“Get off? Where do they get off to?”
He shot her another disgruntled look and returned his attention to the eggs. “They feel sort of like . . . well, at the high point, when we made love, sort of like you felt all those times last night.” Still holding the whisk, he turned to jab a finger at her, shaking beaten egg all over the recently scrubbed floor. “The thing is, you won’t need one,
ever
.”
“Mayhap ye will be the one to need a Mr. Purple.”
That had him bugging his brown eyes at her.
“Me?”
“Yes. Rainie says if she fools around with Mr. Purple during . . . what did she call it? Foreplay, ’tis the word she used—that Parker turns into a wild man.”
Quincy’s dark face turned an odd red color, nearly the same shade as the lovely berry wine she’d enjoyed at Loni’s house yesterday. “
That
is more about my brother’s sex life than I really want to know.” He pivoted back to the stove. “Parker? Holy hell. I never would’ve guessed him to be even slightly kinky.”
“Kinky? ’Tis a word I havena heard.”
“And a word you don’t need to know the meaning of, either.” He released a loud sigh. “Back to you and me. Anytime you get to feeling like you need Mr. Purple in the drawer of your bedside table, you just let me know, and I’ll blow him clear out of the hemisphere. Got it?”
Ceara didn’t get it, but Quincy seemed so disgruntled that she decided to wait and ask the
hens
for more information. A quick change of subject seemed in order.
“So, Quincy, I canna continue to wear Loni’s camisole slip to seduce ye, because I must return it, and I was—”
“You don’t need
anything
to seduce me.”
Ceara remembered Loni saying that Clint had given her fifteen hundred dollars to buy what she’d called lingerie, and Ceara had a feeling
lingerie
must be very important to husbands. “’Tis not that I feel I need
props
,” she informed him. “I am just thinking that a wee bit of lace might be nice when I
do
wish to seduce you.”
Egg went flying again. His gaze found hers, and its hold was as physical as an iron fist. “I like little bits of lace, and I damned sure won’t complain about the bill if you want to buy some. I’ve already sent in to get you a credit card. Sky’s the limit. Buy whatever you want.”
“’Tis me wish to ask the hens to help select me lace.”
He shot her another look over his shoulder. “I could go with you.”
Ceara shook her head. “Nay, ’tis me feeling that I will need the advice of the hens.”
He considered for a moment and finally nodded. “Mr. Purple? What the frigging hell?” Then he shrugged. “Go for it. All ladies love shopping together, and no matter how crazy they get, my heart is in prime condition.” He paused in the whisking, glanced at the sausage frying in a second skillet, and added, “Well, at least it
was
.”
* * *
Life with Ceara. As frustrating as it sometimes was for Quincy, if he’d been asked how to describe the ways his world had been changed, he would have said, “In so many fabulous ways, it’s impossible to put into words.”
After a slightly rocky start, Ceara regained her confidence and approached everything in the twenty-first century with curiosity, daring, and determination. When she wasn’t with him at the stable to help with the horses, she spent time at home, creating what she called “household” mixtures for cleaning, even though Quincy had a woman who came in twice weekly to muck out the rooms. Apparently Ceara still managed to find soil or dust, and she felt more comfortable using familiar, homemade concoctions for scrubbing or polishing, which meant several drives to town for weird ingredients he couldn’t readily find—pure beeswax and lye, to name only two. She also traipsed in the fields to pick spring flowers, which he helped her dry using the dehydrating setting in his ovens, to make fragrant sachets for their clothing drawers. When she wasn’t otherwise busy, he helped her choose a contemporary flick on Netflix to better familiarize her with his century. She especially enjoyed films that featured other countries so she could orient herself in her new world, where new lands had been discovered and occupied since the sixteenth century.
She also needed to learn to cook all over again, so Quincy assumed the role of teacher, fearful that her tendency toward easy, packaged foods would become an unhealthy diet regimen for both of them. She found the gas flame burners on the Viking cooktop similar to preparing food over an open fire, so he started her off there with simple dishes, his aim to give her a sense of accomplishment before he moved on to the more complicated features of the appliances, including the steamer, the warmers, the toaster, the mixer, and even the Traeger smoker-grill in his outdoor kitchen. Some of her culinary attempts were, in a word, inedible, but when she pulled something off that tasted great, she danced around and whooped with delight.
