Chapter 14
FORD
Early the following morning, I sat in the diner at that month’s mandatory family meeting, all my siblings surrounding me while we discussed the latest report for the resort.
Addison was no doubt saying something incredibly important like what my next projects on the docket were.
And Aiden probably had an update on the budget that I should be paying attention to, especially since the little league team the resort sponsored needed new uniforms, and we’d have to foot the bill if we didn’t raise enough at a fundraiser—one I still needed to come up with.
Yet, even with all that shit, I couldn’t focus on any of it.
Not when I couldn’t drag my attention away from the matte black wedding band on my left hand.
A matte black, silicone wedding band. Those weren’t exactly mainstream—even if all the married guys at the fire station wore them—which meant Quinn had actually researched this.
For me , not just some guy who was standing in as her husband.
That probably meant nothing. Quinn was the kind of person who researched absolutely everything down to the letter, so this was just par for the course with her.
But then, why did it feel different?
I didn’t know how much longer it would be before my siblings noticed the new piece of jewelry I was rocking, and I knew things would go over better if I came clean before they could comment on it. God knew Addison was already going to lose her mind when she found out.
So, when we had a lull in the conversation, I figured there was no time like the present.
Around a mouthful of blueberry muffin, I said, “Thought you guys might want to know I got married yesterday.”
“Ha-ha,” Addison deadpanned. “We don’t have time for your jokes today, Ford.”
“Who said I was joking?” I held up my left hand, flashing the black band toward them.
My pronouncement was met with silence that lasted three…two…one…
“ What do you mean, you got married ?” Addison shrieked. “ To who ?”
Well, this was going to be fun…
“Quinn.”
“ Quinn ?” Again with the shrieking.
“No matter how loud you say it, it won’t stop being true. She moved in last night.”
Addison’s mouth dropped open as she stared at me, eyes wide. “ What do you mean, she moved in last night ?”
I glanced to my brothers, but they all gave me you’re on your own, man looks. “I’m not sure what you want me to say here…”
She slammed her hands on the table and pinned us each with a glare.
“I want to know why I’m the only one who’s having a reaction to this!
This is just like when the whole Beck and Everly thing came to light, and everyone else—” She gasped, turning accusatory eyes on my brothers.
“You all knew ? And you little assholes didn’t tell me? ”
I held up my hands, ready and willing to throw my brothers under the bus if it would save my ass from her wrath. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“And don’t think we aren’t gonna talk about that as soon as everyone leaves,” Beck grumbled under his breath. Then, louder, he added, “I wasn’t sure, but I overheard something he said at One Night Stan’s.”
Aiden shrugged. “He borrowed the computer in the main inn and left open a web page on Maine marriage requirements.”
When everyone turned their gazes to Brady, he just lifted his mug to his lips. “I’m the sheriff. It’s my job to know shit, especially sneaky shit people are trying to get away with.”
“I wasn’t trying to get away with—”
“I can’t believe every one of you knew before I did,” Addison said. “ Again !”
“I didn’t know,” Levi said.
Addison scoffed and waved a hand through the air. “You don’t count. You never go anywhere.”
Brady cleared his throat and held up a copy of the Starlight Cove’s Gazette .
On the front page was a large picture of Quinn and me under a headline that read Starlight Cove’s Favorite Rivals Get Hitched , byline by none other than Mabel.
“Actually,” he said, “it looks like the whole town knew before you.”
The picture taking up half of the front page was a shot of our first kiss—how Mabel managed to get a picture of that, I had no idea, though I hadn’t exactly been paying attention to anything other than Quinn’s lips against mine.
While we’d traveled thirty miles to another town specifically to keep this quiet as long as possible, we’d clearly underestimated Mabel’s investigative reporting skills.
Below the main picture were two smaller ones—both of Quinn and me.
One from the back as I’d held her in my arms and carried her toward her car after she’d rolled her ankle following the auction.
My head was bent down toward hers, making it look like we were having an intimate conversation.
And the other at Kick Some Axe when I’d tugged her away from Eli, her back pressed to my chest as I held her to me with a hand curved around her waist. Her head was tipped back, resting on my chest, and mine was lowered toward her.
And though I knew she’d been asking me what the hell I was doing while glaring daggers at me, from this vantage point, it looked like we were about three seconds away from fucking right there in front of everyone.
