Bill felt briefly empty at the loss of her touch, but he had to get used to that, he told himself as they headed back inside. After all, he had made a business proposition. Not a proposal. It wasn’t going to be a love match.
Still, he thought, as the automatic door whooshed open for them and let them into the hospital and the refrigerated air, his heart couldn’t help hoping it could be.
* * *
OVER LUNCH in a corner booth of the Dinner Belle Diner, Darcy tried to concentrate on her tuna melt. She’d eaten at the place enough to know what the food should taste like, but today everything tasted like cardboard and sawdust.
Bill had been quiet all morning since their little excursion to the rear of the hospital, so she knew he’d been trying to work out the details of The Plan. They’d left the hospital when Earline came in on her lunch break, and now Bill was digging into his lunch with appetite and enthusiasm, so Darcy assumed that he was close to something he thought might work.
She waited for him to announce it with the dread of an accused prisoner waiting for the verdict. No matter what it was, it would change her life forever.
No wonder she couldn’t taste her food.
Still, Darcy forced herself to eat it, cardboard sandwich or not. She had a feeling she was going to need all her strength to get through the next few days.
“Here’s The Plan,” Bill said just as Darcy took a bite of potato salad.
She swallowed too quickly and choked. Coughing and sputtering, she grabbed for her water glass and knocked it over, sending a puddle of icy water spreading all over the Formica tabletop. Billy handed her his tea and she drank, while he swabbed at the spill. By the time Luverne arrived with a cloth, he’d averted the worst of the disaster.
Shaking her head and clucking her displeasure, Luverne made quick work of the rest of the mess, then left them alone. Had Luverne been there every other day Darcy had eaten lunch? Had Darcy not noticed her until she’d seen the woman flirting with her man?
Her man?
Darcy shook her head, cleared her throat, and swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally allowing herself to look at Billy. “Next time, make sure I haven’t just taken a bite. Now, you were saying…?” Darcy pushed her plate away—she’d lost her taste for sawdust—and crossed her arms and propped her elbows on the table. “I’m all ears.”
Bill looked at her a long minute, then chuckled. “Not even close. But I have to say that you have the cutest little ears I’ve seen in a long, long time.” He reached across the table and fondled her ear.
Darcy drew back and rolled her eyes. “Can it, Hays,” she said. “Let’s get this over with. The Plan?”
“We go over to the courthouse and apply for a license.”
Darcy jerked her hand back and closed her fist tight. “No!”
“We get the blood tests.”
“No-oh,” she said even more emphatically.
“Then we hope that Momma comes to her senses when she starts to feel better, and we don’t have to use them.”
Darcy expelled a long, relieved breath. That was the first thing he’d said all day that made any sense. “Amen to that one,” she said.
“But,” Bill added, “if she still insists, we go through with it. As long as it isn’t…” He paused for a moment and swallowed quickly. “…consummated, we can get out of it pretty quick.”
“What about the ceremony? You know your mother is going to insist that Reverend Carterette officiate.” Darcy paused, trying to dredge up the right words for what she wanted to say. “Reciting our vows in front of Reverend Carterette in church would be the same as lying to God. I can’t do that. I won’t.”
“Got that figured out, too,” Bill said. “He told Momma he was going to be away at a church raising next week. So, she won’t think a thing about us going in front of a judge.” He paused. “We’ll tell her that we’re doing it for her, and we want to do the church thing later for the whole family and the rest of our friends,” he added.
“What’s to keep her from telling somebody like she did last time?” Darcy still couldn’t believe how far the news of their phony engagement had traveled in one day.
Bill shrugged. “We’ll tell her that we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings by making them think they’d been left out, so we’ll ask her to keep it all a secret till the formal wedding. I think she’ll go for that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.” Bill took a long drink of tea. “At least this time, we’ll have asked her not to tell, and we’ll have given her a good reason.”
Darcy drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I don’t know,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem right to play with your mother’s emotions like that.”
“She’ll never know. What isn’t right is that a good woman who’s had to work all her life might die with her one last wish not granted. A wish that I could grant her,” Bill said with more force than necessary. “There are a lot of things that aren’t right in this world, and I can’t do anything about most of them. But, this is something I can fix. I just can’t do it by myself,” he said tiredly, as if exhausted by his attempt to persuade her.
“All right,” Darcy said slowly. “But you and I know that this will not be real. Not in any way. We have to be able to get an annulment, clean and neat. When it’s over we have to make it so this marriage never happened,” she said, so softly she wasn’t sure he’d heard.
Maybe it was because she didn’t want him to hear. Was it because somewhere far back in the dark recesses of her mind, she really wanted the paper marriage to mean something?
Darcy closed her eyes and sighed. A few weeks ago she’d left a man at the altar because she couldn’t picture herself married to him, and now she’d just agreed to pretend to be married to Bill. And it wasn’t going to be really a pretense; she could see it clearly in her mind’s eye. And in the eyes of the law it would be real.
