Her Last Make-Believe Marriage

by Liz Isaacson

  There were magazines dedicated to glamping, Facebook groups, and pins of the cutest mini-houses someone could pull behind them, set up anywhere, and enjoy nature without breaking their back.

  Jeri’s back ached as she bent over her map, which was still quite bare. She’d been toying with putting in a spot for a campfire, but she worried about the animals on the ranch and all the smoke. Not to mention the people who lived here.

  Honestly, Jeri wasn’t so sure about putting in an area on the ranch where people could come stay. This ranch was an operational, living, breathing entity. They had over a hundred and fifty animals here now, with people in and out as it was to help take care of them.

  They were a rescue ranch, and they already had people coming up to adopt the cats, dogs, pigs, llamas, and horses that were available.

  She sighed and stretched, standing up to alleviate the pinch in her back. It was early in the morning, the sun not quite lighting the day. She’d tried working on the sketches at night, but she found it easier to start her day earlier than to burn the midnight oil.

  Her phone chimed, odd for this time of day. She picked it up off the table where she’d been working and saw Scarlett’s name on the screen.

  You have mail, Scarlett had said. I think it’s your general contractors license. Can I open it?

  Jeri’s heart suddenly beat in her ears. Her license had come—which meant she and Sawyer didn’t need to stay married any longer.

  It had been a couple of months.

  Their time was up.

  Sure, she tapped out.

  Then I can scan it and get it to Jewel, her explanation came before Jeri could send her permission. She tapped send and let her hands fall back to her sides.

  “This is it,” she whispered to her cabin, the weight of the world landing on her shoulders.

  She and Sawyer had been getting along so well. It was wonderful to have someone to talk to at night, and Jeri hadn’t realized how much she missed something so simple.

  She’d asked him to teach her how to play the guitar, and they’d joked about taking a cooking class together. He kissed her; she kissed him. He’d asked her to go to the Halloween carnival down the canyon in Pasadena, and she’d said yes though she hated dressing up.

  He’d said he’d get her a cowgirl hat and a plaid shirt and they could be a country couple, and she’d laughed. She liked that he could make her laugh.

  She swallowed, unsure of what to do. “You knew this day would come,” she said to herself. “It was the deal.”

  So they could get a quiet divorce, just like they’d gotten secretly married. But she wasn’t sure what that would do to their current relationship. She felt like someone had taken her life, put it in a blender, pushed the button, and walked away. They needed to come back and check on her. Make the upheaval stop.

  Because now that she’d been on the ranch for a solid four months, and with Sawyer for two of those, she had no idea what she wanted. She hadn’t hired someone to help her with the construction projects on the ranch. She hadn’t thought she wanted to share her life with anyone, especially a man.

  And yet…Sawyer wasn’t just any man. She trusted him, and she grabbed her phone and started for the back door.

  Are you up? she texted him.

  Just got out of the shower.

  She slowed her strides, her fantasies flying through her mind. Text me when you’re dressed. We need to talk.

  Oh boy, he texted back. Are you breaking up with me?

  Jeri smiled at the same time she scoffed. She thought of him so often, she didn’t even realize how far she’d fallen for him.

  No, she said. My license is here.

  Come on over.

  She did, crossing her lawn and his and going up his back steps. She knocked at the same time she opened the door, and Blue was already there to greet her.

  “Hey, bud,” she said, scanning the living space in the cabin and finding it empty. “Where’s your dad, huh?”

  Blue didn’t answer, of course, but they traded spots as she came in and he went out. She left the door ajar and went over to the kitchen counter, where Sawyer had already set a pot of coffee to brew. Already keyed up, she wasn’t sure why she poured herself a cup, but she did.

  He liked the stuff black, but she preferred cream and sugar, and he’d stocked his fridge for her.

  For her.

  Helplessness filled her, and she pressed her eyes closed. What do I do? she pleaded. Help me know what to do.

  “Hey,” Sawyer said. “You found the coffee, I see.” He snaked his hand along her waist and kissed her forehead.

