Free A Marriage of Convenience by Vicki Blue

Chapter One
     
     
    Jillian Foley looked down at the bouquet in her lap. The irises were already beginning to wilt in the late summer heat. They could use some water, she thought. She could use some water, too. At her feet, Sabrina stirred in her baby carrier. Jillian rocked the carrier with her toe and the baby settled and fell back to sleep. Jillian felt envy over the infant’s oblivion to the world around her.
    She wished she could shut out the world so easily. She wished she could just go to sleep and shut out the surroundings. The hall of the courthouse was stuffy. The clerk they’d seen upon arrival said the air conditioning was broken. Austin’s mother had instantly started complaining.
    “You should have that sort of thing fixed right away,” she chided. “The comfort of your visitors should be paramount, especially since our taxes pay your salary.”
    Jillian knew what the clerk was thinking. No one asked you to come here, lady. Jillian wished the clerk would just say it so she could respond, “Believe me, if I could be anywhere else but here I would.”
    Austin came and sat back down beside her.
    “There’s two more couples ahead of us and then we’re up,” he said. We’re up. Jillian thought that was a pretty fitting comment from a guy who used to play minor league ball. She wondered if he also felt he was about to step up to the plate and hit one big strike.
    “Your flowers are on the floor!” Martha Bellaford stomped over and snatched the bouquet up. “I paid for these, young lady. You could be more grateful!” At Jillian’s feet the baby began to fidget and whimper.
    “Did I wake my grandbaby? Did I? Did I?” The older woman cooed the words at the baby as she knelt and pinched the baby’s cheeks. Sabrina began to bawl. Jillian wanted to scream. Now the baby would cry through the entire wedding. She leaned over, undid the harness around the infant’s tiny chest and picked her up. Sabrina could cry for both of them.
    “Give her to me. I’ll take her,” Austin’s mother demanded.
    “No.” Jillian said resolutely and shot the woman a look that she hoped would remove any doubt about how much she despised her.
    “Austin….” Martha said, pointing to Jillian as if she expected her son to snatch the child from her arms and hand it over. But this time, he came through for Jillian.
    “Don’t push it, Mom,” he said. “This is hard enough on her as it is, OK?”
    It was the first time that Austin had acknowledged what Jillian wondered he even realized, that she did not want to marry him. That she was only doing this because she and Sabrina was about to be kicked out of her small apartment after she’d lost her job waiting tables and the Burrito Barn. Her next student loan fund wouldn’t be available for another two months. She was scared. When Austin had come to her and told her that his mother had found out that he’d fathered a child and was about to strip him of his inheritance if he didn’t marry the mother, she’d felt stunned and trapped.
    “It was a one night stand,” she’d said when he showed up on her doorstep. She still wondered how he’d found her; did he even know her last name? Later she’d learn that he’d tracked her down through Toby, the manager of the O’Kelly’s where she’d been working the night Austin came in with some of his friends.
    “I know,” he said, and explained that this was a business arrangement. Nothing would be expected but to keep up the pretense of a marriage for a year or so, long enough to appease his mother who claimed he’d ‘disgraced’ her by fathering a child out of wedlock.
    “Why should I marry you?” she’d asked hotly. “Not that I care, but you haven’t been here for the pregnancy, the delivery, anything! I’ve done everything, paid for everything..”
    “Look, I didn’t know until just recently. One of the guys who was with me that night…you two have a common acquaintance that’s a friend of one of your more