At 11:15 the Jacks house was abuzz downstairs with pre-party preparations for tomorrow night. Justin had just come home with Halle in tow and John and Jerry was back from Hong Kong. Everyone was in the ballroom talking and giving Jane their feedback on her decorative ideas and her roaring twenties theme. Notably absent were Juliet and Brenda, whom everyone assumed were upstairs doing girl stuff; and Jax, who Jane was afraid was busy packing for the infernal trip into deepest Africa which she was dreading his going on.

     And while Jane tried to talk her other sons into convincing their brother not to go on the Safari, Jax was upstairs in his bedroom slipping on the jacket of his black Tuxedo.

     Why he was getting dressed up for a wedding that was just a temporary thing with no real significance, was beyond him. He grabbed the keys to the black Lexus and headed over to get Brenda. On his way he heard all the chatter and laughter coming from the ballroom and he knew that no one would see them leaving except perhaps some of the household help who would undoubtedly be gossiping about it all night.

     On his way up the center staircase to get Brenda and Juliet, Jax slipped the rings he had run out and gotten for Brenda, into his pocket. And as his head bent to do that, he did not see Brenda coming down the stairs. But then he heard the soft rustle of her gown against the carpeted stairs and looked up to see her.

     She was breathtaking. There were no other words. The devil would sell his soul for one look at her.

     Jax didn’t even open his mouth to tell her how beautiful she was, for it was all there in his captivated gaze. "Wow," was all he said in a hushed tone, but it was enough.

     Brenda, however, did find the words to tell him what she thought of him. "Jax! Do you look gorgeous or what?" She said in her exuberant uninhibited way.

     He gave her a smile. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Are you ready?"

     "Ready!" she said and again, her excitement sort of threw him. What in the heck was she so happy for?

     "I’m ready too," Juliet said. "Hey, where is everybody? Can we get out of here unnoticed, Jax?"

     "More or less," Jax said as he took Brenda by the hand and helped her the rest of the way down.

     As the three of them went through the front door Dorie and Niles saw them and Dorie nearly dropped her tray of coffee.

     "Leapin’ Lizards!" she said. "Niles! Did’ya see that Niles? Miss Brenda in a weddin’ dress and Mr. Jax in a tux, holdin’ hands!" She rubbed her eyes. "Am I havin’ a hallucination?"

     Niles was as cool and calm as ever. "I didn’t see a thing," he said with a shrug as he went about his duties leaving poor Dorie to ponder about her mental faculties.

     "About bloody time!" Chad ranted when his lawyer finally got him released from the holding cell. "I ought to sue this police department! Do you know how long they had me detained here?!" He cursed and took back his jewelry items from the booking desk and hurried out to his car. "Christ!" he shouted as he saw that his Porsche had four flat tires. And then he turned to his attorney. "Larry, where’s your Town car?"

     As he said that, Larry’s car, which had been parked in a tow-away zone, was being towed away. Larry went screaming down the street trying to stop the tow-truck driver to no avail while an infuriated Chad used his car phone to call AAA and then to call the Jacks mansion.

     "Jacks residence," Niles answered.

     "Niles! You listen to me you limey cretin, you put Brenda on the phone this instant or so help me God . . ."

     Niles yawned loudly into the line and hung up. "Oh this is too much fun," he murmured to himself as, whistling, he went into the ballroom to see if anyone wanted anything.

     Banging his phone angrily against his car, Chad finally clamed down enough to dial another number. This time he called the church. It was 11:40, he still had 20 minutes to get there he would just tell the revered to tell Brenda he was running a bit late. But the phone at the clergy room of the Jefferson Parish Cathedral rang unanswered as the swell of "Here Comes The Bride" playing in the Cathedral drowned it out.

     "Where the HELL IS EVERYBODY!" Chad screamed to the empty street. The officer who had arrested him came back outside.

