With my usual disregard for the seasons outside of the computer screen, this is a little bit Christmas-sy.

I disclaim, but I also stand between you and perjury wielding a cricket bat.

Prologue

He didn’t know how he was ever going to explain his actions when her blue eyes were staring him in the face, those blue eyes he had once loved so much, except that now he knew what he had felt had never been love. Infatuation, desire, obsession, attraction, sexual magnetism, any of those, or others, but never love. He was a coward and he knew it, but Shawn Douglas Brady couldn’t bear to return to her and tell her that their engagement was off, that he no longer loved her, and to see the heartbreak in those sinfully beautiful eyes.

So he put pen to paper, and let his emotions flow. He left the heading blank, incapable of describing his emotions or relationship to her anymore and finding writing her name without further ornamentation was too painful.

‘I don’t know what to call you, for by the time you finish this letter, you may not be my lover, my fiancée, or my friend, though I hope this last you will remain.

‘I don’t want to do this to you, but I have no choice. I must tell you honestly what has happened and why we can no longer marry. I do not ask for your forgiveness. I would like it, but I will not pressure you to say what you do not feel and to forgive actions you can neither condone nor bear. I only condemn my own actions as far as regards you. I cannot regret the rest, except that I have caused you pain which I have never meant to do.’

He put his pen down and leaned back into the hard motel room wooden chair, staring at the rest of the blank sheet of white paper. He couldn’t go on without feeling the memory of the last day run and rerun through his mind like a movie stuck on replay.

It had all started so innocently. He had been sent by his fiancée to buy a tuxedo in the only store that stocked the one she wanted for him in America. It was just like her to desire perfection in even the smallest details. It had been for their wedding, a wedding that would now never take place, and she had planned it to the last bud on the last rose of the guests’ tasteful gift baskets. He had been charmed, at first, by the way she had organised their lives, making sure that nothing went unaccounted for and everything was where it was meant to be when it was meant to be, but sitting alone though not lonely in the motel room that was his temporary home, he felt that, for such a young couple, they had lacked spontaneity and passion. They had behaved as if they had been married for twenty years already, and were settled into their pattern of life, which in a way they were.

He had known her for as long as he could remember living, and he had thought he was in love with her for years, but at twenty two, he had come to realise that whatever he felt for her was not young love, but a kind of habitual liking that was based on nothing more than a shared life and was as shallow as her appreciation for well cut clothes. It was bitter to realise it, but it gave him a freedom he had not known could exist. If he did not love her, the vague dissatisfaction with their relationship that he had always felt was explained, and could be justified. That alone was a heavy weight off his broad shoulders.

Sighing, he allowed the memory of the last day to take control, and forgot all about the letter he was supposed to be writing his ‘beloved’. She would have to wait for the explanation of why he wasn’t ever coming home to her. He had other things to think about as he sat alone but not lonely in that motel room only twenty four hours away from Salem.

Chapter One

6:03pm 23^rd December

He had the tuxedo that she had wanted in the back of the bright blue T-Bird convertible. It was black, naturally, elegantly like one worn by James Bond in the latest movie, and very expensive. It had been made for him by a tailor who usually worked only for European royalty, but she had insisted on the best, and they had the money between them to afford it. He didn’t mind spending so much on their wedding when she was so obviously delighted by it all. His mother, too, had been thrilled by a big splashy wedding for her eldest son, and had flown all over America searching the fashion shows of all the most famous designers to find the perfect hat to wear to the wedding.

His father had been more taciturn, but Shawn knew he too was happy that Shawn was marrying the girl they had all thought him destined for his entire life.

He smiled at the thought of her blue eyes, her bright smile, her laugh that had charmed everyone including his notoriously hard to please great grandmother Alice. She had been a little difficult to convince at first, but when she saw them together, her heart had melted and she had consented to the marriage happily. That in itself had been a major achievement. His great grandmother could be as cantankerous as a skunk with a hangover on a dreary February morning.

The radio was playing ‘Whatever’ by the Butthole Surfers, and Shawn was singing, or rather yelling, along when he realised that the thumping noise he had been hearing for the past couple of minutes was not in fact coming from the speakers but from his car. The engine spluttered and died.

Sighing with annoyance and frustration, Shawn coasted over to the side of the snow covered road and popped the bonnet open, staring down at the engine and wondering why it had to breakdown on the lonely highway instead of where he usually drove it around Salem and the surrounding area where there were always plenty of mechanics and garages ready to fix his baby. She hated it when he called his car his baby, or worse still Ingrid after his favourite actress, but he refused to stop. She got to call her cat ‘Mr Snuggles’ and he got to call his car Ingrid. Of course, he didn’t tell her that he usually called the cat Bacardi Breezer after the cat in the add which hers so closely resembled, but he felt that little titbit of information might send her over the edge and him out on the street for a night or two at least.

He remembered the day he had bought her Bacardi as a kitten, Christmas Eve the year before. A tiny scrunched up ball of grey fur with two big blue eyes looking out and what he later came to realise was his ‘I own you’ look, the one that declared complete and utter obedience to the cat’s will.

Flashback

"Oh, Shawn, he’s so pretty. Thank you." Kisses were rained down onto his face as his girlfriend hugged him tight. "I love him already. I think I’m going to call him Mr Snuggles."

Shawn choked down a laugh, his face becoming redder by the minute, but she luckily attributed it only to the embarrassment of being kissed so exuberantly in public. Shawn didn’t really appreciate public displays of affection, and she decided as he was being so ‘not’ sweet to her, she might as well spare him. With a final grin, she swept both Mr Snuggles and her kitten into her arms and hugged them close, wrapping the cat in the warmth of her knitted jumper.

"Thank you," she whispered in his ear with a smile that stretched across her pretty face and warmed his heart. "You always know how to make me feel so very, very happy. I love you."

Mr Snuggles had been squashed between them, and the feel of claws in his skin told him that the kitten was hanging on for dear life half crushed under Shawn’s girlfriend’s sweater. ‘The poem was right,’ Shawn though irrationally through the warm haze in his mind. ‘Girls really do have kittens growing under their sweaters.’

End of flashback

He couldn’t wait to get back to Bacardi. The cat was more his, if he was ever anyone’s, than his supposed mistress’s, and it was with a persistent head rubbing against Shawn’s leg that always greeted him when he came home.

Home, he wasn’t going to get home if he didn’t get Ingrid started soon. It was already getting dark and the highway suddenly seemed both lonelier and colder than it had before. He thumped Ingrid’s engine, carefully listening to the echoes through the metal. She was in big trouble, and if Ingrid couldn’t take him home, it looked like he wasn’t going. His fiancée was going to be furious.

"Can I help?" he hadn’t even heard the red convertible pull up beside him, and he banged his head as he jerked upwards.

A beautiful girl with large blue eyes was looking at him from the other side of the car. She smiled, her smile seemed to make the very snow around them turn into diamonds and the murky grey sky become a brilliant blue, and Shawn forgot he was engaged, forgot he was supposed to be in love with someone else, and fell madly in love with Blue Eyes, as he nicknamed her instantly.

"You don’t happen to know anything about cars, do you?" He grinned at her, and she shook her head, giggling a little.

"About as much as you seem to know about not talking to strangers!" She laughed. Angels laughed like that, he thought. It was a glorious sound, like sunshine liquefied into sound.

"Touché," he conceded the point, grinning at her all the while. "But if you told me your name, we wouldn’t be strangers."

"And I would still know nothing about cars," she evaded.

He rubbed the back of his neck and gave her a bone melting smile. "But I would know something about you."

"No names," she replied, her blue eyes glinting happily at him.

His grin widened, and he waggled his eyebrows at her, "Really?"

"Certainly," her smile widened even more. "Now do you want a ride or are we going to stand here freezing our asses off until next Christmas comes?"

"I would love a ride," his mouth said, but his eyes sent her a rather different message.

"Come on," she moved quickly away to her own car, her hips moving sensually through the frozen air.

"Wait, where are you heading to?" She turned as he called the question after her, locking up his Ingrid as he did so.

"A motel about two miles that way," she pointed the direction he had been driving in and he couldn’t help but smile at her expression, much like that of a child’s at Christmas. "They have the best eggnog this side of Exeter."

He was barely listening to her, too fascinated by the way her mouth moved to really comprehend her words. "Sounds great."

Then he followed her, opening the car door for her and watching her swing her endlessly long legs into it and slide them under the steering wheel. She was so beautiful.

"Just let me get my tux," he said quickly, racing back to Ingrid and grabbing the suit that had lead to their meeting without the slightest twinge of guilt about abandoning his fiancée while he got a ride with Blue Eyes.

"You’re a real gentleman, do you know that?" she asked as he quietly opened the door and slipped inside.

"Well my mother didn’t raise me to be no rascal, Ma’am," Shawn joked in a deep Southern accent that caused shivers to run up and down Blue Eyes’ spine.

"Hush, Rhett," she simpered like Scarlett O’Hara, "what will the neighbours say?"

Shawn glanced out the windscreen and found that the neighbours were in fact a nanny goat chewing on a hedge and a rather amused looking robin.

"I do beg your pardon, Bonnie Blue Eyes, but I did not realise we had company," he hadn’t dropped the accent, and she shifted slightly closer to him as she revved the engine and raced into the dimming twilight.

"Oh, I don’t think they’ll tell," she flashed a not so innocent smile at him, and as he roared with laughter, she tossed her hair, and he realised that no matter where he went, or what he did, he would never find another girl he would ever love like he loved her.

"Would you have dinner with me?" he asked as she pulled up outside of the motel, his brown eyes sparkling with love and hope.

She hesitated, biting on her lower lip, then let out that champagne laugh of hers again. "Of course. Would sir prefer to dance with his dinner or watch George Clooney kiss Jennifer Lopez throughout?"

"Dance, definitely, Blue Eyes," he laughed too, and caught her hand in his. The electricity between their two bodies was intense. Thunderbolts raced from him to her and back again. Nothing had ever felt so natural before in his entire life. "Come on," his mouth said, but his eyes proclaimed, ‘I love you.’

"Coming," she sweetly answered, while her blue eyes answered. ‘I know. I love you too.’

