but…” He shrugged. “Your mom is broke right now, and she’d be the one you could normally rely on, right? If you’ve thought up a better solution…”
“I’d considered contacting my father,” she said quietly. “But he never paid my mother a penny of child support, so I doubt that he’d suddenly want to help with his grandchildren. And Uncle Ted said he didn’t have a job for me. I mean, he did give me some cash, but I need more than money—I need a way to support my kids.”
“And you need my health insurance, right?” he asked, his dark eyes meeting hers.
“You know I do,” she said.
Her newborn sons—Aiden, Beau and Andy—had been born prematurely and their digestive tracts hadn’t been ready for regular milk. Their formula cost a small fortune, and her savings had been bled dry in the past couple weeks just trying to keep them fed. Uncle Ted, who was actually more of a family friend than actual kin, had given her a financial gift that had helped, but their need for formula wasn’t going to end soon. Seth was the ranch manager at the Ross Ranch, and as management, he had decent health insurance. That was where this idea had come from.
Was it selfish of her to want to shield her sons from the gossip surrounding their conception, too? She wasn’t proud of that, and in a place this size, people were going to talk.
“I don’t see any other way you’re going to get the help you need,” Seth replied. “Unless you can suss up a job with benefits real quick. Besides, don’t they always say you should marry your best friend?”
They’d been best friends for years, but kind of an odd couple in that respect. She was the fun-loving risk taker, and he was the overly cautious worrier. They were direct opposites in so many ways, but somehow their personalities clicked.
“Marrying your best friend… Yeah, I’m not sure they had this in mind,” she said wryly. “I just need to know you aren’t going to regret this. I’d hate myself for taking advantage of your health insurance if you’re going to wish you hadn’t. I mean, what if you fall in love with someone and—”
“I won’t.” He paused. “Look, we talked about this. This whole modern notion of marrying for love sets people up for disappointment. It used to be that parents chose their children’s spouses by looking at the more practical things, like how well he could provide, how their personalities might click, how they could succeed if they worked together. And those marriages worked! We can’t say there were thousands of years of marital misery, because there wasn’t. I really think this is smart. We don’t have sky-high emotional expectations from each other. But we do have a really solid friendship.”
Look at him—logical to the extreme. But she did agree with him on this point. She’d already been burned by Craig, and it was her own stupid, romantic hopes that blinded her to reality. That wasn’t her worry here.
“You might meet someone, Seth,” she countered.
“I’ve already had the love of my life,” he said softly. “You know that. There isn’t going to be another love like Bonnie. Besides, you’re my best friend, Gabs, and I want to help. But if you don’t…”
The door to the judge’s office opened and a woman in a black robe smiled and looked down at a notepad. She was short and middle-aged, with chin-length brown hair. She looked tired, Gabby thought, as the judge studied her tablet.
“Gabrielle Rogers and Seth Straight?” she said, looking up.
“That’s us,” Seth replied, then he looked down at Gabby and lowered his voice. “If you don’t want to…”
Standing there in a knit dress that wasn’t quite warm enough, a bouquet of white roses that Seth had splurged on in one hand and the ring box in the sweaty palm of the other, she found her options sweeping through her mind.
She could continue her search for a job—any job—that offered decent health insurance, and then put her sons into day care. She could do what other moms did and get used to this hollow, lonely feeling of being away from her babies. And in the meantime, she could see if the bank would give her another line of credit to cover the cost of formula until she could sort something out… If she could sort something out. She couldn’t count on Uncle Ted to give more than he already had. She had three hungry newborns gobbling back bottle after bottle of specialty formula. God forbid they need more hospitalization or surgery… And Seth’s offer had been so kind and generous. He didn’t have cash to share, but he did have health insurance. Because of his offer, she’d felt genuinely cared for by a man for the first time in years. Besides, she wasn’t about to follow her heart again, either. What she needed was a logical marriage—one that actually had a hope of lasting.
“Gabby?” Seth murmured. “What do you think? You want to do this?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s a good plan.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” She sounded more decisive than she felt. “Let’s get married.”
Another couple slid onto a bench behind them. The woman wore a lacy wedding gown over a bulging belly. The couple’s fingers were entwined, and they leaned their heads together, whispering. They looked excited, those two. And young—so young. Good grief, were they even twenty? Her gaze lingered on the couple, and she sighed. By the looks of it, that bride was marrying the father of her baby. Gabby hadn’t managed that—the father of her babies was already father to two preteens in Billings. Still, even though Gabby wasn’t going to be an excited, dewy-eyed bride, she would be married. And life would be easier because of it.
“All right,” the judge said with a smile. “Let’s get started. Come inside, please.”
Gabby went into the office first, followed by Seth. He’d always been the polite sort—ladies first and all that. She used to tease him about his old-fashioned ways. He’d have to loosen up if he wanted to catch a girl, she used to say…but then he’d married Bonnie, disproving that theory. And watching Seth using those antiquated manners on his wife, she’d wondered if she’d been the one to miss out.
Gabby felt Seth’s warm hand linger on her back as the door to the spacious office shut behind them. Was he as nervous as she was? She glanced back and found his dark gaze drilling into the carpet in front of him. Whatever he was feeling, it was locked away.
A desk dominated one side of the room, but there was a nice open area by the window. There were two court-appointed witnesses sitting in visitors’ chairs—an older woman in sensible slacks and a bored-looking young man whose hair didn’t flatten all the way at the back. They each gave her a cordial nod. How many weddings had they seen today?
“Let’s just take a look at your paperwork,” the judge said, and Seth handed it over. They spent a couple minutes going over everything, and then the judge gestured for them to stand by the window.
“Let’s get started, then,” she said. “I normally do the vows over here by the window. It’s a little nicer for pictures.” She paused. “Do you have anyone to take a few photos?”
“Uh…” Gabby shook her head. “We didn’t really think of it.”
“Sorry,” Seth murmured.
It hardly seemed appropriate to be taking joyful photos of this sort of wedding. They’d look like those stricken couples in old black-and-white photos—the ones where the bride and groom stood a foot apart in every shot.
“I’ll take a few shots, if you like,” the older woman said. “I’ve got my phone right here. I could email them to you.”
Seth smiled. “Thanks. We appreciate that.”
Did they really appreciate that? She’d have her own stricken pictures to pass down to her sons… She wasn’t sure she wanted pictures. It was better to remember this day the way she wanted to—taking an intelligent step that would benefit them both—instead of