Dream a Little Dream (Chicago Stars, #4)(102)

Kristy smiled and nodded.

They found a Pentecostal minister who agreed to marry them, but Ethan conducted the ceremony. He was the one who asked her to repeat the vows he recited, and he was the one who spoke his own vows in a deep, intense voice that came directly from his heart.

It was Kristy, however, who spotted the Holiday Inn not far from the outskirts of the Cumberland Falls Resort State Park.

They’d barely set their suitcases down before she tackled him, and he fell backward onto the king-sized mattress. She looked so eager, so excited, so thoroughly pleased with herself, that he laughed.

“Gotcha!” she said.

While he tried to catch his breath, she tore at the buttons on his shirt, then lunged for his belt buckle.

He gazed up into the beautiful, intent eyes of his virgin bride. “Let me know if I’m scaring you.”

“Shut up and take off your pants.”

That cracked them both up. But they didn’t laugh for long; their mouths were too busy with hot, wet kisses. And since neither of them had the patience for slow disrobing, they were naked and groping each other within seconds.


“You’re beautiful,” she sighed as she stroked him. “Just the way I’d imagined.”

He cupped the spill of her breasts and tried to find his voice. “You’re even more than I imagined.”

“Oh, Eth . . . That feels so good.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I want you to do that a lot.”

“Remind me if I forget.”

She made a throaty moan as he ran his thumbs over her nipples.

“Do that again. Oh, yes . . .”

“Lie back, baby, and let me play with you.”

She did as he asked. His caresses grew more intimate, and she sobbed in her passion. “Oh, Eth, I want to do everything.” She moaned. “Yes. That. And I want . . . I want to say everything. Dirty words. I want to say dirty words. And dirty little phrases.”

“Go ahead.”

“I—I can’t think of any.”

He whispered a really good one in her ear.

Her eyes widened, and she climaxed beneath his hand.

Even though he was so hard he ached, he laughed because he was the only person in the world who knew her secret.

Kristy Brown Bonner was easy.

She calmed, but he was ready to explode. He longed to bury himself inside her, but, at the very last moment, he remembered something he’d forgotten to discuss in their hurried session of premarital counseling. He stroked her hair and noticed his hand was shaking from the effort it took to restrain himself. “Are we worried about getting you pregnant?”

“I don’t think so.” She regarded him searchingly. “Are we?”

He settled his weight between her thighs, kissed her, and thought of the babies they’d have. “No, we’re definitely not.”

She was tight and new and wet. He tried to take his time entering her, but she would have none of it. “Now, Eth . . . Please stop messing around. Oh, please . . . I want to remember this forever.”

He drove home, and, as he fully possessed her, he gazed down into her eyes. They were filled with tears of love.

His own vision blurred, and the depth of his love for this woman brought the ancient words of that first couple to his mind. “Flesh of my flesh,” he whispered. “Bone of my bone.”

She caressed his hips with her palms and whispered back, “Flesh of my flesh. Bone of my bone.”

They smiled. Their tears mingled. And when they came together, both of them knew that only God could have designed something so perfect.





“Don’ get too close, Chip.”

“What are you doin’?”

Gabe gritted his teeth. “I’m tearing off the porch so I can build a deck here.”

It was Saturday afternoon, and Gabe was supposed to be watching Chip. It was the first time Rachel had left him alone with the kid, but he knew she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t needed to run some mysterious errand in town. Gabe suspected that she was glad to find an excuse to get away from him. Ever since she’d made her announcement that she was leaving, she’d done her best to keep her distance.

He rammed the crowbar underneath one of the old rotted boards and shoved down on it. He was furious with her. Just because she couldn’t have everything the way she wanted, she was deserting him. Deserting them! He’d thought she was tough, but she wasn’t tough enough for this. Instead of sticking it out and trying to solve their problems, she was running.

“What’s a deck?”

He regarded the child impatiently. Just as he’d gotten into the physically satisfying work of tearing off the back porch, Chip had abandoned the hole he was digging in the garden and come over to bother him.

“It’ll be like the place where we ate outside when we went to Rosie’s house last Saturday. Now step back so you don’t get hurt.”

“Why are you doing it?”

“Because I want to.” He wasn’t going to tell the kid he’d started the project because there wasn’t much left to do at the drive-in these days, and he had to keep himself from going crazy.

Just walking into that ticket booth last night had dragged him down. It was only his second weekend in business, and he already hated every minute of it. He could have killed some time with Ethan if his brother hadn’t taken off yesterday for a conference in Knoxville, and Cal was all wrapped up with his family, so Gabe had decided to keep himself busy by building this deck.