Buried In Buttercream

wedding went up in smoke doesn’t mean we can’t still have a honeymoon night.”
    “Sure,” she said. “I’ll come home with you.”
    “Really?” He looked shocked. Pleased, but shocked.
    “You betcha. Right after you go into my house and tell my granny that I’m going to be shackin’ up with you tonight, wal-lerin’ in the squalor of fornication and—”
    “All right, all right. Never mind.” He pulled back and put the car in gear. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
    She laughed, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ve waited this long. What’s another week or so?”
    “Agony.”
    He drove on down the street and pulled into the driveway of her quaint, Spanish-style cottage. Every light in the house appeared to be on, and even with the windows rolled up, she could hear the Reid clan’s ruckus.
    “You don’t have to walk me in,” she said. “Just come by and get me as soon as you’re out and about tomorrow morning.”
    “What do you wanna do?”
    “Be somewhere else.”
    “Gotcha.”
    They kissed once more. Quickly. Granny Reid was probably looking out the window.
    “Van,” he said, as she started to open the car door. “That hot, sweaty jungle sex ... are you really expecting that three times a day? Because I’m not sure if I can—”
    “Oh, please. Get real. We’re both over forty, for heaven’s sake.”
    He looked enormously relieved. “Thank goodness. I don’t want you to be disappointed if ...”
    She climbed out of the car, then leaned back in and gave him a smile and a wink. “Don’t you worry about a thing, sugar dumplin’. Twice a day’ll be plenty.”
    “Oh, good. You had me worried there.”
    She closed the car’s door and watched as he backed out of the driveway and drove away. Feeling a little heart string tug when he disappeared, she wondered why. Thousands of times had she watched him drive away from her house over the years, and it had been just part of the old routine.
    But a few months ago, the routine had been shattered.
    They had rebuilt. Now, everything was different. And for the most part, it was pretty darned good, she decided, standing there next to her driveway, still feeling the warmth of his kiss on her lips.
    When she started to walk up the path toward her front door, she felt the pain in her thigh, and another twinge in her abdomen, and that half-numb, half-tingling sensation just below her left breast. That was the shot that had nearly killed her.
    And there were the nightmares.
    So, everything that was new wasn’t good. But, all in all, she felt terribly lucky to be alive.
    And even though she had planned to be on her honeymoon tonight, it was still delicious to arrive home to this tiny, Spanish-style house with its gleaming white stucco walls, red clay tile roof, and elegant draping of thick, crimson bougainvillea.
    Her mood lifted even more when she saw two beloved silhouettes outlined in her living room window. A pair of enormous black cats, Cleopatra and Diamante ... watching and waiting patiently for Mom to come home. Ah, so sweet.
    Then another pair of silhouettes ... two curly-headed children.
    The cats scrambled off their window perches and disappeared from view. One of the children, a boy, caught sight of Savannah. He pressed his face against the glass and stuck out his tongue.
    “Jack! Jillian! You get away from that window this minute!” she heard her sister, Vidalia, scream from somewhere inside the house. “And you’d better keep your mitts off those cats! If your Aunt Savannah catches you pesterin’ them, she’ll have your hides stretched across the barn by mornin’!”
    Savannah sighed. What Vidalia lacked in melodious tone, she more than made up for it in sheer ear-splitting volume. Especially when she was yelling at her twins. Either set of them.
    As Savannah opened her front door and stepped into her foyer, the seven-year-old, curly-locked duo ran to her, arms outstretched.
    “Aunt Savannah!” Jillian cried as she threw her arms around Savannah’s waist. “I’m sooo sad that I didn’t get to be your flower girl today! I practiced all day in your backyard with your roses. I got good at throwing them.”
    Okay, so much for entering those Mr. Lincolns in the fair this year, Savannah thought, imagining the devastation of her rose garden.
    “I’m so sorry, snookums,” Savannah told her. “You’re just gonna have to be my flower girl on another day.”
    “When?”
    “Soon. I promise.”
    Jack