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Henry, Henry’s Fork…
Was there some connection?
Bet he wouldn’t tell her that, either.
She held the pump in her lap while they drove around back for the tire. Hatch got out and exchanged a few words with a guy in greasy coveralls. She exited the truck, too, but stayed put while the two men disappeared into the open bay. A short while later Hatch emerged and put her patched tire in back.
“A souvenir.” He dropped a coiled horseshoe nail into her palm. Looking at it, she wondered how the curved object had managed to puncture her tire. He nodded toward the courthouse in the town square across the street. “You sure this is what you want?”
It struck her then that he’d bent the nail.
She bit down on her bottom lip. He’d said yes. Yes, with an open-ended symbol that fit perfectly on her ring finger.
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Marine’s don’t cry,” he pointed out with far too much sympathy. “At least not any of the Marines I’ve ever known.”
“You’re really going to marry me?”
“Either that or take out a restraining order.” His lips compressed into a serious line. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“HUNTING LICENSE?” the middle-aged clerk asked without looking up. “Big game, small game, fur bearing, fowl or waterfowl?”
“The biggest game,” Hatch said. “Marriage.”
He still hadn’t decided against a restraining order. In the short time he’d known her, Peaches had gotten under his skin—and he didn’t like anybody crawling around in there. Plus, wouldn’t she just love it if she knew he’d tagged her that? Right now the quickest way to end their association appeared to be marriage. She’d be on her way and out of his hair.
And he’d never have to see her again.
The clerk eyeballed him above her reading glasses. “Take a number, please.”
Hatch glanced around the empty office. “Carla, you and I are the only ones here.”
“Number.” She indicated the stand in the middle of the room. Arguing would get him nowhere, so Hatch stepped back and yanked off the next tab.
Carla hit the buzzer beneath her desk and urged the lighted sign. “Forty-two.”
“Only three more to go.” He waited until she called forty-five before stepping forward. “Forty-five for the month or the year?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass, Clay. What brings you to town? Haven’t seen you in a while.” He’d heard the rumors going around. That he wasn’t right in the head since his return from Iraq. That the shrapnel had taken out more than just his eye. That he should have returned sooner, with his mama so sick and all.
That it was too late now for them ever to make amends.
“I’m here for a marriage license,” he reminded her.
“I heard you the first time,” she said. “And I still don’t believe you. Where’s your bride?”
“Throwing up in the ladies’ room, I suspect.”
The woman raised an eyebrow above the rim of her glasses. “Bridal jitters?”
He hoped that was all it was. Outside, Peaches had flung herself at him in a hug so fierce he was still reeling from it. But inside, she’d pressed a hand to her stomach and excused herself to go to the restroom.
“I’d like to get started on the paperwork.”
“We’ll wait.” Carla thrummed her fingernails against the desktop. They didn’t have to wait long.
“Sorry,” came the familiar refrain.
Carla removed her glasses and glared at him disapprovingly as Angela Adams sidled up beside him. “I’ll need to see the bride’s ID,” Carla said. “She has to be at least eighteen to get married without her parents’ permission.”
His bride was being carded before she could even fill out the paperwork.
Peaches extended her Colorado driver’s license to Carla. “I have my birth certificate and passport if you need them.” If he had any doubt that she was serious, the birth certificate and passport squelched it.
With a click of her tongue, the older woman handed him two pens and two clipboards, plus the separated pages of their application, highlighted in pink for her and blue for him.
He passed the pink pages to Angela.
“You okay?” he asked as they sat down in the row of empty chairs to fill out the brief forms. Wyoming had no waiting period for a marriage license. When a cowboy wanted to get hitched, he got hitched.
Without a blood test.
“Yeah.”
He looked up to gauge that one-syllable response. She didn’t sound okay. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
She smiled, laughed even. Better.
Except for that nervous edge to her laughter.
“Are you?” She gazed at him anxiously. “Okay with this, I mean?”
He answered with an equal amount of uncertainty. “Yeah.”
He’d been saving his first marriage for that first big mistake, and right now he couldn’t imagine a bigger one.
She completed her form in record time and handed it to him. He finished his and took both back to the counter, glancing at Angela’s vital statistics before turning the forms over to Carla, together with the twenty-five dollar fee and five dollars for the certified copy Angela had said she’d need to give the recruiter once this was all over with. Calhoun owed him big-time.
Hatch glanced at the wall clock and frowned. A quarter to four on a Friday was cutting it close.
“The judge in?” he asked, trying to hurry Carla along.
The sooner they got this over with the better.
She held up an index finger as she talked into the phone, presumably to the judge. “Half his age,” she was saying. “And throwing up in the ladies’ room.”
“I’m standing right here, Carla.”
She lowered her voice and craned her neck for a better view of his bride-to-be. “Can’t tell if she is or isn’t.” She covered the mouthpiece. “Is she pregnant?”
“None of your damn business.”
With a smug smile, Carla handed over the phone. “Your aunt wants to speak to you.”
“She’s not half my age,” Hatch said in a preemptive strike. “Twenty,” he responded to the question that followed. “No, she’s not pregnant.” Not with his baby, anyway. “I’m doing a friend a favor. She’s a single mom who wants to join the Marine Corps. And that’s all there is to it.”
