Page 17 of First Date: Divorce (Wyoming Marriage Association #1)

Eric put the man’s ring down with a clunk, and straightened. “I’m not wearing this.”

She looked up, ready to do battle. These rings were the best choice. None of the others fit as well or had the right feel of being neither too old nor too new.

Before her first shot, though, she stopped abruptly.

Our hopes. Our dreams .

As much as she never wanted to be a wife, Eric had wanted to be a husband.

He’d had those dreams and those hopes.

And they had gone wrong.

“Okay,” she said.

The man behind the counter watched them leave, clearly puzzled.

He’d been right, Eric was the softer touch. But instead of talking her into the purchase, with very few words he’d talked her out of buying these rings at any price.

“There’s one more pawn shop possibility and we can look for smaller jewelry stores. We have an hour and a half before closing time,” she said.

As they returned to his car, she spotted a sign around the corner for watch repair. “Let’s try there as long as we’re here.”

He shrugged. “Might as well.”

The sliver of a shop was dim after coming in from outside.

“May I help you?”

K.D. turned toward the voice and saw a woman with a smile nearly as big as she was.

“We’re looking for wedding rings.”

“Oh!” The woman turned toward the back of the store where a white-haired man bent over a strong light. “Jacob. Wedding rings. These lovely young people.”

The man looked up, opening his eyes wide to drop an old-fashioned jeweler’s loop into his hand with a practiced air.

“We don’t have many rings, but let me show you…” The man began to rise, slowed by stiffness.

K.D. didn’t know if it was the man’s willingness despite the stiffness or the woman’s smile, but she couldn’t mislead them. “They’re not for us. I mean, they are for us, but not for real. It’s a … a play. A kind of a play.”

“Oh.” The woman’s smile disappeared.

She looked from K.D. to Eric. Once, twice, then at her husband.

The elderly couple exchanged about an hour’s worth of conversation in that one look.

“Yes?” he asked his wife.

“Yes.” She turned her beam back on them. “I will show you a couple things here, while Mr. Schmidt gets a few special ones from the back.”

His wizened face shifted into a smile as he shuffled away.

“But what—?” K.D.’s question was interrupted by Eric’s hand on her arm and the woman — presumably Mrs. Schmidt — taking a small tray from the display and setting it on the counter in front of her.

Two sets of rings were nice, the prices reasonable, and not inscribed. They would do, especially since it didn’t matter what the rings looked like as long as they fit.

“These will work.” She pointed to the less expensive set, as Mr. Schmidt arrived from the back.

“Not so fast, missy,” he said with a smile. He swept back velvet cloth from a tiny box. “Look at these before you make any decisions.”

“ Oh .”

She would take back that small sound if she could.

Especially when Eric darted a glance at her.

There were two bride’s rings, both with gold bands.

The wedding band, simple and elegant, had a sweeping curve cut into its width.

The engagement ring’s band had a complementary curve.

Together, they created one whole band. The wide section of the engagement ring held an oval diamond with groupings of emeralds along its side, so the stones nestled against the wedding band.

The groom’s ring was solid gold, with a line etched along the surface that echoed the curve where the bride’s two rings joined.

“We’ll take them.”

“Eric!”

“Okay, okay. What’s the price?”

She glared at him. That killed their bargaining power, but she would try.

“You see, as I said, they aren’t really for us.”

The man and woman looked at each other, then both smiled. “No?” the woman asked.

“No,” K.D. said firmly, then realized she needed to backtrack. “Well, they are for us, but as I said, we’re … pretending.”

The elderly couple looked back at her, questioning. She glanced toward Eric.

He could help make it clear they wouldn’t keep the rings so no sense paying for such fine workmanship.

“Pretending?” Mr. Schmidt said.

Was that disbelief in his voice? More likely disapproval. This couple had probably been together for twice as long as she’d been alive. Of course they disapproved of people play-acting at what mattered so much to them.

Okay, so they’d struck out here. And a pawnshop wasn’t the right place for Eric.

