Legally in Love Boxed Set 1

by Jennifer Griffith

  “Morgan, about last night…”

  But she didn’t actually speak next. Instead, she leaned into him, stretched up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his mouth and her body against his torso. The messy waves of her blond hair were suddenly threaded between his fingers, and then his hands were on her back. She was kissing him—of her own volition, not prompted by a challenge or anything else. This was a first. And he liked it, a lot—probably a thousand times more than was wise. The pressure of her mouth, of her arms and body, sent his mind shooting like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Her raspberry lip gloss wasn’t distracting him this morning, too early to have her makeup on, and he tasted her bare lips. How could they be even more delicious than berries? But they were, oh, they were.

  “Morgan—” he whispered.

  “I just wanted to thank you for taking care of me. You’re a good husband.” She was looking up at him in earnest, almost pleading with him, an emotion that didn’t exactly match her words.

  “Fake husband,” he whispered, letting his arms drop from the smooth fabric on her back, in his own defense, knowing he’d like to keep them there all day.

  This, for some reason, apparently broke her spell, and she blinked and backed away. He hadn’t meant to do that to her. Not this morning, not when she’d been so incredibly sweet, making him waffles, making him feel like the smartest man in the world, after making his family talk to him last night again like a human and not some pariah.

  She sat down at the table, and Josh said grace. A thorn rotated in his chest when he saw how hurt she looked, but there wasn’t anything he could say to fix it, since he didn’t know what was causing it.

  Unless…unless she actually was starting to have a sincere interest in him.

  Morgan? Interested in him? It wouldn’t have been a stretch a few years ago, before Bronco pulled the rug out from under Josh’s whole life. Girls were throwing themselves at him then. But since then, the only girl who gave him the time of day was Brielle. Besides, Morgan was this blonde bombshell with every guy in the universe ogling her; she could have her pick of any of them. She knew the terms of the contract, and she wasn’t dumb—certainly not dumb enough to let Josh into her heart, bad risk that he was.

  “These waffles are great.” Not as great tasting as Morgan had been a minute ago, but he knew where those thoughts could lead, and they’d agreed not to go there. Business. This whole thing was a business. Even if she was kissing him thank-yous in her nightgown in the morning, it was business.

  Good business. He’d like to have a little more of it. He started entertaining the idea of a little more Morgan every morning.

  She was frowning, though.

  “Morgan, is something wrong?” he finally let himself ask. He knew something he’d said had turned her cold after that heat. Was the heat only the last flash before the star went out, and she was going to tell him this whole thing was done?

  She exhaled long and then spoke. “What I don’t understand is why you’d ever walk away from bio-tech research when it’s clearly your passion and your gift and trade it for something that clearly annoys you, like East West Cold War Relations, or whatever that was called. You obviously love what you’re doing out in the shop, and you’re amazing at it.”

  Josh looked at the stack of perfect Belgian waffles beside the bowl of perfect red strawberries Morgan had prepared for him. He couldn’t talk about Brielle and her influence over his current career direction at a moment like this.

  However, what Morgan said next made him think she’d figured it out on her own.

  “Tell me what it is about her.”

  Josh cleared his throat, and he would have tugged at his collar if he’d been in a dress shirt. “Uh…”

  “I’ve never met her, and you haven’t said what it is that’s so special. What could make a guy like you be so…” She didn’t finish the sentence, and he didn’t know if she was going to fill in the blank with manipulated, like Bronco would have said, or in love, like the direction he could imagine Morgan going, or wrapped around someone’s finger, which was more to the point of where his own mind automatically went. Because he was—wrapped around Brielle’s finger. For the past several years he’d been tied to her, wrapped up in her, and they’d spent a lot of time together, when she wasn’t in school in Portland and he wasn’t working here in Starry Point. His future was pretty wrapped up in hers. Wasn’t it?

  Finally he concocted an answer he thought might answer any of the filled-in blanks. “She’s tough. Smart. On fire about everything. Got all her ducks in a row.”