At least until they proved otherwise.
* * *
BILL HUNG UP his cell phone and breathed a long, relieved sigh. He turned to Darcy and made a thumbs-up sign.
“Good news,” he said, feeling more optimistic than he had since his mother had sprung her request on them. He sank onto a chair in the waiting room outside Momma’s room. Earline and Edd were in with her now, so he and Darcy had a moment alone.
Darcy looked as if she had steeled herself for the worst. She let out a short breath. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“No blood test, no waiting period,” he said, and he wondered if that was such a victory or not. Did he think that if they actually took out a license ahead of time, it would guarantee they’d go through with it? And why was he even entertaining the thought of staying married once it was over?
He’d made a solemn vow—if only to himself—that he’d never marry as long as he remained in the service. Leaving the air force now was out of the question, not when he was so close to his goal. He’d even applied for Operation Bootstrap, a scholarship program that allowed service members to attend college full time away from duty. He would finish his last few courses without the demands and distractions of duty to keep him from doing his best.
He didn’t need a wife right now. He didn’t want to put any woman—much less Darcy—into the same position his mother had found herself in. Yet, the thought of living without Darcy was beginning to loom larger than the fear that as his wife, she might have to live without him.
“Bill, are you listening to me?”
The touch of Darcy’s hand on his arm yanked him out of his thoughts. “What?”
“I said,” Darcy repeated, looking around to make certain they were still alone in the waiting area, “Why is no test, no waiting good news?”
“Because if Momma
changes her mind, we won’t have done anything that might catch up with us later.”
Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Why are you so worried about it getting out?”
Bill didn’t know what to make of Darcy’s remark. Was she hurt? He didn’t know whether to laugh it off or try to explain. Now was not the time for joking, if you asked him. “No. I… Oh, I don’t know what I meant by that. Just forget what I said, okay?”
“I’m sorry, Bill. I don’t know what I’m thinking.” Darcy drew in a deep breath and released it with a sigh. “It’s just…I…I just had myself all psyched up to do it, and then…” Her voice trailed away as if she didn’t know what she meant, either.
He could relate to that. He had no idea what was going on in his own confused head, and it was Momma they were thinking about. Darcy had no stake in this. She’d only met his mother a few weeks ago.
Darcy hadn’t known him but a couple of hours longer. Why should either one of them be looking at this thing as anything more than a favor? What did they call it in those romance books Lougenia liked to read? A marriage of convenience?
It was only going to be a marriage on paper. A temporary one at that. But, as far as he was concerned it would be anything but convenient. How was he going to deal with being married to her and not touching her? Not being able to make her his wife in every way.
No, Bill told himself. You’ve got to stop thinking about your feelings. This is not about you. Though he didn’t want to think about it, his mother had only a limited amount of time left on this earth. Doctor Williamson might have pulled her through this time, but what about the next? Or the time after that?
This was their way of making his mother’s last days happier. This was about Momma.
It wasn’t about them.
Bill risked a glance at the woman curled up in the seat next to him.
He just wished it were.
* * *
DARCY SAT in a chair pulled up next to Nettie’s bed while Bill sat on the opposite side holding the hand that wasn’t still encumbered by the IV line and sensors. At least in this room, Nettie’d been able to have flowers and gifts, and the counter behind her was veritably teeming with fragrant blossoms.
It amazed Darcy how efficiently the country grapevine worked, and it seemed as though everyone in the small Mattison community had sent or dropped by with some sort of love offering for Nettie. How wonderful it must be for her to know she had so many friends.
Darcy could count hers on the fingers of one hand, but she couldn’t help thinking that could change if she ever had the chance to stay in one place longer than a few years.
Billy and his mother were chatting about somebody she didn’t know, so Darcy tuned out their comfortable talk and let her mind wander.
What would it be like to actually be married to this strong, gentle man who tried so hard to hide his feelings? She’d lived around the military all her life, and she knew about the elite corps of men to which he belonged, the men who wore those scarlet berets. She knew that they were trained to defend and protect and…to kill. Yes, she could see Bill fighting for his country and even killing if it were necessary, but she’d seen the tender side of him as well.
She wondered if he had to hide it from his buddies, his teammates. She wondered if it ever caused him problems on the job?
“Have you young ’uns thought any more about what I asked you this morning?” Nettie said suddenly, as if she’d just thought of it.
Darcy blushed because of what she’d been thinking, and Bill cleared his throat.
“We just figured you were doing so well that it wasn’t necessary, Momma,” Bill said, his voice strained. “I’m going to be too busy with duty in the next few months to give my best to startin’ a marriage.”
Darcy could have kissed him. That was exactly the right thing to say. She started to second his sentiment, but Nettie stopped her.
“Psh. If you wait till everything is just perfect, it won’t ever be,” she said. “You’re young, but you’re smart. I’m sure you could figure out a way to make it work.