  She leaned into his touch, tears heating the back of her eyes. Tears. Jeri couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried, though the desperation and helplessness were familiar enough to remind her of why she’d decided to rebuild and then live her life alone.

  Of course, she’d have business associates. Friends she kept at a distance. People she worked with and for.

  But Sawyer had broken all of those barriers, and she hadn’t even realized it until Scarlett’s text had come in.

  One thing she knew: This wasn’t a game to her. Nor to him.

  She faced him, needing to know how he truly felt about things. “What are we going to do?”

  He gazed evenly back at her. “I don’t know.” At least he was honest.

  “What do you want to do?”

  He ducked his head, but he wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, and she’d seen him do this before anyway. He fiddled with the spoon on the countertop, making a metallic clinking noise in the silence between them.

  “Hey.” She ran her hand up his arm to his face. He pressed into her touch too, and Jeri wasn’t sure she’d ever known a man as sweet as Sawyer. “Tell me.”

  He looked at her again. “I want—” His voice sounded rough, rusty, ragged. He sighed, breathed in, and tried again.

  “I just want you,” he said, his dark hazel eyes like pools of the prettiest pond water. They were wide open, and vulnerable, and Jeri inched closer to him and kissed him.

  It didn’t feel like a last kiss or a good-bye kiss. If anything, this slow, unrushed kiss held more love and passion than any of their others, and there had been some truly spectacular kisses between them.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered. He was saying and doing all the right things, and while Jeri’s confusion and frustration with the situation remained, one thing trumped them all.

  Her love for Sawyer.

  She pulled back but stayed right in his personal space. “Can we just stay married?” Was that even possible? Why didn’t it feel as crazy as it sounded?

  Sawyer kissed her again, said, “Sure,” and led her into the more private areas of his cabin.

  Jeri actually took a lunch hour that day, deciding she didn’t have to work ten hours a day without food. She chose to do that, just like she and Sawyer had chosen to stay married even though it wasn’t necessary anymore. A lot of choices had been made that morning, in fact, and Jeri didn’t regret any of them.

  She rang the doorbell at the homestead, having just texted Scarlett to see if she’d be there. She’d messaged back to say she was out in Karla’s cabin, but could run over. So when Jeri heard, “Come in!” in Scarlett’s voice, she went right in.

  “Hey,” Jeri said, smiling at her boss. “I just came to get the license.”

  Scarlett twisted from where she stood at the sink. “Come on in. I just raided Gramps’s freezer and got some of Adele’s leftovers.” She smiled, but Jeri knew Scarlett missed her best friend.

  “How is Adele?” Jeri asked, wondering what was rotating in the microwave. Her stomach growled, but she usually just satisfied it with water or a sports drink, and she didn’t need anything heavy.

  “She seems to be doing okay.” Scarlett finished washing her hands and turned to wipe them on a towel. “I hope she comes back, though. I’ve tried tempting her with a ranch chef job, but so far, no luck.” She popped open the microwave an
d pulled out a steaming bowl. “Luckily, we have her chicken corn chowder to remember her by.”

  Jeri laughed. “Chicken corn chowder, wow.”

  “Right?” Scarlett got down a couple of bowls and opened a drawer for silverware.

  “I don’t eat a lot at lunch,” Jeri said as the other woman started to ladle soup into a bowl. “So just a little for me.”

  “I know,” Scarlett said. “You don’t take a lunch hour.” She looked at Jeri, her eyes sharp and sinking in. “So why’d you take one today?”

  Jeri shrugged. “I’ve decided that maybe I don’t need to work so much.”

  “I’ve been telling you that for months.”

  “I know,” Jeri said, accepting the spoon and bowl of soup. “But I’m stubborn, and sometimes I just need to come to things on my own.”

  “Mm hm.” Scarlett came around the island and sat at the bar beside Jeri, something glinting on her left hand.

  “Oh my stars in heaven,” Jeri said, grabbing her friend’s hand and staring at the diamond ring. “Hudson proposed.”

