Page 12 of Sweet Beginnings

“Maybe not.” Rachel actually cracked a smile. “But they’d have to payout for a wedding.”

Jill rolled her eyes skyward. “Someone give the girl a cola. That glass of wine has gone straight to her head.”

“No it hasn’t and you know it.” Like a cat ready to pounce, Rachel scooted to the edge of her seat, rocking on the balls of her feet. “Think about it. All we need to do in order to bail the ranch out of the immediate threat is for one of us to get married. And fast.”

Chapter Five

“Seriously. Someone take her wine away.” Jill waved her arms in frustration at her sister. The gesture reminding Sarah of when they were all kids and Jill and her twin would have completely opposing ideas. They may have been born minutes apart on the same day but the similarities ended there.

“Think about it.” Rachel pushed to her feet and approached her sister. “Foreigners do it all the time for a green card, except they have to stay married for two years, not one.”

For a split second, Sarah wondered if she’d fallen and bumped her head and didn’t remember. A subdural hematoma or concussion would explain this bizarre conversation. And of all the crazy ideas that her best friends had ever had, this one was a doozy.

Up on her feet, Jill waved a hand at her sister and grabbed a bag of nuts from the bar. “Don’t you think if falling in love were that easy, we’d all be married by now?”

“Unless it’s a business arrangement.” Carson took another sip of his drink.

“Not you too!” Jill threw her arms up in the air and spun around on her heel before collapsing onto the sofa.

“This isn’t a new concept. Television executives got rich making instant marriage reality TV shows, and modern day international mail order brides are big business.”

“Time out.” Jill set her drink on the table and sucked in a long breath. “I’m not saying I agree with any of this, but even if it were possible for one of us to find a person to marry on short notice, Mom would never let us do it. Not even to save the ranch.”

“She’s right,” Preston spoke up.

“Finally. Someone with sense in the room.” Jill’s arms cut through the air again.

“Then don’t tell her.” Carson set his half-full drink aside and leaning forward, resting his arms on his thighs, steepled his fingers together. “I’ve got all my credit tied up in our current deal that has ground to a halt for who knows how long. I might be able to borrow a little more, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to tide us over for an entire year and the interest would just dig us deeper in the hole. As it is, according to those numbers we’re going to need to do a lot of fast thinking to undo this mess. I, for one, cannot imagine not having the only home we’ve ever known sold to the highest bidder.”

Hear, hear, multiple voices chorused. Even Sarah knew, for all of them, the ranch was more than a house, or business—it was who the Sweets had been for hundreds of years.

“Well,” Carson continued, “one of us getting married would be just the start, but at least it’s a start.”

“I know this isn’t my place.” Sarah still couldn’t believe how badly things had turned for the Sweets. “I don’t have a whole lot of savings, but I have a bit and heaven knows I’m earning next to nothing in interest. I’d be glad to make a neighborly loan.”

A smile tipped the corners of Preston’s mouth upward. “That’s very nice of you, but Mom would really blow a gasket if we took your savings.”

“Well, one thing is for sure.” Carson lifted a single finger. “With our busiest season upon us and no help, looks like while I’m waiting for the green light to move forward with my current project, I’ll be moving back to the ranch and getting reacquainted with a little hard labor.”

Preston rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and then just let his elbow hang. “I’ll do the same. I can work remotely from anywhere. I’ll just do ranching at the crack of dawn and my accounting work after lunch into the evening.”

“I don’t have to be at the store till ten.” Jill sighed. “I can put in a few hours here. That is if I move into our old room again.”

“You meanwe.” Rachel smiled at her sister. “I’m only doing field work two days a week. The rest of the time I’m working from home. Thankfully, social services is happy to save money not heating and cooling a big building. I can put in my share of hard labor, but we’ll still be short hands and we’ll still need a huge chunk of change to stop any more losses.”

“You might as well say it.” Preston blinked hard. “To stop us from losing the ranch.”

Rachel nodded. “Exactly. Which, if I’m reading the writing on the wall correctly, brings us full circle to not just one of us, but we all have to try and find someone to marry us. That will increase the odds of us having our inheritance sooner than later.”

Jill pressed her lips tightly together. Sarah couldn’t tell if she was growing angrier or coming around to her siblings’ way of thinking. Either way the whole thing seemed crazy surreal. How did a ranch that had been around for over two hundred years, with a nice normal happy family, suddenly find themselves facing a life suitable for a reality TV show?

Slowly, Jill let out a long, deep sigh. “I’m not saying I agree with any of this, but if I were to go along, where are we supposed to find these marital prospects? Ones that will fool Mom, because you know she’s not going to let us do it for the money, and she’s not going to believe that any of us, never mindall of us, have met someone and fallen head over heels in love in a week.”

The siblings had gone from taking turns communicating to speaking on top of one another and growing louder and louder. Jill was still the only one with viable objections, from what’s in it for the spouse, to sex, to the cost of community property. For someone who saw the worst side of society at her day job, Rachel seemed surprisingly willing to scour the internet for a prospect with little concern for the risks. Carson clearly was stuck in litigation mode because he continued to harp on the need for prenups and clarity before moving forward with this, and Sarah couldn’t begin to imagine what Garret and Kade would have to say when they found out.

The whole time, Sarah kept her focus on Preston. He’d had the least to say and the most intense look on his face. Normally deep blue eyes had teetered on shades of stormy gray as soon as he’d sat down by the computer. She’d love to know exactly what was going through that complicated brain of his. Though she could venture a guess that already he was calculating a way to make this work without leaving collateral damage, and as one of the siblings had mentioned, when you involve human emotions there’s usually collateral damage when a relationship—no matter how platonic—ends.

She very much wanted to help her neighbors, but she especially wished she could run her thumb across the deep-set lines creating ridges in Preston’s forehead and make all his worries go away. And wasn’t that just ridiculous. If anything, as a kid, Preston had been the one to watch out for her and his younger sisters, not the other way around.

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