Chapter 7
The following morning, and I do mean morning, which began with a breakfast call at eight o'clock, almost everyone came to the table half awake and not quite certain of where they were, for sure.
But after Maria had brought in the steaming coffee and the thick rich cream for it and the hot biscuits fresh from the oven and the dishes full of fresh butter appeared everyone began to snap wide awake.
"My God, but I haven't slept that well in years." Mark intoned.
"Christ you sound like you were fifty years old." Jan tossed back at him from the .other end of the table.
"Not at all. It's just that I haven't slept so well since I was a kid. Really!" He answered as he filled his face with a hot biscuit loaded with sweet butter and honey. The honey dripped into his freshly laundered beard. "Oh, hell, now it'll be a fucking mess all day."
"Go and wash it out." Dan said.
"Why, I don't go and wash you out every time you dribble down my chin, do I?"
"Stop being so crude, so early in the day."
"Be what ever you like anytime of the day and all day if you so wish. That's exactly why we came here. And I for one intend to be just that ... course, crude and a fucking whore with and for anyone and everyone that turns me on." With that Liz raised her coffee to her lips and sipped it as graciously as if she were presiding over a great dinner party back at the embassy.
For a moment everyone took on a very serious note and then Liz began to smile over the top of her cup and then she began to laugh outright.
It broke the entire table up and everyone began to talk and chatter like birds over a loaf of bread.
Adell let down her famous hair and told how she got the facial damage and ended it all with a quip:
"So you see I'm really out here resting my face. And God does this face need a rest."
Everyone was down by then except for the newly wed couple and it seems that they would have to be called.
Betty and Dan decided that they would go up and call them.
But when they came back they had a very strange look on their faces.
"They're gone. They left early this morning. They left us this note." Dan said as he handed it to Mark.
When he had read it to himself he smiled and then turned to the table, "Well I suppose you all would like to know what this is all about. That is all of you who are not in the know."
"Naturally!" Liz said with an air of certainty. "Naturally, we would care to know. I have as curious a nature as anyone else."
"And so do I!" Adell was quick to add.
Mark retold the events of the night before and what had happened between the two young people who had married for convenience.
"So it would seem that they have found something that they didn't even know that they had in the first place." Mark added after he had finished.
"Well would you mind reading us the note?" Jan asked, rather impatiently.
"No, not at all." Mark cleared his throat and read:
You all,
Now that's a nice southern way to open a letter, isn't it?
Well, Mary and I have decided that after the events of last evening, which most of you were witness to, that we'd really like to be alone for a while and sort out where we really are and just who we really are.
We know that we couldn't do that by staying on here. We are too much in love with all of you to do that. So we are leaving you our address in Richmond and hope that you will come and be our guests anytime that you may find yourself or selves near enough to do so.
Wish us luck and happiness. We could use a lot of both.
Thank you all for being so great. We love you.
Signed,
Bob and Mary or Mary and Bob which ever way you prefer. We've decided it doesn't make a helluva lot of difference.
LOVE
There was a long silence that was broken only by the sound of an occasional cigarette being lit.
"By God, I hope they make it!" Jan said. Her voice was filled with tears. "Christ, knows that I couldn't and I've tried three times and I'm not even thirty-five yet."
She finished her coffee and got up hurriedly and left the table.
"Excuse me," Joey said, "I think that I'll just see if she's all right."
He followed Jan out onto the big wide porch where he found her leaning against one of the post. She was just looking off into the distance and not saying a word.
"What's wrong? Please, relax and enjoy yourself."
"Man," she began, and then for some reason her attitude changed completely, "Joey," she became softer, younger even, "I guess I'm really afraid of being happy. Even for one fucking day. Because I know that tomorrow the shit's gonna come down and I'll be right back where I've always been. Disappointed, disillusioned, and so fucking hurt and lonely inside that I could just tear the fucking guts out of myself, the pain is so fucking bad."
Joey put an arm around her and they just stood looking across the open grazing land that was already blazing under an Arizona August sun.
"I, we, that is Frank and I, we didn't have it so easy. Yeah, my old man left me this ranch but you bet your sweet ass that it weren't nothing like it is today. Frank was just eighteen then and I was sixteen. Frank and I are half-brothers. But the old man couldn't stand Frank so when he died he'd left everything to me.
