Legally in Love Boxed Set 1

by Jennifer Griffith

  Claire didn’t stop her this time, but she came around in front of her, walking backwards and facing Morgan. Her already sour face looked like it had been sprayed with a dose of citric acid. “Josh Hyatt was nothing before he started dating Brielle Dupree. He had no direction whatsoever. She took him, molded him, made him the man he is today. If you think you’re going to be the beneficiary of all her hard work, you with your big fake boobs and your fake blond hair—”

  Nothing about Morgan was fake. She was too poor to afford fake anything, and Tory refused to color Morgan’s hair, saying she wouldn’t mess with what God got perfect. And who was this woman to talk? Her hair was the color of a ripe strawberry. Nature didn’t do that.

  “Please, you’re out of line, and I’m sure you know it, and if you end up feeling bad about it tomorrow or some other time, just know I forgive you. I’m sure you’re only defending your friend.” Morgan broke into a jog and dodged around this shrew before she could snare her again. “Sorry—gotta run.” Then she really did run, thanking Eat and Leaf for the strong leg muscles it had bestowed on her. Just as the clock tower chimed the hour, she wedged herself through the swiftly shutting door of Professor Wyeth’s classroom and collapsed in her seat next to Isabel, a girl in her major, and pulled out her pencil for the test.

  Yeah, the events of this morning were definitely not the best way to prepare for an exam. She’d better clear her head and focus on economic formulas—if at all possible.

  ∞∞∞

  “What in the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing?”

  Josh instantly went on guard, tensing every muscle in his body. “Good to see you, too, Dad,” slid through clenched teeth. “I’m heading to class after pulling an all-nighter at the water treatment plant, if that’s what you’re asking.” Josh knew what Bronco was really asking, and he decided to evade instead of make it easy on him to see how Bronco liked the tables turned. Because when in the past three years had Bronco made a single thing easy on Josh?

  “Are you out of your mind?” A few curse words peppered every phrase falling from Dad’s lips, words that had crept in after Mom went out of his life. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing here?”

  Josh had been in enough of these vaguely stated interrogations to know they could go on for hours. “Can we just skip to the tirade and the irate lecture part of this conversation now? Because I have a class that starts in a few minutes, and the professor calls roll.” He didn’t mention the name of the class, “Cold War Relations Between East and West,” knowing the very topic and fact that it was obviously part of his foreign policy major would send Bronco Hyatt into the stratosphere and prolong the agony of the conversation by at least fifteen minutes.

  “For a guy supposedly spending scores of hours every week studying power struggles and strategies, you sure put your foot right in a bear trap with all the naïveté of a complete twelve-year-old.” Bronco snorted. “I’m more ashamed than ever to see you on television parading around with that so-called wife of yours.”

  So-called wife? That got Josh’s back up even more. His fingernails dug little half-moon cuts into his palms. “You haven’t even met Morgan, and you’re already declaring her worthless? I’m sorry, but that says a lot more about you than it does about her.”

  “No,” Bronco huffed, pacing the flagstone, his cowboy boots clunking so hard the rock beneath them might chip. “What says something is the fact you and your shotgun bride are on the dole, holing up in this place owned by one of the most ridiculous characters in the entire universe of Oregon businessmen. Sigmund Seagram is nothing but a joke, and you’re making yourself a joke by association.”

  “And you a joke by association with me, apparently,” Josh said darkly. He didn’t want to stand here listening to this, but he knew that if he went outside, the rant would not end; it would merely trail him across campus and embarrass him in front of the whole student body of Clarendon College. Then both he and his dad would be the campus jokes, no association necessary.

  “Do you realize you and your ‘neediness’ has been splashed all over television by that vindictive scum, and that the story has been picked up by practically every news channel in the state? Our family’s reputation is being tarnished by your faking being welfare needy. It’s making us a laughingstock.”

  “A scholarship isn’t the same thing as welfare, Dad.” Josh tried not to sound condescending, but the tone crept in. “It’s merit-based, not need-based.”

  Bronco just snorted. “Merit.”

