Page 44 of A Cowboy's Convenient Marriage

But, those questions, while the first that popped into her mind, were not the ones she wanted to ask, nor was that the way she wanted to think. She wanted to believe that he had her best interest at heart.

“Yes. That’s fine. If that’s what you want. I...wondered how we would handle that,” she spoke honestly, because she truly did wonder. But, she figured it would work out, and she would be fine with whatever happened. After all, she chose to marry him, and she knew what that entailed.

“I thought about it some too. I know that we were rushing because of the money.”

She hadn’t even thought about the money. She wasn’t sure what they needed to do to get it, but he had reminded her, and she made a mental note to ask him when she got a chance. She would think that they’d need to prove they were married, then it shouldn’t take long. Maybe a month?

“But I didn’t want to rush our relationship. Just because we have to get married, and we decided we wanted to, doesn’t mean that we need to take our relationship ahead in high gear. We can move along at a normal pace.”

“That makes sense to me,” she said easily.

“I just want to be clear. I am assuming that we’ll eventually share the same room. But I figured we give ourselves...six months?”

That seemed a little excessive, but she nodded. “I really don’t know. I’ve never had a relationship that progressed to any kind of seriousness. So if you think six months is a good number, I’m down for it.”

“You can let me know if you think we need to take longer?”

“All right.”

He didn’t say that she could let them know if she thought they needed a shorter amount of time. But, she was going to assume that that offer was open as well. She felt comfortable with Cash, and she thought she would probably feel comfortable talking to him about that as well. Although...now if she wasn’t sure how he felt about it. And, after the call with Abby, she had felt more insecure with him than she had in the time she’d known him. Which admittedly hadn’t been long. But, he paid attention to her throughout the entire meal, and did not seem to be preoccupied with Abby’s call. But that could be because John’s call overshadowed it. The idea of moving away from her family, the whole way to Virginia, made her shudder and quake in her soul, but she had known that this was a possibility when she agreed to marry Cash, and she had been sure it was the right thing to do anyway. She wasn’t going to go back on that.

“So, I’m not in a huge rush for the money, and it doesn’t really matter, but I wondered if you knew any kind of timeline?”

“I really don’t. I don’t expect it to take very long, but I just have to go online to the address that they had in the letter, and submit the documentation of our marriage. Once that’s done, they said there will be some processing. So, however long it takes to process, and the money should land in our account.”

“Wow. So it could be a week or less,” she said, surprised. She had thought that there would be a lot more red tape.

“Yes. Next week this time you could be a billionaire. How does that feel?”

“Like I’m going to owe a lot of taxes,” she said, and he laughed with her. She loved that their relationship was casual and easy and she didn’t feel stifled. It felt like she could say whatever was on her mind. And... She even felt like Cash cared about her, which was really important to her. He didn’t have to love her, not in a passionate, over-the-top, infatuation kind of way. But she did want him to care deeply about her. And for them to develop the kind of relationship that was solid and strong and loving. She hoped they were making a good start.

Chapter 18

As they went throughthe first few days of married life they settled into a bit of a rhythm, with Cash getting up and Ada eating the breakfast with him that Aunt Karen made. He knew that Ada would make breakfast herself, but Aunt Karen was used to doing it for him, and he appreciated the fact that Ada continued to allow her.

He supposed that there might come a point where Ada would insist that she needed to make his breakfast herself, but maybe not. Maybe she understood that Aunt Karen needed something to do. Although, it was very considerate of Ada, who perhaps needed something to do as well. If the separation from her family was hard, she didn’t let on.

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