Million-Dollar Bride

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “Nothing like that.” Eliza gathered her courage and lost it again at the fateful moment of truth. “Miz Vangie’s, uh, planning a little…surprise for you. For us.”

  “Surprise?”

  “Oh, sort of a…party kind of surprise, I guess you could say.”

  He pursed his lips. “Are the Marx Brothers in on this little party surprise?”

  “Well, one of them is. It’s Tim’s shift as sheriff. But he’s on our side, at least more so than Jim…who’s now the deputy and who still isn’t convinced I’m telling the truth.”

  “Oh, no, don’t tell me the truth has once again reared its ugly head.”

  “This is no laughing matter, Mack.”

  “Eliza, look at me. I’m behind bars. In jail. Me. Cortland and conservative to the bone. A man who doesn’t even jaywalk. I am under arrest for being a pervert or a kidnapper or something equally heinous. Believe me, I am not laughing.”

  She twisted her hand around the bar until he stopped her with persuasive pressure. “Oh, Mack, if you’d just gone along with me on the elopement story, you wouldn’t be in jail now and we wouldn’t be in this mess. Or at least, it wouldn’t have gotten any more complicated.” She swallowed hard. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re really not out there planning what I think they’re planning. And even if they are and worse comes to worst, I’m sure it can all be undone later. It would be easy to get a divorce when you didn’t mean to get married, anyway, wouldn’t it? And I did try to tell the truth in the very beginning. Really, I did. But you were unconscious and I was scared and-”

  “Whoa.” His grip on her hands tightened, pressing her palms against the iron bars and sending a wave of totally irrelevant, but very real, sensual response through her. “Who’s getting married?” he asked slowly. “And who’s getting divorced?”

  She bit her lip. “Well, technically, I suppose, it would be an annulment.”

  “An annulment of what?”

  “Marriage,” she said bravely.

  “Whose marriage?”

  She wished he wasn’t touching her, holding her palms against the cool metal, covering her with warmth. “Ours.”

  “Our marriage,” he repeated, as if he had to hear the words aloud to clarify their meaning. “Ours? Yours and mine?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned closer to the bars and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Are we going to have to pretend to get an annulment of the marriage I’m supposed to have forgotten because of the amnesia?”

  “We can’t annul that marriage, Mack, because you convinced them that that wedding never happened.”

  “I convinced them? That’s pretty amazing considering that these people haven’t believed a single thing I’ve said.”

  “Exactly, which is why you should have let me do the talking instead of jumping in with the truth and confusing things.”

  “Well, excuse me. This has been a confusing day.”

  “Yes, and it isn’t over yet.”

  “What does that mean?” He paused to consider. “The party? Is that it? Something’s going to happen at the surprise party?” Comprehension and disbelief vied for jurisdiction over his expression. “No,” he said. “Tell me they’re not out there planning a wedding for us.”

  She bit her lip again. “I tried to explain it to them, Mack. Really I did. But since you blew my elopement story to smithereens, I had to come up with a whole different explanation to convince them you weren’t lying and that you didn’t belong in jail. Miz Vangie pounced on a few minor details and drew her own conclusions, and, well, to make a long story short, I just saw them sneaking a man with a clerical collar into the office.”

  His brow furrowed in a thunderous line and he released his hold on her hands. “What were those few minor details, Eliza?”

  “There’s no need to raise your voice.” Her tone stayed level and low, even though she did step back from the bars. “I simply mentioned that you were late for your own wedding, and Miz Vangie sort of took over from there and came up with the idea that your family was forcing you to marry Leanne, but that you were really in love with me. But I wouldn’t agree to elope with you because then you’d lose your family inheritance—which I inadvertently led her to believe is quite substantial—and I couldn’t stand in the way of your future. And besides, Leanne is the perfect wife for you, while I, obviously, am not at all the kind of woman you need. But you couldn’t bear the thought of living without me, so you kidnapped me. And…I really don’t know where she got this part, Mack, because I certainly never said I was going to marry a man I didn’t love just so you’d be forced to go ahead with your wedding to Leanne…but Miz Vangie thinks you kidnapped me only moments before I said ‘I do’ to this other guy and that you’ve been trying to persuade me to marry you ever since we drove away from the church.”