  “For your information, I’m a good student. And at one point, Morgan was at the top of her accounting department.” She’d said so, right? But she’d taken that job, her grades had fallen and her other scholarship had dried up. Josh had a sudden memory of the despair in Morgan’s tone when they’d discussed her situation a few weeks ago, before all the lunacy that now defined his life had started. The thought of her returning to that despair if Bronco busted this situation for Morgan turned Josh’s insides to fire.

  Luckily, Bronco returned to his attacks on Josh instead. “Good student. Ha! At what? Travel? Foreign governments? We Hyatts, my son, don’t give a flying rat about foreign governments. We have all the government we can handle right here in the old U.S. of A., and the rest of the world can all go be hanged. Hyatt Holdings makes all the money it needs from its American-based factories, selling American-made products to Americans. And that’s all there is to it. You think you were raised in a big house with everything money could buy based on the whims of crazy foreigners? No, sir.”

  “I never cared about the big house, Dad, and neither did Mom, for that matter. Now, are you going to make me late for class?”

  “And that’s another thing. Your mother would not approve of your going off and marrying some girl none of us Hyatts have ever met. I saw the pictures, and she looks like you stood at the end of some beauty pageant runway and yanked her down into your lap. Which, you know, good for you, but you can’t keep wasting your life on these floozies.”

  Floozies! “Morgan is a nice girl.” And so is Brielle, he wanted to argue, but now was not the time.

  Bronco harrumphed. “At least she isn’t that pinhead Brie Cheese Dupree you thought you were in love with.” There was some muttering under Bronco’s breath. “With her out of the picture, I’m sure you’ve seen the light, though, and jumped as far away from that stupid line of studying she brainwashed you into taking. You’re being a good American scientist again, aren’t you?” For the first time in the conversation Bronco looked a little softer, but Josh’s answer would cure that.

  “Still a foreign policy major.” It wouldn’t matter to his dad that he’d filed three new patent claims in the last six months, or that one pending patent was highly likely to be approved within the week, or that this property of Seagram’s had the perfect location for him to continue his alternative energy research on the compost in his spare time. Bronco was fixated on the one fact. “And Brielle was right—it’s a bigger world out there. I’m planning on being a citizen of it.”

  “Citizen, schmitizen.”

  Bronco Hyatt. For a guy who did as much business with others as he did, Bronco Hyatt sure had a narrow view of the universe.

  “Look, this has been real nice. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll give Morgan your love.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Bronco exploded again—and just when he’d seemed to be winding down. “And that’s another thing. Chip spilled the beans that he let you have your mother’s ruby ring to put on that gold-digging female’s finger.”

  Gold digger. Ha. There had been a while when Josh wasn’t even sure Morgan knew Josh was a Hyatt, had no idea what dynasty she’d married into. He hadn’t minded keeping it a secret from her, because the Hyatts put the nasty in dynasty.

  “What if I did?” No use denying it. “Mom always wanted it to go to one of her daughters-in-law.” That may or may not have been true, but Bronco wouldn’t have known the difference. This seemed to take the wind out of Dad�
��s sails, and his chest deflated a little at the mention of Mom. “Look, I am now officially late for my class. Good chat, Dad. As always.” Josh held the door for him, and Bronco uprooted his boots from the floor and headed toward the door.

  “Joshua Hyatt, if you can’t pull your head out of your hindquarters long enough to see what a mistake you’re making, then you’re no son of mine.”

  “Which leaves us at the status quo. And I’m still late.” He resisted the urge to shove his dad right out the door. He watched him go, emotions roiling in his gut and blood flow screaming in his ears.

  But a few paces down the walk, Bronco turned back. “Next Friday there’s dinner at the house.”

  Josh assumed there was dinner at the house every Friday. So what?

  “It’s Heather’s birthday. She insists. You’ll show up, and you’ll bring your wife—”

  “Her name is Morgan.” Josh knew Bronco couldn’t deny any request made by Heather.

  “You’ll bring her and the ruby, or I’ll call the police and have you both arrested for stealing the ring.”

