at the trailer. "Bring your own motel room along?" It loomed over us, taller than the truck--which was plenty tall on its own--taller and wider, too, with sections along the sides that were obviously intended to pop out. "I'm pretty sure it's bigger than my old trailer."
Adam glanced over his shoulder and huffed a laugh. "I think it might be. This is the first I've seen of it. Peter and Honey took the truck and hitched it up."
"Is it yours?"
"No. I borrowed it."
"I hope we're not going anywhere with little windy roads," I said. "Or small parking lots."
"I thought we'd spend the night in this really neat truck stop I know of in Boardman, Oregon," Adam said, guiding it onto Highway 395 southbound. "The smell of diesel and the hum of big engines to accompany our first night together as man and wife." He laughed at my expression. "Just trust me."
We did stop in Boardman to change out of our wedding clothes. Inside, the trailer was even more amazing than outside.
Adam unhooked the billion bitty buttons that ran from my hips to my neck. A billion bitty buttons from my elbows to my wrists still awaited. They required two hands to unbutton, so all I could do was look around the trailer with awe. "It's like a giant bag of holding. Huge on the outside, but even bigger on the inside."
"Your dress?" he said, sounding intrigued.
I snorted. "Very funny. The trailer. You know about bags of holding, right? The nifty magic items that can hold more things than would ever really fit in bags of their size?"
"Really?"
I sighed. "The make-believe magic item from Dungeons and Dragons." I craned my neck around, and said, "Don't tell me you haven't played D and D. Is there some rule that werewolves can't indulge?"
He leaned his forehead against my shoulder and laughed. "I may have been born in the Dark Ages"--actually he'd been born in the fifties, though he looked like he was only in his midtwenties; being a werewolf halts and reverses the aging process--"but I have played D and D. I can tell you for certain that Darryl has never indulged, though. Paintball is his game."
I took a minute to picture Darryl playing paintball. "Scary," I muttered.
"You have no idea."
Adam rubbed his cheek against mine and went back to his task. "I could just pull this apart, instead of unbuttoning it," he said ten minutes later. It was a serious offer, spoken in a hopeful- but-doomed voice.
"You do, and you get to sew all the buttons back on," I told him. "Jesse is planning on reusing this."
"Soon?" he asked.
"Not that I know of."
"Somehow," he grumped, "that's not as reassuring as it ought to be."
"Gabriel's going to college in Seattle in the fall," I reminded him. "I think you're safe this year." My right-hand man had a thing for Adam's daughter, and right now he was living in the tiny manufactured home that the insurance had replaced my old trailer with. A situation that made them happy and Adam antsy. He liked Gabriel, but Adam was an Alpha werewolf--which put him off- the-scale protective of his daughter.
Eventually, Adam managed the buttons. While I hung the dress up and put it in the closet (yes, there was a closet), Adam stripped off his tux and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. He didn't often dress down that far. Except for when he was working out, usually slacks and a button-up shirt was as grubby as he got. My clean shirt and jeans were dressed up for me. I was a mechanic by trade, and it was a rare thing when my fingernails were clean. Somehow, we fit together anyway.
He bought us milk shakes and burgers (one for me, four for him) from the nearby restaurant, filled the diesel tanks in his truck, and we were back on the road.
"Are we going to Portland?" I asked. "Or Multnomah Falls?"
He smiled at me. "Go to sleep."
I waited three seconds. "Are we there yet?"
His smile widened, and the last of the usual tension melted from his face. For a smile like that I'd ... do anything.
"What?" he said.
I leaned over and rested my cheek against his arm. "I love you," I told him.
"Yes," he agreed smugly. "You do."
THE COLUMBIA GORGE IS A CANYON THAT RUNS nearly eighty miles through the Cascade Mountains, with the Columbia River cutting through the bottom. It is part of the border between Washington and Oregon. Most of the travel is on the