In the heat of passion ignited between them, Rhett forgot he was Shawn Douglas Brady, and that he had a fiancée waiting for him in Salem, knowing nothing but the pleasure of being with Blue Eyes. After all, there was nothing holding him to the life back home when he was with her, and it was still twenty four hours from Salem.

Chapter Two

7:58pm 23^rd December

She led him through the dim parking lot of the restaurant she had taken him to after they had booked into the motel of her choice, darting past the cars and slipping through the darkness like a Willow the Wisp before him. Her hair was spread over her shoulders, and in her white blouse, she looked almost angelic in the half light. Shawn’s heart beat faster as he watched her, and all thoughts of Salem were banished from his mind as she beckoned him forwards.

"What is this place?" He didn’t raise his voice, as if afraid to break the spell of her eyes if he spoke too loudly.

"The original Holiday Inn," she replied with a smile of glittering glee. "Only, we call it ‘Kismet, Kiss Me’ when old Mrs Appledore isn’t around. Her grandfather built the place, and she doesn’t like hearing it called anything that could be deemed the slightest bit improper."

"Why ‘Kismet, Kiss Me’?" Shawn was looking past her to the sixteenth century building behind her, built in the style of an English country tavern, complete with gables and oak doors.

"Because they say if you are caught under a certain sprig of mistletoe with someone right when the song ‘Always’ starts playing, and you kiss them, they are the person you are meant to be with for the rest of your life. Like saying ‘Snog me Destiny’, but with more class." Blue Eyes joked, punching him gently in the arm.

Shawn’s dark eyes fastened on hers. "Does it work?" he asked a little more seriously than he had intended.

"It has so far." She smiled up at him, and electricity shot through his body. He felt like he had been hit by lightning, like the first time he had seen her and seen that smile.

He grinned back charmingly. "Isn’t it rather easy to cheat?"

"Oh, no," she put her hands up and started walking again. "You see, the only source of music in Kismet, Kiss Me is the jukebox and ‘Always’ isn’t in there. Unless you brought in your own tape or CD player, you could never hear it unless it was destined."

"And you believe all of this?" He was teasing her, but she turned back to him, surprisingly serious. Her blue eyes were focused on a place beyond her grasp and a time she had never seen. She answered him in absolute solemnity.

"Yes." He didn’t know what to reply, so they hurried into the warm restaurant out of the cold night air.

Shawn had never seen anything quite like it. It was the most old fashioned room he had ever seen outside of a museum, and it was filled with the greenery of Christmas. The halls were not so much decked with boughs of holly as weighed down by them, and the fire was nearly out with all the chestnuts being roasted over it. It was also very beautiful, and the hostess, a short bustling woman of about fifty five with white hair and very proper clothing had the most welcoming smile he had seen for three hundred miles, or since he had left his fiancée in Salem, completed the festive scene of joviality. She took their coats and hung them on a hook near the flu of the fire so the warm air would dry them quickly, greeting them with a smile and a sugar cookie.

"I don’t think I’m ever going to want to go home," Shawn breathed as he stared around him.

Blue Eyes took it in her stride, grinning at the old lady and jumping up and down almost in her excitement. "You want some dinner? They serve the best cranberry bread here in the whole of America, and for dessert, their pecan puffs are to die for."

"I’ll have to try them," he smiled at her, and when she smiled back, he felt that he had been sent to some private heaven for just them two.

"This way," the lady led them to a secluded part of the restaurant, to a table with a single red candle and two chairs close together. "The menu is rather limited tonight, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to have what’s left in the kitchens."

Blue Eyes smiled at her sweetly. "I’m sure it will be delicious. It always is."

The lady smiled back, her brown eyes twinkling with merriment. "Thank you, dear. I’ll bring you some drinks in a moment, and the food shouldn’t be so much longer."

"Interesting place this," Shawn remarked, staring at his love across the flickering flame of the candle.

"Very," she took his hand in hers and rubbed it gently.

"I’m so glad you rescued me," he kissed her hand, and she simpered sweetly at him.

She stroked the side of his face lovingly. "I’m glad I rescued you too. If I hadn’t, I would be stuck here all by myself tonight."

The lady returned with their drinks, and they fell into a lively conversation while they sipped them and waited for their meal, which, when it came was just as delicious as had been promised.

The plates had been cleared and coffee set out before them as the grandfather clock struck ten. Shawn had barely noticed the time passing, and was surprised to hear the chimes. Neither made a move to leave. It was enough to be with each other, if only for that moment.

A song started on the jukebox, and Shawn couldn’t resist the urge.

"Dance with me?" He wasn’t asking her, he was begging. He needed her in his arms, needed to feel her warmth near his own, needed to know that with snow on the ground outside and an open fire roaring in the hearth, he wasn’t alone so close to Christmas and so far from home.

"I thought you’d never ask," she answered him softly, her eyes luminous and beautiful in the candle light.

He took her in his arms, and he knew that, whatever happened from now on, he would always treasure this moment. The jukebox, the most modern item in the room, was playing ‘All by Myself’ by Eric Carmen, and the slow movements of the couple as they waltzed around the room entranced all the other guests.

The music washed around them, and Shawn felt her arms go around his neck and her chin rest on his shoulder in contentment. "When I was young / I never needed anyone / And making love was just for fun / Those days are gone."

Suddenly, it wasn’t Eric’s voice that Shawn was hearing but that of his Blue Eyes, and she, as she sang softly in his ear, was pleading with him. "Living alone / I think of all the friends I’ve known / But when I dial the telephone / Nobody’s home."

He thought he felt a tear soak his shirt, and wondered if he was imagining it or if she really was crying as that voice of an angel serenaded him with the words he never dreamed of hearing addressed to himself.

"All by myself," she sang softly to him so only he could hear her pain. "I don’t want to be / All by myself anymore." He hugged her tighter, and wondered where all of this agony came from when she seemed so confident and happy when they were together.

"Hard to be sure," she whispered, half breaking his heart with the sound of her own devastation, "Sometimes I feel so insecure / And love so distant and obscure / Remains the cure. / All by myself / I don’t want to be / All by myself anymore / All by myself / Don’t want to live / All by myself anymore."

He held her even closer, burying his face in her hair, and, with a love that started somewhere in the depths of his soul, answered her prayer. "You will never be alone again. I promise."

Then the strains of that song died away, and one quite different played in their ears.

"I’ll be loving you - always," Shawn heard, not knowing what it meant or why Eric Carmen was no longer singing but a woman with an high class accent instead.

"With a love that’s true - always," replied a deep male voice Blue Eyes could not place but echoed in her soul and reverberated through her mind.

Then everything became clear, and as one, they looked up to find themselves beneath the mistletoe.

"Kismet," Blue Eyes whispered.

"Kiss me," Shawn muttered in a low, almost feral growl that spoke of a millennia of love in his heart, and an eternity yet to come.

So, just twenty four hours from Salem in a Holiday Inn called by it’s patrons ‘Kismet, Kiss Me’, she did and cemented a love that had grown for a time longer than the life of the world and more pure than the tears of angels.

Chapter Three

11:53 p.m. 23^rd December

He watched as she walked slowly over to him, her legs endlessly long, her blue eyes wide still pools of azure colour, her delicate pale hands running through her hair as she pulled out the clips and bobby pins she had used in her hairstyle. She was utterly beautiful. He loved her in the way that he had never loved before, and knew that, whatever happened, the passion he felt for her would never be felt for anyone else.

"What’s wrong?" she sat on the Victorian four poster bed next to him, unashamed of her own sensual locks trailing over his bare chest.

He shifted his dark gaze to meet her eyes, her lovely blue eyes, and let out a low growl of an emotion that was neither desire or pain, but something in between. "I don’t deserve you." The words were not so much spoken as communed from his heart to hers without the usually necessity of sound.

"That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have me," she smiled and traced the line of his jaw with one slender finger. "I’ve never met a man yet who deserves the woman he is with."

He dropped his eyes and sighed. "I want you to have the world, to have a god at your side, to have everything that you could ever want, and all I can offer you is my body, my soul and my heart…"

"I have all that I could ever want here, with you," her smile became tinged with sadness. "You don’t understand, do you?"

It was his turn to touch his love’s face, and he held her chin in strong brown fingers, willing her to let him in. "Understand what?"

"No matter how much we love each other, it’s never going to be enough." A tear, a crystal drop from heaven to Shawn, fell down her cheek and trickled across his hand.

He kissed the next one away before it reached his hand, feeling the thunderbolt of love pass between them with a whisper of regret. "Why won’t it be enough?"

"Because this isn’t a life, it isn’t even a day of sunshine, it’s two lonely people reaching out one cold night, and that isn’t enough. It can’t be." She tried to pull away, but she was the prisoner of his eyes, unable to leave the emotion she saw in them.

Shawn smiled, his grin spreading slowly across his face and brightening the darkness of his eyes. "Let’s make it a life. Marry me."

She didn’t reply, just stared at him as if he was crazy. "We can’t get married…"

His grin widened. "Why not?"

"Because…" she trailed off. There was no real reply to that. They were both single people, or would be if Shawn broke off his engagement to the girl in Salem, and she knew that, if she lived for a thousand years, she would never find another love like theirs. The world held nothing for her without him in it, and her own arguments against their love fell into ridicule when she realised her own passion would never permit her to let him leave her. Her own refusal to accept the emotion that burned within her for him, and him alone, would destroy her if she did not refute what she herself had said and take him in her arms to love and cherish forever.

Shawn saw the indecision waver in her eyes, and knelt down at her feet. He raised his fingers to his ear and unhooked the loop that hung there. Holding it before her, he offered her more than a glinting piece of gold, he offered her a love that would never die. "I love you the way I never imagined I would ever love anyone. You are my moon, stars, sun, heart, soul, dreams and angel incarnate. If you leave me, I will never know what is it is to be happy again. You won’t just take my sunshine with you, you will take my will to live. I wouldn’t care if the world fell down around me, as long as you were by my side. I can’t promise you that we will only have good times, I can’t promise you that I will never leave your side, and I can’t promise you that you will never regret this, but I can promise you this: For as long as I am alive in this world, I will love you, and even once I die, you had better prepare to be haunted because I am never going to let you go. Say yes, and you will have everything I can give you, and you will make me the happiest man on earth. Please. Let me be your husband."

