Page 31 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

TWENTY-ONE

ETHAN

Hours later, Harmony and I collected the animals back from Goods and Provisions and put them in Harmony’s truck. Jenny could still jump up into the backseat, but Bruce needed help and so I got my arms under her and lifted her into the truck. I shut the door behind them.

Harmony had not stopped talking.

“All in all, I think there were five good ideas we can implement this year,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said, and held out my hand.

“What?” she asked.

“Give me the keys. I’ll drive, you can talk.”

“But what about your car?” she asked.

“I’ll get it in the morning.”

“Oh.” She dug her keys out of her purse and handed them to me.

We were the second to last people to leave the meeting. Everyone wanted to come up and talk to Harmony, mostly. They hugged her and told her how amazing she was.

Some of them even shook my hand.

A lot of people asked if I was going to be working at the clinic and I gave them all the same vague answers I’d given Dr. Blackfeather.

“ We…ah…haven’t figured it out yet. We’re sticking around here until after the festival and then we’ll make our plans.”

A couple I knew, Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez, locked up behind us. Mr. Gonzalez had been our sixth grade teacher and Mrs. Gonzalez was the property manager of the museum. They walked hand in hand towards us.

“Harmony,” Mrs. Gonzalez yelled. “You were amazing tonight.”

“She was, wasn’t she?” I said, wrapping my arm around her waist and kissing her on her temple. Right where her red curls met that soft skin near her eye.

I was really starting to get down with safe kisses.

“Thank you,” Harmony said, and climbed into the passenger side of her truck.

I hopped in and started the engine. I cranked the heat, which for some reason only blew out on the passenger side of the truck.

“It’s an old truck,” she said, by way of explanation. She shifted one of the vents harder towards me.

“So,” I said, backing up and then putting the truck in gear to head home. “What are the five ideas you want to implement this year?”

“Well, I think the chili cook-off is a great idea. As are the food trucks, in addition to what Chuck’s providing. I know the woman in Big Horn who organized their food truck festival and so I can pick her brain about it.”

“I liked the 5k community run,” I said.

“You suggested it,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “Because it’s a good idea.”

“Well, I like it too. And that was a good idea to make sure we advertise it in running forums. Is that-” She stopped and looked out the window.

“Is that what?” I asked, when she didn’t finish her thought. In the moonlight streaming in the windows I could see her blush.

“Is that why you look the way you do? You run?”

“Harmony,” I all but purred. “How do you think I look?”

“Like you’re a surgeon on TV,” she said. Which I took to mean…hot? I wanted her to think I was hot. I wanted that a lot.

“Being a surgeon is physically hard because you can be on your feet for really long stretches,” I said. “Most surgeons I know run, or swim, or do something to stay healthy.”

“Well, it was a great idea.”

“You were great,” I said, and she laughed.

“You’ve never even been to a town meeting.”

“I caught the vibe,” I said. “Everyone in that room was Team Harmony Calloway.”

“You’re right. When we split up, you are going to be a serious bad guy,” she said as a joke, and the temperature in the cab got weird. Colder.

“We’ll have to come up with a good story,” I said.

“We can make me the bad guy, I suppose,” she offered, like she was being helpful. “It doesn’t have to be you. What if I cheat on you?”

“No one will believe it,” I scoffed.

“That’s what you think? Maybe I’m a vixen.”

I chuckled. “I know that you’re loyal to your core. You would never cheat.”

However, it was a good reminder that this was temporary.

Harmony cleared her throat and made a valiant effort to change the subject.

“We’re going to get that blue ribbon back. I know it,” she said. “And how awesome were Marion’s ideas?”

“Really good. She’s a bright kid.” I said. “But it sucks that the clinic has to basically do a bake sale just to stay afloat.”

“Once we get more people in town it will bounce back.” I liked her enthusiasm, but I was still doubtful a blue ribbon could wield that much power.

“What were the other ideas you liked?” I asked, keeping the conversation on safer ground and my hands to myself.

She’d shot down the cat fashion show. The yodeling contest. And the open gun range. I still don’t think I understood what shooting for dollars even meant. She’d handled the folks’ disappointment like an absolute pro.

When she tapped her pen against her pursed lips, it was hard to keep my attention on the road. “You know, what if we changed the re-enactments?”

