Midas Touch
SLADE
We get our marriage license the next day. It’s a gorgeous Montana autumn day, blue sky and a slight chill breeze cutting the warmth of the sunshine.
The velvet box sits in my inside jacket pocket. I’m aware of it the whole time I’m filling out the forms.
A little velvet box and my hands are shaking.
As we’re filling out the paperwork, I look over what Lila’s written. My attention snags on her date of birth.
“You were born on Halloween?” I ask.
“Another knock against me, as far as my family’s concerned.”
“What do you mean?”
“‘As my mother liked to say, ‘such a crude, middle class holiday. I wouldn’t mind so much except they have to ‘desecrate the neighborhood with their foul decorations,’’” she says, imitating her mother’s icy patrician voice.
She gives me a flat smile. “Mother was appalled by the new money families that would move in and have the gall to decorate their houses in such ‘tacky’ ways. Me being born on Halloween was apparently evidence of my fate to be the family misfit. She did her best to ignore the holiday and my birthday along with it.”
I just stare at her for a moment.
What the fuck is wrong with those people? That’s what I want to say. But I’m not about to insult my fiancee’s family to her face.
I tell her, “We do things different here. Whole town goes all out for Halloween. Decorations everywhere. Parade on Main Street. At Wild Rose we grew up doing hayrides and pumpkin carving. My mom made all of our costumes.”
A wistful smile. “That sounds really lovely.”
A strand of pink has escaped the pearl barrette she has clipped in her hair. I tuck it back in for her, being careful so I don’t rip out any of her silky hair. “Ain’t a bad thing to be a Halloween baby around these parts.”
I look back at the paperwork, at her date of birth. October thirty-first. She’ll officially be my wife by then.
“I think you should take my last name,” I tell her.
Her pen freezes on the paper as she looks up at me.
“It’s more convincing that way,” I explain. “Seems more permanent.”
She nibbles her bottom lip. “Are you sure? I mean, I’m happy to leave the Sherwood name behind. But your family might be upset that the Rhodes name is going to an imposter.”
I tap on her paper with my own pen. “This right here is the real deal. You’re going to be my wife in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of my family. You being Mrs. Rhodes will help convince your family too.”
Her gaze searches mine. “I can change it back. After we—”
I put a finger on her lips. “Not here. You don’t know who might be listening.”
There’s also the fact that I just don’t want her to finish that sentence: after we divorce. Not the kind of thing you want to hear when you’re filling out your marriage license.
Lila’s mouth is plush and pillowy beneath the pad of my finger and I have the urge to drag my fingertip across her bottom lip. To push it between her sweet lips and feel her tongue.
I drop my hand.
Over Lila’s shoulder, I catch the clerk watching us, her head tilted. When she sees me notice, she drops her eyes to her keyboard.
We finish the forms. My eyes linger on the line where Lila’s written her name as Lila Rhodes.
A surge of possessiveness courses through me—to my surprise. It’s not an emotion I expected to feel. I’ve never been a man who wanted to claim anything or anyone.
And yet.
“Mrs. Lila Rhodes,” I murmur, my gaze sliding to her. “It suits you.”
Her cheeks flush as she smiles back at me. “Has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?”
The clerk processing our paperwork looks up from my license and does a double take.
“Oh my god. Slade Rhodes?" She sits up straighter. “It’s Kaylee. Kaylee Cole? We went to high school together.”
I do remember her, now that she’s put a name to the face. She was one of those girls who was always around the rink, along with her other cheerleader friends. Our team captain, Boone Hutchins, seemed to think of them as his own personal harem.
I haven’t thought about any of them in years. That’s the way I would have preferred to keep it: forgotten. But small town living doesn’t allow for such luxuries.
“Hey, Kaylee,” I say. “Been a while.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.” She's smiling now, leaning into the counter, twirling a strand of hair. “Wow. You look exactly the same. Better, actually.” Her eyes drop to the paperwork between us, and then to Lila, and the smile dims. “Whoa. You're getting married?”
“That's the plan,” I say.
“Huh.” Kaylee glances at Lila again, quick and narrow-eyed. “That's so funny. You never had the time of day for any girl. Didn’t think settling down was your thing.” A little smile that doesn't reach her eyes as she glances at Lila. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Lila says, smiling back, but a little stiffly.
I take Lila's hand in mine, lacing our fingers together so the engagement ring is on prominent display. “Took me thirty five years to find her,” I say. “Worth the wait.”