Quincy gave her daily driving lessons on his property. Needless to say, fence repairs became a common necessity, because Ceara continued to miss the brake pedal in his truck. But, oh, well. Though Quincy dreaded the day that he turned Ceara loose on an actual road, he was practical enough to realize that she couldn’t exist in his world without learning how to drive.
It took two weeks for Ceara’s blackened eyes to return to normal, and because she detested wearing sunglasses, which she said made everything look dark, she and Quincy spent most of that time either on his ranch or visiting the homes of his family members. Ceara continued to refer to the other Harrigan females as the “hens,” and somehow the tag stuck. Not even the women themselves objected. Instead, they acted as if they’d formed an exclusive club and were glad to have a name for themselves.
Because all the hens had cell phones, Ceara asked Quincy to please supply her with one, which he promptly did, and even more promptly regretted. Ceara was fascinated by the phone’s features, which opened up the electronic world of communication to her—with a bang. At first Quincy feared that the technology would baffle her, but Ceara proved to be a fast learner. She caught on to texting and fell in love. When he worked in the arena without her, his phone went off constantly. He had assigned a special ring tone for Ceara—the sound of a hen clucking—and he heard clucking alerts about every ten minutes, which made it difficult for him to accomplish anything.
Hi,
she’d write.
What u doing?
Quincy would text back about his activity of the moment.
I miss you
. He’d zing back,
Miss you too
. Mostly he didn’t mind the intrusions and smiled, wishing he could be with her instead of with his horses. But there were other texts that sent his blood pressure off the chart and had him racing toward the house.
Black smoke coming from microwave
. When Quincy burst into the kitchen, the aforementioned black smoke had filled the large room and he saw flames dancing through the sooty viewing window of the Miele Speed Oven. Ceara had come across a jar of his all-natural peanut butter in a cupboard, had trouble stirring the oil at the top into the dry mess at the bottom of the plastic jar, and had decided to soften the whole works by nuking it. Quincy wasn’t sure what had combusted, the plastic jar or the oil, but after turning on the exhaust fans, he had to drown the microwave with foam from a fire extinguisher to put out the blaze. His pricey Miele appliance had to be replaced.
Marriage, he decided, could be a costly venture. But even as he paid the tab, he couldn’t help but smile. Ceara brought so much joy and contentment into his life that he couldn’t complain about a few mishaps, expensive though they might be.
He felt more than a slight jolt of alarm when he came in from work one day to find Ceara pecking away at the keyboard of his business computer. The system held all his ranch records, and though he backed it up onto an exterior drive daily, he didn’t trust his wife not to accidentally wipe out everything with a few clicks of the wrong buttons. He ironed out that little wrinkle by taking her into town, where she could select her very own laptop. While she played with systems, wearing the sunglasses to hide her black eyes, Quincy wandered the software aisles, searching for educational games she might enjoy, at the top of his shopping list a typing program for kids that was entertainingly interactive. That night, he set Ceara up in her own little corner of his office, got her wireless Internet connected to his home network, and left her to play while he barbecued steaks, baked a couple of spuds, and made a salad for dinner.
Later, when they sat across from each other at the kitchen table, sipping wine and enjoying the meal, Quincy gazed across the flickering tea lights that Ceara insisted on using for every evening meal and wondered how any woman with two eyes splotched with purple and soot gray could possibly be so beautiful.
“I’m in love with you,” Quincy blurted. For a second, he wasn’t sure what had prompted him to say the words aloud, but then he realized he’d been thinking them plenty, and it seemed only right to get them out in the open. “I mean, I really,
truly
love you, Ceara. I don’t know exactly when it happened—or even how it happened—but it’s a done deal for me. I’m head-over-bootheels, crazy in love with you.”
Chewing daintily on a bite of steak, she pocketed the meat in her cheek, smiled dreamily at him, and replied, “When you walk in at night, me heart does a dance, and I feel happy and warm in me middle just like when I drink champagne.”