  Scarlett giggled and held her hand out to admire it. “He did.”

  “You said yes.”

  “I did.” She gave Jeri a look out of the side of her eye, and it was casual and yet Jeri felt like Scarlett had so much more to say.

  She took a bite of her soup, wishing she and Sawyer had talked a bit more about what to tell their friends around the ranch. Of course, nothing they’d done that morning should really be talked about with anyone.

  And Scarlett said nothing. She simply ate, and though she had more soup than Jeri, she finished first. Jeri could barely put food in her mouth, as the truth seemed to be filling it, making swallowing difficult.

  She got up from the counter when Scarlett did, even though her bowl wasn’t empty. Scarlett let her wash out her bowl and put it in the dishwasher without comment, and the silence was driving Jeri toward madness.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “What do you want to know?”

  “What?” Scarlett asked, but it was a little too innocent.

  Jeri grinned and shook her head. “Come on. I can tell you’re dying to ask me something. Or say something. Whatever. Just say it.”

  Instead of speaking, Scarlett stepped over to the built-in desk that held papers and folders and plucked one from the pile. “This is your license,” she said, extending it to Jeri.

  Jeri reached for it, but Scarlett snapped it back at the last moment. She peered at it as if she hadn’t already seen it. “I found it quite interesting that the last name is Smith.” She looked at Jeri again, her eyes downright eagle-like. “Same as one Sawyer Smith, cowboy here at the ranch.”

  Jeri swallowed, a totally amateur move for someone trying to keep a secret. “It’s a common last name,” she said.

  “And yet.” Scarlett hit the T-sound hard. “Your W-9 and employment paperwork has the last name of Bell on it.” She folded the contractor’s license and carefully placed it back in the envelope it had come in. “So which is it, Jeri?” Her eyes blazed with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and perhaps some annoyance. Jeri supposed she’d be irritated if someone she’d hired and trusted had lied to her.

  But Jeri hadn’t lied. “I was—both sets of paperwork are correct,” she said.

  “You have two last names?” Scarlett folded her arms, tucking the envelope under one of them, making it seem very far out of Jeri’s reach.

  Jeri scrambled for something else to say, but nothing came to mind. Time to tell the truth.

  She sighed, letting Scarlett know she didn’t appreciate this conversation. But she and Sawyer had kept the secret for two months now, and if she wanted any kind of future with him—which she honestly couldn’t believe she did—she couldn’t put him in a situation that would compromise his morals.

  She didn’t want to compromise hers either.

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “Give me the cliff notes,” Scarlett said. “I’m interviewing a few more cowboys in twenty minutes.”

  Twenty minutes. Jeri could survive the next twenty minutes. “All right. Cliff notes. At the beginning of this year, there was an accident at one of my construction sites. It wasn’t my fault, but my foreman blamed it on me. I lost my crew. My company. Everything—including my license.”

  Scarlett’s eyes rounded, the playfulness disappearing from them. “Jeri. You’re kidding.”

  “I wish,” she said. “I took a few months off, trying to get my license back. There was an official hearing and everything. I was denied. When this job came up, and I bid on it, I only did it because it was Last Chance Ranch, and I did have a provisional license at the time. It felt like maybe if I could get the job here, it would be my last chance.” Her emotions swelled, and she looked away from Scarlett, worried she might actually cry.

  She cleared her throat as Scarlett stepped over and wrapped her in a warm hug. “I’m sorry.”

  “It gets worse.”

  Scarlett stepped back. “You didn’t have a license until now,” she said, setting the envelope on the counter.

  “No, I lost the temporary after I was hired here,” Jeri said, not sure she could continue. Scarlett knew anyway, so she gestured with her hand to go on.

  “You married Sawyer to get a new last name and applied for a new license with that.”

  Jeri nodded.

  “Holy crap, Jeri.” Scarlett’s face burst into a smile. “I can’t believe this.” She looked like she’d been lit up like a Christmas tree. “So…I mean, are you two…?”

