by Merry Farmer
“I heard what just happened, you two,” Denise Yamaguchi greeted them just as they were taking seats in a booth in the corner. “I’m just back in town to drop Mom off for a while, but word is out all over town.”
“Yeah, well,” was all Arch could manage in reply.
“Congratulations.” Denise wedged into the booth to side-hug Tabby. “I always knew the two of you would get back together eventually, although it sure took a while.” She laughed, then got distracted, said her goodbyes, and hurried off.
That left Arch and Tabby staring at each other across the table. Neither of them was smiling, neither of them looked as though they deserved the slew of congratulations that had fallen on them.
“I’m going to murder my sister in her sleep,” Tabby said, bringing them right back to where they’d been more than an hour before at the church.
“Then you can come help finish off my siblings,” Arch added.
The two of them just sat there, reading over their menus. Now that the initial burst of adrenaline and activity was over, Arch’s shoulders felt heavy and it was harder to sit up straight than it should have been. Exhaustion that ran deep—more than fifteen years deep—pushed down on him.
“And what’s all this about everyone knowing we’d end up together eventually?” Tabby went on as though there had been no lull in the conversation.
“I have no idea.” Arch shook his head. “It was over between the two of us a long, long time ago.”
Their conversation ground to a halt as the waitress came to take their order. Even after she left, Arch didn’t feel as though he had the energy to do anything but slump back in his seat. Not exactly the way he thought he’d feel directly after his wedding.
Except that had not been his wedding. It was a prank and a sham. There was no way he was going to just sit there and consider it the real thing.
Although Tabby had looked stunning in her dress. And continued to look stunning now, even as she rubbed her temples and slouched against the wall. In fact, it dawned on Arch that if he were sitting on the other side of the table, he could put his arm around her and let her rest her head against his shoulder. And he could relax a little into her. Just like an old married couple who had grown so used to each other that they didn’t need to constantly be “on” with each other. Maybe being married to Tabby wouldn’t be so bad after all.
But for the minor fact that they weren’t married.
Were they?
“So if she didn’t go to the courthouse in Culpepper, where do you think your sister went?” Arch asked. And why weren’t they burning rubber to chase after her?
“I don’t know.” Tabby sighed. “Haskell, probably. She’ll stop in and see Dad while she’s there.” She froze and sat a little straighter. “Dad’s a lawyer. I bet he’s helping with the legalities of this whole prank.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone, tapped it once, then held it to her ear. A few seconds later, her eyebrows lifted and she said, “Dad?” There was a pause, then she went on with, “Yeah, hi, I missed Christmas too. Listen, Dad, has Sammy been in touch with you about some silly prank to trick Arch O’Donnell and I into getting married?”
Arch watched as Tabby’s expression shifted from tired but curious to angry and alert. His stomach sank. At the same time, a thrill zipped through him.
“But Dad, what if Arch and I don’t want to be married?” Tabby asked, then glanced up at Arch.
As soon as their eyes met, a spark sizzled between them. Tabby’s cheeks pinked. Arch had to fight the overwhelming urge to reach across the table to take her hand. That or pulling Tabby across the table into his arms and telling her to just let the whole thing go and build a life with him.
“I’m sorry, what, Dad?” Tabby blinked rapidly and looked away. Her expression grew more focused. “But is it legal? Really?” She paused, her jaw dropping lower and lower. “But signatures don’t mean anything. What if they were coerced?” Another pause. “Well, no, I guess they weren’t coerced in that way.” Still another pause. “But that doesn’t mean we agreed to this. It was a prank.”
Arch was distracted as the waitress returned with their food. Tabby’s expression grew increasingly worried. And then increasingly determined. There was nothing Arch could do but take a bite of his burger and wait for the call to finish so she could share the whole story.
“I see,” Tabby said at last. “Well, when she gets there, you tell her that I’m going to tan her hide. And if you so much as think of filing that license officially, I’ll never speak to you again.” Half a second later, she added, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t really mean that. But I am so angry about this.” She paused, then said in a grumpy voice, “Yeah, I love you too. Goodbye.”
She tapped her phone to end the call, then practically threw it onto the table before digging into her burger.
“Sooooo…” Arch raised a brow.
“They have us on video willingly signing the license and saying our vows. If they file the license and we protest that the wedding was faked, Dad doesn’t think the court would believe us. The best we could do would be to have the marriage annulled.”
The burger in Arch’s mouth suddenly tasted sour. He chewed and swallowed, then attempted to clear his palate with a drink of soda. But that tasted just as wrong. “We’ll deal with that later, if we have to. It sounds like your sister hasn’t gotten to Haskell or filed the license yet.”
“No, but I bet she will as soon as she arrives.” Tabby chomped angrily on a fry. “I can’t believe they thought they would get away with this.”
As far as Arch could see, they’d already gotten away with it. “The answer is simple, then.” She peeked up at him over her burger. “We’ll just have to prank them all back.”
A smile popped onto her face, whether she’d intended it to or not. That smile was as good as reaching into his chest and plucking his heartstrings. It gave him…sensations.
