Illegally Wedded

by Jennifer Griffith

  “Uh, no. You haven’t.” In fact, they’d told her she was born in San Antonio. Or at least that’s what she’d thought they’d said. “You never once said that to me.”

  “Well, we meant to. All along.”

  “What about my birth certificate? I might not have an official copy of that right now, but I’ve seen it. I’ve used it to apply for jobs and college and things.”

  Again, there was silence for a moment, and then Mom’s voice came with a forced casualness.

  “Oh, that. Heh-heh. See, we knew a guy. He had this pawn shop down on the border in McAllen.”

  “You knew-a-guy.” Like that phrase constituted a single word. Piper’s world turned on its ear. She had to grip the front lip of the counter to stay upright. “Dad, is Mom telling the truth? That my birth certificate was forged?” Her nails dug into the particle board under the lip of the counter, she was squeezing it so hard. Breathe, breathe, breathe. “You’re saying I’m not an American citizen? That I unwittingly lied on my University of Texas application, on my driver’s license, on all my documents?”

  “Well… Details. They’re details, dear.” Dad’s protests seemed weak, pointless.

  Piper’s head slammed in pain, and the kitchen started to spin.

  At this point, Mom chimed in, a warbling little offering.

  “Isn’t this neat, dear? This means you can finally come to Hobbit Households. We have the sweetest young neighbor three doors down. Quite good-looking, for his weight. He’s single, and he will just love your cooking, especially if you can whip him up an omelet for elevensies every morning—he’ll be your slave for life.”

  “Mom!” Now the confusion had morphed into anger. “I can’t even…” She couldn’t even. “I have to go. I have to figure this out.” She hung up.

  The second skillet of mushrooms on the burner was smoking, and she shut off the heat, thinking about closing the kitchen for the remainder of the lunch hour and just walking out into the San Antonio River, stepping onto a gondola and never coming back. She could change her name, go into hiding, live in a cave.

  Or launch out the hard swears right here and now.

  “Hey, Piper, darling?” Mitzi reappeared. “Smoke is starting to fill my office and so probably the dining room, too.” She saw the alarm on Piper’s face and stepped out. “Are you all right? I overheard a little. Your parents—are they okay? Nothing tragic, I hope.”

  Piper’s eyes crossed, and then she looked straight at Mitzi’s eyes. Their edges were tense, from months of pressure of running Du Jour. And now they were so close, just weeks away from being eligible for Texas Star review for Texas Foodies. Weeks from that make-it-or-break-it one year mark as a successful restaurant. After so much work and scraping and sacrifice, now they stood so close they could both taste it, like olive oil and garlic in the air on a day she made focaccia bread.

  She needed to tell Mitzi. But how?

  ∞∞∞

  “Mitzi, we have to talk.” Piper set a plate of crepes in front of Mitzi to soften the blow. Mitzi started eating it with all those ecstatic sounds she always made before Du Jour opened for lunch and she tested the meal.

  “This is fantastic, by the way. Did you add onions? I love them.” Her red ponytail bounced as she dove in for another bite.

  Mitzi had been a hundred percent the enthusiasm fuel of Du Jour from its inception. Piper herself had put in sweat equity to the tune of trading in her salary at that five-star restaurant over in Dominion for the freedom to be the sole chef here. Well, sort of freedom—if freedom meant devoting every waking hour to planning menus, shopping, prepping, cooking.

  Still, it was good, hard work, and the two of them lived or died by their own efforts. Please don’t let us die by them, she’d prayed more than a few times over the past year or so.

  “This is serious.”

  “So is this crêpe. Your customers who miss these will be shooting themselves tomorrow.”

  Piper sat down across from her at the small prep table and launched her missile.

  “So, I’m basically an illegal alien.”

  “An alien. Sweet! Welcome to earth.” Mitzi sang a snippet from that sci-fi TV show theme song. She held up her hand in a Spock greeting with her fingers splayed just right. “Tell me you come in peace.”

