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His attention went around the table, lingering on each woman as she’d done with the men, and then came back to his own.
“And to the angels themselves,” he added. “Who make it worth taking that leap of faith. ”
“Hear, hear,” Justin said. The glasses raised, catching the soft gleam of the fairy lights. Marguerite closed her eyes, thinking she felt the brush of wings against her hair a moment before Tyler’s lips touched hers, sweeping all need for thought away.
Epilogue
“Can we make it happen that quickly?”
“Angel, we’ve got a whole month left before the carnival. A city can be built in a month. ”
“If you have more money than God. ”
“Well, aren’t you fortunate to be married to me, then?” He grinned, slowed down to kiss her, but she spun away, pulling him onward.
“No time for your husband anymore?”
“Not a moment,” she agreed. “He’s kept me out of this part of the garden for two weeks. He told me today was the day I get to see what he and Josh have been doing.
Our anniversary was yesterday, after all. ”
“More money than God doesn’t faze an artist,” Tyler grumbled. “I even tried threats of violence. He just waved his hand at me like he was swatting at an annoying fly. He’s already made the damn thing. I didn’t realize he would take half a week to determine how to set the base and arrange the area. ”
“Well, at least you tried. That’s something. ” Showing a woman’s proclivity for changing moods, now she stopped, turned full into him and rose onto her toes to wrap her arms around his neck and give him a heated, openmouthed kiss. Her body was soft and giving, making him groan and grip her hips, pull her hard against him.
“You sure you won’t reconsider Jell-O?”
“No,” he said decisively. “Sarah will not make enough Jell-O to fill a wading pool.
She draws the line there. And I am not opening ten thousand of those little cups. ”
“Chloe will help. ”
He raised both brows. “She’s…”
“Brendan told me he’s bringing her. Or she’s bringing him. It’s unclear. ” Marguerite smiled. “But I suppose one of my employees is about to see a very different side of her boss. ”
“Baby oil. ” His eyes gleamed. “It’s much easier to obtain by the gallon and it does lovely things to female skin. ”
“It’s not too bad on males, either,” she returned. “All right, then. We do wrestling contests in the baby oil pool and then the contestants can go to the open shower area.
Only there’s a cost. Men have to pay a donation to hold the detachable showerheads and the women can’t leave the shower area until they’ve reached orgasm. And the couple that takes the longest to finish has to pay a bonus donation. ”
“I like that. ” He liked it a lot. Enough to want to whisk her away to their private bath area and practice.
“Oh, no. ” She disentangled herself and backed away, chuckling. “My gift. You promised. ”
He would promise her anything, his angel who had learned how to laugh and smile so much more easily this past year, who let him help her keep her lingering nightmares at bay with his arms safely around her through the night. And in that miraculous reciprocity that love had, she kept his at bay the same way.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” She caught everything, every change in his expression. It made it easy to learn to be open with her, in a way he hadn’t ever trusted himself to be with a woman before.
“I was thinking how different you’ve become this year. The way you laugh and smile more. ” He reached out, touched the curve of her mouth, saw her quell the instinctive urge to cover the gesture, a gesture that had become instinctive of late only when pointed out, like now.
“Will you stop loving me if I become so different from the person you knew?”
“It has nothing to do with who you are today, tomorrow or yesterday, angel. It’s about who your soul has always been, always will be. ” When she took his hand, he saw her holding him in her eyes, in her heart.
“Will Josh be waiting for us?”
“No. I wanted to give it to you when we were alone as man and wife. ” Her expression always became tender, bemused when he referred to her that way, so he did it often. Now he squeezed her as they walked companionably through the trellis, the one under which they’d taken their vows. He’d moved it to the opening of this new part of his garden. It was a transition point for the area, which he knew she would understand, being a student of Japanese tea ceremonies. He’d become somewhat of one himself this past year, as well as an avid apprentice of Japanese gardening.
