Page 15 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

TEN

HARMONY

Sunshine: Mom just called. Is this real? You’re marrying one of those idiots?

Harmony: I’m marrying the doctor idiot.

Sunshine: Well that’s better than one of the cowboys I guess. But…really?

Harmony: Really.

Sunshine: I can get you on a flight to NYC tonight. Come here so I can talk some sense into you.

Harmony: I have to save the town.

Sunshine: You have to have your head examined. Wait, is this about that party in high school?

Harmony: No comment.

“Rise and shine, Harmony.”

I blinked. Then blinked again. Sunlight coming through my window pierced my brain through my eyeballs.

I put a hand over my face to protect myself, but it was too late, I’d already seen him.

Ethan. In the doorway of my bedroom. He looked so dark and masculine against my pink walls and the pictures of my sisters I’d hung on the wall.

What was happening right now? Like any morning after a reckless night of drinking, I took a quick assessment of the situation.

In my bed. Check.

In my pajamas. Check.

Ethan had driven me home and walked me to my front door. Check.

Now he was in my bedroom telling me to rise and shine.

NOT. CHECK.

I sat up and prayed to the heavens my boob wasn’t hanging out of my tank top.

“What the hell are you…” I stopped when I saw my mom standing behind Ethan, wringing her hands. “Mom? You let him in my room?”

“He said you agreed to this last night,” Mom said.

“ Because we’re going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married ,” Ethan sang.

“We’re just getting a license,” I snapped.

“Yeah, well, there’s no song about that.”

This wasn’t happening. I must still be drunk, because Ethan McGraw was not in my bedroom, surrounded by my girlish stuff, wearing a dopey smile and holding a bag of something that smelled very interesting.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Wasn’t sure what condition you might be in this morning, so I brought you one of Mrs. Walker’s famous hangover cure sandwiches.”

I moaned in gratitude before I could stop myself.

“Look alive,” he said, and tossed the bag towards me. I made no move to catch it and it hit me in the chest. “We’ll work on that when we’re married. You’ve got twenty minutes to be dressed and out in the car,” he said, and then, like the angel of death, as fast as he arrived, he was gone.

“Honey,” my mother said, coming to sit on the edge of my bed. She wore a pair of overalls and one of Dad’s old Brigham Young University sweatshirts, her hair in two long silver braids down her back. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

“What? Me getting married? I have to. You were there, you heard everything Mr. McGraw wrote.” I swung my feet onto my old Hello Kitty rug that I got for my tenth birthday.

“But,” she took my hands in hers, “what if you didn’t? What if you just let this town die the way it probably should have a hundred years ago?”

“What are you saying? This is our home.”

“I’m saying, the Calloways have stayed here for generations getting abused and pushed around by the McGraws. What if we didn’t do it anymore? What if we said enough and we just…left.”

“And went where?”

“Anywhere. There is a huge, wide world out there. We could go to Spain or Montreal or Iowa.”

Iowa?

“Sunshine’s always saying how we could stay with her in New York.”

“New York!” I cried. “We’d never make it in New York. Besides, what about everyone else in this town? Ida and Irma, the Darryls, Mrs. McCormick, Chuck? They’d be lost without us.”

“But why should you have to sacrifice your future for them? Just because Leroy McGraw says so?”

I pushed my tangled hair off my face. “Mom? What did he do to you?”

She stiffened, and the look on her face was pure panic, but before she could hide it away, I saw how scared she was of this will.

“He only did what McGraw men have been doing to Calloway women for centuries. All those statues in the park, are about a McGraw leading a Calloway down a path she shouldn’t have gone down.

It’s what I’m scared Ethan will do to you. ”

Looking at my mother’s beautiful face, I could see how Leroy McGraw had broken her heart, and then reopened all the pain with his stupid will. A secret relationship she’d buried all those years ago, probably felt like it had just happened yesterday.

“You want to tell me about it?” I asked her.

She shrugged like she was searching back through her memories.

“We were just kids, when I think about it. He said he loved me and I believed him. I loved him like crazy. When he asked me to marry him, I said yes right away, even though we were still teenagers. You saw the ring. Nothing big or fancy, because he’d paid for it with his own money.

But when he told his family what he’d done, they cut him off.

He tried to hold out against his father.

But in the end, it became clear. It was the Swinging D or me.

He picked the ranch. Then Sasha showed up from Texas… and that was the end.”