  “I’m going to be in pieces if we don’t get my documentation sorted out.” She told her about the phone call to her parents. “So basically, I’m not only not a citizen, I’ve committed fraud—many times. Unwittingly, of course, but I’m probably a felon.”

  The reality of it was starting to set in. She choked it back down her throat and told herself to keep calm. Mitzi bit the nail of her index finger.

  “Right. Well it’s easy. I know exactly what you should do.”

  Piper brightened. “You do?”

  “Of course. Get a lawyer. A good one.”

  “I don’t know any lawyers, not even bad ones.” Her voice pitched a few notes higher as her throat pinched closed. The closest thing she had to knowing a lawyer was having a staring contest with that gorgeous lawyer who came in yesterday and admiring his biceps.

  Having a moment with a lawyer wasn’t the same as having a lawyer.

  “Calm down. I can see that old familiar cornered rabbit look in your eyes. You’re about to do the rodent scream.”

  She took a steadying breath. Mitzi reached out a hand and placed it on Piper’s shoulder, calming her.

  “Listen. Breathe. We’re on the Riverwalk. Every morning on my way here I pass a law office. It’s only two blocks from here. It’s a tall building; you can’t miss it.” She described it—about ten stories high, old sandstone and glass, classy. Piper had seen it, yeah, lots of times. “Walk down there, go in the doors, find the reception desk and ask if someone there can help you.”

  “Can’t I just call someone? Or go on-line?”

  Mitzi tilted her head, and in an exasperated voice said, “Oh, honey. You’d be wasting your capital.”

  “What?” What was that supposed to mean?

  “Your pretty face and sweet young, curvaceous body is your capital. It’s almost impossible for a man in power to resist a plea for help from a pretty girl, especially a desperate one. Play it up, and the knights in shining armor will line up their white horses.”

  Great. Using her feminine wiles to get good representation in court was not on Piper’s to-do list for the day, even if it might be a good strategy, which she refused to admit. Besides, her face wasn’t that pretty or her curves that tempting. Average, at best.

  “What if I want a female lawyer?”

  “Oh, you could probably find one there, too, but I’m just saying. Go in person. Make like a sad puppy dog with those big green eyes of yours and get the sympathy you need.”

  Piper pressed her fingertip to the bridge of her nose, considering, and willing away the headache. “Time’s a factor. Majorly. Walking down there right now would probably take less time than figuring out a phone number or skimming a local directory and reading reviews.”

  “Exactly.” Mitzi gave her a supportive smile. “From the size and shininess of that building, you know they’re successful. It’s a safe bet. Take action. Don’t wait. Thirty days flies by.”

  Action—Piper needed to spring into action and get this taken care of as fast as possible.

  “Make that twenty-nine now.” Piper threw more mushrooms into the pan, ready to get the last batch cooking as the lunch hour waned. “I got it yesterday.”

  “Wait.” Mitzi handed Piper the spatula. “You said thirty days. Was that from the date you received the letter, or from the date it was typed?” Mitzi asked. “That’d be an important detail to discuss, you know, with a time-line so tight.”

  Sickness swelled in her. She didn’t know the answer to that. She hadn’t even looked at the date of the letter. Ten days might have already elapsed. Piper took off her apron, the deportation bomb’s timer ticking down to detonation with every beat of her heart.

  �
�I’ve got enough crêpes made for any latecomers.” She glanced at the clock. Only fifteen minutes remained until closing time. They could flip the business sign around to CLOSED a couple of minutes early if necessary. “Can you assemble and plate them? Have Garrett serve the rest? I feel like if I don’t go right now, I’m going to lose it.”

  “Absolutely. I can’t have you losing it.” Mitzi was already washing her hands and putting on an apron. It didn’t look quite right, but she’d do fine for the few minutes remaining in the lunch day. “You’re the engine of the restaurant. People come for one reason alone: it’s your food.”

  Piper knew, and the fact put even more pressure on her to get this disaster straightened out as quickly as possible.

  ∞∞∞

  Zach tapped his phone, scrolling through a blur of countless contacts.

  Not a single one jumped out as an Insta-Marriage possibility.

