Page 28 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

NINETEEN

HARMONY

The bell over the door rang, and I braced myself for another person pretending to be a customer but really just came here for gossip. I was still answering questions about me and Ethan.

How happy were we finally being together after all this time?

Blissfully .

How crazy was it that no one in town knew anything about our relationship?

Batshit .

How things must be really hot and heavy in the sheets after being apart for so long?

No comment.

That last one came from Ida Strunk. The nerve. Then her sister Irma wanted to know if Ethan’s naked butt was as hot as his butt in his jeans.

Really, those two women could be audacious.

Except my customer wasn’t a customer at all. It was, in fact, my husband.

He of the hot butt.

Something strange happened to my shoulders. They…relaxed? Just the smell of him, cedar wood and cold wind and the spicy tang that followed him wherever he went, made me sigh.

“Hey,” I said, and checked my watch. “You’re early. The town hall doesn’t start for an hour.”

He dropped a kiss on my forehead, which immediately smoothed out the tension in my brow.

“Safe kissing,” he muttered. “In case anyone is watching.”

Right. Very safe. No worry that I was going to like that too much.

“The store is empty,” I said.

“Yes, but there’re always people passing by the window. Looks like it’s going to be a big crowd at the town meeting.”

“People are really excited,” I told him. “It’s nice to see the town…well, alive again.”

He looked at me. “You’ve always loved this place.”

I shrugged. “It’s home. What’s not to love?”

An expression came over this face, but I didn’t know him well enough to read what it meant. Wistfulness?

“Anyway, I come bearing gifts,” he announced.

He held up a bag from the café and I could smell grilled cheese sandwiches, and what I hoped was tomato soup. In the other hand was a bunch of medical stuff.

“Am I supposed to guess which is the gift?” I asked, pointing at the medical stuff in his hands.

“Well, we eat this,” he put the bag on the counter and I glanced in. A soup container. Had to be tomato. That was the only soup that went with grilled cheese. “And this is for Bruce,” he said.

At the sound of her name, Bruce honked behind the counter and got to her feet.

“Switch places with me,” he said.

I came around to the other side of the counter and he stepped behind it with my animals and my exploding purse. I pulled up one of the stools I kept by the stove for people who wanted to chat, and settled in on the other side of the counter and started to unpack our dinner.

He ducked behind the counter and there was suddenly quite a bit of squawking and Jenny barked once as if to calm Bruce down.

“What are you-”

“Just a sec,” he said, and I couldn’t see anything because the breadth of his shoulders was blocking me. It was worth asking how a surgeon got shoulders like those, I mean not out loud. But to myself I had to ask…how did he get shoulders like that? “And…there we go.”

In one smooth move he stood up and stepped back, and Bruce, in an outrage of feathers and honking, charged around the corner away from him.

Jenny, bewildered, followed and got lost near the door.

She stood there and barked at nothing while Bruce tore up and down the aisles one wing flapping, the other… wrapped in some kind of stretchy tape.

“What is that?” I asked, waiting for her to calm down.

“Well, a kid came into the walk-in today with a finger sprain and Dr. Blackfeather created a buddy splint out of tape and I thought it might work for Bruce. If I could kind of create a splint and hold the wing to Bruce’s body so it doesn’t drag for her.”

I watched Bruce finally settle down and come waddling over to me. She pecked at my knee and rubbed her face against my thigh.

“I think it worked,” Ethan said, pulling things out of the other bag. “I think her body was sore from carrying around that dead wing and this will at least provide some stability and relief.”

“Hey,” I whispered to Bruce, and stroked her soft head with my finger. Something she only let me do on the rare occasion. When I fed her the good alfalfa sprouts. When she was happy. “That feel better?” I whispered, my throat clogged with tears.

She waddled over to Jenny, honked once, pulling the blind dog’s attention from the door where she was still barking and led her back to their beds behind the counter. Ethan stayed out of their way until they settled. Then he looked up at me with a big smile.

Something weird happened in my body. Like everything expanded for a second. My heart. My lungs. My eyes. I shook my head, but I felt…different.

“You fixed my goose,” I said.

“I hardly fixed her. I just…helped her.”

He was being modest. Because he did something no one had done for me in a very long time. Taken care of something I cared about. Which felt, in this quiet moment, like he’d taken care of me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“My pleasure,” he said.

I took a few deep breaths and kept myself busy with the food until I wasn’t so emotional.