Her blue eyes were full of tears, and she didn’t speak a word.

"Please, say something," Shawn’s voice was cracking with his heart. "Anything."

She still didn’t say a word. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck, knocking him over backwards, and kissed him as she had never kissed anyone before. The lightning love of theirs super novaed into a red giant, and the stars fell from the sky to enter their hearts and light them with a love that could never fade or die.

"Tonight." It was the first word she had said since he had proposed, and it was a choked low sound of passion and need.

It was his turn to be confused. "What?"

She smiled at him softly, her eyes brighter than sapphires and more lovely than the wings of an angel. "Marry me tonight."

He picked her up slowly off the floor, and with the tenderness known only to lovers, wrapped her in her warm winter coat and grey cashmere scarf. He even tied her shoes for her, lacing them so gently that she barely knew they were done, losing herself in the pleasure of being close to him. His fingers found her buttons and rubbed her hands warm as well as giving her tiny lover’s kisses of pleasure wherever he touched her, and whether he intended to or not, he gave her an ecstasy of loving she had never known before, intoxicating her mind as well as her body.

She tried, in her turn, to dress him but found her hands shaking so badly that it was impossible. He kissed her palms and sent her downstairs to check out, searching for his shirt and jacket and pulling them on before following her down with all their bags and his new tuxedo under one arm.

"Going somewhere nice?" The man on the front desk was perhaps sixty, his hair a mane of white and his cheeks covered by a soft down of beard, and he smiled at the pair, knowing what he saw that night was extraordinary, but was unable to feel such a selfish passion as envy in the face of such unselfish love.

"Las Vegas," Shawn answered with a smile brighter than a thousand light bulbs.

"We’re getting married," she confided softly, her hand finding his as he signed them out and returned the key to their room.

The man smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled in the soft light, reminding her of the Santa Claus that her childhood perception had always created. He seemed a good spirit, a kind elf bestowing magic upon them. "Good luck, but I don’t think you’ll need it."

Shawn offered him the money for the room, but he shook his head. "Forget it. Think of it as a wedding present. Fare well."

Shawn and his bride to be smiled at each other, seeing the adoration in the other’s eyes, and knowing that a lifetime of love lay before them.

Holding hands, they left the hotel and returned to her car.

"Ingrid," Shawn suddenly muttered.

"Who?" For a moment, her face darkened with the first pang of jealousy she had ever felt, and her voice echoed it.

"My car, Ingrid," Shawn grinned down at her, seeing that she was so in love with him that she couldn’t even bear him to speak another woman’s name. "She’s still sitting on the side of the road in the snow."

Her jealousy faded immediately. "We can have her picked up tomorrow."

He fell a little deeper in liking with her, for his love was so deep that it had become unfathomable. She had not only called his car ‘her’, but had also referred to them being together tomorrow when she had said ‘we’. His heart fluttered in his chest as he unlocked and opened her car door for her.

She gave him one of her own megawatt smiles. "Thank you…"

"What for?" his grin faltered slightly.

Her smile became even brighter. "Everything."

"I love you." He told her, not knowing his eyes had proclaimed the truth for longer than he had known it himself.

"I love you too." Suddenly, holding in a giggle of delight, she became almost flippant. "Now shut up, get in the car, and let’s go get married!"

Laughing, he followed her instructions, and they did not stop holding hands all the way to the airport, as he ‘helped’ her change gear, nor on the way to Vegas as she gripped on to him as her fear of flying kicked in. As the plane rose into the air, though, she realised that she was no longer afraid, for as long as he was with her, she was invincible and nothing could harm them.

So it was, twenty four hours from Salem, that two lonely people found the greatest love they would ever feel, and forgot the rest of the world, even if it did not forget them…

Chapter Four

3:23 a.m. 24^th December

The lights of Las Vegas were even brighter than usual with Christmas decorations and the reflections of those lights in her eyes made Shawn feel light-headed with joy.

He had changed into his tuxedo in the men’s room of the airport, but she was still in the white blouse dress he had first seen her in, her hair loosely tumbling over her shoulders in delightful waves, and her cheeks cherub pink with pleasure. She looked beautiful to him, but he knew she deserved all the perfection he could give her when the wedding was to be such a small, quiet hurried affair, so he had taken her to the most expensive dress shop in the town to find her a wedding dress of which a princess could be proud.

He waited with the patience of a man used to being in dress shops for his beloved to emerge, and chatted quietly to the smiling shopkeeper, a young woman who had seen many couples buying wedding dresses from her, but had never seen two people more in love.

His bride to be smiled at him, her blue eyes dancing with delight, and twirled slowly in the long white dress that had a fitted bodice embroidered with lace and pearls and a flowing satin skirt that fell to the floor, but which she lifted to show shapely legs and a pale blue garter just above her knee. He had been wrong when he had thought a princess would be proud of the dress, it was good enough for an angel, and nothing less. She looked as if she had just descended from a cloud, and he almost wept with joy knowing that she was to be his, and that this creature who was so far above him had chosen him to be her husband. He would never deserve her, but he would try his hardest until the day he died to become worthy of her. He might falter in his course, but one look from her eyes told him that, whatever might befall them, he would never have need to doubt her love or her faith in him.

"I can’t believe you’re mine," he whispered softly in her ear as he took her slim body in his warm, strong arms.

"Believe it," she answered, "because after tonight, you’re never going to be rid of me."

"You say that like it’s a bad thing," Shawn confided, kissing her chastely on the lips while the shopkeeper looked on in wonder.

What the lovers did not realise was that their adoration of each other made them glow with an inner happiness so rarely seen that to behold it was to revel in its reflection, and feel a contentment of soul all too often destroyed by the world around one. They exuded joy in a way that made others feel happy for them rather than envy their pleasure, for to envy them would be similar to envying the sun for its life giving heat, ridiculous and impossible.

The kiss, delicate and sweet as it was, would have become heated except Shawn’s cell phone rang and his Blue Eyes gently pulled away so he could answer it, much to his irritation.

She slipped away from him to change, but he shook his head. That was the only dress he wanted her in, and after the ceremony, he hoped she wouldn’t stay in it for too long. His passion was not just for the beautiful, angelic girl who stood shyly before him, but also for the grinning woman who had so tempted him with her beauty from the moment he had first seen her.

"Hello?" His voice was low, and the grin that was so much part of his charm widened on his lips as he spoke, watching her twirl before him in that glorious gown with an even more lovely smile on her face.

"Shawn!" His mother’s voice was sharp, sounding angrier than he had heard her since he had broken her favourite bowl by playing basketball in the house with Philip.

"Hi Mom," Shawn’s smile wavered a little, but then his Blue Eyes put her arms around his waist and it cemented into place. "What’s up?"

"What’s up?" She sounded even madder than a moment before. "You don’t call when you’re late home, you forget to come to Gran’s house for the tree decorating, damn near breaking her heart, and all you can say is ‘what’s up’?"

"Aw, Mom," Shawn tried to calm her, but Hope, characteristically, was having none of it.

"Don’t you ‘Mom’ me, Shawn Douglas," she had used his full name, that meant she was beyond mad and it was probably a good thing that they had several states between them or he would be ducking right about "Brady’s been looking for you for hours, and I can’t imagine what your poor fiancée is thinking" now.

"Mom," Shawn choked out at last while she paused for breath. "I’m sorry, but I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back in the morning." ‘Or perhaps the afternoon,’ he added mentally, staring into her lovely blue eyes that were holding him prisoner.

"Shawn, don’t you da" was the last thing he heard as he hung up the phone before he finished the chaste kiss his mother’s call had interrupted.

"Your mother?" Blue Eyes asked breathlessly as they broke apart once more and he paid for the dress, not noticing the stare of the assistant who had just come out from the back of the shop.

He rested his chin on the top of her head, loving the feel of fitting next to her so perfectly. "Yes. She wondered where I was."

"But you didn’t tell her?" she pulled back just enough to look into his brown eyes with concern.

He kissed her nose and took the receipt from the girl with brown hair and bottomless brown eyes that watched them with longing. "No, Blue Eyes, I didn’t tell her. I thought it could be a Christmas surprise. You like surprises, don’t you?"

She giggled, almost shyly, "but it’s almost Christmas already. You could have told her."

"I could have," he answered, his brown eyes suddenly telling her that he was a million miles away, "but she would have been so angry that I was about to married without her being there, she probably would have threatened to curse me never to enjoy another one of Gran’s doughnuts again."

"And what a dreadful fate that would be," she joked. He smiled, a little wanly, and she instinctively put her arms around him again. "It will be OK, you know."

"Will it?" He sounded lost, staring across the edge of the world and seeing something else stare back.

She didn’t know what else to say, so squeezed him a little harder.

He came back to her then, his body warming to hers, and responding to her gentle touch with a greater ardour for her than he had dreamed possible. "You’re with me. Everything will be alright." He said it half to himself, not really talking to her at all, but confessing something to his soul instead.

"Now you want to go get married?" He was laughing then, and they ran down the boulevard like school children on their way to the candy store, holding hands and smiling with the simple joy of living.

The chapel was not one devoted to Elvis, or anything else too strange, but a simple white building with a tall spire and a Mexican feel to it. Shawn knew that it was nothing to the church in Salem where he was supposed to get married in terms of grandness, but St Mark’s had always terrified him as a child because of its grand coldness, and he infinitely preferred the more intimate feel of this place.

"Are you Shawn Brady?" The minister was a small man, with thick glasses and thinning hair, a small button nose and a broad smiling mouth.

"That’s me." Shawn shook him by the hand. The shake was firm, strong, and for some reason, Shawn found himself trusting this man more than he probably should for having just met him.

"And I presume this is the bride?" The minister’s voice was friendly, and he held out his hand to her with a gentle smile.

"She’s my Blue Eyes." Shawn was proud of her, of her beauty inside and out, corny though it sounded, and of the love that burned like twin torches in her eyes, the cerulean orbs that had enchanted him from the beginning.