"Well, you see, I love Frank. I guess he's the only person in the whole fucking world that I've ever trusted, completely. And you know why?"
Jan shook her head no.
"Because he loves me and I know it. It's something that has always been between us and nothing ain't ever gonna change it. From the time I was so small I could hardly sit a horse Frank was and has been there to make sure I didn't fall and hurt myself. He loved me even when he had every reason to hate my guts. He always says, 'Well, I just couldn't help myself.' Maybe that's so, but we got each other and we took hold together and with Franks ability with handling the men and the cattle and my way with handling the bankers we built up this place into what it is today.
"That's been twenty years in the making and making it together.
"You see Frank and I are lovers. We always will be in one way or another.
"But we could still love someone else. Say like you. I mean you could have things pretty good with him and I. We'd both love you."
"Come on let's go for a ride. Just you and I. You must know somewhere there is a cool stream and a mountain of trees and all that shit. You know right out of a Roy Rogers and a Dale Evans movie."
They both began to laugh and took off hand in hand running toward the horse barns.
Before anyone knew it they were long, long gone.
As they all stood on the porch watching them take off over the mesa toward the north-west Frank finally spoke up: "Well, I knew it'd have to happen sooner or later. I'm just glad that it's settled. Finally!"
Betty gave him a queer look and asked him "What in hell do you mean. It had to happen? What had to happen? What in hell is going on?"
"Betty," Liz turned to her and stopped her in her tracks with her most imposing and most intense stare, "what Frank means is this, Joey has finally found himself a mate. Something that he's been looking for but didn't know it. But Frank knew it. Isn't that so, Frank?" Liz turned to the raw-boned, tanned, almost handsome dude and asked.
"Yeah, I guess that just about says it." Frank turned and went back into the house.
They all followed him.
By that time it was nine and the day was set to start for the vacationers.
Maria had huge lunch baskets packed and there were immense caskets of crushed ice with bottles of cold beer and good table wine packed deep in the center.
They all headed towards the barn and there they were all given a good saddle horse to ride.
There was some problem about mounting but finally everyone got into the swing of it and the whole group set off into the hills for a day on the trail.
Luke and J.D. two of the older hands rode along to help with the horses and take care of any problems that might arise.
Now both these dudes were in their forties and tough and weathered to a magnificent bronzed look from years out in the open.
Luke was a fucking good looking stud about forty-five and hung like a horse. And the hang showed very clearly through his faded jeans as he rode along the trail next to Adell. She had a hard time keeping from reaching over and just touching the fucking hammer he showed just to make sure that it was the real thing.
J.D. was a year or two older but a helluva lot better looking with a fucking full head of black hair that fell to his shoulders. He was half Indian and looked like a fucking movie star. His chest was big and very hairy which was unusual for an Indian.
He had beautiful green eyes and a fantastic smile that bloomed from his cleft chin up past his huge mustache to the very top of his hair line that was thick and glossy.
Liz was giving him a very close appraisal and while riding next to him became immersed in a very serious conversation about the different ceremonies that the Indians still believe in and honor every year.
J.D. was well hung as well and his fucking balls were equal to any yearling bull around.
He was a man of quiet humor and hot blood. He had taken a shine to this polished city lady the minute he'd seen her. Knowing full well that it would only be for as long as she were a guest, that he'd be able to have an intimate relationship with her. He knew his place, as it were, and tried never to overstep those bounds.
But for some strange reason this woman did not seem to be aware that there were such bounds and if she did she choose to ignore them as out moded or distasteful or no longer of any use to her.
He liked this. She was strong, like he was. She was older than she looked. This he knew instinctively, just like one knows when one is in danger or going to be lucky. He felt lucky.
"Do you live at the ranch the year around?" Liz asked.
"Yes, ma'am. We all do. You see during the winter we have all the inside work to do to get ready for the spring herding and the calving. Then we got all the duding to do off and on. We take turns riding the trail with the guests and working the range as a cowhand. But I love it. I guess I must. I been at it all my life." He gave Liz a big wonderful smile.
"Have you never been married?" She questioned him.
"Once," his face turned dark, "long ago. A very long time ago. She died when my son was born. She was fourteen, I was just fifteen. We hardly had time to get to know each other."
