Something in his voice makes me turn around.
He’s standing by the window, the phone pressed to his ear, and his expression has gone carefully blank in a way that makes my stomach flip. Not the good kind of flip. The “something is very wrong” kind.
“No, I understand what you’re saying. I’m asking you to explain how that’s possible.”
I set down the spatula.
“Right. And when was this processed?” Another pause. His eyes find mine across the room, and there’s something in them I can’t read. “I see. And the timeline for… right. Thirty days. Got it.”
His voice is mechanical and weirdly polite as he thanks whoever’s on the other end before he lowers the phone.
The silence stretches.
“Tank?” I wipe my hands on a dish towel, moving toward him. “What’s wrong? You look like someone just told you your truck got repossessed.”
“That was the county clerk’s office.” He says it slowly, like he’s still processing. “Apparently, there was some confusion with the paperwork we signed after the auction Friday night.”
I stop a few feet away. “Did they lose our forms? Because I remember signing a lot of things?—”
“Marlie’s Angels filed our Domestic Partnership Agreement with the county. Standard procedure. It’s how they track placements and make sure the women are protected legally.” Tank scrubs a hand over his jaw in a tell I'm learning means he’s working up to something. “Usually, those forms get delivered to the clerk in Havenstone County.”
“Okay...” I draw the word out, waiting for the other shoe.
“Although the cabin is technically part of Havenridge Ranch, the land is part of the new expansion zone. So the paperwork went to the county office out here instead.” He pauses. “Where they have a new clerk.”
“A new clerk who...?”
“Processed our Domestic Partnership Agreement as a marriage license application.”
I blink.
Wait for the punchline.
Tank just looks at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say carefully. “Did you just saymarriage license?”
“Montana recognizes domestic partnership agreements as grounds for common-law marriage if they’re filed as such.” His throat bobs. “The agreement had our legal names, addresses, ID verification. There’s a checkbox for ‘intent to cohabitate in an exclusive partnership.’”
“The checkbox,” I say slowly. “I remember that. I thought it was asking if I intended to stay at Havenridge.”
“So did I. But the new clerk flagged it. And apparently, there was a software update last week. The system auto-generated a marriage record number and sent it straight to the state database.” His voice has gone flat, reciting what he must have just learned. “According to the state of Montana, we’ve been legally married since Friday at 6:47 PM.”
The words hit me one at a time.
Marriage. Record. Legally. Married.
“That’s not—” I shake my head as if I can physically dislodge the information. “We didn’t—You can’t justaccidentallyget married because of asoftware glitch. There are rules. Processes. Someone checks these things!”
“Usually, yes. But the new clerk didn’t know the difference, and by the time the system flagged it, we were already in the state database.”
I think back to Friday night. The cramped hallway behind the auction stage. The forms I signed on autopilot because I was too rattled by Tank’s thousand-dollar bid to read the fine print. All those boxes about non-harassment clauses and asset protection and legal traceability?—
“So Marlie’s Angels filed paperwork toprotectme,” I say slowly, “and a new clerk at an unfamiliar county office processed it as a marriage license because their system had an update that auto-filled the wrong form type.”
“That’s about it.”
I stare at him.
