The next few weeks go by quickly, and I’m able to spend time with my husband. Having him back with me at nights and on weekends has been awesome. I feel like I have my life back. My contract with the real estate company ends, and my house doesn’t sell. I decide to go with a company recommended by Lindsey. Lindsey loves them and tells me they sold her house in less than sixty days.

When I meet with the new agent, she tells me the main reason that my house hasn’t sold is that the price is too high. She shows me the graph of comparable homes in my area and the prices. My house was listed at a much higher price than any of those houses. I think the other agent told me my home would sell for a higher price because she wanted the listing. I lower the price on my house and list it with the new agent.

I notice immediately that I have more interest in my house, and it is shown a lot more. I’m very happy with the results. I’ll make sure to do my homework next time.

Work has been easier since I came back with the contract for Valerie Designs signed. I’m caught up, and my stores are doing well. I’m using the time to check all my paperwork and make sure all the Is are dotted and the Ts crossed.

Tonight I walk into the house and take off my shoes. I make my way through the living room to the stairs, and jump when I notice Zach’s parents sitting on the couch, “Goodness! You scared me.” I put my hand over my heart.

“Sorry about that. We got back about four hours ago and wanted to be here to meet you as soon as you all walked inside. We really need to talk to you,” Ramona says.

“No duh! My main question is why you haven’t answered any of our calls. All we’ve received has been the odd text saying that you’re okay. Zach will be home in about thirty minutes, and I need to change clothes. I’m going upstairs.”

“Hold on.” Ramona holds out a bunch of bags. “We brought a few things back for you.”

I snatch the bags quickly, holding them to me. “Thank you. But I’m still mad at you.”

I see Steve’s lips twitch, and I run upstairs, hearing their laughter behind me. I know they’re going to take us out to dinner, so I take a quick shower and match a pair of pants to the maroon sweater I find in one of the bags. I’m putting on my shoes when Zach walks through the door.

He kisses me, then takes in the bags on the bed and smiles. “A bribe, huh?”

“Probably, but I’m still holding them being gone against them.” I stand and accept another kiss.

“I’m going to take a quick shower and get dressed, and then I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“I’m not going down until you do, so I’ll wait.”

He smiles again. “Nice sweater.”

“Shut up.”

I comb my hair and put a little makeup on my face, then I watch my husband get dressed. The way his muscles flex makes me want to take off my clothes and have my way with him right now. Damn his parents for showing up tonight.

When he’s ready, I grab my purse, and we walk downstairs together and face his parents. We stand in front of them, and they follow suit and get to their feet.

“What we want to tell you will be better over dinner,” Steve tells us. They signal the limo, and it pulls around to the front of the house. We climb inside and the driver takes off.

“Where have you been? I feel like I at least need to know that much.” Zach’s arm comes around me, and I lean in to him.

They list the places they’ve been in the last eight months, and end with, “We didn’t come home because we were avoiding you.”

“We know that, and we know that you were at our wedding. We have the DVD. We need to know why you were avoiding us,” I say.

“You’ll find out shortly,” Steve says.

Zach nuzzles the spot behind my ear, and I close my eyes. He works his way down my neck until Steve begs, “Please. Not in front of us.”

Zach lifts my chin and kisses me. “Later,” he breathes against my lips.

The rest of the ride to the restaurant is completed in silence.

We pull up to the restaurant, and the valet opens the door for us, helping us out. Of course, I knew that we would end up at some fancy restaurant. At least I’m not underdressed. Zach takes my hand, and I follow him into the restaurant, where we’re seated immediately. The waitress takes our drink order, then walks away. We wait for Zach’s parents to start talking, but all they do is make small talk until at last our drinks have been delivered and our food order has been taken and the waitress sets our food in front of us.

“When are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Zach says.

“Right now.” They look at each other, and Ramona starts. “The day you were supposed to get married, we found out that I had some long-lost great-uncle we didn’t know about. He died and left a will for the youngest son on our side of the family, to inherit his money.”

“And there’s a lot of it,” Steve says.

“Come to find out, it’s you,” Ramona states.

“What does that have to do with you being at our wedding and then disappearing?” Zach leans forward in his chair. This is getting good, so I take a bite of my food and chew while they continue.

“There was a condition to the will. You had to get married and stay married for six months in order to get the money. We called you a few times, but we kept getting your voicemail. We finally called Stephanie the next afternoon, and she told us what happened.” Ramona touches my shoulder. “Not really sorry about that. He wasn’t right for you.”