     "Mr. Stanton, if you don’t want to get arrested for disturbing the peace I suggest you shut the hell up," he said with a smile as he went back inside.

     "I’ll have your badge you bloody incompetent!" Chad muttered angrily as he paced in a circle around his inoperable car while he waited for the AAA tow truck. To think he would have to arrive at his wedding in a blasted, junky tow truck! But then he envisioned taking Brenda home tonight and lasciviously inducting her into the world of womanhood as his wife and he calmed down considerably. Yes, this fetching creature was worth the wait. Soon she would be his and his alone.

     The vows swam around in Jax’s head like a crazy jigsaw puzzle. ‘Do you Jasper Jacks, take Brenda Barrett, to be your lawfully wedded wife. . . Love and cherish, have and hold, sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live . . .’ Was he actually pledging all of this? Pledging it to a 19 year old girl whom he had only known for a week? What was he out of his cotton picking mind or something? Marriage was a prison! He had no desire to visit this prison until he was 40 years old and had conquered the earth so to speak. But he was only 24 and he hadn’t even gone on his first Safari yet and here he was taking a teenaged wife? Had he fallen on his head this morning or something?! He couldn’t do this!

     And yet he looked into her eyes, felt a strange, inexplicable little surge in his heart, thought of Chad possibly standing where he was right now and remarkably enough he heard the words "I do," roll quite easily off of his lips.

     Good God, he was married.

     At 11:59 Chad Stanton was raging at the tow truck driver to get a move on. They were still a good ten minutes from the church and by God he didn’t want Brenda thinking he had stood her up! They hit their tenth red light.

     "Why the hell didn’t you take the parkway like I asked you to?" Chad railed. "We have hit every red light since we left the police station!"

     "Sorry Mr. Stanton, but there’s too much traffic on the highway tonight. Everybody driving in for that Orpheum party tonight. Believe me this is the fastest way right now," the driver assured him.

     Chad checked his watch and this time it was the date more than the time that jumped out at him. Friday the 13th. "Oh for the love of. . .!" the light turned green and the tow truck driver took off.

     Jax and Brenda were officially pronounced man and wife at the stroke of midnight as a jubilant Juliet, the jovial minister and his equally jovial wife, looked on.

     "You may kiss the bride," the minister said as his wife played "Isn’t it Romantic" on the church organ.

     Jax leaned forward to kiss Brenda but she stopped him. She looked at Jax and bit her lip, liking him soooo much that it could very possibly be love and therefore feeling suddenly guilty for tricking him into this wedding. She knew he didn’t want to get married for another fifteen years or so. She knew she had totally screwed up his time table and his Safari plans and that he would never have gone through with this wedding to her had she not set it up so magnificently.

     "I’m sorry," she said.

     "For what?" he asked.

     "Your getting married way before you want to, probably to somebody you didn’t want to, and your missing your Safari and all. I mean it was supposed to be Chad here instead of you."

     "Don’t you ever be sorry for that," he said. "I would never have let you marry him," he informed her.

     "Really?"

     "Mmm Hmmm."

     "Why not?"

     He didn’t feel like answering her twenty questions right now. "Just kiss me," he said with a wickedly handsome smile.

     And his smile alleviated a lot of her worries as she met his lips halfway with her own in a searing kiss of captivating passion that had Juliet convinced that this pretend marriage would not be ending any time soon, . . if at all.

     "Why that’s the best ‘you may kiss the bride’ kiss I’ve ever seen," the minister said. "And I’ve seen a lot of ‘em."

     "We had a lot of practice," Jax said which made Brenda giggle. Then Jax shook the minister’s hand and Brenda kissed the minister’s cheek.

     "Godspeed, children," the minister called to them as his wife threw rice after them as Jax. Brenda and Julie all left the church. "Be good to each other and be happy!"

     As they climbed back into the Lexus, Brenda turned to her brand new husband and said with a smile that melted his heart, "So, where are we going on our honeymoon?"

