Leigh Michaels - Backwards Honeymoon

“Is there someone there with you, darling?” Jock’s voice sharpened into suspicion. “Is someone telling you what to say?”

“No, Daddy. I just called to tell you not to worry about me. But I won’t be coming home for a while.”

“Kathryn—”

She clicked the disconnect button and turned to Jonah. “There. I tried to be reasonable. Are you satisfied?”

He nodded absently. He was thinking hard.

“Good.” She led the way back to their booth. “Now that I’ve set Daddy’s mind at rest—so to speak—what’s next?”

He took a long swallow of coffee. “What else do you have in that purse besides a passport?”

“Credit card. Makeup. Nail file. That kind of thing.”

It figured, he thought. She carried everything she considered essential, but not much that was useful. “Any actual money?”

“Not much. I’ve never been in the habit of carrying cash.”

He supposed that for most of her life she hadn’t needed to. There would have always been someone with her to pay the bill or sign the charge ticket. “That’s too bad, because I don’t have a lot on me at the moment, either. Your credit card accounts are probably already being watched, so if there’s a transaction, Jock will know it before the ink’s dry. I’ve got a card, too, but it won’t be good for much longer, either.”

“Why not? Nobody knows you’re with me.”

“Jock will know soon enough, honey. They’ll be questioning everybody who was on the estate today. And when they find out that I left about the same time you did, and that nobody’s seen me since…. Well, it never did take Jock Campbell long to add two and two and come up with half a dozen. We are going to need to get hold of some serious cash.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to be on the run for a while. I wish the library was open.”

She frowned a little and said very gently, as if she was humoring him, “If you’re thinking of somewhere to rob, wouldn’t it be better to choose a bank?”

“Thank you for that excellent advice, Katie Mae,” he said dryly. “I’m not planning to steal the overdue book fines, I want some information—because at the moment, I don’t know how far we’ll have to go, or even in what direction.”

“For what?” She was beginning to sound exasperated.

“To find a state…” he set his coffee cup down with a firm click and looked at her very deliberately “…where we won’t have to jump through a lot of hoops in order to get married.”

Kathryn choked on a mouthful of coffee. “You mean…you…”

“I’ll marry you, yes. Or are you backing out of the deal?”

Am I? She’d have expected to feel relief at his announcement, not this sudden wave of blinding panic. This was what she’d wanted, she told herself desperately. What she’d asked for. But now…

It’s just the suddenness of it, she told herself. It’s the same good idea it always was. I’m just surprised that he changed his mind, that’s all.

Of course, said a little voice in the back of her brain, fifteen percent of a national restaurant chain was well worth changing one’s mind for.

But wasn’t that the whole point? She knew exactly why he was marrying her; that absolute certainty was why she’d made the offer in the first place.

“No,” she said as firmly as she could manage. “I’m not backing out.”

“Then from here on out, we’re partners. Fifty-fifty in everything, right?” He held out a hand.

She laid her palm against his and felt an almost electrical zing from the contact.

“What am I thinking? I don’t need a library,” he muttered, and only an instant after taking her hand, he pulled away. Before Kathryn could gather her wits, he’d crossed the room again to a vacant computer station.

She sipped her coffee. It was cold now, but she didn’t care.

Married. She could almost hear her father roaring at the news that within hours of her broken engagement she was seriously planning to marry a different man.

A very different man, she thought. With Jonah, there were no false promises, no crossed fingers behind the back, no faked declarations of love. Just honesty and openness. And kindness, of course. Perhaps that was the most important factor of all, in Kathryn’s estimation. Few men would brave Jock Campbell’s wrath in order to help his daughter, even with the promise of a good chunk of his empire dangling before them. Jonah—despite his firsthand experience of what the man was capable of—hadn’t hesitated. And he’d done a good deal of helping even before she’d offered him the deal of a lifetime.

Well, Kathryn corrected, he hadn’t hesitated much.

Jonah came back to the table, folding a paper napkin. “This may be a little trickier than I thought. It appears that the easiest places to get married in this country are a long way from Minnesota.”

“Well, putting some distance between us and my father might not be a bad idea.”

“A very long way. We don’t have enough cash to buy airline tickets, and if we used a credit card, Jock would know about it long before we reached our destination.”

“He’d probably be waiting for us in the terminal,” Kathryn agreed.

“So it needs to be somewhere within driving distance. However, as far as I can determine, every state around here requires either a waiting period or blood tests or both.”

“I can see why you’d object to the waiting period,” Kathryn said reasonably, “but what’s wrong with blood tests? Are you afraid of needles or something?”

Jonah shook his head. “It’s the uncertain time element that bothers me. It can take days to get a lab report, maybe even longer than the official waiting periods are. And the more time we stay in one place—”

“The more likely it is that Daddy will catch up with us.”

“Of course, he can’t really prevent you from doing anything you want,” Jonah pointed out. “You’re an adult and you can marry whomever you choose, even if Jock’s standing right there yelling at you about it.”

Kathryn made a face. “Not a pretty picture. I think I’d rather present him with a fait accompli.”

“That’s what I expected you to say. So the best choice I’ve found is Nevada.”

“Las Vegas?” She was horrified.

“What’s wrong with it?”

She bit her lip. “I guess it’s a silly objection, but apparently it’s one of Douglas’s favorite playgrounds. And it’s not what I’d call within driving distance, either. Wouldn’t we be better off—”

“To stay right here and play sitting ducks? There isn’t a courthouse in Minnesota that will be open again until Monday, and then there’s a five-day waiting period. How certain are you that Jock wouldn’t hear about his daughter applying for a marriage license in Minnesota—especially since it’s the second one in just a few weeks?”

“You have a point,” Kathryn admitted.

“We might as well spend the weekend on the road. We don’t have to go all the way to Vegas, anyway, because anywhere inside the state line will do.”

Kathryn sighed. “I suppose, if it’s the best we can do, we should get started.”

Back in the car, he thrust a road map at her and said, “Plot me a route to Wisconsin.”

Kathryn stared at him. “Wisconsin? I wasn’t the best geography student on the planet, but the last time I looked Wisconsin was due east of here, and Nevada is southwest. Why on earth do you want to go to Wisconsin?”

“To rob that bank you were talking about earlier.” He flicked the turn signal and pulled onto the highway. He must have seen her expression, however, for he laughed. “Not literally, Katie. But we must get hold of some cash, so we’re going to have to use the credit cards. If we use them along the way, we’ll be giving Jock directions on how to follow us. So we’ll go the opposite direction, create a false trail, then double back and make our run for Nevada.”