  Mack stared at her in awed silence.

  Her palms began to sweat and she wiped them on the polished-cotton skirt. “Say something, Mack. Yell if you have to, but say something.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, then shook his head in wonder. “All that came out of a statement about my being late for the wedding?”

  “Well, most of it. I really am sorry. I was just trying to convince Miz Vangie and Tim and Jim that you’re not a pervert and you don’t belong in jail, and that it was totally my fault that you weren’t wearing any clothes. The next thing I knew they stopped listening to me and started talking about how two people who were so eager to be together that they forgot where they lost their clothes and wound up rolling around in a haystack shouldn’t be let loose without a marriage license.”

  “You told them we rolled in the haystack?”

  She tossed him a rueful frown. “They added the hay in my hair to the hay in your hair and figured that one out for themselves.”

  He ran his fingers across his jaw. “So how are we going to get out of this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I could convince them we’re part of an undercover sting operation and that we were trying to infiltrate a gang of nudist burglars.”

  “What?”

  “It was a joke, Mack,” she said, sighing. “A meager attempt to wipe the worry lines off your face. It won’t happen again.”

  “I am not worried.”

  “Yes, you are, and I don’t blame you a bit. I mean, how are you going to explain to Leanne that you accidentally had to marry me?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, I don’t think I can explain it to her.”

  He paced to the sink and back—four steps round-trip. “Do me a favor, Eliza. Don’t explain anything else on my behalf. Please.”

  “You’re right. Auntie Gem tried to warn me about this kind of misunderstanding.”

  “Misunderstanding?” he repeated in disbelief, shaking his head. “I think this misunderstanding belongs in the Guinness Book of Records. How could you have gotten things in such a sorry state?”

  “It wouldn’t be if you’d just trusted me a little.”

  He stared at her in amazement. “Did you expect me to sit there and nod my head while you persuaded these people I’d lost my mind? They’d have locked me up in a padded cell so fast it would have made even you dizzy.”

  “Memory,” she corrected. “I never said you’d lost your mind.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He scowled at her.

  She scowled back. “Frankly, under the circumstances, I don’t think you could have come up with an explanation any better than my elopement story.”

  “I could have thought of some version of the truth that at least resembled what actually happened, something that would have sent the Cooper boys looking for Chuck and the dress instead of landing me in jail.”

  “The dress is the problem, Mack. I could have told Miz Vangie and the sheriff to call Mrs. Pageatt and verify that the gown was worth a lot of money, but then she’d have told them I stole the dress, and I wasn’t sure I could convince them I hadn’t. An
d if I was in jail, too, how would either of us get out? So that’s why I didn’t tell them. Besides, no one wants to believe the dress is worth a million dollars.”

  “Chuck believed you right away.”

  Her chin came up. “Well, then, maybe you should just call him up and let him explain it.”

  “Can’t. I’ve already used my one allotted phone call.”

  “You talked with an attorney?”

  “No, I called Leanne, thinking she could call an attorney for me.”

  Eliza heard the fatigue in his voice and sensed that his anger with her was fading. “I guess help is on the way, then?”

  He shrugged. “Leanne didn’t stay on the line long enough for me to ask for help. Somewhere between my ‘hello’ and ‘I can explain,’ she hung up.”

  Her heart went out to him of its own accord and without restraint. “I’m sorry, Mack. You have been patient and kind and a complete gentleman since the first moment I met you, and I’m terribly sorry that your fiancée has such poor regard for your character.”

  The outer door opened before he could answer, but Eliza saw the surprise and appreciation in his eyes, and she smiled.

  “We’re ready,” Miz Vangie said in a voice that wavered with excitement. “You are not going to believe this. You’re really not going to believe this.”