     "Honeymoon?" Jax said. "Ahh . . . .I really don’t think that’s such a good idea."

     "Oh but Jax, we have to. We don’t want some judge to think our marriage is fake."

     "But it is fake."

     "Yeah, but we can’t let other people know that or else Iris could get some judge to put me in jail for fraud or something like that. No, we definitely have to go on a honeymoon."

     "Ooh, go to Maui," Juliet suggested.

     "Oh that sounds nice," Brenda agreed, excitedly. "Or what about Jacks Isle? We could go back there. I liked it."

     Jax remembered the rose petal waterfall caves and his and Brenda’s little encounter in there. No way could he go back there and keep his promise of a platonic relationship to her. And Hawaii would be no better. If she was insisting on this ridiculous honeymoon thing for show, then he had to take her someplace where there would be so much going on that sex would not be an option.

     He had a brainstorm. "How about the French Riviera?" he suggested.

     His sister looked at him, shaking her head, knowing that the French Riviera was where Jax and his crazy friends had their crazy games like real-property Monopoly and went from party to party to party and social event to social event. There would be little or no time for romance. But of course Brenda didn’t know this and the French Riviera sounded perfectly romantic to her.

     "I would love that!" Brenda said excitedly.

     "Good," Jax said. "I’ll need to take care of some business first and then we can leave say . . .Thursday night?"

     "Perfect!" Brenda said leaning over and kissing his cheek while Juliet stuck her tongue out at her brother, who saw her from the rearview mirror.

     She didn’t understand that he was doing this for Brenda’s own good, so that he could keep his promise to her, that was all. A promise that he didn’t know how in the hell he was going to be able to keep judging by the way he had kissed her in the church.

     He saw several cold showers in his future.

     "Can we tell everybody that we’re married now?" Brenda asked him, sounding strangely happy and resting her hand against his leg absently, having no idea what her touch generally did to him.

     "We’ll announce it at the party," Jax decided. "This may even top my harem episode last summer, don’t you think, pest?"

     "Definitely," Juliet agreed. "Mum and dad will turn to stone from shock when you tell them." she laughed.

     "Indeed," Jax murmured. And God only knew what Chad and Amber’s reaction would be.

     Chad got to the church at 12:11 and to his shock it was locked up and dark. How could this be? Surely they would have waited a mere ten minutes? He kicked the door angrily and was about to call the Jacks Mansion again but in anticipation of Niles hanging up on him again, he decided to wait until tomorrow. He would explain this abominable mess to Brenda and reschedule their nuptials for tomorrow night after the party. If her step-mother somehow crashed the party and started trouble they could always announce their engagement at the party to let her know she’d better back off. The more he thought of that the more he liked the idea of announcing their engagement at the Orpheum party. It would let the whole world know she was his . . .

     Meanwhile, back at the Jacks mansion, Brenda was moving all of her things into Jax’s wing of the house. Most everyone was sleeping except Dorie, who, seeing Jax, still in his Tux moving Brenda’s things to his side of the house, told herself she needed new glasses and went to bed.

     When Jax was done, he sat at the top of his staircase, leaning back on his elbows and Brenda, still in her wedding dress, came from behind him and sat herself down in his lap, encircling one arm around his neck. She stifled a little yawn and then leaned her head against his shoulder. "So where am I sleeping?" she asked him as she shut her eyes.

     Her hair smelled like honey and almonds, her body smelled like Channel No. 5. Her wedding ring set glittered on her left hand which was playing with his loosened bow-tie and her body was so relaxed against his. Totally trusting, totally at ease. She was his and yet she wasn’t which was a puzzling sort of thing for him to comprehend.

     "We can sleep in the same bed if you want to," she said sleepily as her fingers played with his hair absently. "I trust you. Nothing will happen."

     He glanced down at her in disbelief. "Yeah right," he murmured.

     And so it began . . .