Chapter 12

BEA

Lying in bed at my parents’ house, I felt my phone vibrate beside me.

Ky: Are you sure you don’t want to come back?

Bea: I will see you in the morning, promise.

Ky: But my bed is really lonely without you.

Bea: You know why I came here for the night.

Ky: I still think you could think good thoughts about me from the comfort of my bed.

Bea: You’re unbelievable.

Ky: And don’t you forget it.

How could I? The man was unforgettable as far as I was concerned. He always had been. While wrestling with how being married to him for real would affect our friendship, I had never once thought of being married to him as a bad thing. It had once been a dream of mine. It was a dream of mine again as I fell asleep that night full of nervous optimism.

This future might not have been my most recent plan, but it wasn’t exactly a new idea either. That was the thing that I kept going back to in my mind. We weren’t doing anything that either of us hadn’t thought of doing before. Granted, I never knew Ky felt the same way I did previously, but finding out certainly helped me make my decision.

I was going to meet him in the morning to go to the courthouse and make everything official. We already walked down the aisle, all that was left was for us to make this new chapter of our lives work. Considering we both now knew that communication failures had been needlessly keeping us apart for years, it was a roadblock we hopefully wouldn’t have to deal with moving forward.

Tomorrow, I would officially become Mrs. Beatrice Armstrong.

“Beatrice Armstrong.” Goosebumps erupted across my arms as the name whispered from my lips. Disbelief marred the words, but then I said it again, and it just sounded so right. Ky was always meant to be mine.

My mind was made up. For better or worse, just like the vows we took on Friday, I was going to sign those papers, and we were going to make this marriage work.

“Good morning,” Kylan said as soon as I opened the door for him on Monday.

“Morning.” I yawned as I turned back around and headed for the kitchen. “Need coffee first.”

Ky chuckled as he followed behind. “If you had woken up at my place, the coffee would have been ready for you.”

“I’m glad I had the night to think things through.”

“Did you reconsider?”

“No. That’s just it. It was more like everything felt settled.” I glanced back at Ky as I poured my coffee and added a little sweetener. “Does that seem weird?”

“No. It felt settled the day I watched you walk down the aisle toward me.”

My heart stuttered in my chest as my eyes flew up to meet his. Ky’s beautiful smile formed tiny little lines at the corners of his eyes which proved he was being genuine. “What?” He asked.

“It’s a bit strange to hear you speak so candidly of feeling settled with me. I supposed, since I gave up on anything ever happening between us so long ago, it feels a bit shocking to hear you admit things like that.”

“I guess I’ll have to keep it up then. One day, you’ll say it back without hesitation because it will feel normal, and no longer shocking. This is real for me, Bea. I know it feels like a hundred miles per hour toward a future that only felt like a dream at times, but it is real.”

“I guess we better go make sure this marriage is legal then.”

Ky leaned toward me and gently brushed his lips against mine. “I promise that you won’t regret it.”

“I appreciate that but I already know it in my heart. I trust you with my heart, Ky.”

“Thank you for that, Sweet Bea. I won’t let you down.”

If only life was as simple as the promise my best friend made to me. Unfortunately, life was full of other factors that forced the best laid plans to be put on hold.

Case in point, the way the woman at the clerk of court’s office stared at me as though I had two heads when we presented her with our paperwork from the pastor who married us, our birth certificate, picture IDs, and explained that we needed to apply for a license because we got married in a surprise ceremony.

“Ma’am, let me get this straight, you married this man?”

“Yes, my best friend, Kylan Armstrong.”

“Uh-huh. But you had a marriage license to make things official with another man, Lawson Gregory, last week.”

I nodded my head slowly. “Law left me at the altar with a note telling me that he was interested in another woman and he went to go try to make a go of it with her. While he was gone, my best friend stepped in and married me instead.”

The woman’s eyebrows hid somewhere in her hairline as her eyes rounded out in surprise. “Oh. Well, the thing is, Mr. Lawson Gregory was just here with a woman claiming to be Beatrice Robeson Gregory. They registered your marriage certificate not twenty minutes ago.”

“Well, you’re looking at my state issued driver’s license, birth certificate, and my signature on the certificate Kylan and I signed with the pastor.”

“No, you’re right. It’s obvious that you are Beatrice Robeson.”

“How did another woman file a marriage certificate with you without proving her identity?”

“Well, we checked identity when the license was issued, and Mr. Gregory showed his ID, but they mentioned that they had to go back to the hotel where they honeymooned because his wife forgot her purse in the excitement to make things official this morning.”

“That was very convenient of fake me to forget her purse.”

“Obviously, fraud was committed, so you can just pull the certificate and void it out,” Kylan suggested.

The woman bit her lip as her eyes shifted between us nervously. “I need to call the magistrate down for assistance with this. I do not have the power to alter records once they’re officially placed.”

“Even when you screwed up and allowed fraudulent records to be entered?” Ky growled his question at the woman. She flinched and took a step back just as a man came up behind her in the office.

