Marriage (Red, White &) Blues (Unexpectedly Married #2)

Chapter 30

One year later…

“Come on, Glory, we have to get moving.” Blake held the front door open for me. I’d already given my goodbye kisses and ear scratches to Princess Miranda. Our only kitty, she held court over our house. We were her people and she allowed us to live here. Period. Georgie Boy, on the other hand, trotted out of the kitchen with Benji, Roddy, and Clovis on his heels. I sort of had a problem. Whenever one of our animals got put on death row, I made it my mission to rehome them. If I couldn’t rehome them with others, then I rehomed them with us. Hence Benji, Roddy, and Clovis. All mixed breed sweethearts.

Blake loved me. We had all this property. And Maisie and Clinton housesat for us when I got a wild hair to travel. What? Wally needed to meet his goddaughter. Cheryl and Duane needed to hold our little darling—their words, not mine. I wasn’t that full of myself.

Each of our boys got kisses and ear scratches. Maisie waved us off. Blake already had Maria hooked in her carrier.

“ Bye ,” I said, waving to Maisie and the fur babies as I shuffled out the door. Blake restrained from rolling his eyes at me, but he smirked.

“We have a plane to catch. If we’re late, that’s on you.”

“We won’t be late.”

We were a little late. But the good thing was the jet couldn’t leave without us. Flying the three of us to Poland private was so much nicer than even flying first class commercial.

You heard that right. Poland . We were the gift for my Grandma Maria’s eightieth birthday. Well, my aunts said we all were the gifts, but I knew better. Getting to meet her namesake, now that was the gift.

Eleven hours after takeoff, we landed in Warsaw, Poland. Blake had the good sense to download an app to teach himself Polish. I had the good sense to copy him, downloading the same app to brush up on my skills.

My great-aunt Antonina stood in the terminal waving her fool head off at us. Antonina, fifteen years younger than my grandmother, had the energy of a thirty-year-old.

“Ciotka Antonina!” I shouted. I hadn’t seen her since my grandma moved back here after dad died, but no one forgot Antonina, not her looks—which if I had to give a descriptor, could be described as a bohemian hippie—nor her personality—already stated, that of a thirty-year-old, independent woman, even though she’d been married to my Uncle Alfred for, like, forty-five years—nor her face, which looked exactly like my grandma’s.

Ciotka meant aunt , by the way. Pronounced chyotka . Babcia meant grandmother . I called my grandma “Baba.” Baba Maria. And I couldn’t wait to see her again.

Uncle Alfred spoke English fluently. They’d met in college in the States. Antonina followed my grandmother there when she’d gotten old enough. All the uncles, or, wujek —pronounced voo-yek —stayed in the old country.

Now keep that in mind because once we got back to Zielona Dolina, they exclusively answered to wujek . No English. Zielona Dolina might not actually be the name of the town. It meant Green Glen , as the town sat at the edge of a green glen, that my grandmother had sworn all my life held magic and stayed green all year round. But I’d never actually found a Zielona Dolina on the map, so maybe she’d simply called it that herself, or maybe it had once been named that generations ago. Generational names meant more in these parts than official anything.

Alfred’s little Toyota Corolla, yes, my Polish uncle drove a Toyota Corolla, hardly had enough room for the five of us. My poor husband sat with his knees in his chest from the lack of leg room—the man was tall, remember. But we were able to secure Maria’s car seat between Blake and me in the back. What a well-traveled little girl. An old hat by this point, she remained unflustered by international travel. Maybe she slept a little more in the beginning of our trips, but she never fussed. Never. I could not wait to show off my girl.

The roads turned from wide to narrow, and then from pavement to dirt. Bumpy, bumpy dirt. Maria giggled. It took several hours, a bottle, and two diaper changes to get to the family farm.

“Now to be clear, Baba knows nothing about our arrival, correct?”

“Not a clue. Trust me, it’s been hard keeping this from my sister. She has insights.”

“Insights?” Blake asked.

“She knows things. Mind powers.”

“ Ahh … Then Gloria is definitely related,” my husband replied. Alfred laughed. Antonina nodded knowingly.

I cracked a smile. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“I’m counting on it,” he said low and I saw the glint in his wickedly smiling dark eyes.

At the point where my butt couldn’t handle one more bump, Alfred clicked on his blinker… for what? There wasn’t a car or even a wagon anywhere in our vicinity. Still, he clicked on his blinker and turned to drive up a dirt path that stopped at the most beautiful, old farmhouse.

