Page 47 of Made For You
“Why? It’s better to tell them now before we leak it to the press.”
The press? I hadn’t really even considered the fact that the tabloids would find out sooner or later.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s always the chance that someone at the registry office leaked it when my name came across their desk. My plan was for us to make an appearance at that charity event in Nashville in two weeks.”
“Oh.”
“Now, please continue.”
Slouching in my seat, I turned away from Talon and stared through the windshield. A large dual-wheel truck turned the corner and started coming in our direction. He slowed down as he got closer and asked if we needed any help, and Talon let him know we were fine. As the truck moved down the road, I realized I missed my opportunity to hitch a ride.
Talon faced me again and waited patiently as I picked at the threads on my shorts.
“I made this mistake before,” I mumbled quietly when his stare became too much and I felt like a circus act.
“What mistake?” Of course he would have wolf-like hearing.
“Do we have to do this right now?”
“Mm hm.”
“Ugh,” I groaned, then went on to tell him that my high-school boyfriend and I went to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee right after graduation. I’d just turned eighteen, and we thought since we were adults and in love, we should get married. We got a marriage license in the morning and were married that evening at a little drive-thru chapel. And that night, instead of enjoying our honeymoon, I found him screwing the neighbor of the little log cabin we rented for the week. I was so angry and called him every name in the book. I didn’t understand how he could treat me that way, especially after we hadjustexchanged vows.
We argued for hours, and then he just hopped into his Jeep and left me there. He had even taken the key to the cabin, so I couldn’t go inside to get any of my things. For whatever reason, the woman he was having sex with took pity on me and let me use her phone. Andrew was the first person I called, because I was so embarrassed.
He came to my rescue, with my dad in the passenger seat. They kept saying how disappointed they were in me. That I should have known better.
“You have to understand that I was the wild child. I snuck out, went to bonfire parties, drank. All the things you wish and pray your children will never do. Thankfully, I stayed away from drugs, because I have no idea where I’d be in life if I’d fallen down that path.
“When we got back to Ashfield, Dad took me to the courthouse right away and had the marriage annulled based on refusal of marital rights. Something about him consummating our marriage with someone else fell under that line.”
“What happened to him… the guy?”
“I don’t know. He never came back to town. Probably a good thing. My brother is waiting for retaliation. So, you can see why me coming home suddenly announcing our marriage is going to rock my family. Not even my sisters know I’ve been married before. I’m sure my dad told my mom, but I’m not even positive about that.”
“If they don’t know, then it shouldn’t rock themtoomuch, right? I think your family might surprise you.”
I was skeptical that they would believe the lie. An actress, I was not, and this was the show of my life I was about to put on.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked me, and I shrugged as I unclenched my hands and slipped them under my thighs.
“Marginally.”
Talon put the car back into drive, and we were back on our way to my parents’ farm. He maneuvered the sports car around the sharp turn with the ease of someone who had completed it a dozen times before. When we crested a small hill, I pointed out the Crawford Bed & Breakfast that Autumn and Colton ran. They lived on the third floor but had been discussing building their own home farther up the property so they could open up the third floor living space to more guests. As someone who loved her nieces, I was hoping that meant the two of them were trying for a baby.
“Farther down that dirt road is my sister Alex’s house. In fact, all of this land and some on the other side of the town belongs to my family. The Easterlys were one of the founding families of Ashfield. My parents set aside parcels of land for each of us if we ever decided to build on it.”
Talon didn’t speak up, but I watched his fingers tighten around the steering wheel and the muscle in his jaw pulse.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I hadn’t considered how hard it might be for him to hear about my family, which to any outsider would seem perfect. I was aware of that fact. His messed-up family was the reason he and I found ourselves married in the first place. “Up ahead, you’ll see a sign for Sunny Brook Farms on the left. You can turn there. It’s a few miles down the drive.”
Dirt kicked up around the car as he turned toward the farm. Just like last week, a few of the tractors and UTVs were out assessing the land as we approached the harvest. Nate was probably somewhere on the property, testing the soils with one of his robotic gadgets. The man was an engineering genius.
“There it is.”
“Wow,” I heard Talon breathe. Cocking my head, I tried to see the farm from an outsider's perspective. It was a large, classic farmhouse with white siding and a wrap-around porch my sisters and I loved to play on when we were younger. My parents recently installed a green metal roof, and I really loved how it blended in with the mountainous background of the farm.
