I took the long way to the farmhouse, the one that had me stuck in Friday traffic. The entire drive, I could feel where Cayce’s lips had touched my cheek, the flesh continuing to tingle.
What he had said played over and over in my mind. I almost rear-ended four different cars in the slow-moving traffic—two more than my average.
The radio played, but I couldn’t say what station or what songs. All I heard was Cayce saying he was going to spank me and him calling me “love” again. On more than half a dozen occasions since rescuing me from Sarchi’s, he had used that word as a pet name. And once he had said he loved me.
Smooth talking, nothing more, I told myself as I turned onto the country road on which I lived. Driving that last mile and a quarter, I started to get sick. My breathing got funny, my face and the top of my chest burned hot. It felt like I had a hummingbird locked inside my rib cage and a python in my stomach.
“Nothing is happening tonight, Ash,” I said, turning off the radio so I could listen to me giving myself a pep talk. “You’ve got your room, Cayce has his. Keep your hands to yourself, don’t lash out, be a grown-up and you’ll be fine.”
Being a grown up was the tricky part. I was twenty-five, had been formally employed since I was in high school and long before that with daddy’s practice. I had a college degree, a professional license, a pension plan and all the other accoutrements of responsible adulthood. I had also lost my mother when I was fifteen and my father at twenty-four, a man who had spent all but his last few weeks of dying working overtime at the clinic.
Part of me was stuck at fifteen, sitting in the nursery’s rocking chair with all the quilt squares cut out and on my lap, a crockpot full of stew cooling while I waited for my father to finally drag himself away from the sick animals the day after we buried my mother.
Releasing a shaky breath, I swiped at my cheek as my driveway came into view. I wasn’t going to arrive home with tears in my eyes. It didn’t matter to which emotion Cayce attributed the waterworks. If he caught me crying, things would get even more complicated—and intimate.
Turning into the drive, I slowed down to a crawl. The small farm was five acres wide and fifteen acres deep, ending at another country lane. The house and detached garage sat about a hundred yards from the road, the stables and other outbuildings another hundred yards beyond that. Coming from the east, as I had, a thick line of trees blocked the view of the backyard. From the drive, however, I could see a string of what looked like fairy lights around one of the many wooden poles supporting bird feeders.
Daddy had put the poles up when mama could no longer leave her bed. With the curtains open, it gave her something other than television programs to look at.
I blinked as the next pole came into view with its own string of lights. I stopped the car a couple lengths from the front of the house and put it in reverse. Before I could back up, the front door opened and out stepped Ellen Stapely, the sixty-something woman who had worked at my father’s clinic for most of her adult life. Round like me, she threw her arms out in welcome and stepped off the porch. All smiles, she yelled my name, her arms intent on staying up in the air until she had them wrapped around me.
Cayce appeared from behind the house, quickly followed by five more faces I knew.
Shit, shit, shit!
I wouldn’t let him do any kind of public wedding, just the courthouse ceremony, so the sneaky jerk had gone behind my back and arranged a backyard reception. Looking toward the stables, I could see where he had everybody park so the vehicles wouldn’t be visible from the road.
“You got married in that?” Ellen laughed at my pantsuit as I put the car in park and killed the engine.
As slow as she walked, she and Cayce reached the car at the same time despite her head start from the front porch. I dropped my keys in the cup holder then got out, throwing a quick glance at my new husband before being enveloped in the warm, pillowy flesh of Ellen Stapely. With all the years of studying the man, I could see lines of tension in his face that no one else would recognize as such.
“Sweet child, your father always said this day would come!”
More people were coming around from the back of the house. Jess, an old married couple that lived a few farms over, the rest of the employees at the clinic, and Mr. Dabney, my father’s attorney—the same attorney who had written up the marriage contract between me and Cayce a little more than twenty-four hours earlier.
Ellen released me. Cayce immediately followed her retreat with the slide of his arm along the small of my back, his hand settling on my hip. He guided me forward as everyone made room, giving both of us congratulatory pats and murmuring their approval.
