Chapter 14
It was quite a while later before I heard sounds from inside the cabin, letting me know that Paula and her mom were back from wherever they had been. By that time, I'd started to work on a sketch of all three women and had really gotten involved with it. Since I really wanted to get more done as quickly as I could so I wouldn't lose the concept I had in my mind, I didn't get up to check on the sounds from inside the cabin. At the same time I was feeling a bit insecure about that sketch, I really didn't want any of the women to see it yet.
You see, all of them were in the vignette and I want to have it much more complete before they saw it at all. One reason for that was the fact that all of them were nude and the second reason was the similar expression on all of their faces. I suppose that morning had influenced me, but each one of them appeared as if she wanted something, the problem being that in order to get the effect the way I wanted it, the sketch had to be refined much more. So, when I heard Paula come to the door onto the deck, I flipped that sheet underneath and brought up a sketch of Sydney that I'd been working on previously.
"Hi, CJ. How are you today?" Paula asked quietly.
"Okay I guess." I looked up at her and smiled. "Did you two get done everything you wanted to do? Sydney said you were both seeing a new doctor."
"Well, yes and no." She sighed, then looked at me appraisingly. "How was your morning?"
"Enlightening." I answered calmly, then frowned. "And, upsetting."
"Oh?"
"Unh huh."
"Excuse me, CJ, good morning. Where is Sydney?" Aileen asked from behind Paula.
She looked like she was wasted, worn and frazzled. This was the first time I'd seen her looking tired and worn down, but I wasn't about to say anything, not in the mood I was in. Since her first words were about Sydney, I didn't even ask what was wrong.
"Morning, Aileen. Sydney went for a walk down toward the lake. I think she went toward the main dam, but I'm not positive of that."
"Thanks." Aileen answered quickly, then hurried off to follow Sydney.
With both Aileen and Sydney gone from the cabin, I knew Paula wanted to talk. I steeled myself for what I felt I had to say, knowing that I might have to offer support to Paula afterward. Then I waited, still fiddling with my sketches.
Paula didn't say or do much for a few moments, instead she spent some time looking out toward the lake, but finally she must have realized that I was willing to outwait her. She turned toward me with a resolved look on her face.
"I guess you and Sydney talked already, did you?"
"You could say we talked, yeah." I tried to keep my voice neutral.
"Well, since you don't exactly look happy and she's gone for a walk, I suppose things didn't go the way she hoped it would, did it?"
"I doubt it." I felt myself growing uptight and tried hard to fight it off.
"Well, she told you her idea then." Paula sighed and flopped back into a chair, staring at me and looking like she was worried concerning whatever I was about to say.
"Yes, we agreed to disagree." I said quietly. "But, let's forget that for a minute. What are you worried about?"
"Um, do you think I'm worried?"
"Yeah, if you were acting the way you usually would, by now you'd be sitting in my lap and I'd be getting hugs and kisses."
"Oh." She looked chagrined. "I guess I was a bit afraid that if things went wrong, you'd be p'd off with everyone, even me."
"Well, I'm not p'd off, not really. I am upset that you didn't warn me and talk to me about what was going on. I'm annoyed that Sydney considers me as a . . . well, I guess a commodity or something. If I was to be p'd off about anything it would be the idea that somehow I'm nothing more to the bunch of you than a source of sperm to make babies. That really gets under my skin."
"That's not it at all." She protested. "First off, I didn't know what was going on, so don't blame me. Mom and I were halfway back from our trip to town when she told me what Sydney had planned to try to do while we were gone. They'd been talking about you and teasing me earlier, or I thought they had, but it turned out they meant some of the things they said. I guess I was being gullible or something, but I really did think they were kidding me earlier. So I didn't know anything to talk to you about. Besides, Sydney had made a special arrangement for us to see a new gynecologist and you were sleeping so soundly when we left that I didn't want to disturb you."
"Okay, I guess I can believe you're gullible if you want me to." I sighed. "But why haven't you given me a kiss or a hug yet?"
"Well, Mom was worried that you might be mad and to be honest, so was I." She looked ready to cry.
"Your mom wasn't that worried, or she wouldn't have run off chasing after her girlfriend and leaving you here with me." I growled, folding the sketch pad so I could carry it and getting to my feet. "But, you didn't even trust me enough to give me a chance, none of you really have. You've all just assumed various things about me and tried to make me conform to your ideas. That is the one thing that does piss me off! However, none of you are in danger of suffering a beating or anything like that, even if I did get angry. The worst that might happen is that I might just tell you all to get into your new car, take along everything that you brought with you and just fuck right off! At the moment I'm damn close to doing exactly that."
