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Silas nodded. “I understand. Hyport probably will, too.”
“My cousin Hunter’s the sheriff and justice of the peace. We can get the license from him.”
I couldn’t believe we were talking about getting married at the same time we were bickering about shop maintenance.
“Good. I can’t wait to make you mine.”
Oh my.
44
SILAS
We were marriedin the interrogation room of the Hunter Valley Police Station. Turned out, Eve’s cousin Hunter, the sheriff, wasn’t actually a justice of the peace. But the station manager was. For the ceremony, there were no flowers. No rings. No wedding dress; instead a pink Steaming Hotties t-shirt. Witnesses were two deputies who brought in a drunk and disorderly tourist from Omaha. If he were sober, he could have signed the documentation, too.
To me, it was perfect because it was Eve I was saying vows to. This was real.
When I asked her to be my wife, had I expected toactuallymarry her? No. I hoped, crossed my fingers, that she’d perhaps, maybe, hopefully agree to be a fake wife for a few days. It was asking a lot, I knew. Except she didn’t want a fake marriage. She wanted the real thing.
Nothing went as expected with her.
My usual calm, orderly, over-traveled, and boring life had gone a little crazy.
For the good.
As we faced each other, I held her hands in mine, looked into her slightly-stunned gray eyes and vowed to honor, cherish, and protect her all the days of my life. I felt it to my very core.
We’d left directly from the police station and to the airport. Eve hadn’t packed a bag. With the flight plan submitted and another storm ready to blow in, there had been no time before we had to leave. Now we were at forty-thousand feet, and I had her all to myself. Dot, the flight attendant, served us drinks before takeoff and had joined the pilots in the cockpit.
We were all–mostly–alone.
Reaching over, I unclipped her seatbelt, then pulled her into my lap.
“Silas!” she said with a laugh, pushing her hair back from her face.
“I’m going to fuck you before we get to San Francisco, but we need to talk about that asshole Douglas first. I’m not talking about other men when I’m insidemywife.”
Her eyes flared with heat. She liked the idea of joining the mile high club, but didn’t seem too thrilled to talk about her ex. It wasn’t like I wanted to either, but something was going on and I needed to know about it now so I could take care of the problem.
From what she said, he’d been sniffing around for a while and that wasn’t working for me. Not withmy wife. I was the only one who should be sniffing her.
Before we left the coffee shop, I’d sent a text to Bradley to find out all there was about Cheney Douglas. But I wanted to hear about him from Eve.
“Why did you introduce me to Douglas as your husband?” I wondered.
“I guess I need you as much as you need me,” she admitted, and I realized she wasn’t talking about sex or orgasms. No, she meant money. Fuck, I started all this by needing her to be my wife because of the Hyport deal–aka a billion dollars–but I knew I wanted her as mine.
It sounded like she never considered the possibility.
Not good. Another thing I needed to take care of. She needed to know that she was important. That she was special. That she was mine to care for. And fuck.
“I went to boarding school in Vermont,” she began. Since she went so far back as to talk about high school, this wasn’t a simple answer. “Senior year, when I came back for Christmas, I had dinner with my parents at the club with Cheney and his parents. It was announced over appetizers we were dating.”
What the hell?
“You went along with it?” Obviously she did since the asshole lingered years later.
She shrugged. “I was seventeen. He was handsome. Older. At first he was charming. Plus, it was easier to go along with my parents than to make a fuss. I went back to Vermont and graduated, then went to college. I saw him on breaks.”
