Page 39 of A Cowboy's Convenient Marriage

Ada was racking her brain, trying to think if she could find a verse in the Bible that supported that. Really, marriage in the Bible seemed to be much less, and even a betrothal was binding. At least from what she could remember of the Joseph and Mary story.

Still, she couldn’t think of any reason why their marriage wouldn’t be legitimate. But she also couldn’t get rid of the nagging fear and doubt that plagued her.

If Cash still wanted Abby, he could have her; it sounded like she’d marry him, and he could still have his billion dollars.

Or, maybe he wanted Abby more than he wanted the billion dollars. Neither Ada nor him seemed too consumed with the money. It was just...a nice thing to have. Who wouldn’t want a billion dollars? And who wouldn’t go through a few little inconveniences, like a quick marriage, in order to get it, but Cash probably didn’t want it so much that he would stay married to someone he didn’t want to stay married to when he could be married to someone he did want to be married to.

How would she tell her family? It would be really embarrassing to only stay married for less than a day.

The pastor might not have recorded the marriage. They might be able to go back to the courthouse and just get him to rip up the paper.

She really didn’t know how those things worked. But, all kinds of crazy scenarios were running through her head, and when the waitress came and asked if she could take their order, she hadn’t even looked at the menu, although it had been lying in front of her the entire time.

“I think I’ll take the steak. We're celebrating today,” Cash said, which left Ada staring at him. Were they still celebrating? Was he wishing he was with Abby?

“I’ll take that too,” Ada said, closing her menu. She didn’t really care for steak, but she hadn’t seen anything else and she wasn’t really in the mood to look. She had completely turned her mindset around by allowing her thoughts to spiral out of control. And what for? Just a lot of pure speculation.

She could ask Cash exactly how he felt, but...was he really going to say, yeah, I wish I would have married Abby, and I’m really tempted to divorce you and marry her now that she’s willing again. And who cares about a billion dollars.

No. He would never say that to her. If he still had feelings for her, it wouldn’t matter if she asked or not. He would never tell her.

This is getting her nowhere. Whether he did or whether he didn’t, she needed to just trust that she was doing the right thing. She had God’s leading, and she was not going to sink into a mental pit of worry and despair.

“Have you had steak at this restaurant before?” she asked, desperate to try to turn the conversation to something that was neutral, and that would get her mind off of the spiral.

“No. I’ve never even been here before, although I’ve seen it and heard it was good. I had promised my aunt I would try to turn her car dealership around, and I’ve been spending all my free time on that.”

“Was it very bad?” she asked. Part of her thought that was none of her business, and then Ada reminded herself that she was talking to her husband. Everything was her business.

“It hadn’t been making money for a while. My uncle was a salesman. My aunt always did the paperwork behind the scenes. She notarized everything as well, but she allowed her license to expire since they hired someone a few years ago. I think she really wanted my uncle to retire.”

“I bet if he could say anything, he would say he wished he would have.”

“Yeah. You never know when your life is going to end and all the things that you think you’re going to do tomorrow are things that you’re never going to do now.”

She nodded. And appreciated the fact that her husband seemed wise. A lot of times people never realized that. They thought they had an unlimited amount of tomorrows. But, everyone had a finite number. Some more than others, of course, but it was all finite.

They settled into a pleasant conversation as the waitress brought their steaks out, and told them to enjoy the meal. It was very good, and Ada had to say that if she was going to have a wedding meal, this was a good choice.

“I suppose you have steak all the time,” Cash said, smiling at her as they finished up their meals.

“I have to admit, I’ve never ordered steak at a restaurant. But this was very good.”

“You live on a farm. So you have your own steak?”

“You’d think so, right? But I think we’re kind of like anyone else. A cleaner cleans all day, and when they get home, they have zero interest in cleaning their own house. They’re tired of it.”

“So you’re not interested in steak?”

She realized she hadn’t done a very good job of explaining. “All right. So maybe it’s a little bit different. Steak is our product, and if you eat your product, you don’t make money on it. Now, of course, if you grow your own, then you don’t have to buy it at the store, which is even more expensive. But, a lot of times the meat we get in our freezer is just ground beef, because it’s an old cow that was going to die. We just took her to the butcher shop or something like that. We very seldom have really nice, restaurant worthy steaks at home.” She smiled. “That’s not to say there aren’t advantages to having a farm. Because we have raised beef for ourselves, and we almost always have fresh eggs and we’ve even had goat milk for a while. One of my brothers was into that.”

“Interesting. I’ve heard that’s healthy.”

“Yeah. It really is, although some people don’t like the taste of it.”

“You?”

“The milk is a little bit hard for me to swallow sometimes, but I love the cheese. Which has the same kind of strong goat flavor. I don’t know what the difference is, but I did make a lot of goat cheese back in the day.”

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