Page 12 of The Auction
“None of your damn business.”
“It will be,” he sighed. “Here’s how this is going to go down. We’re going to go back in there and tell your father the good news. I’ll apply for the license and we’ll get married in the nearest courthouse as soon as it’s legal. Then you and I will find a way to…figure each other out.”
“How much?”
He shook his head at first, then shrugged. “I’m putting fifty K in an escrow account that will be used to invest in the farm and property. My stake in all this. That will happen as soon as your father shows me his will, leaving me the house and property.”
“Fifty thousand,” I whooshed out a breath. So that’s what I was worth on this earth in cash money. A number that definitely would have gotten Herb’s attention.
I banged my hands on the wood railing, not with any real anger…just resignation. There was no stopping this. I either ran away and figured out how to survive. Or I stayed, figured out how to survive, and won back what was mine.
He hadn’t pulled any punches with me, so maybe he was sincere about not raping me. Maybe not. But I hadn’t pulled my punches either.
I was going to make his life a living hell.
Smiling brightly, I curtsied to him like the proper miss I was. “Wow. For all that money you should have forced me to show you my tits. I’ll tell Daddy the good news!”
Then I went back inside the house and told myself to not look back.
FOUR
JULIETTE
Four monthslater
I satin the pew and looked over at the coffin taking up space in the small church’s aisle, while the pastor droned on about the valley of death.
I tried to wrap my head around what I was feeling, but it was hard. So much anger and pain. Resentment towards my father and for my husband, sitting in the pew next to me.
Relief that it was finally over for Herb.
Thewedding,for lack of a better term, happened three days after I met Creed. It was done in a courtroom by a judge. There were two witnesses. Herb and a local attorney who met with us after the ceremony to change Herb’s will.
Leaving everything he owned to Creed.
True to his word, Creed deposited the fifty thousand into an account both he and my father had access to.
Obviously not me, because I would have taken the money and run.
And Creed knew it.
The only awkward part had been when Mrs. Talley, from the Long Valley Ranch, the property adjacent to ours, stopped by a few days later. She’d come on the premise of being a good neighbor when word got around town that I’d been married.
What a show that had been.
She’d heard some crazy rumor from the auction (all true, and she knew it) and just wanted to be certain that my marriage hadn’t come about too suddenly (I hadn’t been sold by my unfeeling father to a stranger for cash).
Of course not, I’d told her. (Lies.)
Yes, Daddy had been anxious about his health so there had been a moment during the Rodeo Remnant Auction when he’d taken to the microphone. Maybe not quite right in his thinking, sick as he was. (Why else would a father auction off his daughter?)
But Creed wasn’t a stranger at all. No, he was someone I’d been writing letters to for years while he was deployed in the Navy serving our country honorably. (Bullshit.) And, as soon as I’d told him about my daddy’s failing health, he immediately had come home to take care of me. We’d only married as soon as we had because we wanted to be sure Daddy would be at our wedding.
I’d said all this with a straight face, while I poured iced tea and pushed a plate of cookies in Mrs. Talley’s direction.
Then she’d said something that struck me.
“Once upon a time, I had to get married under…unusual circumstances. But it all worked out in the end. I hope it does for you, too.”
