LITMIR.BIZ

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       “I wouldn’t go that far, darlin’,” he said in answer to her cheeky assumption.

       She tried not to let his response sting. They’d known each other only a couple of hours or so. A couple of hours in which she’d proposed—and he’d rejected her. That had to count for something.

       “Clayton. Is that a family name?” It was kind of old-fashioned. “Is it okay if I still call you Hatch?”

       “I’ll make an exception.”

       Her request appeared to amuse him. Good, because she wasn’t ready to give up on the whole friendship thing. As in friends helping friends. Convincing him to marry her might be easier if he actually liked her and wanted to help her.

       “I’m Angela, by the way. Angela Adams.” She finally got around to introducing herself, after having spent some time in the company of a man whose real name she didn’t know. And who didn’t care enough to ask hers when she’d neglected to mention it. “Now that we’ve been properly introduced can you please quit calling me darlin’?” She tried imitating his drawl.

       “Hardly seems fair. I’m letting you use my tag.”

       “What does Hatch stand for, anyway?” All this time she’d been thinking Hatch was his last name.

       “My friends don’t have to ask.”

       She’d stepped right into that one.

       Feeling rather foolish, Angela left the store with the only mechanic in town, aside from Jason, likely to fix her car for free. The guy she knew as Hatch.

       Clayton Henry-Miner. The Hermit of Henry’s Fork.

       Henry, Henry’s Fork…

       Was there some connection?

       Bet he wouldn’t tell her that, either.

       She held the pump in her lap while they drove around back for the tire. Hatch got out and exchanged a few words with a guy in greasy coveralls. She exited the truck, too, but stayed put while the two men disappeared into the open bay. A short while later Hatch emerged and put her patched tire in back.

       “A souvenir.” He dropped a coiled horseshoe nail into her palm. Looking at it, she wondered how the curved object had managed to puncture her tire. He nodded toward the courthouse in the town square across the street. “You sure this is what you want?”

       It struck her then that he’d bent the nail.

       She bit down on her bottom lip. He’d said yes. Yes, with an open-ended symbol that fit perfectly on her ring finger.

       She nodded. “I’m sure.”

       “Marine’s don’t cry,” he pointed out with far too much sympathy. “At least not any of the Marines I’ve ever known.”

       “You’re really going to marry me?”

       “Either that or take out a restraining order.” His lips compressed into a serious line. “I haven’t decided yet.”

      “HUNTING LICENSE?” the middle-aged clerk asked without looking up. “Big game, small game, fur bearing, fowl or waterfowl?”

       “The biggest game,” Hatch said. “Marriage.”

       He still hadn’t decided against a restraining order. In the short time he’d known her, Peaches had gotten under his skin—and he didn’t like anybody crawling around in there. Plus, wouldn’t she just love it if she knew he’d tagged her that? Right now the quickest way to end their association appeared to be marriage. She’d be on her way and out of his hair.

       And he’d never have to see her again.

       The clerk eyeballed him above her reading glasses. “Take a number, please.”

       Hatch glanced around the empty office. “Carla, you and I are the only ones here.”

       “Number.” She indicated the stand in the middle of the room. Arguing would get him nowhere, so Hatch stepped back and yanked off the next tab.

       Carla hit the buzzer beneath her desk and urged the lighted sign. “Forty-two.”

       “Only three more to go.” He waited until she called forty-five before stepping forward. “Forty-five for the month or the year?”

       “Don’t be a smart-ass, Clay. What brings you to town? Haven’t seen you in a while.” He’d heard the rumors going around. That he wasn’t right in the head since his return from Iraq. That the shrapnel had taken out more than just his eye. That he should have returned sooner, with his mama so sick and all.

       That it was too late now for them ever to make amends.

       “I’m here for a marriage license,” he reminded her.

       “I heard you the first time,” she said. “And I still don’t believe you. Where’s your bride?”

       “Throwing up in the ladies’ room, I suspect.”

       The woman raised an eyebrow above the rim of her glasses. “Bridal jitters?”

       He hoped that was all it was. Outside, Peaches had flung herself at him in a hug so fierce he was still reeling from it. But inside, she’d pressed a hand to her stomach and excused herself to go to the restroom.

       “I’d like to get started on the paperwork.”

       “We’ll wait.” Carla thrummed her fingernails against the desktop. They didn’t have to wait long.

       “Sorry,” came the familiar refrain.

       Carla removed her glasses and glared at him disapprovingly as Angela Adams sidled up beside him. “I’ll need to see the bride’s ID,” Carla said. “She has to be at least eighteen to get married without her parents’ permission.”

       His bride was being carded before she could even fill out the paperwork.

       Peaches extended her Colorado driver’s license to Carla. “I have my birth certificate and passport if you need them.” If he had any doubt that she was serious, the birth certificate and passport squelched it.

       With a click of her tongue, the older woman handed him two pens and two clipboards, plus the separated pages of their application, highlighted in pink for her and blue for him.

       He passed the pink pages to Angela.

       “You okay?” he asked as they sat down in the row of empty chairs to fill out the brief forms. Wyoming had no waiting period for a marriage license. When a cowboy wanted to get hitched, he got hitched.

       Without a blood test.

       “Yeah.”

       He looked up to gauge that one-syllable response. She didn’t sound okay. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

       She smiled, laughed even. Better.

       Except for that nervous edge to her laughter.

       “Are you?” She gazed at him anxiously. “Okay with this, I mean?”

       He answered with an equal amount of uncertainty. “Yeah.”

       He’d been saving his first marriage for that first big mistake, and right now he couldn’t imagine a bigger one.

       She completed her form in record time and handed it to him. He finished his and took both back to the counter, glancing at Angela’s vital statistics before turning the forms over to Carla, together with the twenty-five dollar fee and five dollars for the certified copy Angela had said she’d need to give the recruiter once this was all over with. Calhoun owed him big-time.

       Hatch glanced at the wall clock and frowned. A quarter to four on a Friday was cutting it close.

       “The judge in?” he asked, trying to hurry Carla along.

       The sooner

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