"Will you ever get married in the Church?" Bride wanted to know.

"Yes," Ashley said, but added nothing more.

"And your children? That is, if you have any," Elisabetta said. "How will you raise them, I'd like to know?"


"I'm sure you would." Ryan stepped into the conversation, which was beginning to lean toward confrontational. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now, girls, I think that is enough questions for tonight." He saw his eldest sister, Bride, smile just ever so slightly, and thought, My God, I think she's actually beginning to warm up.

At ten thirty the cars were ready, and they were transported to St. Anne's. Ashley honked and waved at them as she passed them by, pulling up at the pretty stone church across the street. Both churches let out at approximately the same time, and Ryan asked Frankie to drive his car home while he joined his wife. They led the way back to Kimbrough Hall. There they found whiskeyed eggnog and hot mulled cider, along with very thin slices of an almost black and extremely rich fruitcake awaiting them.

"This is fruitcake?" Angelina was surprised.

"It's how the Irish make it," Ashley told her mother-in-law. "It's my great-great-grandmother's recipe. It's one of the few things I actually make every year."

"It doesn't taste at all like those disgusting light fruitcake bricks we had to sell in Catholic school," Frankie noted. "Remember, we used to kid about using them to build a house." She laughed. "All those yucky candied cherries, and big pieces of nuts."

Everyone departed for bed. The tree in the living room was now surrounded by gifts, as each of the sisters had brought presents. Ashley walked through the house, smiling to herself. She had a really big surprise tomorrow for her husband. She stood for a moment in the living room, darkened now but for the dying fire in the fireplace. It was well after midnight, and there was absolute magic in the air. She could feel it. Going upstairs, she noted it was silent behind all the bedroom doors. She entered their bedroom suite to find Ryan standing naked, a large red bow about his very distended cock.

Ashley giggled. "You're kidding," she said.

"You don't like my present?" he said.

"I want to know how you got it that way without me," she replied.

He grinned. "I've got a talented hand and a great imagination."

"Well, I suppose I should try it on for size," she said as she began to pull off her turtleneck. "It looks like it might be a good fit, darling." She unfastened her lacy bra and tossed it aside. Then she kicked off the slippers she always wore in the house when she wasn't barefooted, unzipped her slacks, pulled them off, pulled down her silk briefs, and stepped out of them. She was quite naked now. Reaching out, she undid the bow adorning his long, thick penis, let it drop, and then, wrapping her hand about him, she led him into their bedroom.

Pushing him down on the bed, she climbed atop him, her butt toward his head, and, leaning down, captured his dick between her two full breasts, moving it up and down.

"Ohh, baby," he murmured as he hardened seriously. His hands reached out to squeeze her cute ass cheeks.

"You like?" she asked him. Her tongue snaked out to lick at the tip of his cock.

"Yesss!" he hissed. "Hike."

She took the tip of him between her lips and rotated her tongue about him. "Mmmm," she said. Then she bent lower and sucked him deep into her mouth and throat, but she was careful with him, because she didn't want him to come in her mouth this time. For a moment or more she sucked him, and then released him, gasping as she did when Ryan pushed a finger deep into her ass. "Ohh, my!" He had never done that before. She squeezed her butt cheeks together hard.

He chuckled and rotated the finger. "You like?" he parroted her query of a few moments before.

"I'm not sure," she admitted.

"We'll get a nice little dildo and play sometime. I think we should expand our horizons, don't you?" he said softly as he withdrew the single finger.

"Oh, God, am I boring you?" Ashley asked, turning around to face him.

"You will never bore me, baby," Ryan told her. Then he rolled her over and thrust himself into her wet pussy. "This is where I belong!"

Ashley wrapped herself around him and let him fuck her until she was weak with pleasure. He took her high, and she scratched and bit and screamed as he groaned and finally, as they climaxed together, shouted. Afterward she giggled as they lay together, replete and satisfied.

"Good thing we're way down the hall from everyone else," she said. "The harpies would sure as hell be jealous."

He chuckled. "Fuck 'em!" he said, and she laughed.

"That was your first Christmas gift," she told him.

"Yours too," he responded, pulling her into his arms, and then yanking the down quilt over them.

