The alarm went off at 6 a.m. as usual.
"Morning gorgeous," Kenny said, giving me a quick kiss before getting out of bed and making his way to the bathroom. He always was better at getting up than me.
At the first sound of movement, Stan and Ollie, our two Australian Cattle Dogs rushed into the bedroom, tails wagging furiously. When they'd arrived as puppies, I hadn't wanted to call them that. I could just picture the embarrassment of having to call out their names as I chased after them. But Kenny had been keen on the idea and in time the names came to suit their personalities, or so it seemed.
When Kenny came out of the bathroom I got up to take my turn. We passed each other at the end of the bed, both naked, and he reached out for me.
"Looking good," he said putting his arms around my waist and drawing me in.
"Why thank you kind sir," I replied.
I put my arms around his neck and we kissed. Stan and Ollie were having none of it however and they grumbled their frustration.
The late August air was still warm when we left the house and jogged towards the trail. We were only a street away from it but put the dogs on leads in case they happened to see a cat. Once on the trail they could run free. Fortunately I'd never had to chase after them and they never strayed far, they just padded along with us, keeping the pack together.
Our usual route took us around forty five minutes and when we got back we fed the dogs then went up to take a shower. Showering together was one of life's pleasures. It sounds odd but neither of us ever seemed to tire of it. Kenny always liked to soap my body and I enjoyed the feel of his hands running over me. It was reassuring.
After we'd towelled ourselves dry I put on a fluffy white bathrobe and went downstairs to make us some breakfast while Kenny got dressed for work. When he came down he looked his normal self in jeans and a tee shirt. At thirty seven he still looked good. Strong, muscular and with hardly an ounce of fat on him. He tucked into a couple of slices of toast and marmalade and washed it down with a cup of strong coffee then got up to leave.
"I'll be back by lunchtime," he said embracing me. "I won't be late."
"I'm looking forward to our road trip." I told him. Then added teasingly, "but I don't know what I should wear."
"Well, slutty always works for me," he replied, "but as we're meeting Esme tonight, perhaps just slutty on the inside."
"I'm always slutty on the inside," I told him.
Kenny undid the cord on my bathrobe and opened it up. Reaching in he, cupped my breasts. He couldn't resist them. They were my best asset, we both knew that.
"I'm counting on it," he said kissing me one more time.
I watched from the front door as he walked out to the old Ford pick up on the drive. He could have taken the new Mustang he'd bought himself a few months ago but the ten year old truck suited him. Kenny wasn't the sort of guy to flaunt his success over anyone.
***********************
Things hadn't always been this good for us. We'd both grown up in a suburb of Seattle and Kenny and I had been an item since we were sixteen. We'd always made a good looking couple. He was tall, muscular, captain of the wrestling team. I was pretty, blonde and well, I had quite a good rack, D-cup to be precise. I was also a flirt, I liked the attention of boys but there was something about Kenny that tied me to him. People liked Kenny and I was proud to be his girlfriend. We'd had everything going for us but then, straight after graduation, I'd got pregnant.
I knew the precise week it had happened. We'd been on a hiking trip with a group of friends from high school. One night, someone produced a bottle of Jack Daniels, and an hour or so later we'd all thought it would be a good idea to swap partners. I'd had sex with three other guys by the end of that trip. Each one felt different and I'd loved the way their hands had roamed over my body, their tongues searching out mine while they fucked me. When they came in me I'd felt fulfilled. If that had made me a slut then so be it. Kenny didn't seem to mind, he'd been fucking their girlfriends after all. It had been fun, guilt free and we'd all gone home happy.
Like all my friends, I'd been on the pill since turning eighteen. The week before the camping trip I'd eaten some bad seafood and been very sick for a couple of days. I'd read the warnings about abstaining from sex if you had an upset stomach, but stupidly, I'd ignored them.
I had an inkling that something wasn't right with my body after a couple of months. I bought one of those testing kits that you pee on and when the result came back positive I wished I was dead. I was terrified and dreaded having to tell Kenny, it felt like I was trying to trap him. But I owed him the truth and had to tell him that what was inside me might not be his. I'll always remember his response. He said he loved me and that he already knew he wanted to marry me. He told me he didn't care who the biological father was because he was going to be the child's real father and I was going to be his wife. At that moment I vowed to myself I would be the best wife to him, and mother to his child, that he could ever wish for.
My parents kicked me out the moment they found out I was pregnant. They were religious and their religion meant more to them than their daughter did. Fortunately Kenny's parents were more understanding. Kenny's dad was pragmatic about the situation. In his eyes, we'd made our bed, now we had to lie on it. Kenny had planned on going to college and his parents gave us the money they'd saved up for his fees to start our life together. We stayed with them for a few months but they made it clear that we needed to find a place before the baby was born. It wasn't fair on Kenny's younger brother and sister, who were still at school. So, in the fall, we moved out and rented an apartment together.
Kenny and I got married in September 2000, before my bulge became too noticeable and in April 2001, our daughter Esme was born.
