Page 44 of Just (Fake) Married
I pushed my tangled hair off my face. “Mom? What did he do to you?”
She stiffened, and the look on her face was pure panic, but before she could hide it away, I saw how scared she was of this will. “He only did what McGraw men have been doing to Calloway women for centuries. All those statues in the park, are about a McGraw leading a Calloway down a path she shouldn’t have gone down. It’s what I’m scared Ethan will do to you.”
Looking at my mother’s beautiful face, I could see how Leroy McGraw had broken her heart, and then reopened all the pain with his stupid will. A secret relationship she’d buried all those years ago, probably felt like it had just happened yesterday.
“You want to tell me about it?” I asked her.
She shrugged like she was searching back through her memories. “We were just kids, when I think about it. He said he loved me and I believed him. I loved him like crazy. When he asked me to marry him, I said yes right away, even though we were still teenagers. You saw the ring. Nothing big or fancy, because he’d paid for it with his own money. But when he told his family what he’d done, they cut him off. He tried to hold out against his father. But in the end, it became clear. It was the Swinging D or me. He picked the ranch. Then Sasha showed up from Texas…and that was the end.”
“Yes, but then you met Dad and fell in love with him and had us,” I reminded her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Eventually, I met your father. And we were very much in love.”
That was a thing my father could do. He could make things lovely. Easy. Everything was always fun with him. Never stressful. He wouldn’t have brought a quarter of the angst Leroy McGraw had obviously brought to my mother.
When he had that heart attack, it had seemed so impossible, because his heart had been the most powerful thing about him.
“I want that for you,” she said. “I want you to meet someone who loves you so much, he would do anything for you. Anything. You deserve that, Harmony.”
“And I’ll have it,” I assured her. “This thing with Ethan…it’s just temporary. We pretend for everyone in town that we’re married for a few months. We throw a big Calloway/McGraw reception on Feud Day, which will hopefully capture the hearts and minds of the Blue Ribbon committee…”
Note to self: Find out whose hearts and minds we need to capture on the Wyoming State Blue Ribbon Committee.
“And then we go our separate ways. No hearts will be harmed in the making of this festival.”
Mom grabbed my hands. Held them so hard the knuckles rubbed together.
“Just be careful that you don’t fall in love with him,” she whispered. “He will be charming. They are always charming. It’s their evil super power.”
“Mom,” I whispered, and pulled her into a hug. “You don’t have to worry. There’s no way in the world I will fall in love with Ethan McGraw.”
I usedevery one of the twenty minutes Ethan had allotted me and I still felt flustered. My hair was wet and I only kind of had make up on. The one good thing about my hangover was that my head hurt too much to stress out about what I was going to wear.
So, I had on my favorite jeans, my second favorite sweater and my puffy parka. My yellow hat was probably crushing my wet curls, but it would keep my ears warm.
It wasn’t my best look. But it wasn’t my worst, either. Besides, it’s not like I was getting married today. This was just the license step.
When I popped into the car where Ethan was waiting for me, I noticed he was also in jeans. I hadn’t looked at him very closely this morning when he was singing to me and throwing me sandwiches.
He made jeans and freshly showered hair look really,reallygood. Except he was still wearing a coat that wasn’t Wyoming Winter worthy.
“You could have waited inside,” I told him, buckling my seatbelt. I carried the sandwich he’d brought me and my purse. The coffee pot had been empty when I made my way down to the kitchen, but there had been no time to make more. Not with Ethan waiting.
So I had no caffeine, which was almost a crime in and of itself, but I was a tough cookie.
I was.
“I was making your mother nervous,” he said, putting the car in gear. “Not to mention Jenny.”
Well, that was kind of sweet of him. Perceptive, when I didn’t really expect it.
“Oh, and I have coffee for you,” he said, like he was conjuring a spell, nodding toward a travel mug in the cup holder. “I don’t know what you take, so I just guessed.”
I wasn’t going to weep. Or lunge across the console and kiss him, but the urge was there and it was real. I lifted the fancy metal cup for a sip, and I would never tell him, but he’d nailed it. Two milks, two sugars. It was ambrosia. Elixir. Absolutely lifesaving.
“Thank you,” I said, and took another sip. I opened the brown paper bag he’d brought me and pulled out a slightly squished sandwich.
“So you know,” he said, his eyes sparkling, “Mrs. Walker’s secret ingredient is sauerkraut.”
