Chapter 18

Our official marriage started auspiciously with a trip to the steakhouse, and soon, we were at the door of OUR home. I opened the door. "Come here, Mrs. Richards," I said. I scooped her into my arms and carried her through the door and deposited her on the bed. "There. Now make me a sammich!"

She laughed. "Nuh-uh. It's time for YOU to consummate our marriage."

An hour later I staggered out of bed behind her as she headed to the shower. She giggled. "Do YOU feel consummated? I feel consummated!"

"Oh, gosh, yes! I do believe that we have consummated each other pretty soundly."

After our showers, she was a beautiful sight, hair clean and brushed, face clean, eyes twinkling, as I finished shaving. I walked out of the little bathroom into her waiting arms.

"Married, Dan! We're married! For real!" She kissed me.

"Yes, we are. Serious stuff, you know, babe! Forever stuff!"

"You held my hand! And kissed me in broad daylight on the courthouse steps! And Wednesday we're going to meet your family!"

"Yes we are."

"It's like a fairy tale."

"All the way to the "happily ever after" part!" We kissed again.

"It's only nine, she said. "wanna play couple hands of rummy?"

"Sure," I said. "It's what old married couples do." She giggled. And beat me. Bad.

Tuesday morning I kissed her when the alarm went off. "Your first day as a married woman," I said.

"Mmmmmm" she purred as we kissed. "We shoulda took the day off."

"Well, when I promised your labor this week, I didn't know we'd be married..."

"'S okay. Let's get in gear!" And we dressed and headed up the road for breakfast. In the truck, she said, "I'm not going to make a big deal in front of work people yet."

"You are a wise person. It may be a shock to find that I married my apprentice. Not to mention all those broken hearts, those old guys lusting after your spectacular young body."

"Hmmph!" she spat. "I am NOT the "fantastic body" type, in case you haven't' noticed. Most guys want big tits on fantastic bodies."

"Well excuse me, lady, but you have PERFECT tits. I can't help it if the world may desire otherwise. Besides, you have a brilliant mind, a fantastic sense of humor, and the most astounding face imaginable. And a cute ass that is made for parading around in jeans."

"I really don't care what other guys think, baby. I want to be YOURS."

"You are. I got a paper that says so."

We parked at the restaurant and went inside for breakfast. Forty-five minutes later we were walking in the office trailer. Sara was just ahead of us.

Cindy finished Sara's filing right after lunch. I spent the day tying up loose ends, making sure everything was at a good stopping point for the five-day holiday weekend. Mid-afternoon, when Cindy finished with Sara, we did a tour of the jobsite, and then headed back to the office trailer. Because I was told, "Get Cindy out of the office until three o'clock."

When we walked back in, several of the engineers and the project manager and Sara were standing around a cake with "Way to go, Cindy!" iced on it. Cindy was surprised. So was I. I knew something was up, but not exactly what. This was special. Cindy certainly thought so. And a couple of the engineers were standing there holding t-shirts, one from the University of Alabama, the other from Auburn.

The boss was an Auburn graduate. "But if you go to Alabama, I won't hold it against you, little lady," he said. He presented her with a certificate of appreciation and then a check. "I am proud to present you with a paycheck for your first job, Cindy. I hope I will pay you for your first engineering job, too!"

Sara gave her a big hug. "I'm proud of you, darlin'", she said.

My mechanical engineer counterpart bent over and Cindy kissed him on the cheek. He returned it. "First time I ever kissed an engineer," he said.

One of the other guys said, "First time YOU ever kissed something that didn't inflate!"

"Guys! This is a young LADY!"

"Oops! Sorry!" he said.

And Cindy leveled the crowd when she said, "That's okay, Mister Bob! He told me you don't date within your species. What'd he mean by that?" And she smiled demurely as Bob squirted cola out of his nose.

We said good bye and left. Helen was in her office when we got back to the park. We walked in, hand in hand. She saw us. "You make a pretty couple, now that you can hold hands in public."

"Helen," I said, "thank you. I can't ever thank you enough! I just wish we were going to be here for your wedding."

"Oh, bull," she said. "You guys had plans already. It's just gonna be me and Charley and a couple of or friends. Don't give it a second thought!"

"But still..."

Cindy piped in, "Mizz Helen, I wanna thank you too. You took care of me for all these years. And you gave me Dan!"

Helen smiled. "I didn't give you Dan. You found Dan yourself. Like two magnets, you two. And this turned out very well, I think."

"Yes, ma'am," Cindy said, tiptoeing to kiss me. "I am soooo lucky."

Helen looked at me. "And he's lucky too. You two just be good to each other. You'll last forever."

I took my wife to our trailer. We inventoried and packed for the next day's trip. She picked up my cellphone and punched the pizza delivery and ordered one for our dinner. After pizza, we gave the little trailer a thorough cleaning, emptying trash, cleaning out the fridge, getting ready for our planned absence. After that exercise, we took our normal turns in the shower.

When I got finished shaving, I exited the tiny bathroom to find Cindy brushing her freshly dried hair. This was normal. The faint scent of a tiny drop of her perfume wafted in the air. That was normal. What wasn't normal is that she was wearing my pajama bottoms.

"What's this?" I asked.

"I've been thinkin'," she said. "Tomorrow night we'll be in your house..."

"OUR house. You're my wife, remember?"

