Rogenna Brewer - Marry Me, Marine

“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.