LITMIR.BIZ

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“As soon as you feed me and fix my car.” Her stomach growled on cue.

       “Then I guess we’d better get going.”

       Saying goodbye to the Stewarts, Angela plugged Mia’s number into her cell phone, though a play date for Alex and Ryder was doubtful. She wouldn’t be in these parts much longer. Still, she didn’t really have all that many friends after having dropped out of high school pregnant. It was always nice to add someone to her social network.

       Hatch held the truck door for her. “What’s so funny?” he asked when she gave a nervous laugh.

       “Nothing,” she said, tucking her phone away. Mia had just sent a text explaining the suction cup, which was used to position the glass eye and remove it.

       “You do know you’re damn inconvenient for a marriage of convenience.”

      A SHORT WHILE LATER THEY pulled up in front of a turn-of-the-century brick Victorian with a powder-blue roof and beige, blue and white gingerbread trim. The plaque beside the door declared the place a historical landmark, while the sign out front identified it as Maddie’s Boarding House. Est. 1829

       Nowhere near as old as the establishment, Hatch’s aunt Maddie met them at the door. She wore colorful layers of loose crinkle skirts and cotton shirts. Angela wouldn’t have been surprised to find a crystal ball somewhere in the house.

       Maddie held her at arm’s length, looking her over from top to bottom. “I thought you said she was pregnant.”

       “I said no such thing and you know it.”

       “Wishful thinking on my part, then.” Maddie returned her attention to Angela. “Welcome! Never mind me. It’s my job to give the boy a hard time. Thirty is a good age for a man to settle down and start a family.”

       Thirty. That’s how old he was.

       His aunt ushered them inside. Where Judge Booker T. Shaw was seated at the dining room table. He stood and nodded as they entered the room. “Clay, Angela.”

       Hatch didn’t seem all that surprised to find the judge at his aunt’s. Which would explain why he hadn’t been afraid to tell the judge exactly what he’d wanted in the way of a wedding ceremony.

       She, on the other hand, had prepared herself for the “to have and to hold” version, justifying this in her mind as words said every day by people who later regretted them. She felt relieved not to have entered into that lie.

       Especially now that she’d come face-to-face with the judge again. “Your Honor.”

       “Judge will do, Ms. Adams.”

       “Angela, please.”

       “I hope you’re hungry.” Maddie showed Angela where to wash up, and had her seated by the time Hatch came down the stairs a few minutes later.

       He’d done more than just wash up. He’d trimmed his beard and pulled back his hair. What couldn’t be pulled back fell in damp waves around his face. He still wore his eye patch. Which meant what?

       He didn’t like his new eye? Or was he just that self-conscious? He didn’t seem like the self-conscious type.

       For whatever reason, he chose to present an in-your-face tough-guy image to the world. Which left her to conclude that the patch covered the vulnerability she’d glimpsed earlier and not just his prosthetic eye.

       “So, Angela,” Maddie said as she sat next to the judge. “I’d say you went above and beyond the call of duty to join the Marines.”

       Hatch was the one who’d gone above and beyond. “I just did what I had to.”

       “Be sure to tell Calhoun I’ll be collecting,” Hatch said. “From him, not from you.”

       He must have added that qualification because he’d seen the look of panic in her eyes. She didn’t like being indebted. And she knew he would come away with nothing from their arrangement except being lighter by a few dollars. Which she intended to pay back.

       Before helping himself, he passed the bread basket from Maddie to her.

       “Thank you.” Angela set a homemade roll on her plate.

       She couldn’t recall the last time she’d sat down for a meal like this. Must have been that last Thanksgiving with her parents. And here it was not even a week away from that holiday.

       “What made you choose the military?” the judge asked.

       “My dad got his start in the Navy as a photographer and went on to make a career of it after he got out.” She broke the crusty roll in half as Hatch passed her the butter.

       “Explains why you tried the Navy first.” She shouldn’t be surprised he remembered that from their earlier conversation. “You can choose any branch of the service.”

       “Said the Navy man.” She wondered if he missed it. Her father had always spoken of his service with pride. “I didn’t choose the Marine Corps—it chose me.” The Navy recruiter had seen a single mom. The Marine recruiter saw beyond the single mom to what she wanted to be.

       “What does your mother do?” Maddie asked.

       “She was a volcanologist. Both my parents were killed in a plane crash four years ago.” Angela took her time spreading butter on the roll. She hadn’t been on board, but hadn’t flown in a plane since.

       “I’m so sorry, dear.” Maddie touched Hatch’s forearm as if he’d pass her sincerity along, the way he did the meatball stroganoff and the green beans.

       He didn’t reach out to her. But Angela shrugged off the sympathy just the same. Normally the platitudes “at least they died together” or “at least they died doing what they loved” followed such expressions of condolence. All that meant was she’d lost both parents.

       “I was homeschooled until high school. A family vacation for us was a trip to Yosemite to see the supervolcanoes. That’s where my folks met. She was working on her master’s thesis and he was shooting a coffee table book.”

       Angela speared several green beans with her fork. “They never did get married. But they were together almost two decades.”

       They’d loved each other. And they’d loved her.

       But any stability in her life had come from Shirley, because her parents didn’t always take her with them. After they’d died, her grandmother had insisted on enrolling her in a public high school. Of course, that hadn’t turned out so hot.

       Angela slanted a glance toward Hatch, who appeared to be digesting more than just his dinner, even though he didn’t comment. Not that her parents were opposed to marriage, but she wondered what they would have said about her reason for marrying him.

       Did it matter? She’d gotten what she wanted. “Shirley—that’s my grandmother,” she said for Maddie’s and the judge’s benefit, “says I inherited a restless heart. Which is why I can’t hold a job.”

       “You’re only twenty.” Hatch frowned. “You have plenty of time to figure out what you want in a career.”

       “I still have a responsibility to Ryder.” She met Maddie’s sympathetic gaze across the table. “The military is my chance to do something with my life while providing some stability for my son. It’s a start, anyway.”

       “I’d love to see some pictures of your little one,” the older woman said.

       “After dinner,” Hatch suggested when Angela reached for the cell phone beside her plate.

       He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and she’d already said too much. But Maddie more than made up for it with engaging family anecdotes.

       Maddie was his paternal aunt, his father’s sister.

       She’d never married, never had any children.

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