Desparate Housewive’s James Denton On Lasting Love

by Jesse Kornbluth

(Page 7 of 9) Erin remembers. “We were shocked.”“It exceeded expectations,” Jamie adds, “and we got change from $100.”But then there is the moment when the jokes end and Jamie speaks from the heart.“The biggest surprise about our marriage is that

Erin was out there,” he says. “That was a real shock. I was convinced I’d have to settle. And I was comfortable with that. But I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to.”

Erin, too, knew she’d found something special. “When you’re this old, you can’t not carry baggage,” she had told Jamie. “You have to decide what to keep around and what to throw away. With you, there’s a lot I can throw away.”A few months later, back in the real world,

Erin endured 49 hours of labor at home (real labor, with Jamie timing contractions every five minutes) before forsaking the midwife and rushing to the hospital. Finally, a beaming doctor held Sheppard up so the new father could cut the cord. “Aren’t there people who do this?” Jamie asked. Having been a nanny,

Erin was determined to do most of the parenting herself. She hired someone to care for the baby two days a week while she returned to work part-time at Crunch. Jamie’s new job on Desperate Housewives was no problem. With ten major characters in the series, he usually hasn’t been needed on the set for more than a couple of days a week, so he and Erin have traded off child-care responsibilities.Jamie also mows the lawn and works around the house, because, as he says, “it’s hard to justify hiring anyone when I have this much free time.” He is his own personal assistant, too. “No BlackBerry—I’m too incompetent,” he admits. “We use dry-erase marker on a calendar tacked on the refrigerator.”Life may get more complicated with the arrival of their second child. And