He Swapped Himself Out at the Altar, So I Married the Honest Stranger novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Nine A.M.

Cal says yes after a night of thinking, they write the terms on a napkin, and they sign at the courthouse while Hoyt watches from the steps. Gene calls to say a paid groom is a fraud.

Calvin Lundin was on the courthouse steps at 8:40 on Monday, holding two paper cups.

I knew him by the hum, which started before I reached the top stair.

"It's black," he said, offering me one. "I didn't know how you take it."

"Black is fine."

"I almost didn't come."

"I know."

"I sat in my truck for twenty minutes." He rubbed his thumb along the seam of the cup. "Then I thought about the card."

I waited.

"Hoyt never paid me the four hundred," he said.

"When I asked, he said, 'Don't be greedy, you got a free lunch and a wedding.'"

He turned the cup in his hands. "He called me the help to my face."

"Then why did you say I do?"

"You said please." He shrugged. "Nobody says please to the help."

That was how I learned that Calvin answers the question you asked and then stops.

We sat on a bench in the lobby and I laid it out as plainly as I could.

If I was legally a wife by the end of the day, the note was dead and the building stayed mine.

If I wasn't, Gene's lawyer would put the deed back in front of me.

Hoyt would be at my shoulder, tender again.

"And I'm the husband," Calvin said.

"For ninety days. Then we file, and it's over, and I never ask you for anything else."

"Why ninety?"

"Because Gene's lawyer will call it a sham, and a judge won't believe a marriage that lasts two weeks."

He looked at the floor tiles and counted something on his fingers.

"I'd want terms," he said.

I had a napkin from the diner across the street in my bag.

He wrote on it left-handed, in square capital letters, with the pencil from behind his ear.

I read it over his arm.

ONE. NINETY DAYS, REAL ON PAPER ONLY.

TWO. HE SLEEPS IN THE LOFT. SHE GETS THE ROOM OVER THE SHOP. NO TOUCHING UNLESS ONE OF US ASKS.

THREE. NO LIES. NOT EVEN SMALL ONES.

FOUR. EITHER ONE CAN QUIT BEFORE DAY NINETY IF THEY SAY IT OUT LOUD IN ONE SENTENCE.

"Why the loft?" I said. "I thought we'd stay at my place."

"The Sandbergs own the street your place is on. If I'm living in your apartment, Gene can say I moved in on his dime." He tapped rule three. "My shop has a loft and a stove, and nobody has ever tried to evict a boat."

"They own your lot too," I said. I had checked the county map on Sunday night.

He looked at me for a second.

"Yeah," he said. "They do."

"Is that a no?"

"It's a bad idea," he said. "Where do I sign?"

I signed the napkin first, so he'd know I meant it. Then he did.

Hoyt was waiting on the steps when we came outside.

He'd come alone, in a camel coat, no phone in his hand, which meant he'd planned it.

"Junie." He said it gently and spread his hands. "I was an idiot. I took the joke too far. Come home and we'll do this right."

I looked at his coat, his shoes, the set of his shoulders.

I knew him by his walk and his voice, and for the first time in three years I saw how much of it he performed.

"I'm going to get married, Hoyt."

"To a stranger? Be serious." His voice sharpened, then softened again. "You can't tell him from a dozen men."

"That's why we play the game, Junie. I'm the only one who knows how to make it easy for you."

Calvin's hand stopped an inch from my back.

"Okay?" he asked, low.

"Yes," I said.

His hand settled between my shoulder blades, warm and steady, and he didn't push.

"I knew him by his hand," I said. "I knew you by yours. That's how I know you weren't in the line."

Hoyt's jaw worked.

Then he stepped aside and let us pass, because there were people on the steps with phones.

The clerk was a woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a beaded chain.

She did not blink at a bride in jeans and a man in work pants.

She checked our IDs and slid a pen across the counter.

I signed first. My hand shook, then steadied.

Calvin signed in square letters with the pencil from behind his ear.

The clerk stamped the page.

"Congratulations," she said. "Again, I assume."

My phone buzzed against my hip before we reached the doors.

Gene Sandberg's name was on the screen. I put it on speaker, standing in the lobby with Calvin beside me.

"June." His voice was almost kind. "I just heard, and I'm sorry to tell you. A man my son paid to stand in a line is not a husband. That's fraud. I'll have a judge say so within the month."

Then, as he hung up, he added, "Tell Mr. Lundin to check his lease."

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