The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [60]
“I couldn’t help it,” he sighed. “I’d reached the end of my patience.”
“What do you mean?”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Later. I’ve got work to do tomorrow. We both have to get some sleep. Okay?”
She sighed, as close to heaven as she’d ever dreamed of being. “Okay, Mack.”
She let her sated body relax and curled into him, closing her eyes. He gathered her as close as he dared and pulled the covers up.
“And don’t brood over what I just did to you,” he murmured firmly. “It’s part of the courtship ritual. We’ll restrain ourselves until it’s legal. In the meantime, you and Vivian can plan the wedding.”
She moved drowsily. “Are you really serious?”
“Deadly,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing. “I wanted you when you were seventeen and I want you now. Somewhere in the middle, I fell in love without realizing it. These past few weeks have been the purest hell I’ve ever known. I don’t want to go through them again.”
“Neither do I.” She touched his face in the darkness. “I’ll be the best wife in the world, I promise I will. I’ll take care of you until we die.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ll take care of you, too, Natalie,” he whispered. “And I’ll never stop loving you. Not even when they lay me down in the dark.”
She pressed her mouth against his bare shoulder and her hands clung to him. “Not without me, you don’t. Where you go, I go. No matter where.”
He couldn’t manage another word. He kissed her forehead with breathless tenderness and wrapped her close in the darkness.
The wedding took a lot of planning. It had to be small, because Natalie didn’t recover as fast as she’d hoped to. But it had to be big enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to see them married, and that meant having it at church. They settled on the local Presbyterian church, and Natalie decided to have a traditional white wedding gown and to let Vivian be maid of honor. Mack decided to have two best men so that both his brothers could stand up with them. It was unconventional, but very much a family affair.
With Mack in a dark suit and Natalie in her elegant puffysleeved white silk dress with a long veil and a bouquet of white roses, they were married. They exchanged rings and when Mack lifted the veil to look at her for the first time as his wife, tears rained down her face as he bent and kissed her more tenderly than he ever had before. They looked at each other with expressions that brought tears to the eyes of some of the matrons in the congregation. Afterward, there was the mad dash out the door—done leisurely to accommodate Natalie’s still slow pace—and the rice and ribbons. It was traditional in that respect, at least, and in the reception in the fellowship hall with the cakes and punch.
“You made the most beautiful bride in the world, Nat,” Vivian said as she kissed her warmly after the ceremony. “I’m so glad things worked out, in spite of me.”
Natalie laughed warmly. “We both have a lot to learn about life. Besides,” she added, “every bad experience has a silver lining. Look at what mine has produced. And not only for me,” she added wryly.
Vivian wrinkled her nose as she smiled. “Imagine me, in nursing school,” she chuckled. “But the nurses in Dallas said I was a natural, and I think I am. I love the work, the equipment, everything. I daresay if I study hard, I’ll make a decent nurse.”
“You could make a decent doctor, if you wanted to,” Mack added as he joined them to slip a possessive arm around his new wife. “We can afford medical school.”
“I know that,” Vivian said. “But I’m not really keen on spending ten years in school, just the same. Besides,” she said with a grin, “everyone knows that the nurses are the real power in hospitals!”
Natalie laughed. “You certainly would be.”
Mack kissed his sister’s cheek. “You’ve changed a lot in the past few months,” he pointed out. “I’m very proud of you.”
Vivian flushed with pleasure. “I’m proud of you, too, big brother. Even though it took you so long to realize that marriage isn’t a trap.”
He searched her face quietly. “I was afraid that it might be too much responsibility