Page 27 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

EIGHTEEN

ETHAN

When my eyes popped open this morning, I remembered I’d forgotten to turn on the auto timer on the coffee machine. Quickly, I pulled on sweatpants and ran downstairs to make coffee.

Mrs. Walker had been needed at Carter’s house for kid duty, so we were on our own for breakfast and I didn’t want to be responsible for Harmony having to run out of the house again without her caffeine.

I could hear the commotion of the goose and dog as they all rushed down the stairs like they were late for something once again, just as the coffee pot gurgled and gasped and the pot was full.

“You’re up early,” Harmony said, as soon as she spotted me standing in front of the big sink, the window behind me.

Truthfully, I was usually an early riser, but I’d been letting her avoid me on purpose until yesterday, when I’d pulled the shower moment.

After last night, though, playing those games seemed a little unfair, so I would follow through with what I offered. We would be partners in this fake marriage, and partners made each other coffee.

I handed her a mug and she took a sip and sighed.

“Do you have time for breakfast? I make a mean omelet.”

She snorted. “Do you say that to all the girls who spend the night at your house?”

“Actually, no,” I said, surprising both of us with honesty. “I’ve never had a woman spend the night in this house, and in Seattle, it’s been months since I’ve made an omelet for a woman.”

That stunned her into silence, and I wanted to tell her that I’d never made an omelet for anyone I cared about. Anyone I liked as much as I liked her.

But that was beyond the bounds of a fake relationship.

“Your sweater’s inside out again,” I said, pointing to the tag that was sticking out.

“Why do I keep…” Harmony’s voice trailed off as she whipped the sweater over her head, giving me a brief period of time to admire the tops of her creamy breasts guilt free, until she was pulling it back on correctly.

“You seem a little scattered,” I commented.

She shrugged. “No more than normal. What are you doing today?”

“I’m heading into town to check out the clinic. You volunteered me last night, remember?”

She took another swig of her coffee and nodded. “Sorry about that. I just thought it would make you seem invested in the town.”

“No worries. I’m happy to do it. When I’m done, I’ll come by the store to pick you up for the town meeting.”

She beamed. “I’m excited. We’re really going to bring the festival back to all of its morbid glory.”

“The Calloways and McGraws will kill each other again! Figuratively, and only for the entertainment value,” I agreed.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, gathering up her coat and animals, and like a whirling Tasmanian Devil, she was out the front door and the house was noticeably quieter.

Not long after Harmony left, I was in my dad’s study doing some basic research on successful rural health clinics. What worked for them, what didn’t, when the door opened and Carter poked his head inside.

He was carrying Zoe in his arms, despite the fact she should be at school.

“Hey!” I said, sitting back from the desk. “What are you doing here? And with such delightful company?”

“I wanted to dig into Dad’s accounting again and Zoe didn’t go to school today.”

“I’m sick,” Zoe announced, lifting her head off her father’s shoulder. Her arm was wrapped around a pink elephant almost as big as she was.

“Good thing I’m a doctor,” I said. I stood up and transferred Zoe, elephant included, from Carter’s arms to mine.

“She’s okay,” Carter said. “Probably just a cold.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, taking a seat on the couch. “Tell me everything, Zoe. What hurts?” I said all of this to the elephant. “Is it your trunk? It’s a very strange color for an elephant.”

“Uncle Ethan,” she said with a laugh. “I’m Zoe. This is Chompers.” She lifted the elephant over her head.

“Oh, there you are. I thought you looked different. Now, what hurts?”

She pointed to her head, then her nose, then her mouth.

“The trifecta,” I said. I felt her forehead for a fever, then her glands. All seemed normal. “Say ahh for me, honey?”

“Ahhh.”

I checked her throat. No swelling.

“Are you really sick?” I whispered.

Her eyes went wide for a second and she looked over my shoulder at her dad who’d taken my seat behind the desk. She shook her head no and smiled, like she was letting me in on her secret.

“Did you just want to stay with your daddy today?”

She nodded again and put her fingers against her mouth like she was struggling to contain her giggles.

“Your secret is safe with me.”

I tucked her into my lap and we both watched Carter work.

As a kid, I wouldn’t have missed church (which I hated) to spend time with my dad. But Carter was ten times the father my dad had been. Looking at my brother’s serious face, my niece tucked into my chest, it hit me again how long it had been since I’d been home.

I’d been so busy, so driven, I’d never really had a chance to count all the things I’d missed while living in Seattle. But here, without my job and my ego to occupy me, I saw everything.

“Any luck?” I asked him, as his brow continued to furrow.

“With what?” he asked, his eyes flicking back and forth between files on his desk and something open on his screen.

“Whatever it is you’re trying to figure out?”

He laughed and looked at me with red-shot eyes, which told me he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep, maybe since his oldest, Taylor, was born.