“You want to start a riot?”

“Well, we can keep the popular ones,” she said. “But also add some new ones? Maybe nicer ones to demonstrate that our long-standing feud is over.”

“Do we have nicer ones?” I asked.

“There was that one winter back in the early nineteen hundreds. Agatha Calloway saved Thomas McGraw’s life in a blizzard-”

“She cut off his leg.”

“Because of frost bite.”

“Are we sure about that?” I asked her.

She went back to tapping her pencil on her lips.

“We are the only good story, Harmony.” Which made me chuckle. “Our fake marriage in which we’re lying to the entire town is the closest we’re probably going to get to a nice McGraw/Calloway fable. I wonder what our statues will eventually look like?”

I pulled into the graveled area in front of the lodge and put the truck in park. In the backseat both animals got to their feet. Harmony reached back and popped the backseat open and the animals headed out into the yard.

“I want to let them stretch their legs a little before we go inside,” she said, and settled back into the front seat. The animals walked into the light of the headlights and Bruce flapped her one wing and pecked at the snow.

“Thank you for her wing.”

“My pleasure.”

Harmony looked over at me, her eyes luminous in the headlights reflected off the snow. I have no idea how long we stared at each other. Outside, Bruce honked, and still I didn’t look away. Neither did she.

“About that list you wrote,” she said.

I nodded. It took everything I had not to touch her. Run my hand across the satin of her cheek. The strength of her shoulder. To bury my fist in her hair and pull her head back, revealing her throat. Which I wanted to kiss. I wanted to kiss all of her.

“If we did…do that…I have some more rules.”

“You and your rules,” I said with a smile, so she knew I was teasing.

“It’s to help us-”

“Draw the lines. I know, Harmony,” I said. “But can’t you feel it? This thing between us. It feels inevitable.”

“Of course I feel it, but you can’t confuse me when we’re alone. If it’s just sex and some uncomplicated fun, then that’s it. You can’t do that thing where you touch my shoulder, or sniff my neck. And, still no kissing.”

“Harmony,” I groaned, my head rolling back on the headrest. “This is ridiculous. We’re adults. We want to fuck each other. Let’s just do it.”

“It’s not that simple and you know it. This isn’t some casual affair between two strangers. We have history. Our family has history. We just found out our parents have history! If we don’t keep our guards up, one or both of us, will get hurt.”

“So, let me get this straight,” I said, recapping everything. “In public, we pretend to be in love and I can kiss you all I want-”

“Safe kisses only,” she corrected me.

“But no sniffing or shoulder brushing.”

“Right.”

“And in private, we can have sex but no kissing. And you think that’s not confusing?”

“Yep,” she said with a definitive nod. “Take it or leave it.”

“Oh,” I laughed. “I’ll take it. I’ll take you, however I can get you, but you’re not the only one who gets to make the rules.”

“What…what does that mean?” she whispered.

The way I wanted to kiss her mouth was obsessive.

“Come to my room tonight and find out,” I said.

Her lips parted on a gasp, like there just wasn’t enough air to breathe.

Outside the truck, Jenny started barking at the shadows and Bruce bonked Jenny in the nose with her one good wing which sent the blind dog running in circles.

Harmony hopped out of the truck and went to calm her animals. I went out and grabbed Bruce under the belly. She tried to bite me but I nudged her beak away and she settled down. Harmony got her hand around Jenny’s collar and the whole motley crew of us headed inside.

The house was cold. No fire burning in the fireplace. The only light was the moonlight coming in the windows in pale sheets.

“You can let her go,” Harmony said, her eyes a million miles from mine. “I can take it from here.”

I set Bruce on the floor, unable to believe I’d been cock blocked by a blind dog and a goose with one wing, but that was Last Hope Gulch for you. Shit got weirder every day.

I watched her walk away, her animals following her up the stairs.

“Harmony,” I said, and she turned to face me, her face highlighted by the moonlight. Those big eyes gleamed and her skin glowed, and for some reason the only thing I could think was:

My wife.

“My room is at the end of the hall,” I said, gesturing to the corner of the second floor opposite of her room.

Her throat bobbed but she didn’t nod, and so, when she turned away and walked up to her room, I had no idea if she would come to me.