The Maverick's Accidental Bride. Christine Rimmer

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      In the morning, when Will pulled up in front of the boardinghouse, Jordyn Leigh was waiting on the front steps wearing faded jeans and a little white T-shirt. She jumped up and ran down the steps to meet him, the morning sun picking up glints of bronze and auburn in her pale gold hair.

      “Hey.” She gave him a nod and a wobbly attempt at a smile as she pulled the passenger door shut. A hint of her scent came to him, that pleasing perfume he remembered from Saturday night, like flowers and spring grass and ripe, perfect peaches.

      “Mornin’,” he said.

      She plunked her bag at her feet, hooked up her seat belt and stared straight ahead.

      He put it in gear and off they went. “You sleep okay?”

      She sent him a look that said, Are you kidding? And then she went back to her intense study of the street ahead of them.

      Once they got to the highway, he tried to get her talking—about harmless things. About the weather and her job at the local day care. But she was having none of it. Her answers consisted of as few words as possible. She volunteered nothing.

      He went ahead and asked her if she’d seen the Gazette.

      “I saw it,” she answered. That was it. Nothing more.

      He kept trying. “I talked to Craig again last night. He had more on the Brad Crawford story—Brad’s the guy who won that ranch in the poker game.” He waited for a nod or a grunt from her to tell him she was listening. Nothing. He soldiered on. “Well, now the ranch belongs to Brad, and the former owner has vanished into thin air. Nobody’s seen him since Saturday night. Some folks are thinking there’s been foul play.”

      Jordyn only shrugged and stared out the windshield.

      Will gave it up. For the time being, anyway. They rode the rest of the way in silence.

      In Kalispell, it only took a few minutes to get to the county justice center. Will parked in the lot, and they went in together. The county clerk’s office was on the third floor. They waited their turn in line and quickly learned that the clerk himself wasn’t in the office right then.

      At that news, Jordyn muttered, “Thanks a bunch, Elbert.”

      The woman who helped them told them that yes, their license was on file and they were indeed married. As Jordyn stood wide-eyed and silent at his side, Will went ahead with the original plan and asked about the possibility of an annulment.

      The woman clucked her tongue as if in sympathy and then patiently explained that it would actually be very difficult for them to get an annulment. “In Montana, an annulment requires proof that there has been no sexual intercourse between the married couple. You can imagine how complicated proving that can be.”

      Jordyn made a strangled sound. Will fully expected her to burst into tears, and he braced to deal with that.

      But somehow she held it together, and the woman went right on, “What you want is a joint dissolution—joint dissolution meaning that you two file jointly for your divorce. It’s simple and straightforward and also fair.” She gave them the large packet of documents they would need and said that the same documents were also available to print off online.

      “Fill them out completely and bring them back,” she said. “When you return all the needed documentation—in person, together—you’ll be given a hearing date a maximum of twenty days out. The hearing is a formality. Bottom line, twenty days from filing jointly, you will be divorced.”

      They went back downstairs and out the door. Back in the quad cab, Jordyn remained scarily subdued.

      Will tried again to get through to her. “Jordyn. I think we really need to talk some more about all this.”

      But she only shook her head. “Just take me back to the boardinghouse, please.”

      He drove north on Main and turned right on Center. Two blocks later, he pulled into the parking lot of a cute little café. The tidy building was painted white, and there were cheerful geraniums in cast-iron boxes at each of the wide windows. He switched off the engine and stuck his key in his pocket.

      Jordyn shook off her funk long enough to send him a scowl. “What are you doing, Will?”

      “I need some breakfast. Did you eat?”

      Her eyes flashed with annoyance. “I told you, I want to go back to the boardinghouse.”

      He slid his arm along the back of the seat and leaned a little closer to her. “So you didn’t eat.”

      She just stared at him, her soft lower lip beginning to quiver.

      He wanted to reach out and pull her close and tell her it was going to be all right. But he had a very strong feeling that if he so much as touched her, she would shatter. So he kept his hands to himself and said reasonably, “We need to eat. And we also need to talk.”

      She bit her lip. And then at last, she nodded. “Okay,” she said in a voice that only shook a little. “We’ll eat. And you’re right. We should talk.”

      * * *

      Jordyn followed Will into the cheery little restaurant. She really didn’t want to be there. She felt so awful about everything, and Will was being so wonderful and calm and reasonable and understanding.

      She wanted to grab him and hug him tight and tell him how great he was. But if she did, she would only end up blubbering like a big baby, and that would only make it all crappier than ever.

      Dear Lord, they were married. They were really, truly married. And now they would have to get divorced. Jordyn didn’t believe in divorce. In her family, marriage was forever.

      It was all so wrong.

      She felt caught in some awful nightmare, one she couldn’t seem to make herself wake up from.

      Will chose a table in the corner. The waitress came and poured them coffee. He ordered steak and eggs, and Jordyn opened her mouth to say she only wanted the coffee. But Will’s beautiful blue eyes were on her, giving her that look, both stern and gentle, so she ordered a pancake sandwich.

      They sipped their coffee in silence until the food came. He dug right in. She drizzled syrup on her pancakes and nibbled at the bacon and felt a ray of hope that maybe he’d given up on the idea that their accidental marriage demanded further discussion.

      But he hadn’t given up. Once he’d worked his way through half his steak and two of his three eggs, he leaned across the table toward her and said, low-voiced so it stayed just between the two of them, “We need a better plan.”

      She set down her half-eaten strip of bacon. “Better, how?”

      He ate more steak, sipped his coffee. “I know you’re upset about this, Jordyn, and I don’t want to make it any worse than it already is for you, but have you thought about what to do if it turns out you’re pregnant?”

      Her stomach lurched. She pushed her barely touched plate away and confessed in a whisper, “No. I... Oh, my God.” The thought that she might be pregnant hadn’t even occurred to her.

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