Jesus, was it getting hot in here?
With a gasp, Addison snatched the paper from Brady and stared down at it with wide eyes. “Holy shit, I can’t believe it’s true. You”—she shot a glare at me—“got married . To Quinn. The one woman besides me in this entire state who doesn’t fall for your bullshit?”
“So it would seem.”
Addison huffed out a breath. “Seriously? That’s it ?”
I shrugged, glancing at my brothers once again, but they were still no help. “Yeah? What else do you want me to say?”
“Um…I don’t know? How about you tell me what kind of backward reality I’ve stumbled into?”
“Not backward…just reality.”
“When did you decide to do this? Better yet, how did you manage to talk her into it?”
“How do you know I was the one who talked her into it?”
“Oh please . This has Ford written all over it. I just want to know how much you had to drug her to get her to agree.” She gasped. “Oh my God, you’re blackmailing her, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not fucking blackmailing her. Jesus, Addison.”
She scoffed. “Oh, like it’s that much of a stretch with you two. I seriously don’t understand what’s happening. Every time I see you two together, you look ready to claw each other’s eyes out.”
“Or rip each other’s clothes off…” Brady piped up over his cup of coffee.
Aiden glanced at him with a raised brow. “Weird thing to notice about our brother, man…”
He shot Aiden a scowl. “It’s my job.”
“Okay, Mr. Small-Town Detective,” Addison said with a snarky edge to her voice. “Tell me what the hell is going on here, then, because none of it makes sense.”
“What do you mean, none of it makes sense?” I said, shifting in my seat.
While Quinn and I hadn’t explicitly laid out that we weren’t going to tell other people about our little make-believe marriage, it sort of went unsaid.
And if my family got in on this? Fuck me .
“Quinn and I actually had a wedding yesterday.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt your wedding,” Addison said, eyes narrowed on me. “I doubt your marriage .”
She was too damn close to the truth, and I was sweating now for a whole different reason than the thought of fucking my wife. “Why the hell would I be in a pretend marriage?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“You two were just arguing at One Night Stan’s,” Levi said.
I shot him a glare. I’d helped that little shit out so he wouldn’t have to talk about Harper, and this was how he repaid me? See if I saved him from the wrath of our siblings ever again.
“Right before he grumbled to the bartender that she was about to become his wife,” my traitor—I mean, twin—said.
“Wait…” Aiden said, his attention pinging between our siblings. “He ran into Chelsea a couple weeks ago and got conned into going to her wedding. He wouldn’t actually go as far as to marry Quinn just to have a date to that, would he?”
Well…it sounded stupid when he said it like that.
As one, they all turned to face me, gazes scrutinizing, before turning back to one another, all of them nodding.
“Yeah, he’d definitely do that,” Aiden said.
They were acting like I had been the deciding factor here, when I was just a willing participant. Quinn was getting far more out of this than I was.
“Hey!” I snapped. “It’s not even mostly for me!”
Addison spun on me with a gasp. “So you admit it!”
Motherfucker .
I pressed my lips together in a flat line, refusing to say anything else because I was only going to dig myself deeper into this hole.
“Wait a second…” Brady said, tapping a finger on the counter. “Could this have anything to do with Dr. Dinsmore’s backward philosophy about women?”
“What do you mean?” Addison asked. “I know he’s a misogynistic asshole, but how is that relevant here?”
Brady lifted a shoulder. “I may have heard around town that the only reason Quinn agreed to take a position at the clinic was because Don’s close to retiring, and it went without saying that she’d be first in line to purchase it.”
“Don would fucking hate that,” Aiden said.
“Hate it enough to put some bullshit stipulations on it,” Brady said. “Like that Quinn had to be married before he’d consider an offer from her.”
Beck turned to me, shaking his head. “Never saw the marriage of convenience trope for you, man.”
“What the fuck,” I whispered to no one in particular. It’d taken them less than ten minutes to put it all together. We were wasting our time with this resort when clearly they should’ve been out solving crimes.
Addison gasped, her eyes darting between Beck and me. “Oh my God, we’re right .”
“No,” I said without hesitation. “No, you’re not right.” I glared at all of them, hoping they understood the unspoken threat threaded through my words. “I’m married . To Quinn . That’s all you need to know. Got it?”