That was it? Quincy wanted to hear other words from her, notably that she loved him back, but recalling the aftermath of their wedding night, with him expecting words from her that she couldn’t say, he decided to settle for whatever he got. If he made her heart dance, that was good. Right? And making her feel all warm in the middle wasn’t half-bad, either. They were happy together. They laughed a lot. The sex was phenomenal. He’d be crazy to nitpick.
Just then Quincy’s cell phone whinnied. A text from Clint. He opened it up.
I’m glad to know your wife likes your ass, but I think she meant the pic to go to Loni
. Quincy’s stomach clenched. Clint had forwarded Ceara’s text back to him, and he half expected to see his bare butt shining. He was relieved to see only the seat of his jeans. He glanced up at Ceara.
“’Tis bad news?”
Quincy shut down the phone. “No, good news, actually.” His wife thought he had a sexy ass. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her sending the hens texts about certain parts of his anatomy, but he sure as hell couldn’t complain about the sentiment she’d wanted to share. “Clint just sent me a little joke.”
Her cheek dimpled in a smile. “’Tis good he is feeling happy again. Loni grows stronger every day. She and Aliza walked over to Dee Dee’s fer the midday meal today, and after resting, she was strong enough to walk all the way home.”
After Quincy and Ceara set the kitchen to rights, he volunteered thirty minutes to show her the different features of her new iPhone and then gave her advanced lessons on texting. “It’s easy to send a text to the wrong person on this particular device. So when you begin a text, look at the top of your screen to check to whom your text will be sent.”
Her cheeks went rosy. She glanced up with a worried look in her blue eyes. “Have I sent texts to wrong people?” she asked.
Quincy had no desire to humiliate her, but he didn’t wish to lie to her, either. He settled on saying, “It’s just a big possibility, so from now on, when you’re texting, always check to be sure of the recipient.”
Ceara hunched her shoulders, scowling down at her phone as she tapped the screen to zip back and forth between message threads. Quincy pretended not to notice as he got a beer from the fridge. As he screwed off the cap, he stared at the bottle for a long moment, wondering when over the last four weeks he’d started drinking again. It was kind of like love, he guessed, one of those things that sneaked up on a guy and hooked into him before he quite knew how it happened.
“Oh, dear,” Ceara said, her voice ringing with dismay. “I sent the picture of yer backside to Clint, not Loni.” She glanced up. “’Tis what he texted you about.”
Quincy shrugged. “No big.” He couldn’t stifle a grin. “I’m just glad to know you like my backside.”
Ceara sighed. “’Tis verra careful I must be when I text.”
Quincy figured she probably would be from now on, and distracted her with an introduction to the universal and iPad remote controls, which operated all the stereo, television, and Internet entertainment options. At one point, Ceara had everything on at once, the stereo in party mode, with different music playing in every room, and a Netflix movie blasting on the flat screen at an ear-shattering volume. Though she sent Quincy panicked visual appeals for help, he stood at her side with his arms folded, determined to let her punch buttons until she figured it out by herself. Smart young woman that she was, she eventually mastered the devices, and blessed silence settled over the house again.
Quincy took that as his cue to carry his wife upstairs to what she still called their bedchamber to cap off the evening by making slow, passionate love to her.
* * *
The Erotic Parrot. Excitement bubbled in Ceara’s chest as Rainie steered Loni’s new Suburban into the parking lot of the establishment. The building was painted a gaudy purple with pink trim, but Ceara decided the colors were fitting, because this was the home of Mr. Purple, not to mention a huge selection of sexy lingerie, according to the hens. Mr. Purple. Ceara couldn’t wait to see an electronic boyfriend.
“I didn’t think your black eyes would
ever
go away!” Loni hooked arms with Ceara after they exited the vehicle. “It’s too bad you hate sunglasses. We could have gone shopping a week ago.”
Walking behind them, Dee Dee said, “You weren’t up to it a week ago, Loni, and I’m holding you to your promise to say something if you start to get tired.”
“I promise, I
promise
,” Loni said with a laugh. “Do you know how long it’s been since we had a girls’ day of shopping? I was thinking last night. It’s been well over six months. I didn’t miss it at the time. I think I was starting to get sick long before I realized it. No energy for fun stuff.”