Other than Cayce and me, I counted thirteen people, the attorney completing the unlucky number.
We rounded the back of the house. Every last bird pole had a string of lights around it and a festoon of flowers. Tables were set up with paper plates, covered dishes, and pitchers of cold water, lemonade, and iced tea. Several big bottles of sparkling grape juice chilled on a table next to a three-tiered cake with a topper of hearts.
A cut-out I recognized from the annual county fair’s photography booth displayed a brawny groom in tuxedo and his bride in a proper wedding gown instead of the attire of a frumpy twenty-something accountant with windblown hair.
“Don’t think we aren’t getting you presents,” Ellen chided. “Cayce said you didn’t want any fuss, but you both need it after the last few years.”
Unable to talk around the lump in my throat, I nodded. There was no stopping Ellen from giving people presents. She was tireless when it came to fundraising around the county. Winter coats and gloves for the poor, the food bank, the county animal shelter, the children’s hospital in Austin. The list went on and on.
Numb, I took a seat at the table closest to the cake. Cayce sat next to me, leaning in to whisper.
“Don’t think I couldn’t tell you had that car in reverse, baby girl.”
I blushed.
Marcus, Ellen’s nineteen-year-old grandson and the clinic’s newest employee, snapped a photo with a professional looking camera and lens.
“We should get some shots of you at the cut-out before the best of the light is gone,” he warned.
“The girl just sat down,” Ellen protested. “I bet her legs are all wobbly.”
Judging by the heat fanning across my cheeks, my blush went from a fading pink to lobster red at all the potential reasons for why my legs might be wobbly. She meant excitement, of course. Maybe even shock in a “chubby bride snags catch of the county, news at ten,” kind of way.
But all I could think of was how it was officially my wedding night and how easy it was for Cayce to turn my bones to jelly just by sitting next to me.
“It’s okay,” I coughed as Cayce stood up to pull my chair out.
Sliding that damn arm of his around me again, he walked me over to the cut-out. We stepped behind it. Both of his grabby hands touched me, his fingers sliding over my body as he molded us into a position that approximated the playful couple painted on the other side, only their faces missing.
Marcus took a shot, checked the digital display on the back of the camera and took another.
“One more,” he coached as Cayce slid a hand up and inward to cup my breast.
“Cayce Edward Gerard,” I hissed. “You stop that this instant!”
Every last one of the guests erupted in laughter as Marcus snapped the last picture.
“Your cheeks sure are gonna show in that one,” the teen teased.
Not looking the least bit contrite, Cayce led me back to the head table, his hands staying on me until I was in my chair and he was pushing it forward. Sitting next to me, he scooted his chair until our shoulders touched.
Ellen dabbed at her watering eyes, her tone turning maudlin.
“Young love,” she sighed.
My own eyes wanted to tear up but I refused to let sentimentality erase the fact that my marriage was fake. I would have hauled Cayce into the house to yell at him or sat there next to him with a scowl stamped on my face, but our plan to save the farm from going on the auction block meant I had to play nice with him. Just like appearing to live in sin would hurt both the clinic and stables, so would marital discord.
He had me coming and going.
So I smiled. I glanced adoringly at my husband. I let him plant kiss after kiss on my cheek, along the curve of my jaw and wherever else on my face his lips landed. I opened my mouth as he delicately fed me a piece of cake. And, even though I wanted to push the top layer of the cake against his sneaky face, I was just as gentle in feeding him his first bite.
People laughed, smiled, took their own pictures of us. Music played. I danced on the grass in my bare feet with Cayce, at times fast, other times at a pace that was achingly slow.
It would have been the most amazing night of my life—except it was fake.
The sham nature of the evening was brought to the forefront as Mr. Dabney pulled Cayce aside and asked to speak to the two of us in private. We wandered into the house with him as nonchalantly as possible and settled in the kitchen.
“This won’t take long,” he said pulling two envelopes from the inside pocket of his business jacket.
The envelopes confused me. That there were two seemed right. He was supposed to have filed the prenuptial agreement with the county clerk and then provide us with two certified copies.
