Page 16 of First Date: Divorce (Wyoming Marriage Association #1)

It was a beautiful afternoon for a drive, with the Big Horn mountains on their right seeming to hold up the sky of brilliant blue like the puffed-up sheet from when they’d made the bed together.

“Want me to look for jewelry stores?” She gestured to her phone.

“I got a recommendation from Grif.”

“Then we better practice our memorization, so we can pass Pauline’s next inspection.”

They tossed questions at each other from Pauline’s questionnaires, only occasionally going astray into discussion of the answers.

The longest digression was how he’d met Grif and Cully — more discreet than Pauline, he said their paths crossed on a legal case involving someone in the military that he couldn’t say more about — and her most outrageous case — a raccoon with such a felonious bent they’d had to put him behind bars in a zoo.

At last, he pulled into a neat parking area and led her through a passageway between stores into a shopping mall’s version of a town square. The first store on their right had jewelry on display.

“Here? This is way too expensive,” she protested. “We can’t—”

“We need rings. They have rings. And we’re already here. Let’s go in.”

She let herself be ushered deep enough into the shop to catch a glimpse of the prices.

She was out before he could catch her arm.

“No way I’m wearing any of that. It’s a year’s salary—”

“I’ll—”

“No, you won’t. And Shakespeare County in the person of Cully Grainger won’t either.”

“He could return them after for a refund.”

“Can rings be returned? No—” Her word and a raised hand stopped his response. “There’s one way to spend less and get something back: We’ll go to a pawnshop.”

“A pawnshop?”

“Sure. Much more economical. And we know we can sell them back afterward.”

*

They drove past two pawnshops she’d found using her phone before she spotted one that looked worth entering.

“I don’t know, K.D.”

“I do,” she said, head held high. “I pawned stuff as a kid often enough to spot the decent ones.”

“You—?”

“Yes. My mother’s no good at negotiating. Or standing her ground. That’s why her hus— Never mind. Take my word for it, this is a good one.”

He eyed her for another moment, though whether over the sentence she hadn’t completed or her order to take her word for it, she didn’t know.

Then he said, “Okay.”

And he did leave it to her, not questioning anything, even when she had the man behind the counter pull out sets at much lower prices — and quality — than a pair of rings that looked decent and fit both of them.

She negotiated the price down on the decent set, but wasn’t satisfied.

The man behind the counter gave Eric a look, then said to her, “I’ve got a call to make. You two talk it over.”

The man clearly considered Eric the softer touch. He was right.

He also thought Eric would persuade her to take the rings at the current price. Doubtful.

Eric tipped the man’s ring to get more light on its interior surface. “Heather and Bob,” he read aloud. “Our hopes. Our dreams.”