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“Lexie, can we please go someplace private?” Ethan asked.
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “As long as it’s not outside.”
I’d about frozen my tits off out there and poor Baby Girl, she was gonna be mad at me for ages for bringing her to the Arctic Circle.
Ethan reached out, as if to touch my elbow, like he might lead me someplace, and I jerked backward. This was all really hard. Harder, actually, than I’d thought it would be. Because this place was so pretty and his father was sitting right there. Because he was as handsome as I remembered. And he smelled the same, like pine trees.
And I’d liked him. So much.
And he’d been hoping to never see me again.
His mouth tightened and he stepped back, his arm out. “This way,” he said. And I squeezed past him toward a pretty little room off the lobby.
“Ethan,” his father said when he must have thought he couldn’t hear me.
“I’m handling it, Dad.”
“Not very well. Your mother—”
“I know.”
I lifted my chin and kept walking.
Ethan stepped in behind me and shut the doors, taking his time because he was probably trying to figure out what to say to me.
“You guys really like Christmas, don’t you?” I asked, taking in the room’s decorations. “Or do you guys film those Hallmark Christmas movies here? Because you totally could. It’s like Christmas threw up all over this place.”
“Lexie,” he said quietly. “Are we really married?”
I nodded because the seriousness on his face was throwing me off. “You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t—”
I pulled out the licenses and the marriage certificate I found in the bottom of my purse the morning after he left and handed them over to him. He studied them, his brow furrowed.
“I’m not lying,” I said.
“I didn’t think you were.”
Well, I thought, you’re thinking something.
“Ethan Krumble,” he said.
“It’s why I couldn’t find you.”
“How did you?”
“The fight you had with your brother at the airport. You’re kind of internet famous.”
“Of course,” he said with a sigh.
“Look, none of that matters. You sign the papers and I’m gonna get out of your hair.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked. He was still being so serious and it was freaking me out. I had this all figured out in my head. He’d wanted to bang a showgirl and get married to brag to his friends. He was the bad guy. I was the good guy.
“Call you?” I asked. “How?”
“I wrote you a note with my number and left it on your coffee table.”
“Well,” I said archly. “It wasn’t there when I woke up.”
In my bag, Baby Girl growled, her topknot trembling. I remembered that morning there’d been shredded paper all over her dog bed and I’d cleaned it up without thinking about it.
He was changing the script in my head and I did not like it. Henny had given me a whole pep talk at the airport about how I had to be tough and not be charmed by his charming ways. I was right. He was wrong.
But if he left a note….
“Baby Girl doesn’t like you,” I said, stupidly trying to find some kind of upper hand with this guy. “She has really good instincts about people.”
“She bit me,” he said, his thumb rubbing his palm. “It was about all I remembered from that night.”
“Well, all in all it was pretty forgettable.” I lied. “We got drunk. We got married. You left in the morning. We got on with our lives.”
“You had just gotten that job with the show at Caesar’s Palace. You were celebrating.”
“I thought you didn’t remember anything.”
“Are you still at the Palace?”
“Sort of. I’m on…paid leave.”
“Why?”
“I hurt myself. But again, none of this matters. Sign the paperwork.”
“Hurt yourself how?”
“Ethan—”
“How?”
“My ankle. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not. I’m fine. I mean, I’ll be fine.” I could feel my face getting hot.
Ethan’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, hit Decline, and put it back in his pocket. Where it rang again. And then there was a steady stream of pings of texts and messages.
“Lexie,” he said, ignoring his phone. “You must have thought the worst of me.”
“I thought you lied about your name, fucked a show girl, and got Vegas married so you could go back and tell all your friends.”
He stared at me, aghast. “I swear I would never do that.”
“Okay.”
“Do you believe me?” His phone was going nuts.
“It doesn’t matter, does it.”
“Of course, it does—”
“Will you please answer your phone!” I cried.
He fished out his phone again and took the call. “Yep. Yes. You’re kidding.” He looked over at me and I felt something shift in the air. You don’t grow up in Vegas and develop boobs in fifth grade without also developing a sixth sense for danger. And something in his expression was telling me danger was coming.
He hung up.
