Chapter 3

November and December came and went, with the Dalton family holiday gatherings, which now included Prudence, Constance and the twins. Tim too, since he and Constance had become engaged.

Bev was three months pregnant, and radiant. Bill was bursting with pride. Mary was five months pregnant with her second child, and happy that this one was conceived with Fred, her husband.

Linda had Paul over for Thanksgiving dinner, and it was obvious they were completely caught up in each other. Repetitions of her oral love for him had convinced him, beyond doubt, that she was completely honest about how she felt for him. The rise in his level of self confidence had led him, on his own, to offer to reciprocate, which she had gleefully accepted.

Ted, at various times, sat with various women. An observer would have thought he belonged to Prudence at one dinner, to Mirriam at another, and to Flo, if they’d been there when he sat with her. Her younger sisters, long used to the odd relationships that the Dalton women had with men, took everything in stride.

Suzie was sixteen and, like Flo had at that age, seemed to have no interest in boys or men whatsoever. She was very serious about her studies because, of them all, she wanted to go to college. A scholarship was the only way that would ever happen and she pursued grades that would hopefully get her a scholarship, with single-minded attention.

Suzie did show an interest in Paul, but it didn’t threaten Linda in the slightest. Suzie simply saw, in Paul, the brilliance and capable mind that made him at the top of their class. They also had hundreds of things in common, in terms of interests. Suzie was fascinated with Biology, and Paul was, more and more, thinking of going into Medicine.

Negotiations, of a sort, were conducted, as Mirriam, Prudence and Flo debated Ted’s future fate. Ted was even there for one such session, but his opinion was not asked for. Somehow, all of them knew that he would formalize his relationship with Flo. What shape that would take, was all that remained in question.

When Mirriam opened her Christmas present from Bobby, she thought it was going to be jewelry, because it was a tiny box. She unfolded the paper inside, to see a set of keys. She looked around, bewildered, and Bobby calmly led her to the window. Outside, parked in the yard, with a big red ribbon wrapped all the way around it was a brand new 1973 Chevrolet Impala.

“The truck will work fine for farm stuff,” he said, his hands on her hips, as she stared at the beautiful car. “But with the baby and all, I thought this might be a little more comfortable.”

“You can’t afford that!” she gasped.

“Yes, I can,” he said. “I’m doing just fine, and you deserve this.”

By December, Flo knew she was pregnant, but hadn’t told anyone. She went, by herself, to the doctor, who sat for a moment, and stared at her when she told him why she was there.

“I’m just going to open a branch clinic in your house,” he sighed. “You Dalton people are going to provide for my retirement, and I just want you to know I appreciate it.”

Florence giggled, and they got down to the business of confirming what she already knew.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” said Flo. It was New Year’s Eve, and they were having a quiet celebration at the farm, except for Bobby, who was at a party at Chumley manor. They were sitting, and watching the New York City countdown on TV.

Ted turned to her, smiling. “Shoot,” he said.

She pulled him up and took him into the dining room, which was, at the moment, empty. She sat, and gestured to the chair next to her. He sat too.

“It seems that I should have been more regular about taking my birth control pills,” she said. She hadn’t had sex with Bobby since Halloween night. She’d avoided it completely, based on her examination of her pill case, the next morning. And, she’d taken her pills ... finally ... religiously every day since.

He blinked. He’d been through this with Mirriam, before, and his hopes had been dashed. He didn’t have any reason to believe that Flo had another lover. The thirty or forty times they’d made love since out behind the barn, had suggested she was dying for him ... each time.

Florence, though, was well aware that, throughout her mother’s pregnancy, Ted had hoped that the baby was his. It had been obvious to them all that it was not. It had been obvious to Flo that it was Bobby’s. That was another reason she had stayed away from him. Besides, he was busy with other women, she suspected, and with Linda, which she knew.

“There is no chance that this baby is anyone else’s but yours,” she said, her voice quiet.

The hope in his eyes made her want to drag him off to her bedroom that very instant, but she controlled herself.

“How long?” he asked.

“My due date is July thirty-first,” she said.

She smiled as she saw him do the calculations in his head, counting backwards. His eyes got big.

