Tess threw her head back against the leather seat and laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Just like the day I came back home last April. I followed Conn's truck all the way around the town square. That was the day I met you."

"Mmm… not exactly," he added.

"Again," she amended.

"There ya got it."

Her private plane was waiting at Three Rivers Airport and flew them to Nashville, where her Z was waiting at another airport.

She gave her hubby a smirk, and asked, "How'd you like to drive?"

"Wow," he said drolly, accepting the keys, "this is really true love after all, then, isn't it?"

Some would have thought that a millionaire like Tess McPhail Kronek would choose to spend her wedding night in the fanciest bridal suite of the most exotic city in the world, but she'd spent enough time in hotels that home was her idea of luxury.

Besides, though Kenny's things had been moved in, he had never moved in. They'd decided for several reasons that he would not sleep there until their wedding night. One reason was Casey, whose respect he still valued, who lived down the hall and should not witness a bad example, no matter what he'd been wearing that morning in L.A. Another reason was the "rags" and their trade gossip, ever watchful of people of Tess's fame, just waiting to print a dirty headline. But most importantly there were Tess and Kenny themselves, who chose to have a wedding night complete with anticipation.

When they reached her house, Kenny said, "May I do the honors, Mrs. Kronek?"

And she answered, "I wouldn't have it any other way, Mr. Kronek."

When he carried her inside, the built-in sound system was playing softly-not country or rock, but Debussy's "Reverie." They paused to kiss just inside the entry before he set her down and they went exploring. Maria had left walnut chicken breasts in brandy sauce ready to warm in the oven along with a crisp French boule, and an artichoke-heart salad in the refrigerator. A table for two was set with candles and a single white rose floating in a glass compote. In the living room they found some wedding gifts piled up on the piano bench, and upstairs, the double doors to the master bedroom suite stood open, while inside, on a dresser, a bouquet of red roses filled the room with scent.

Kenny stopped in the doorway, holding Tess's hand.

He was filled with a sense of excess that seemed, momentarily, beyond accepting,

"I can't believe I'm going to live here with you."

"Sometimes I can't believe it either."

"That we're this lucky… that we have all this."

"And love, too. It does seem a bit much, doesn't it?"

But it was theirs to accept, and they stepped inside to begin their life together.

Later, when they'd consummated their unity in bed, and eaten Maria's delicious walnut chicken, and taken a swim in the pool, and opened the pile of wedding gifts, they were sitting on the floor among the wrappings with one small gift unopened.

"Momma said to open it last," Tess said.

"Well, go ahead," he said.

She began pulling at the Scotch tape. "What do you suppose it is?"

"I don't know." It was no bigger than a billfold. When the wrapping was off, she opened the end flap of a small cardboard box and tipped it till something slid out into her hand: a picture frame, and in it a photograph of Tess and Kenny at about ages two and three, eating watermelon on the back steps of Mary's house, their knees together, feet bare, toes hooked over the edge of the step, faces sunburned and dirty, as if they'd been hard at play just before the picture was taken.

Tess's reaction to it was as emotional as Mary's had been to the announcement of their wedding plans.

"Oh," she said, a hand going to her lips and tears stinging her eyes as she turned the picture his way. "Oh, look…"

He looked. And got a lump in his throat, too.

"Have you ever seen it before?" she asked.

"I don't think so."

She dusted the glass lovingly. "I wonder where it's been all these years."

"In your mother's bureau, I suppose, tucked away with the precious things that mothers keep."

"Do you suppose they planned this day back then, when they used to watch us play together?"

"Maybe they knew something we didn't."

They kissed, feeling special, and loved by more than each other, and magically fated to end up together.

"What time is it?" she said.

"Nearly eleven."

"Oh, I don't care. Let's go call Momma."

He beamed, and leapt to his feet and pulled her up after him. "Yeah, let's!"

They took the picture along, and went together to wake Mary and thank her, and to tell her how happy they were. And then they simply had to call Casey, too, just to say good night and that they loved her.

When they finally went upstairs, they took the picture along and set it on their bedside stand where it would be when they woke up in the morning.

