After two weeks in Colombia, they traveled to Switzerland so Eduardo could conduct business with one of his biggest buyers. In Switzerland, life had been perfect. Nobody cared if they were married or not. But their life wouldn't be lived in Switzerland if they stayed together. In Colombia, people got married then they lived together and had babies. The decision to get married had come quickly when they were in Switzerland.
After about two months together, he figured out she was pregnant. Or he'd made an educated guess based the fact she'd never actually had a period in their time together. Confronting her with a pregnancy test he'd bought at a pharmacy probably wasn't the best way to handle the situation, but she knew him well enough at that point to know he occasionally had the subtlety of a cudgel when trying to make a point. So, with him standing over her, she’d peed on the stick. When the test delivered the result she knew it would, she was as convincingly shocked and overjoyed as he was. And in truth, at that point, she was overjoyed. She wanted to be with him.
A positive pregnancy test had been enough to push her into agreeing to get married. For Eduardo, there was really no other choice. What she hadn't counted on, was getting pregnant first month around. She expected to have at least a couple of months to ease into the idea. But no. Her fate had been sealed.
When they'd returned from Switzerland and announced that they were getting married, the women had warmed slightly to her. This one act of compliance had been enough to earn their contingent approval. They still gave her a look that told her they knew why she and Eduardo were getting married. That, more than anything else, annoyed her. As much as she wanted to be with Eduardo, she didn't want her choice dictated to her to appease the moralistic sensibilities of the women who worked for the Salazar's.
The door to the bedroom opened, but she didn't bother turning around to see who it was. Warm hands landed on her bare shoulders, followed by soft lips on her neck. Eduardo always returned mid-morning to discuss the day with her.
“What do you see?” Eduardo asked from behind her.
“It's going to be a hot day,” she said.
“It's going to be a very hot day,” he responded. “How do you know?”
“You've had the workers move higher up on the mountain. You do that when it's going to be particularly hot in the valley.”
“You're learning to know me,” he said. “Get dressed. We're going riding.”
“My family is arriving today,” she reminded him again.
Before leaving San Francisco, she'd extracted promises from each of her friends to visit. Simon had been the first. He'd arrived before they'd gone to Switzerland and slipped right into a new life. Waverly's adamant refusal to hear that they would never get married had prompted him to flee town. It was possible he might never leave. Eduardo paid him well and the idea of working with patients who actually needed him appealed to him.
When Simon arrived, or fled the machinations of Waverly as he preferred to think, Eduardo gave them an outbuilding to use after he'd had it painted, installed air-conditioning and windows, and somehow had managed to have their applications for a license to practice medicine in Colombia fly though all government channels faster than a phone call. There were things about how Eduardo managed his affairs she just didn't want to know. What she did know was that when they really needed an ultra-sound machine, a new one was delivered within a day.
Since teaming up, they'd delivered four babies, tended to the needs of nearly a dozen pregnant women, did the best they could with what they had to reattach a nearly severed finger, treated an almost epidemic level of the clap, had a firmly worded conversation translated by Inez with the two women who were purveyors of the world’s oldest profession about the need for condoms, arrived too late to be of any use after a drowning, and treated enough snake bites to ever make her comfortable walking around in sandals on the plantation.
As much as it galled her to admit it, having Simon around helped her. His terrible Spanish was better than her nonexistent Spanish. Plus, despite the fact he'd run away from Waverly rather than confront her, technically he was still a man. There were far too many people in their rural stretch of Colombia who would quite literally rather die than go to a woman doctor. Simon also willingly went out into the mountains to make house calls.
“We’re supposed to go and pick them up. I'd love to go for a ride, but it's going to have to wait.”
“I already sent Alberto and Domingo to the airport.”
“I really wanted to go to the airport to meet them.” Only the threat of not seeing her oldest daughter get married had gotten her mother to come to Colombia. Like only a mother could, she had extracted many promises from Henna, mostly surrounding indoor plumbing and security. Meeting her mother at the airport might be essential to securing a repeat visit.