  Morgan nodded and set down her forkful of strawberries. She didn’t say anything for a while.

  “Look, Josh. There are things we do for the people we love. But giving up all our dreams shouldn’t be one of them. The person you spend forever with should love you for the man you are, as well as the potential you have in the things you’re passionate about, not try to remake you into some ideal or in her own image. Making man in His own image is God’s job.” She looked at him with an earnestness so intense he didn’t know how to respond. The words were true, and yet, he couldn’t say whether they applied to his situation or not.

  Did they?

  Morgan’s eyes broke away from his, and she stood. He watched the flutter of the hem of her robe at her thigh while she cleared the dishes. God had done a killer job on Morgan’s image. He knew there was wisdom in her words, and that she wasn’t saying them with malice. Still, they didn’t sit right. What she said was nothing he hadn’t, in essence, heard before a dozen times from Chip and Heather, or in much cruder tones from Bronco. Everyone was against Brielle, but none of them knew her like Josh did.

  Besides, he wasn’t in the mood to talk about Brielle right now. He’d just broken through a major wall, and now he had a gorgeous woman with bare legs from here to eternity offering him fresh strawberries.

  “Thanks, Morgan. I’ll think about what you said.” He came around the kitchen island and laid a hand on her arm.

  Morgan stopped what she was doing and turned to face him. “Think about what it would mean to the world if you pursue what you really love. Your work could change everything, Josh.”

  A spot at the back of his chest sparked. The confidence of a beautiful woman. In him. His spine straightened.

  Just then, his phone’s timer sounded for the results of his experiment.

  “Oh, I have to run. Thank you so much for breakfast.” He looked right into her eyes. “It meant a lot to me.” Including the way it started with her luscious kiss, but he didn’t have time to explain that now. He pressed a quick kiss on her cheek and hustled out to the shop.

  “Yes!” he shouted, loudly enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. “It worked!” He’d made a giant step forward. This was actually the right formula, after all these months of trying. Compost into crude oil? It could be the energy breakthrough of the 21st Century. He’d win the Nobel Prize. He’d be the savior of the problems between the U.S. and the Middle East. Josh punched a victorious fist in the air. The implications of this were endless!

  Ah, nothing like the sweet smell of sulfur in the morning. He gathered his notes and logged on to the U.S. Patent website so he could start filling out his application immediately. No sense wasting time. Some other bio-tech dropout like him could be working out these very details in his own garage somewhere right now, and no way would that guy beat Josh to the punch.

  ∞∞∞

  Upstairs, she exhaled for the first time. She’d kissed him. The memory of his lips on hers still tingled. Morgan caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Whoa. She’d kissed him looking like this? Hair all disheveled, wearing nothing but a cami and her robe? No wonder the warmth of his hands felt so near on her back when he’d kissed her in return.

  The water steamed as it filled the tub. He had kissed her back, hadn’t he? It wasn’t just a mercy kiss. Or a thanks-for-breakfast kiss. He was too breathless afterward for that to be the definition. But then he pushed
her away with the correction, fake husband. Josh was right: she was, in truth, only his fake wife, and no way should she let herself get too serious about him when he clearly was still only in this for the business arrangement. She was letting her heart take control of her actions this morning, all because of being dumb enough to admit to herself that she really did want him, did want to fight for him.

  But that experimental kiss she’d given him to check if his temperature was even close to hers in this relationship had felt so good, so right, every breath of it. Could he not feel how right they were together, too? In that moment, she’d seen in his eyes how he was feeling about her—looking at her like she was his angel. No man had given her that look before. She shut off the faucet and slid into the water, wanting to steam away everything but the feel of his lips on hers.

