“Yes. That’s the one. You make me feel like your teddy bear.”
“You don’t feel like any kind of bear to me,” he said softly, running his leg up hers. “You’re too thin and not enough hair.”
“Too thin?” she said in alarm, turning toward him.
“Too thin to be a teddy bear.”
“Oh.” She slipped her leg between his. “But not too thin otherwise? Not, oh, what did you say? ‘A skinny ass’?”
“I think it would be better if we both forgot what was said on the island,” he said before he kissed her.
“It is…all right to make love during the daylight?”
“I don’t know. Let’s try it and see. If the earth opens up and the devil takes us, at least we’ll go happy.”
Aria made a sound remarkably like a giggle just before J.T. began to kiss her neck.
He took his time caressing her body and she, for the first time, began to touch him too. How different his body felt from hers, no softness, just angles and planes and hard muscle. His skin was different too, coarser feeling, and his hairiness was a delight.
“Happy?” he asked, looking at her, smiling.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Perhaps I can make you happier.”
He did.
Later, they lay together, sweaty but holding each other close, both of them content.
“I have to get up,” Aria said. “I have to wash my hair and Ethel showed me how to set it in pin curls. It has to dry before this evening.”
“Pin curls? Not those awful bobby pins that poke a man’s eye out?”
She twisted away from him. “What do you know about women’s pin curls?”
“Less than you know about Count Julian’s mustache.”
“How did you know he has a mustache?”
“A guess,” J.T. said, but Aria smiled, knowing he was lying. She hummed in the bathroom while she washed her hair.
She managed with washing and rinsing her hair but the curling was beyond her.
J.T. had stayed in bed, half dozing, half smiling at the sound of her in the bathroom.
“Lieutenant Montgomery,” she called. “I need your help.”
Stubborn wench, he thought. He had told her not to call him Jarl and for some reason she refused to call him J.T., so she insisted on Lieutenant Montgomery.
Fifteen minutes later, to his utter disbelief, he was wrapping her hair about his fingers and fastening it with bobby pins. “I cannot believe I am helping you deceive me,” he muttered, making Aria laugh.
But later, as he was getting dressed, Aria ran past, gave him a quick kiss, and said she was going to cook him lunch. He leaned back and smiled. There were redeeming features to this marriage: lovemaking for breakfast and home cooking for lunch.
Later J.T. was just coming down the stairs when there was a loud knock at the door. Before he could answer it, the door burst open and General Brooks barged in. J.T. stopped on the third step, came to attention, and saluted.
“What is this?” General Brooks roared as he shoved the door shut in the face of his adjutant. He was holding aloft a copy of the Key West Citizen and pointing at the front-page photo of Aria dressed as Carmen Miranda arm in arm with Amanda, both women doing a high kick. “Is this Her Royal Highness?” he bellowed. “Is this Princess Aria?”
“Yes sir!” J.T. said smartly, eyes straight ahead.