"I'm sorry." She whispered. "I really don't know what to do to repair the problem though."
"Well to start off with, you could ask your mother and her lover to at least pretend to think that I'm human and that I have feelings and desires too. I have a personality of my own and I don't like being pigeonholed as 'just a man' and expected to act a certain way simply because I happen to have a penis. Next, you can start to show some backbone around your mom and Sydney. They may be older and more worldly than you are, but that doesn't mean that you can't make up your own mind about what you want, as well as what's right and wrong. If you can't, then you're just being a puppet of those two man hating bitches, and I'd probably be wise to simply walk away and give up on you."
With that said, I turned and walked inside with my sketch pads and pencils, putting them away in a locked cupboard. At that moment I certainly didn't want anyone to criticize the drawings I had been doing. Paula had scarcely gotten to her feet before I marched back out onto the deck and leaned against the railing, staring out toward the lake.
"I really don't understand why you're so mad at everyone?" Paula whispered. "I thought Mom and Sydney were treating you wonderfully. I mean they include you in everything and they wouldn't be teasing you if they didn't like you."
"Oh, sure they do." I snarled as sarcastically as I could. "What I've heard half of the time is praise laid on so fucking thick that it sounds like criticism, as if they doubt every fucking thing I say. I've done my best not to react until now, but that session this morning was just too fucking much. Sydney was trying her best to get me to act the way she expects a man to act. Maybe she does want a fucking kid, I don't know, but trying to get me to get her pregnant when I haven't even really gotten to know you is just too damn much. Hell, woman, I've hardly gotten used to calling you by name and she's trying to get between us. I don't really know you. You don't really know me. We haven't spent a lot of time talking about ourselves. In fact, I think we've spent more time screwing than we have talking."
"Oh, it's not that bad." I could barely hear her speak, her voice was so quiet.
"Oh come on now, what do I really know about you? Not very damn much other than that you were raised in a strange situation and you were over protected most of you life. From what I understand of things your mother practically abandoned you when you were young, leaving you to be raised by a weird woman with wild ideas. Then she dropped back into your life and is suddenly trying to run it for you. Now it looks to me almost as if she and her gal pal see that you've found a good thing. I looks to me like they want to dive in to grab their share or else fuck it up for you. At the moment I don't know which. At the same time, you're letting them fuck you around and not saying anything about it. Where the hell is your backbone?"
I realized then that I was probably hurting her and it really wasn't her that I was pissed off with. As soon as that dawned on me, I spun away before I said anything worse. At that moment I was as near to blind rage as I had ever been.
"Dammit, where are you going, CJ." She suddenly screamed as I went down the stairs and across the lawn toward a path in the bush where I could wear off the built up adrenaline in my system.
"For a walk, I need it." I hollered back without turning. "I'll be back in an hour or so."
Normally I went walking along the paths amongst the trees to observe and appreciate nature. That morning I slipped off into the woods to be away from people and to calm myself down. I had a place that I often went where I was usually able to relax and think. A few feet off of a trail, it was under the hanging boughs of a dogwood tree; one of the very few dogwoods I'd ever seen that had 'weeping' branches. A long time ago I'd shifted a section of log under it and set it so I could sit in comfort as I looked out toward the lake.
I hadn't realized it before, but that morning I found that spot let me watch for anyone coming on my back trail without being noticed as well. The hanging branches must have made it almost impossible to see me unless you looked directly at my face. The reason I found out was that Paula must have decided to follow me. I had hardly gotten sitting down before she came charging up the trail, her face looking like a thundercloud.
While I had come for a walk to get away from everyone, I couldn't very well let her go charging into the bush on little more than a game trail, either. She could either get lost or hurt herself far too easily. All it would take would be for her to slip as she was climbing over a deadfall along the trail and she could break an arm or a leg. So I waited until she was nearly even with me and I spoke up.
"If you want to scream at me, I'm over here." I said, loud enough for her to hear, but not loudly enough for my voice to carry far.
"CJ?"
"Yeah." I tried not to sound too angry. "I'm trying my best to calm down."
It took her a couple of moments to find me, but finally she was looking at me from behind a small shrub.
"Are you really mad?" She sounded close to tears.