  It was difficult to believe, Mack thought, as he stepped into the sheriff’s office a few minutes later. A canopy of yellow crime-scene tape was draped from the center light fixture to all four corners of the ceiling. A scraggly bouquet of sunflowers, tied with tape, rested on the corner of a dual-sided partners’ desk. Tim and Miz Vangie wore matching smiles, while Jim lounged against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. A short, balding man with a round face and a rounder belly stood behind the desk, holding an open book in his hands. “Come in. Come in,” he said. “I’m Reverend Robson, and you must be the happy couple.”

  Eliza slipped her trembling hand into Mack’s and he closed his fingers around it, thinking it felt right. He didn’t know how he could feel good about anything at the moment, but her touch, her unspoken trust in him, felt wonderfully warm and appropriate. “What’s this?” he said with a show of surprise. “Has a crime been committed in here?”

  Laughter made the rounds, skipping only Deputy Jim.

  “Now, don’t be makin’ jokes about crime in this office, Mack.” Sheriff Tim stepped forward, all smiles and self-importance, to nudge Mack with his elbow. “Course, there are those that’d say matrimony is a crime.”

  The laughter made another incomplete circle. Everyone was certainly in a festive mood, Mack thought. Well, almost everyone. “Matrimony?” he said. “Is someone getting married?”

  “You and Eliza.” Miz Vangie’s tone and demeanor took consent for granted as she approached him and pinned a single sunflower on his jumpsuit. “There. Now you look like a bridegroom.”

  “Miz Vangie thought it’d be fun to surprise you,” the sheriff said. “This was mostly her idea.”

  Miz Vangie allowed herself a slight smile as she handed Eliza the sunflower bouquet. “It was the least I could do, after hittin’ Mack like I did and then havin’ him hauled off to jail.”

  “Really, there’s no need to go to so much trouble,” Mack said. “I knew all along it was just a misunderstanding.” He turned to Sheriff Tim. “I’m not still under arrest, am I?”

  “No, no.” Tim grinned and shook his head. “Not now that Eliza explained how you and her came to be running loose in your—” he winked at Mack “—birthday suits.”

  Mack let that pass. “You know, this is all very thoughtful, but Eliza and I can’t accept this—this…” Words failed him.

  “But that’s the whole idea.” The sheriff dropped his arm, buddylike, around Mack’s shoulder. “It’s our way of saying, hey, we’re sorry this happened to you on your weddin’ day. I mean, after all the trouble you had to go to just to convince this little gal you wanted her to be your wife…well, we don’t want you to have to wait another minute to be conjoined.”

  Eliza looked at Mack, wide-eyed and uncharacteristically silent. He squeezed her hand. “We appreciate your effort, but Eliza and I have some problems we have to work out before we can be…conjoined.”

  “Problems, pshaw!” Miz Vangie took Eliza’s elbow in one hand and his elbow in the other and moved them into position before the Right Reverend Robson. “You get married first and that takes care of one big problem right off the bat.”

  “What problem?” Eliza asked.

  “Lust,” she replied.

  Mack looked over his shoulder at the petite and strong-opinioned Miz Vangie. “But we have more than just, uh, that one problem to deal with and—”

  “I know what your problem is, buster,” she said with a decisive nod of her gray head. “Fear of commitment. Now, just stand there and do what the reverend tells ya and it’ll all be over in a few minutes.”

  Mack upgraded the situation to serious as his gaze traveled from Miz Vangie’s Mona Lisa smile to Reverend Robson’s beaming face, connected briefly with Deputy Jim’s suspicious frown and then moved on to the sheriff’s bust-his-buttons grin. Very serious. Maybe Eliza was right and the truth had no place in this particular discussion. “This just isn’t the place or the atmosphere Eliza and I had hoped to have for our wedding.”

  The atmosphere in the office grew slightly less festive as Deputy Jim uncrossed his arms and straightened away from the wall. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you sound downright ungrateful, MacKenzie.”

  There was a threat in there somewhere. Mack thought it might have been in the way his name had been pronounced—like Deputy Jim didn’t entirely believe that was his name. “No,” he said quickly. “No, that isn’t true at all. It’s just that…” he glanced at Eliza for inspiration “…Eliza told me she’s having second thoughts.”