And the morning after that, and the morning after that.

And often, when they would look at it, in the years ahead, one of them would say what Casey said that morning in the hotel, "It's like it was meant to be, isn't it?"

And the other one would smile.

For no other answer was necessary.


Celebrate the magic of

Lavyrle Spencer…

"Lavyrle Spencer's books get read and reread, passed on from one friend to another, mothers to daughters, daughters to mothers, sisters, etc. They're given as gifts, and for gifts to self-bought for self-care, nurturing, and special escape into another world… They've become a part of the work I do in helping people develop healthier ways to live."

– Judy Ohmer, Ph.D., President,

Lifeskills Training and Development

Discover the joys of her newest bestseller…

Here is an excerpt from Lavyrle Spencer's captivating novel, Then Came Heaven. It is a very special story, with a very special heroine. A woman who has taken a nun's vows, only to find that God works in mysterious ways… and that love is His greatest gift.

Then Came Heaven

Available in paperback from Jove Books


Thursday, Sept. 7, 1950

Cyril Case was making the daily run from St. Cloud to Cass Lake, sitting up high on his box seat in engine number two-eighty-two. Beside him, his fireman, Merle Ficker, rode with one arm out the window, his striped denim cap pushed clean back so the bill pointed skyward. It was a beautiful morning, sunny, the heavens deep blue, farmers out in their fields taking in the last of their crops, most harvesting with tractors, though down around Sauk Center they'd seen one working with a team. They'd passed a country school a couple miles back where the kids, out for recess, waved from the playground, and their teacher-a slim young thing in a yellow dress-had stopped gathering wildflowers, shaded her eyes with an arm and fanned her handful of black-eyed Susans over her head as she watched them pass. It was days like this that made driving a train the best job in the world: green woods, gold fields and the smell of fresh cut alfalfa blowing straight through the cab. And beneath the men the shuug-a-shuug-a of the steam engine hauling smoothly down the tracks.

Cy and Merle were having another one of their friendly disagreements about politics.

"Well, sure," Merle was saying, "I voted for Truman, but I didn't think he'd send our boys to Korea."

"What else you gonna do?" Cy replied. "Those Communists go in and start bombing Seoul. Can't let 'em get by with that, can we?"

"Well, maybe not, but you ain't got a nineteen-year-old son and I do. Now Truman goes and extends the draft till next year. Hell, I don't want Rodney to get called up. I just don't like how things are going." Merle pointed. "Whis-tlepost up ahead."

"I see it. And don't worry, MacArthur'll probably clean 'em up before Rodney gets any draft notice."

Up ahead, on the right, the arm of the white marker shone clear against the pure blue sky. Cy reached up and pulled the rope above his left shoulder. The steam whistle battered their ears in a long wail: two longs, a short, and a long-the warning for a public crossing.

The whistlepost flashed past and the long wail ended, leaving them in comparative quiet.

"So," Cy continued, "I suppose your boy's gonna go to work for the railroad if he doesn't get…" He stiffened and stared up the track. "Seet Jesus, he ain't gonna make it."

A car had turned off of Highway 71 and came shooting from the left, trailing a dust cloud, trying to beat the train to the crossing.

For one heartbeat the men stared, then Cy shouted, "Car on the crossing! Plug it!"

Merle jumped and hit the air brakes.

Cy grabbed the Johnson bar and squeezed for dear life. With his other hand he hauled on the steam whistle. Machinery ground into reverse and the brakes grabbed. From the engine through the entire train life, everything locked in a deafening screech. Steam hissed as if the door of hell had opened. The smell of hot, oily metal wafted forth like Satan's own perfume. The couplers, in progression, drummed like heavy artillery from the engine clear back to the caboose while the two old rails, with fifty-three years' experience between them, felt it in the seat of their pants: forward propulsion combined with a hundred tons of drag, something a railroad man hopes he'll never feel.

"Hold on, Merle, we're gonna hit 'em!" Cy bellowed above the din.

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph," Merle chanted under his breath as the train skated and shrieked, and the puny car raced toward its destiny.

At thirty yards they knew for sure.