The minister’s smile widened almost imperceptibly before he put on his grave, church matters face. "Very well, shall we begin?"

He walked Shawn to the front of the sparse chapel, passing the Christmas roses and the bright decorations on the pews without a glance, and settled him into place as the wedding march started.

Shawn started suddenly as he realised they had no witnesses, turned to the minister, but saw the beaming grin on the man’s face, and realised that even that was taken care of as three elderly ladies, all dressed in their finest, waited in the pews for the minister to take them home after Shawn and his Blue Eyes were married.

Then everything else vanished from the scene as Shawn laid eyes on the beautiful angel he was about to marry, a vision in her dress with her veil down over her face and walking slowly up the aisle on the arm of one of the ladies husband. He could have been her grandfather, and Shawn was suddenly pleased that she did not have to walk up the aisle alone.

She stopped by him, and he put out his hand for hers, unable to release himself from her powerful stare that bored into him and saw into his soul.

The minister started reading the wedding ceremony, and Shawn felt his heart lift from his chest onto another plane of existence, where love was the only emotion and he was alone with his Blue Eyes.

"Repeat after me, I, Shawn Douglas Brady, do take thee," the minister paused as he realised the words ‘Blue Eyes’ were probably not appropriate or legally binding, then went on, "to be my lawfully wedded wife, forsaking all others, to love, honour and" again he stumbled as he did not know whether they had planned on ‘obeying’ one another and went on again, leaving a convenient gap, "for richer for poorer, for better for worse, and in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

Shawn repeated the words, adding in what the minister had left out. Then it was his girl’s turn, and before he knew it, the minister was asking for the rings. Shawn searched his inside coat pocket and brought out the wedding ring that had resided there since he had first proposed to his Salem girlfriend. It was beautiful, the ring his mother and father had given him to give to the love of his life on his sixteenth birthday, and now he was doing just that.

"With this ring, I thee wed," he recited slowly, "with my body, I thee honour, and with my soul I thee swear to love faithfully forever more."

She too repeated the words, giving him one of her own hoop earrings as his wedding ring, and then together they finished their oaths, though it was more than the law or the minister required for them to say, it came from their heart, for now they were one heart, one soul, in two bodies and would stay that way forever.

"Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following after you, For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay Your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God. And where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord do with me and more if anything but death parts you from me." It sounded like a reading from the Book of Ruth, and whether they had memorised the words long before or had spoken spontaneously the same, the words took on new meaning as they left their lips, and the old ladies began to cry softly.

"In as much as you have each pledged to the other your lifelong commitment, love and devotion, I now pronounce you husband and wife, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." The minister was smiling as if it was his birthday, New Year’s day, and Easter along with Christmas. "Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder. Shawn, you may now kiss the bride!"

He lifted her veil gently, staring at the knowledge of forever in her blue eyes, and did just that.

It is said that time is nothing but a human misapprehension, and that it does not in fact exist. If such is true, then the kiss of true love lasts for an eternity and exists only for the briefest instant. Such a kiss is never truly ending, and its mark lies upon those who experience it for the human interpretation of forever. Many experience love in its diluted forms, and it is enough. The passion that is so soul searing that it destroys any part of the heart not devoted to it is found once in a generation in two people strong enough to hold it between them and make it stronger still without being destroyed by it. What was witnessed that night in the chapel in Las Vegas was an example of such a passion, and though few would ever know it, such love is available to all, if they can only find it. Yet when it is found, the passion is so overwhelming that the rest of the world does not become grey in comparison, but finds new vigour and beauty, becoming more as the lover has become more through its power. Shawn knew as he kissed his bride that Christmas Eve morning he had finally come home, and that no matter what happened after, he had, for one brief instant at least, known true happiness.

Chapter Five

9:42 am 24^th December

She was as beautiful to his eyes, though her eyes had bags under them from lack of sleep and her hair was a mess of blonde strands, as she had been when they first met, or when they married, or the moment he had carried her over the threshold of their Penthouse suite in the Treasure Island Hotel and kissed her sweetly. She might not think so, but every moment of the day he would see her and he would know her to be more beautiful than she had been the instant before.

"Are you OK?" His eyes were so distant that she thought he was in another world.

"I’m fine." He turned away from her, and walked towards the window, staring out across Las Vegas. It seemed less fascinating in the daylight, more like a gaudy toy for the rich than a glittering world of pleasure. He would hate it there except she was with him. He could never hate anywhere if his Blue Eyes was there.

She rose from the bed, pulling one of the cream silk sheets around her tightly, savouring the feeling of the material against her bare ivory skin, and came to stand by him. Touching his chest gently, trying to comfort him desperately, she leaned into him. "Are you worried about your mother?"

"No." His smile was soft, and he kissed the top of her head. "She won’t be too mad." His smile faltered for the briefest instant. "I hope."

His Blue Eyes made him feel safe, and so let him take risks because he could not feel the danger while she was near. His mother was something he would think about later, when the love he felt for his new bride was not all consuming within him, though he could not know then that their passion would never diminish. Every day they spent together would only strengthen what was between them, and at last he would finally understand the poets’ odes to love and the beauty of their lady loves.

"Baby," she spoke quietly, and his strong arms went around her as he heard the pain in her voice, crushing the silk between them. Her head rested on his bare chest and tickled him pleasantly. "I’m frightened."

He hugged her tighter, feeling her body shudder and remain tense. "Why?"

She buried her head in the warmth of his chest, and felt the tears rise in her eyes. "I’m frightened I’ll wake up and this will all be a dream, and I won’t have found this love of ours, and everything that has happened will be a lie."

"If you weren’t frightened of losing this," he said, "it wouldn’t be worth half of what it is. If you fear not having our love, you will treasure it all the more. Anyway," he kissed her gently, "you don’t think that I will ever let you go, do you?"

He felt a tiny wet patch on the warm tan skin of his chest as she voiced her darkest fear. "No, but you might die."

Lifting her face gently with two fingers under her chin, he stared into her crystal blue eyes, and kissed away her tears. "God wouldn’t be so cruel as to let me die when I’ve just found you, Blue Eyes. If St Peter himself called me up to Heaven, I wouldn’t be able to go. You own me now, body and soul, so you’d better be prepared to have me forever."

She smiled then, and his heart was raised beyond the skies as he knew that smile was just for him, a secret between them two alone. He kissed her then, with a chastity he had not kissed her with since before they were married and an innocence of passion that rocked her to her very soul. When he kissed her like that, every worry vanished and the cares of their new life together slipped over her slender shoulders. Nothing could be wrong in the world while he could love her that way, and eternity seemed to short for all the love between them.

He broke the kiss, missing the warmth of her against him instantly, and smiled gently down at her, brown eyes dancing with joy. "We have a plane to catch, Mrs Brady."

She stiffened, becoming a Greek statue in his arms, going cold as she thought of flying back to their old lives. A sudden mortal fear gripped her, and Shawn’s warm body felt stone cold. Lines from Romeo and Juliet echoed through her head, but they were gone before she could grasp their meaning. Vegas was no longer before her, the church they had been married in surrounded her, but instead of Christmas decorations, there was lilies and white roses all around her. There was a smell in the air not of the sweet old ladies who had sat in their pew and wept for joy, but of holy incense, choking her with its rich and heavy aroma. It was overpowering, and it reminded her of a funeral she had attended as a child when the coffin had been full of the body of someone she loved, and her heart had been full of pain. The memory was burning in her mind, the details as clear as they had been on the day, and she felt the same coldness reach from the grave as she had sensed then. Terrified, she turned to run, but found herself trapped in the centre aisle as the pews closed in around her. The stench of death filtered through her nostrils, and clung to her throat, stopping her from breathing and carrying her ever closer to her tomb.

Then, falling to the ground with a thud, she was in the vault of St Mark’s where most of the older members of the Brady and Horton families were buried, alone, in the dark, with the bodies of the town’s finest around her. Torches on the walls flared to life, giving an eerie glow to the already frightening room. Standing up, she reached out for one, but stopped when she felt the floor beneath her shift under her weight. Looking down, all she saw was fragments of something white…

A noise came to her ears, a noise like that of stone grating on stone, and turning slowly, she saw the lid of one of the coffins slide slowly off. The thing - it could no longer be described as a body - came towards her, a skeleton held together by a few pieces of rag, its arms outstretched as if to take her in its embrace. She turned to run, her limbs shaking, her mind wild with fear, and saw that all of the tombs were opening, and the bodies were rising, coming out to get her. Twisting, she fought to move across the shifting floor, but when she looked down to see what held her still, a blood curdling scream rose in her throat as she realised she wasn’t on sand as she thought, but the bones of tiny animals, ground half to dust, and the other half - the rats especially - were coming towards her, readying themselves to crawl up her legs and…

She realised the skeletons weren’t the only bodies in the vault. Her Rhett, her husband, her Shawn Douglas Brady, brown eyes flat, empty of emotion and body gaunt with the slow desecration of death, with a bullet hole in his chest, was coming towards her, and for the first time in her life, she was afraid of him.

The scream that had risen in her throat got no further as she fainted, backwards, realising even as consciousness left her that in a moment she would be on the floor with all those things, and she couldn’t get away…

Shawn’s arms caught her before she hit the floor, but she didn’t know it.

Scared for her life, Shawn started yelling for help, as he carefully lowered her to the floor and pushed her hair off of her forehead. Her blue eyes had rolled back up into her head, and her face was as white as a sheet. Her limbs were heavy, her breathing laboured, and her heart raced when he felt her pulse.

"Come on, Blue Eyes," Shawn whispered again and again, rocking her gently in his arms, his heart breaking as he realised he had no idea what to do to help her. "You can’t do this to me, baby. It’s our honeymoon. Come on, Blue Eyes, let’s see that gorgeous smile of yours. Come on…"

The hotel door was thrown open and the doctor came racing in, attended by half of the staff as well.

He took one look at the distraught young man and the beautiful woman he held in his arms. His heart damn near broke looking at them, obviously so in love and at the same time in so much trouble. "What happened?"