“Star gazing with you is apparently very dangerous,” she said, smiling.

Then she got more serious. “I know how you feel about getting married again - I’m not asking for that - but I just thought you’d want to know.”

He stood up and paced, his hands in his back pockets. This was no new thing he was thinking about. He had thought about almost nothing else for the last month. Spending more and more time with Flo had made him re-think his casual attitude about the relationships he had with Mirriam and Prudence. The negotiations had resulted in him still being welcome in both women’s beds, though with much less frequency than he’d been there in the past. Both women accepted him only when they knew they were at their lowest chance of fertility. He hadn’t minded, because Florence had taken over everything else, basically.

But the tentative, if comfortable relationship he had with Mirriam and Prudence was also missing something. Basically, he had finally realized that it lacked commitment. He hadn’t thought he needed that, or that he’d want to give it, either, for that matter.

Flo made him feel differently. He turned to her.

“Look,” he said softly. “I know what you’re going to think, when I say this, but it’s not what you think, okay?”

“Okay,” said Flo.

“I know how ever since I’ve gotten here, I’ve catted around, and talked about how bad marriage was and all that. But time changes all things. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, Flo. It isn’t because of what you just told me. It’s that too, but not all that. I want to know you’ll be there. I want to come home to you ... sleep with you. I want you to think about giving me a chance to show that I can be a decent husband.”

The women knew him better than he knew himself. That was one of the things that had bothered both Mirriam and Pru. They had seen this evolution in his attitude, and both were, at different times, afraid he’d ask them to marry him. Their attitudes about that had not evolved. So Flo wasn’t as surprised as he thought she would be. She stood up, put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“I’d be proud to be your wife,” she said.

Before he could say another word, she pushed him away.

“Don’t you go anywhere!” she yipped. “I’ll be right back!”

She all but ran to the kitchen. Shrieks of female joy erupted. It sounded like someone’s favorite football team had just scored the winning touchdown in the last ten seconds of the Superbowl.

Then there was the stampede, as Mirriam, Prudence and Florence all ran back into the room to envelop him in soft, female flesh.

It was about one in the afternoon, and New Year’s day, that Flo opened the door to Bobby’s room, and saw that he was there, still sleeping. She’d gone to bed ... with Ted ... before Bobby had gotten home. Ted had gotten up and eaten breakfast with those who were up, but needed to go check his furnace, which had been giving him trouble lately. He’d had to re-light the pilot light twice, now, and it was bitterly cold outside.

Most of the others had gone back to bed. The twins were watching a football game on TV.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked Bobby’s bare chest. She had always been amazed at how warm he was, even in winter, like this, with only a sheet over half of him. He woke up, and rubbed his eyes.

“Haven’t seen much of you, lately,” he said, yawning.

“I was too busy getting pregnant with Ted’s baby,” she said, as if she had only said “I’ve been busy.”

He blinked, and his eyes came open wide.

“You’re kidding!” he said.

“Nope,” she said, still tracing her fingers over his chest. “If you’d have been here, it probably would have been yours. I forgot to take my pills three days in a row.”

“When did all this happen?” he asked, looking up at her.

“Halloween night,” she said.

“But that was your first date!” he said.

“Uh huh.”

“Wow. How’s Mamma taking it?” he asked.

“She’s delirious. She was afraid he was going to ask her to marry him, instead of me.”

Bobby did a double take. “He asked you to marry him?” His voice was up an octave.

“See what happens when you neglect me?” she said, smiling.

“I know,” he said. “This thing with the Chumley women has really been taking a lot of my time.”

“I’m going to want to hear about that some day,” she said.

“Maybe,” he said. “So what did you tell Ted?”

“I told him I’d marry him.”

Bobby grinned. “I knew you had a brain in that head somewhere.”

She slapped his chest.

“It’s complicated. I’m not taking him away from Mamma and Pru. They still get him sometimes, but I’m not sure he’ll let us...” She didn’t finish.

“Sweetheart,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her palm. “I only gave you what you needed. If you don’t need that any more, I’m happy for you!”

“But I still love you,” she sighed. “I’ll always love you. I’ll always love what we did. I’m going to miss that. He’s so different from you.” Her finger traced the shape of Ted’s bent penis on Bobby’s stomach. She wasn’t aware she had done it.

