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That was worthy of a real belly laugh, but he didn’t want to make her feel stupid. “Definitely not.” It had been a long time since he had allowed himself to think that he would ever get married at all.
“Okay then. Let’s do it.” She sounded legitimately excited.
“When?” he asked.
“Right now?”
“Right now?” he repeated.
“I don’t want to rush you, but all I care about right now, no offense, is getting those kids under the same roof as me so that I can love and protect them.”
Gunner could understand that. “Okay. I guess the first step is to go get a marriage license.”
“And then what? Who should marry us?”
He shrugged. He had no idea.
“I think the mayor can do it,” she said.
“I think the mayor might have other things to do today.”
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Just how busy do you think the West Hope mayor is?”
“Okay,” he said. “I might have another idea. But first, let’s go get a marriage license.”
“Wait,” she said. “We might need a witness to.”
This sounded like a real thing.
“Do you want to invite one of your brothers?”
Not really.
She stared at him, waiting for him to say yes.
He understood why she had suggested it. It made good sense to someone who didn’t know his brothers, but the pickings were slim. He didn’t want to invite Kash because he didn’t want to tolerate the ribbing for the rest of his life. He couldn’t invite Tucker because Tucker would freak out about the financial risks of this arrangement. And he thought Colton was probably too busy to take an hour off in the middle of the day. And Denver was in New Mexico. “Ryker,” he said.
She nodded eagerly. “Okay, let’s call Ryker.”
Chapter 22
Nova felt like she was living in a story that someone else was writing. She stood in the church basement with one man she barely knew and two she didn’t know at all.
Earlier, Gunner had made a very brief phone call to a long-retired youth group leader—notGunner’sformer youth group leader, as Gunner had rarely gone to youth group and couldn’t remember who his leader had been, but Colton’s youth group leader.
Apparently, Nick Townsend had gotten ordained by some online church so that he could marry Colton and Adeline. If it worked for those two, apparently Gunner thought it would work for them.
Nova thought it would have been simpler to just go to the mayor’s office, but Gunner said they should involve God as much as possible in this deal, so he wanted to get married in a church. By a pastor—sort of. She was glad he hadn’t decided to go with their actual pastor. He’d obviously considered it because he’d given her a horrified expression and said, “He would make us do premarital counseling.”
She didn’t have anything against premarital counseling, necessarily, but they didn’t have time for that.
But maybe this was all supposed to be because Nick was very excited to come out of his recent retirement for another Bridge Brother wedding. And he wasn’t acting like they were both insane for doing this. He hadn’t yet asked for an explanation. He probably thought she was pregnant.
The other man she didn’t know was Gunner’s brother Ryker, who stood scowling in the corner. Every time she looked his way, she caught him looking at her suspiciously.
“All right, if you’re ready, I’m ready,” Nick said.
Gunner cleared his throat and nodded.
