Ever. Now are you dyin’ or have you killed someone?” He paused then, “Right.”

Then he touched the screen, turned off the ringer, tossed it back on the nightstand and came back to me. I thought it was prudent not to request details but I knew who the caller was and when Brock came back to me, he immediately resumed our interrupted activities, activities I had been thoroughly enjoying and wanted to recommence doing so, therefore I made the decision to concentrate on said activities and explain things to Martha the next day.

So I did (though, she’d already guessed).

She never called late again and she also didn’t get mad. She’d done an about-face with Brock, learning I loved him, he loved me and made me happy, so now she thought he was the bomb (and told me so).

And she adored his sons.

“Raul,” I answered Brock.

“Fuckin’ shit,” he muttered.

“He said he has to push it back another week. I told him, essentially, he was fired though I have to admit he’s waiting for your call to confirm that,” I went on. “I’m at a mall, you’re dealing with homicides. Do you want me to call him back and confirm that so you don’t have to?”

“You call him, darlin’, that’ll deprive me the opportunity to tear him a new ass**le so, no, I don’t want you to call him back.”

Hmm. I kind of felt sorry for Raul.

“Okay,” I said softly, took my cookies and set them aside as I dropped my Dillard’s bag to rummage in my purse for my wallet. “When I get home, do you want me to search for a new contractor?”

“I’ll deal with it when we get back from the island,” he surprised me by saying. “Rex is set for now. He isn’t complaining. It’s working so it can wait.”

“Okay, honey.” I was still talking softly. Then I offered, “I’m at Mrs. Field’s. If you don’t have cookies handy, do you want me to buy some for medicinal purposes later?”

“Mrs. Field’s are sweet, baby, but nothin’ beats your kind of sweet.”

That was nice, very nice but I wasn’t entirely certain if he meant cookies from my bakery or a different kind of sweet that I could give him for medicinal (and other) purposes.

I decided that I’d pop by the bakery, just in case, cover all the bases.

“Okay,” I said yet again, having paid for my cookies, I smiled at the clerk, shoved my wallet back in my purse, grabbed my stuff and took off.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yep. The boys have a bevy of swim trunk selections. I’m leaving the mall now, on my way to get them from school. When we get home, I’ll supervise packing.”

“Babe, we got two days.”

“And tomorrow we have one day. We don’t want to rush. When you rush, you forget stuff.

We need to be prepared. There are four of us and the boys need supervision. And I need a whole evening to sort myself out. Not to mention, I need to concoct dinner from whatever is in the kitchen so we don’t leave stuff that will spoil.”

“Tess, we’re goin’ to Aruba, not a jungle in Paraguay. We forget stuff, we buy it. We come home, stuff spoils, we throw it out.”

Hmm. This was true. Except the “we throw it out” part. Brock, Joel and Rex would undoubtedly come home and continue to utilize the fridge as they normally did, that was, standing in its open door, staring inside like doing so could form whatever they wished to have (if it wasn’t already there) and they would ignore anything with mold on it that had gone bad. Therefore, the “we” part actually meant “you”.

Brock went on before I could remind him of this fact. “And, far’s I can tell, you can take a carry-on because all you need is a bikini.”

I continued to dodge fellow shoppers on my way to the exit as I explained, “Brock, first, I don’t wear bikinis. Second, I need more than one bathing suit for a week. That requires at least three but I’m going with four which is how many I bought when I was out shopping with Martha, Elvira and the girls last week.”

By the way, my ban on the mall was up and I made a vow to myself that, next year, post Christmas, no matter how frenzied Christmas could get, I was lifting the ban in February because I’d gone gonzo when I hit a mall for the first time in over two months and I bought practically an entirely new vacation wardrobe. Some of it was hot but all of it was awesome and none of it I needed (really) especially not after paying for four to be accommodated at a five-star hotel and while setting up a new bakery .

“Third,” I carried on talking to Brock, “although I intend to relax I also intend to shop and you can’t shop in a swimsuit. And last, evening will require me in something other than a bikini and who knows what we’ll be up to? We could be going to nice restaurants or local dive restaurants or family restaurants. I’ve never been to Aruba. Maybe we’ll go to all of those kinds of restaurants and each kind requires a different kind of vacation outfit, not just for me, for all of us. Therefore we all have to be prepared.”

To this ling-winded, multi-point explanation, Brock asked, “You don’t wear bikinis?”

I rolled my eyes and headed to the exit doors outside of which my car was parked. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“Why?”

I pushed through the doors asking, “Do I actually need to explain?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he asked his own question of, “Do you own a bikini?”

I answered his question. “No.”

“Babe, you’re at a mall,” he told me something I knew.

“Actually, I’m outside walking to my car.”

“Turn around and buy yourself a bikini,” he paused, “or four.”

“Brock.”

“Sweetness,” his voice had dipped low, “you got a great body. Fuckin’ beautiful. Since you told me about this trip, I’ve been imagining you on the beach in a bikini. I’ve also been imagining you other places in a bikini. I’ve also been imagining taking off your bikini. All this imagining has lasted four weeks. I only got two days left to wait. Don’t take that away from me.”

Mm. I liked that. All of it. So much, I started imagining too.

My imagining took all my attention so I stopped behind a car and studied the tips of my high-heeled boots.

Then something else hit me and I asked, “Do you think it’s okay to be in a bikini around the boys?”