Why didn’t anyone tell me that while I was trying to fall in love and get married to him? Our family.

I stop mid-chew. “Wait. You called my mom?” She nods.

“And she knew why you were trying to get hold of us?” She nods again, raising her eyebrows. Son of a— My mom knew all along and didn’t say anything. She has a lot of explaining to do.

“When we finally found you two, you were at the bar, three sheets to the wind and talking about getting married anyway. You had a whole bar full of people trying to talk you into it. We just helped them and pushed it along. We’ve always known that you two belong together. We knew it wouldn’t be a hardship for either of you.” Steve takes a bite of his food.

“We set everything up and pushed you through. It really wasn’t hard. You two love each other anyway. Stephanie and Rob watched your wedding on the computer. We had it live-streamed for them. The next morning, we went to the courthouse and made sure that anyone who got your file would tell you that you would have to stay married for six months. You could have gotten an annulment the same day if you’d needed to. They just have the three-month sign up to deter people.” Steve takes a sip of his wine before taking another bite of his food.

“Why wait for eight months to come home?” Zach asks.

“While we were avoiding you, we were actually working as well. We’ve had business these last two months, so we couldn’t get away. I talked to Stephanie a few times, and she told me that you all decided to make a go of it. I’m really happy for you.” Ramona has a smile on her face.

“Wait again. You mean that my mom has known where you were all this time too?”

Steve nods. “We asked both her and your father not to tell you. We wanted to tell you ourselves.”

“You could’ve called us,” my husband chastises them.

“We wanted to speak to you in person. We needed to explain the whole situation, and if we’d called, you would have demanded answers over the phone. It was just easier to wait until we could speak with you face to face.” Steve wipes his face with his napkin.

I roll my eyes. We aren’t getting anywhere with this.

“Why didn’t you just tell us what was going on the morning after the wedding?” Zach asks. “And why was Mom nowhere in sight after the wedding? Why did she keep calling me that night?”

“We didn’t want to give you a chance to rethink your marriage the next morning, and your mom was sick that night, so as soon as you were married, she had to go back to the hotel room. She kept calling because she wanted to experience the night with you. I told you to stop answering her calls because she was calling every five minutes,” Steve says.

“Anyway,” Ramona continues like the rest of our conversation hasn’t happened, “you’ve stayed married for the required length of time, so you get the money. And the land. And the houses. Basically, you get the whole estate. I just need you to sign some papers and everything will be put in your name. We have an appointment with the lawyer tomorrow.”

They talk about the times when Zach is available tomorrow, and they continue to talk about his inheritance and what it means for him. I send a quick text to my mom telling her that I know everything and she owes me an explanation. Then I order the biggest, richest chocolate dessert they have on the menu and proceed to eat all of it.

At the end of the night, we go home and fall into bed, stunned.

I confront my parents a couple of days later. They apologize profusely and congratulate Zach on his inheritance.

***Zach

I sign all the papers the lawyer gives me, and he hands me a stack of letters after congratulating me.

Each envelope has the name “Appropriate family member” scrawled on it. I smile at that. It seems he either had a sense of humor or was a very dour man. I decide to set some time aside and read all the letters. I hope they will tell me a lot about his life.

We’re in the last week of the project, and I’m excited to complete this one. I needed two more people on my team so we didn’t have to work so much overtime to complete the project. I’ll let Don know when he asks for my observations.

“What are you and the wife doing this weekend?” Enrique asks while we’re waiting for everyone to come into the meeting.

“She’s going out of town on a girls’ weekend. I’m spending this weekend sleeping and recuperating from working this project,” I tell him.

“Where is she going?” one of the girls on the team asks.

“She said something about a spa weekend. She asked me to go, but I didn’t want to intrude,” I tell her.

Everyone finally arrives and gets settled, and we have our final meeting. When it’s over, I thank everyone for their hard work and we make plans to go out Friday evening after work.

Friday comes quickly, and halfway through the day, Rigs texts me and says that since her house sold, she’s not going out of town. I’m happy to have my wife with me tonight. I invite her to go out with us, but she declines, telling me that she will be at home waiting for me and she loves me. It warms my heart.

Dinner is fun. Everyone is talking over everyone else. The food and drink is flowing, and everyone is laughing, having a great time. As it gets later in the evening, everyone starts to leave one by one. Eventually, everyone is gone and I pay the bill. I also send a text to Rigs letting her know that I’m on my way home.

