Quick-Fix Wedding, Chapter 2

Happy Wednesday! We continue with our story about Jock, the werewolf, and Amanda, the heiress, who found themselves getting married sight unseen. I'll be posting it chapter by chapter every Wednesday until I eighter get it all posted or until I get it self-published. I'll be offering it free once it's done, so don't worry, I'm not teasing you with a freebee just to hoook you into buying the rest of it later.

If you missed the beginning, you can read the first half of the first chapter here and the second half of it here. Today's post is the entirety of chapter two, and I'll be doing full chapters from this point forward. Enjiy!

~ Rebecca




Amanda was in love with her husband. Well, sort of. She had technically known the man for less time than they had been married, but still. If she had met him before he lifted her veil at their wedding, she would have fallen in love with him. Not just because he agree to marry her to save her inheritance sight unseen, either. Jock was genuine grade A prime beefcake. A very charming cowboy beefcake. Who came riding to her rescue.

Oh, no, she thought. There she went with the Gothic romance stuff again. She shrugged it off, figuring she was entitled to her hero worship for one night at least. Besides, he really was a hunky cowboy and he had a terrific sense of humor, to boot.

“Oh, my god!” Amelia squealed as she took Jock’s vacated chair at the head table. Her uncle had dragged him off to “meet his new family” almost as soon as they’d arrived at the combination wedding reception-Thanksgiving dinner, which translated into grilling him about his intentions toward her. Uncle Charles was a tad too late, in her opinion, since he’d been the one to marry them only an hour ago.

“Yeah,” Amanda agreed as she turned to her cousin. “So, at what point were you going to tell me that your cousin was a total babe?”

“Says you, now that you married the man!” Amelia shot back.

“Yeah,” she said again and then sighed at the sight of her new husband’s very nice backside. “I have to admit that I came out of that on top. Nothing against Pablo or anything. He would have made a great fake husband but the idea of trying to sleep with a gay man was not all that appealing, if you know what I mean.”

“And the idea of sleeping with Jock?” Amelia asked, her eyes dancing with wicked delight.

“Girl, you have eyes! I know he’s your cousin and all, but surely you realize that any female who bats for our team would let that man eat crackers in her bed!” They both split into peals of giggles.

“Seriously, though,” Amelia said. “Jock really is a great guy. I had a total crush on him when I was a kid. He’s just so very nice!”

“And hot,” Amanda agreed, her gaze drawn back to him as if by magnetism.

“And he’s a real, live cowboy,” Amelia added.

“He told me he grew up on a ranch on the way over here. I didn’t realize he still worked on one,” Amanda said, wondering how that was going to work. Winnemucca was something of a small town but her family wasn’t in agriculture. And with her inheriting the casino upon their wedding, she couldn’t follow him back to wherever he came from. “Where does he live, anyway?”

“Oh, my god!” Amelia said again. “I still can’t believe my cousin married my other cousin sight unseen! Ok, ok,” she said when Amanda shot her a dirty look. “Let me fill you in on your new stud muffin. His full name is Jacques Antione Hancock. His dad was a science buff and named him after Jacques Cousteau, but everyone just calls him Jock. His mom’s name is Natalie and she still lives in Talbot’s Peak, Montana. He lives and works on the family ranch just outside of town, so he still sees her a lot. His dad, Tom, and my dad were brothers and they both died in the same accident that killed my our grandfather hand his brother. I met him when I was eight and he was eleven at our fathers’ funeral and spent practically my whole early life half in love with him.”

Amanda nodded her head, remembering him now from Amelia’s girlhood ramblings. Amelia never had much to do with her father’s family before his death. The family patriarch, Damien Hancock, had made a point of being very unfriendly to her at the funeral and Jock had stuck up for her. His mother, a prominent business woman in town, had invited her to come visit every summer after that and Jock had made a point of being her personal guide whenever she was in town.

“Yeah, I remember him now,” Amanda said. “I always thought your crush on him was because he was so nice to you. Now I see there was maybe a little more to it than that.”

“You could say that,” Amelia agreed with a smirk. “I did eventually outgrow my crush on him, though, and I’m absolutely thrilled that you ended up marrying him. I bet you find yourself wanting to make this a real marriage in every sense!”

