Page 9 of It's Holy Matrimony, Baby

CHAPTER THREE

Marriage isn’t mathematics.

It’s survival of the fittest.

Two enter, but only one survives.

If I have to go down, then I’m going down swinging.

Nox

There’s too much fruit on the trees. Fat dimpled orange balls dangle through the greenery like Christmas ornaments. Too many to pick them all without help before they spoil and litter the ground with their fermenting stink. If it’d been up to me the whole thirty-six of them would have been pine trees. Fucking pine trees I could have cut down after a year, but oranges...

Beck Casey; never expected to see her again. Stopped waiting for her to show up to deal with the legal side of things. It must be nearly two years since the disaster that was Vegas. Two years since dad died. Two years since my world went to hell. Beck Casey was nothing but icing on a shit storm of a cake.

The weight across my shoulder shifts as Dean jumps out of the back of the flatbed, mumbling something or other.

“We should hurry up and get the rest of this wood unloaded. I need to take the truck back.” I wait long enough for him to hoist the other end of the planks and start walking along the rocky path from the drive to the shed beside my cabin. “Ian will get his panties all in a wad if it’s not in the yard before lock up.”

“Uh-huh. Blame your boss for your mood.” Dean rolls his eyes. I don’t need eyes in the back of my head to see him do it, because it colors his voice. “Did you hear what I said before? Or is this your way of telling me to shut the hell up?”

“Why am I telling you to shut up?” Not that I need a reason to tell my brother to shut his yap. Done it plenty of times over the years.

“That girl at the bar—”

Beck Casey. Odd that I can’t remember her actual last name. Only what she would have been called if our marriage was more than an Elvis impersonator and a couple of signatures on paper. “What about her?”

“If you had let me finish my sentence, I was going to say she seemed into you.”

Yeah, so into me, she left me high and dry in Vegas. “You think?”

“Yeah. She was a stunner too. Legs for days. You remember that old ZZ Tops song Dad used to play? Sort of reminded me of that.”

“Couldn’t say I noticed.” So what if she’s got legs, and she knows how to use them?

“Bullshit.” He grins as he turns and walks back up the driveway. “That’s why you have a date with her tonight.”

We reach the rest of the stacked planks and deposit our load. Beck Casey, or whatever her name was before that fateful trip to Vegas, isn’t on my to do list. There’s nothing to gain by revisiting that night. “It’s not a date.”

“Sure, Romeo. All I’m saying is that it’s nice to see you finally connecting with the opposite sex again. After Lena.” He shakes his head as he marches out of the shed. “No man is an island. Dating, fucking, whatever you want to call it. It’s a good thing.”

Don’t know who he thinks he’s talking to. Celibate bastard.

“It’s not a date,” I grumble under my breath once he’s out of earshot and then I kick at a plank with the steel capped toe of my boot.

Beck Casey was a sweet girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. As intoxicating as the liquor I’d been drowning myself in. We talked about all the places we’d travelled to, music, our families. She was working for a magazine, living an adventure, but it was the quieter places that really drew her in. We’d had an instant connection. Circumstances didn’t help me keep my head and she was mind-blowing enough to distract me.

It wouldn’t have worked out. It was for the best that she disappeared. And now she’s here. But all that does is take me back to the shit that went down with Lena. Dad’s death. Almost losing the studio. I’ve come too far to be ruminating over something that should never have happened. So she’ll get her annulment, and I’ll hold the door open for her to pass through on her way out. That’s all there is to it.

Circumstances are different now. Even though that zing I felt the first time I saw her is still there. Doesn’t mean anything though.

I follow after Dean who’s climbing into the bed of the truck. “We better get a move on.”

“Sure,” he says, waiting for me to slide the next load onto my shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to keep you from getting all cleaned up.” He slaps his own cheeks, making a hollow sound. “A little shave, a dab of cologne, check the expiration date on those condoms.”

“Load up the wood, dickhead.” I mock growl at him, denying the urge to laugh. There’ll be no condoms because there’ll be no sex. Only a swift conversation to wrap up a relationship that doesn’t exist.

“That’s what she’ll be saying to you later.” He grins as he jumps out of the back of the truck. “Let’s hope you can deliver after so long.”

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