Hitched(5)

“We have a honeymoon to get to,” Blake agrees dryly.

The judge’s eyes light up. “And where are you taking this lovely lady on your honeymoon?”

Blake winks at him. “That’s a secret, but it’ll be a trip neither of us will ever forget.”

And now my belly’s flipping and things low in my body are unzipping and I make a mental note to cuff myself to my four-poster bed before I go to sleep every night of my impending marriage.

In addition to blowing up electronics, I’ve also been known to sleepwalk, and the last thing I need to do is let my subconscious take control while I’m married to Blake. It might assume it’s okay to indulge the hunger he awakens inside me, and that would be bad news for everyone.

But mostly me, since Blake would probably laugh me right off his front porch.

Ignoring my inappropriate case of tingles, I subtly dig my elbow into his side. “Oh, you,” I say lightly.

Through gritted teeth.

Let’s move this along already. Time’s a-wastin’. Right now, Kyle thinks he has the upper hand because he met a girl on Tinder last week.

But he underestimated me.

I’m just glad I didn’t have to resort to full-fledged groveling.

Or crying. I hate fake crying, though I’m pretty good at it after a childhood spent doing whatever it took to escape the magnifying glass of my parents’ disapproval. But these wouldn’t have been fake tears. Before Blake pulled up, I was on the verge of weeping on the courthouse steps.

He’s saved the day, and I’m thankful for that, no matter how miserable I’m sure he’s going to make me until Gram’s will is legally executed and the animals are officially mine.

“All right, let’s get you two hitched.” The judge beams at me. “I used to worry about you, sweetheart, but you’re getting one of the good ones here.”

“Tell that to my parents,” I joke through a smile, already dreading the “I eloped with a guy who isn’t nearly as rich as you’d like for him to be” conversation I’m going to have to have with dear old Mom and Dad.

It’s almost a relief that they’ve taken their chilly relationship to Europe for a summer getaway.

Otherwise, they’d probably be here objecting to everything from Blake’s heritage to his work boots.

“Your parents love me, boo-boo-cakes,” Blake grits out through his own smile.

Doubtful—also, boo-boo-cakes?—but I beam at him.

My cheeks hurt.

My skin itches, because dresses and I don’t get along, but my mother would’ve double-killed me if I didn’t wear one to my wedding.

The one that she’ll know about, anyway.

My heart is achy and empty, like it’s hit that point in a good romance novel where all is lost, only the author died before she could finish the story. And now the two characters she left behind will live in limbo, in the land where happily ever after never comes.

Kind of like Blake and me.

“So good to see you so happy,” Judge Maplethorpe says again. He sighs, wipes a tear, opens a little black book, and starts the trial.

I mean wedding.

I cut a glance at Blake while the judge says his short bit about the sanctity of marriage. There’s a muscle ticking in his jaw, and his green eyes are as hard as the petrified horse poop I tripped over in the pasture last week.

He’s going to bolt.

Any minute now, he’s going to realize that I’m a walking disaster, he wants no part of this, and he’ll sprint for the door.

And I won’t blame him.

I am a walking disaster. And he already knows—intimately—that I’m allergic to commitment. The only place I like romance is bound inside a book with a cover where the good guys always win and it’s safe for anyone to fall in love, because it’s not real.

But that hasn’t stopped him from kissing me a time or two since that incident in Vegas that we don’t talk about.

I shiver, and not just because this dress is showing off my milky white shoulders over the deep tan from mid-biceps down. Actually, it’s pretty freaking warm in this room.

Is the air conditioning broken?

I fan myself with my flowers, weeds picked fresh from the pasture this morning to symbolize that even weeds have a moment of beauty before they wilt and die and go spread their weediness everywhere else.

Like marriage.

It wilts.

It might not die—my parents are still together, even though they hate each other, and Kyle’s parents too, since St. Claires aren’t quitters—but it can get shriveled and sad as hell.

“Do you, Blake O’Dell, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

So freaking hot in here.

“I do,” Blake grits, then adds under his breath, “again.”

“Wonderful. And do you, Hope St. Claire, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“If I have to.”

The judge chuckles. “You always were the funny one.”

I was never funny, and this courtroom is the temperature of Hell’s sauna in August.

“And now the vows,” Judge Maplethorpe says.

“I’ve written my own,” Blake announces.

“When?” I ask, then belatedly remember to smile through the panic, because if he’s written his, does that mean I have to write mine? “I mean, oh, pookie-pookie-poo, you shouldn’t have.”