“I can’t wait,” she said. “So, what are we going to do?”
Arch put his burger down and leaned toward her, forearms on the table. “Whatever it is, it’s got to be huge.”
“And messy,” Tabby added.
“And really hard to get out of.”
“Really hard to clean up.” Tabby’s eyes narrowed as she smiled.
“They’re going to regret ever getting the two of us together,” Arch added.
“Yes, they are. Regret it until the day they die. Which will be soon after this stunt.”
Arch chuckled. “It was a major mistake for them to get the two of us together.”
“They don’t know what we’re capable of as a team,” Tabby agreed.
They both stopped and blinked. As a team? Of course, they had been a team once, a really long time ago. That had worked beautifully. But he had never considered working as a team with her now. Well, except for practically every one of his waking moments since the high school reunion. Maybe since he got back to town. And a few times before that.
“They’ve created a monster,” he said, though the enthusiasm of battle was quickly being replaced by something far more tender and protective in him. He reached across the table to take her hand, the way he’d wanted to before. And she didn’t back away.
“They won’t know what hit them.” Tabby’s voice had taken on a sort of dreamy quality.
A long silence fell between them. They’d both stopped eating and were merely sitting there, watching each other, holding hands. All Arch could think about was that maybe this had been the best prank ever. Maybe he should be thanking his rotten siblings instead of planning something that might—
“Glitter!” she burst, an evil grin spreading from ear-to-ear.
“Huh?”
“Glitter,” she repeated, far more sinister. “It’s impossible to get out of anything. The finer the better. Like those letters you can have anonymously mailed to your enemies.”
“Glitter bombs?” It wasn’t even close to where Arch’s thoughts had been g
oing just then. He’d already started imagining a honeymoon in someplace warm, like Tahiti.
“Glitter warheads,” Tabby went on, eyes sparkling as if he’d just made a particularly naughty suggestion. “And since New Year’s Eve is in just two days, I bet we could rent all the equipment we would need to pull this off.”
He liked the way her mind worked. She was thinking big. Very big. He’d worry about whether he was fake married or real married later. Right now, there were more exciting things afoot.
“They’re not going to know what hit them,” he said. Exactly like he wasn’t entirely sure what had just hit him.
Chapter 7
As Tabby and Arch spent the next day driving all over Culpepper and as far out as Rock Springs to get everything they needed, certain niggling thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. All that time years ago that she and Arch had spent plotting and executing plans against each other could have been better spent if the two of them had worked together. They were certainly proving that they could work together now.
“Red and green or silver and gold?” Arch asked, holding up a thick cartridge in each hand for her to compare.
Tabby narrowed her eyes as she studied the two. Really, as she studied Arch. He was in his element plotting this prank. His handsome face had a bright glow, and his dark eyes danced with mischief. As far as husbands went, he wasn’t half bad.
And he wasn’t her real husband. She had to keep reminding herself of that. As soon as they pulled the prank, they would zip off to Haskell to get the marriage license back and put an end to the whole silly thing.
“Which one has more glitter?” she asked at last.
Arch glanced from side to side, reading the labels of the cartridges. “The silver and gold says metallic confetti. The red and green doesn’t.”
“Silver and gold, then,” Tabby decided. “Whatever is the hardest to clean up.”
“Gotcha.” Arch winked before turning to put the red and green cartridge back and picking up another silver and gold one, and a giddy thrill swirled around in Tabby’s gut. Maybe they should just forget the whole prank thing and make out instead.
She shook that thought away as she and Arch marched up the narrow aisle of the party store toward the front counter. This wasn’t about getting cozy with Arch. Although hadn’t she just been thinking that making up with him would be far better than continuing their rivalry? Making out was part of making up. And for a change, they were on the same side, sooo…
“You find everything you need?” the middle-aged store owner asked from his stool behind the counter as Arch and Tabby approached.
“Yep.” Arch set the two cartridges on the counter. “Just let me know what you need for the cannon rental.”
“License and credit card,” the man answered.
Arch leaned closer to Tabby as he reached for his wallet and muttered, “If we had the license, we wouldn’t need the confetti cannon.”
Tabby snorted and giggled. She wasn’t even sure why, just that when Arch joked with her like that, she couldn’t contain the happiness that bounced around inside of her. Arch had a way of making her feel like they were back in high school again. At least, the good parts. They’d spent all day driving around, working on their plot, and she hadn’t felt younger or more carefree in a decade.
“Just so you understand,” the man behind the counter began, “confetti cannons are not toys. They’re powerful machines. I usually only give them out to organizations, like schools or sports teams, or professional DJs. They’re to be used in open spaces under adult supervision. You will not aim the cannon at any individual, and you will not operate it in any way that falls outside of the instruction manual.”
He slapped a thin pamphlet on the counter, poking a finger on it. Yep, something about being with Arch really did make her feel like she was back in high school again.
“Are you planning to use this equipment for its prescribed purpose?” the man asked Arch, one brow raised.