They fell asleep, waking several hours later to the smell of coffee in their sitting room. Byrnes had crept quietly in, as he did almost every morning, to bring it. Getting up, they pulled on robes and went out to find the tray decorated with a sprig of holly and containing a plate of cinnamon rolls and butter as well. They fell upon the food, realizing that their exertions several hours previous had given them an appetite.

"Can we open our presents?" Ryan asked boyishly, and she nodded.

Together, like two kids, they took turns pulling off Christmas paper and opening the boxes beneath their small tree. They had decided beforehand to limit their gifts to two each. Ashley's boxes contained a red cashmere turtleneck sweater and a beautiful gold chain, at the end of which was a ruby heart. It was the necklace that caused her to cry. She had gotten Ryan a beautiful antique gold and bejeweled miniature triptych she had found in Venice with Bianca's help, and a leather desk set for his new office. He was delighted with both.

"We hung our stockings for Santa," Ashley reminded him. "I see there's something in yours. You'd better go check it."

"I thought we said two gifts. I forgot about the stocking. Stocking gifts don't figure in the total, do they?" He looked a little distressed.

"You'll remember next year. Go see what Santa left you," she encouraged him.

"Probably a lump of coal." He grinned. Reaching in, he pulled out a narrow rectangular box all beautifully gift wrapped. Carefully he pulled the paper off of it. Probably a new watch, he thought. Lifting the box lid and then the tissue, he stared down, confused, at the plastic rectangle with the pink plus sign. "What is it?" he asked her.

"A pregnancy test kit I took the other day," she said softly.

Ryan's mouth dropped open. He stared down at the pink plus, and then he looked up at Ashley. A smile suddenly split his handsome face. "We're going to have a baby?" he said in a husky voice.

"We're going to have a baby," Ashley told him, smiling back.

"When?"

"Sometime next August," she told him. "I think it was that mirror in the canopy above the bed in Venice that did it," Ashley teased him.

"We gotta get married," he said. "Right away!"

"We are married," she reminded him.

"Not in the eyes of the Church," he told her nervously.

"If it will make you happy, then fine," Ashley agreed. "But it has to be with your priest and mine, Ryan."

"No argument," he replied. "But right after the holiday, okay?"

"Fine," she told him. "I'd like to tell your family today after dinner."

He nodded. "Ma will be so pleased, especially since we're going to get married now."

"We are married, you dumb Eyetie-Mick!" she insisted. "It's legal."

"Yeah, yeah, okay, but not without the Church's blessing. Bear with me on this one. I can't help the way I was raised," Ryan said.

Ashley laughed. "I like the way you was raised," she teased him.

They finished their coffee, dressed, and went downstairs to greet their guests.

Byrnes had laid out a breakfast buffet on the library table in the living room. After a good night's sleep and a lot of rather excellent food, the five elder Mulcahy sisters were leaning toward acceptance of their new sister-in-law. Outrageous promises from their husbands had helped to cool their disappointment over losing the monies they had hoped to gain from selling R &R. They exchanged gifts with one another, their youngest sister, nephew, mother, brother, and Ashley.

"They're actually laughing," Frankie's son, Michael, whispered to his mother. "I never saw your sisters laugh so much."

"Scary, isn't it?" Frankie murmured back.

"Behave yourselves, the pair of you," Angelina scolded softly.

"Sorry, Nonna ," Michael replied.

At four o'clock in the afternoon Christmas dinner was served.

"I wasn't certain what your traditions were," Ashley apologized, "and so I asked Mrs. B. to do prime rib, which my family has always served, a ham, and a turkey." She noted that most of her guests took a little of everything, and realized that she had just begun a new tradition. There were potatoes done about the beef, a sweet-potato casserole, and mashed potatoes, along with French-cut green beans, mashed turnips, creamed onions, and a fruit salad. There were freshly baked rolls, butter, and cranberry and horseradish sauce.

"Where do you get such fresh beans?" Magdalena wanted to know.

"We have a small greenhouse where we grow them, along with peas, lettuces, radishes, carrots, spinach, and baby beets in the winter. We tried growing tomatoes, but it's a small greenhouse, and we haven't room to heat it enough. We pick the beans young."

"It's like being in your own little private world," Kathleen put in. "Is there any crime out here?"