I head out to my car, and I hear, “Fuck!” from a couple of cars down. I look, and it’s Catherine, kicking her car.

“Are you okay?”

She looks up, startled. “Oh, um, I locked myself out of my car.”

“I can call you a cab, and you can have someone unlock it for you tomorrow,” I offer.

“My house keys are in there also, and I live alone.” She kicks the tire. “Fuck!”

“You can stay at my house until tomorrow, and I’ll get someone out to unlock your car for you. It’s no problem.” I’m too tired to deal with this tonight.

She throws her arms around me. “Thank you so much! I don’t know how, but I’ll repay you!”

I peel her arms off me. “No problem. Let’s get going.” The drive home is made with her saying over and over again how she’s going to repay me. I really just want her to shut up. I’m tired and I can’t wait to see my wife.

We pull in through the gates and approach the main house.

“Oh my goodness! This is gorgeous! Is this where you live?”

I don’t answer.

I roll my eyes as I pull into the garage of our house and walk toward my garage door with her behind me, jabbering. I step into the house, onto a pair of Rigby’s shoes.

“Fuck! Why can’t she put her shoes away like normal people?” I mumble to myself. I kick them to the side and let Catherine in before closing and locking the door behind her.

I turn on the lights in the kitchen and go to the refrigerator to get myself a bottle of water. “Do you want one?”

“No thanks. Thank you for letting me stay the night here,” Catherine gushes once more.

“No problem. Let me show you where you’ll be sleeping.” She follows me to the room at the end of the hall. “I’ll see you in the morning.” I leave her where she’s standing and she says goodnight.

I walk into my bedroom and straight over to my wife. Pulling the covers off her face, I kiss her.

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi. Go take a shower. You smell like beer and smoke.” She starts to turn over, but I stop her.

“I just wanted to let you know that Catherine is here. She locked herself out of her car and house.”

“You know this is just a ploy to be here with you alone. She’s going to take the first opportunity to make a move on you. Then I’ll beat her ass,” she mumbles. “Take a shower and come back to me quickly.”

I kiss her forehead and smile. “As fast as I can.”

I hurry through my shower. I dry myself off and put on my underwear and pajamas.

“What the fuck?!”

I run out of the bathroom and see Rigs on top of a very naked Catherine, in our bed, with her fist pulled back about to punch her. I run and jump onto the bed, lifting her off Catherine.

“What the hell is going on here?” I pull her off the other side of the bed. She’s struggling the whole time to get back to Catherine.

“Your little slut here got into bed with me, naked, talking about how she can take care of you better than I can. She grabbed my tit!” Rigby tries to pull away from me again.

Catherine is shrinking in our bed, with our covers over her body. “I’m s-sorry. I thought it was him. I thought you were out of town.”

“And that gives you permission to go after my husband? Who the hell do you think you are? I will fuck you up, bitch!” Rigby is still fighting hard to get out of my grip.

I pull her flush to me. “Sweetie, I got this. Please relax so I can let you go.”

She relaxes in my grasp, her chest heaving.

“If I let you go, are you going to go after her?”

She shakes her head. I slowly let her go and step back from her.

“Catherine, we’re going to leave the room so you can get dressed. I’m going to call a cab for you, and you will get the hell out of my house. If you come near me or my wife again, I will let her loose on you. Do you understand?” She nods her head quickly, sinking further into our bed. I grab Rigs’ hand. “Let’s go downstairs and let her get dressed.”

We reach the kitchen, and I call a cab for Catherine. Rigs gets us each a bottle of water and leans against the counter. I stand behind her with my arms on either side of her. She leans back against me, her body stiff.

“I told you so.”

“You did.”

“You are taking me to buy a new bedroom set tomorrow.”

“Whatever you want, sweetie. I love you.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Catherine slinks downstairs into the kitchen, where we’re waiting. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re only sorry that it was me in that bed and not my husband. You are very lucky he pulled me off you. Get out of my house.” I hold Rigs close to the counter so she doesn’t go after her again.

“The cab is waiting for you outside.” I nod my head toward the door.

“Where will I go?” she asks.

“If you really locked your keys in the car, then you are more stupid than I thought you were. Get out of my house,” my wife says through clenched teeth.

She walks out of the front door without another word, and we hear the cab drive away. Rigs finishes her bottle of water and pulls away from me.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m getting my purse. I’m staying with your parents tonight. Every room that she was in needs to be redone. I’m not stepping a foot back into this house until it happens.”

We spend a month at my parents’ house. They laugh at me the whole time.