  Yep. His social life had a definite desert-like, vast wasteland quality, similar to a drive westward from here on the I-10 freeway toward El Paso: hundreds of miles of nothing.

  Julie Favreau? She’d never speak to him again.

  Brianna McDonald? She’d given him the finger last time they spoke. Just because he’d been called in on a sensitive emergency for a top drawer client and couldn’t tell Julie why she’d been stood up at Del Monaco’s for appetizers, that didn’t mean she had to get all nasty.

  Scroll, scroll, scroll. Nope, nope, nope. Not Gigi. Not Triss. Or Amanda. Or Stella. They were all married now.

  The nopes beat went on. Charla, Megan, Truvey. Lots of pretty girls’ names blurred by from his hazy, career-centric past, but none he’d consider even floating the idea to.

  Kinsey? Uh, not just no. With a few swipes of his thumb, he deleted her number, making his world a little safer.

  The grandfather clock at the end of the CBH hallway struck the three-quarters hour, a symbolic reminder that Zach’s window of time was closing. If Crockett officially announced his departure and Zach hadn’t made the right changes, that window slammed shut.

  Much as he hated to admit it, Eisenhower’s theory was the only thing that made sense, and the only plan open to him was to test it. Unfortunately, with the current landscape of female possibilities, he had nothing but sand dunes and barrel cactus in the dry social desert of his life.

  He slapped his phone back down onto his desktop. Sure, he might not have the answer at hand, but Zach wasn’t the type to give up. Just like when his client list dwindled after a few victorious cases, he’d have to unearth someone new.

  From somewhere. Like, where?

  Three drummings of his fingers tapped on his desk. Three more.

  Oh, fine. If he was honest with himself, the only girl currently on his radar was that bombshell from the lunch place yesterday—and what moron hadn’t asked for her number? This one. This moron.

  He murmured a curse under his breath. Pretty much no other girl he met was going to have those green eyes or that sexy voice that he could have listened to all day, that he could bottle and sell as an aphrodisiac. The truth was, nobody else he met was going to erase the memory of restaurant girl from his mind, not until he’d figured her out somewhat, boyfriend or none.

  He had made that pseudo-plan to stalk her yesterday, or at least to go back to the place he last spotted her. Then again, going back there for lunch seemed like such a long-shot. There had to be a more efficient way.

  His mind drummed along with his fingertips. Nope. Nothing. Going back to that great restaurant was his only option, desperate and illogical though it might appear.

  However, his life had taught him to go after thin leads because sometimes they paid off. Applying to work at CBH being a case in point. He’d come out of law school with middling grades, having to work nights all through the program to help out with some financial things back home when the economy soured, and then having to work even harder as a first-year associate there when the ranch had that horrific fire. Throwing his résumé to the highest echelons of the legal deities of San Antonio looked like the thinnest chance and the longest shot combined.

  When Crockett himself extended the hiring offer, Zach had stood speechless, and a little voice whispered that this was where he was supposed to be, for some great purpose.

  So what if since that time, he’d been mired in legal disputes about warehouse property? Someday, he was sure, the bigger reason for his working at CBH would become clear.

  So, thin leads paid off, and harebrained plans needed to be followed sometimes. Besides, his stomach was growling. He’d spent the morning working up Karlovy’s case against Taylor, working up all the fine details of his property law arguments, and he hadn’t even hit the vending machine. Maybe he could grab a bite at Du Jour before they shut for the day.

  He grabbed his suit jacket and headed out with this thrilling thought: they might even have a leftover plate of yesterday’s lunch he could beg them to warm up in a microwave somewhere.

  The elevator dinged, and he decided to take the faster stairs down. His stomach growled again at the thought of tasting that food. Could it possibly taste as good as it had tasted yesterday? And would the patrons there be anywhere near as stunningly beautiful as the one he’d talked with then?

  Food and the gorgeous girl. Something like wild hope fluttering around in his stomach told him he’d find both. And this time, he wouldn’t waste a minute; he’d get that girl’s number.

