“I now pronounce you man and wife. Thank you. Thank you very much,” announced the standard-issue Elvis minister at the Little Chapel of the Strip in Vegas.
Not exactly how Olympia had pictured her wedding, but then she’d never planned to get married at all. So the $29.99 ceremony would do just fine.
“Thanks,” her new husband, Spencer MacCormack, said as he shook Elvis’s beringed hand. He used his aw-shucks-ma’am smile, which hid his sharky lawyer brain.
Olympia shook the minister’s hand, too, ignoring his raised eyebrows. He was clearly wondering why they hadn’t kissed. Simple answer. The marriage had been contracted, signed, sealed and delivered. No lovin’. No touchin’. No squeezin’. She’d get the cash she needed for her sister. Being a husband would get Spence full custody of his son. When they each had what they wanted, they’d go on their merry ways, just like they’d done after that night in Phoenix.
“Do you want to eat before we head back?” Spence asked as he opened the door into the desert heat, waving for her to go first. Another one of those cowboy gestures that was as fake as a three-dollar bill. She knew that Spence had grown up in suburban Phoenix—on a golf course—and had never ridden a horse and never wanted to. Even without the Stetson and drawl, his all-American good looks—the disordered blond hair, the dusty-blue eyes and the barely there dimple—probably got him what he wanted in the courtroom and in the bedroom. She blamed falling into bed with him three months ago on his looks. But that was ancient history. Over. Done.
“I just want to get back to Tucson,” Olympia said. The knots in her stomach stayed firmly tied, as they had for months, ever since her youngest sister had announced that—in a stroke of James-family bad luck—her four-year college scholarship had dried up, and she’d have to drop out of school before she’d even started. When Spence had approached Olympia with the “marriage” proposal out of the blue, she’d hoped that she’d finally been cut a break.
“If traffic is good, we should be home by four,” Spence said as the oversize, fuel-guzzling, dual-pipe pickup with the king cab roared to life. “If you need me to stop for a pee-pee break, just holler.”
“Really? I’m not two.”
“Sorry. Old habit from when I hauled my son around as a toddler.” He pulled out of the parking lot.
Nausea added to her misery. When they’d been getting hitched, she’d been able to forget that Spence had a seven-year-old son who would not be living with them or even visiting. Thank the Lord. The former in-laws had his custody all tied up in court, and Spence could see his son at only neutral locations. He’d talked about that when they’d met at her friend’s wedding. She’d felt bad for him. Even though they’d connected and he’d charmed her with a smile she’d found attractive at the time, she’d never imagined that they’d be involved beyond that one night. That was the kind of curveball life always threw at her, so here she and Spence were—married, with a one-hundred-page prenup contract. The document outlined a lot of how they would carry on before and after the marriage and stipulated he’d reside at her house. She’d been the one to explain that the ranch would help show he had a stable home life—no pun intended. But the overly legal agreement didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of the everyday. Like, who cooked? Not her. Who cleaned the toilet? Not her.
The number one unwritten ground rule, though, had to be that she and Spence would not repeat what had happened in Phoenix after the wedding of Jessie, her friend, to Payson, Spence’s brother. Olympia had no room in her life for romance or wannabe cowboys. She swallowed hard, bile creeping up the back of her throat, then picked up her purse and rooted for the TUMS, which had become a staple of her diet the past three weeks.
They had hours before they’d get to the foothills of the Catalina Mountains outside Tucson. She’d inherited a small ranch there from her deadbeat father. Her daddy—though she usually thought of him as The Sperm Donor—hadn’t paid child support or done any of the other things a father should do. Then three years ago, he’d died and left her the ranch. Of course, the taxes hadn’t been paid, the house hadn’t been lived in for years and the barn, which could house only six horses, had needed major repairs. By stretching her finances beyond the breaking point, she’d made it livable...just. The ranch wasn’t the only thing she’d inherited. According to Mama, Olympia looked more like her daddy with her dark hair and slanted eyes. The only thing James about her was her breasts—large and high—and her short pinkie fingers.
Get it over with, cowgirl, Olympia told herself. “We need to clear up the house rules. You know, like I don’t do laundry, cook meals, make beds—”
“I get it,” Spence said. “You’re not June Cleaver. But let me remind you that I may need to show the courts that I have an appropriate home life, in case of an official visit.”
Olympia gulped down the tension that had lodged in her throat. She plucked three lint-covered TUMS from the bottom of her bag and chewed. “As long as you’re clear about me not being the wifely type. I’m not a slob, but I don’t clean up after anyone but me.” The idea of being tied down to a man made her want to howl and chew off her leg like a coyote caught in a trap. She had this one final thing to do for her youngest sister. Then her responsibility to her family was over and done with. James women looked after themselves—only—just like her mama had said again and again.
“You don’t have to be anything,” Spence said, his eyes never leaving the road as he raced down the highway. “You can act, can’t you?”
“Act like a damned Stepford wife from the sounds of it.”
“No swearing. You’re the mother—stepmother—of an impressionable young boy.”
“What the hell? I won’t be seeing him. He’s not coming to the ranch. How much can I corrupt him?” The temporary marriage would barely register for the boy. She should know. She’d had at least six “daddies.” And what did she remember about any of them, even her own? Next to nothing.
“We need to be prepared for the possibility of a court examiner coming to the house. That person will expect a home where there isn’t swearing or yelling, and there are snacks and sit-down meals.”
The antacids hadn’t touched the nausea or the burning in her stomach. “That’s not what we agreed to. I’ve got a life, you know.”
“Obviously,” he said, glancing at her, “the judge will need to see a report clearly showing that, unlike my ex, I can provide a stable, loving home.”
“There isn’t anything in the prenup about not swearing.”
“In section four, paragraph six, I included a morality clause.”
“A what?”
“Morality clause. You know, no messing around with other men, no drinking—”
“Well, slap me stupid, I didn’t know I’d hitched my wagon to a preacher’s.”
“This is my son.”
She’d