"Yeah, but not really at you. I'm not angry enough to get physical in any way eother, so it's safe to come over here."
"Hmmph. After listening to you, I think you might be inclined to want to paddle Mom and Sydney." She sighed. "I don't think you understand them at all."
"You're right there." I agreed. 'I certainly don't understand them, and at this moment I'm not even sure that I want to understand them."
"To be honest, you keep surprising them in various ways, me too for that matter."
"Why, because I have some scruples? Because I refuse to screw another woman, just so she can have a kid? Because I insist on being involved in raising any kid I sire? What's so damn surprising about any of that?"
"Whoa there. What the heck are you talking about?"
"Oh come on, you know what happened. Sydney woke me up this morning by bringing me coffee. She was nude and doing her best to look provocative as hell. Once I was awake, she proceeded to tell me that she wanted a kid, my kid, then she announced that she was ovulating today. She wanted me to impregnate her the 'old fashioned way' because the other way was too much fuss and might not work as well." I spoke loudly, my voice showing my anger. "Then as if that wasn't enough of an insult, she blatantly told me that the kid wouldn't be my worry, almost as if she wanted me to forget about the fact that it would be my kid. The final insult was the fact that she told me you had insisted that she had to be nude when she brought me my coffee and told me what she wanted."
I paused, then thought about the bit after I'd had my shower, so I laid that on Paula as well.
"That wasn't at all what I meant or what I thought she'd do." Paula's face showed shock and astonishment. "All of us were teasing each other and I guess I did say she could tease you by coming to wake you up nude, but I didn't expect her to actually do it. On top of that, I really didn't think she meant to ask you to get her pregnant, not really. I mean, she was on about all sorts of genetics stuff and I don't know what all. Somehow I thought all of that crap was just teasing me, the way they've been doing for the past couple of days. I really didn't think she'd do anything like that."
She just stared at me for a minute, then broke into tears.
Okay, so I'm like most guys; I'm a sucker for any women in tears. For the next few moments I simply cuddled her as she cried on my shoulder. During that time my anger dissipated, which meant I was left feeling empty and suffering from adrenaline withdrawal. At that point I was unsure how I felt or what I wanted to do so perhaps the next few moments were quite important. I had time to think about what had happened and to contemplate what I was about to do.
I glanced at my watch and realised that it was still before ten in the morning. Suddenly things didn't add up very well. I knew I'd been up and around for more than two hours and when I'd awakened, Paula and Aileen had already left to see Paula's new doctor. It was Sunday. Nobody, especially a doctor, had early opening hours on Sunday. Even pharmacies didn't open early on Sunday; the earliest opening I knew of was one that opened at nine thirty or ten. Somehow things just didn't add up for me. Since Paula was still cuddling close to me, but no longer crying, I decided to ask her about what had happened earlier that morning.
"Paula, what time did you get up this morning?"
"Oh, about five." She sniffed. "Mom and Sydney were still partying and I thought it would be best if I tried to get them to go to bed. Instead they kept me up and started to give me a rough time. Then we started talking about the idea of me going to see a new gynaecologist. Sydney blew me away when she grabbed the phone at about six in the morning and woke her friend up to get me an appointment to talk to her. I think perhaps she was still drunk from the night before, but I can never tell since they drink vodka."
"I was wondering if she was drunk." I sighed.
"Perhaps not drunk, but certainly affected by the alcohol she'd been drinking all night." Paula sighed. "I'd put the booze away and had given her some coffee, but there's no way that the vodka was flushed out of her system."
"I'm surprised I didn't smell it on her though."
"Huh! If she showered and used a body wash, then brushed her teeth and used mouthwash too, she could disguise that. What else would you expect a woman to do if she was out to seduce a man?"
"You're making her sound like a cold, calculating bitch." I looked at her in surprise.
"I'm not sure about cold." She snorted. "But, I can certainly see her as calculating. That's why I really can't understand why she would act the way she did. She always seems to think things through so thoroughly, but she's not mean, so this doesn't really make sense to me. It's like she was just drunk, but rather stupid as well."
"Well, she did say that her biological clock was ticking." I sighed. "I don't know if a woman can go that silly over having a baby, but . . ."
"Oh fuck!" Paula sat up straight and spun to face me. "Look at me for fuck sake! All my life I've wanted to learn how to paint and to become an artist. So I went to school to learn all I could about painting and right now I'm willing to throw all that out the window to have your kid. It's like my body has taken over my brain, so I can sure as hell see that."
