Illegally Wedded

by Jennifer Griffith

  “Okay.” Piper could see that. But the commitment was huge. “Will I be on the mortgage, too?”

  “That depends on how much you want ICE to believe we’re committed to this marriage.”

  “A hundred percent.” All of her wanted ICE to let her stay, to let her stay long enough to win the Texas Foodies Star of Texas prize, to solidify her career future, and to keep her from letting Mitzi and her family down. And explore where things might go with Zach, she thought and then hushed herself. “Completely.”

  “Then we have to show we’re completely in. Your name will have to be on the mortgage too.”

  This still didn’t answer her original question. About this relationship’s expiration date. Not that she was anxious to get out of it. But Chad would be back, eventually. Her real life where she could get to work and the farmer’s market just on foot had been ripped away from her today, and she was committing herself to thirty years of house payments with this, albeit amazing, stranger.

  Her life had relocated to shifting sand.

  Would things ever settle down and return to normal? Whatever normal was?

  “If that’s what it takes, I’ll sign.” And sign herself into a thirty-year contract with Zachary Travis, promising to repay a mortgage on a house she absolutely hated—because she was in danger of falling in love with it.

  And with Zach.

  ∞∞∞

  Zach probably shouldn’t have been so surprised at Piper’s willingness to sign the mortgage contract. After all, she’d already said the ’til death do us part line with him. Still, hearing her agree to it aloud sent a zing of electricity through him.

  He hadn’t answered Piper’s question about the ending date for the marriage. He’d sidestepped it with the mortgage issue.

  The mortgage was tricky. Once they’d signed, it would be a series of legal gymnastics to get them out of it, unless the house could sell. Sadly, this little house was so easy to get into because no one else wanted in. According to Glen, the real estate agent he’d been working with for the past few months to try to find himself a place that CBH would approve of, this place had sat empty for two years, too small for Texas tastes. Plus, no granite countertops in sight, a weird modern must. However, it made for a perfect place to cement his and Piper’s appearance of commitment.

  Commitment. This was turning into at least a legal and contractual commitment.

  And after that blazing hot kiss on the bed, parts of him were feeling even more committed.

  From outside, the snort of a muffler caught Zach’s ears. “The movers are here. Let’s go unload.” He took her by the hand—for show, right?—and led her outside to where the truck had pulled up in the warm afternoon light.

  “Let’s get the houseplants out first,” she said, taking the living objects’ lives most seriously. But as they went out to the truck she snared him by the arm. “You didn’t give me a straight answer.”

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer Piper about the end of the marriage, it was that he didn’t know the answer. Things could take time. There were unknowns. The only true answer from a lawyer, ever, was it depends, so he hadn’t answered.

  “It depends,” he finally said, an armload of cookbooks weighing him down and reminding him he needed to spend more time at the gym.

  “Depends? On what?” Piper looked up at him, biting her lower lip, those green eyes still seemingly lit with sparks from the electricity they’d generated together in under three minutes.

  Failing to conjure up anything else, he took the easy out.

  “As soon as you have your green card and I have my promotion.”

  “Sounds good.” She jogged ahead and caught a lamp one of the movers was bobbling at the back of the truck.

  She’d accepted that almost too readily, but worry sloshed in him, the same sludge as every time he’d asked himself the same question. Green card and promotion as an end date? That would be tough, since her green card might take months, if not years to process, the way things were going with the government these days. And his promotion was iffy, at best, what with Mr. & Mrs. Fuller Eisenhower-Nakamura-Whatever also actively vying for the last partnership opening for the foreseeable decades.

  While Zach was taking honeymoon days off, they were back at the office trying to line the CBH coffers with cash. Or at least Nakamura probably was. Eisenhower still only managed the Bingham v. Kempton case.

  Well, Zach had better put in some serious man hours on Karlovy, and he and Piper had better make one mega-splash at the spouses’ potluck on Wednesday night.

  Work. From home. Did this place even have wi-fi? Probably not yet. Another detail to arrange tomorrow. But tonight, he was going to spend a little time on Piper Quinn Travis, thank you very much.

  It only took less than half an hour to move all their boxes off the truck into the house.

  “You pack light.”

  “I live light,” she said, taking a swig from a water bottle while he admired the curve of her throat. “Comes from years as the daughter of pop-culture obsessed nomads.”

  “Nomads?” He took his own drink. “I thought you were always in Texas.”

  “We were, and actually always in San Antonio, but never anywhere long. My parents liked shallow roots.” She set down her water bottle and pulled the tape off the next box. “They named every apartment we moved to something different. There was one with desert landscaping, and they called it Tatooine. Our neighbors were drug dealers, so they proclaimed that the village was inhabited by ruthless, lawless Hutt gangsters.”

  “Creative.” Zach couldn’t think of another adjective for that.

  “You should have seen the bright green house we lived in over on the east side of town. They painted the front sidewalk yellow and dubbed it The Emerald City.”

  “So they were into Munchkins before they were into hobbits.”

  “Equal opportunity fan-kids.”

  Zach read some of the frustration in her tone.

  “How about you? Were you a fangirl of anything?”

