“Tell me what happened last night,” I say.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“No. Not really.”
“You punched my step-cousin out.”
Her eyes sparkle with sheer admiration as she looks at me across the table as though I’m her knight in shining armor. I don’t usually like it when women look at me like this, but with her… I feel ten feet tall. The realization is terrifying, like being trapped on a roller coaster that’s about to drop.
“You know, the asshole I was almost forced to marry so he could steal my money,” she says.
The one she supposedly crossed the hotel wall to escape from.
“But it was too late for him because we’d gotten married already,” she says. “We were walking out of the chapel when he stopped us.”
Weird. How loopy was I that I agreed to marry her, just like that?
“By the way, your punch was justified because he hit you first,” she adds. “He knows karate, so he hit you pretty hard.”
I cock an eyebrow. He must be shitty at karate, because I’m not feeling it. If Josh or Bryce had punched me, I would’ve been bruised for days.
“He went down like a misfired rocket.” She lets out a laugh, which puts a reluctant smile on my face. “Hopefully, he and his parents won’t bother me for a while.”
“Why not?”
“Because you and I are married now?”
“The ceremony alone isn’t legally binding,” I inform her.
“Don’t worry.” She’s all sincerity. “We got a marriage license first.”
Isn’t she thorough?“Who told you to get a license?”
“No one. It just happened. You were there, too. And you insisted on paying for it.”
I can’t picture myself doing that. But I don’t remember, so I can’t deny it. She could lie about everything, including her relationship with Mom and Harvey—or lack thereof—and I wouldn’t know any better.Irritating.
“A fake Frank Sinatra sang for us, too, which makes it extra airtight because he’s a licensed officiant.”
I frown.A fake Frank Sinatra?Fucking Harvey. It isn’t like me at all to marry a woman I don’t know, even if I was high. He was probably willing to keep me all night to force me to sign the retainer agreement. Bet the drug he fed me was to make me malleable and nod and agree with him, regardless of whatever warning signs might have been there.
“Can I suggest something?” Lareina asks.
“Sure.” She might finally tell me why she’s gone after my bachelorhood while I was out of it. I pull one of the cream-laden bowls of berries close and start to eat.
She eyes it longingly. I push the other bowl toward her, but she doesn’t touch it. Instead, she continues to look at mine, then swallows hard.
I don’t know what this…fetish is, and shouldn’t care. But her longing gaze is driving me crazy. A starving stray dog would be less overt. I swap the bowls.
“Thank you.” The smile she gives me is like the sunlight pouring in through the window behind her. I stare, dazzled. My heart pounds, the rapid beats reverberating through my body. I reach for my coffee to shake off the strange agitation.
“As I was saying…” She pops a strawberry into her mouth and sighs softly. If she wants me to give her proposal proper consideration, she needs to quit making that orgasm face! “I’d like to propose that we maintain our marriage.”
“No.” My response is instant and firm. I look at the cheap ring on my finger again. It’s nice enough that she helped, but I’m not staying married to a woman who throws me off like this. And although I only have two more days until my deadline, I do have more dates set up. Surely one of them will work out.
My personal goals are simple: marry a woman who doesn’t throw me off, get promoted and live a good, uneventful life.
“It’d only be for six months, until my thirtieth birthday,” she says.
