Forbidden Game: Seducing the Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Twenty-Four Hours

With a deputy at the gate, Thalia and Jasper bicker through a marriage license so he can sign her out of any hold, and come back to a foreclosure notice on Ida's door.

Jasper turned the television off so hard the knob came away in his hand.

"He can do that?" I asked.

"He can try," Ida said. "He's got a judge or two that owe him."

"I'm not crazy."

"Honey, you just grew a fish tail off my dock. I'd keep that out of the hearing."

I slept that night in Ida's spare room under a quilt with ducks on it.

I didn't sleep long.

At seven, Biscuit started barking at the gate.

A county deputy stood on the other side of the chain-link in a tan uniform, holding a folded paper and looking sorry about it.

Ida went out in her robe and her overalls under it.

I watched from the kitchen window with Jasper behind me.

"Morning, ma'am. I've got an order to bring in a Thalia Stoddard for evaluation."

"Never heard of her," Ida said.

"Ma'am, the bride from the news."

"There's no Stoddard woman on this property. There's a Stoddard man, and he's ugly. You want him?"

The deputy looked at his paper.

"It says Thalia Stoddard."

"Then it's wrong, and the Lord hates a false balance. Proverbs eleven, verse one."

"Ma'am."

"Go get it written right, son. I'll put coffee on for when you come back."

The deputy stood there a while.

Then he got back in his car.

Ida came in and lit nothing and put the cigarette in her mouth anyway.

"That bought you a morning," she said. "Don't waste it."

Jasper was already looking at me.

"If you're married to me," he said slowly, "on paper, I'm your next of kin. No judge commits you without hearing from me. And I can sign you out of any hold they put you in."

"The sea already married us."

"The sea doesn't have a notary."

So we went to the courthouse.

I wore a pair of Ida's jeans rolled four times at the ankle.

On top I wore one of Jasper's T-shirts, gray, with a dive shop logo cracked off the front.

He wore the same shirt in black.

We looked like a matched set of bad decisions.

The license office was on the second floor, with a long counter and a clerk who had seen everything twice.

She slid two forms across.

"Fill it out together."

We sat on a bench with one clipboard between us.

"Full name," Jasper read.

"Thalia Vane."

"Is that real?"

"I picked it. It's as real as yours."

He wrote it down.

"Date of birth."

I gave him one.

He looked at me.

"That's the day you pulled him out of the water."

"It's the day I got legs. It seemed right."

He wrote it down and didn't say anything.

"Place of birth."

"The sea."

"I'm putting Charleston."

"That's a lie."

"Everybody on this form is lying about something. Father's name."

"I never knew him."

"Mother's name."

"She didn't have one you could write."

He put the pen down.

"You're doing this on purpose."

"I'm terrible at lying. You asked."

"Fine. Previous marriages."

"Does yesterday count?"

"Yesterday doesn't count."

"Then why are we here?"

He breathed out through his nose.

A woman two benches down was trying not to laugh into her purse.

"Occupation," he said.

I thought about it.

"Lucky charm."

"Thalia."

"Five years. I sat in the front row of every board meeting and went out on every salvage job. Corbett called me his luck to the investors. It was in the annual report."

"Did he pay you?"

"No."

Jasper looked at the form for a long moment.

He wrote "Unemployed."

Then he crossed it out and wrote "Consultant, maritime."

I liked him a little for that.

"Your turn," I said, and took the clipboard. "Full name."

"Jasper Stoddard."

"Occupation."

"Salvage diver."

"Previous marriages."

"None."

"Not one woman ever?"

"That's not the question."

"I'm curious."

"Be curious on your own form."

I wrote "None" in very neat letters.

"Why did you tell me not to marry him?"

He looked at the clerk's counter.

"Because I watched you at the rehearsal dinner," he said. "You checked his face before you laughed at anything. Every single time."

I didn't have an answer for that.

I signed my line.

He signed his.

The clerk read both forms through and stamped them.

"South Carolina has a twenty-four hour wait," she said. "Come back tomorrow after two."

"Twenty-four hours," Jasper said.

"I don't make the rules, sir."

He drove us back with one hand on the wheel and the other arm out the window.

"Tomorrow after two," I said. "Then you can sign me out of anywhere."

"Then I can sign you out of anywhere."

"Thank you."

He glanced at me.

"Don't. I'm doing it to make him furious."

"Liar."

"I'm better at it than you."

He was smiling a little when we pulled in at the yard.

It went away.

Ida stood at the yard office door in her overalls with Biscuit pressed against her shins.

There was a paper nailed to the door above her head.

She didn't take it down.

She just looked at it.

Jasper got out and read it.

I read it over his arm.

It was on Stoddard Maritime letterhead, with Corbett's signature at the bottom in blue ink.

The note on Loring Salvage was being called in full.

Thirty days.

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