  “They had every angle covered already. I did some painting for a while, until they wanted me to turn a room in our basement into a Donkey Kong world when I was a college freshman. I didn’t do it right, so Mom took over. I switched to creating my art with food at that point, and everybody was happier.”

  Zach couldn’t think of a family life that contrasted more with his own, but he was impressed that Piper could paint, too. What couldn’t she do?

  Piper tossed her empty water bottle in the recycling and started putting cookbooks on the built-in shelves in the kitchen. Zach helped.

  “What about your family?” she asked, setting another pile all in French beside The Joy of Cooking.

  “What about them?” He wasn’t sure how much to tell her. “Mom, Dad, little sister, much younger. Libby. She was born when I was a teenager.”

  “They’re here in Texas?”

  “Just outside the city.” In a pile of ashes and soot. He really should tell Piper about the fire. “Libby likes to read, especially fantasy. She and your parents would probably get along.”

  Piper’s eyes lit up when she heard about Libby.

  “A little sister! I never had one before. I hope she likes me.”

  The five words hit Zach like a slap. He’d have to introduce Piper to his family. And soon. Visions of the scorched lives passed before his eyes. His concern must have shown on his face.

  “You haven’t told them about me.” Piper set down a book on the counter. “They don’t know.”

  Slowly, Zach shook his head. “Not yet. I’m sure they’ll love you.”

  Piper swallowed visibly. “If this is going to work, you’re going to have to introduce me to them.”

  “I will. Soon.” He tried to smile, but he knew it was strained. “I promise.”

  Words from his visit with that awful Valentine woman scratched in his memory. I declare this investigation open.

  Zach saw his own worry reflected in Piper’
s face now, and he reached for her. This was a risk for him—the career, the fine, the jail time, flushing his family’s future down the toilet—all for the possibility of a promotion, and a shot at one big gesture of altruism to help this girl. But, she was risking a lot too: career loss, her friend’s loyalty, plus jail time, deportation, getting stuck with a bunch of people in a foreign country who didn’t see the world the way she did—at all.

  “We’ll meet my family on the weekend,” he said, taking her in his arms. “But we have to start with my office coworkers on Wednesday night.” When Piper’s worried look didn’t subside, he said with his warmest smile, “We’ll convince everyone.”

  The danger was, with the way she felt nestled in his arms, and the way he could talk with her so easily, he might be convincing himself.

  ∞∞∞

  Piper hugged her knees as she sat on the inflatable mattress in the nursery of the little yellow house. Her back pressed against the mural of the wall, and with the lights off, an unexpected transformation took effect. All the little fairies and their wings had been painted in the forest with luminescent paint. It was like the whole room had been hung with fireflies.

  If she hadn’t been on the verge of tears, the place would have felt like magic.

  But her throat had closed, and she had to sniff to keep from letting her tears fall.

  “Sign on the line, please,” she’d been told about six times today. First the mortgage company, and then the Social Security office, and then the Motor Vehicle Division. Then she’d done it over the phone, switching all her magazine subscriptions to Texas Foodie, Chef’s Monthly, Bon Appetit, and the others, to her new name and address. They’d gone to the city office and switched over all utilities into both their names. Then, just as the closing bells rang, they’d hit the post office to have all her mail forwarded from her cute little apartment downtown to this world of pretense they’d spun.

  It was no small miracle to get all those tasks done in a single day. She appreciated that fact, and gratitude didn’t escape her for the dominoes of miracles that must have had to fall for it to happen.

  However, with every signature, bits and chunks of her old life and identity had slipped away. She’d been Piper Quinn, but now, to maintain herself as Piper Quinn, she’d needed to lose parts of herself, to cut them loose.

  Paradoxical. Like so many things. She saw it in cooking all the time. To preserve a vegetable or make it useful, a change had to happen, chemical or external: it had to be cut up and frozen, or it needed to be dehydrated, or it had to be cooked.

  Change was painful, and sometimes it wasn’t reversible.

  So here she sat, her knees hugged tightly at her chest, in just shorts and her Neil Diamond t-shirt in honor of her lost friend Birdie, holding back the tears.

  Unsuccessfully.

  It’s a hundred percent necessary. I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t. She told herself this a dozen times. For Du Jour. For her own sanity. For Mitzi’s parents’ retirement.

  That last one nagged at her. How could they have done that? For one, it was stupidly risky. Everyone on earth knew restaurants were notoriously dicey investments—and that you never put long-term funds like retirement accounts into high risk investments. Buy bonds, for heaven’s sake, if you want to move your 401K. Or real estate. Whatever. Don’t invest in a start-up restaurant, not even for a beloved daughter.

  Mitzi totally would have stopped her parents if she’d known what they were doing. The whole debacle had been totally preventable, if those generous, wonderful people had been honest with Mitzi and not tried to deceive her with the secret capital infusion.

  Piper’s tears started wetting her cheeks and her shirt now. She whispered to the fairies, “Come and wipe these tears away with your wings, and I’ll bring you little bowls of hibiscus nectar tomorrow.”

  She sounded like her mother.