"I don’t know," Shawn couldn’t lift his eyes from his Blue Eyes’ face. If he stopped looking at her for the briefest instant, he might lose her. "We were just talking, then she seemed to go into some kind of fit and fainted."

The doctor moved around him, checking her pulse, flashing a light into her eyes, trying to get a response, then firing rapid questions at the bridegroom. "Does she have a history of epilepsy?"

Shawn still didn’t look up, but gained a little hope. "No. Could it be that?"

The doctor was young, and none too experienced. The hotel was his first job after medical school and he was still slightly nervous of making a misdiagnosis. "I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I’ll see if I can wake her up, but she should really go to a hospital."

"Please, doctor, just tell me if she’s going to be alright." Shawn was pleading, desperate, terrified.

"I honestly can’t say," the doctor sighed. "The longer she’s out the worse it may be."

He patted Shawn on the shoulder, and went to talk to the ambulance people.

"Come on, Blue Eyes," Shawn whispered softly. "I only just found you. I can’t lose you now. I love you…"

He stopped as she opened her crystal eyes and looked up at him, a puzzled expression on her beautiful face. "What happened?"

"You fainted, darling," he kissed her hand, relief flooding his features as he realised she was not on the brink of death, but alive and in his arms, safe. "How do you feel?"

"Tired," she confided with a soft smile that spoke of untold secrets. "I think last night wore me out."

Shawn smiled back, but his heart was uneasy. There was something else, something she wasn’t telling him. "The doctor’s here, Blue Eyes. Will you let him examine you?"

She nodded slowly, her head hurting her badly. After all, she might as well put her Shawn’s fears at rest.

The doctor came bounding back into the room, and looked her over carefully. She was still lying on the floor, but she looked to them all like some angel just fallen from heaven, ethereal and utterly lovely. "Well, I can’t find anything wrong with you, but I think you should still go to the hospital."

She started, not realising it had even been considered. "Please, no."

"She’s scared of hospitals," Shawn explained in a quiet low voice. "She spent a lot of time in them before, and she really doesn’t like them anymore."

The doctor didn’t seem pleased, but Blue Eyes smiled at him so sweetly and said with such perfect innocence, "Please, just let me go home today, and I’ll see my doctor there. She’s very good. Dr Bader."

The doctor seemed suddenly relieved. "Oh, Dr Bader, I know her. If you promise to rest and see her as soon as you get back, I think we can skip the hospital visit."

"Thank you doctor," Shawn said with the grin that melted his Blue Eyes’ bones along with all the female hotel staff as well.

"Home?" Blue Eyes asked when everyone had left and Shawn was packing up there things.

"Home." He agreed. "We have a plane to catch."

She smiled, but a faint memory of her vision tinged that smile with sadness. "I’m ready when you are." She had been sitting in one of the chairs, and now stood up slowly.

He glanced over at her, then smirked. "Well, Blue Eyes, as much as I like you that way, I kind of object to letting my new bride walk around without any clothes on in front of other men."

She looked down, then blushed bright red. She wasn’t naked, but she was still wrapped only in the cream silk sheet she had pulled off the bed what seemed like hours before. "I’ll get dressed," she mumbled, as she strode past him.

He caught her arm gently, forcing her to look into his stormy brown eyes. "Blue Eyes," he said so softly she only just heard him, "I love the way you look."

She kissed him for that, knowing moments before she had scared the life out of him, but even his warmth and love could not banish her feeling of impending doom. "I know, but Rhett, if you don’t let me get dressed now, how in Georgia are you going to introduce me to your mother at Midnight Mass tonight?"

Shawn muttered a swearword beneath his breath and threw her clothes at her. "Blue Eyes, if you aren’t the death of me, I’ll live forever."

He said it in jest, meaning to make her laugh, but the word death sent cold shivers through her slender body and she began to shake uncontrollably. Racing to her side, Shawn took her gently in his arms, pressing her face against his shirt, but he could not calm her.

The blue eyes that had enchanted him for so long were blank with fear, and her voice was a low growl as she finally spat out "Flight 12:03 will be the death of you."

"What?" Shawn wanted to shake her, to do anything that would take that look out of her eyes. "Blue Eyes, what did you say?"

She lifted a fragile hand to her forehead in a pathetic gesture of weakness. "I didn’t say anything, Rhett."

"Yes you did." Shawn’s eyes were dark with worry and pain at seeing her in such a state. His angel was looking less angelic and more like a fairy with a bad case of the shakes. "Something about death."

This time she didn’t react, and only stared blankly up at him, but with the blankness of incomprehension rather than fear. "I didn’t say anything, Rhett."

Before he could ask her again, the bellboy came for their bags, and bustled them out of the room and down to the lobby.

"Oh, Mr Brady," the receptionist was young, pretty, and smiling flirtatiously up at him, but Shawn paid no attention, his heart and mind preoccupied by his new wife. "The airport called. Your flight time has been moved to 12:03. They said they were sorry but it couldn’t be helped. I hope that’s OK, sir."

"Fine," Shawn still wasn’t concentrating on what she was saying, he was too worried about his Blue Eyes and the slightly scared look on her face. "Thanks."

They checked out. The receptionist couldn’t resist one more try, if only to say that to the other hotel girls that she had spoken to the man with the eyes like two infinite pools of grace and a wife as beautiful as a sunrise. "Have a nice flight, sir," she simpered.

"Thanks," Shawn replied, hugging his new bride’s slender body close to him. He was afraid, though he could not have said what he feared in the warm daylight, for it was a fear of the dark places and the time before the dawn when even shadows fear to walk into the night. Yet when his Blue Eyes was in his arms, it no longer mattered, for they could defy the world together, and Fate was merely their plaything when love burned so heatedly in their veins.

So it was twenty four hours from Salem that fear was dispelled by love and one heart bound itself to two mortal bodies. Those bodies, however, were mortal, and though the love that held them was more than could be denied or abused, it was seen and envied by more than mortal eyes.

Chapter Six

11:47 am 24^th December

The plane for Salem was boarding. In sixteen minutes it would take off. Shawn felt his brown hand gripped by his new bride, and he smiled. He loved the way she took comfort from him.

Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head with a lifetime’s love and gentleness. She looked up at him with the blue eyes that would always drive him crazy with passion lit with fear, but he mistook it for apprehension of what would happen when he returned home.

"She’ll love you," he whispered into her ear, breathing hotly onto her neck.

She wiggled away from him, disconcerted. "I wasn’t thinking of your mother."

Shawn’s next words were cut off as the air stewardess, staring frankly at him with a mixture of admiration for his face and awe at the love he obviously felt for the blonde at his side, took their boarding cards and showed them the way to the small plane.

She smiled. "You’re the last passengers on. Have a lovely flight and a very merry Christmas."

He could not resist smiling back, not feeling the tension in his Blue Eyes’. "Thanks, you too."

"Come on, Shawn," she almost sounded petulant, not quite the angelic creature he had married, but he wasn’t to know that her dream was preying on her mind. She couldn’t bear to lose him now. She loved him to much for that. She felt Fate’s cold presence on that plane, and knew that a single day could change their lives forever. She put the thought aside. While Shawn was by her side, what was there to fear? "Let’s sit down…" she cooed seductively into his ear. "How do you feel about the Mile High club?"

His smile told her everything she needed to know.

The plane took off with her heart in his chest. There love would protect them. Her dream meant nothing. Looking out the window, the young woman, girl no longer, felt her spirits rise with the plane and looked forward to the future with trepidation and hope.

Jan had always been one nasty piece of work, but her years in juvenile detention for various crimes had made her crazier than even Laura Horton. Now she was angry and crazy. She had seen the looks her man had been giving that little blonde floozy, and she was not best pleased.

She watched as the little bit of fluff wandered into the bathroom, casting alluring and supposedly seductive looks over her shoulder to Shawn Douglas Brady, sex god of Salem and Jan’s obsession. There was no way in hell that she was going to let him get away with that. It was bad enough that she had borne and lost his child, the baby she sometimes rocked in her arms in the middle of the cold, long nights at the institute, she was not going to let him leave her for a girl not even big enough to bear his children.

With a demented look in her eyes, Janice Spears made her way to the front of the plane where Shawn sat.

He was waiting for sufficient time to pass for him to join Blue Eyes in the bathroom, and shower her with the kisses that had been waiting impatiently on his lips since they had left the taxi, and the strain of knowing she was in there, all by herself, was beginning to weigh on his mind.

He was in no mood to entertain random curly haired prosthetic enhanced women therefore as Jan plumped herself down next to him. He almost snapped at her before perceiving who it was, and when he realised it was the woman who had made his life miserable for months during high school, he did snap.

"What the hell do you want, Jan?"

"Is that anyway to speak to your future wife, darling?" she simpered. He nearly smacked her. She had been trying to seduce him by every means possibly for months. To have her force herself on his attention at this moment was beyond aggravating.

"For your information, Jan," he spewed out between gritted teeth, "you are not my future wife. I’m already married."

She gasped. How could he do this to her? In a sudden flash, she realised who the floozy was. She would show him that no one messed with Jan Spears and got away with it.

"But Shawn," she whined, "you’re supposed to marry me!"

"No, he’s not," Blue Eyes, afraid and tired of waiting in the bathroom stall, had returned to her seat. "And Jan, if you ever come near either of us again, you’ll live to regret it."

Shawn had never seen his bride like this, cool and controlled, but with fear in her eyes and bravery on her tongue. He admired her even more than he believed was possible. She was an angel of vengeance with a burning sword of righteousness.

Jan stood up and backed away from the blonde fireball swiftly, moving backwards towards the air stewardess’s station. "No, no," she kept repeating to herself, "he’s mine, mine I tell you!"

"No, I’m not," Shawn stood up slowly, holding his hands out to calm the crazed woman down. "Jan, you need to take some deep breaths and sit back down. You don’t want anything bad to happen, do you?"

The words seemed to trigger some deep repressed memory in her brain. "Bad things happen to bad girls," she started repeating the mantra in a voice that became increasingly shrill. "Bad things happen to bad girls! Bad things happen to bad girls!"