  ∞∞∞

  Zach’s foot hit the shiny terrazzo tile of CBH’s ground floor. A bell was chiming somewhere out in the big world of San Antonio. Being near the Riverwalk, with its historic buildings, including the churches and cathedrals made for so much atmosphere.

  Until he realized that the clock had struck two. Two o’clock—that was closing time for Du Jour, and he’d missed lunch, as well as any chance of seeing that girl again, at least for today.

  The wait until tomorrow stretched out, long and dreary. A couple of people came off the rickety elevator, which he was still blocking the door of, nearly bumping into him, while he thought about what to do next.

  No way was he waiting until tomorrow.

  Maybe the owner knew her. Anyone who’d ever seen her had noticed her, no question. Those eyes alone would stop traffic. Just because the shop’s front doors would be closed to customers, that didn’t mean nobody was there doing dishes or counting the till. Zach could go around back and knock, see whether anyone could help him find her.

  So what if it made him look like a stalker?

  Resolved, he set forth on his new mission. As he crossed the foyer, the memory of those eyes floated into his mind. Huge, light green eyes, the soft smile when he’d made her laugh—and she’d laughed generously in return. A generous laugh was always a cool trait, one that caught him. In fact, her laugh probably made that undeniable connection between them zap and crackle.

  The electric memory put a clear visual of her in his mind’s eye. Very clear. Extremely clear. So clear, in fact, she veritably floated in front of his eyes here in the foyer of CBH: the long ponytail of fair hair, fetching dimple, and again with the eyes. They all looked so real, he could almost reach out and touch those amazing curves walking toward him with a feminine sway, so alluring…

  Man, he’d better quit with the fantasizing—he was starting to see things. He rubbed his eyes to get rid of the image, but then there she was for real.

  Naw, he had to be imagining things with his wishful thinking. But then, when he blinked six or seven times, even squinted, it still seriously looked like the girl from the restaurant, right here, crossing the lobby of CBH, heading toward the elevator.

  Zach switched direction.

  “Hold up!” He called after the elevator, striding long toward the iron accordion door she was attempting to close. “Heading up?”

  Of course she was, fool. This was the ground floor.

  “Thanks,” he said as he tucked himself into the small cage alongside her, only large enough for two or three
people. “Hi. Oh, hey. Didn’t I just meet you yesterday?” As if he didn’t know. “Zachary Travis.”

  She looked at him like she’d just woken up. Soon recognition dawned in those gorgeous eyes, and the current from yesterday between them lit up again. Serious voltage, at least for Zach.

  “Oh, right. We did meet.” She extended a hand, and he let that delicious voice pour over him like a rich, velvety sauce. “Piper Quinn.”

  Her touch made his stomach quiver.

  The elevator rattled and started its anemic ascent. He’d like to rattle this girl. For the first time ever, he thanked building maintenance for never updating this thing for efficiency. Maybe it could break down between floors and they’d be stranded together all afternoon. Not a bad fantasy.

  “Piper Quinn, huh?” He gave her what he hoped was a dazzling smile, since he needed to charm her thoroughly in order for his plan to work—the plan where he proposed to her and asked her to marry him, well, today, if possible. “I have to apologize to you for yesterday.”

  “Oh, it’s forgotten.” She waved away his words as they passed the third floor. “Seriously. You more than made up for it. I saw that you tipped the waiter well.”

  She’d seen that? Time squeezed against him, the light on the band of brass numbers of each floor they passed blinking like a countdown clock. He had to work faster.

  “No, not about that.” He didn’t mean Kinsey. Kinsey never existed as far as he was concerned now. “I mean for my huge oversight.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. She was interested. “What oversight was that?”

  “Not getting your phone number. Not asking you to dinner.”

  “But you did ask me to dinner.”

  Uh-oh. Was she blowing him off? They passed the sixth floor. He’d better seal this deal now.

  “Here. Give me your phone.”

  A smile tugged at the side of her mouth, exposing her very nice white teeth. From her purse she dug out her cell phone and handed it to him. It was warm as he palmed it. In a flash he texted his own phone from hers. The phone in his pocket chimed. He got it so much more easily than he’d figured.