Chapter 5

"It's 3:00, we have to go," I say, lying completely still.

"I know, just ten more minutes," he says in a low voice, kissing my neck as he holds me from behind.

"You said that ten minutes ago."

"Yes."

"And ten minutes before that."

"Yes," he says, pulling me closer to him.

"And ten minutes before that."

"No, that time it was you."

"Right."

"What if…"

"Josh."

"I know." He kisses my shoulder once more and then rolls to his back and gets out of bed. I watch him move about the room picking up clothes that were strewn about an hour and a half or so ago. His body is quite fantastic for a man his age with his job, his eating habits, and his exorcize regime. In fact, his body is quite fantastic for a man half his age with good eating habits and a daily exorcize regime.

I stand up and stretch my arms over my head. I'm extremely relaxed and my body feels pretty much like Jell-O; I could have stayed in bed the rest of the day. I try to put that thought out of my head and pull my arms back down and open my eyes. Josh is staring at me like I'm some sort of Greek goddess, which makes me blush. And when I blush, I blush everywhere. "No staring, Josh."

"You were staring first." He has a very good point.

I nod and start putting on my clothes. "I'm getting my own room when we get back. We can't keep having this… problem."

He steps into his jeans. This man can wear jeans like very few other people. "This time was your fault. You said we could."

I smile and pull my shirt over my head. "Actually, I was talking about going to the courthouse."

"Which is why we had to hurry." An hour and a half? He calls that hurrying? His idea of foreplay could last all day. We're going to have to test that theory out in about two and a half years.

"When I said we had to hurry, I meant to the courthouse." I grab a brush and comb through my hair.

"But I came over there, and…" he points to the scene of our last crime.

"See, that was your fault, because you started doing that thing to my neck and ear."

"Ahh… so you weren't trying to turn me on with the whole naked massage in the same room with CJ thing?"

"Not so much, no."

"Hmm… guess I misjudged that one."

"Guess so." I grab my purse and the marriage certificate, and Josh takes our rings from his pants pocket, puts his on and hands me mine. I put mine on as well, deciding not to spend any time trying to figure that one out, and off we go to the wonderful wizard of Atlantic City.

When we get to the courthouse, we walk up to the lady at the front desk of the Marriage/Divorce division and calmly explain our situation. We leave out certain details… the White House, both acts of consummation, and the already engaged again details to be exact.

Apparently, Lara here has heard our story once or twice before, because she hands us a clipboard and goes back to her computer work as though nothing happened. We head over to the corner of the room to fill it out.

I do most of the form without Josh's help, but hand it to him when I'm done to fill in his side of what happened. "You put my social security number down here," he says, looking at the form.

"Yes."

"You know my social security number?" He looks at me like he can't believe I could possibly know that. Like I randomly wrote a number on the form and it just happened to be his social security number.

"Apparently."

"How do you know my social security number?"

I look at him like he's an idiot. An idiot that I adore and wouldn't mind taking into the nearest closet, but an idiot none-the-less. "Are you serious with this question? I know your social security number, your driver's license number, the pin number to your ATM card, your Visa and MasterCard numbers, including their expiration dates and 3-digit codes on the back, and all your frequent flyer mileage numbers, not to mention your address, your mother's address, your license plate, and the user name and password you use on any internet sites that require them."

His eyes get bigger and bigger the more I speak. "By heart?" he squeaks.

I wiggle my eyebrows at him. "Does that scare you?"

"A little."

"Good."

Josh finishes filling out the form for the annulment and we take it back up to not so friendly Lara at the desk. She takes it from us and starts typing in information. Had I known she was just going to type it in, I would've told her to move over and typed it from the beginning.

While she's typing, Josh gets fidgety. Big surprise, I know. "How long will this take?"

She looks up at him with an evil glare. "About five minutes."

"I meant the annulment process."

"A few weeks."

"Will we need to come back for it?"

"No, if you're approved for annulment, you'll receive notification in the mail." She looks over at me. "You're not suing for alimony or child support, right?"

For a marriage of one day? "No."

She pointedly looks at my ring. "Didn't think so." This makes me laugh.

Josh looks at me and then back at the woman defensively. "We were drunk. Sober, I would've gotten a much better ring."

"Uh huh," she says doubtfully. I put my hand over my mouth and look down at the desk.

"I have very good taste," he says a little loud.

I reach over and put my hand on his to calm him. "Josh. She doesn't care about your taste."

"But…"

"Josh, please don't fight with the woman who's in charge of our annulment."

"Yes, Josh," says Lara. "Listen to your wife." Wife. I like that. It has a nice ring to it. Focus, Donna.

"She's not in charge, the judge is," he mumbles. I'm going to kill him. Lara over here's going to wait until we leave and that annulment form is going to disappear.

"Joshua," I say, giving him a death glare. "Has working with me for the last six and a half years not taught you anything about who's really in charge of things?"

He looks at her and then at me and then back at her, and suddenly he looks a little frightened. "I'm sorry," he says to her. "Would you like something to drink? There's a soda machine down the hall. I could run and get you one."

Lara looks at me and nods, obviously impressed. "No thanks, I'm fine. I do need your marriage certificate though."

I pull it out of my purse and hand it to her. She looks at it and looks back at me. "Where did you get married?"

I shrug. "We don't remember much about last night. We just found that this morning, along with our rings."

"You have no idea?" I shake my head and she looks at Josh.

"We don't know. We were hoping the certificate would be enough."

"Do you have a receipt for the chapel?"

Josh looks through his wallet. "No. I might be able to get one from my credit card company, assuming I paid by credit card. Do we need it?"

"You might want to get it," she says to him, typing into the computer again.

"Can we start the process without it? We're only in town for the weekend," I ask her.

"Well…" she looks up at us and gives us a small smile. Yes! We've won her over. "Hold on for one minute," she says, standing up and walking into a door behind her desk.

As soon as she's gone, I turn to Josh and whisper harshly, "We should've been tracking down the chapel instead of…"

"Of what?"

"Consummating!" I scream whisper.

"I only get to be married to you for one day. Did you really think I'd waste it on the phone trying to find a wedding chapel when I could be making love to you," he scream whispers back.

"Well, fine," I spit out.

"Fine." After that, it gets eerily quiet as we both stare at the empty desk in front of us.

I take several deep breaths, but then I can't help myself. "I'm going to kiss you now."

"Oh, thank God," he breathes out before pulling me to him and kissing me right there in the Marriage/Divorce department of the courthouse. Immediately, my hands go around his neck and my fingers play with the curls on the back of his neck, and his hands go around my waist, pulling me as close to him as he can.

We continue kissing until we hear Lara clear her throat. Even then, we kiss for several more seconds before pulling apart from each other and looking at her apologetically.

"Mr. and Mrs…" she says, sitting back down at her desk.

"Yes?" I ask, motioning to Josh to wipe the lipstick off his mouth.

"This is a false certificate," she says, holding up our marriage certificate.

"Excuse me?"

"This is a fake. I don't know where you got married, but you got ripped off. This isn't a New Jersey marriage certificate." She pulls a piece of paper out of a stack of papers on her desk. "This is what a New Jersey marriage certificate looks like. Yours is a fraud. Whoever married you ripped you off."