Wedding Party Collection: Don't Tell The Bride: What the Bride Didn't Know / Black Widow Bride / His Valentine Bride. Kelly Hunter
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his hands and proceeded to bring the free end of the towel down hard on the person’s back. He did it again and the towel landed lower this time. Again and again, all the way down to the toes. Every time the towel came down the body strung out on the slab twitched.
‘I might give the flagellation a miss,’ said Lena after a moment.
The masseur had downed the towel and picked up a huge bucket full of water. For someone so small and wiry, the man had some serious body strength. Next minute, he’d thrown the entire contents of the bucket at the person lying on the slab.
‘Wasn’t expecting that,’ said Lena as the person sat up, a man, now that you could see past the suds. The front of him got slammed with another full bucket of water and then he stood up and headed towards a nearby waterfall of water and half disappeared under it. ‘You reckon that was cold water?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’
She had such a shameless grin. ‘You going to tell me how I got these scars now? Because I think I’m ready to hear it. It bothers me that I can’t remember if this happened because I did something wrong.’
‘You did nothing wrong.’
‘I don’t suppose you could expand on that?’
‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Trig, I look at my body in the mirror and I see the scars and feel the aches but I don’t know how they got there. It’s really disconcerting, and I’d really like to know. I appreciate that it’s probably not a memory that you want to revisit, but please...’
Trig scrubbed his hand over his face. He had no defences against a pleading Lena. None.
‘So we were on a simple recon run in East Timor,’ he began. ‘There’d been a last-minute change of plans and we got asked to check out an old chemical weapons lab that had been reported abandoned about three years earlier. That’s what the mission profile said. We came in careful, we always do, and found cobwebs and dust. No footprints. No sign of use. No equipment on the benches, nothing in the cupboards. The place had been picked clean and left to rot.
‘We came back outside. Didn’t figure we had a problem until semi-automatic fire came at us from the left flank and took you down. I don’t know why, because there was nothing there to protect. Another two minutes and we’d have been out of there. No activity to report. Not coming back.’
‘Did we catch the shooter?’
‘No.’
‘Do we have any idea who did the shooting?’
‘No. And no rebel group put their hand up for it. The incident’s been buried. No press coverage, nothing but an internal memo or two and a verdict of random opportunistic insurgence.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘I’m not. There’s something else going on. Jared’s looking into it. Quietly.’
Lena nodded. Trig waited.
But no memories of Lena coming to Turkey specifically to find Jared were forthcoming.
Lena leaned her head back against the tiled lip of the pool and closed her eyes. ‘Think I’m going to forget the scrub-down altogether and stay right here for at least an hour. The only thing I plan on opening my eyes for is to watch you get all sudsed up and sluiced back down. I could appreciate that show a lot.’
‘Never going to happen.’
‘Probably for the best. If it did, I’d want a way of showing ownership and you’re not wearing a ring. By the way, when are we getting our rings? Because I have some more ideas on what I’d like.’
‘You do?’
‘I do. And I found a wad of cash and a couple of credit cards in my suitcase belonging to one Lena West. I can pay for rings.’
‘Gentleman pays for the rings, Lena.’
‘Since when?’
‘Pretty sure it’s a rule.’
‘Do we follow rules? As a rule.’
‘Always. What sort of wedding ring do you want?’
‘Plain brushed platinum. Wide.’
‘You want diamonds in it?’
‘Meh.’
‘What about a diamond engagement ring?’
‘Shouldn’t I already have one of those?’ Lena frowned. ‘I wish I could remember your proposal. I want to know how you got away with not giving me a ring.’
‘It’s possible I promised you the world instead.’
‘Not the moon and the stars?’
‘Those too. And Saturn’s rings.’
‘Classy,’ she murmured. ‘Were we beneath the stars at the time?’
Trig made an executive decision. ‘We were on the beach, lying in the whitewash watching baby turtles hatch and return to the sea and it was a starry, starry night.’
‘I can see how that would work. Where would you have even put a ring?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I could have a turtle engraved on the inside of mine,’ she murmured.
Or not.
‘Or the date.’
Or not.
‘What was the date of our wedding?’
‘November the twenty-eighth.’
‘I’ve been married almost a week already? Doesn’t feel like a week.’ She favoured him with a sultry smile. ‘You really are going to have to bed me soon. Because it’s criminal that I can’t remember any of that.’
‘You can’t help it. No need to dwell on it. I’m not dwelling on it.’
‘I can’t remember any of the sex we had before marriage, either. That’s assuming we had it.’
‘Lena, can we not talk about the sex we may or may not have had? I am stark naked in a public bathing pool and at some point I am going to have to get out of here without giving anyone here a heart attack.’
‘You want your wash cloth back?’
‘No! Keep the cloth. You need that cloth to cover you up when we get out of here.’
‘This isn’t working for you, is it? You’re not relaxing.’
‘Maybe if we stopped talking.’
She lasted less than five minutes. Five minutes during which he convinced himself that if he took nothing too seriously, he could probably get through another day of being married to Lena without losing his mind.
‘So would you wear a brushed-platinum wedding band?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Not a lie. More of a theoretical answer to a theoretical question.
‘There could be a glossy strip running through it like a wave. And there could be diamonds, little ones, like a little wavy strip crosswise across the band. Or little sapphires the colour of the sea. But not the deep blue sea. The light blue sea.’
‘I see.’ And he did.
‘Maybe we should consult a jewellery designer.’
‘Maybe. Are you tired?’ he asked. ‘I’m tired.’
‘Hot water does that. May I ask you another question that I can’t remember the answer to?’
‘Shoot.’
‘It’s December the fourth already and we’re in Turkey on our honeymoon. How long is our honeymoon going