Maybe a big-box discount store, or a place with fakes — as long as they didn’t turn fingers green, they would do. Come to think of it, good fakes were fitting, so—

“We can give you a good price.”

At Mrs. Schmidt’s words, her husband gave her an Are you sure ?

look. She patted his arm without looking at him.

“You see—” Her gaze never left K.D.’s face.

“—my husband made these rings for a young couple. They made quite a down payment, but they never picked up the rings. Not long before the wedding, they each decided to marry somebody else.”

“Twenty years ago,” said Mr. Schmidt.

“Thirty-three,” his wife corrected gently. “They each have grandchildren now. The woman of that couple is my niece. She is very happy with the right man. And her wrong man is very happy with his right woman.”

“So, my wife says we can give you a good price.” Mr. Schmidt looked at Eric.

It was the strangest negotiation K.D. had ever witnessed.

Mr. Schmidt offered Eric a price based on his cost for materials thirty-three years ago minus the down payment by Mrs. Schmidt’s niece and her ex-fiancé.

Eric mumbled calculations about the cost of gold and inflation, and offered a higher price that made K.D. stifle a gasp.

Mr. Schmidt refused.

Eric kept offering more and Mr. Schmidt kept saying to pay less.

They finally compromised in the middle.

“Oh, my dears! You haven’t tried the rings on!” Mrs. Schmidt said.

Eric’s fit well. But the bride’s ring was too large.

Mrs. Schmidt clicked her tongue. “My niece, she always says she has a fat finger. But that’s not so. She broke that finger as a girl and it never healed right. Fat finger,” she muttered disapprovingly.

It made K.D. chuckle. She appreciated that, since it prevented any sound of disappointment escaping her.

“They’re lovely, and it’s a shame but—”

“Jacob will fix,” Mrs. Schmidt said, and he nodded.

“But we need them now.”

“Oh, dear,” the elderly couple chorused. “We have a birthday dinner for our granddaughter. We should have left already.”

“We don’t need them tonight,” Eric said. “But we do need them tomorrow. Figuring time to get back to Far Hills for the wedding, plus some cushion — say by two in the afternoon.”

“By two in the afternoon? By nine in the morning,” declared Mr. Schmidt, already taking her hand in his to measure her finger. “Not a minute later they will be ready. You will pay then, so we can go now to our party.”

“Absolutely.” Eric hooked one hand around her arm. “Thank you so much. We need to go, K.D., so we don’t hold up the Schmidts. Happy birthday to your granddaughter.”

Mrs. Schmidt followed, waving them out the door, then locking it behind them and turning over the sign to read “Closed.”

“I’m not sure—” K.D. started once they were on the sidewalk.

“I know you’re not and you were about to try to demolish the whole deal, which would have made them miserable. But I am sure. Besides, you took them into your confidence, but not Mrs. Cavendish. That has to be a sign.”

It took her a second to realize what he meant — she’d told the Schmidts they were putting on a performance, pretending to be married, but had kept up the charade in front of the woman at the clothes store yesterday.

She’d told the Schmidts…

What a rookie mistake.

“They live far enough from Marriage-Save, I doubt they’d come in contact with anyone there. But if you think I’ve compromised the investigation—”

“Don’t get all stiff. I agree they’re unlikely to come in contact with the Marriage-Save people. Even less likely to rat us out. I wasn’t criticizing your telling them.” He steered her toward his vehicle. “I’m trying to understand how you think, figure out what makes my wife-to-be tick.”

“Your ex-wife-to-be.”

“That, too. C’mon, let’s get dinner before we drive back.”

It was a good plan. Especially since they lingered over the meal long enough that Pauline was long gone to her private area when they finally returned to his house in Bardville.

Skipping a grilling session from his assistant had probably been his intention in suggesting they have dinner in Casper.

That’s certainly why she’d kept asking him questions and answering his at the candlelit restaurant table where they’d lingered and lingered.