“And you know, I ain’t getting better. Doc might have pulled me through this time, but one of these days he won’t be able to.” She let out a shallow sigh, a sound so wistful, so poignant that it made Darcy want to cry. “The next time, the doctors might not be able to fix it.”
Darcy swallowed and covered Nettie’s hand with hers. The woman was right, of course, but it hurt too much even to think it. She swallowed again. “Now, Nettie, you know they’re making advances in medicine every day. They could come up with the cure next week, and then you could be dancing at our wedding—one that my mother would have time to plan and do up right.”
Where had that come from? Did she really want to go through all that again? Or was she just clutching at straws to pacify a sick old woman?
Nettie shook her head. “I reckon you’re just as married if a judge does it as if you have all the pomp and ceremony of a big wedding. Why, me and my Raymond paid two dollars down to the courthouse and had a judge say the words. I felt just as married then as I’m sure I would have if we’d had the Pope bless us.
“It ain’t the trappin’s that count. It’s the meaning.” She glanced toward the window. “Look here. It’s almost dark. You two been here all day. You need to go home, get some rest. Think about what you really want in life. Do you want to waste money on some big dog-and-pony show, or do you want to do something that means just as much and have some money left over to start a life together?”
Hot tears scalded Darcy’s eyelids, and she blinked them back. Nettie’s sentiments had touched her. Was that why she’d fled from the chapel? Because Dick had wanted the show, and she had just wanted to be secure in the knowledge that he really loved her?
Maybe it had been with Dick, but love wasn’t the issue here. She already knew Bill didn’t love her. This was just a charade to humor a dying woman.
Why was she even thinking about love?
At least, she’d finally come to understand why she’d fled her own wedding. If any good were to come from all this, that was something.
Bill had gotten up and come around to her chair, and Darcy hadn’t noticed. Not until she felt his strong hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Darcy. Momma’s tired, and we’ve been here all day.”
He looked at his mother and smiled. “I promise, Momma, that we’ll think about it. But, it’s Friday and the courthouse is closed till Monday. It’s a big step you’re asking us to take. Let us have the weekend to think on it.”
“Done,” Nettie said with a tone of finality. “Now, y’all go home and let me get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
Darcy drew her brows together. “Tomorrow afternoon? But you’ll be all alone tomorrow.”
“Shoot, Darcy girl, there’s people a’comin’ and a’goin’ fit to beat the band. I won’t be alone, and you need rest, too.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Now, git.”
“Yes, ma’am, Momma sir,” Billy said, saluting smartly. “We’ll see you tomorrow.” He helped Darcy up, his hand slipping down to the curve of her waist as if it had always belonged there.
Darcy liked the feel of his hand at her waist, but she reminded herself that it wasn’t about her. She managed a tired smile. “Good night, Nettie. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Go on, you two. Git,” Nettie said.
Bill ushered Darcy toward the door, but he stopped in the open doorway. “One thing, Momma. We’d rather you didn’t tell anybody about us maybe getting married. If we do this now, I think Darcy would still like to have a big wedding where we could invite everybody later.”
“That right, Darcy?”
“Yes, ma’am. I think a lot of people would be hurt if they found out they’d been left out, so maybe it’s better we just keep
our plans quiet for now,” Darcy said, a lump of emotion forming in her throat.
“I understand, I really do, and I’d purely love to be dancing at your wedding, but I’d ruther know you were happy than be able to dance a jig.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Darcy said softly.
“Good night, Momma,” Bill said again, and steered Darcy through the door.
Bill was quiet, too quiet, as they made their way down the corridor to the way out. Darcy knew that meant he was thinking. She just wished she knew what it was all about.
Her future could depend on it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE RIDE HOME was long and silent. Bill wished they could have talked, but he wasn’t sure what to say to Darcy. He wasn’t sure what to tell himself. He needed to think. Long and hard. Even if this was only a temporary fix to ease an old woman’s heart, it was still a serious step. One he didn’t want to take lightly.
Darcy seemed to have withdrawn into her own silent world, as well. Funny, he thought. Normally, she would have tried to draw him out. She would have wanted to talk about it, examine every angle of the situation.
But, this time, she seemed too silent. That worried him. Did it mean she was seriously thinking about accepting the proposition? He certainly couldn’t call it a proposal, but proposition seemed too contrived, too…mercenary?
That’s what it was. Maybe it wasn’t for money, but there would be a payoff. If it would make his mother’s last days happy, he would do it. Even if it would hurt to let Darcy go after it was all over.
Bill heaved a long low sigh as he steered onto the rutted dirt lane that led to his mother’s house.
“I know, Billy,” Darcy said as if she’d heard him thinking. “I know.”
She didn’t say what. She didn’t explain it, but Bill knew exactly what she meant. They both understood the gravity of the situation. And it gave him a warm feeling inside to think that he and Darcy were so attuned.
And though she hadn’t said it, Bill was pretty sure she was going to make the right decision.
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