  Truth kept washing up on her like the little waves of this tub lapping against the skin at her collarbone. She wanted Josh Hyatt, all of him, to be hers. She didn’t want to be a Wife in Name Only with a Fake Husband. She wanted to be Mrs. Joshua Hyatt, regardless of the shifty foundation they’d started their relationship on. When she’d gushed like some crazed fangirl this morning that he was the smartest guy she’d ever known, she wasn’t exaggerating. But that wasn’t the only reason she might was falling in love with him. Josh was also endlessly kind to her, protecting her, making her feel like she mattered, all while extending caring gestures to her dog-obsessed mother and her rent-challenged sister. He was still contributing to Tory’s rent with his weekly paycheck. What live-in guy would ever have the gallantry to do that? Josh was something more than anyone she’d ever known.

  Best and most of all, she could talk to him, as herself, not some fake version or hollowed out deer-in-the-headlights mute. That alone drew a stark contrast between Josh and any other decent guy she’d known. Being with Josh let Morgan be Morgan, not bottled up and afraid.

  She gasped as she realized it. She needed Josh.

  Her head was buzzing with him. Josh, Joshua, Josher. He was becoming much more now than her fake husband, which was why when he reminded her of their status, her blood had turned to ice, and she’d pulled away. But then, sitting beside him, she’d thawed so quickly.

  Maybe that was what marriage was about. Even if a person hurts you, you love them enough to let things like that heal, love them enough to not hold a grudge.

  How could she hold a grudge against Josh? He was so good to her, and to Tory, putting his relationship with his girlfriend at risk by helping Morgan get her grant, going along with the roller coaster demands of the Seagram Scholarship disaster without complaint, and a million other good things, not the least of which was simply being there for Morgan, coming home to her every day, just being someone she could talk to.

  When this all ended, she was going to have a serious void in her life.

  This couldn’t end. She couldn’t let it. It was just a beginning.

  May Brielle Dupree stay in Germany forever.

  ∞∞∞

  “You feeling better yet after pulling that all-nighter?”

  Josh blinked a few times. Morgan sat on the edge of his bed wearing a blue dress that matched her eyes. She had her hand on his shin, the warmth of it seeping through the blankets somehow.

  “I’m leaving for church in a while. Do you want to come? Afterward, I thought we could do something to celebrate your breakthrough—if you’re rested enough, that is.”

  Josh had slept about twelve hours, and with the pressure of Morgan’s hand on his leg, he was more than rested. She’d better get away from him, or he’d be revved way past the rested zone. “Yeah. Sure. What did you have in mind?” He wouldn’t say what he had in mind, not if he was planning on keeping this as a business arrangement and making it so the annulment could go through without a hitch when this was all over. Dang, that girl was attractive. Her future husband, the real one, was one lucky son of a gun—and Josh was a total priest for handing her over unscathed. A hot and bothered priest.

  “Nothing too flashy. We’re still poor students, remember?”

  He wouldn’t mind whatever she had planned. It was just cool that she thought of him, and thought so much of his breakthrough. Morgan was cool.

  After church, they changed into jeans and Morgan had Josh load a big basket in the back of his Explorer. “I hope you like cold salmon.”

  Cold salmon? How did she know it was his favorite?

  They headed down to the coastal highway. “It’s low tide. You want to walk out to Haystack Rock for our picnic, since that would take less driving, or do you want to do what I had originally planned?”

  Josh liked Haystack Rock, and he hadn’t been there in years, not since his freshman bonfire party days, but he wouldn’t mind a little ride in the car with Morgan today. The sun was out, and her hair had glinted in it when they were walking out of church together. “Whatever you had in mind sounds great.”

  They steered south on the coastal highway. “Is Manzanita Bay too far?”

  Not if he was getting to sit beside Morgan all the way it wasn’t.

  On the drive she asked him questions about his research, and he tried to keep the details on the non-technical side so she could understand, but she seemed to get whatever he told her, and even asked some questions that proved she did and suggested a few things that he hadn’t thought of. They wouldn’t work, probably, but they did get him thinking in other directions about what he could do with the next round of process experiments.

  They talked about growing up in Oregon, things they’d done as kids like pick wild blackberries. Morgan had made jam with them; Josh had used them to make dye and ruin three of his best shirts, much to his mother’s displeasure. Morgan thought this was funny. She seemed to get his sense of humor. Nice.

