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The corner of his mouth curled. “We’ll work it out.”
Half an hour later she was standing under the shower in the spacious marbled bathroom of their hotel suite. The door slid open behind her and two suntanned arms encircled her waist. She leaned her head back against his chest. “Oh, Kenny, we should never have done this.”
“I don’t see what the big damn deal is, especially since you already told me you loved me.”
“Marriage bloody well is a big damn deal!”
“Don’t cuss. Profanity just isn’t effective with a British accent.” He nuzzled her ear. “Even if you all of a sudden let loose with the Big One, it’d still sound like something you could say from the pulpit.”
She sighed. What was she going to do with him?
“Wash my back, will you?”
She soaped the washcloth, slipped behind him, and began stroking it over his shoulders. Slowly, she moved lower, to his waist, his buttocks, his thighs. ?
?You have to be faithful,” she said. “As long as we’re married, you have to be faithful.”
He took the soap from her and replied softly, “I’m not the one who tried to buy herself a gigolo.”
“Still . . .”
He dipped his head and kissed her. She kissed him back—loved the feel of his mouth, loved the slide of his tongue, the scratch of his whiskers—but, even so, her kiss turned into a yawn.
He drew back. “I think this’d better wait until you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
“Rubbish.” She could see what his consideration was costing him, and she mustered herself. “The only reason I yawned was that I didn’t sleep much last night either, and it’s late, and—Go ahead. Really. It’s fine.”
He lifted one eyebrow, turned her around, and began washing her in an impersonal fashion, as if he were taking care not to arouse either one of them. But it definitely wasn’t working for him, and as his finger accidentally brushed one of her nipples, she realized it wasn’t working for her either. She rubbed her soapy back against his front.
“Emma . . .” His voice held a husky, warning note.
She pulled his head under the shower and kissed him.
He took her right there in the shower, holding her against the wall, her thighs locked around his waist. Afterward, as they lay in bed together, their bodies were so closely entwined it was hard to decide where one of them began and the other left off. But as exhausted as she was, she didn’t fall asleep immediately.
As she listened to the deep sound of his breathing, she tried to absorb the fact that this man was her husband. She knew she loved him, and she certainly desired him, but that travesty of a marriage ceremony had given her no real connection to him. Where was the feeling of attachment she’d been searching for all her life? Despite Kenny’s ardent lovemaking and apparent fondness for her, he didn’t truly love her, and pretending anything else was too self-indulgent to even contemplate. Her relationship with him felt as transitory as those temporary bonds she’d had with teachers and friends, as fragile as her relationship with parents who were all too eager to forget they had a daughter.
If only she had some idea what he was truly feeling, it might be easier, but he remained as closed off from her as a locked door.
The next morning she awakened to the sound of him speaking quietly on the telephone in the suite’s adjoining living room. “I’m not going to talk about it, Shelby. And I’m not telling you where we’re staying, either. Now come on. Just put him on the phone.”
There was a pause before Kenny spoke again. This time his voice was pitched higher. “Hey, Petie. It’s Kenny. Listen, buddy, I didn’t mean to disappear on you. I’ll be back soon, and we’ll go swimming, okay? Swimming. You and me.”
Emma smiled to herself. This was the side of Kenny she loved the most.
Another pause, then his pitch deepened, so she knew Shelby had come back on. “If you know which hotel we’re in, you’ll somehow let it slip, and then the press’ll be all over me.” Another pause, then he said dryly, “Yeah, it was a real romantic ceremony. Uh-huh. I’ll tell her.”
He appeared in the doorway, his hair still rumpled and his stubble approaching the pirate stage. “Shelby says hi.”
Knowing Shelby, Emma imagined the message was much longer than that, but she didn’t question him.
They spent the next few hours in bed with Kenny directing the action, as always, but being so sublimely attentive to her needs that she couldn’t complain. Finally, they wrapped themselves in hotel bathrobes and ate a room service breakfast. Several times she tried to get him to talk about the enormity of what they’d done, but he shrugged it off as if they’d committed themselves to nothing more complex than a Saturday night date. Sex seemed to be the only connection he wanted to have with her, and the knot in her stomach grew tighter.
After they’d finished eating, they went out to buy a change of clothes for each of them. Kenny tried to disguise himself in a pair of trendy sunglasses and his Dean Witter cap, but several people in the store still recognized him and wanted to talk about what had happened. He dismissed their questions by acting as if he didn’t understand them.
Eventually, they found some anonymity by mingling with the tourists walking along the Strip. Although Emma’d seen photographs of Las Vegas, the reality of this resort built in the desert was far different. She found it fascinating from an anthropological standpoint, but not exactly to her taste, and Kenny seemed to read her mind. “Come on. I’ll show you a place I know you’ll like.”
“Where?”