Amanda couldn’t disagree. He was a dream come true for a small town girl who had dated and discarded all the available local men. He was perfect. She just hoped he wasn’t fixed on this being a temporary arrangement. And she hoped he didn’t mind moving down here to be with her. Dang, she thought sullenly. What started out as a quick-fix to getting around her grandfather’s draconian changes to her father’s will would end up being this complicated?

If only Pablo hadn’t backed out. But no, she realized. She might not be wrestling with the unfortunate problem of falling in love at first sight with her “temporary” husband, but she much preferred this to a true sham marriage. The way she saw it, her and Jock had about as much going for them as any normal couple. She only hoped he saw it that way, too. Now all she had to do was figure out how a girl went about asking her brand new husband if he would maybe like to make their marriage real. That wasn’t exactly covered in any of Miss Manners’ etiquette columns!

“You know what?” she said to Amelia, who was still babbling on about what a great guy Jock was. “I think I’m going to go over there and rescue my husband from Uncle Charles.” She got up and started working her way around the table. The going was slow, due mostly to family members who wanted to wish her well and get in a little gossip about her new husband. Amanda was getting the feeling that most of her family was cautiously optimistic about how things had worked out, especially the male portion of her family.

Jock saw his new wife get up and start walking over toward him somewhat unsteadily. This shindig may have been one part Thanksgiving dinner and one part wedding reception, but that punch had been spiked with something considerably stronger than champagne. He’d had more than a little of it himself, but of course, werewolves don’t get drunk. A high metabolism sucked that way. He could eat just about anything in just about any quantity, too—except for chocolate. No booze no bon-bons. He suspected that was the real reason werewolves had such contentious home lives.

His train of thought was jerked sharply to another track when he was three guys who didn’t smell right converge on Amanda. He couldn’t quite identify what smelled off about them but it was something. He turned his back on “Uncle Charles”, as the man had identified himself, and began pushing through the crowd towards her. Just as he got close, something sharp jabbed him in the ribs.

“Now don’t go making a scene, pretty boy,” the voice said. Whoever it was smelled exactly like the three who were now hustling Amanda out of the room. “It’s just a little wedding tradition. You know, where we steal the bride?”

Steal the bride, may ass, Jock thought. If it was so harmless, why was there a knife shoved against his ribs? Amanda wasn’t struggling but maybe that was because she knew those who were abducting her. She was engaging in an angry but low pitched conversation with one of the guys. He couldn’t make out much more than the sound of hissing—a sure sign that what she was chewing the contrite looking ma out but she was also trying not to look angry.

He didn’t like this at all. His instincts were telling him that his new wife was in more danger than she realized. If she trusted one or more of them, and it looked like she did, then she was probably oblivious to that danger. Normally, that little pig sticker being pushed into his side would not have stopped Jock. It wasn’t silver plated or his side would already be itching even through his dress shirt, so it couldn’t hurt him enough to stop him. It could hurt pretty much everyone else in the gymnasium the reception was being held in, though.

Besides, he was by himself. A lone wolf never trumped the odds by charging right in. He had to be clever. They obviously didn’t know he was a supernatural creature at all and they really couldn’t know he was a werewolf or they would have taken him out right away rather than trying to detain him with a plain steel knife and one guy. They may be supernaturals of some sort themselves—his nose told him that much, even if he couldn’t identify what type—but they were dumb ones. They wouldn’t be guarding their tracks against someone who could follow their scent trail. He was better off playing along so that they’d leave this place, which was chock full of vanilla humans, and go someplace he could let his wolf loose.

He watched as Amanda was pulled all the way out the door. The guy who had been holding the knife to his ribs melted away into the crowd, not that it helped him any—Jock had his scent now and that was more important to a werewolf than facial recognition. Uncle Charles sidled up next to him, acting a bit jumpy.

“That’s not good, not good at all,” the little priest muttered.

“Why’s that?” Jock asked.

“The marriage has to be consummated tonight. You can’t do that if they keep her ‘til after midnight,” Uncle Charles muttered.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jock said with an easy smile that didn’t reach his demand hard eyes. “Do you know who those yokels were?”

“Oh, yes,” Uncle Charles said with a sharp angry nodding of his jowly head. “One was that friend of hers, Pablo. The one that stood her up today, who was supposed to marry her. The other two and that one that’s sneaking off now are hired thugs Amanda’s grandfather sent to make sure his will was done.”

“Perfect,” Jock said with an evil grin. It was perfect, too. That meant he could do whatever he wanted to them for stealing what was his.