It was the size of the envelopes that wrinkled my brow. They were the same as I’d send a bill off in or a letter folded in three. They weren’t thick, nothing like the twenty-plus pages of the agreement. It was hard to imagine more than two pages folded up inside them.
Looking at me, Mr. Dabney’s gaze turned as watery as Ellen’s as his head bobbed. “Your daddy gave me these to hold onto until today.”
I stared at him, the wrinkle in my brow growing as thick as my index finger.
“May twenty-seven?”
Cayce cleared his throat then leaned closer. His lips near my ear, he whispered.
“I think he means our wedding day, love.”
I shook my head. That couldn’t be the case at all. Not once had daddy offered the slightest sign that he thought Cayce and I might so much as date. It was crazy to think daddy had anticipated us getting married.
Mr. Dabney thrust the envelopes forward, then wiped at his eyes as soon as Cayce took them.
I hadn’t stopped shaking my head, kept right on bouncing it left to right to left as Cayce read the front of the envelopes then handed one to me.
To Ashley Heather Gerard to be opened upon her marriage to Cayce Edward Gerard.
I stole a side glance as Cayce carefully opened his envelope, the way it was addressed the reverse of mine, but also in what I recognized as daddy’s handwriting.
Cayce started reading. My envelope remained sealed, my hands shaking. There was no way I could open the letter. Not with anyone around, not alone, not ever.
“What about the…papers…from…yesterday’s visit?”
The old lawyer’s lips rolled for a second and then they slid into a professional smile. “Bit of a delay with the clerk’s office, but it will all be fine.”
I looked down at the envelope in my shaking hands, the paper starting to crinkle because I couldn’t relax my grip. Next to me, I heard Cayce sniffle. I forced myself to stare out the kitchen window.
Ellen was dancing with her grandson one second. The next she was on the ground.
Still clutching the paper, I raced outside, shouting for Cayce to follow. Ellen clutched at her chest. Jess and Marcus were on the ground with her. I screamed for everyone to stand back. Realizing what had happened, Cayce ran past me and elbowed Marcus out of the way.
“Someone tell me they are calling 911 right now,” he barked out.
“Me!” Marcus answered, his phone already out of his pocket and his fingers flying over the screen.
Needing something to do, I ushered Mr. and Mrs. Bixby, the elderly couple from down the road, into chairs before the excitement could claim any more victims. Then I did the same for Mr. Dabney before I returned to the perimeter of where Jess and Cayce had started CPR.
His body bouncing rhythmically as he did chest compressions, Cayce jerked his head toward the front of the house. “Move your car, love, then get down to the road so you can flag the ambulance in.”
I took off running barefoot down the gravel drive, hopped into my sedan and whipped it up near the front porch before jumping out and running the hundred yards down the drive. Two more minutes that felt like twenty passed before I saw the flashing lights and started flapping my arms like a chicken trying to make it to the top of the hen house.
The ambulance pulled in and I warped from crazy chicken to airport ground crew, my motions directing the crew down the drive before they could stop and roll down their window.
“Straight back,” I shouted. “Right behind the house. Keep going!”
By the time my exhausted legs got me back to where Ellen was on the ground, the medics were loading her onto a gurney.
“Sweet Jesus,” Mrs. Bixby exclaimed. “It’s a miracle your young man was here. He got her heart started back up before the ambulance arrived.”
I nodded, my mind too numb to argue about whether a man being at his own wedding party was a miracle.
Marcus hopped in the back of the ambulance, Cayce getting the teen’s car keys and assuring him that the two of us would make sure it got to the hospital before he needed it.
“Don’t worry about anything out here,” I said as some of the guests began to tidy up.
Mr. Dabney approached with my shoes and a sheepish look on his face.
“Thank you,” I said, leaning forward to hug him.
As I pulled away, he placed something slightly damp in my hand.
“You dropped this in the excitement.”
I looked down. Some of the ink had feathered. The paper was slightly wet, but the envelope’s seal remained unbroken.
To Ashley Heather Gerard…