Her voice was a shriek now, and Blue Eyes grabbed onto Shawn for comfort. She didn’t understand what was happening. Shawn moved in front of her, his hands still held out in a pacifying gesture.

"Jan, please," he said in a voice that did not betray his inner turmoil, "sit down and we’ll sort this all out when we reach Salem, OK?"

Without warning, Jan launched herself forwards at Shawn, knocking him backwards and pushing Blue Eyes to one side.

"No!" She cried, slamming to the ground.

Shawn’s new bride stared at the floor in horror. Where her beautiful new husband lay, there was an increasing pool of blood. One of the other male passengers picked the still squealing Jan off of Shawn and stared down in horror at the poor boy whose body rested on the ground.

"My god," the words were half a prayer, half a blasphemy.

The wife of the injured soul knelt beside him, taking his head into her lap and stroking the hair from his paled and clammy forehead. "Shawn," she called down to him, horrified by the red stain on his chest, "please, no!"

"Is there a doctor on board?" Yelled the man who still gripped the now weeping Jan by the shoulders. "This man needs a doctor!"

The deadly sharp scissors that Jan had used to inflict the chest wound lay on the floor, dampened by the stream of blood that had not been staunched.

No doctor came forwards.

The other passengers stood and either shrieked or yelled as the blood continued to leak from the man’s side. Grabbing a hot facial towel, his new wife held it down hard over his chest, and started praying hard for him not to die.

"Don’t leave me now, Shawn," she wept, her tears of sadness mingling with his of pain and forming rivers onto his white shirt.

"Never," and then he passed on.

The love that had been found only hours earlier, consecrated by God and now seemed to be sundered by man and death, faced its greatest challenge yet, but it was strong, and Shawn was, after all, a Brady, a Kiriakis and a Horton. With such blood, though some had leaked onto the floor, he was fated for greater things than death in a plane headed for Salem. All he had to do was grip life with the same degree of faithfulness as he had taken his new bride in.

So it was twenty four hours from Salem, Shawn Douglas Brady and the newest Mrs Brady felt tears and life blood mingle, and prayed that they would live to see their first sunset as husband and wife. Love is indomitable, but death cannot be cheated. It was a poker game between the two of the greatest forces in the Universe, and God only knew who was to win, and who would pay the price of a love that, like gunpowder and fire, as it kissed, consumed.

Chapter Seven

2:36 p.m. 24^th December

Shawn’s new bride waited anxiously in the hospital hallway for news of her husband. Still dressed in the bloodstained clothes she had held his head in her lap in, she was oblivious to everything but his condition, and there was no news yet.

Jan was in custody. The police had dragged her off the plane and raced her away as soon as they had landed in the first airport they’d come to after Shawn was stabbed. She felt nothing towards her, no hatred, no loathing, nothing except emptiness. She was not important. That she had done this to Shawn only showed how far gone she was in her delusions, Blue Eyes thought nothing of her. Shawn consumed her every thought.

The bloody scissors had been removed as evidence by the same police who had taken Jan away, and Shawn had been rushed away to the local hospital, his life blood seeping out of his chest and into the cloth his wife had pressed to his chest.

She would never forget the triumphant look on Jan’s face as she had watched Shawn being loaded into the ambulance, or the grey one on his. Tears running freely down her beautiful face for what felt like the fiftieth time in the past few hours, Blue Eyes tried to get a grip on herself, for Shawn’s sake, but whenever she closed her eyes to stop herself weeping more, she saw him closing his eyes and his head lolling sideways as he lost consciousness on the floor of that accursed aeroplane. If she had only been able to remember her premonition, the premonition that now stood starkly out in her mind as clear as any memory, she would have been able to convince him to take another flight, and then perhaps Jan would not have been able to harm him.

Unable to bear it longer, she raced to the tiny chapel in the basement of the hospital, decorated for Christmas with red holly that only reminded her of blood and greenery that was reminiscent of her wedding the night before, though God knew it felt like a decade had passed in the interval.

She knelt solemnly, tears still pouring down her cheeks, and began praying with the fervency of new love and youth.

"God," and it was an entreaty, not a blasphemy on her angelic lips, "please, you gave him to me only this morning, don’t take my Shawn away from me so soon. Please…"

The priest listening to her felt his own heart become heavy and worn with her sorrow. To be so young, so obviously in love and so desperate was tragic. He walked forwards slowly, and touched her shoulder gently.

She did not move.

He touched her again, a little more roughly, saying, "Miss?"

Still Shawn’s Blue Eyes did not respond.

The priest, suddenly afraid, shook her by the shoulders hard.

She stayed completely unresponsive.

"Nurse!" He ran to the chapel door and yelled down the corridor. "Nurse, help me please! Anyone! Dr Horton!"

"What is it?" Dr Michael ‘Mike’ Horton raced to the chapel door and looked over the priest’s shoulder. "Nurse! Get a trolley, stat!"

He was at her side in an instant, checking her pulse and her pupils. She seemed fine, except for being unconscious and unresponsive to the priest’s shakings of her.

"It’ll be fine, Father John," Mike reassured him, "I’ll take her upstairs and check her out."

"You’re so good, Mike," the priest calmed down instantly. The girl would be in good hands if Dr Horton was looking after her. "Poor thing, she was really upset about something."

"She’ll be all right now," the tubby black nurse said, helping the good Dr to put the girl on the trolley, "God wouldn’t let anything happen to such an angel on Christmas Eve."

The priest clutched at his rosary, and nodded. "I pray not."

Blue Eyes was oblivious of the priest’s concern, the nurse’s gentle attentions to her or even the gorgeous doctor’s examination of her.

She stood in a hospital waiting room, but not the one she had been standing in a few minutes before, but in Salem General. The place gleamed with cleanliness, and smelt slightly of disinfectant. It was not decorated for Christmas, and it was barren of the usual barrage of patients, doctors, nurses and hospital staff. Even the usual ubiquitous Colin Murphy was missing.

It was empty but for herself and one other figure.

Shawn stood in the light filled ER doorway, facing away from her, but unmistakably himself, dressed in his usual blue jeans and leather jacket. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest as she looked at him.

"Husband," she held out a creamy skinned hand to him. "I’m here, Rhett."

"Blue Eyes," Shawn twisted around, and she saw that the red blood stain on his chest had vanished. "Is that you?"

She nodded and started walking towards him.

"No," he started back and put out his hands to stop her from coming closer. "Stay there. You don’t understand: this is Heaven’s door."

"Shawn," his new bride was tapping her foot with impatience. "If you think I’m staying on this side just because you’re being pig headed about death as you’ve been about everything else, you can think again. Didn’t you hear what we promised each other-" she glanced at her watch, which was still ticking, "-twelve hours ago?" She quoted the words they had spoken with such love and with complete faith, "‘Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following after you, For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And where you die, I will die and there I will be buried.’" She smiled and took his reluctant hand, looking love straight into his soul and seeing her gaze returned with equal feeling. "You’re stuck with me, sugar."

"But I may die," he took her in his arms and crushed her to him.

She looked up, her blue eyes for once not filled with tears, "Do you think I could live without you? Where you go, I’m going."

"I love you more than life itself," he whispered, leaning down for a kiss.

"Compared to what we have, life isn’t that terrific," she replied, kissing him back.

A bell rang in the air and the ER waiting room vanished. With a jolt, the joined souls fell back into their two bodies and found themselves in beds that were side by side.

Reaching out a hand, they touched across the crevasse and the miracle was complete.

"They remind me of you and Carrie, Mike," the black nurse told him, and Mike smiled, but said nothing. To be compared with such a pair was a compliment beyond his wildest dreams, and to be told that he and Carrie had a similar love made his soul come alive.

"Feeling better?" Shawn’s female doctor asked him, slightly surprised by the looks of love between the young patients.

"Yeah," he replied, dragging his gaze away from his Blue Eyes for a few precious seconds. "Can I go home now?"

"As long as you promise to stay in bed for the next few days," she sighed, "I don’t see why not." She could hardly deny this beautiful boy his Christmas, especially if he was going to spend it with the girl next to him.

"Thank you," her heart went into a puddle as she saw that smile, but she felt no jealousy as an even brighter one was turned on the beautiful blonde in the bed next to his.

"Friend of yours?" She asked, nosily.

"You could say that," said Shawn’s Blue Eyes with a wicked smile on her lips, "we were married this morning."

"Congratulations, Shawn, Mrs Brady," Mike called as he ran out the door to find Carrie. "Have a very merry Christmas!"

"You too!" They yelled after him. "Send Carrie our love!"

Shawn’s doctor left them alone to dress and sign the release papers.

"Are you ready to face the parents?" he asked his young bride, and she did nothing but smile. An angel had taken the place of a mortal in her, and Shawn knew that he owed his life to her. It was to be a debt he would spend the rest of his life repaying.

Outside the hospital, the snow was deep and it had drifted into huge mounds. The lovers walked through it without eyes to see anything but each other, making their slow way back to Salem and Christmas with the families there.

They knew they had to go home, and it was no surprise when Hope called, demanding he return immediately.

"Hey Mom," he held his new wife’s hand a little tighter as they wandered to the car rental shop.

Blue Eyes heard only one half of the conversation, but she could guess the rest.

"I promise, I’ll be there, and I’m bringing your Christmas surprise with me," he smiled down at Blue Eyes, and she winked back up at him. "You’ll love it."

There was a pause as Hope chattered on about something, and then Shawn finished, "OK, Mom, I’ll be there tonight, six o’clock. I know, I know, miss it and I won’t bother coming home at all. Send Abby my love. Bye," he looked at his wife seriously. "Promise me that when we have kids, you won’t turn into my mother during the holidays."

"No, I’ll turn into mine," and that made him laugh so hard the stitches in his chest almost ripped apart.

"I’ll warn the fire brigade now," he picked her up and swung her around, kissing her sweetly in the middle of the snowy landscape. "I love you."

"I love you too, but if we don’t get a car soon, your mother will never forgive either of us for being late," she giggled as Shawn gave her the puppy dog look he had perfected with his mother. "OK, one more kiss, and then we go."

It was not one more but five more later that they climbed into their car, and with the heater blasting, they roared down the highway to Salem, love lighting their road and their hearts. Nothing could harm them now.