“Is there actually a reason why you can't take me?” She reserved becoming irritated until Eduardo responded. He might actually have a legitimate reason. Colombia wasn't San Francisco and it was not safe for her to drive on her own from where they were in the Andes mountains to Bogota. But she could have gone with Alberto and Domingo. After getting used to the fact they carried guns with them wherever they went, she frequently traveled with two of the men Eduardo used for security when he wasn't available.
“The
bruja
wants to meet you. She sent a message down the mountain that you're to come to her today.”
“I don't want to meet the
bruja
.” She dreaded meeting the
bruja
. Everyone she had met since arriving in Colombia revered and feared in equal measures the
bruja
. “I especially don't want to meet her today. Why now? We're getting married in...” She looked behind him at the clock on the wall. “Eleven hours. Oh, my god. Eleven hours? No. I'm not going to meet the
bruja
today. The last thing I need is for her to put the whammy on me. I'm nervous enough as it is. I still think we're rushing this.”
“Are you still frightened?” Eduardo turned her away from the view of the mountains to face him.
She glanced into his eyes then looked at his chest. He wore one of a hundred or more battered work shirts paired with faded jeans and cowboy boots that comprised his work uniform. She liked him in linen and wool, but nothing compared to how Eduardo filled out a pair of jeans. “I might be just a little afraid.”
He kissed her on the forehead as he drew her against his chest with his arms wrapped around her. “Don't be. She's just an old woman. Nothing more. We will go and pay our respects to her because it matters to the people who live and work on my land.”
“Politics,” she said. Eduardo refused to admit or acknowledge that he was, without any question, the lord of his own fiefdom. His workers came to him for everything from dispute mediation to his blessing on their upcoming nuptials.
“Politics,” he said. “Besides, all of the preparations are getting under my skin.”
“Nervous? Getting cold feet?” She certainly had cold feet. It seemed too late to back out, but that didn't change the fact she had reservations about the choice to get married so fast.
“Neither. Annoyed people can't just get their jobs done without coming to me for approval every five minutes. If I'm not around, then they need to figure it out on their own. Get dressed to ride. Where we're going there are no roads.” He released her then turned and walked back through the bedroom.
She showered and dressed in riding pants and a polo shirt. Her childhood dream of owning her own horse had become a reality when Eduardo learned she could ride. Although technically Maya belonged to Gloria, Henna had an open-ended invitation to ride her whenever she wanted.
A great deal of hustle and bustle buzzed in the house outside of their bedroom. Their wedding reception was no ordinary party. Everyone was invited. Everyone included all of the people who earned their living working for the Salazar's and their extended families. There would be hundreds of people to feed and entertain. When the decision had been made to get married, Eduardo had insisted on two things. One, they get married in Colombia. Two, they have a traditional wedding. He hadn't eloped the first time around, but it had been fast with little ceremony. Fortunately, Inez knew what needed to be done.
Preparations for the wedding began immediately after Eduardo instructed the staff to make things ready. Two weeks from the day they made the announcement to the day of the wedding. Two weeks. There would be no months’ worth of preparations and hours spent mulling over flower arrangements and color schemes. Just one singular order for a great festival to mark the occasion of Don Eduardo's marriage to the woman they all suspected was probably pregnant.
Henna might not speak Spanish, but she understood body language. That and Simon had told her the main topic of conversation amongst the workers circled around the bloom in her cheeks and the roundness of her belly. Her checks were not rosy and her stomach was as flat as a board. At eight weeks pregnant, there were no external signs of her condition other than the massive party being planned outside in the courtyard of the hacienda.
She walked down the stairs through the foyer and out the door to the busy courtyard. From sun up to sun down the activity was constant at the front of the hacienda. The back of the house, where the pool and gardens were located, privacy and peace dominated. Except for the workers maintaining the grounds and the women working in the extensive kitchen garden, only family entered To the front of the house and off to the side, the coffee beans were processed from brilliant red to pale green.