Kaylee's eyes drop to the ring. Her smile doesn’t quite recover as she processes everything and hands me our license with an unenthusiastic “congratulations.”
I hold tight to that license the second she hands it over. Technically, it’s just a piece of paper. Doesn’t weigh anything at all as I hold it. Yet it feels like a stone tablet in my hands, something sacred, something with real weight to it.
Lila is trusting me with a year of her life. More than that: she’s trusting me with her family situation, her finances, her daily existence. It took a whole lot of trust to say yes to my proposal.
I don’t take that lightly.
Whatever this is on paper, I know what it is to me. It’s a responsibility. A real one. I’m going to be a good husband to this woman for exactly as long as she’ll let me.
I hold the door for her on the way out of the courthouse.
“She did not like me,” Lila says once we're out on the steps.
“The clerk?”
“Yes, Kaylee. She perked right up when she saw your name and then looked at me like I’d spit in her Lucky Charms.” A sidelong glance through her long eyelashes. “Did you two have a thing or something?”
“God, no.” I shake my head. “Back in high school, she actually asked me to a dance once. Sadie Hawkins, the one where the girls ask the guys. I turned her down.”
Lila stops walking. “You turned her down? Slade, she's so pretty. Why?”
“Because Boone Hutchins got to her first.” I see Lila's confusion and try to explain.
“The hockey captain. It was a whole thing with the guys on the team.
They'd hook up with a girl, pass her around the team, compare notes. Share pictures.” My jaw clenches just thinking about it.
“That was kind of the point, for them. Hutchins, the captain, was the worst about it.”
“That's disgusting.” Lila shakes her head.
“Yup.”
“I’m sure it’s so much better in the NHL,” she adds sarcastically.
“You don’t wanna know,” I tell her. “I never wanted any part of it.
All I could think of was my sister Josie and some asshole treating her that way.
It made me sick. I didn't laugh at the jokes, didn't look at the pictures. When I could, I just walked out of the room when they started in. Made me pretty unpopular, honestly. Couple of guys thought I figured I was better than them.” I shrug.
“Maybe I did. Still do, when it comes down to it.”
Lila is quiet for a second, looking up at me with an expression I can't quite read.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.” She slips her arm through mine, leaning into my side. “You’re just a good guy, that’s all.”
I eye her skeptically, even as I savor the feel of her body close to mine. “I’ve broken other men’s bones. And noses. Knocked out more than a few teeth.”
She shrugs. “You all know what you’re getting into. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
I smile despite myself. “You’re surprisingly ruthless for a girl who wears a sexy bunny costume in her off-hours.”
She gazes up at me through her eyelashes. “Oh? You thought that bunny costume was sexy?”
“I think you know exactly how you looked in that costume.”
“I’d love to hear your assessment, actually. In detail. Be thorough. Take your time.”
I lean down close to her ear. “Ask me again on our wedding night,” I murmur. “I’ll tell you everything I thought about that bunny costume. Slowly.”
Her breath catches. She looks up at me, and the teasing falls away from both of us for a second, and there's just her dark, beautiful eyes looking deep into mine.
“Our wedding night,” she says softly. “In separate beds.”
Right. Separate beds. The whole arrangement I proposed, the terms I laid out myself on that overlook. No sex. No complications.
It had seemed so reasonable when I said it.
We pass a cottonwood on the courthouse lawn, its golden leaves fluttering and scattering with every gust of breeze. Up on the mountain the tamaracks are still green and stubborn, holding summer a little longer.
“At least we’ll get all four seasons together as husband and wife,” I tell her. “There’s so much I want to show you.”
She gazes up at me, smiling. “Like what?”
“This autumn we can take long trail rides. In the winter, we can ski and skate. Spring has some beautiful hikes, especially when the wildflowers start blooming. Summer we can swim in the lake.”
The smile is still on her face, but there’s something ambivalent about it. Almost guarded. “You leave for Denver when, again?”
“June.”
When I signed the contract, knowing I’d be taking a season off between now and then, June seemed way too far away. An eternity.
Now it seems way too close.
At the other end of Main Street is Lila’s boutique. She’s put pumpkins out by the door, not the plain orange kind from the grocery bin, but smooth ones in varying heights, deep orange and cream and one the color of sage.
The window display has changed since last week too. She’s done something with dried grasses and antlers and amber glass that makes you want to stop and look.
“You do that everywhere you go,” I observe.
“Do what?”