In the darkness he watched her from across the room.

     She was in the bed sleeping peacefully looking as angelic as usual. He was dressed, shirt open, sitting in the arm chair by the open window, the curtains blowing gently behind him.

     He was trying to think of a way to backtrack from this powerful emotion that had ambushed him, trying to think of a way to ward off it’s effect, to somehow reverse the Thing. Was there any way to do that? Looking at her he automatically thought no, but there had to be a way. None of this was in his plan -- none of this was what he wanted. He didn’t want to be married, he didn’t want to be, as his father would say “utterly besotted” with a woman, and he most certainly did not want to be in love. Especially not with a 19 year old girl, for God’s sake. How on earth had she done this to him? He had never been in love before. He didn’t know how to shut this thing off.

     Brenda stirred, rubbed her eyes and sat up in the bed. She saw Jax sitting by the window looking at her. He was bathed in the pale blue moonglow making his blonde hair take on some magical looking silvery blue highlights.

     “Hi,” she said.

     He didn’t say anything, just looked at her.

     “Couldn’t sleep?” she guessed.

     He shook his head.

     My, he was certainly acting peculiar, she thought.

     “Are you okay?” she asked him.

     He didn’t know how to answer that.

     “Was I . . .ummm . . .was I okay?” she asked, drumming her fingers against the bed a tad nervously as she awaited his response.

     He didn’t say anything for a long time and then he simply told her the truth: “You were perfect.”

     She looked so excited that despite his strange mood, a hint of a smile played on his lips.

     “I was? Well, you know, so were you,” she said looking at him with a look that made him feel as if he were the only thing that mattered to her. “You were so perfect Jax and if I was perfect it was only because I was responding to you. I’ve never felt anything like that in my life.”

     Neither had he.

     “I mean I can even still feel it now.”

     So could he.

     She looked at him wondering why he was so quiet, why he was doing nothing but staring at her as if trying to figure her out - as if she were some intricate puzzle he had to solve.

     “Jax, are you okay?” she asked, cocking her head and looking at him.

     The thing infused him. “I don’t know,” he said, which was as honest an answer as he could give to her right now.

     Brenda wrapped the sheet around her body and walked over to him.

     “Well are you sick?” she asked feeling his forehead. “Do you want anything?”

     Something changed in his eyes then. They grew attractively darker. “You,” he said.

     She blinked. “Me?”

     “You asked me what I wanted,” he reminded her as his eyes invaded her soul and mentally kissed her all over. She felt that familiar weak in the knees feeling.

     “Jax . . .” she murmured feeling disoriented. Could a man’s eyes really do all of that? make her feel as if he had kissed her everywhere when he had not so much as touched her?

     “I don’t know how you did this to me,” he whispered getting up, his eyes full of a strange mixture of confusion and longing. “And I don’t know what to do about it.” And then he took her face in his hands and kissed her with a passionate urgency -- a searing desire that flooded her with a desire of her own and made her shiver with the anticipation of physical rhapsody.

     “Did what to you? Are you mad at me?” she asked, surprised she could even put together a coherent sentence after that riveting kiss.

     “It doesn’t matter,” he said kissing her again as he swept her off of her feet and into his arms with purpose and took her back to the bed. His passion for her was suddenly a singularly wild, exciting thing like a reckless, heart-stopping ride on the white water rapids of the Colorado river. She was lost in the fascinating turbulence of their combined ecstasy almost immediately.

     This kind of love making was different from the first time. It was wild and tempestuous and all consuming and scintillatingly erotic. They made an unbelievable physical connection that paid off in shattering multiple orgasms that blew the love-making novice Brenda’s mind and left her completely rocked, stunned with pleasure and physically exhausted.

     She fell asleep in his arms, sweetly fulfilled and happy, her slender, tanned arms entwined around his neck possessively.

     Jax felt her warm, soft body against his, her gentle breathing lifting her body up and down. Contradiction reigned supreme in his mind which was now a minefield of confusion. How could it feel so perfect to be with her and yet at the same time fill him with a strange sort of dread? He had made love to her with a tender passion earlier and now he had made love to her with a wild urgency and still nothing had changed. The feelings were still there, still the same, still seeping into his heart with him defenseless to block them. The thing was growing and he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t shake it. It would not leave him and it would not let him give her up. It would not go away or be satiated by incredible sex or just vanish at his command as he had hoped. He had never encountered such a formidable foe.

     “I refuse to let this happen to me,” he murmured, ready and willing to defy the god of love that had done this to him. “I’m not ready for this. I don’t want this yet.”

     He had to find a way to withdraw that blasted arrow from his heart, he decided -- before it was too late to change the course of this destiny he felt building itself around him.

     Had he been able to hear himself murmur ‘I love you,’ into Brenda’s hair while he was sleeping, he would have realized that it was already too late . . .