Quick-Fix Wedding, Chapter 1, part 2

This is a continuation from last week. If you missed that part, you can read it here.

“Mamma?” she asked nervously. “What does my groom look like?”

“Don’t worry about that, baby,” her mother whispered. “He’s only going to be a paper groom.”

“But Mamma, I have to sleep with him!” she hissed back.

“Think of it like a one night stand,” he mother whispered back as she dragged Amanda into place at the center of the nave. The organ started playing Pachelbel’s Cannon in G Major and everyone turned to look at her. This was it, she thought. Time to go meet my future groom/fuck buddy or whatever he was. Time to go thwart her grandfather’s will.

Amanda wished she could say her wedding had flown by in a blur but it hadn't. For a woman who had been raised to be strong and independent, these last few weeks since learning of her grandfather's change to her father’s will had been hell. She had almost come to terms with being forced to marry, and only because she loved Pablo like a brother, when Dearest Grandfather found out that Pablo was gay. All she could think of was that while Pablo had been fine with the idea of hood winking “the man”, he was not alright with the stipulation that he had to actually sleep with her. Publically. As in medieval bedding rituals.

This wedding looking more gothic than medieval, though. Medieval people considered weddings to be little more than business transactions that resulted in babies. The bride and groom usually knew each other, and certainly would have met each other, before the wedding. No, marrying a cousin’s cousin sight unseen was straight out of an Elizabethan Goth novel, complete with the evil bastard of a grandfather. Amanda sighed, wishing she had not spent quite so many hours devouring Ann Radcliff’s gothic novels as a teen. It had clearly put a few crazy ideas into her head. Next thing she knew, she’d be looking at her mysterious groom, trying to figure out what deep, dark secrets he was hiding from her!

She looked up at his very large form, blurred by the heavy lace of her veil, and squinted. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary so far as she could tell. Uncle Charles cleared his throat meaningfully. Amanda jumped, realizing she had missed her cue.

“Do you promise to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do you part?” he repeated.

“I do,” he choked out, ignoring the odd thrill that ran up her spine at “’til death do you part.” That was silly. This was still only a temporary marriage, even if it was to her cousin’s cousin rather than to her gay best friend. It was really more of a one night stand that would linger a bit.

“Do you have the ring?” Uncle Charles asked. Her groom fumbled a bit, finally pulling something small out of his pant pocket. At Uncle Charles’ urging, he slipped it onto her ring finger. Another thrill of something other ran down her spine as the thin gold ring, warm from his body heat, slid past her knuckle. She felt a little giddy when he lifted her hand and kissed it softly. She shivered when he folded her small hand into both of his much larger ones, a feeling of destiny settling heavy on her shoulders. She tried to ignore it, thinking it was a product of her earlier musing about gothic romance novels, but she couldn’t quite convince herself.

Finally, he lifted her veil and she got to see her groom for the first time. If she had to come up with one word to describe Jock Hancock, it would be “chiseled.” He hand a square rugged jaw, high sharp cheek bones, and piercing blue eyes. His brown hair was over-long and curling around his ear just a bit, clean but not overly well kempt, the type of man who didn’t care much for what was fashionable. His tall frame looked heavy with muscle from his huge shoulders to his trim, narrow waist, to his mile long legs. Then he bent down to give her the traditional kiss and any thoughts of what he looked like fled.

Jock looked down at his bride and gulped. Oh, Luna above, she was lovely! He reminded himself sternly that this was a quickie wedding of convenience. He didn’t get to keep her. Oh but her scent! It whispered to him of hearth and home and crisp, clean winter snows laying heavy on a pine forest. She was dainty, coming not quite to his shoulder, with a waist so narrow he could probably span it with his hands. When he lifted her veil and saw think black hair, a deep olive complexion and velvety chocolate almond-shaped eyes, he knew he was lost. This may only be a temporary thing for her, but his inner beast was howling for her. His one and only, his mate. ‘Til death would they part, indeed!

He smiled at her and dropped down for the traditional kiss to seal their vows, reminding himself that there was a whole church filled with people who were related to her and knew full well that he was a stranger who’d never set eyes on her before five minutes ago. He kept the kiss chaste and quick, though he did allow himself to breathe deeply of her enticing fragrance. He lifted his head back up and noticed how tense she seemed to be. Aw, no. He couldn’t let his precious if very new mate be uncomfortable around him! So he grinned, stepped back and theatrically bowed over her hand, which he was still holding on to for dear life.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Hancock. My name is Jock and I will be your husband for the duration of this marriage. If there is anything I can do for you, do not hesitate to let me know.” The sound of bawdy laughter filled the small church, but he didn’t care. He saw her sweet, bow-shaped crimson lips quiver with repressed mirth. That was all that mattered to him, that Amanda was put at ease by his tomfoolery.

