Suddenly a Bride Read online

  “It means it’s raining hard. Next time it rains, you can say it. Anyway, I’ll drive today.”

  Chris stood up, took his suit jacket from off his chair, and shrugged into it. “Have you found someone who’d make a suitable life mate?”

  Mark shook his head as they headed for the exit. “I’ve seen lots of women, but most of them are already with men. They date on this planet.”

  “Date?”

  “It’s not being a life mate, but they go out and have a good time.”

  “What do people on this planet consider a good time?”

  They stopped in front of an elevator so Mark pressed the button to go down. “From what I can tell, people like to see a movie and eat out.”

  “Oh.”

  “I went to one of these movies because I was curious, and you wouldn’t believe how expensive it is for a two-dimensional experience. For the price they pay, they should be able to go into the movie as one of the characters.”

  Chris recalled the virtual reality books on their world. “Is that what a movie is like?”

  “Kind of, but you can’t be a part of it. You can’t change the outcome of the story if it’s awful.”

  “You’re telling me that you have to suffer through the whole thing?”

  Mark shrugged. “You can walk out of the theater or turn off the TV, but the fact that it was so horrible will stay in your memory forever.”

  Chris grimaced and turned to the doors as they opened. Once they stepped into the elevator, Chris debated whether or not to broach the subject that’d been on his mind. Finally, he decided if he couldn’t talk to someone from his planet about it, then he’d have to keep it to himself and didn’t want it hanging over his head. “You know how I met Caitlyn’s family this past weekend?”

  “Yes. You said you mopped the floor with the guys there.”

  Chris frowned. “Mopped the floor?”

  Mark laughed. “It’s another one of those Earth expressions. It doesn’t mean to literally mop someone on the floor but that you won the game without any effort.”

  Nodding, he replied, “I’d say that’s accurate. I thought it went well. I’m not sure what to think of Andy.”

  “Andy? Her brother?”

  “No. That’s Blake. Andy is her first husband’s brother.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  The elevator doors opened so they walked into the hallway, and as they headed for the exit, Chris sighed. “I’m not exactly sure. He seemed nice enough, but…”

  “But?”

  “Well, he was telling me about Caitlyn’s first husband and how much she loved him.”

  “That’s good,” Mark said. “I mean, women here actually want to be with men. They don’t have to be forced into life-mate bonds.”

  “Well, yeah. That part is good,” Chris relented as he opened the door and stepped outside. “Except she chose to marry her first husband. She didn’t choose to marry me.” He noticed his voice grew softer on the last sentence, and an unsettling feeling twisted in his gut from having said it aloud. It was one thing to think it, but saying it made it more real.

  “That’s why I’m not going to choose a woman until I’m sure she wants to be with me too. You know I didn’t want the agency to pick a life mate for me. What if I got one who doesn’t want to be tied to a husband? The agency picked a good one for you, but that doesn’t mean they pick a good one for every man who wants one.”

  Chris kept stride with Mark as they crossed the parking lot to get to Mark’s car. “I am glad they chose Caitlyn for me.”

  “Then why the hesitant tone in your voice?”

  Chris stopped by the passenger side and waited for Mark to unlock the doors before he slipped into the car. Securing his seatbelt, he shrugged as Mark got in behind the wheel. “Well, I wonder if I did the same thing you’re doing if she would have chosen to marry me.”

  Mark put the key into the ignition and started the car. As he put his seatbelt on, he gave Chris an amused look. “You’re taking for granted you would have crossed paths with her at some point. You met Caitlyn because the agency selected her. No one selected a woman for me. While I’m relieved I have many women to choose from, it’s a little overwhelming. I’m not sure which woman is interested in marriage, which is already in a relationship, or which is worth spending the rest of my life with. Marriages on this planet aren’t like the way we think of it. The life bond requires a committed relationship for life. People on this planet might get married, but a lot of them divorce.”

  “Divorce?”

  “They dissolve the marriage. Some don’t marry again but a lot of them do. Those that do remarry often take children into the new marriages.”

  “Why do they divorce?”

  Mark backed out of the parking spot and shifted the car into drive. “There are some who seem to have legitimate reasons. One woman caught her husband sleeping with her sister.”

  Chris grimaced. Thank goodness the life bond made that scenario impossible. Any man who so much as touched Caitlyn with sexual intent would be burned.

  “And,” Mark continued, “there’s a hotline for women who are being abused by their husbands.”

  Chris’ jaw dropped. “Husbands are abusing their wives? That’s awful.” What was wrong with the men on this planet? Didn’t they understand that having women with them was a blessing? He’d like to see what those men would think if they were transported to his home world.

  “I’m just saying I can see the point in some of these marriages getting dissolved,” Mark said as he turned onto the main road on the base. “But most of them are dissolved because they’re not ‘in love’ anymore.”

  Chris frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I don’t either, but some women place a high importance on being ‘in love’ with their husbands as deciding whether or not the marriage is worth staying in.”

  The tension in Chris’ gut tightened. “And how can a husband guarantee the woman will have this ‘in love’ experience?”