     When Jax and Brenda got back to the mansion it was early and only Justin and Jerry were up chi-chatting by the breakfast patio. They watched as Jax and Brenda entered the house and saw them disappear inside.

     “Return of the newlyweds,” Jerry said to Justin.

     “Did you see them?” Justin grinned. “Something happened.”

     Jerry nodded. “Jax looks like he’s been hit by lightning.”

     “Or by an arrow,” Justin said with smiling blue eyes.

     “An arrow?”

     “Long story. So, do you want to make a bet on what happened on their little overnighter?”

     Jerry smiled. “You think they did the deed?”

     “I think that marriage is as real as it gets right about now,” Justin confirmed.

     “I agree. So where do you suppose he took her yesterday anyway?” . . .

     Upstairs, Brenda was snuggled up in the bed still carrying around that pleasant exhaustion from last night’s passionate love fest. Jax quietly left the room and went downstairs where his curious brothers awaited him by the patio.

     Jax was unusually quiet and seemed to have a lot on his mind as he tried to go back to his normal routine of perusing the paper for companies ripe for a takeover. As Justin and Jerry watched Jax take a seat opposite them with his paper, they were amazed that he didn’t say one word to them other then hello.

     “So how was yesterday?” Justin asked.

     “Fine,” Jax said not looking away from what he was doing.

     “Fine?” Justin and Jerry both repeated, frustrated by their brother’s lack of elaboration. By now they all knew about the circumstances of Jax and Brenda’s marriage. Jax had told them himself yesterday when he informed them that this Hamlish fellow would be moving in to try and prove the real reason Jax and Brenda had gotten married. But knowing that Jax’s marriage to Brenda was supposed to be platonic had Jerry and Justin wagering how long that would last and they intended to find out.

     “Well what did you do? Where did you take her?” Justin asked.

     “Don’t you have a hostile takeover to oversee?” Jax reminded him.

     “That isn’t until 2 o’clock. Why are you being so evasive?” Justin asked winking at Jerry.

     “Why are you being so annoying?” Jax countered.

     “Oh, we’ll never get anything out of him,” Jerry decided. “Where’s Brenda?”

     “She’s taking a nap,” Jax said, but at that moment Brenda entered the patio, looking refreshed and irresistible and capturing the attention of all three brothers.

     Ah-ha! Now they could get some answers, Justin thought.

     “Hi Brenda,” he said, “did you have a good time yesterday?” he asked her.

     She smiled, pouring herself some orange juice. “Oh yeah,” she said, and her voice was almost like the contented purr of a pampered kitten and she was unable to conceal the gorgeous, dreamy look on her face.

     Jerry rose one eyebrow, Justin grinned, Jax tried to ignore them all and bury his head in the morning paper.

     “What did you do?” Justin asked, taking her hand and pulling her down in the seat next to him.

     “Well Jax took me to your family’s cottage in . . where was it?”

     “Chalmette,” Justin supplied.

     “Really? He took you there? How interesting.” Jerry remarked.

     Jax rolled his eyes and noisily turned to the stock market section.

     “And we had lunch in this gigantic hot air balloon,” Brenda continued. “And then your brother tried to attack me with a rubber octopus, but I threw it right back at him.”

     “Kinky,” Justin murmured.

     Jax smiled, despite himself.

     “Then we went to the amusement park by the race track, that was so much fun. We were there for hours. Then we went back to the cottage and there was this really, really romantic, candlelight dinner waiting for us that Jax must have conjured up by magic, because I swear I don’t know how he did it . . .”

     “All right, a romantic, dinner,” Justin said rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the payoff, “ . . .then what?” he asked.

     Jax looked up and his eyes met Brenda’s.

     “Then we ummm . . .” her eyes held his and they shared a secretive smile. “Then we ate dinner, we danced -- no actually we danced first then we ate dinner, then we just were really tired and we went sleep,” she said with a shrug.

     “You did not!” Justin said laughing.

     Jax was grinning at his brother’s inability to get Brenda to spill the beans about last night.

     “You can tell us what really happened, Brenda. We’re all technically family now,” Jerry said persuasively.

     “What really happened? What do you mean?” she asked innocently as she grabbed a bagel while Jax watched her.

     “Did Jax tell you not to tell us?” Justin asked.

     “Not to tell you what?” she asked.

     “She’s good,” Jerry said.

     “Okay, here’s the deal, goddess-in-law, we’re trying to find out if a certain consummation has taken place,” Justin said.

     “Leave it to Justin to just blurt the damn thing out,” Jerry said slapping Justin in the back of the head.

     “Well don’t act so innocent Jer, we both want to know.”

     “Why? Are you taking bets on it?” Jax muttered going back to his paper.

     “As a matter of fact --” Justin said.

     “Do you guys bet on everything?” Brenda asked with a shake of her head.