“Pleased to meet you, too, Jock,” she murmured shyly. He nodded his head back toward the crowded pews and winked.

“Shall we?” he asked. She nodded and blushed. Jock gave her his most encouraging good ol’ boy grin and turned, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. He was pleased to see that his new wife was as susceptible to good ol’ boy charm as most women. He spent most of his time working the back country on the Pack’s ranch so that was about the only kind of charm he could claim to have. That and wolfish charm, but that usually only worked on female wolves. As good as she smelled, he could tell that Amanda was plain vanilla human. That was just fine by him.

He was startled into laughing when he was what was waiting for them outside the church. He looked over at Amanda to find her chuckling, as well. Honestly, it was the only response most people would have come up with at the sight of a turkey-drawn buggy. Or rather, a horse drawn buggy with the horses decked out like turkeys.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “It was supposed to have been a joke for my friend Pablo, the guy I was actually supposed to have married.”

“No problem,” Jock said gamely. “You drivin’ or am I?”

“You... know how to drive a horse buggy?” she asked uncertainly. Jock laughed again.

“You could say that,” he replied. “I was born and raised on cattle ranches. The teams I usually drive pull hay wagons but I’m sure I can manage a little two-wheel buggy just fine.” He handed her up just as a pack of younger people his and Amanda’s age spilled out of the church at a dead run. Jock noticed that Amelia was in the group and that each person was holding a bag with one hand buried in them. He met Amelia’s eye and shook his head. “Catch us if you can!” he hollered back at them and jumped into the buggy.

“Shouldn’t you be going faster than this to outrun them?” Amanda asked, laughing and shaking flower petals out of her eyes.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked. “Besides, the horses were cooling their heels for a good long while. I don’t want to push them too hard.”

“Good point,” she replied.

A Quick-Fix Wedding

Jock slumped down in the pew and tried to ignore the hollow, gnawing ache in his belly. The fact that he was here, at the wedding of his paternal cousin Amelia’s maternal cousin Amanda, said worlds about how desperate he had been to out of attending the moon-darking ceremony. It was not something that came to wolves naturally, dammit, and he wasn’t going to go along with it!


Of course, nor was he the alpha, which meant having to have a good reason not to attend.

The moon-darking ceremony was his alpha’s invention, an attempt to address the high number of unmated wolves in the pack. In real wolf packs, only the alpha pair mated to keep the population of the pack at sustainable levels. In a world that was hostile to shape shifters, were-packs also had adopted that practice, so they didn’t have packs too big to sustain or, most importantly, to hide. The alpha had decided that in this day and age of birth control and expanding social tolerance, mating lower wolves—but not allowing breeding privileges—was the answer to a different wolf pack problem. Tail chasing.

Since when was chasing tail considered a problem, Jock wondered. So long as there was no unwanted sexual contact and no leaving litters of pups everywhere, who cared if wolves humped willing partners all night every night? It was good, harmless (if not exactly clean) fun.

But no. The alpha wanted his wolves to settle down and pick mates. There weren’t enough females to go around if the mated pairs were strictly male-female, but the alpha hadn’t specified that. He said “non-breeding mating groups”, meaning however you want it, fine, but everyone had to be in a group of some kind. During the moon-darking—why not just say new moon???—everyone had to pick and they were stuck in that mating group until the next new moon. Or, moon-darking, rather. See? Not at all how werewolves work. Besides, he just wasn’t into that stuff. He liked one-on-one long term monogamous relationships. Instead of going to that stupid made-up ceremony, he’d called his cousin Amelia and begged her to invite him to Thanksgiving at her house. She had a wedding to go to and no date, so she was fine with that. He’d get out of being matched up with someone he didn’t really want to sleep with and she wouldn’t have to go to a family wedding with some random guy off the street. Or worse, alone.

So that’s why he was sitting here in the pew of a church in a town he’d never visited before in the company of a cousin he didn’t know very well waiting for a weeding to start. It was late, too. He checked his watch again and then tapped it. It was now almost three and the wedding was supposed to have started at two. He frowned and looked around.

