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“He’s a great guy.”
“I can tell. He’s the one in the picture you’ve got in your office at home, right? The one you go white-water rafting with?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything else until we’re in our suite waiting for the bellman to deliver our luggage.
I watch as she takes off the light sweater she traveled in and drapes it across the arm of the couch before kicking off her shoes. Then she goes into the bathroom and closes the door behind her, still without a word. She turns the sink on, runs the water for a couple of minutes before turning it off. And then there’s nothing. No toilet flushing, no water running, no door opening. Nothing at all except a silence that suddenly seems oppressive.
“Chloe.” I knock on the door. “Are you okay?”
The door swings open. “I’m fine. I think I’m going to go down and meet Tori, though. I don’t want her to get impatient.”
I try to catch her eye, but she’s looking through me. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She starts to move past me, but I block her path. She still won’t look at me.
A hot lick of fear snakes through me, but I ignore it. She hasn’t changed her mind about marrying me in the twenty minutes it’s taken us to get from the limo to this room. Still, something’s going on with her and I need to know what it is.
“I need to go,” she says.
“What you need is to tell me what’s going on in your head right now.” I rest my hands on her shoulders gently, then just wait her out. She has to look at me—has to talk to me—eventually.
“Nothing. I’m fine. It’s stupid.” She glances up and this time I manage to catch her eye. Once I do, I hold her gaze with my own, refusing to let her look away again.
“Well, which is it?” I ask softly. “Is it nothing or is it stupid? Or are you fine?”
Her only answer is a shrug, but she doesn’t look away, so that’s something, I suppose.
“I thought we weren’t going to do this,” I tell her.
“Do what?” she finally asks, after a long, awkward silence.
“Lie to each other. Or is that restriction only on my side?”
She rolls her eyes. “This isn’t the same thing at all.”
“Then what is it?” I demand. “How am I supposed to know what to fix if you won’t tell me what’s wrong?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t need you to fix things for me?” she demands, shrugging my hands off her shoulders as she pushes her way past me.
“No. It really hasn’t.” I stand my ground, watch as she starts to pace back and forth along the wall of plate glass windows that gives a hell of a view of The Strip forty floors below us. “I fix things. That’s what I do. You knew that when you agreed to marry me.”
She whirls on me then, cheeks pink and eyes flashing. She looks hot—really hot—and for a second I miss what she’s saying because all I can think about is getting her into bed and making her scream.
The thought is so vivid, the need to have her moving underneath me so great, that I’ve taken a couple steps toward her before the words I heard but didn’t listen to finally register. I freeze in place. “What do you mean, what are we doing here?” I demand, suddenly as angry as she is. “We’re getting married.”
“Are we?”
“We sure as hell are. Why? Are you suddenly getting cold feet?” Just the thought is an ice pick to my gut.
“Are you?” She lifts an inquiring brow and somehow manages to look drop-dead sexy as she does it. Then again, I think everything this woman does is sexy. The way she smiles, the way she thinks. Hell, even the way she breathes turns me on, all slow and quiet and steady like she’s got everything under control. And she’s asking if I’m the one with cold feet? I would have married her six weeks ago if she would have had me.
“No! I’m marrying you, Chloe.”
“Then why didn’t you want Sebastian to know? My best friend is downstairs right now, shopping for my wedding dress and you didn’t even bother to tell your best friend.”
“Is that what this is all about? You’re upset because I didn’t tell Sebastian?”