“What’s going on here, Bette?”

“Oh dear, it seems that I may have messed up.” She went on to explain why Kylan and I were there and what happened with Law and the imposter woman coming in to file the paperwork. “I thought I remembered her. She had dark, curly hair. Not as curly as the real Ms. Robeson, but you know how people do different things with themselves.” The poor lady shook as she handed over all the documentation to the man, who turned out to be the Magistrate Court Judge.

He sighed heavily and then turned his attention back up to us. “I’m sorry to say, folks, that Bette is right. She can’t just remove the information on file. We have to go through the system to have that done.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“You will have to go through the process of having the marriage to Lawson Gregory officially annulled before we can remove the record.”

“What? No!” I yelled. “We were never married. We never said vows to one another. I said them to Kylan when Law failed to show up for a wedding because he was chasing after another woman. How can you stand there and tell me that I’m now married to that asshole simply because he lied to this woman?”

“I’m so sorry. I know it isn’t what you wanted to hear, but it is the only way to have the record wiped, and we will file criminal charges against Lawson and his accomplice.” He leaned back and picked up the phone to call someone. “This is Judge Harrington. I need the surveillance video from the clerk of court’s office for the past two hours and have the sheriff come to the clerk’s office.”

“If you two don’t mind, it might help if you stick around and take a look at the footage. If you recognize the woman who came in with Lawson, it might speed up the process.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I cried. Kylan wrapped his arm around me and pulled me tight to his side.

“It will be okay, Sweet Bea. We’ll get it all figured out and make it official as soon as we can.”

“Do to the time it will take to get everything done, you will need to have a new ceremony. The vows you took, since you didn’t get the license in advance, won’t count. We could let a day or two slide, as was the case for this, but you’re looking at a thirty day wait before you can begin the annulment process.”

“What the hell did you just say?” Ky snapped. “Why would Bea have to wait thirty days?”

“It’s the law in Georgia. A married couple must be separated for thirty days before they can file…”

“We were never married!” I shouted at him.

“Ma’am, I understand. Let’s go to my office,” He suggested after the people who were waiting for us to finish started to grumble about the wait.

We followed Judge Harrington down the hall and through several doors before we ever made it to his office. Once we were there, he called who I assumed was the security person he spoke to previously and told him to have everyone come to his office instead of the clerk’s.

As we waited, my temper started to flare. “I don’t understand why I have to wait the legal time for a real married couple when none of this was legal.”

“I understand your frustration, ma’am. It’s not fair that you’re tied up by the letter of the law when Lawson Gregory allegedly had someone forge your signature.”

“Not allegedly. He did that. Look,” I pointed to the copy of the signed marriage certificate that had been entered into the county records. “That is not anything like my signature.”

“I understand.” The man blew out a heavy sigh. “My Aunt Bette should have retired a few years ago. Her husband died and her retirement got put on hold indefinitely without his income to help out.”

“I feel bad that your aunt was put in that position, but realistically, she should have told them to come back when both people had proper identification.”

“You’re absolutely right. She should have. I just wanted to explain that she’s a romantic at heart and thought she was doing the right thing.”

“That’s not how official positions work though,” Ky stated. I turned to see the angry scowl on his face aimed at the man. “Excuses like that don’t fly when the fallout is that I can’t be legally married to my best friend. It doesn’t fly when you tell the woman who should be MY wife that she has to wait thirty days to do anything about a mixup that wasn’t her fault. It was intentional fraud on Law’s part and pure ineptitude on the part of the woman who allowed it to happen. I don’t care how romantic the notion was, protocols are in place for a reason. This is the reason. My wife, the woman who should be my wife, is now officially married to the man who left her at the altar. Do you understand the ramifications of that?”

“I assure you that I do.”

“No, I don’t think you do. If we walked out of here today, and ended up in an accident that man is now her next of kin. Legally, your clueless, romantic aunt gave him the right to make life or death decisions over Bea. Those decisions would supersede any her family makes for her. He would inherit from her if she was to die. What if that was his plan all along and your aunt just helped him achieve that goal?”

The judge seemed just as stunned by those revelations as I was. “That can’t happen. He can’t have that say over me based on a lie.”

“We will put some safeguards in place for you while we work through how to handle this situation. I apologize for not having all the answers up front, as this is a unique situation. We will get to the bottom of this and I assure you that I will personally have an injunction against Lawson Gregory having any legal hold on your person or belongings.”

“Speaking of belongings,” I huffed. “All of my things are still at his condo. We were meant to move in together and get married until he went to chase after another woman. I still need to get my belongings from his house, and after all of this, I’m worried that I will lose everything anyway.”

“When we’re done here, the sheriff will escort you to his place and stand guard while you obtain all of your possessions. He will also pick up Lawson and bring him in to be booked on fraud charges, so your ex-fiancé won’t be there to harass you.”