"There has to be. Otherwise, you would be perfect, and I cannot live up to, or with, perfection."
"We shall see."
She smiled and then kissed him, not bothered at all when that led to more. Later, they lay entwined and whispered words of love until they fell asleep together.
Her dreams were sweet and she woke beside the man she loved and the man she now knew loved her.
She looked at the clock and then started. "Aren't you supposed to be at the office?"
"I am playing hooky. We are celebrating."
"What are we celebrating?"
"Being in love."
They spent the day doing just that, but it didn't stop with a day. Carlo thought that their love should be celebrated often and well.
Annette agreed. It was an amazing gift.
EPILOGUE
The evening of their first anniversary, Annette met Carlo on the terrace outside their bedroom with a sheaf of papers.
"What is this?" he asked.
"I've got a contract for you to sign."
"Do you?" He took the papers and began reading, his laughter ringing soon thereafter.
Annette settled onto his lap, enjoying how much easier it was to do so now than it had been six months before. She'd barely shown for the first five months and then ballooned to a basketball sized tummy at supersonic speed.
Carlo had spent the last months of her pregnancy kissing her stretch marks and telling her how beautiful they were, a mark of her motherhood. Now, their adorable little Joy was six months old and wonder of wonders, sleeping through the night.
"What's so funny?" she asked him, as if she did not know.
"This reads more like a teenaged girl's sex fantasies than a contract," he told her, echoing her words from a fateful day that had brought them here. He went serious. "But it's this final set of articles I can't live without."
Annette had poured her love onto those pages, promising the many ways she would show it to him throughout their life.
"I will only sign this if I can add some clauses of my own."
"Of course. It's a love contract after all and love is both give and take."
"In this case, I want to give it to you. Every day for all of our lives."
And that is what he did.
THE END