Looking up into his eyes she whispered, “As long as you still want me for your wife, I swear I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.”
“You already have.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s open our wedding presents. I know you’re dying to. By the time we’ve finished, dinner will be here.”
She put an arm around his waist. Together they walked to the foyer. “When did you order it?”
“That’s my secret. I told my favorite chef to surprise us.”
Terri decided she was glad there’d been a rough moment. In getting so much emotion out of her system, she felt more natural and relaxed around him. Maybe it was good it had happened. He seemed in better spirits, too.
Though he might not be on fire for her, they had an inexplicable camaraderie that brought her inner contentment. That was one of the important ingredients missing in her marriage to Richard.
Ben helped her bring the gifts into the living room. They worked out a system. She took off wrappings and undid lids, then handed the gifts to Ben to actually open with his free hand. It didn’t take long for the living room to look like a disaster area. At one point he was knee deep in paper and tissue. She ran for her camera and snapped some pictures.
They saved the family gifts until last. “Here’s one from Parker.” She handed it to him. “I think it’s a picture.”
“It’s probably an eight-by-ten photograph of himself so you won’t forget him. I guess I’d better read the card first.
“This little filly’s my favorite. She kind of reminds me of you.”
Before Terri could avert her eyes, Ben held her gaze. “Want to tell me what that’s all about?”
She smiled. “When he caught up with me in the hospital foyer, he said something about my running faster than a nervous filly being chased by a twister.”
“There’s nothing my little brother loves more than his horses. He’s just paid you the supreme compliment.” Ben lifted the framed photograph from the paper so she could see it, too.
“Oh, Ben! What a darling she is—I love it!”
“She’s a little beauty all right. As long as we’re on the subject, do you want to tell me why Parker gave Juanita Rosario money?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
TERRI would have answered his question, but just then the steward arrived from the kitchen with their wedding dinner.
Pears in champagne, tapas, spinach salad, stuffed shrimp, rack of lamb, yams in their jackets full of a buttery concoction of brown sugar and cinnamon followed by strawberry tarts laced with cordial and clotted cream.
Like happy children they ate in the middle of the mess and slowly opened the rest of their presents. Terri never wanted any of it to end.
Ben finished off the rest of the champagne in his goblet, then sat back on the couch. “I’ll have to tell Andre he outdid himself.”
“I want to meet him and thank him personally for this sumptuous feast. In fact I want to meet everyone who works on this ship. In time I hope to be able to call all of them by their first names.”
His eyes played over her features. “That’s an ambitious project, even for you.”
“But not impossible.”
“I doubt you’ve ever used that word.”
She smiled. “I was just going to say the same thing about you. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a floating city called the Spirit of Atlantis, and I wouldn’t be married to its creator.
“Do you know I once had my fortune read by a Gypsy who told me I’d be carried off by a tall dark handsome stranger? When I asked her where he would take me, she got all excited and lifted her hands. ‘You will go everywhere. You will see many sights.’ Later I found out she told that to all my girlfriends.”
He chuckled.
“I felt kind of sorry for her. It’s a hard way of life. Too bad I don’t know her address. I could send her a postcard from the ship and tell her that her prediction came true. Of course I would explain that she left out the part about his looking like a mummy first.”
“I really frightened you, didn’t I.”
“No. All I could think of was that you had to be suffering from claustrophobia. I felt like I needed your oxygen mask more than you did. Are you really okay now? I mean mentally, emotionally? If something like that had happened to me, I’d probably need counseling to get over it.”