"Okay, so it's the first night for us in OUR house, so I think we should save up to make it extra special."

I kissed the top of her head. "That's admirable thinking, dear, but YOU make things extra special."

She turned and wrapped me in her arms. "Dan," she said, looking up at me, "I still can't believe it. We're married."

"I know. It's like I hit the lottery or something." I kissed her pink lips.

"Go put some pants on, babe! You make it difficult for me to maintain my resolve, walkin' around half-hard like that!"

"Okay," I said. "A man is wise to listen to his wife."

"And get the deck of cards. We have time for a couple of hands of rummy." I beat her by seventy points. Winner gets a kiss from the loser.

We crawled into bed with the thermostat set at fifty-five, punched up Boccherini on the stereo, snuggled our uncharacteristically clothed bodies together and drifted off to sleep.

0600! Alarm came alive to classical music and I rolled over into Cindy's arms. We kissed and then rolled off opposite sides of the bed. A couple of quick tugs and the covers were neatly flattened and we dressed. Twenty minutes later I loaded our bags into the truck and we locked the trailer behind us. Breakfast was at the normal place, the waitress greeting us as regulars. When I paid the check I told Cindy she'd better make a bathroom stop now because we had a three hour flight ahead of us. I hit the men's room myself, and then we were on the road to the airpark.

Together we rolled the plane out of the hangar and loaded our bags into the cargo door, then I backed the truck into the hangar.

"Okay, punkin," I said to Cindy, "did we forget anything?"

"Just so you have the keys to the hangar and the truck in your pocket, I think we're good!" She helped me push the hangar doors closed and we locked the truck inside to await our return.

We pre-flighted the plane and climbed in, and five minutes later the wheels left the runway and we turned west toward Louisiana and home. We climbed to eighty-five hundred feet and set up an economical cruise that ate up the miles. I had my arms crossed, letting Cindy fly, and when the plane was trimmed and cruising, it almost flew itself.

"You take the yoke," she said.

"You have a problem? Something wrong?" I looked at her. She was smiling.

"Just something I want to do." She took off her headset and unbuckled her harness, turning sideways in her seat. Her hand reached for my zipper. "Eighty-five hundred feet. That's way more than a mile. We're going to do our own Mile-High Club."

"B-but we can't, baby. One of us has to fly."

"You fly. I have a goal." And my zipper came down and fingers dragged my dick out. Her head bent down between my belly and the control yoke and I felt her lips close over the head of my dick. She sucked me to hardness, then popped up, smiling as she pushed my stiff dick back into my pants. "There!" she announced brightly. "That's all you get. But you got it!" And she stretched over and kissed me, then sat back in her seat and buckled back in.

When her headset was back in place, she said, "I thought about that half the night!"

"I like the way you think, angel!"

She grinned. "I like the way you taste, bub!"

We crossed the Mississippi River at eighty-five hundred feet, less than an hour from our destination. "That's another 'first' for me," Cindy said. "I've never been west of the Mississippi."

"You are now, babe." Forty-five minutes later the engine was stopped on the apron of a little airfield near my hometown in Louisiana, and I was tying down. Tootie, by cellphone call, was ten minutes away, and we were waiting in the airport office when she showed up. I left instructions to have the plane's tanks topped off for our departure on Sunday.

Tootie pulled up outside and we walked out the door to meet her, each carrying a bag. I dropped mine to hug her in greeting. Cindy stood beside me. Tootie said, "And you're my brother's new wife!" She hugged Cindy like a long-lost child.

"Damn! Brother, she's a cutie!" Tootie said. "Where'd you find her?"

"In the pool at an Alabama RV park!"

Cindy giggled. "Poor thing was there scopin' out the babes! An' I'm the only one that showed up!"

Tootie laughed. "Oh, she's a smart ass, too!" She smiled at Cindy. "Babe, I like you already!"

We tossed the bags in Tootie's SUV and she drove us to my house.

"I opened it up Monday and let it air out, then gave it a good vacuuming, and put out some air freshener. It wasn't bad at all." We rounded the corner to my, make that "our", house.

"There it is, baby," I told Cindy. "That's home base."

"Looks nice, Dan! Really nice!" We parked in the drive and walked in. Cindy looked around. "Nicer than I expected."

I turned to Tootie. "Cindy 'n' I have been living in my travel trailer. It doesn't give me room to display my mad decorating skills. Hey, before you leave, lemme make sure my car starts."

"Is that a hint?" Tootie laughed.

"Hint?"

"Oh, don't be coy, Dan!" Cindy giggled. "She thinks we want to be alone!"

"Oh, no, that's not it at all. I didn't want to keep you here if you had something' else to do."

Tootie snickered. "Uh-huh..."

"Seriously!" I said, walking through the kitchen and through the door into the attached garage. Cindy followed me. I hit the switch to open the garage door and then opened the door of my SUV. I stuck a key into the ignition and turned it. It started on the first try. "Cool!" I said.

Tootie said, "You've been gone since the middle of summer and your car starts?"

As I popped the hood I said, "Sure! I'm smart enough to leave a charger on the battery." Opening the hood I disconnected two clamps and hung them on the wall next to the charger.

"Yep!" Cindy laughed. "That's my Dan. Takes care of things!"

Tootie sighed. "Okay, then I can go now. Ya'll gonna come over for supper? We have a gumbo on the stove."