Liz was very interested now, this man had a past and that fascinated her.
"Where is your son now?" She asked as casually as if she were asking about the weather. And perhaps that's why J.D. answered her so promptly. He knew that she was interested but that she was wise enough to ask it in such a way that one could answer if they wished or completely over look the question all together.
"He's buried in Arlington Cemetery. He's a War Hero." His voice was like acid and the tone brittle, but there were tears in his eyes.
Liz quietly reached over and took one of the big rough, well worn hands in her soft, so well cared for hands. She never said a word. She only looked straight ahead of herself and held the big strong hand until it was gently raised to the big warm lips beneath the massive mustache.
"Thank you, my lady." He said very quietly.
Liz turned to him in her most gracious manner and looked the magnificent man square in the eye and answered.
"You, sir, are the first real man and gentleman I have ever met or known besides my father and when I tell you that it is the greatest compliment I could ever give any man. For to me you are as much a Prince as is my father and I nod to you in acknowledgement of your peerage." Liz was feeling a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to have this man's child.
When the full reality of what she was thinking hit her she almost passed out and fell from her saddle.
J.D. grabbed her and steadied her until she regained her composure. She shook her head a couple of times but the thought persisted.
"I do want this man to make love to me. Not just sex or anything that is as outrageous as an affair on the trail, but I really want to have this man as my lover. He does something that I've never experienced before. My God! What a scandal it would cause! But if he is as respectable a man as I know him to be then what can anyone possibly say. They'd simply have to accept the fact that The Grand Duchess of Lictenstein-Monrovia has taken a cowboy, and a half-breed at that, as a lover. Perhaps, even a husband. After all, I do want a man, a real man when I do marry. And from what I've been confronted with I guess I'll have to remain single for the rest of my life."
Liz ran every fantasy that was possible through her mind as she thought of the big handsome man next to her.
They passed a clump of small trees where there was still a growth of grass beneath them that looked inviting.
Liz slowly fell back and as she did so so did J.D. until they were way behind of the others who were so into talking and having a time of their own that they never noticed the two lonely riders turn their horses and ride slowly back toward the grove of trees.
They never said a word between them. It was simply understood that they would return to this spot together. They had only looked at each other once and that was to smile in a soft knowing way at one another.
They reached the coolness beneath the trees and within the center of it was an artesian well that ran into a trough and from the trough into the ground again so that the place was very cool and grassy.
"Would you like a drink of really cold spring water?" J.D. asked.
"No, I want you to take me in your arms and hold me very close to you for a moment. Please? If you would?" Liz asked in a gentle tone that she had seldom ever used before.
J.D. tied the horses near the trough so they could drink and graze. When he had done this he came up to Liz who was looking out of the grove with her back to him.
He just stood for a long time very close to her so that she could feel the heat of his body on hers and she could smell his wonderful, healthy animal male odor as it came to her over the fresh breeze that blew through the trees.
She knew that he was close to her. So close in fact that there was hardly an inch separating them.
But she would wait for him. She would be a woman for a change and not a ruler. She would be simply a female waiting for her mate to take her. Not by force, because she wanted him as much as he wanted her, but take her, reach for her first and not she for him first. Only after he had proven that he was man enough to reach out and take her could she reach back for this magnificent man. God, she hoped he would. She needed that sp badly: All her life she had been taught that she was this and that and that she had to give all the signals and everyone else was to follow. But now, right now, at this moment in time, she just wanted to be a plain ordinary woman, who had a man who would reach out and take her.
Quietly, gently he did just that.
The warm feeling of two very large hands came to rest on her shoulders and they ever so gently turned her to face the most wonderful most gentle, strongest, handsomest, kindest face she had ever known.
The eyes were as steady as her own and they caught and held her in their gaze for a long moment and then the lids closed as the face came closer to hers and she too closed her eyes.
The lips met and there was an instant fire that spread between the two of them. It was a deep, glowing, kind of fire. Certainly not a little one made of kindling wood. This was a forest fire. A fire that would burn forever in their memories. It was the kind of thing that one looks for all their lives and then suddenly when they have almost forgotten about it altogether and put it away as a worn out dream the dream comes to pass.