  Miz Vangie pursed her wrinkled lips and stared him in the eye. “Any second thoughts she’s havin’ is because she’s afraid you’ll regret givin’ up your inheritance in order to marry her. She needs to hear you say that money doesn’t mean a thing to you and your life just isn’t worth livin’ without her.”

  Mack glanced at Sheriff Tim. “What if she really doesn’t want to marry me?”

  Tim looked at Eliza. “Well, do you?”

  Eliza nodded, then seemed to rethink the question and started shaking her head.

  “There,” Miz Vangie said. “See, I told ya. She’s just afraid you’ll regret this.”

  He already regretted this, but Lord only knew what they’d do to him if he said so. “This is all so…unexpected.”

  “Unexpected?” A trace of his twin’s suspicion crossed Sheriff Tim’s face. “How can it be unexpected when you had to kidnap her right out from under the nose of that no-account bartender just before he could get her to say ‘I do’?”

  Mack turned his gaze on Eliza, who was beginning to look very pale and wan. “I thought you didn’t tell them about him.”

  Reverend Robson cleared his throat. “Maybe we should allow the bride and groom a moment of privacy before the ceremony.”

  “They already had a moment,” Deputy Jim said. “In the cell block. And they still aren’t gettin’ their stories straight. I say we either have this ceremony now or we hold them in jail until we can do a little more investigatin’ into just who these two yahoos really are.”

  Miz Vangie faced the deputy with no more fear than an elephant has for a gnat. “Jim Cooper, I don’t know why you’re behavin’ like a bear with a sore tooth, but I want you to stop it right now and join with us in helpin’ these two young people celebrate their wed-din’. Yahoos, indeed.”

  “But, Miz Vangie-”

  “No buts, Jim. There is just no excuse for being inhospitable.”

  “Yeah.” Tim stuck a camera in his brother’s hands. “I’m the sheriff and I’m tellin’ you to point and shoot that thing ‘til I tell you to stop. Or until you run out of film, whichever happens first.”
He turned to cuff Mack on the shoulder. “Let’s get this show on the road. Ready, Reverend?”

  Mack couldn’t think how to stop this runaway train, so he just stood there, holding Eliza’s trembling hand and waiting to get run over.

  “Dearly beloved,” Reverend Robson began.

  “Oh…” Eliza threw her arm across her forehead. “I think I’m going to faint!”

  Mack gripped her elbow as she started to sag, but he saw her peeping at him and knew this was a tactical maneuver. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, inventing a tactical maneuver of his own. “You see, Miz Vangie? It isn’t me who has the fear of commitment. It’s Eliza. She doesn’t want to marry me. She’s still thinking about…him.”

  “That is pure nonsense!” The myopic gaze shifted from Eliza’s flushed face to Mack’s pained expression. “Now, if you just look at her and tell her you love her, then we can get on with the ceremony.”

  Eliza made a face, sighed and straightened in his arms. “All right, MacKenzie Cortland,” she said. “I’m through trying to save you from disaster.” She jerked the sunflowers into bridal-bouquet position, slipped her hand through the crook of his arm and faced the uncertain but still-smiling minister. “Reverend Robson? I do.”

  Chapter 10

  “Don’t you think you’ve done enough already?” Mack asked.

  “Now, now, there’s no need to thank us.” Sheriff Tim pushed open the door of Cabin 5 at the Hay Capitol Motel and stepped back. “Me and Jim wanted to do this. We thought you two deserved to spend what’s left of your wedding night in a decent motel. We’ll be back later in the mornin’ to drive you down to Hutchinson and see about gettin’ you a rental car.”

  “That’s very kind,” Mack said tightly. “But this is not necessary.”

  “Maybe not, but the room’s paid for and you may as well put it to good use.” Sheriff Cooper winked at Mack and nudged Eliza toward him. “Now, go on, son. Pick up your bride and carry her across the threshold.”

  Mack looked at her, and Eliza wished she could wipe out the frustration she saw in his eyes.