  “I guess that’s why I wanted to take this trip today. When I was a kid, my grandparents took Tory and me for a weekend and we came to Manzanita Bay and saw the shipwreck. It was so creepy and so alluring at the same time. I loved it.”

  “You want to go see it again this afternoon?”

  “Oh, we don’t have to, but I do want to picnic where we can see it. Is that okay?”

  Anything was fine. She could convince him to buy her the shipwreck at this point.

  Morgan sighed and rested a hand on his arm like she understood. Then out of nowhere she dropped a bomb on him. “Hey, I know I was out of line yesterday, and I want to apologize.”

  What? He had no idea what she was talking about, unless she meant the kiss out of nowhere, for which he could not accept any apology. A sizzling kiss from a beautiful woman in a thigh-length robe never required apology. “Out of line?”

  Morgan bit her lip, the lip that tasted better than berries. Finally she spoke. “I shouldn’t have said that about your decision about your major, or implied that Brielle was telling you how to be, or whatever.”

  Oh, that. Josh exhaled. No, she shouldn’t have. He swallowed hard. Josh was tired of everyone second-guessing his decisions. Sure, Morgan had a point that Josh did have a passion for the bio-tech world, and the more he’d dug into his classes in foreign policy, the more he’d struggled to keep his head above water and his grades above Cs. But it was a means to an end. It was the best and possibly only way for him to be together with Brielle long term, since she had her career already settled, and if Josh wanted to be part of her life, he needed a job that was as mobile as hers was. Nothing else would do, and Josh hadn’t forgotten any of his resolve that had cemented inside him that day when he left her at the airport. That was the main point of all of this, including this this. He looked at Morgan. Wasn’t it?

  “So, yeah. I’ve gotten to know you well enough in the past few months to be sure that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re not in anyone’s control but your own.” Morgan put a hand on his. “I trust you.”

  She did? Suddenly the bristling in him from a moment before softened. She trusted him. The words were almost a foreign phrase, they’d been said to Josh so seldom in his
life as the youngest of the brothers, as the son of Bronco Hyatt. Someone trusted him. Morgan did. She really was the angel she looked to be.

  “Oh, look. We’re at the bay already. This trip flew by.”

  Morgan changed the subject and started talking about what the shipwreck had been like when she saw it as a girl, but Josh was in a spin cycle comparing Morgan to Brielle. Brielle had never said those words to him, I trust you. Morgan’s words were re-echoing inside him. Brielle might be fire, but Morgan was a drink of cool water. Brielle was energy, while Morgan was a reservoir of peace. Brielle had been through a lot with him, including when Bronco cut Josh off; Josh had expected her to break up with him soon afterward, but ultimately she hadn’t. Josh and Morgan were enduring a series of storm systems, and they’d weathered them well without even a serious argument.

  It wasn’t wise to be drawing these contrasts. Not smart at all.

  “Oh, look!” Morgan pointed at a perfect spot on the beach for their picnic, a place where the sand sloped just right so they could watch the waves and kind of lean back against the sand at the same time. Josh brushed Brielle out of his mind. She was gone, and Morgan was here, and this was a day he should focus on Morgan since she was doing this whole thing for him and in celebration of his success, something Brielle might never do—not over compost, anyway. He carried the basket over to the sand and decided to just enjoy the day with Morgan. She really did look great in jeans and a sweater, and she’d been amazing with his family, and she had a nice singing voice that he’d heard again today during the hymns at church. She could do more than just a mean Dean.

  “I have a confession,” she said through bites of grapes. “Here, catch.” She tossed one and he caught it in his mouth. “Good! Wow.”

  “Don’t look so surprised. I’m a champion grape-catcher. What’s your confession?”

  “I called Heather to find out what your favorite food was.”

  “You did?” Morgan got Heather’s number? “Heather’s cool. Sometimes she and Chip are the only cool people in the family.”