“Yes, but then you met Dad and fell in love with him and had us,” I reminded her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Eventually, I met your father. And we were very much in love.”

That was a thing my father could do. He could make things lovely. Easy. Everything was always fun with him. Never stressful. He wouldn’t have brought a quarter of the angst Leroy McGraw had obviously brought to my mother.

When he had that heart attack, it had seemed so impossible, because his heart had been the most powerful thing about him.

“I want that for you,” she said. “I want you to meet someone who loves you so much, he would do anything for you. Anything. You deserve that, Harmony.”

“And I’ll have it,” I assured her. “This thing with Ethan…it’s just temporary. We pretend for everyone in town that we’re married for a few months. We throw a big Calloway/McGraw reception on Feud Day, which will hopefully capture the hearts and minds of the Blue Ribbon committee…”

Note to self: Find out whose hearts and minds we need to capture on the Wyoming State Blue Ribbon Committee.

“And then we go our separate ways. No hearts will be harmed in the making of this festival.”

Mom grabbed my hands. Held them so hard the knuckles rubbed together.

“Just be careful that you don’t fall in love with him,” she whispered. “He will be charming. They are always charming. It’s their evil super power.”

“Mom,” I whispered, and pulled her into a hug. “You don’t have to worry. There’s no way in the world I will fall in love with Ethan McGraw.”

I used every one of the twenty minutes Ethan had allotted me and I still felt flustered. My hair was wet and I only kind of had make up on. The one good thing about my hangover was that my head hurt too much to stress out about what I was going to wear.

So, I had on my favorite jeans, my second favorite sweater and my puffy parka. My yellow hat was probably crushing my wet curls, but it would keep my ears warm.

It wasn’t my best look. But it wasn’t my worst, either. Besides, it’s not like I was getting married today. This was just the license step.

When I popped into the car where Ethan was waiting for me, I noticed he was also in jeans. I hadn’t looked at him very closely this morning when he was singing to me and throwing me sandwiches.

He made jeans and freshly showered hair look really, really good. Except he was still wearing a coat that wasn’t Wyoming Winter worthy.

“You could have waited inside,” I told him, buckling my seatbelt. I carried the sandwich he’d brought me and my purse. The coffee pot had been empty when I made my way down to the kitchen, but there had been no time to make more. Not with Ethan waiting.

So I had no caffeine, which was almost a crime in and of itself, but I was a tough cookie.

I was.

“I was making your mother nervous,” he said, putting the car in gear. “Not to mention Jenny.”

Well, that was kind of sweet of him. Perceptive, when I didn’t really expect it.

“Oh, and I have coffee for you,” he said, like he was conjuring a spell, nodding toward a travel mug in the cup holder. “I don’t know what you take, so I just guessed.”

I wasn’t going to weep. Or lunge across the console and kiss him, but the urge was there and it was real. I lifted the fancy metal cup for a sip, and I would never tell him, but he’d nailed it. Two milks, two sugars. It was ambrosia. Elixir. Absolutely lifesaving.

“Thank you,” I said, and took another sip. I opened the brown paper bag he’d brought me and pulled out a slightly squished sandwich.

“So you know,” he said, his eyes sparkling, “Mrs. Walker’s secret ingredient is sauerkraut.”

I gagged and put the sandwich away while Ethan laughed and laughed.

“You should try it, it really does work.”

“No thanks. I’ll survive on coffee.” And nerves.

He was silent and I was silent, and our two silences combined to make a nearly toxic silence that could have killed me if I didn’t have coffee.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For the coffee?” He smiled at me briefly. “You already thanked me.”

“And the sandwich, and driving,” I said, my defenses were low. “You’ve been nicer…”

I stopped. What I’d been about to say was not very nice.

“Then you expected?” he asked. “Then you thought I could be?”

I laughed. “Something like that.”

“I suppose I deserve that,” he said, his brow furrowed. “But I’m not a boy anymore, Harmony.”

The unsaid I’m a man , sent shockwaves and ripples across my body.

“I noticed,” I said, because last night apparently broke my filter, and I blushed and tried to hide myself in my coffee cup.

I felt his gaze on the side of my face.

“Anyway, coffee is a good start,” I said, and lifted the cup in a toast before taking another sip. I refused to meet his eyes.

“My fiancé likes coffee,” he said with a nod. “Good to know.”

I wrinkled my nose up. “You can’t call me that.”

“Wife?”

“Weirder,” I said.

“You will be. When are you moving into the house?”