The first few years were hard. Kenny's dad got him a job working for a friend in construction while I stayed home to look after the baby. Money was always tight and Kenny worked all the hours he could to put food on the table. He bought a crappy old Honda 500 to ride to work on. It was a piece of junk but Kenny liked riding a motorbike and it meant that I could drive our equally crappy old Nissan in the daytime.
As Esme got a little older, things got a little easier. When she started Kindergarten I began waitressing of an evening in a trendy restaurant downtown. I was under no illusion as to why I got the job. I had a good body and I was expected to flaunt it. It was never a problem for me and I made good tips. I enjoyed it.
Kenny did well at work. Construction suited him. He was a hard worker and popular. After five years Karl, the boss, made him foreman and as the company got more and more work he relied on Kenny to keep the crews busy while he dealt with the developers. Karl had always liked Kenny. He knew we needed the money and had tried to throw extra work Kenny's way whenever he could. He also saw that Kenny was intelligent and that he needed someone like him to keep the developers happy.
Karl's wife, Inge saw how desperate we were in the early days and she took me under her wing. She would invite me to her house when the men were at work and look after Esme while I slept in their spare room. Then, as Esme got older we'd go out on trips together. Esme called her 'Nana Inge' which she liked. We owed her so much.
As money got a little bit easier we moved to a house with a yard so that Esme could play in it. I didn't need to keep waitressing but the money was handy and Kenny knew I enjoyed it. Then, in 2010, when Esme was nine, our lives changed irrevocably. Karl died suddenly of a heart attack. He was only fifty. None of the guys in the construction firm knew if they had a job anymore, including Kenny, but the developers approached him to ask if he'd considered taking over the business. They were in just as much trouble as the employees if Karl's company folded.
The construction firm had been Karl and Inge's pension and so Kenny and Inge discussed how best to protect her future and everyone's jobs. In the end they agreed that Kenny would take out a loan from the bank and buy a fifty percent stake in the business from Inge. The company would then pay Kenny a salary to run the company and they would split the remaining profits between them.
In the months after Karl's death I got the chance to repay the kindness that Inge had shown us. Karl and Inge didn't have any children of their own and I'd like to think that Esme and I brought Inge some comfort in those difficult days. I gave up waitressing and Inge taught me how to keep the books and do the payroll for the company, it felt like we all had a stake in its success.
As part of the deal, Kenny got Karl's almost new Ford pickup and Inge also gave him Karl's Harley Davidson Road King complete with sidecar. Esme's eyes lit up the moment she saw the bike and sidecar combination and the three of us would go out riding in it on weekends and summer evenings. Kenny would pilot the bike and Esme would sit on my lap in the sidecar. We even went camping with it, even though it would have made much more sense to go in the truck. Those simple weekends were some of the best we had as a family.
As Esme got older she became too big to sit on my lap and graduated to riding pillion with her father. She was a Daddy's girl and given the circumstances of her conception I was glad of that. Fortunately she inherited my genes. She was pretty, blonde and like me preferred the company of men to women. As she grew up, she also inherited another of my features, a great chest.
The construction business went from strength to strength. People could do business with Kenny. Both the developers and the crews trusted him and it paid off for him and Inge. In 2016 we moved into a big house on a nice development that Kenny's company had built and the following year, when Esme was sixteen we threw a big party for her. At that point I realised that our little girl was growing up. Two years later she was graduating high school and off to college in Oregon.
Like any mother I was sad to see Esme go, but she was only four hours away. Besides, Kenny and I were still only thirty seven and we had some living to catch up on.
***********************
I finished my tea then went upstairs to get dressed properly. When I walked into the bedroom I saw a card and a neatly wrapped box on the bed. I opened the card and inside Kenny had written, 'I thought you could find room for this in your luggage. Love, Kenny'.
I opened the box and inside was an exquisite Aubade bra, brief and suspender set. I knew it would be lingerie. Kenny always joked that the day he stopped buying me lingerie for me would be the day he didn't want to have sex anymore. I wondered if he'd still be doing this when we were in our eighties and what the lingerie might look like if he was.
I undressed and tried the ensemble on. It fitted well. Kenny usually bought me Aubade, because he liked the look of it and knew that the sizes fitted me. I looked at my reflection and studied it. Pert bum, shapely legs, flat stomach and of course a great rack. All things considered I couldn't complain but I couldn't get complacent either. Kenny still had the body of a thirty year old and with his new found wealth it would have been easy for him to trade me in for a younger model. But despite the alarming divorce rate I had no real concerns about Kenny leaving me. In time I'd come to understand why Kenny loved me and it was due to a combination of things.
Firstly, he really did like the way that I looked. I'm not ashamed to say that, to this day, I have done everything in my power to maintain the image he had of me when we first dated. I weigh almost the same as I had before I got pregnant and my hair is as blonde as the day we met, although now it gets some help from a salon once a month. Some women think that, as time goes on, it's ok to stop being the image of the person their husband fell in love with. I don't agree.
Secondly, Kenny knew that I was totally loyal to him. I've always been a flirt but I took the vow I'd made to be the best wife he could wish for very seriously. I knew how much he'd given up for us.
