Bride from the Black Lagoon

She mulled over all the places she could wear the sweater as she drove home to the apartment. When she steered into the lot, she searched for Kip’s car. Thankfully, she didn’t see it, so she grabbed her bag and raced inside. Kip might arrive home at any moment.
With the precision of a surgeon, she snipped off the tags then stashed her purchases in a zippered garment bag in the back of the closet. She carried the tags and the shopping bag to the laundry room, wrapped them in a plastic grocery sack and deposited them in the trashcan reserved for the nastiest of garbage—the small sacks full of poop scooped from their cat’s litter pan.
As she washed her hands she heard Kip’s key in the lock. A moment later, he entered the kitchen with a hand full of mail.
“Hi, honey,” she cooed. “How’d the audition go?”
He dropped the mail on the bistro table and threw himself into a chair. Clover, their Siamese cat immediately jumped into Kip’s lap. “Got a callback for Monday. Director’s awfully old. She might want me to sleep with her for the role.” A wry grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “I told her I was taken.”
Jodi picked up the cat and relocated her to the floor. She slid onto Kip’s lap and hooked her fingers behind his neck. His spicy cologne wrapped around her senses. “Let the bitch know that your fiancé will whip her wrinkled old ass if she makes a pass at you, okay?” When he nodded, she brushed her lips over his and picked up on his sweet, familiar taste. Her nipples puckered and hardened from the contact.
He swirled his tongue around hers, sucked on it before releasing it He kissed her forehead and her ear before meeting her stare. “So what’d you do all day?”
Her stomach flipped. She climbed off his lap, strode to the window and pretended to focus on something outside. He always seemed to sense when she wasn’t being truthful, but if he couldn’t see her eyes, maybe she’d get away with the white lie. “This and that. Worked on a lesson plan, took a walk, you know.” The distinctive sound of tearing paper caught her attention. She spun around in time to see Kip open what appeared to be a credit card bill.
Heart hammering, she lunged for the envelope and ripped it away from him. “That’s just a bill, honey. I’ll take care of it.” With the speed of a threatened wildebeest, she raced out of the room toward the office.
“Hey. What’s wrong with you? Can’t I even see it?”
She stashed the bill in a desk drawer next to the computer. “Sorry, honey. I might have charged something…for your birthday on here. You don’t want to ruin the surprise, do you?”
Deafening silence filled the air between them. It felt like minutes had passed before he appeared in the doorway holding folded papers and wearing a big frown. He raked his fingers through his blond curls.
Her gaze dropped to the document in his hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Want to tell me about these Visa and MasterCard bills?”
She swallowed hard. “Um, no.”
He sank onto the futon and slammed a fist against the cushion. “You promised, Jodi. How could you keep doing this to us? What the hell are we gonna do? Soon some guys are going to show up here while we’re at work and repossess all our stuff. Have you forgotten our car payments have been late the last three months? And we still owe another five hundred on the laptop. I told you, we won’t get married until these bills are paid off, but if they keep growing, we’ll never be able to tie the knot. I don’t want to spend my life sinking in a quicksand of debt.”
“I know, I know. Maybe I can take a loan against my pension to pay them off.”
Fire sparked in his eyes. “You’re not even vested yet. You’ve only been teaching two years. Borrowing to pay off debt won’t cut it. I can’t live like this anymore.”
Think.
Suddenly she had an epiphany, the answer to all their problems. “I’ve got it.”
Kip folded his arms across his chest and lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Tell me.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. Remember when we watched that show the other night about the forensics detective?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. So?”
“Well, did you see the commercial for that new reality game show?” She crossed her fingers behind her back. This plan might really work if she could convince him to go along.
He narrowed his eyes. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Hear me out. There’s a new show coming out called Bride from the Black Lagoon, and they’re looking for contestants.”