  Mark shrugged. “Beats me. It seems like such an arbitrary thing, and no woman will give you the same answer.”

  “You’ve been going around and asking women about marriage and love?”

  “Actually, I was interested in the marriage part. They were the ones who stressed how love factored into it.”

  “So they choose men to marry based on whether they love them or not.”

  “It’s more complicated than that. One woman I talked to said while she loved her husband, she was no longer ‘in love’ with him, so she’s dissolving the marriage.”

  What in the world was that supposed to mean? Chris had no idea what this whole ‘in love’ thing was about. He wasn’t even sure he understood the part about love. All he knew was that Caitlyn loved Randy. If she stayed married to Randy until he died, did that mean she was also ‘in love’ with him? And, more importantly, since the marriage ended by death instead of divorce, did that mean she was still ‘in love’ with him?

  Just because someone dies, it doesn’t mean you don’t cherish their memory. That’s what she said when Chris asked her why Randy’s picture was still hanging on her wall. Did cherish mean the same thing as being ‘in love’ with someone? If she had Randy’s picture up in her apartment, then it meant she still loved him, didn’t it? Pictures were important on this world. If nothing else, Chris learned that from his time at her family’s house. And she still didn’t have a picture of him. Sure, she mentioned it, but they hadn’t gotten a picture taken yet. Wincing, he rubbed his chest.

  “You okay?” Mark asked as he pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant.

  “I don’t know. I feel a weird pain in the center of my chest.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you want to check out a doctor?”

  Chris took a deep breath and thought of all the illnesses common to men on his world. “I think I’ll be okay. I don’t think it’s anything seri
ous, but I’ll keep track of it and if it continues, I’ll go see one.”

  Mark nodded. “Do you feel up to eating?”

  Chris tried to determine if he felt up to eating or not and decided he was hungry enough to have lunch. “Yes. My stomach is growling.”

  “Alright.” On their way into the restaurant, Mark said, “I think men have heart attacks on this world.”

  “Heart attacks? We haven’t dealt with heart attacks since the year 2C430.”

  “Yeah, but that was on our world. People die easier here. I think it’s because they still have a long way to go in their medical advancements.”

  The hostess came up to them and led them to a booth before she handed them their menus and left.

  “But we should be immune to stuff like that since we’re not from here,” Chris said.

  Mark shrugged. “We don’t have access to our daily nutrients anymore.”

  Chris frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. Maybe common Earth ailments would factor into his new life.

  The server came up to them and got ready to take their order, so Chris put the matter from his mind.

  ***

  The next evening, Chris found himself staring at the trunk in the bottom of the closet. This was Randy’s trunk. Caitlyn had opened it to give him a suit to wear to his interview and then again to get those cat paperweights. He wondered what else was in there.

  Since Caitlyn was eating an evening snack in the kitchen and talking to her mom on the phone, he figured it was a good time to see what kind of man Randy was. Caitlyn chose to marry Randy because she loved him. She loved him so much she kept a trunk of his things.

  Taking a deep breath, Chris knelt by the trunk and lifted the lid. He scanned the contents, not sure what he felt as he took in the photo album, a few items of clothes, some autographed records, the glass cats, and the picture that had been hanging on her wall when Chris married her. At least those were the contents in his immediate viewing range.

  Chris turned his head toward the door and heard Caitlyn let out an exasperated groan. Good. She was still talking to her mom. Leaning forward, he took the picture and clothes out, mentally cataloguing where they belonged so she wouldn’t know he went through these things. He didn’t know if it would upset her or not, but he decided it was best if she didn’t know.

  As he set the clothes and picture down, he realized Randy liked to wear jeans and t-shirts. He glanced at his striped long-sleeved shirt and slacks. Did Caitlyn prefer men who wore jeans and t-shirts? He decided to pick up the photo album, thinking it might give him a better idea of what she loved about Randy. He opened the album and blinked in surprise. More baby pictures of Caitlyn. But it wasn’t just her. There were baby pictures of Randy too. Hesitant, he flipped the pages of the album and frowned. It was a visual account of Randy and Caitlyn’s life together from the time they were toddlers to the time they started dating in high school and to the time they were a married couple. Randy only wore a suit once, and that was when he married Caitlyn. That was the same suit Chris wore to the interview. Otherwise, Randy wore jeans, t-shirts, baseball caps and a goatee. Was that the kind of look Caitlyn liked?

  Chris gulped the lump in his throat and felt another pain shoot through his heart. He set the album down and tried to gauge whether he had any other symptoms that might alert him to a heart attack. From what he researched, he didn’t notice anything that ached besides his chest.

  He paused and listened for Caitlyn, relieved when he heard her telling her mom that she was okay. Turning back to the trunk, he pushed past the annoying cats and found old rose petals in a plastic bag, two Champaign glasses from a senior prom, and a neatly folded stack of letters that had been tied together.