     “Just about,” Justin said. “So you see money is riding on your answer, Brenda.”

     But Brenda wasn’t really listing to her brother-in-law, she was gazing distractedly at Jax who had his blonde head bent, circling things in the paper. “What are you doing, Jax?” she asked curiously.

     “He’s looking for victims,” Jerry supplied, peeling a banana.

     Brenda grinned. “Victims?”

     “Takeover victims,” Jerry clarified.

     “Oh yeah? How exactly do you do that?” she asked curiously.

     Jax looked up at her and the look they shared was enough to give Jerry and Justin their answer about last night. Whereas there had always been constant electricity and a fascinating, flirtatious chemistry between Jax and Brenda from the very day they had met, there was now this very visible simmering passion and a new level of playful intimacy that was also impossible not to notice.

     “Do you really want to know?” Jax asked Brenda, surprised that she was interested. He’d never known a woman besides his sister and mother who cared about what he did for a living.

     Brenda nodded.

     “Okay, well come here, I’ll show you,” Jax said.

     Brenda got up from next to Justin and went over to Jax foregoing the chair next to him and sliding onto his lap as he showed her how he went about deciphering which companies were ripe for takeovers. It was distracting having her so close, but he really, really liked it. As for Brenda, she found Jax’s explanations of what he was doing to be fascinating, but she kept thinking that he smelled so good and that she loved that shirt he was wearing and how it brought out the darker blues in his eyes and how she wished they were upstairs right now starring in a sequel of last night. . .

     Justin and Jerry watched them and then exchanged looks. Justin leaned over and whispered to Jerry: “They definitely did the deed.”

     Jerry nodded. “Obviously.” he said with a defeated sigh as he shelled out some cash to Justin, who was on a roll with winning the family bets of late.

     “Why do you suppose they’re being so secretive about it?” Justin wondered.

     “Maybe because it meant more to each of them than they want us to know -- or than they want each other to know, for that matter,” Jerry said.

     Justin gazed at Jax and Brenda again. Brenda was whispering something to Jax, her fingers playing flirtatiously with the back of his hair, and Jax had this semi-smile on his face that was indicative of a man who had everything he wanted. “He’s falling in love with that girl.” Justin stated.

     “Falling? Hell, he’s plummeting,” Jerry whispered back. “And you know how Jax feels about love. He’s not going to just sit there and let it happen to him.”

     “Well how can he stop it, really? His only recourse is to let her go,” Justin said.

     “Which he will never do,” Jerry predicted.

     “Not even after she gets her money? I mean that was their deal, he said.”

     “Well they can’t get an annulment. They’ve consummated the marriage, so they’ll have to get a divorce.” Jerry pointed out.

     “And you think Jax won’t let her?”

     “And let her get snatched up by another man? Not a chance. Remember how irritated he always got when Chad would so much as hover around Brenda? No . . now that he’s got her, he’s going to block all of the exits so that she doesn’t get away.”

     “But he doesn’t want a wife,” Justin pointed out. “ You know Jax and marriage - it’s the oil and water scenario. He doesn’t even want a relationship. Jax is Jax, you know? He just wants to go to the ends of the earth in search of his next adventure and his next amazing fling. this thing with Brenda has got to be screwing him up big time.”

     “Exactly. He’s in a quandary now that his feelings for her have changed,“ Jerry agreed. “Having Brenda screws up Jax’s plans and the reckless way he’s always viewed life and wanted to live it, but on the other hand, not having her is something I don’t quite think he’s willing to accept anymore - not after whatever transpired between them yesterday. Loving her is totally unacceptable to him and yet it’s also inevitable because apparently it’s already happened. He can’t stop it now.”

     “But he’ll try.”

     “Of course he will. Jax always was once to knock his head against brick walls thinking he could move the damn things by sheer will alone. He thinks that if he tells himself not to fall in love with her, he won’t. But then again, he already has.” Jerry shrugged.

     “A nasty little paradox,” Justin commented.

     “Yes it is. It’s got to be driving him bloody mad,” Jerry said with a grin. “I’m sure he’ll make an effort to let her go, but mark my words, Justin, he is not going to part with that girl, no matter what he thinks.”

     “No wonder he’s acting so strange,” Justin whispered finishing his health shake.

     “Well guess, what, I think it’s about to get stranger,” Jerry said and then he rose an eyebrow and took out his wallet. “Say, do you want to wager on how strange this will get?”

     As Jax and Jerry discussed the state of Jax’s heart and Jax and Brenda bonded over the financial section while exchanging playful, intimate whispers, a stranger watched them. After observing them for a while longer her stepped out onto the patio and made his presence known with a loud clearing of his throat.

     “Good morning,” he said gazing unsmilingly at them from his thick, stylish glasses as he got their attention. “I am Douglas Hamlish. I’m here to validate a marraige and from what I can see this won’t take very long,” he said crisply.