  “We’re dating,” Jeri said, deciding her boss didn’t need to know everything. “It was just going to be for a couple of months. He only agreed to it for the ranch, so we could get the funding from Forever Friends. We didn’t—I didn’t want you to lose that. I couldn’t do that to you, and I wanted the job, and—” She cut off, starting to feel desperate, and she didn’t want this to be about her.

  Though, of course, it was all about her.

  She stared at Scarlett, hoping her boss would understand. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, her job, her cabin, her future at the ranch only a toe away from going over.

  “I understand why you did it,” she finally said. “And Jewel won’t need to know. She just needed the license for her file, and now she has it.”

  Jeri nodded, her mouth feeling slimy and thick. “Thank you, Scarlett.”

  “And you and Sawyer…now what?” Scarlett asked.

  Jeri thought about the slow, perfect way he’d loved her that morning. “We’re still working on that part.”

  Scarlett looked worried, and Jeri wasn’t sure why. “Why are you concerned?”

  “Because I need you both,” Scarlett said. “I can’t lose Sawyer the way I lost Carson, and I can’t lose you either. I’m just…if you guys break-up, will one of you leave the ranch?”

  Jeri didn’t know the answer to that question either. There were too many new things going on in her life for her to process them all, including her new and deep feelings for Sawyer when she’d thought she’d never want another man in her life.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I promise I won’t leave you high and dry.”

  Scarlett nodded, and Jeri picked up her license and said, “I have to get back to work,” hoping she could keep that promise.

  Chapter 14

  It didn’t take much for Sawyer to get used to his new morning routine—one where he woke with the slumbering form of Jeri beside him. In his cabin, in his bed.

  He gazed at her, the love he felt for her swirling through him lazily, the way the breeze lilted around the ranch in the summer.

  Of course, it was fall now, and heading into winter, and the breeze had morphed into wind. He didn’t mind it, as it was still plenty warm, and the wind blew some of the more offensive ranch smells to the east.

  He reached over and tucked Jeri’s hair behind her ear, causing her to shift and groan. “Why are you waking me up so early on a week
end?” she asked, her eyes still closed.

  He chuckled and brought his hand back to his side of the bed. “Habit,” he said.

  “It’s Saturday,” she said, rolling over so her back was to him.

  Unfortunately, his body didn’t have different internal alarms for weekdays and weekends. He got out of bed and said, “I have a couple of chores this morning before we go to the carnival.”

  “Mm,” Jeri said, and Sawyer knew she’d fall back asleep to the sound of the shower. She’d told him she loved that sound, as it soothed her back to sleep. She was the opposite of him in that arena.

  Once he was awake, he couldn’t go back to sleep. But she could, almost at the drop of a hat. He placed a kiss on her forehead and went into the bathroom. He turned the shower on first so she’d have a few extra minutes of the noise and then got out his toothbrush.

  Looking at himself in the mirror, he hardly recognized himself. His hair was much longer than he normally kept it, but he hadn’t cut it because Jeri said she loved the way it curled around his ears. He liked how she ran her fingers through it as he kissed her, but he did look different without his military cut.

  He’d grown a beard over the past couple of weeks too, but that was mostly because he and Jeri were sharing a bathroom now and trying to get out the door at the same time, and he’d missed a few days of shaving. It fit his theme for Halloween, so he’d gone with it. He’d even told her he’d grown it on purpose, so her feelings wouldn’t get hurt about how long it took her to get ready in the morning.

  Sawyer was doing all kinds of things he’d never done before. Things he hadn’t even known he wanted to do—like share his personal space with someone. Tell them about his day. Express his thoughts, his hardships, his dreams.

  Jeri had told Scarlett about them, about the marriage. Hudson knew too, but neither of them had said anything to Sawyer. Cache, Dave, Lance, and another new cowboy Scarlett had just brought on—Ames Golden—didn’t seem to care what Sawyer and Jeri did. He got his work done on the ranch, as did they, and everything was fine.