Gasp . I blinked back the tears. My dad had to be looking down on me smiling, knowing I’d made it back here. We’d traveled here once when I was a little girl. My great-grandmother Beata passed away and we’d flown in for the funeral. My dad, my mom, Baba, and I all made the trip. I met my dad’s brother for the first time that visit too. He lived the carefree single life in California, or he’d lived it back then. With me as Baba’s only grandchild, she’d chosen to live with us. It just got too hard for her after my dad passed. No parent wanted to outlive their child.

But onto happier memories, the place looked exactly as I remembered. Not one clay roof tile or painted spindle differed from my memory. “ Blake ,” I whisper-shouted, reaching over our daughter to squeeze his hand.

When Alfred parked the front door flung open and old men flooded out of the house. My grandmother’s brothers and nephews. Women wearing kerchiefs tied around their heads, in peasant blouses and long skirts, filed out slower. One woman walked down the stoop wiping her hands on a raggedy towel.

Antonina and Alfred climbed out of the car first. Blake unhooked our girl from her seat and met me around the front of the car.

“What’s going on?” my grandmother called out, but she called it in Polish, not English. The translation was mine. You’re welcome. She stepped out onto the top stoop and the family parted like the Red Sea. Baba’s eyes grew seven sizes as she clasped her hands over her heart, gasping for breath, and I worried for a second that my appearance here might’ve triggered a heart attack.

“Baba,” I called out, taking a step forward, but there was no need. My grandmother pushed past and practically leapt over any person that separated her from me.

“My Gloria,” she cried, over and over. “My Gloria.” She crashed into me and let me just say, the woman held some power. Once she let me go, she looked over to my husband, who beamed at us all proud and sentimental.

“Baba, this is my husband, Blake Parker.”

“Blake Parker.” she said, narrowing her eyes on me. “I can’t believe my Gloria is a Parker now.”

I nodded. “I’m a Parker now. This is our little girl.” Our Maria held her arms out to Baba like she’d seen the woman every day for the last year of her life.

Baba reached for Maria, hugging her against her chest, swinging her back and forth.

“My Maria,” she said as a huge sob broke free. She pulled my husband against her to hug him at the same time. I felt a bit left out, so I wrapped my arms around the lot of them. We stood there hugging for what felt like forever until a giant Tatra sheepdog bounded out of the house and down the steps, leaping into our circle. When I said giant , I meant the thing looked like a smaller version of a polar bear with all that long, white fur. The family had always owned them, from what I understood. They herded sheep and my family owned sheep. So, it made sense. But seeing as the dog landing on us sent me sprawling against the hood of the car, with the rest of my family falling on top of me, our moment ended.

We moved inside the house. Uncle Alfred carried our bags in from the trunk and Baba showed us up to the spare room in the attic. Because the roof sloped, the room felt a little tight, but it was big enough for the three of us, and if Blake kept to the center of the room, he could actually stand up straight.

Baba told us to get settled, and then clean up. About twenty minutes later, she called us down to dinner. We walked into the kitchen to find her leaned over stirring a huge pot of ?urek, which basically contained ham and vegetables in a fermented ryemeal broth. Baba’s always had a hard-boiled egg cut in half and dropped in the center of the bowl. She served it with a rustic, crusty bread and fresh butter.

She held Maria on her hip the entire time we ate. She wouldn’t put my daughter down and my daughter was all about that life. Baba played with Maria’s soft, curly red hair, just like her mama’s. She had my eyes, too. Jupiter always teased that she thought maybe I’d cloned Maria rather than Blake adding any DNA whatsoever.

After dinner, we sat in the living room, me and Maria on the floor so I could keep her away from the fire raging in the fireplace. Blake sat in an old chair that Baba said belonged to her father, and her grandfather before him. The history of this house went back generations. Baba told stories of her youth, in both Polish and English, more for Maria than us, because she spoke Polish to us (most of which I had to translate to Blake) but would turn a soft voice in English on my daughter. I thought she was trying to teach my daughter Polish. My daughter would definitely learn Polish.

My wujek and their wives, my ciotka , jumped in to pick up parts of the stories that Baba apparently got wrong, and she glared at them. “Whose story is this?” she snapped, yes, in Polish. Again, you’re welcome.

We laughed and drank heated cider while the siblings bickered. Eventually, we wandered up to bed. They’d found a crib for Maria. Blake turned on his bedroom eyes. I turned on my ‘open all night’ sign. Yes, we did it in the attic of my ancestral home. Ask me if I cared. Hell, yeah, I cared. What an awesome memory to share with my husband.

