Last Call (Cocktail 5)

“Stop it—just stop it! We’re talking wedding hair here, dammit, and—”

I tuned them out mostly, drinking my beer and listening with one ear as Sophia and Mimi began a heated conversation about updos versus long and flouncy. The other ear was tuned to the Glenn Miller currently crackling through the speakers. And within seconds, Simon appeared.

“Mrs. Parker?” he said, extending his hand.

“Mr. Reynolds.” I winked and stood. “Bye, girls.”

“Bye,” they said in unison as I followed my husband out onto the impromptu dance floor. Taking a cue from our original, if not technically legal, ceremony we had lanterns hung all over the backyard, bringing a little bit of fairy tale home with us from Ha Long Bay.

“Are you happy?” he asked as he spun me across the brick patio.

“Ecstatically. You?”

“Oh yeah. Especially since I got some news from my doctor today.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, babe. I’m good to go,” he whispered, pulling me tighter into his body. Oh boy. He wasn’t lying.

“Well lookie here,” I murmured, sneaking a hand down to cop a feel around what was pressing into my thigh. “Um. Wow. You’re, like, really, really hard, Simon.”

“Hmm? Oh jeez, that’s a bottle in my pocket. Literally.” He laughed, pulling out a glass bottle from his front pocket and showing it to me. Thank goodness. Not only was he frighteningly hard, the bottle was also . . . hmm . . . how do I say . . . considerably thinner than Simon was.

“Why are you carrying around a bottle?” I asked.

“I thought I’d grab some dirt, maybe from the edge of the dance floor over there, put it with our other bottles. I know it’s technically not sand, but there should be something there for tonight.”

I grinned and told him it was a very sweet idea. Years ago, Simon had started collecting sand from the beaches he’d visited all over the world, storing them in little labeled bottles and displaying them on a narrow shelf. We’d started a second shelf for beaches we’d visited together. I’d brought some home from the beach where we were married in Vietnam, and I was touched that he’d thought to commemorate tonight as well. But back to his pocket. . . .

“I’m liking where this night is going,” I said, deliberately bumping my hips into his, where there was something else taking shape. Definitely bigger than a bottle. “How fast do you think we can get everybody out of here?” I asked, only half joking.

“As soon as the ribs run out they’ll leave, right?”

“We are so classy. Serving ribs at our wedding.”

“And potato salad. Don’t forget the potato salad.”

“And pie.”

“That pie was great. Never stop making that pie. Dammit, I should have written that into the vows,” he said, dipping me low and making me giggle upside down. And there, in our own backyard surrounded by everyone we loved, he kissed me. My husband.”

“What a mess.”

“I think one of the wedding presents should be cleaning up after,” Simon groaned, surveying the damage in the kitchen.

“I don’t think that was on our registry, babe,” I said sadly, patting him on the shoulder as I walked by to the dining room. Which was still wedding gift central. “We do, however, have the latest in immersion blenders, electric carving knives, and . . . what the hell is this?” I asked, holding up a white box.

“That’s the Mr. Bacon.” Simon said proudly.

“Who is mister bacon?”

“No no, Mr. Bacon. You cook bacon in it.”

“I gathered that. Why is this necessary?” Every cat in the house had gathered either on the dining room table or underneath. They knew the word bacon. They understood the word bacon. They loved the bacon.

“You use it to cook bacon in the microwave, easy as pie. Which is appropriate, because if you drape the bacon over this little cup here, you can microwave it into the shape of a little pie. Now you’ve got a bacon pie thingie that you can fill with other stuff!”

“Who the hell bought us this?”

“Trevor and Megan.”

“No way. No way that Megan, a former Food Network gal, gave us this for our wedding.”

“Actually, they gave us two presents. They also got us the new white serving dishes you had to have from Williams-Sonoma.”

“Atta girl,” I praised, and looked once more at the box Simon was now cradling. “Trevor must have gone rogue with that one.”

“Keep making fun of my Mr. Bacon. It still doesn’t solve the problem of this mess.”

“How about a post-wedding-party party? Where we invite many of the same people and put them to work cleaning up? That way we don’t have to spend our honeymoon working,” I suggested, and Simon’s eyes lit up.

“Yeah, why are we spending our wedding night talking about bacon?”

“Well, you were the one that—”

I was silenced by a kiss as Simon crossed the kitchen in two strides, gathered me against him, and pressed his mouth to mine. I ignited instantly.

“You sure about this?” I asked, breathless as he kissed the stuffing out of me.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked, his voice thick and impossibly sexy as he trailed kissed down along my jawline, headed for my neck. Once those lips hit below the chin, I was pretty much done for. “I missed our first wedding night, I’m not missing the second.”