“And potato salad. Don’t forget the potato salad.”

“And pie.”

“That pie was great. Never stop making that pie. Dammit, I should have written that into the vows,” he said, dipping me low and making me giggle upside down. And there, in our own backyard surrounded by everyone we loved, he kissed me. My husband.”

“What a mess.”

“I think one of the wedding presents should be cleaning up after,” Simon groaned, surveying the damage in the kitchen.

“I don’t think that was on our registry, babe,” I said sadly, patting him on the shoulder as I walked by to the dining room. Which was still wedding gift central. “We do, however, have the latest in immersion blenders, electric carving knives, and . . . what the hell is this?” I asked, holding up a white box.

“That’s the Mr. Bacon.” Simon said proudly.

“Who is mister bacon?”

“No no, Mr. Bacon. You cook bacon in it.”

“I gathered that. Why is this necessary?” Every cat in the house had gathered either on the dining room table or underneath. They knew the word bacon. They understood the word bacon. They loved the bacon.

“You use it to cook bacon in the microwave, easy as pie. Which is appropriate, because if you drape the bacon over this little cup here, you can microwave it into the shape of a little pie. Now you’ve got a bacon pie thingie that you can fill with other stuff!”

“Who the hell bought us this?”

“Trevor and Megan.”

“No way. No way that Megan, a former Food Network gal, gave us this for our wedding.”

“Actually, they gave us two presents. They also got us the new white serving dishes you had to have from Williams-Sonoma.”

“Atta girl,” I praised, and looked once more at the box Simon was now cradling. “Trevor must have gone rogue with that one.”

“Keep making fun of my Mr. Bacon. It still doesn’t solve the problem of this mess.”

“How about a post-wedding-party party? Where we invite many of the same people and put them to work cleaning up? That way we don’t have to spend our honeymoon working,” I suggested, and Simon’s eyes lit up.

“Yeah, why are we spending our wedding night talking about bacon?”

“Well, you were the one that—”

I was silenced by a kiss as Simon crossed the kitchen in two strides, gathered me against him, and pressed his mouth to mine. I ignited instantly.

“You sure about this?” I asked, breathless as he kissed the stuffing out of me.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked, his voice thick and impossibly sexy as he trailed kissed down along my jawline, headed for my neck. Once those lips hit below the chin, I was pretty much done for. “I missed our first wedding night, I’m not missing the second.”

“Let’s go slow though, okay?” I insisted as he backed me toward the stairs. His doctor had cleared him, sure, but that didn’t mean we needed to swing from the chandeliers.

“I like slow,” he murmured, gathering a handful of backside.

“We started out slow, you know . . .” I sighed as his lips found my sweet spot just below my ear. We were walking up the stairs now, shutting off lights as we went and kissing like teenagers.

“That’s not how I recall it,” he said, turning me at the top of the stairs, positioning me in front of him as he walked me down the hallway. His arms were wrapped around my waist and his lips tickled at my ear, making me giggle a bit. I was a little tipsy from beer, but not so tipsy that I was going to be railroaded.

“We did so start out slow—we were friends first. Friends for a while, actually,” I reminded him, stopping just outside our bedroom door. I leaned in the doorway, keeping him from going inside.

“I don’t recall us being friends first. I recall us being something else entirely at first.” He nipped at my earlobe. More specifically, at what was hanging from my earlobe. His wedding present to me.

That morning when I woke up, there was a jewelry box sitting on top of the pillow where Simon’s head usually was. I could hear him brushing his teeth in the bathroom as I looked around, wondering what he was up to. Since we already felt we’d been married on that beach, there was no “can’t see the bride before the wedding,” today and I wanted him next to me in our bed.

“What’s this?” I asked, scrunching back down into the pillows, tugging the comforter up around me.

“Sahfing for mah brud,” was the answer I got.

“I’ll wait until you spit, babe,” was the answer I gave.

He spit.

He joined me on the bed.

“Just a little something for my bride,” he repeated.

“But I thought we weren’t doing presents,” I protested. We’d discussed it before and agreed that we weren’t doing anything special.

“Oh hush up, will you, and open it,” he instructed, and I did as I was told.

Blue.

Flashing.

Fire.

Earrings. Drop earrings filled with diamonds and sapphires, exactly the color of his eyes. Teardrop sapphires hung from a delicate diamond-encrusted base.

“Simon, what did you do?” I breathed, my hand shaking.

“I figured this could be the something old, since they’re old; the something new, since they’re new to you; something blue, obviously; but technically not borrowed, since they’re now yours. You’re borrowing them permanently.”

“From who?” I whispered, already knowing the answer.

“My mom,” he replied, and my eyes filled with tears.

“I could not possibly love you more,” I told him, bringing him down to me for a sweet kiss.

“You like?”

“I love them.”

I promptly put them on, and wore them all day. Which brings me to now, where I had a Wallbanger nibbling on my ear as I stood in a doorway.

“The way I recall it, you hated me on sight that first time we met,” he said, switching from my ear to the back of my neck as he held my hair up high.

“I didn’t hate you, but I sure wasn’t your biggest fan,” I admitted, thinking back to him opening his door after I’d been banging at it relentlessly. “I was missing sleep.”

“You were missing more than sleep, babe,” he said, nuzzling my shoulder. His hands pulled at my dress, gathering the fabric and bunching it high around my hips. “Pretty sure you were missing this too.” And he placed one hand over my sex. Entirely. My body responded as it always did, with full abandon.