  Curious, he untied them and opened one. It was a letter from Randy. Chris read through it, wondering why he referred to Caitlyn as ‘baby’. The date on the letter indicated that Caitlyn was seventeen. He might not have been on this world for long, but he knew that seventeen year olds were considered teenagers, not babies. Did men on this world not understand that or was Randy on the less intelligent side?

  He shook his head and continued through the letters, realizing that Randy liked music—a lot—and talked of marrying Caitlyn. It was obvious that Randy loved her. Randy even wrote poems with lame rhyming attempts. Chris didn’t see what was so great about the poems. It wasn’t like they were literary compared to what he’d seen here on Earth from the greater authors he’d read while at Star Systems Unlimited. But Caitlyn saved Randy’s poems for a reason. Why? Did she prefer sloppy writing? Or was it because Randy wrote them?

  Chris winced and rubbed his chest. He couldn’t take this anymore. He’d seen the contents of the trunk. Now he knew what Randy was like and why Caitlyn loved him. He didn’t need to see anything else. After he put everything neatly back, he closed the lid.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On Saturday morning, Caitlyn glanced up from the steak she was cutting into when Chris entered the kitchen. She paused and took a better look at his face. “Uh, Chris?”

  “Yes?” he asked as he poured himself a glass of orange juice.

  “Did you forget to shave part of your face?”

  When he glanced in her direction, she motioned to the area around his mouth.

  He chuckled. “Oh, this. I thought I’d grow a goatee.”

  “But I thought you hated facial hair.”

  Shrugging, he grabbed a box of cereal and poured it into a bowl. “It might not be so bad.”

  That didn’t sound like him. If she remembered correctly, he claimed that facial hair made him feel messy. She watched as he took the milk out of the fridge and poured it over the cereal. Well, he was entitled to change his mind. With a slight shake of her head, she turned her attention back to the steak, french fries, and two corndogs. She hoped it would keep her full until lunch. There seemed to be no end to all the food she could consume. So far, she hadn’t gained any weight, but she worried Chris would have to roll her to the hospital once her six or however many months were up.

  He set the juice and bowl on the table across from her before he went to get a spoon. “I’d like to go back to the mall.”

  “Really? You don’t strike me as a shopper.” She ate a large bite of steak and gulped down half a glass of chocolate milk. It needed more chocolate. She picked up the chocolate syrup, added more to the milk, and stirred it with her fork before she licked it. She couldn’t remember a time when chocolate tasted this good! Glancing at Chris who bent down to tie his loafer, she quickly squirted some chocolate syrup into her mouth before he saw her. That was better. She put the bottle back down and got ready to eat a corndog. “What do you need to buy?”

  He stood up and sat at the table. “I thought I should get more clothes.”

  She swallowed the food in her mouth and drank more milk, thinking it was a lot better than before. “You figured you need more shorts, huh?” she teased. “I told you it gets humid in Florida.”

  Dipping his spoon into the bowl, he said, “I thought I’d get some jeans and a couple of t-shirts.”

  “But you hate the feel of jeans. You said they were too tight, especially around the more interesting area of your body.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at him.

  “It might be nice to have some variety,” he replied before he put a spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

  Though he spoke, she had no idea what he was talking about. She took a good look at him and recalled how he looked naked. She wondered if that was a part of the pregnancy hormones or if it was a symptom of loving sex. Even before she was pregnant, she really enjoyed having sex with him. He might possess a boyish charm, but man, he was hot!

  “So, is it okay?” he asked.

  Blinking, she forced her mind back on their conversation. “Is what okay?”

  “That I get more clothes?”

  She laughed. “You don’t need my permission to get more clothes.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Of course not. You�
��re a grown man. You can make your own decisions.”

  Glancing at her, he asked, “Will you come with me?”

  “Definitely.” They both had today off work, and there was no way she was going to spend it without him.

  He nodded and ate more of his cereal.

  She watched him, her food temporarily forgotten as she contemplated having her way with him in the kitchen. Her stomach growled, and she groaned. This was awful. How was she supposed to focus on food when what she really needed was to have sex? And how was she supposed to have sex when her stomach was nagging at her? The hunger was going to win out. She ate a couple of french fries and decided to pour some chocolate syrup on them.

  She quickly finished her meal, aware that Chris took his time. Clearing her throat, she ventured, “Does pregnancy on your planet increase a woman’s arousal?”

  Setting his empty glass on the table, he asked, “Arousal for food?”

  “No. I already know it does that. I mean does it increase a woman’s sexual arousal? You know, like when you had to ejaculate every six hours.”

  “Oh that. No. There shouldn’t be any change in arousal levels for you.”

  “Hmm…” She finished her second glass of chocolate milk and grinned. “I guess I’m just horny by nature then. Care to do something interesting?”

  “Um…” He collected his bowl and cup. “I want to go to the mall.”

  Chuckling, she stood up and put her own dishes in the sink. “So?”

  “I want to make sure I get there before you need to eat again.”

  She snuggled up to him and kissed his neck. “Come on. I might eat a lot, but I can go without eating for a few hours.”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  “Of course, I can. I might be eating enough to fill up an ark, but I’m not eating every second of the day.”