gallant. Funny. Handsome. And on shore leave for a few weeks.”
    “But you knew right away?”
    “I thought I did,” she said. “But after a few weeks, he shipped out and we were separated on and off for the next two years. A long-distance relationship.”
    “When did he ask you to marry him?” Becca asked.
    “When he was stationed in San Diego. He flew out to Virginia. He only had a few days of leave. He told me then that he didn’t want to be away from me any longer and he’d tried his best to get assigned to Virginia. But it didn’t work out, and there was nothing he could do but beg me to marry him. By that time, I’d graduated and had a pretty stable job at a newspaper. And we lived on different coasts. So he asked me to take a chance on him and come back to San Diego with him.”
    “And you did.”
    “Not immediately. I had to think about it. I was born in Virginia! And my parents were completely opposed to the idea—they were old-fashioned. There’s a courtship, a ring and a wedding first. It wasn’t a hard decision, it was a terrifying one.”
    “How long did it take you to decide?” Becca asked, even though she’d heard the story a few dozen times.
    “Three weeks,” Beverly said. Then she laughed. “I guess that shows you that at twenty-three I didn’t have a whole lot of willpower. And when I packed to leave, my father said, ‘Make no mistake, you do this against my approval.’”
    “Wasn’t it hard for you to make such a big change?”
    “Of course,” Beverly said. “And it was a huge adjustment. San Diego was nothing like Virginia. I had to make all new friends, your father’s friends. I planned a wedding without my parents. In fact, my father was so opposed to the idea of me living with my fiancé, he refused to help pay for the wedding.” She laughed a little. “For a while, he said he wouldn’t even attend unless it was in Virginia, but my mother put her foot down. It was a wonderful and scary time.”
    Her mother stopped talking and silence enveloped them both. Wonderful and scary, thought Becca. That just about summed it up.

    When Denny entered his apartment, only the bathroom light was on. Becca was curled onto her side, snuggled into the quilts, her hair fanned out over the pillow.
    He ran his cold hands under hot water in the bathroom, stripped and crawled in beside her, spooning around her back. He slid an arm over her waist and pulled her against him. “Sorry I’m late,” he whispered. “Those people didn’t want to leave.”
    “Hmm,” she murmured.
    “Are you asleep?”
    “Yes,” she whispered back, wriggling against him. “Shh.”
    He lay still and quiet for a while, his face against her hair, inhaling her sweet scent. Minutes passed before he whispered, “You awake?”
    “Barely,” she said.
    “I think I forgot to do something…”
    She rolled onto her back. “Are you leaving again?”
    He grinned down at her and shook his head.
    “What did you forget to do?”
    “I forgot to make love to you.” Just pressing up against her, even against those boring flannel pajamas, he was already aroused.
    “Are you really waking me up for sex?” she asked him.
    He grinned as he nodded, looking down at her beautiful face. He covered those soft, pink lips with a searching kiss. “I need you,” he said. “I want to be inside you.” He had never wanted anyone the way he wanted her. In fact, he had never wanted anyone else. “If I say please?” he whispered against her cheek.
    “I can hardly say no,