"Okay." I said quietly and had to grin at her vehemence.
"Oh, quit looking like a Cheshire Cat." She snapped. "A guy probably doesn't feel the same sort of stuff at all. It's an overpowering urge that just takes over some women."
"So you're saying that between the hormones and the alcohol she wasn't acting in a normal manner?"
"That's probably putting it mildly." She nodded. "And, after you put her down, she's probably out there feeling like shit. Right now I'll bet she's thinking that she's really fucked up things for all of us."
"Well, how do we handle this?"
"What do you mean, how do we handle it? It's your cabin, your home, your sperm and your decision, I'm just along for the ride."
"Oh like hell." I snapped. "You're in this up to the eyeballs. If we handle this wrong we'll end up offending both Sydney and Aileen. I don't think we want to do that, do we?"
"Well a short while ago, I thought you were saying that you felt like telling us all to 'pack our bags and fuck right off,' so how did I get drawn into this?"
"Well, you came chasing after me like you wanted to argue your case and you've done a fair job." I managed a smile again. "If you plan on the two of us being a couple, you'd better plan on having a say in things too. Aren't you the one who told me you wanted to have an equal relationship between us?"
"Yeah, but not for something like this." She sighed. "Although, I guess an equal relationship means taking the bad with the good, doesn't it."
"Yep, it does." I nodded. "In this case, your going to have to be a guide to what I do and say. In fact, it might go over a lot better if you did most of the talking."
"Oh please, I'm not sure I can do that." She looked at me almost as if the idea frightened her.
"Hey, come on. You've got to be willing to pull your weight if we're going to have any kind of relationship and part of that is talking to your family. I'll back you up, but don't expect me to carry all the weight of this. Since you know them better than I do, you'll be able to say things that I can't because I'd probably offend one or the other of them."
It took some discussion, but we finally decided what we were going to do. Paula was going to talk to the two of them first. In fact, she was going to do it while I moved out of hearing, but if she felt she needed any backup, I was going to be close by to help her if needed.
When we got back to the cabin both of the older women were sitting on the deck sipping cups of coffee, so Paula asked them if they'd eaten anything. When they shook their heads without looking at me, I felt this was the perfect time to go ahead with our plan. I winked at Paula, then went inside to make something to eat while she began to talk to them. On one hand, I would have loved to have heard what Paula said, but on the other hand, I felt that anything they said between them was their business, not mine. If they carried on pressuring her, then I was going to make it my business, but at that moment I felt it was too soon for me to drop my oar in the water.
Instead of trying to listen to whatever Paula said, I began to make brunch. Luckily I had purchased the makings for what Mom referred to as 'cholesterol bombs' as a basic dish to build a meal around. Mom might have given them a disparaging name, but she, and everyone else I've made them for, scarfs them down. Because almost everyone likes them and since they're fast and easy, they've become one of my breakfast/brunch standards.
To start out I set a fresh pot of coffee going. After that, I pulled the removable cast iron grill from storage, flipped it over two of the stove burners turned on high and at the same time turned the oven on medium heat. Tossing several rashers of bacon on the grill, along with one of the Scotch sausage patties, I moved to the fridge. There, I pulled out a half dozen eggs, a small onion, a sweet red pepper, a stick of celery, some cheese, a carton of milk and some butter. As I was chopping a portion of each of the vegies into small pieces and grating some cheese, I could make out the women's voices, but couldn't hear their words.
That suited me fine. I wasn't going to interfere unless I was called or they began to argue heatedly. Instead I concentrated on the meal I was preparing. As I listened, I was flipping the sausage patty and the bacon which were cooking quickly.
Four of the oversized hamburger buns were slit open and went into the oven to warm, then I whipped several eggs, adding a bit of milk and some grated cheese. That was left to sit for a few minutes while the diced vegies went into the microwave in a covered bowl to be partially cooked. As that was happening, I took several pieces of fruit out of the fridge, dicing them and filling four individual dessert bowls.
After checking that it was cooked through, I took the single sausage patty and set it on a paper towel to let the grease drain away as it cooled. The bacon was slipped back to the cooler portion of the grill at that time and I turned the heat on those burners down while turning the heat on the oven up. I also took all the buns and moved them to sit face down on the cooling grill in order to let them absorb some of the flavour of the bacon and sausage.