So, twenty four hours from Salem, Love and death faced off, vying for the souls of a pair so unusual and pure that the Devil himself could not corrupt them. Love won through for now at least, and though they knew that death could never be cheated forever, a lifetime of love was allowed to flourish. Jan and her evil schemes had been defeated, and now all that could stop them returning to Salem was the weather, but when God himself has judged the case, the danger of fate has passed, and only the purity of angels and the innocent love found in the heavens remains.

Chapter Eight

4:27 p.m. 24^th December

The rental car roared down the freeway, and Shawn felt the miles spin away beneath them, taking them ever onwards to Salem and the reception they would have there. He could only imagine his mother’s reaction. Whenever he did, he winced.

His new bride was fiddling with the radio. She passed Santana playing ‘Black Magic Woman’ and found a station that had a request show. ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You’ sung by Andy Williams played sensually, and Shawn started singing along, staring at his Blue Eyes-wife as he did so, but unfortunately he had to keep looking back to the snow covered road so that they didn’t crash so the romantic moment wasn’t quite perfect.

It shattered completely when Shawn turned to her and said, "We have to talk."

Those four words have ruined more relationships over the years than any others. They had their usual effect on Shawn’s Blue Eyes, and she stiffened in her seat.

"What about?" She wouldn’t look at him, and they drove in silence for a moment before he began again.

"Blue Eyes, you know how much I love you," she waited for the words she suspected might break her heart, "and I want to tell everyone in Salem about us, but…"

"But what, Rhett?" She was as stiff as board now, and the hand that had been resting on his was snatched back.

"Can you tell your Dad for me?" She stared at him. "Only I want to live until tomorrow."

She started laughing, not the pretty tinkling laugh of before but the rib cracking uncontrollable hysterics of a girl who has just realised that her lover wasn’t breaking up with her and was, in fact, simply terrified of the man she had had wrapped around her little finger for years.

"What’s so funny?" He gave her a serious look, and she found another laugh building in her abdomen.

"You being scared of my father!" She practically screamed with laughter. "In the past twenty three hours we’ve fallen in love, flown to Vegas, been married-" she left a gap for the activities that had filled the morning hours then went on, blushing slightly "-I’ve passed out, we’ve been attacked by a crazy woman, you’ve been stabbed and almost died, and you are afraid of the idea of facing my father!"

It was with a grin that Shawn pulled over and stopped the car. "You know what that deserves, don’t you, Blue?"

She kept laughing, and shook her head.

"Tickle torture!" His hands found her slim body and then she was laughing for an entirely different reason.

They didn’t notice the new flurry of snow that made a pattern around their car, each flake unique, so caught up were they in their love and their passion for one another. ‘Twist and Shout’ by the Beatles, requested specially for Jenn from Jack, played on the radio as Shawn made his bride scream with laughter.

Still red from her exertions, Blue Eyes gazed past Shawn’s brown eyes and saw white. The car was snowed in. She shrieked, and Shawn turned abruptly, staring at the white windscreen.

"Damn." He muttered, and realised the temperature in the car was dropping and that there was the smell of exhaust. He had failed to turn the engine off because he liked listening to the radio and the messages of love that flew from heart to heart through its waves. "Honey," he touched his wife’s arm and she jumped slightly, nervous of what was happening, "Blue, we have to get out of here. Now."

She nodded, and watched as he rolled down the window and started working at the snow, pushing it outwards, trying to find the fading sunlight.

"Shawn," she didn’t like to stop him but she worried that he would hurt himself, tearing at his stitches or worse.

"I know," his chest was hurting, but he knew they had to get out or risk freezing to death in the snowdrift. He changed positions and started kicking at the snow with his legs, hoping something would give soon.

His breath was getting shorter, and she could see that he was hurting himself doing this. Then a glorious, bitterly cold gust of air came through and they could breathe once more. He pushed his way out, and found night was coming on fast. She handed him the one bag they had with them and then felt his warm hands pull her out. As they had sat there, loving each other, tickling the other and forgetful of the world outside for what must have been longer than either realised, the car had been buried beneath the snow.

A terrible rumbling sound came from above. The freeway embankment, usually safe and clear, lay beneath a hill, a snow covered hill with steep slopes, and as Shawn pulled his new bride free of the car, feeling the warmth of her hands making him forget the pain in his chest, an avalanche of snow thundered down the hill and smothered the car. Resting against his chest, she turned her head to see their car fully submerged in the snow, and heard him whisper a prayer of thanks for her escape. If he had not pulled her out then, or if she had not noticed sooner their plight, she would have been buried, with or without him, beneath more tonnes of snow than he could have dug out alone in a week.

The only visible sign that the hillock was a car was the hole that Shawn had just made in the side.

He kissed her gently, and added a smaller one to her snow flecked nose. "We have to start walking. We can’t stay here all night."

She didn’t speak, feeling too exhausted by the eventful day, and with her hand in his, they walked through the darkening light along the side of the freeway, praying both her gratitude for having such a good man and for salvation, as the cold bit further into her body and she shivered.

They walked for what felt like miles, and even in his jacket, Blue Eyes shivered with every step. Shawn held her closer, but he could tell she was cold, dangerously cold. He wondered if he should leave her in the snow and search for shelter, help and warmth, then realised, as a fresh wave of the blizzard settled upon their shoulders and heads, that if he did, this might be the last white Christmas she ever saw.

With new resolution, he picked her up, and struggled through the snow with her small, fairy-like body huddled against his chest. Her breath, like his, frosted as it left her mouth, but unlike his, the clouds came in shallow short pants. She was losing heat, too tired to walk, and he didn’t know how far he could carry her. Her eyes were closed, and he could only pray that they would find shelter in this desolate place before they were closed forever.

Through the darkness, through the snow, through the torment of the knowledge that he had placed her in this situation, Shawn struggled on. No light showed ahead of him, and on the dark freeway, he knew of no salvation. She stirred briefly against him, and he realised if he trudged on endlessly, he would fall by the wayside, and on the happiest day of both their lives so far, perish. It was that ‘so far’ that concentrated his mind. He walked faster, feeling his blood pound and cool as he did so.

A memory from his childhood floated back to him. He had been out with his father and mother sailing, in a lifejacket as he was too young to swim well, and, in a sudden gust of wind, the boon had swung round suddenly, before either of them could warn or catch him, and knocked him over the side. It had been freezing in the water, he would never forget that cold, and the waves had begun to whip up as a storm began, and he had known the danger, but after a few minutes, as his parents struggled desperately to retrieve him, Hope holding Bo back from simply diving into the waves to rescue him, he had begun to feel sleepy. He had almost succumbed to that feeling of peace, the cold ebbing away from him, when his father had finally managed to navigate to him and drag him out of the water, and his mother warmed him by the stove and in a warm bath. Years afterwards, he realised that what would have killed him was not drowning, for his head was above water and he managed not to be sucked under the waves, but that terrible cold that would have first sent him to sleep, and then to death’s waiting arms.

He forced him to think of anything but where they were and what could happen to them. His wandering mind lighted on a Robert Frost poem he had read in his English Literature class, and he began reciting it, forcing his mouth to repeat the words, then forcing his Blue Eyes to repeat them as well. He had to keep her awake.

Shawn stamped his feet harder and made his Blue Eyes repeat the words he had told her once more before joining in.

Together, their voices in odd harmony in that place made strange by the white snow, they recited it. "The woods are welcoming, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep." Again and again he made her say it, and though her beautiful eyes remained closed, her voice was strong and clear enough. She wasn’t falling asleep, though he knew the temptation must be great.

The cold would not take what he would not give, and after a long time of his gently carrying her, he spied a light in the distance and his heart lightened. The snow was still thick, falling faster than ever in fact, but with hope his waning strength flowed back, and he carried his angelic lover to the heaven of warmth and safety.

"Come on," he said, jiggling her a little to get her to respond properly, "we’re nearly there, Blue."

She opened her eyes then and smiled with blue tinted lips. He was so afraid for her. She was so small, so fragile, and he loved her so much, he did not know what he would do if anything happened to her. His heart went into arrhythmia at the thought. She would be all right. They had come this far. Now, even the prospect of her father did not scare him.

Reaching what turned out to be the light from the window of a roadside motel, Shawn hammered on the door desperately, knowing that if no one answered he would break it down to get into the warmth.

The door creaked open, precipitating his actions, and a boy’s face peered out. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but at the sight of the girl’s small body huddled up against Shawn’s chest, he whipped the door open fast and ushered them in.

"I wasn’t expecting no visitors," his words were slurred by his local accent, not drink, and as Shawn stared into his face, he thought he traced honesty as well as the kindness that had led the boy to admit two strangers on such a dark and lonely winter’s night.

"We weren’t expecting to hit a blizzard," the blue eyed girl murmured, nestling her head against Shawn’s good shoulder.

"Well, a see, the weather just kind of sprung up from nowhere," the boy grinned, his white teeth flashing in contrast to sun darkened skin.

"Do you have a room free?" Shawn, though he would never admit it to her, was finding his new wife’s weight, light as she was, exhausted him.

"Sure we do," the boy let himself stare at the girl in Shawn’s arms for a few seconds.

"Hi," she murmured sleepily, "I’m Mrs Brady, and this is my husband. Rhett, baby, please, let me sleep now."

"OK, Blue Eyes," he glanced at the kid. "You got a double room?"

"Got the whole place free, Mr Brady," the kid was grinning. "Everyone else went home for Christmas and I was about to lock up when you got here."

"Call me Shawn," Shawn grinned back. "You reckon we could have that room?"

"Sure thing." The boy became business like. "It’s forty dollars for a double room or sixty for a suite."

"We’ll take a suite." His blue eyed wife had fallen asleep against his shoulder. "You going to be around?"

"Naw, my Mom wants me home, but I can trust you, Mister." The boy stuck out a hand, which Shawn carefully gripped without dropping the girl in his arms. "You can call me Charlie. I’ve got a pager so if you need anything, just give me a ring. The number’s on this card. Here are the keys. If you’ll give me your credit card details, I’ll see you in a couple days, if you want to go sooner, I’ll be at 42 Marlborough Street, St Anne’s, about four miles down the road."

