He Swapped Himself Out at the Altar, So I Married the Honest Stranger novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Step Four

Gene's lawyer waits at the cake table with papers that sign the shop over. June reads the note's clause aloud in front of every guest and asks Cal for one favor on Monday.

Nobody on the lawn said a word.

Then Hoyt laughed, loud and easy, and turned to the guests with his palms up.

"It's a prop, everybody. I wrote it for the bit." He plucked the card out of Calvin's fingers. "Junie knows I'd never do that."

I knew he would.

"Reception's in the tent," Gene Sandberg said from the front row, standing, in the voice he uses to end board meetings. "Let's all get warm."

The guests got up in a murmur and drifted toward the white tent by the water.

Cecelia was at my elbow with a glass of water.

"Come inside and let me fix your veil," she said.

"My veil's fine."

"Junie. Please." Her voice dropped, and she was looking at Hoyt, not me. "Not like this, Hoyt."

He didn't look at her.

I took the water and kept hold of Calvin's hand with my other one.

He hadn't tried to let go.

The cake stood on a table at the head of the tent, four tiers, with a brass bowl beside it that I had not noticed that morning.

A man in a navy suit waited next to the bowl with a leather folder open in his hands.

Gene stepped up beside him.

"June, honey, we're going to have a little ceremony of our own," Gene said. "Do you remember what I promised your father?"

I remembered.

My father died two years ago, and the week after the funeral Gene had come to the shop and bought the note on the building, the loan my father took when the roof fell in.

A hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars.

"The note burns at the wedding," Gene said now, warm and slow, and every guest in the tent could hear him. "I wrote it into the paper myself. A gift to my son's bride."

He nodded to the man in the navy suit.

The man turned the folder toward me. Under the note, a second document sat waiting for a pen.

"Just a deed of gift," the lawyer said. "It simplifies the paperwork on the building. Sign at the flag."

A small yellow flag stuck out at the bottom of the page.

Hoyt had come up behind me. His hand settled on my waist, light and familiar.

"Babe," he said into my hair. "It's been a long day. Let's sign, burn it, and go home. We'll do the real vows on Tuesday, just us."

He tapped the back of my other hand twice, slowly, with a pause in between.

My whole body knew that tap.

It was Hoyt's. It had been the first thing I ever knew him by.

I stood there and understood that on my wedding day, in front of two hundred people, he was using it on me.

I took my hand out of his.

"I'd like to read it first," I said.

"There's nothing to read," Hoyt said.

"Then it won't take long."

The lawyer didn't move the folder. Calvin put his palm flat on the top of the page, gently.

"The lady's reading," he said.

The lawyer looked at Gene.

Gene nodded once, because everyone was watching.

I read the deed.

It gave the building at 14 Ridge Street, my father's shop and the apartment over it, to Sandberg Development for one dollar.

There was a low sound beside me, a hum with no tune in it.

It was Calvin, humming under his breath while he waited.

It steadied me more than it should have.

I set the deed down. I picked up the note.

"This is my father's loan," I said, loud enough for the back of the tent. "Mr. Sandberg, will you read me the line about the burning?"

Gene's smile held. "The terms are standard, June."

"Then I'll read it." I found the paragraph. "'The balance shall be forgiven in full on the day June Almgren marries.'"

I looked up.

"It says marries. It doesn't say who."

Hoyt's hand left my waist.

"June." Gene took off his glasses. "Everyone here knows what the line means. That ceremony was a game, and you know it."

"There were two hundred witnesses and a minister," I said. "A man said I do, and said his own name."

"There was no license," the lawyer said quickly.

That was true. I hadn't thought of that until he said it.

Nobody spoke.

Calvin was looking at me, not at them.

I turned to him, in my dress and my crooked veil, with the guests' phones all on us.

"Mr. Lundin," I said. "I need to ask you for one favor, and you can say no."

"Okay," he said.

"Monday at nine, at the county courthouse. I need you to sign a license."

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