  “Nice way to extend a dinner invitation, Dad.” He’d clearly spent the last six months in an intensive charm school course. This? This was why Josh had determined not to bring Morgan anywhere near his family.

  But for now, it looked like he didn’t have any choice. Poor girl. He hoped her silky, creamy skin was thicker than it looked.

  ∞∞∞

  At the end of class, Morgan set her exam on the professor’s dais and trudged over to pick up her backpack. Isabel was leaving at the same time and went down the staircase beside her, saying, “That was brutal.”

  No kidding. “I never bombed a test so badly in my life.” Morgan would have sat down and cried if she didn’t have to be at her next class in eleven minutes clear across campus. “I’m wondering why I even left the house this morning.” If this test sank her grade and kept her from graduating, she was going to hunt down that venomous redhead and give her a swift kick.

  “Ooh, tell me about the house. You’re in Siggy Seagram’s house now, right? You are so lucky you scored that. I want to know, are there fifteen bedrooms and a game room like I heard?”

  Morgan gave her a few sketchy details of the house and then said, “No game room, exactly. Just a library with a nice sofa and more books than you could read in a lifetime—oh, and a fireplace.”

  Isabel gave a dreamy sigh and launched into a monologue that carried them across the whole Quad. “A fireplace. I bet you and Josh cozy up in front of it at night with Dean Martin songs playing—I read once that Josh Hyatt loves Dean Martin. How romantic. And so close to campus, luxury living, housekeeper, gardener—I saw it all on the news, and it made me look up the details of the scholarship, and when I told my boyfriend about it, he was like, ‘Wow. We should get married just so we can apply for that. It’d be worth it.’ And I about fell out of his car because I’ve been wishing he’d propose for about a year. We’ve been together for three years, ever since high school. You’re so lucky you got Josh—Joshua Hyatt!—to up and propose to you at the bat of an eyelash. Of course, whoever you batted your eyelashes at would have chucked armloads of diamonds at you, you’re so gorgeous. Oh, I haven’t seen the ring. Show me the ring. I bet it’s amazing.”

  Morgan had missed that whole excitement of gathering her girlfriends around her and squealing over the ring, and this was the first time anyone had asked to see it. It felt weird, but she showed Isabel her left hand. The ruby looked a lot bigger in the sunlight, covering almost half the width of her finger.

  “Oh, sweet honeybees. That is one red mega-rock. Is it real? Oh, what am I saying, of course it’s real. You’re married to Joshua Hyatt, for heaven’s sake.” Isabel gawked and went on about it for a full minute while Morgan felt a little rush of warm pride. It really was a spectacular ring, and hearing someone say those nice things about Josh didn’t hurt either.

  “It was Josh’s mother’s.” The tidbit came out before Morgan realized what she was sharing. A faint wisp of a wish it could really belong to her and mean what it ought to mean rose up in her heart. Sorry, Mrs. Hyatt, wherever you are. It was also possible that this was top secret information, and she’d better clarify with Josh before she told anyone else. Except she wouldn’t need to tell anyone else—Isabel would broadcast it to anyone unlucky enough to be in listening range.

  Isabel put a hand over her heart and tilted her head to the side, speechless. “His mother’s? That is just so amazing. Aw.” She sighed. “When he proposed, was it super romantic? How was the kiss?”

  That, at least, she could answer with full truth. “The kiss sent my soul fleeing from my body. That guy can kiss.”

  Isabel’s eyelids fluttered as she rolled her eyes heavenward, and then Morgan had to run, again, to her next class. This whole charade was tricky, in that it was starting to make even the actress believe her own stories.

  ∞∞∞

  “Tory?” Morgan hadn’t even talked to her sister since the move. Things had been too hectic for anything but a couple of texts. “Want to meet me for lunch?”

  “Sure. Anywhere but the Garden Grubs.”

  “Come up to my house. The fridge is so full of food I can’t possibly hope to use it all, and it’s going to go bad.”

  Tory gasped. She felt the same way about food going to waste as Morgan did—it was a crime. “I’ll be there at one.”