“So? You were at the clinic? All day?”

He sat down on my stool behind the counter “Most of it,” he said. “It was walk-in day, she apparently has it once a week. I couldn’t technically see patients, but I could help out where needed.”

I nodded.

“It was packed,” he said. “And it’s just her, one pediatrician, and a nurse for a twelve-hour shift. That’s crazy.”

“The clinic has had to drastically reduce hours. Basically, it only opens when they can staff it.”

“Yeah,” he said, pulling open the tinfoil wrapped around both grilled cheese sandwiches. Looking at them, I could see one of them was deluxe, with two kinds of cheese and the good sour dough bread.

The other was extremely sad by comparison. Two heels of a loaf of white bread and what looked like blue cheese in the middle?

“Did you order that?” I asked, wondering if this was a special order.

“Amity said to trust her,” he said, sounding so disappointed my heart broke for him.

Then we both looked at each other and laughed until we cried.

Ethan caught his breath first. “I think she might be enacting her revenge on Mac vicariously through me.” He shrugged and reached for the sad sandwich.

“No!” I cried. “I can’t let you eat that. We can share this one.” I pulled apart the good sandwich and put half on his tinfoil.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and we smiled at each other until I coughed awkwardly and broke eye contact.

“So I have to ask, the wanted poster, does anyone know who’s behind those things?”

I shook my head. “They’ve been appearing randomly for the last year or so.

Some think it has to be the Darryls because they could change out the posters undetected, and Darryl J.

is a huge gossip. Others in town think it’s Mayor Gallup trying to stir up, I don’t know…

town drama. But I just don’t think he’s got the photoshop skills for that kind of thing. ”

“People still coming in asking about us?”

I nodded. “Ida wants to know if we’re heating up the sheets and Irma wants to know if your butt is as hot naked.”

He laugh-coughed into his grilled cheese and stood up.

“What are you doing?” I asked, when he reached for his belt.

“Showing you my butt so you can let her know the truth the next time she asks.”

I reached for his hand. “Stop. Someone could walk in here any minute.”

My hand lingered on his belt, which I knew covered his impossibly tight abs. We looked at each other and I could hear every intake of his breath. Long and slow, like he was trying to control his heart rate. Because my touching him had sped it up?

“Harmony,” he breathed, like he wanted me to touch him. Like he was dying for me to touch him.

I snapped my hand back and he took a seat and we both went back to eating grilled cheese like nothing had happened.

“I also had to come up with a lot more details about us,” I said. “This lying business isn’t for chumps. I had to start making notes so I wouldn’t forget everything.”

“Fill me in, wife. I can’t wait to hear about our romantic past.”

“Grab my purse behind the cash register.”

Using two hands, he brought my satchel bag that hadn’t been able to snap or zip closed in months, and set it on the counter away from our food. A bunch of stuff spilled out.

Snacks for the animals.

My keys.

A hat.

Sunscreen.

A book.

About twenty lists.

About sixty receipts.

“Are you preparing for Armageddon?” he asked, trying to shove stuff back into my purse. “Is there also a bomb shelter in this thing?”

“Gimme,” I said, grabbing the papers and going through them. I held one up in triumph. “Okay. Our forbidden romance in high school started one day you gave me a ride to school.”

“I never gave you a ride to school,” he said. “Dad forbad it. Said you girls were fine taking the bus.”

“Yes, but then one day, you defied him.”

Ethan sighed. “I should have. I always hated it when I drove by you guys when it was cold out.”

I patted his hand. “For our first date you brought me yellow tulips. My favorite.”

“For real favorite, or for the story?”

“Both,” I said. “We also had pet names for each other,” I said.

“Oh, this should be good.”

“You called me sweetness.” He started to laugh. “What?” I cried, laughing with him. “You did.”

“What did you call me?”

“Dumbass.”

He blinked at me and I grinned so hard my face hurt. “It was ironic,” I said. “Because you were so smart. And I did it affectionately.”

“Sure,” he nodded, like it all made sense, and took a bite of his soup. “Dumbass is known as a real affectionate name.”

“We saw each other again at your sister-in-law’s funeral where I comforted you in your grief and you pledged that you’d always loved me and always would.”

“It was an emotional time,” he said, with a sage nod.

“Indeed. But since I had a boyfriend at the time, I had to shoot you down.”

“Of course. I’m sorry I put you in that position,” he said. “But the heart wants what the heart wants.”

I rolled my eyes.