Uh-oh, he thought when he spied a crowd of people spilling out of church nave. No one looked happy, least of all the bride, who’s face was covered with a heavy while veil. He shoulders were scrunched in, though, making it clear that she wasn’t in a good place, emotionally.

“Dearly beloved,” the priest said sonorously at the front. “It would seem we have no groom for this event. Unless anyone else would like to take this fine young lady as his wife, we are going to have to cancel.”

Time seemed to stop. Jock looked at the cringing young woman, whom he could even see properly. He looked down at his cousin Amelia. She was looking back at him, eyes just as wide and shocked as his. He looked back up at the girl and whispered to his cousin, “Is this for real? Did the priest actually just offer her up like day-old bread to anyone who wants her?”

“Um,” Amelia said, chewing on her lip. “Amanda kind of agreed to an arranged marriage. He dad won’t let her inherit unless she’s married by her twenty-fifth birthday.”

“When’s her birthday?” Jock asked, stunned.

“Today.”

He looked at Amelia. She shrugged and then said, “He dad’s a bit of an ass, but the family lawyers checked. It’s all legal and binding. She has to be married by the end of the day or…”

Jock looked at the cringing girl, stunned by how backward that was. Then he had a thought. Married wolves were exempt from the moon-darking ceremony…





Amanda was miserable. She knew it wasn’t going to go as well has her mother had planned. Get a quickie arranged marriage to satisfy her dad’s medieval stipulations. After a year, they’d get a divorce. Sounded simple. Then her asshole father said it had to be a real wedding, not a paperwork one. And that, of course, had freaked out her friend, Pablo, who had agreed to a paper marriage-in-name-only. She was quite possibly the only woman on the planet to be stood up by her best friend at their arranged wedding. And then her maternal uncle, who was a priest and was officiating, solicited a new groom for her from her own wedding guests. Oh, just shoot me now, she though.

“I’ll do it,” a deep voice said from somewhere in the middle of the packed pews. She tried to look, but the veil was too thick. All she could see were vague shapes, like ghosts in a fog bank. As she watched, a very large shape seemed to rise above the other moving shapes. Whoever he was, he was very large, Amanda thought. The crowd murmured and her uncle the priest cleared his throat.

“And you are?”

“I’m Amelia’s cousin Jock on her father’s side. Her dad and mine were brothers,” the deep voice replied calmly.

“Do you understand the circumstances involved?” Uncle Frank asked, sounded exactly like the stodgy old priest he was.

“Yeah—uh, yes, sir,” the unseen man said, sounding a bit flustered. “Amelia explained it to me just now. She said her cousin had to be married by the end of the day or her sperm donor was going to deny Amanda her rightful inheritance. I’m not married or planning to get married any time soon.” The hulking shape seemed to shrug as the tittering stopped. Sperm donor, huh? She was going to have to remember that. It fit her father perfectly.

She tried desperately to remember something, anything about Amelia’s cousin. She didn’t think she’d ever met him, though he was Amelia’s last living relative on her dad’s side. She and Amelia shared maternal bonds, so he wouldn’t have been around the family. Just then, she remembered Amelia commenting that her cousin had called up asking if she minded if he visited for Thanksgiving. And so here he was, saving Amanda from her father, if not from total embarrassment.

“You’ll do fine,” Mother said from Amanda’s left side. “Places everyone! Young man, go up to the front of the church. Do you have a ring? Oh wait. Of course you don’t—”

“Well,” he said, sounding very bashful. “I do have my grandmother’s wedding ring. My mom wore it on a chain around her neck and when she died, I started wearing it that way, too. Because it reminded me of her,” he finished lamely. Amanda felt for him. Her family was very intimidating. Not in a bad way, of course, but they were more than a little batty. She didn’t have to actually see them to know they were probably staring at the poor guy intently, polite smiles on their faces and nodding as if bat-shit crazy stuff like this happened every day and was totally unremarkable. Amanda had to admit that she was already starting to like him, sight unseen. But then again, Amelia was one part cousin and one part best friend. Id she brought this Jock to a family wedding, he had to be good people.

He mother grabbed her arm and steered her into place without warning. “Just keep calm, baby,” her mother whispered loudly. “It’ll all be over soon. You’ll have a husband to shut your father up with and then you’ll have the company fair and square.”

“Mamma?” she asked nervously. “What does my groom look like?”