Marguerite noted this area was more intimate than her favored Aphrodite area. The vegetation here was all Japanese gardening style. Delicate maples, a rock garden with the tiny bamboo rake, the sand arranged in ripples to look like water. On the side of the clearing was a wisteria arbor, whose meaning she immediately recognized. Tyler had created an outdoor machiai, a waiting room for guests to cleanse and prepare themselves before entering the teahouse. Passing through the arbor, the circular area that followed contained a mat of greenery and soft low ground cover which could become a dew garden with the water mister, concealed as a tiny statue of a rabbit. Guests would stand there to clean their feet before they would turn to the stone basin on a pedestal next to it, a tsukubai, to wash their fingers and mouths, further purifying themselves before their host or hostess led them into the teahouse. A stone bench was here for them to seat themselves to wait for that host or hostess.
And the teahouse was perfect. Simple, natural materials. No nails, all peg construction. Small, intimate, for the preferred two to four guests.
“I thought you might finally decide to perform a Japanese ceremony for me. Inside, right now, there’s a tea set with one cup. For us to share as the samurai did, to emphasize the bonds that exist between family. I thought we might go in there in a few minutes, share a cup together, make it official. ”
Family. She and Tyler were a family.
“I didn’t know Josh was doing construction now. ”
“He isn’t. Robert and I handled this part. ” He leaned forward to kiss her, holding his lips against hers in a quiet way as the cicadas buzzed and the breeze whispered through the garden area. Then he pulled back, turned her away from the teahouse, facing her toward an angle of the garden not visible until one stood here.
“This is what Josh was doing. ”
For a long moment she simply stood, staring at it. Not believing what she was seeing. Fragile dark green ferns clustered at the base of the sculpture that had been placed by a small waterfall crafted of round smooth stones. There was another rock garden here as well. Tyler released her hand, his fingers caressing hers a moment before he let her go. She felt him watching her as she went closer. A small bench was in front of the statue, a simple square wooden piece that could serve as a kneeling bench for prayer, a place to sit while one made designs in the rock garden, or a place for solitary contemplation. She stepped up onto it to bring herself closer to the statue’s face, reach out to it with trembling fingers.
In the mortal world she’d never known him as an adult, but she knew this was how he would have looked. It was all there, the structure of his face, the intentness of his eyes, even the manner in which he stood. Alert, turning as if he was about to respond to her, a light smile on his lips.
She stepped down. When she turned to face her husband, the question was in her eyes, but she was unable to speak.
“I tried to tell you several times,” he said. “But we’d get interrupted, or the timing would be wrong. There seemed no way to say it until I could show you, like this. ”
“H-How could you…”
“When I drove up that day…” Shadows gathered in his eyes. Because she knew the memory still haunted him, she reached out and he took her hand. Sitting
down on the bench, he kissed her fingers. “When I jumped out of the car I looked up, looking for you. And I saw something. ”
Tyler turned his attention to the statue, remembering. “You leaped with Natalie in your arms, your father with you and then… It was like sunlight, only it was raining.
Mac remembers it as the sun breaking through the clouds for just a moment, but I saw something else. Wings. ” He met her gaze. “A face, a length of leg. When your chute came out, he was all over it, pulling it out, open. He held on to it a moment, probably decelerating you a bit. Then he was gone as if that was all he was allowed to do. If I saw what I thought I saw, I’m sure he would have seen you all the way to the ground if he could have. ”
Marguerite stared at him. Her attention shifted back to the other prominent feature of the statue. She’d thought it had been Tyler’s compliment to her brother’s spirit, but she now recognized it as an attempt to reconstruct a memory. This older version of her brother had a pair of wings coming out of his back, all of it sculpted in bronze, every feather textured and separate. The smooth musculature of his arms and legs was defined well, though his body was clothed in a simple tunic. Marguerite was sure that was due to the fact he was her brother, since Josh’s work rarely displayed clothing for the purpose of modesty. However, he had not hesitated to show in sensual detail what a beautiful mortal man David would have been. Making her heart hurt, wishing he had lived to enjoy the love of a woman, to give some woman the gift of himself.
“I thought about it a long time, not sure of my own mind on it,” Tyler continued.
“Then, the night you went sleepwalking in my house, when you got up on the balcony, I saw him again. He woke me up, saved your life. That time I got just a quick glimpse of his face. He has a hell of an arm. Just about knocked me out of the bed. ” Tyler smiled, though his eyes remained serious. “And I haven’t seen him since. I guess he knew his work was done. ”
She nodded mutely, sinking down on his knee. Tyler put an arm around her waist, steadying her with a palm on her hip as they looked at the statue together.