  Oh, and for another, how could Mitzi’s parents put that much pressure on Piper to succeed? It was one thing if a young person’s success was on the line. She could fail and move on. But that was two people’s lifetime efforts now hanging on whether Piper could cook well, creatively, and draw a clientele daily—and stay ahead of the game—and make back their investment—besides not getting deported.

  And to accomplish all that, she had to live in a house, cohabitate, with a man she almost couldn’t control her fantasies around, and he was asleep in the other room, just steps away from her, and her impulses were going berserk every time his face, his arms, his touch, flashed into her mind.

  Which was pretty much constant, since she could almost hear his breathing through these walls, or at least her imagination told her she could.

  Worse, she was married to him, so all those impulses were not only legally and lawfully permitted, they were expected—by not just her physical yearning, but by society.

  Not to mention by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

  Who would be checking on her.

  Worry about how that might be accomplished sent a chill of fear through her.

  However, it wasn’t just the government or society or her insides that mattered to Piper. The biggest expectation came from what Piper believed—that marriage was ordained of God, and that by standing before Father Ryan and making those promises to Zach, she’d also promised God she would honor this marriage. She’d created a situation for herself where she had to choose to keep her first promise to herself (and oh, yeah, to Chad, too), or the second promise she’d made to Zach—and to the Lord.

  No matter which path she chose, she had to break one promise in order to keep another.

  It was tearing her apart.

  A growl of frustration rose in her throat. She dashed at the tears that landed salty on her tongue.

  Except for her promise to Chad, and the other one to herself, she would be in Zach’s arms right now letting him comfort her, release the insane tension pressing her toward him. Those two minutes lying beside him with his mouth on hers, his hand on her ribcage, his touch on her back—she’d almost flipped.

  Now, in the other room, just through the wall, Zach, her husband, was inches and light years from her at once.

  This was the stuff insanity was made of. Complete with glowing fairies she could talk to.

  ∞∞∞

  Zach lay on top of the bedspread, still in his jeans, but with just his undershirt. It was hot in here. The real estate agent had assured him the AC worked like a charm, but he doubted it strongly for as hot as he felt right now. He got up and went to check the thermostat in the hallway. Nope, seventy-three. He went back into his room and flopped down, a trickle of sweat on his collarbone. He shouldn’t feel this hot.

  Except that he suspected the real reason for his temperature spike: he was sleeping feet away from Piper Quinn Travis, his incredibly gorgeous, talented, sweet and pure wife—and she wasn’t in his bed. And she might not be anytime soon.

  He tossed and turned. He couldn’t shake her from his mind. Her long, silken hair, the curves he could see as she wore her moving clothes, how they hugged just the right places, the way her skin had felt at his touch. Frankly, that short and unsatisfying make-out on this very bedspread was likely the cause of the fever he was running.

  Even though he’d planned to spend some serious time on Piper tonight, by the time they got back from all the offices they needed to visit, he had three emergency fires to put out on the Karlovy case, and Piper had fallen asleep beside him on the couch within about thirty seconds of sitting down to plan her menu for tomorrow.

  He’d led her by the hand to her bed. Why she refused to take the real bed, he didn’t know. Maybe she really did like the tiny room. Either way, she’d looked so pretty as she closed her eyes, so peaceful, all he dared do was press a kiss to his hand and place it on her forehead.

  Frustration from that so-close-yet-so-far moment kept his nose to the Karlovy grindstone far past midnight, and now he couldn’t shut off his brain. Too many images of Piper Quinn crowded it:
Piper at her restaurant, Piper’s laughter as she spoke with her elderly neighbor, Piper catching the lamp when the mover nearly dropped it, Piper’s eyes dancing as he told her about Libby, Piper signing her name as Piper Travis on every document they met all afternoon.

  Like she belonged to him.

  Even though she didn’t.

  A sound caught his ear. A crackling from the nightstand. With a reach, he flipped on the bedside lamp to see what it was. There’d better not be bugs here—oh. Nope. It was something completely different.

  A radio thing. Nope—baby monitor. The old kind, like Mom had when Libby was little. It gave her a way to leave Libby asleep in the upstairs bedroom and still let Mom listen while she worked on things downstairs. Zach remembered. Like an intercom just for moms.

  He switched it off.

  Except, wait. It was connected to Piper’s bedroom.

  He shouldn’t. He should not turn it back on.

  It was intrusive.

  Well, naw. It wasn’t as intrusive as if it was one of the new kind, with the video monitors. Not that intrusive. It wasn’t like he’d be watching her sleep or some other creepy vampire thing, but it was still intrusive.

  Turning it back on would be the wrong thing to do. Seriously.

  Unless—unless the sound of the rise and fall of her breath made white noise rhythm to help him sleep.

  Piper’s breathing. It would soothe him. In fact, every time he was around her, he felt a duality—of both electric excitement and her complete acceptance of him, a calm reassurance. She was a reservoir of comfort.

  No question, this woman was nothing like the other women he’d ever met before.

  Zach’s hand strayed back to the nightstand. He’d turn it on, just for a few minutes. If it had the desired effect of calming him down, good. If all it did was stir his blood, or make him feel guilty, snap. He’d turn it off.

  Decision made.

  On it went. Dialed to five. Six. Nine.