This is what happened between the Grand Duchess and the half-breed cowboy. J.D. the son of an Indian Chief and a lovely dark-haired Irish girl who had come to the reservation over fifty years ago to teach the young chief how to read and write and had stayed on to be his beloved wife.
Between these two people, this man and this woman there burned a fire that neither time nor distance could ever put out.
"I love you J.D. I've never said that to any-other man before in my life. Because I've ... "
"Because you never felt it before. I know. You are like me, you are too honest with yourself to cheat yourself by making a lie to your soul. I have had many but never have I ever told them of love." He paused and wrapped her close in his huge powerful arms, "But you my sweet fawn, you I will say it to, 'I feel for you in my heart as I have never felt for anyone before, except for my son and my mother, but even that love does not cover what I feel for you right now. Nor what I will feel for you after you have gone out of my life. You and knowing you will be the point in my life at which I shall begin to reckon the birth of my heart." He was so tender and so gentle for such a huge man that Liz felt for the first time in her life comforted by the very presence of a man.
She reached for his lips once more and this time their tongues began to search into one another's mouths. Circling each others lips and then sucking one another's tongue back and forth.
Finally J.D. bent her back slightly and began to kiss her cheeks and then he kissed her eyes and covered her eyebrows and the tender skin above her eyes with his lips in the most sensual kisses that Liz had ever known. The touch alone sent sensual spasms through her entire body.
"Ohhhh!" She moaned as he moved to her temples and then slowly and gently moved the hair away from her ears and began to trace their delicate outlines with his tongue. His lips then completely enclosed her auditory shell and she thought she would pass out from the intense feelings and extensive sensual pressure it put on her nervous system.
"I love you." She whispered to him.
"I know." Was his only reply as he brought his lips to her long beautiful, satin smooth neck. He caressed the long taut tendon with his warm mouth and then he began to slowly trail his mouth up and down and up and down over and over that same delicate piece of flesh until the sensation from the passage of his warm wetness over it nearly made Liz collapse with the lush agony of the movement.
"Please, my darling, please, you must stop. I can't stand it any longer." Her voice was so small and sounded like part of the breeze that he could only halt for a brief moment and then he continued but extended the coverage of his thick sensual lips and hot mouth down to the front of her throat and then down to her very cleavage.
Slowly he undid the buttons on her shirt until he had exposed her entire breast. But with each button he had paused and made love to the new flesh of her luscious body as it was exposed so that by the time he had the shirt unbuttoned and off of her and she stood naked before him to the waist he had already covered her exposed parts completely. But as he removed the shirt he stood back and looked at her for a moment, He drank in the sight and as he did so there came from deep within his chest the sound of a man in the agony of pure ecstasy.
He took her again in his arms and as he did so she could feel his groin now as it ground into her own. She could feel the outline of Ms powerful tool as it lay tight against his thigh, held there by the tightness of his jeans. But even so she could still feel it throb and beat against her own throbbing cunt.
She wanted this man to fuck her. But she would let him take his own time in getting to that point. She wanted to be completely his.
J.D. put his hungering mouth over her nipples and sucked at each one of them until they both stood up tall and stiff.
The feeling of his mouth at her breast nearly sent Liz into an orgasm. The sensuality that the man put into the sucking and into the way he enclosed her tits with his entire mouth was almost to much pleasure to endure.
Slowly he sank to his knees before her and as he did so he worked his mouth and tongue over her body, cupping her belly button with his devouring mouth. And as he gently sucked at her navel he began undoing her pants buckle and then the buttons on her jeans until they were all open and he could easily slip them down from her waist.
But before he did that he moved his face to her groin just above the little triangle of pubic hair and began to push the hot air from his lungs over her tender flesh.
As he did this he put her hands on his shoulders so she could steady herself as he withdrew her boots and socks and then he lowered her jeans and pulled them from her legs until Liz stood naked. Completely naked before this big wonderful, humpy, horny, hot stud of a man that was so full of love.
He then buried his face in the soft hair of her pubic area, and began to suck and lick at the flesh beneath the hair. He worked his tongue all over the area until he had covered it from one side to the other and then and only then did he make the first darting pass at the very top most point of her pussy lips.
Her lips had become so swollen from pure sensuality and lust for this man that they were already turned back and exposing the soft, pink, satin flesh inside.
