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“Please tell me that’s not City Hall,” Haley said, swallowing nervously as she pushed her glasses back up her cute little nose.
Jason sighed heavily as he shut the truck off and pocketed the keys. “I would, but I don’t think lying is really the best way to start a marriage.”
“M-marriage? What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, sounding a tad hysterical as he opened his door.
He paused with the door halfway open as he considered her. What he saw had him releasing a long-suffering sigh and reaching for her. With a startled gasp, she tried to back up against her car door and move out of his reach, but it was really a sad attempt. In seconds, he had her out of the truck and thrown over his shoulder.
“Jason, maybe we should talk about this,” she said, gripping the back of his shirt tightly as he carried her towards City Hall.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said, opening the door and holding it for a large group of old women.
“There really is!”
“And why is that?” he asked around a yawn.
“Because you’re kidnapping me again!” she snapped, for some reason sounding kind of angry.
“I’m not kidnapping you,” he felt obligated to point out.
“Then what would you call it?” she demanded, wiggling in his arms.
“We’re getting married,” he said, stepping in line for the City Clerk’s window.
There was a brief moment of silence before she said, “Please tell me that you’re kidding.”
“I would never joke around about getting married, my little grasshopper. Bradfords take this shit seriously.”
“Oh my God! I can’t marry you like this!” she shrieked, sounding a bit hysterical and drawing the attention of the group of women standing off to the right, watching them warily.
“You’re not going to marry me?” he asked hollowly, making sure to let his bottom lip quiver just enough for the benefit of their audience.
“I just think that maybe we should think about-”
“You were just using me?”
“What? No! I wasn’t using you! I-”
“You had your dirty, filthy way with me and now, what? You’re done with me? Just like that? Like I was nothing but a whore?”
*-*-*-*
“No! That’s not how-”
“After the dirty, disgusting things that you made me do, you’re not going to marry me?” he demanded, sounding outraged.
“That’s not what I-” she started to say, but the bastard wouldn’t let her finish a sentence!
He also refused to let her go. With a huff, she gripped the back of his jeans and pushed herself up to tell him to let her go when she saw the group of women watching them, shaking their heads in disgust.
“You promised that you’d marry me!” he said, sounding a bit hysterical.
“I-”
“What am I supposed to tell my mother?”
“Well, I-”
“What?”
“If you could just calm down, I’m sure that we could discuss this like two rational-”
“How could you use me like that? How?”
Sighing, she released her hold on his jeans and let herself drop against his back, because clearly there was no talking to this man. When he realized that they couldn’t get married today, he’d calm down and start acting like the rational man that she loved.
Okay, so he’d hopefully just turn back into the man that she loved since the whole rational part was kind of hopeless. He was a Bradford after all. Any minute now this little fiasco would be over and they could go home, get some rest, have something to eat and discuss this.
“Next,” the City Clerk said, letting her know that this whole thing was almost over.
Chapter 2
“How,” Haley started to ask only to pause so that she could take a deep breath and count to ten before she continued, “did you get your hands on my birth certificate?”
“I have my resources,” he murmured absently, glancing down at his watch as he carried her into the empty courtroom.
She sighed heavily against his back. “Grandma gave it to you, didn’t she?”
“She may have helped a little,” he admitted, wondering what was taking so long.
“Maybe we should go home and talk about this?” she calmly suggested.
There was nothing to talk about, but since it would kill some time until his plan could come together, it sounded like a good idea. “We can talk here,” he pointed out, deciding that putting her down on her feet probably wasn’t a good idea. At least, not until after he’d heard what she had to say.
He felt her sigh against his back again just as he’d registered the feel of her nibble little fingers toying with one of his belt loops. “I can’t marry you today.”
“Well, this marriage license says otherwise,” he said, absently running his hand over the back of her legs as he looked around the courtroom, making note of all the possible exits.
There were too many of them.
“You blackmailed me into signing that!”
He shrugged, smiling when she released a little grunt as the move jostled her a bit. “I did what I had to do,” he said with absolutely no shame as he walked over to the first bank of windows and peered out the large window overlooking the front lawn, watching for any signs of a taxi or public transportation that could aide his little grasshopper in her escape if he fucked this up.
“You wouldn’t let me use the bathroom until I signed it!” she said, grabbing hold of the back of his pants as she tried to push herself up only to give up a few seconds later and return to toying with his belt loop with an annoyed little sigh.
“You have no one to blame but yourself for that one. No one told you to drink all that water and soda,” he absently pointed out as his eyes narrowed to slits on the taxi parking in front of the courthouse.
“Are you kidding me? You’ve been pushing liquid on me since the moment that I woke up!”
“You looked thirsty,” he murmured absently as he pulled his phone out of his back pocket and sent another text message.
“That’s because you jacked the heat up in your truck, you manipulative bastard! It was either drink everything that you shoved at me or die of heat exhaustion!”
He sighed heavily. “Are you going to keep throwing the past in my face?”
“Keep throwing the past in your face…” she repeated back, sounding a tad hysterical. “It happened an hour ago!”
“More than enough time to let it go and move on,” he murmured, wondering if he should try to get her to drink a few more bottles of water just in case she managed to escape. It was probably wrong to use her small bladder against her, but he’d do whatever it took to ensure that she was legally required to put up with his bullshit whenever he fucked up, which according to his father and Uncles, would be often.
“I should have kicked your ass when I had the chance,” she said, sounding completely serious, which of course left him biting back a chuckle as he reached up and gently rubbed her bottom.
“You’ll get plenty of chances to kick my ass after this,” he reminded her as he walked back to the double doors at the back of the room and peeked his head out into the hall to find the Bible Study group still standing there, waiting to make sure that Haley made an honest man out of him.
“True,” she agreed with a heavy sigh, making his lips twitch.
She was just so damn cute.
“What are looking for?”
“Nothing,” he lied, looking down at his phone and silently cursing his family to hell and back. They should have been here ten minutes ago.
“Then why are you stalking around the room like a caged animal?” she asked.
“I thought you wanted to discuss this?” he reminded her, hoping to distract her.
When she didn’t say anything after a minute, he reached up to pull her off his shoulder, afraid that she might have passed out from staying in that position for so long, but just as
he gripped her hips, she said, “I don’t think we should rush into this.”
*-*-*-*