She spotted Eduardo on the patios, which were a series of concrete terraces where coffee beans where spread out to dry in the sun. She watched him as she walked nearer to where he stood talking with one of the foremen. When he saw her, the foreman nodded to Eduardo who dismissed him.
“They all do that.” She stood next to him as they looked at the terraces. “Run away whenever I get near.”
“They're back country Colombians,” Eduardo said. “You have to just understand their mentality. You're an unmarried woman that openly sleeps in my bed. They don't know what to make of you in that capacity. After tonight, they'll still ignore you, but that's because you're my wife and not my mistress.”
She snorted indelicately. “You realize there is a double standard around here. They all look at me like some whore of Babylon and you're Don Eduardo. Wholly unfair.”
“I'm a man,” he said. “Bad behavior is expected.”
“That is so unfair,” she said. “Our personal life should be ours. They spend more time worrying about my flat stomach and our sleeping arrangements than I do.”
“We're going to solve that problem tonight,” he said. “As of tomorrow, nobody is going to care where you sleep anymore, and as for your flat stomach, time will resolve that question.” He put his hand on her arm just above her elbow as they walked in the direction of the barn. “Are you still wondering if this is the right thing to do? Because it is. At least, for me it is. I want it to be the right thing for you, too. Otherwise, we can wait.”
“We haven't even known each other that long,” she reminded him. They'd known each other three months. Just as long as her sister had known Romeo before they'd jumped into their marriage. If she hadn't fussed so much about Eden getting married after three months, she would probably be more willing to take a leap of faith.
“How long is long enough?” he asked. “We are meant to be together. I have no doubts.”
“I just need some time.” Her excuses where growing increasingly more thin as time went on. She wanted to get married. She just didn't want to get married because she was pregnant. It seemed unfair to her baby. Making the child the reason she and its father married was a lot of pressure to put on her future infant. The psychological pressure could potentially be enormous if, by some fluke of Eduardo's precious destiny, they didn't work out.
“Take all the time you want. If you don't want to get married tonight, then we don't get married tonight. I want you to be happy. If waiting makes you happy, then we wait.” He gave her a kiss on the head. A rare public display of affection from a man who was hotter than the sun behind closed doors and cooler than the moon in front of his workers. She sighed in relief. “Thank you. Maybe after the baby comes. Then we can get married. Just now...” She shrugged. “Now feels like we're forcing this. Like we're getting married for some reason other than we love each other. People should never get married because of a pregnancy.”
“You think that's why I want to marry you?”
“Isn't it? Honestly, would you be pushing for us to get married if I wasn't pregnant?”
“Probably no,” he said. “Okay. If you want to postpone, we postpone. The festival still has to go ahead. Too many people have worked too hard over the past two weeks to cancel because you don't want to marry me. Just so you understand, I want to marry you because I love you. Not because you're pregnant. That just pushed forward plans.”
They walked through the courtyard where lights had been strung from poles festooned with garlands and bouquets of flowers, a bandstand assembled, tables and chairs set out, and a pig roasted while being slowly turned on a spit. Poor pig. What a way to go.
The nearby stucco church where they would be married had been filled with enough flowers to send a person with hay fever into shock. Not that she'd seen. The church, where the nondenominational ceremony she'd insisted on was to take place, had been decorated without her input. Eduardo wanted it to be a surprise. He wanted her to be happy and joyful in their marriage from the beginning. For certain, at least at that moment, he was better than she deserved.
She looked up at his profile. “Why are you okay with this? Don't think I don't know you. Based on everything I know about you, you should not be okay with this. I know you well enough to know that you do not want your child, who you are mystically convinced is a girl, to be born out of wedlock. I know you, Eduardo Salazar. You're up to something. You may drive a Porsche, but you might as well be pulling a donkey loaded down with bushel baskets for as modern as you are about some things.”