While the oven was heating, I opened a cupboard, pulling out four small ceramic dishes. They were almost five inches across and had two inch high vertical sides. (They probably have a fancy French name, but I just refer to them as my 'egg cookers' and don't worry about it.) After buttering the insides of those, I set each one on the bottom half of the four buns for a moment so they could warm slightly. Then I went back to the sausage patty, moving it to my cutting board where I sliced and diced it into small pieces. Both the sausage and partially cooked vegies were folded into the egg mix, along with a touch of salt and pepper, then that was portioned out into the four 'egg cookers' which got popped into the oven.
Now it was back to the fruit bowls and the morning coffee. A quick drizzle of honey and a small scoop of the yogurt based ice cream finished off the fruit bowls, then they were set on a large tray. Next to them, I set four large mugs of fresh coffee, but I added a few drops of Amoretto to each one. Cream and sugar servers, as well as spoons, went beside the mugs. After that it was only a moment's work to butter the four halved buns and set them back on the grill. A quick glance through the door of the oven and I turned off the heat on the omelettes, or whatever they were, then it was time to get the show on the road.
Picking up the tray, I headed for the door.
"Alright ladies, it's time for a break in the discussion and it's past time to have something to eat." I announced loudly as I stepped out the door, breaking into whatever they were saying. "This is to get us all going, with more to come later."
"Oh, I never eat breakfast, I just have a cup of coffee and I've got that." Aileen protested.
"Lady, this ain't breakfast. It's brunch and that coffee is some brew that someone else made. I'll trade you. Try this instead." I took her mug and handed her one of the fresh ones as well as a bowl of fruit.
Sydney and Paula didn't even try to protest. As I served her, Paula looked up at me and winked when my body blocked her face from the other two women. She looked okay, but the other two looked like she'd just kicked their butts all over the deck. That changed momentarily though.
"Oh, this fruit is good!" Sydney raved.
"So is the coffee." Aileen added.
"Why, thank you." I grinned, taking a few seconds from scarfing down my portion of the fruit. "It's really only an appetizer though. The main course is still cooking as we eat."
"Oh, I couldn't eat anything more." Aileen protested.
"It's the weekend and I'm in charge of seeing that you eat properly while you're my guests." I frowned at her. "I intend to serve you something that I enjoy eating once in a while and I expect you to at least taste it. If you don't care for my cooking, you can set it aside."
"That's the trouble, you cook too well and I've liked everything you've cooked so far." She smiled at me. "I'm trying a new diet so I can lose a few pounds."
"I could comment on that, but I won't." I tried to growl, but didn't achieve the sound I was aiming for. "In my opinion, fad diets are making everyone fatter."
"Here, here." Sydney pointed a finger at me. "I agree completely. Tell us more of your thoughts, then I'll give you mine."
"In a moment, I have to check on the next course." I stood and set my coffee mug down by the side of the chair I'd been sitting on, then stood to go back inside.
I wondered to myself what Paula could have said. Both Aileen and Sydney were treating me a lot differently, even the tone of their voices was different than it had been. Inside I laid out the four buns on a large plate, then used a spatula to flip the 'omelettes' onto each one. A small slice of cheese and a couple of rashers of bacon, then an extremely thin slice of tomato and a small leaf of lettuce topped that and was covered with the other half of the bun. Each was placed on a small plate. I picked them all up and tucked a small roll of paper towels under my arm before I went back outside.
"This is my version of a dish that 'MacDonalds' totally ruined." I grinned as I handed each of them one of my creations. "Of course, I only cook this once in a while, so I take a few seconds longer to prepare it. They simply refuse to waste that much time to make something that tastes good and is actually good for you."
"You're young, but you don't care for fast food?" Aileen looked at me strangely.
"Well, that doesn't that surprise me." Paula laughed softly.
At that point no one spoke as they each tried a tiny bite, but I could see from their faces that they were all slightly surprised.
"Oh, this is good!" Sydney said enthusiastically.
"Did you expect anything else?" Paula giggled, then turned to me. "CJ, you forgot napkins."
"Oops." I grinned, whipping out the roll of paper towels, then ripping off a single sheet for each of us. "I don't have any of those, so I'm afraid that we'll have to make do with these."
That brought a chuckle, but no words. I wasn't really expecting any though. For some reason I'd come to expect people to be quiet while they tried my cooking. I suppose I did alright, but mostly I seemed to have a talent for combining tastes that others didn't expect.