"Thanks, Charlie," Shawn’s grin turned into a warm smile. "You OK getting home?"

Charlie laughed. "Sure, I got myself a big ol’ snow tractor. Merry Christmas to you, Mr Brady, and to you, Mrs Brady," his brown eyes softened as he rested his gaze on her lovely face. "Good bye now."

"Merry Christmas, Charlie!" Shawn called after him as Charlie vanished into the darkness of the blizzard. "Come on, Blue Eyes," he whispered as he carried her gently to the queen sized bed of the suite. "Sleepy time now."

She stirred against him, and then lay still. He laid her down, and stretched his arms above his head with a groan. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. She needed to eat, and so did he. He set about finding food, but apart from in the mini-bar, there was nothing in the suite. He stared out at the weather, wondering if he dared risk walking the four miles to St Anne’s for food for the girl he adored. He shook his head. He loved her dearly, he didn’t want her to be a widow almost before she was a wife. The light from the candy machine was the only one he could see, so with the haste of youth and love, he ran out the door and across to it, trying to remember if she preferred jelly beans to goobers or if she would be in the mood for Snickers not Mars bars. Then he hit his forehead. Of course, it was obvious, she’d want candy hearts, Cadbury’s Roses and Miniature Heroes. Grinning, Shawn fed money into the machine and took advantage of all of its selections.

Piling the candy high in his arms, he began to walk back to the love of his life, snow frosting his beautiful brown hair and settling on his shirt. The sound of the phone ringing was so strange in this white out world of the blizzard that he dropped some of the candy before reaching into his pocket to answer the call.

"Hello?" His voice was made lower by the cold and the snow that came into his mouth with every breath, becoming more a growl than a purr. "Shawn Brady speaking."

"Shawn," it was his mother, her voice hysterical, "where the hell are you?"

She was swearing. Not a good sign.

Picking up the candy one handed, he cringed. "Um," he sought desperately for somewhere she wouldn’t yell at him for being. "In a motel parking lot. I got snowed in."

"Why weren’t you here earlier?" She was shrieking now. She started to calm down a little, and Shawn could practically see his father laying a hand on her shoulder. "Shawn, honey, it’s Christmas Eve, and I want you home. Mike’s here, baby, and he says he knows all about your surprise. I want to know, Shawn, why the hell you aren’t here telling me about it yourself! Everyone is here waiting!" She took a deep breath, and Shawn could imagine his father giving her a shoulder massage, then came an unexpected list of news of everything going on that he was missing. "Carrie’s heavily pregnant, so Mike’s rubbing her feet and telling her that being pregnant with his twins becomes her, Sami’s scheming to keep Brandon away from her in case he realises her sister is a nicer person than she is, and better looking, Lucas is keeping Will away from Sami, Kate’s trying to seduce Victor, your Grandpa Shawn is trying not to kill Victor, Caroline has to keep taking the deep fat fryer away from him so he doesn’t pour boiling oil over troubled waters, Alice is making donuts in the deep fat fryer, Marlena’s avoiding the kitchen and feeding John Prozac because Brady just told him that he’s in love with Abby and they’re looking for a place to get together, Abby’s trying to explain to Jack and Jenn that moving in with Brady isn’t a terrible idea and that she really does love him, Philip and Chloe are arguing about what they should call the baby, Maggie’s making eggnog and getting Fay drunk on it, Roman and Abe have tied Lexie to a chair and are entertaining Zack while she raves about Stefano and some garbage about Tony being a nice person, Cassie and Rex are making eyes at Kevin and Mimi respectively, Billie’s moaning about Bart’s lack of interest in her, Bart and Rolf are giving Lexie sedatives every time she wakes up and starts calling for Colin, or, scarily, Elvis, Colin keeps telling Nicole that nothing happened between him and Jan, and I, for one, believe him, Jason’s hanging onto Cynthia and trying to convince her that Colin’s an Irish Brady, not that Australian hunk from ‘Home and Away’ but she doesn’t believe him, Celeste is predicting six new babies in the next year, and we’ve only accounted for three, Mickey keeps talking about suing Stefano for breach of copyright - something about Van Helsing, I don’t really understand that bit - I don’t even want to say what Nancy and Craig are doing in the closet, something about fixing her lips, and Dad and Julie keep asking me every five minutes where you are!" She breathed in deeply, while Shawn waited in shock for the next part of her speech. "Shawn Douglas Brady" - she’d used his full name, he was in some serious trouble - "It’s half past five. I expect you home by six."

"Mom," he started saying, "I really don’t think-"

"You will be home, Shawn Douglas, by six or else." He didn’t bother asking ‘or else what?’. ‘Or else’ was a threat in itself.

"Mom," he started again, then came to his senses, "put Dad on the phone."

His mother grumpily stopped speaking, and the phone changed over. "Shawn, my boy, you there?"

"Yeah, Dad, I’m here, but the connection isn’t great." Shawn gently opened the suite door, and dropped the chocolate onto the coffee table. "Dad, I need you to relay this message to Mom and the rest of the room. OK?"

Bo sighed, "OK son."

Shawn sucked in a deep breath. "Dad, I’m married."

"You’re what?" Bo yelled down the phone, so loudly that Shawn had to hold it away from his ear and pray that the sound wouldn’t wake up his new wife.

"I’m married, Dad." He repeated, more slowly, and heard the phone being ripped out of his father’s hand by his mother.

"Shawn, Sailor Man, baby," his mother was repeating the words again and again, "you’re giving your father a heart attack. What is the surprise?"

"Mom, I’m married." Shawn dropped the cell phone as his mother started screeching at him.

"MARRIED? MARRIED? SHAWN DOUGLAS BRADY, DID YOU JUST SAY YOU WERE MARRIED?" The noise was so loud that he could hear it even when he moved away from the phone.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Was screamed in synchronicity by the two Black men.

Sounds of utter chaos came out of the phone. Shawn crossed his fingers that the crashing sound wasn’t his emotional but not biological grandfather dropping a deep fat fryer on his biological but not emotional grandfather or his mother’s favourite vase breaking. He especially hoped it wasn’t the vase. It would start Salem’s World War Five if it was.

"Shawn," it was Mike’s voice, so Shawn hesitantly lifted the phone to his ear again. "I think you’d better stay where you are."

"I was planning on it," he breathed. "Congratulations to you and Carrie, by the way."

"Thanks. How’s the wife?" Shawn felt his chest tighten in pleasure at hearing the word ‘wife’.

"Sleeping peacefully." A gentle smile spread over his lips. "She’s so beautiful, like an angel, Mike, but I guess you feel the same way about Carrie."

"You know it," the good doctor let a smile cross his lips, then had to duck as Marlena threw Hope’s favourite vase at Caroline, only for it to be fielded by Roman as a surprise tackle on his mother was made by none other than Kate. "Shawn, you know what I said about staying where you are?"

"Yeah?"

"I really, really mean it." Mike watched as his beautiful, heavily pregnant and glowing wife stalked towards him, fury at having the secret kept from her written all over her lovely face. "World War Five has broken out, and if you and your new bride don’t want to get stuck in the middle of it, I’d stay out of Salem."

He watched as Carrie was waylaid by Lexie who had been sprung by John in an attempt to get her and the rest of the Dimera clan on the Black side of the argument.

"Give me that damn phone, Mike," John barked, holding Jenn and Abby at bay while reaching for it, "I want to talk to that son of a bitch."

"Hey!" Hope objected from the other side of the room. "I’m no bitch!"

"Then why did you steal my man?" Billie screamed, throwing herself at the brunette.

"Catfight!" Zack yelled, highly amused by it all.

"Shawn?" John yelled. "Is that you?"

Shawn involuntarily stood to attention. "Yes sir."

"Listen to me, you lousy bastard," John snarled, earning a thwack around the head from a member of the enraged Brady clan. "You may not be here now, but I’m going to camp out on your doorstep, you son of a bitch, until you get home and then I’m going to put you in the hospital for what you’ve done!"

Brady grabbed the phone from his father, "And I’m going to help!" He yelled before it was snatched away from him by Abby.

Hers was the first calm voice he had heard in several minutes. "Shawn, congratulations, and don’t worry about John and Brady. Marlena and I can sort them out."

"What?" The men said simultaneously.

"She’s quite right," Marlena responded as she tugged out a handful of Cynthia’s hair just for the hell of it. "No bedroom dancing until Shawn’s safe, isn’t that right Abby?"

Shawn would have paid a million dollars to see the looks on the Black men’s faces at that moment.

"That goes for the rest of the clan too!" Caroline yelled abruptly, taking their lead.

"The fight stops now or no bedroom dancing!" Carrie clarified loudly.

The groan around the room was huge. It was nearly force three.

"Wow," Shawn murmured just loudly enough for Abby to hear, "this must be the first time no one in Salem is going to be getting some."

"Haven’t you noticed that it’s gone very quiet?" Abby giggled. "The fight’s over, but I’d stay clear for a day or so, because even my Dad’s going psycho over here."

"Bye Abby, love you," Shawn sighed happily. "We’ll be back in twenty four hours. By then, everyone should have forgotten all about it."

"Bye Shawn," then Abby laughed loudly, breaking the tension, "don’t do anything I wouldn’t do."

"As that gives me a free license for anything, Ab, thanks." Shawn hung up and gazed around the room. His bride was still asleep. The job of telling his parents, her parents, and the whole of Salem was over. Now all he had to do was tell one last person. His fiancée.

So, twenty four hours from Salem, Shawn Douglas Brady defied his family, took on John Black, caused Salem’s World War Five and won. Love triumphed, family feuds were ended, his Blue Eyes slept on, everyone in Salem got drunk, went to Midnight Mass, and fell happily asleep to wait until Christmas morning brought presents, cheer, and the love of all mankind to them. The two purest souls were passed through the fire, and in it were bonded more deeply together than before. Even John Black could not defeat the truth that ‘Amor Omnia Vincit’ or ‘LOVE CONQUERS ALL’… even mercenary commando in-laws.