The next morning, someone pounded on the attic door and it flung open before I had the presence of mind to tell them to stop.

“You have that much energy,” Wujek Alfred said, “then you can help in the field.” Oops . Apparently, they’d heard us. How embarrassing .

I started to get up when Alfred stopped me. “Not you— him .” Then he continued to mumble under his breath, “All night long. Squeak, squeak, squeak, bang, bang, bang, scrape, scrape, scrape . Give the woman a break.”

Blake whipped his head to look at me, and I threw my hand over my mouth. “Be down in a minute,” Blake answered. His cheeks were almost the same color as my hair.

Baba and I watched out the window. Blake helped the uncles with the lambing. He jumped right in. We cooked for the family. “He’s a good-looking man,” Baba said, “but now I know why you married him.”

And I thought my heart stopped. She did not just go there.

“Don’t,” she admonished. “You take care of your husband. A good wife does. The first time I brought your grandfather home”—again, since he’d died of the same cancer as my dad, I got screened every year. Maybe it was overkill, but I planned to shun that legacy—“we got caught with our britches down in the cow barn. Can you imagine how humiliating it is to have all of your brothers and both your parents file in to gawk at you while you used hay to cover all the unmentionable parts?”

“Oh, my God!” I laughed so hard.

“He made your grandfather sleep in the attic. Maria had to sleep in our childhood bedroom with me,” Antonina added.

“He made you sleep in separate beds?”

“We weren’t married yet,” Baba replied. “Though we had a quick wedding here in town. Thank goodness, seeing as your uncle showed up about seven months later.”

Maisie and Clinton FaceTimed us every day so we were able to talk with the fur-babies back at home.

Maria thrived under the care of all her great-great-aunts and great-grandmother. The men were impressed with Blake’s work ethic. When we decided to extend our trip, Blake worked in the den as his makeshift office to keep up on his clients back in the States. Murielle proved to be the best assistant. Time and again, Blake noted, “I couldn’t be here without her. She gets the job done.”

My husband paid her way more than she ever made at the old job. She deserved it.

He worked outside to help the uncles on the farm all day, then set aside a few hours each evening for his clients, by using his phone as a hotspot to connect with the internet. My husband enjoyed working with his hands. My Wujek Bartek, one of my great-uncles, taught Blake to carve wood in the evenings after the business work was over. Everything about this life appealed to me on a certain level. Could I live it for the long haul? No. I missed my American family too much. But I loved giving my eighty-year-old grandmother the chance to bond with her namesake. I wouldn’t give this up for the world.

Blake and I ended up staying for three months.

Three months .

My daughter babbled in Polish.

I talked to my best friends or my mom on the phone every day while I cooked and cleaned and gossiped with the women. I found out that Adelajda Balik, Bazyli Balik’s wife—Bazyli the elder was one of the most prominent men in the village—anyway, she ran off with Szymon Dabrowski, the courier who came through town twice a month. And when their families wanted him to go after her, he refused. It turned out he’d been having an affair with a young woman named Pola, who was some cousin of our family. She was four months pregnant with his baby.

We never got this kind of juicy gossip back home. Probably because it didn’t hit the same in Detroit, where no one cared if you had a baby and you weren’t married. And people left their spouses all the time.

The night before we left, Blake and I lay in bed. He held me in his arms, erotic romance novel kissing me. When he finally pulled away, ready to take this thing to the next level, I looked him in the eyes, smiled, and asked, “What do you think of the name Antonina?”

His eyes comically widened and dropped to look at my belly, then back up to me.

“Are you serious?” he asked, and I picked up a hint of trepidation mixed with hopefulness in his voice.

I nodded. “We forgot the condom our first night here.”

My husband attacked me.

Uncle Alfred was in for a night of squeak, squeak, squeak, bang, bang, bang , and scrape, scrape, scrape .

All night long.

He’d just have to deal.

I loved my life.

Thank you for reading! I hope you loved meeting Blake and Gloria. If you haven’t read my first Rom-Com series yet, let me introduce you to SKYDIVING, SKINNY-DIPPING

Don’t miss sweet fur-babies. Read the HOLIDAY BITES SERIES starting with ALWAYS YOURS

I appreciate your help in spreading the word, including telling a friend not only about my rom-coms, but about my romantic suspense, too. The Brimstone Lords. The Bedlam Horde. Reviews help readers find books! Please leave a review on your favorite book site.

You also might be interested in The Consolation Bride . It’s the first book in the Unexpectedly Married series. If you haven’t read it, here’s a sneak peek at the bonus first chapter.