A few minutes later, everyone had finished and Paula had insisted that she'd take all the dishes inside, then had come back out and replenished all the coffee mugs before sitting down.
Aileen sat up and looked at me intently. "A while ago, you were disparaging my diet without even hearing about it, would you care to tell me why?"
"Well, I could, but it would be a long involved conversation." I sighed. "I didn't mean to offend you, but is your doctor aware of what you're doing?"
"What does my doctor have to do with my weight?" She sounded offended.
"Well, your doctor has your health in mind and most fad diets are basically unhealthy. They try to limit one or more of the food groups as a method of forcing your body to lose weight. Either that, or they try to make you starve off the weight by limiting calorie intake far too drastically. Both of those things are basically unhealthy and totally counterproductive."
"Could you explain yourself?"
"Well, I can try, but I'm not sure I can make myself clear." I shrugged. "It's complicated. The human body is adapted to feast or famine conditions. We're omnivores and we can survive some pretty horrid conditions, but our bodies don't like starvation in any form. One of the things which happens is a basic adaptation of the body, it takes the extra food we eat during feast conditions and stores it as fat. So if we start to diet, our body reacts. First it slows our metabolism, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot, depending on how badly the diet we're on is starving us. Then it begins to manipulate our appestat so that we crave the foods that the diet we happen to follow is trying to starve us from having."
"So, what?" I've got great willpower."
"Unh huh." Paula smirked.
"Okay, so I have a small weakness for chocolate." Aileen grinned sheepishly.
"And sweets." Sydney laughed
"And alcoholic drinks with cream." Paula grinned.
"Okay you two, that's enough." I grinned. "Aileen, maybe you really do have great willpower, but if you do weaken, even a little bit, your body latches onto those calories. It does it's best to store them because they're precious now. And you know how the body saves calories? It converts them into fat. So, by starving your body with a fad diet of any sort, you've now keyed it up to save more fat than before, but now it's based the key on the food that the diet said was harmful. If you go through enough darn diets that key on enough different kinds of foods, you'd put on weight just looking at food."
"So how would you reduce your weight?" Aileen asked
"I don't think I want to try." I smiled. "First I'd talk to my doctor, then if he said I needed to lose weight, I'd try exercise in order to turn the fat into muscle. As well, I'd make certain I was eating a well rounded diet, but didn't overeat. Oh yeah, I'd make sure I drank enough water."
"So you're saying that you really don't know anything about diets, but you're willing to give diet advice to others."
"Oh no. I've done a lot of study on dieting, years of it." I frowned at her. "I know someone who has a major diet problem, and I've tried to help out. But for gosh sake, don't take my advice, go see a doctor instead. Ask him how diets affect people, then take his advice about maintaining your weight."
"Oh." Aileen said quietly, then she yawned.
"Oh darn, Aileen , don't do that. I'm getting sleepy myself." Sydney stifled a yawn.
"Well, why don't you two have a snooze." I grinned. "I think I'm the only one here who slept much last night and we still have a dinner party to go to this evening."
"That might be an idea, if you'll excuse us?" Aileen stood.
"No problem." I chuckled. "I might even catch forty winks myself, but not for a while."
"I'll stay with you." Paula smiled. "Have a good snooze Mom, you too Sydney."
"Unh huh." Sydney waved as she followed Aileen, then yawned again.
Soon only Paula and I were sitting outside and after only a few moments we could hear no sounds from inside the cabin.
"So how did your talk go?" I asked quietly as I took Paula's hand.
"I think I took Mom by surprise and I think I flabbergasted Sydney."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I told them both off. Then I said that if they laid a hand on you without my permission, I'd use an axe to remove it and they'd pull back a stump." She giggled.
I just stared at her for a minute as she grinned. Then she slipped into my lap.
"Now, do you know what I want?" She grinned.
"No, what do you want?" I kissed her on the nose.
"Well, that was a rather heavy brunch. I think we should go inside and exercise away some of these extra calories."
"Won't we disturb their sleep?"
"Who cares?" She giggled. "I don't."
Somehow I managed to stand upright while still holding her. I was headed for the stairs, but she stopped me.
"Unh uh." She kissed me. "I don't want to go to bed. I want to do it right here on the floor, on the rug in front of the fireplace, with the golden sunlight reflected down off of that beautiful wood."
Even I thought that was a great idea. Two minutes later, I decided it was a wonderful idea. Her nude body looked glorious in that light.