“We’ll see what happens,” He said. “Don’t worry about that. You have everything to be happy for.”

“Okay,” she said. “Can I at least have another kiss?”

They should have known better. The kiss turned into a grope, which turned into her shirt falling open and, since she was braless, her nipples getting sucked. In no time at all she was heaving up at him, pushing her pussy up onto his long stiff prick, that felt so completely different in her than Ted’s did.

“I wish it had been me,” sighed Bobby, as he gushed into her.

She didn’t say it out loud, but her thought was, “Maybe someday it will be you,” as she felt him spurting.

She got up and got dressed just in time. She went downstairs, as Ted was coming in the back door, complaining that his furnace had gone out again. Flo simply went back to Bobby’s room and asked him if he could fix that.

“It’s New Year’s Day,” said Bobby.

“You owe me,” said Flo.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Bobby. “It’s probably the thermocouple, and I can’t buy a new one today.”

“You don’t have one?” she asked, expecting him to be able to do miracles.

“I’ve got a used one in the tool shed,” he said. “It came out of a furnace that got thrown away. I can try putting that one on.”

She kissed him soundly, and then stood back up.

“Well get up then. My fiancée needs you! I don’t want to go to a cold house tonight, when I go home with him.”

They all trooped over to Ted’s house. Fifteen minutes later Bobby re-lit the pilot light.

“Now we wait,” he said. “We should know in ten or fifteen minutes.”

It stayed lit, and Flo just stayed there, when Bobby left.

There were two more “last times” for Florence, as she did very little planning for a very simple ceremony that would take place in the farmhouse where she grew up. They had no reason to wait, as far as Flo was concerned, so they set the date for the last day of January.

As scandalous as it would have been, if people had found out about it, Flo basically just moved in with Ted, during January. She stayed there at night too, which was the scandalous part. She only spent two nights of the month at the farm.

Both nights, she slept with Bobby.

“It’s like I have to have sex every single day!” she moaned, as she came to him the first time. “I’m not supposed to be doing this with you!”

He shushed her and then made her wiggle with passion. They slept and he made love with her again in the morning.

The second night, she just came in, stripped and climbed on top of him. She hadn’t figured out yet, with Ted, how to delay her orgasms ... how to stay at the peak of pleasure, without tumbling over the cliff. With Ted, when the tip of his prick scraped her G-spot, she just had orgasms ... for as long as he kept going.

That was the night before the wedding, when she decided she’d do at least one thing traditional about getting married. That one thing was not letting the groom see her before the ceremony.

She was the second Dalton woman to walk down the aisle, to meet her groom, with her brother’s sperm in her. She was the first, though, who was walking down the aisle pregnant with a baby that actually belonged to the groom.

February of 1973 was a cold month, and people stayed outside in it as little as possible. Bobby stayed busy, because the cold froze pipes that had to be thawed, and broke pipes that had to be repaired. He had three customers who couldn’t shovel their own snow, mostly elderly folks. He never seemed to remember to charge them, when he was finished, and moved on to another job.

His Friday nights were the same, each spent at the Chumley manor. Felicity and Annie were now about five months along, showing nicely. Naked, their gently swelling bellies were almost mesmerizing to Bobby, and he spent hours stroking those bellies, and talking to the children inside them. Both women, of course loved it when he paid homage to their ultimate femininity, and then slowly abandoned the baby, to pay homage to their other feminine parts as well.

Both learned to ride him, often doing so for an hour at a time, talking to him about all kinds of things. Both learned how to inflame him, and make him spurt, even when he didn’t want to, yet.

Chester had never seemed healthier. At eighty-one, he walked more, and spent more time on the grounds of the estate, planning a garden that he intended to plant in the spring. He, too, ran his hands over his wife’s swollen abdomen, as he kissed her for hours and thanked her for giving him this gift. That it was another man’s baby didn’t faze him at all. He knew that the child in that belly would grow up believing he was its father. Later, when he was gone, perhaps Felicity would tell the truth about it. He wasn’t worried about that. He’d get his chance, however belated, to be a father ... to act like a father.