Page 9 of A Cowboy's Convenient Marriage

“So you think this letter is legit?”

The idea that someone would give him that much money was just...so far out that he could hardly believe it, but it was also so tempting to...what? Try to find a woman who would marry him in three days? He’d almost gotten himself saddled to Abby, and he considered the fact that his wedding date had come and gone, and he was still on the hook for several different payments. Abby had sent the bills to his parents, which had made him even angrier. They had not wanted to forward them to him, but they didn’t have the money to pay them.

She was the one who had wanted all the fancy things.

And probably the biggest kicker of all was the fact that his church was charging them full price for everything. Even though they knew that not only were the allegations against him false, but they had fired him knowing that. At least John knew that. Which had caused his fiancée to call off the wedding. For them to still charge him, the pastor of the church, full price...just made him mad. Not that he wasn’t willing to give that money to his church on a normal day, but after everything that they had done to him, it grated.

“Yes. I do think the letter is legit.”

His aunt’s words brought him out of his musings.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. I suppose one billion is enough to get anyone excited, but...” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not like I have anyone who wants to marry me.”

His aunt was suspiciously quiet.

He put a spoonful of soup in his mouth. It was delicious. He could tell it was, although it tasted like sawdust to him. He was eating it because he knew he needed to. And he didn’t want to hurt his aunt’s feelings. But he just had no appetite.

He felt like he had been attacked, spiritually, and he was wounded. His wounds were invisible from the outside but were still bleeding and gaping on the inside. But he didn’t know how to fix them. He’d been acting like everything was just fine. Maybe he was a little quieter than usual, and maybe his bitterness came out at certain times, but he felt for the most part, he was pretty good at pretending.

Still, his aunt remained quiet. Almost as though she were thinking. Finally, he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t be asking. Maybe he didn’t want to know her answer.

“Well, you’re right. You don’t have anyone lined up, and you’ve just been through a really terrible experience. It’s probably not the best time for you to be trying to find someone to spend the rest of your life with.”

That was the truth. He couldn’t argue with it. And didn’t want to. She was right, his bitterness and anger and the caustic way he felt inside wouldn’t be good for anyone to be around. He needed to figure out how to fix it, but he just didn’t know how.

A little voice told him that he actually did know how, but he was avoiding doing the work.

Maybe that voice was right. He didn’t want to fix it. That was the problem.

“But,” his aunt continued, “the chance for one billion dollars doesn’t come around that often, ever, and I feel like this might be one of those times where you do something that you normally wouldn’t.”

“Ask a stranger to marry me?”

“She would be a stranger to you, but I know someone who would be perfect for you.”

His aunt had not led him astray at all, so when she said that she knew someone who was perfect for him, he found himself believing that maybe she knew what she was talking about.

“If you say so. Is she someone who’s not just perfect for me but willing to marry a man she doesn’t know in the next three days?”

“She’s a divorcee with three small children. I think she would marry anyone, just to have someone else giving her a hand with the children.”

He had never considered having another man’s children and raising them. He hadn’t really considered marrying someone who was divorced, either. The Bible clearly said that he that marries her that is divorced commits adultery, although Jesus said that divorce was okay when it was because of fornication.

He hadn’t wanted to get into the nitty-gritty, sticky stuff revolving around that, especially since he was a pastor and felt that he needed to be above reproach. So, for himself personally, he never even considered someone who might have been divorced.

But now that he wasn’t a pastor, none of that mattered.

He supposed that should feel freeing, but it didn’t. It just felt...empty. He had been called to be a pastor, he was sure of it. But now, he was a used-car salesman, and it felt wrong. Still, he supposed anyone who had made such a drastic change in their life was bound to have a few hiccups along the road, and he certainly had. He might as well get used to his new reality.

“All right. I wonder if I could go see her tonight?” he said, figuring that there was no time to waste. If he was going to ask someone to marry him, without knowing him at all, why wait until tomorrow when he could do it today?

It didn’t seem like one day would make any difference.

“I can give you her address, and I’ll call and let her know that you’re coming.”

“That’s fine. I’ll do it immediately after we eat and I help with the dishes.” She cooked the meal, and he had told her multiple times that he would do the dishes, but she never allowed him to do them by himself. She always helped after she had put any leftover food away.

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