“No,” he said. “Unless what I’m trying to figure out is how much of a control freak Dad was. In which case, yeah, I’ve learned plenty. You okay over there, Zo?”

She snuggled in deeper to my chest. “Clearly, I’m an exceptional uncle.”

“If you give Daddy a few more minutes, we can head down to the barn.”

“What’s going on at the barn?”

“Baby chicks!” Zoe said, slapping a hand on my chest.

“And a new horse,” Carter said.

“Baby chicks and a new horse,” I said, wishing I could call off my plans for the day and go check that out. “That’s a big day at the barn.”

“Sure is,” Carter said, and let out a big sigh. “I’m not going to figure this mess out today. There’s something off here, but I’m going to need our accountant to dig through it.”

“Is this still about the land purchase you were talking about?”

“I’m not seeing how he’s paying for it. I’m sure I’m just missing something. Like I said, if the stubborn old sonofabitch had just shared with me more about what he was doing…”

I shook my head. “That wasn’t our father.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Carter agreed. “Come on, Zo. It’s barn time. Let’s get our coats on.”

Zoe jumped off my lap and ran for the foyer where all the coats hung on pegs.

“I know she’s not sick,” Carter said, standing up from behind the desk. “But she’s only going to be this age for so long, and since I won’t be having any more kids, I’m trying to appreciate every moment while it lasts.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. “About the kids, I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said with a sigh. “Lilly is gone and she was the mother of my children.”

“You’re not buried with her,” I said, which was seriously the wrong thing to say. He glared at me the way he’d glared at me when we were kids and I left his bike out in the rain.

“Remember, brother. Your marriage is fake. So you don’t know shit about shit when it comes to love.”

That felt particularly harsh, but I couldn’t say he was wrong.

Zoe came running back into the study with her pink hat on her head and one arm in her coat, while she re-situated her elephant. “You wanna come with us?”

“I can’t, sweetie,” I said, as I held up her coat so she could get her other arm into the sleeve. “I’ve got to go be a doctor in town today.”

She nodded and reached up to take Carter’s hand. “You were a good doctor. I’m all better now. Let’s go, Daddy.”

I laughed and watched the two of them leave.

I want children.

It hit me like a bolt inside my chest. But it was true. Just like I’d understood the same thing about Harmony that day in the courtroom, I understood it about myself, too.

I wanted little ones.

But Harmony and I wanting the same thing…didn’t make our fake relationship any more real.

The clinic was criminally understaffed by very nice people.

Dr. Blackfeather was the kind of doctor I liked. No nonsense. She wasn’t above anything and there was no game-playing with her. Her family was part of the Eastern Shoshone tribe from over in Wind River and she worked on the reservation three days a week and at the clinic two days.

She’d recruited another doctor from the Crow Nation as a pediatrician. But it was just the two of them and two more LPNs, who lived over in Big Horn and rotated in for shifts to try and fill the cracks.

“Let me take you on a tour,” Dr. Blackfeather said, after explaining her staffing issues.

The building was incredible and pristine. One surgery. Two well-supplied trauma rooms. Two offices. A reception area and a nursing station. I opened a drawer in the trauma room and found intubation sets and syringes.

“You intubate a lot?”

“Not really, but the helicopter has picked up a few trauma cases when the rodeo is in town. Mostly we get broken bones, burst appendixes, heart attacks and babies.”

“That covers a lot of ground,” I said, shutting the drawer and following her out into a hallway covered in thank you cards and pictures of new babies.

“We’ve tried everything,” she said. “To get more funding, we’ve tried to hire more people, offer better hours. We’ve even offered free housing, but the town just isn’t bringing in new people. Which is why, when I heard you were moving back to town…”

“I’m not,” he said quickly, too quickly. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, are you and Harmony moving back to Seattle then?” She smiled. “I never thought I’d see Harmony Calloway move away from the Gulch?”

“We…ah…haven’t figured it out yet,” I lied. I was going to have to get better at lying. I was going to undo all the good work Harmony had done over the past few weeks crafting our believable love story. “We’re sticking around here until after the festival and then we’ll make our plans.”

“I guess this has been a whirlwind, hasn’t it?” she asked, her eyes narrowed like she didn’t totally believe me, and for a second I almost gave up the whole charade. This was a woman of science, she wasn’t going to buy this bullshit of love saving the town.

“It really has,” I said.

“Anyway,” she said, slapping her hand on my shoulder.

“Having the McGraws and Calloways committed again is good for the festival. If it’s good for the festival, it’s good for the town.

I can’t believe it matters, but the truth is, winning back that blue ribbon could really change things around here.

And the economy matters if I’m going to convince talented doctors and nurses to come to Last Hope Gulch. ”

Great. Now the clinic was riding on this fake marriage too.