J.D. gently and ever so delicately began to eat at her cunt. The big lips with their smooth sensuality only grazed her cunt lips at first.
Only when he had his own shirt off and was slowly but deftly shedding his jeans and boots, did he become forceful and start to really eat at her pounding cunt. And it was pounding with the lust that was building up in her body for this man and the feel of his body in and on and around her.
She reached down and ran her fingers through the long dark hair and clutched the head as gently but as firmly as she possibly could in order to steady herself.
Then he too was naked.
He slowly rose, never taking his mouth from her body until he was in a position to once more kiss her on the lips.
Only after they had kissed for a long time did Liz have the chance to look at J.D. naked.
When she saw him she had an obvious intake of breath.
He was magnificent beyond belief. His body was rock hard with a big chest that was very hirsute and thick. He narrowed to the waist but not like that of body builder. No his body was thicker, more solid, yet hard as rock. There was a great thick line of hair that followed the very center of his chest down to the very beginning of his pubic region. There he had a mat of hair that was thick and had formed long masses of curls from the sweat of his groin and being compressed within his jeans.
But the cock and balls were absolutely glorious. The cock was large and thick with an uncut foreskin, excepting that this was the loose kind of foreskin that when the cock became hard it moved back over the top of the head in thick gentle folds of voluptuous flesh. The cock was thrust straight out from his groin and at midway made a slight downward curve. It was the most perfectly shaped cock for sucking that Liz had ever seen. It was large but the shape and angle of jut from the body made it perfect to swallow down to the very root.
The balls were immense. They were at least a full handful. They were covered by a very thick and very tightly wrinkled skin that was both delicate and textured at the same time.
She reached for his balls and he let her. Her hand cupped them and then slowly she fell to her knees before his wonderful smelling musk scented groin and began to lick his fat delicious balls. First one and then the other she licked and lapped until they were completely wet.
Then she very carefully placed her lips over the throbbing head of the swollen, pulsing organ.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" He let out a soft moan as his hips gently thrust forward. This, thank God, sent at least three inches of this thick wonderful cock into her mouth. But Liz was hungry for all of it. She wanted to feel all nine inches of this marvelous tool sink deep into her throat.
J.D., his massive balls beginning to bob up and down gently was so filled with the excitement of the blow-job it was almost more than he could stand.
He was ecstatic with the delighted feeling, but he was a bit confused as to what his response should be with this particular woman. She was so utterly magnificent.
She slid her mouth up and down joyously on J.D.'s hard swollen shaft.
She slid her mouth from the engorged tool.
"Don't say anything, J.D. Just enjoy it all as much as I am."
She resumed her sucking, taking his huge member in her hand and beginning a slow up and down motion, masturbating herself gracefully as she did so.
He was going wild with the sensation and the visual response he was getting from it all.
He had never dreamed a human mouth could feel so good on his cock. Most all of the other men or women he had had, would only do a token job on his cock and then want it shoved into their ass or into their pussy.
His legs began to quiver slightly as Liz continued her blow-job, drawing the come up his shaft with absolute expertise.
"I'm ... " J.D. began.
Liz looked up at him, the tip of his hard cock on her lips.
"I know, darling, you're going to come. And that's beautiful. It is just exactly what I want. I want you to come in my mouth this first time. After we will do whatever you want."
"Oh, my God, you beautiful bitch, I'd love it anyway you did it.
She resumed her sucking as he felt the great welling up in his body of all the pleasures that he had never felt before. Those subtle feelings that come so few times in our lives that tell us that this is the perfect time.
She felt his cock harden with desire and lust as she tongued up the shaft in a very elaborate fashion.
"Then, take it!" he cried, feeling himself erupt into the fabulous woman's hungry mouth. His knees quaked violently as he felt himself shooting stream after stream of blazing hot jism into her throat.
Liz sucked greedily, jerking her fingers madly in and out of her swollen twat as J.D. filled her mouth with his massive orgasm.
Suddenly she groaned and began to spill all the delicious cunt honey into her hand and in such great quantity that it spilled and ran down her legs and inner thighs.
She continued blowing J.D. while she wildly worked her cunt until the last of her own ejaculation was over.
She held the enormous hard on in her mouth for quite a while after all the spurting had stopped from its head.