“Yes, sir,” Arch answered seriously. “I can absolutely promise you that we will use it carefully and professionally.”
Tabby had to slap a hand over her mouth and pretend to cough to hide her grin. The shop owner narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. They probably should call the whole thing off and come clean about their plans, but even the hint of changing their minds made her feel like Sammy and Arch’s siblings would get away with something if they didn’t at least try to prank them.
Arch seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked as the two of them drove back toward Culpepper that afternoon, the confetti cannon and its cartridges secured in the bed of Arch’s truck. “We could turn around and take this thing back.”
Tabby scrunched up her face as she thought about it. “As immature and silly as I’m sure it makes us for wanting to pull something like this, you know it has to be done.” She sent him a mock serious, sideways look.
A beautiful, boyish smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, I know.” He paused, then burst into a chuckle.
It was contagious. Tabby covered the lower half of her face with one gloved hand, trying not to let on to Arch how tickled she was. That only made him laugh harder. And he was dead sexy when he laughed. The crinkle lines around his eyes made him look younger, the pink that came to his cheeks made him seem happy. She had rarely seen him look—
A thought hit her as hard as if they’d driven over a pothole and wrecked the truck’s suspension. Arch rarely smiled. At least, real smiles. And it wasn’t a new thing, since he moved back to Culpepper, either. Even back in high school, she had only seen him genuinely happy a few times. The realization cut her laughter off and filled her stomach with lead.
Arch picked up on her change in mood and stopped laughing himself. “What?”
She shook her head but didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what to say. Almost all of her memories of Arch from high school were of the pranks they pulled and the rivalry they fed like a raging fire. But behind those battles and bust ups were a few older, fainter memories. Like the memory of the time she’d first stopped to talk to him in their junior year. It had been at lunch, in the cafeteria. Arch usually sat with a group of guy friends, but that day he had deliberately taken a seat at a smaller table in the corner, alone. She’d gone over to sit with him because he’d looked sad. Really sad.
“Why were you sitting at that table alone?” she asked, knowing the question would sound out of the blue to him.
Sure enough, his brow wrinkled in confusion, and he shook his head a little. “What table?”
“In the cafeteria. Junior year. That time I came over to eat lunch with you. Why were you alone?”
Arch’s confusion was replaced by wariness. He flushed darker, eyes straight ahead. “I don’t know. That was a long time ago.”
She could see plain as day that he knew exactly what she was referring to. “Are you sure?” she asked softly.
He took his time replying. They were driving on the highway, so it wasn’t as if he had anything to distract him besides his memories. Tabby waited patiently, eyes fixed on him, trying to read what was going on in the tension of his shoulders and his far-away look.
“It was probably my parents,” he said at last. “They were…difficult.”
“I know they were both alcoholics,” Tabby said. “And that they each died a few years back due to health complications from it.” She may have been an obstetrician, but the medical community in Culpepper was so small that they tended to know way more than they should about all of Culpepper’s citizens.
Arch nodded silently. “They’d been fighting a lot around that time. Sly and Doc were away in college, and Elvie was doing that internship in her gap year. I was the only one at home left to deal with it.”
“Oh.” Tabby blinked fast and looked forward at the road stretching in front of them. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. It must have been horrible to be the only kid le
ft at home with dysfunctional parents who were already on a road to destroying themselves. The O’Donnell siblings had always supported each other. Everyone in town knew that. But that year, that time, they were all gone but Arch.
At least, until she came into his life. He hadn’t seemed so sad that summer, when they started dating. Then again, he’d spent more time at her house than his own, and most of his time with just her. It must have been a huge relief for him to have someone to care for him when everyone else had gone.
The knot in Tabby’s stomach seemed to grow heavier, like she’d had an epiphany but couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
“I’ll tell you what, though,” she went on in a brighter tone, trying to dispel the sudden heavy feeling that had fallen over them. “We sure do make a great team.”
Arch’s smile snapped back into place. “When it comes to pranking people you mean?”
She didn’t want to limit it to that, but she said, “Absolutely. Your family isn’t going to know what hit them.”
“A bunch of confetti is what’s going to hit them.” Arch grinned, but there was something edgy about it. Like he needed to think about the prank to stop himself from thinking about other things.
Had he needed to think about the pranks he’d played on her their senior year to stop him from thinking about how depressing his family life was?
A chill passed down Tabby’s spine, growing in intensity when the whisper of what part she had played in that equation hinted itself to her. She couldn't think about that now, though. It was too painful.
“I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces. We have to remember to take lots of pictures,” she said.
“Heck, we have to video it,” Arch went on. “This one is going to go down in the record books.”
“Do you think they’ll buy our excuse to get them all together tomorrow morning?” she asked.
“Of course they will.” He glanced briefly toward her with a wide grin. “They’re the ones who wanted us to get together so badly. If we tell them we want to all meet for breakfast because we have an announcement to make, they’ll assume that they’ve won, that we’re going to tell them we’ve decided to stay married after all.”
