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.
“Do the witnesses know of any reason we may not legally continue?”
“We do not,” Ned replied.
“Your Honor—”
“I said legally. Any other reason and I do not want to hear it, Carla. While marriage is never to be entered into lightly, it’s up to this young couple to determine what constitutes their marriage. And up to the rest of us to butt out.”
The woman shut her mouth.
“Clay, repeat after me,” the judge said.
“I do solemnly declare,” he repeated, “that I do not know of any lawful impediment why I, Clayton Henry-Miner, may not be joined in matrimony to Angela Anne Adams.”
“Angela,” the judge prompted.
“I—I do solemnly declare,” she said, stumbling over the unfamiliar words, “that I do not know of any lawful impediment why I, Angela Anne Adams, may not be joined in matrimony to Clayton Henry-Miner.”
“I take it we’re not exchanging rings,” the judge said.
Angela twisted the silver knot on her finger—an inspired gesture on Hatch’s part. Still a horseshoe nail could not be misconstrued as anything other than what it was. A token meant to wish her luck and send her on her way.
They both responded, “No.”
“By the power vested in me by the state of Wyoming—” the judge snapped his Bible shut “—I pronounce you husband and wife.” After a few bold strokes of the mighty pen, they entered into that legally binding marriage contract.
“Just so we’re clear…” She put the pen down after signing in her pretty penmanship. “I’m keeping my own name.”
He’d read her preference on the application. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, darlin’.” She gave him her I-asked-you-nicely-not-to-call-me-that look. Next time, she’d probably not be so nice about it. Fine by him. He’d filled his quota of playing nice for the day.
They left the judge’s chambers with her clinging to the marriage certificate she’d driven four hundred miles to obtain. “You hungry?” he asked. “I promised my aunt we’d stop by for dinner.”
“The aunt who thinks I’m pregnant?”
“One and the same.”
“I’m not pregnant,” Angela said to clarify, sparing him a glance as he held the courthouse door for her.
“That’s good to know.”
CHAPTER THREE
HATCH HAD A QUICK STOP to make before heading over to his aunt’s house. He pulled up to a log cabin on the outskirts of town. On the porch a black bear poised to strike wore a rough-hewn wooden sign around its neck with the word Taxidermy burned into it.
After driving around to the garage marked Deliveries, Hatch put the truck