Somebody had to sign for her.
He’d finally figured out what Calhoun had known all along. That he was the guy most likely to remember having been dependent on somebody else to join the service.
Parental consent. Spousal support.
Not spousal support in the traditional sense, but he really didn’t know what else to call it. Felony? Fraud?
It wasn’t as if they were doing this for monetary gain, or even military benefits. He had his own military pension with benefits. And therein lay Calhoun’s genius.
Hatch gained nothing by marrying Angela Adams.
Which meant neither of them had anything to lose. As far as he knew, only Immigration Services had a problem with people marrying for the sake of convenience.
Just a signature on a piece of paper.
And here he was, stone-cold sober and ready to sign.
“There’s no point in your coming down here,” he said to his aunt, when he could get a word in edgewise. The last thing he wanted was his only living relative caught up in this fiasco. “All right.” He agreed to stop by later. “See you then.”
He handed the phone back to Carla. “You were going to check on the judge,” he reminded her.
She took their freshly minted marriage certificate from the printer with her and came back a few minutes later and asked them to wait.
At four o’clock on the dot Carla ushered them into the wood-paneled chambers of Judge Booker T. Shaw. The judge stood before his massive desk with a Bible and Colt Peacemaker clasped in his hands.
The antique revolver was for show. The cabinet full of rifles behind the desk was not. Every inch of wall space was covered with pictures and plaques of the judge’s award-winning bird dogs.
A sign behind his desk read I’d Rather Be Hunting. Judging by the waders beneath his robe and the two Brittany spaniels at his feet, Peaches and Hatch were keeping the man from his preferred pastime.
Hatch could relate. He’d rather be anywhere than here.
Angela stooped to scratch the dogs behind their ears. The judge glanced at her and then at him.
“What’s all this nonsense, Clay?” Judge Shaw reviewed the application and license Carla had presented to him, along with whatever commentary the clerk had deemed necessary. So Hatch knew the man had gotten an earful. “Why isn’t your aunt here?”
“My aunt couldn’t make it,” he said. “Just strip it down to the legalese. We don’t plan on staying married all that long.”
Angela rose to her feet as if expecting the judge to throw them out. The spaniels wandered off to the rug in front of the unlit fireplace.
“Well, at least you’re honest about it. That’s more than I can say for most folks.” Shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to do, the judge asked his clerk and bailiff to act as witnesses. Carla and Ned stood off to the side nearest the door.
Angela was to Hatch’s left, his good-eye side. Where he could see her resolve, which strengthened his. She wanted this paper marriage. And aside from being inconvenienced, he had nothing to lose by giving her what she wanted. Judge Shaw opened the Bible to his cheat sheets and flipped through several before finding the right script. Then he cleared his throat. “We have come together today to witness the marriage of Clay and Angela. The legal requirements of this state having been fulfilled, and the license for their marriage being present, we’ll begin.”
He raised his eyes from the page to look at them individually. “Clay and Angela, you stand before me having requested that I marry you. Do you both do this of your own free will?”
Angela glanced sideways at Hatch before joining her voice to his. “We do,” they answered in unison.
She probably wasn’t even aware that in its simplest form marriage was a civil contract between two people. As long as he didn’t have to stand here and lie his ass off with promises to love, honor and cherish, he was okay with that.
“Do the witnesses know of any reason we may not legally continue?”
“We do not,” Ned replied.
“Your Honor—”
“I said legally. Any other reason and I do not want to hear it, Carla. While marriage is never to be entered into lightly, it’s up to this young couple to determine what constitutes their marriage. And up to the rest of us to butt out.”
The woman shut her mouth.
“Clay, repeat after me,” the judge said.
“I do solemnly declare,” he repeated, “that I do not know of any lawful impediment why I, Clayton Henry-Miner, may not be joined in matrimony to Angela Anne Adams.”
“Angela,” the judge prompted.
“I—I do solemnly declare,” she said, stumbling over the unfamiliar words, “that I do not know of any lawful impediment why I, Angela Anne Adams, may not be joined in matrimony to Clayton Henry-Miner.”
“I take it we’re not exchanging rings,” the judge said.
Angela twisted the silver knot on her finger—an inspired gesture on Hatch’s part. Still a horseshoe nail could not be misconstrued as anything other than what it was. A token meant to wish her luck and send her on her way.
They both responded, “No.”
“By the power vested in me by the state of Wyoming—” the judge snapped his Bible shut “—I pronounce you husband and wife.” After a few bold strokes of the mighty pen, they entered into that legally binding marriage contract.
“Just so we’re clear…” She put the pen down after signing in her pretty penmanship. “I’m keeping my own name.”
He’d read her preference on the application. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, darlin’.” She gave him her I-asked-you-nicely-not-to-call-me-that look. Next time, she’d probably not be so nice about it. Fine by him. He’d filled his quota of playing nice for the day.
They left the judge’s chambers with her clinging to the marriage certificate she’d driven four hundred miles to obtain. “You hungry?” he asked. “I promised my aunt we’d stop by for dinner.”
“The aunt who thinks I’m pregnant?”
“One and the same.”
“I’m not pregnant,” Angela said to clarify, sparing him a glance as he held the courthouse door for her.
“That’s good to know.”
CHAPTER THREE