Slowly she released the swollen member and as she did so J.D. reached down and lifted her to her feet.
"My God, that was one of the most beautiful things that's ever been done to me." He held her close to his magnificent, muscular, hard body with its faint smell of the masculine about it that was now mixed with the wonderful odor of fresh sweat.
As he held her and kissed her full on the lips he also kissed away the few flecks of his own sperm that had escaped to the edges of her lips.
She pressed her body up close to his, her firm breasts pressing against him urgently and the swollen mounds of her cunt pulsing against his own swollen groin in a way that it was not long before his resistance, if he had had any, was gone and his huge cock was again fully hard and as it came back to full stature, Liz spread her legs and caught it between her wet hot thighs with the head pressing against the open lips of her fiery cunt.
As they kissed she began to work her ass so that with out much delay she had the lips of her luscious hot pussy covering the head of J.D.'s massive monster.
He groaned and bucked forward when the head first made contact with her cunt. Then he slowly picked Liz up and he gently lay her down on the ground her legs splayed wide open for the easy entrance of his huge pulsing cock.
Their lips locked in a kiss of the sweetest delight, they began to couple. As he lowered his massive weight onto her his hand slid down to her spine and gently gave it a thrust upward.
As he did this, he positioned his own hips so they were able to piston inward at the right angle and suddenly she was completely filled with his manhood and the magnificent set of nuts lay nestled very close and tight next • to her hot warm pussy lips.
For a moment they remained coupled that way. Slowly, ever so slowly he began to pull back on his throbbing shaft until only the head remained within the delicious cunt, then he would ease it slowly back into her so that she could feel the entire shaft in all its length and thickness as it entered her cunt to the very last inch and the beautiful balls once more rested in the nest of her pubic hair.
"Oh! Oh! My wonderful man, my wonderful, wonderful, beautiful man, fuck me , fuck me so that I will feel all of you. Let me know the strength of your cock against the walls of my cunt. Don't stop until you haven't any sperm left. Give me all of your wonderful cock!"
J.D. was so excited that he could not control himself very well with this woman. She drove him mad. She was such a lady, she was such a real woman, she was such a wonderful bitch that could really fuck with a man and make him feel every stroke of his cock.
Their passion became limitless and as they fucked they became more completely into union with each other as they both thrust toward each other, he driving forward, she squirming and grinding her hips upward under his attack.
Each stroke of J.D.'s massive cock seemed just a little more powerful than the one before.
His cock plowed in and out of her so beautifully that it took his breath away with every thrust of his magnificent hips and beautiful lusting groin.
He opened his mouth and kissed her full on the lips as he thrust inward. This time he could feel the foreskin peel backwards over the head of his cock and roll all the way back over the swollen ridge behind it and slightly pull until the little fine fiber of flesh that attached itself to the foreskin and the bottom corner of his piss-slit, giving him the most fantastic and sensual sensation that a man could possibly want or feel. It felt like an orgasm without the sperm being spewed. It was a fabulous false one but with just as much feeling.
Then suddenly he could feel her cunt go very limp and then with great gripping spasms grasp the shaft of his swollen tool in the most sexual way and in that instant he was sent over the brink.
He began to come, shooting what seemed to be oceans of sperm into the lusting hot pussy hole of this woman he could not help but love.
For the longest time they lay wrapped up in each other's arms, happy and content, more so than either of them had been in their entire lives.
Finally they began to disengage and prepare to return to the ranch house.
They both bathed in the icy water of the spring as it ran clear and fresh and cold into the watering trough.
She laughed in a wonderful pealing kind of way that sounded to J.D. like the bells of a church at Easter.
She was so happy with him. She would splash the cold water at him and he would just stand there and not flinch. Then he suddenly just picked her up and tipped her head first into the trough.
When she came up she was nearly drowned, her hair was a soaking wet mess and she was cursing and crying and completely out of sorts until she saw Ms face smiling at her through the veil of cold water as it dripped from the top of her head and down the mop-like strands of her hair.
Then she too began to laugh all over again and she redoubled her water attack upon him.
They played as they never even had as children, since neither of their childhoods had allowed for the likes of this.
Now it was theirs and they were going to take it.
