One Night In Reno Read Online Free PDF Page B

temporary arrangement.  My protection, my name.  A chance to get back on your feet.”  He didn’t want to spook her so he made it measurable.  “Say a year.             
    “Marriage is the practical solution.  And I’m a practical man.  If I’m going to be responsible for you and the boy, then I owe it to the three of us to make you my legal dependents.  It’s not going to be easy living with a Navy SEAL.  You can ask me all the questions you want about my job, but I won’t be able to answer them.  I’m gone three hundred days a year.  You’ll never know where I’ve been or where I’m going.  Or when I’m coming home.”
    He left out the “if” he came home, because there was always the possibility of being killed in action.
    “I’ve got some money saved and some burning a hole in my pocked right now, but I’m not a rich man.  The Navy will increase my allowance from that of a bachelor to a married man--not much--a couple hundred dollars a month.  Which I’ll put into a checking account in your name.  When you get a job you’ll be able to add to it, save for your future.  You’d be able to take classes, go on to college if you want.  Then there’s the matter of medical and dental--if there’s an emergency--and I’m not saying there will be, but if there is, we’ll be covered.  Boys break things, arms and teeth.  We can think of this marriage as our insurance policy.”
    “You want me to marry you for medical and dental?”
    “No, I wa nt you to marry me because...”  Because she needed him and he wanted to be needed.  With a gut aching certainty, he knew the three of them—make that four—belonged together.  He swallowed hard.  “...I’m the best option you have right now.”
    #
    As far as proposals went this one was at the very least honest.  Jenny realized she could fall in love with someone like Garrett Erickson.  Not with someone like him, with him.  For that reason alone, his self-sacrificing proposal deserved a refusal.  “I can’t marry you, Mr. Erickson.”
    “Officers are misters.  I’m just plain Chief Petty Officer Garrett “Itch” Erickson.  I don’t expect anything from you, Jenny.  This doesn’t have to be a real marriage.”
    Josh pressed his face against the backseat window.  No mistaking where he stood in all this.  For Josh she could do this.  She should do this.  Because if anything happened to her there’d be no one to care for him.  But it was also up to her to protect her son and too many questions remained unanswered.
    “Why?” she asked simply.  “I mean I can see what Josh and I are getting out of this, but what about you?”
    “What about me?” he shrugged off her question.  “I knew a woman in your situation once.”  He raked a hand through his hair.  “Got pregnant in high school, never finished her education--no help from the baby’s father or her parents, thought she could make it on her own.  She never did get on her feet.  She wound up on the streets and her son in foster care.”
    That sounded too close to the truth of her situation.  Still, she didn’t want to believe it.  “I can make it on my own--”
    “I know you can,” he said, matter-of-factly.  “I just want to give you that chance.”
    Like the twelve hundred dollars she’d found in her purse and had no intention of keeping.  Money wasn’t the answer, was marriage? 
    She didn’t know which way to turn, but Garrett, being Garrett, knew exactly what to do.  He stepped around to her side of the door and held her while she cried tears that soaked his shirt.  The easy part would be leaning on his broad shoulders.  The hard part would come later when she had to let him go.  When she and Josh had to let him go. 
    “What happened to the son?” she asked, even though she already knew.
    “He ran away from the system at fourteen.  Wound up in and out of juvie before the McCaffrey’s took him in and helped straighten his