  By a little after one, they were eating sandwiches and drinking chocolate milk at the quartz counter in the kitchen of Seagram’s Campus House. Tory kept running her hand along the cool, smooth surface of the stone. “I can’t believe you live here. It’s a palace.”

  “I know. I can’t either.” Every time she walked in, it felt like she was entering a luxury hotel by accident and she had to remind herself to breathe.

  “Can I get a tour of the place?” Tory asked. Morgan promised one later, after they talked a few things out. “Don’t tell me there’s trouble in paradise. Because this, my dearest, is paradise. Especially with the gorgeous Josh Hyatt floating in and out at all hours. Have you ever considered that you might just be the luckiest girl alive right now?”

  Morgan hadn’t. It was too stressful to feel happy-go-lucky in any way right now. “It’s not all fresh peaches with half-and-half. There’s a glitch.” She steeled herself and told Tory about the run-in with Claire. “So now I don’t know what to do. Should I tell Josh there’s a screaming red banshee threatening to bite, or just let it ride?”

  Tory set down her milk glass. “That is a dilemma.” She looked thoughtful. “Because you don’t want to give busybodies like that an inch or they’ll take a mile. Don’t give her the time of day. Josh is yours; the she-devil’s friend left town and lost him—her own fault. Finders keepers, losers weepers, the end.” Tory gulped down the final swig from her glass and set it down with finality.

  Morgan shook her head. Tory’s assessment definitely didn’t jive with her own. “No, it’s that I don’t want Josh to have to worry about it, when in the long run it’s basically meaningless when he and I get our annulment. The point will be moot. Scary Clairey’s best friend can have him back untarnished, with only a few kisses here and there to complain about.”

  “There’s been kissing?” Tory’s eyes lit up. “Tell!”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “Only when I challenged him after the proposal.” And when they said I do, and when he spontaneously kissed her when the check came in the mail, and a few times on the forehead. And for Seagram’s cameras.

  “I think you’re forgetting the make-out in the waves. I have photographic evidence of that one.” Tory got a wicked look in her eye. “What other kissing has there been? Late night on that sofa over there in front of the sultry firelight?” She pointed toward the reading room, and Morgan remembered how it had felt last night, stretched out on the couch with her legs over Josh’s lap, more relaxed than she’d been in a man’s presence ever in her life. “Maybe a little more for the newlyweds at bedtime?�
�

  “Tory. Don’t you know me at all?”

  “I know you’re a married woman, living with a really nice, drop-dead gorgeous, wealthy, sharp-minded man who happens to be your husband. What kind of nun wouldn’t be taking full advantage of that situation?”

  “Enough with the peer pressure, Tor. I’m not going there.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Morgan gulped. “Wanna see the house?” She led Tory through the reading room, which Tory had already glanced at and mentioned in that kissing fantasy, the other rooms on the main level, and then took her upstairs to the sleeping quarters. “You have to see the jetted tub in the master. It’s beyond luxury.” They went through the master bedroom without Tory commenting on the huge swimsuit picture above the bed, and Morgan exhaled a little in relief. “See? Isn’t it amazing? It has about forty jets, and the water can come up to my neck. You’ll have to try it sometime.”

  Morgan got a text and sent Tory to explore the rest of the bedrooms while she answered it. Tory came back in a moment, confused. “None of the beds look slept in. Where do you and Mr. Hyatt sleep?”

  That was strange. Morgan definitely hadn’t had time to make her bed this morning, not with all the hoopla after her towel scene. Would Josh have gone around and made the beds? She and Tory made their way down the hall, with Morgan checking in each bedroom to find them all as neat as a pin, her own discarded robe hanging on a hook on the bedroom door. Josh Hyatt—what a surprise. He’d never struck her as the neat-freak type, and less as the type to spend a full morning turning a house into a showcase.

  “It’s like you have a housekeeper or something,” Tory said, taking a peek inside a well-stocked linen closet.

  Housekeeper. That was right. Mr. Seagram had said something about having someone come in a few days a week so Morgan could concentrate on her studies and not have to spend all her time looking after this enormous house. “Isn’t that fantastic?” she breathed.