When they arrived back at the ranch the remainder of the trail blazers were still out on their respective horses. All that is except for Joey and Jan who were having a bite to eat all by themselves in the big homey kitchen with Maria bustling around cooking and baking up the most wonderful smells in the world.
"Hi!" Joey was the first to recognize the presence of Liz and J.D.
"Hello yourself," J.D. answered him with his broad warm smile as he and Liz ushered themselves into the kitchen.
He had his arm protectively around Liz's shoulders and was holding her close to himself.
Joey only made a slight note of it with his eyebrow but Jan was too enthusiastic about her decision to stay on at the ranch and try a go at being part of Joey's and Frank's family.
"Yeah, I decided that there really isn't any reason for me to live in Beverly Hills. Christ it's only a couple of hours from here to there if I have to be there. And furthermore, I can do all the in town work I need to do in two days a week, the rest of it I can do right here.
"See, it's mostly all design and sketch that has to be done after the show has been decided upon. So that can be done here.
"Besides, I don't want to go back. I'm just to fucking lonely in L.A. after having had what I found here."
She put an arm around Joey's neck and gave him a quick smack with her lips on his forehead.
"Well for some strange reason I think that you've made the wisest of all choices," Liz at last said, "I wish that my decisions were as easy as yours are. But somehow I intend that they shall not become complicated."
"What seems to be your problem?" Joey asked as he dug into a big piece of fresh apple pie.
"How I can best have J.D. for a lover and not disturb my political life in Washington, nor disturb his life of freedom and happiness as he knows it here in the openness and freshness of this country,"
She spoke with a very casual air and as she was doing so she had helped herself to a cup of coffee.
"Coffee, darling?" she asked as she finished pouring for herself. She flashed J.D, a fabulous smile and he simply glowed all the way through to his soul from it.
"What!!!!" Joey nearly chocked on his last bite of pie and Jan almost dropped the hot cup of coffee that she had had halfway to her mouth.
"Yes, that's my problem." She calmly sat down at the old kitchen table with its clean sweet, fresh smelling checkered tablecloth covering its worn top surface, "It will be a bit touchy at first. But since I do not wish to take away his pride of being someone and someone important with a sense of accomplishment I will have to buy a farm or a plantation or something like that within five to seven hundred miles from Washington where I can fly to most of the time and a place that J.D. can call his own and it will be his, and a place that is out and open. A place that is part of the land, the earth the beginning."
She reached out and opened her hand and he reached back and covered it with his.
"You see, he's the first man in my thirty five years that I've ever had any deep feelings for. Aside from the usual sexual ones. Those I've always been able to manage quite well. But I've never experienced with a man what I did today with this one man. And I don't want to lose it."
"We'll be leaving tonight for Washington and by tomorrow we should have found the farm or the plantation that's just right for us." Liz sipped on her coffee and there was a long silence before Joey spoke.
"Do you know who this woman is, J.D.?"
"Yes, she is the woman, the only woman I have loved in all my life. She is my woman. I am her man. Yes, Joey, we know who we are. Do you know as much about yourself?"
"Whew! Well that should teach me to keep my smart aleck mouth shut." Joey shook his head as if trying to get rid of something bad lodged inside.
Liz rose and came to the far side of the table and leaned close to both Joey and Jan.
"You, both of you, if you ever find out that you aren't the people you think you are right now, don't hesitate to make the necessary change in your lives to accommodate the person that you really are or have become.
"That's all I'm really doing. I am not the same person I was yesterday. So I have to make the changes to make that person I am now comfortable and possibly happy. And by my doing that for myself, I may, just may be able to make someone else's life comfortable and happy."
She hugged Joey in a long hard squeeze.
"You are such a sweet boy."
"But I'm a year older than you are!"
"Physically, my sweet adorable boy. Mentally it is a fact that women are far more mature than men are when at the same physical age. Why I'm practically old enough to be you mother."
With that she took J.D.'s hand and started upstairs to pack so they could leave if possible before the rest of the guests returned.
An hour later, Joey and Jan in the front seat of the .battered old station wagon and Liz and J.D. in the back with just two pieces of luggage each, they were headed out of the drive of Moon Ranch and up the long grade which would take them all away from the past of yesterday and catapult them into the reality of a greater tomorrow.