Tyler kicked the chair in front of him, watching the seat bounce with force. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. He was in the middle of a date with an incredible woman, and Belle Meade Records was tightening the screws. That’s what he was, too. Screwed. His career might just be in jeopardy after all. Now he had to come up with three new songs, sing one with a woman he’d barely met, and fake a relationship for the fans, or risk losing the one thing in this world he gave a shit about: his music.
Squeezing the bridge of his nose, Tyler closed his eyes. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
They disconnected, and Tyler took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The proverbial shit was about to hit the fan, and he had no clue what to do next. Other than finish his date.
“Everything okay?” Sherry’s floral scent enveloped him a half second before her gentle hands closed around his shoulders. He craned his neck as she began kneading the knots. “Let me guess—that was the boss man?” she asked, giving him a sympathetic smile. “If we need to cut this date short, I totally—”
“No.” Tyler shook his head. “We’re not going anywhere.” They may be about to mess with his life, but he refused to let the label ruin their date. Forcing a lighthearted grin he didn’t quite feel, he said, “Wait till you see what I have planned next.”
The concern on her beautiful face eased, replaced by excitement. The tension in his shoulders melted under her fingers. “Really? There’s more?”
“Plenty,” he assured her, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “Ready to go?”
She flashed a smile and nodded, and threading their fingers together, Tyler led her to the exit.
He had no clue what tomorrow would bring or what his next step should be to protect his career. But those were decisions for later. Tonight was New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow, Sherry Robicheaux was on a plane back to New Orleans, and he was, more than likely, off to Nashville to discuss his new fake relationship.
The thought twisted his insides.
One thing was certain. If this was going to be his last true night of freedom, he was going to enjoy the hell out of it.
Chapter Four
An incessant buzz drilled its way through Tyler’s ears, rousing him from a deep sleep with the subtlety of a woodpecker. He blindly slapped a hand out to silence his cell phone but knocked it to the floor instead. Great. The room fell into silence for a nanosecond, and then the buzz began again. Groaning, he peeled open his eyelids to turn off the damn thing, only to have bright sunlight stab his corneas. He slammed them shut with a curse.
Hangovers sucked ass.
His mouth was drier than the desert outside his window. It tasted like tequila. Memories of why it tasted that way swam before the backs of his eyes like a tidal wave of booze.
Dancing. Liquor. Lots of liquor. Not nearly enough food to balance out said liquor. Fireworks. Sherry’s laughter…blurred images of her head tipped back in passion.
Tyler’s eyes popped open again.
Sherry. He jerked his head to the side, pain slicing through his skull as he surveyed the rumpled sheets. No sexy brunette zonked out beside him. He glanced around the room, more carefully this time, and saw clothes strewn across every surface. A bra dangled from the television set. Definitely not his.
Slumping back against the pillows, Tyler swiped his hands across his eyes. He dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets and tried to piece together exactly what happened last night. He distinctly remembered the call with Charlie—how could he forget?—then taking Sherry back to her room so she could freshen up. He’d picked her up an hour later, they hit the casino floor, and then…what?
A feminine moan, and not the pleasured kind he enjoyed, sounded from the bathroom. Tyler stopped rubbing his eyes. If Sherry felt anywhere near how he did, she was in a world of hurt. Yawning, he slid his hands down his face, preparing to head in and check on her…only to still as his gaze fell upon a silver band wrapped around his finger.
His ring finger. On his left hand.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
His arm extended with a jolt. That wasn’t there. He was imagining things. Delusional from dehydration. No matter how blitzed out of his mind Tyler had gotten, he’d never do something that stupid.
A second moan came from the bathroom, and Tyler shot to a sitting position. Pain exploded behind his eyes. Disbelief twisted with dread as he stared at the closed door, knowing what he had to do. Go in there. Check on Sherry.
See if her hand held a matching silver band.
“Shit.” Cautiously, as if the damn ground was going to latch onto his ankle and drag him into marital hell, Tyler set his feet to the carpet. Pushing to a stand, he took a tentative step—then stopped dead in his tracks when he spied two things on the nightstand.
A DVD boasting the title “Our Wedding.”
And a photograph the happy couple had apparently taken in front of a chapel. Sherry in a white lacy veil over her sweater-and-jeans combo, him with a damn top hat, and both of them wearing matching, inebriated grins.
Wouldn’t the tabloids love to get a hold of that?
Tyler swiped the evidence in his hand and did the first thing he could think of—dumped it into the nightstand drawer. Then he snatched his discarded jeans from the floor and hastily yanked them up his hips. Plans and scenarios ping-ponged in his mind as he zipped his fly. He was still dreaming. They were gag rings bought from a vending machine. Tyler stopped and tapped a finger against the metal. Jeweler he wasn’t, but that shit looked and felt real.
His stomach rolled and cold pricked the back of his neck. His hand went limp and slapped against his thigh, crinkling paper in his pocket. He stopped breathing. Another memory flashed as he shoved his hand inside, not wanting to do it, but at the same time knowing that he had to, and he withdrew his death warrant. A Clark County certificate of marriage.
There it was, written in ink. Tyler Blue of Opelousas and Sherry Robicheaux of Magnolia Springs had gotten hitched at the Love Me Tender Wedding Chapel. Most likely by Elvis.
The words swam in his vision. It was like some sick joke. That or a cruel twist of fate. Never in his life would he want this. Marriage wasn’t for him—at least not for another twenty years. Attachment, commitment, they got in the way of dreams.
His chest spasmed. God, had he even told Sherry who he really was? Had she seen the certificate? Tyler couldn’t remember. It had been his intention to tell her everything after dinner—before sleeping with her. But since he was standing there married, he figured at some point along the way he’d decided to chuck his prior plans out the damn window.
Shit…he was married.
A cough came from the bathroom and he panicked. Quickly, he pocketed the paper declaring the owner of the voice Sherry Blue, wife of a world-famous musician, and looked around the room for a sign. An out. A silver lining of any kind. Other than the band around his finger.
The only thing that came to mind was that as bad as this disaster was—and it was a disaster—it could be a hell of a lot worse. This wasn’t permanent. As shitty and unwanted as this was, people got out of drunken marriages all the time. And without anyone finding out.
But how many of them are celebrities?
The truth was that despite what his wife believed, he wasn’t some Joe Schmo off the street. Was he dumb enough to think Tyler Blue could actually get married and divorced in a span of a couple weeks and have no one in the media ever find out?
And that didn’t even factor in the bride.
Tyler didn’t know much about Sherry Robicheaux. Barely anything, really. But he knew she was passionate and spontaneous. It was what drew him to her in the first place. Was it that much of a stretch to think she also believed in love at first sight? The very real possibility made his head pound harder.
Sherry could be in that bathroom right now, hungover and cursing the world, but blissed out about being married. He hoped to God she wasn’t. Because for Tyler, marriage to any woman, gorgeous or no
t—sweet or not—was out of the damn question.
“Tyler?”
The rough question made him flinch. Sherry’s voice sounded like she’d gargled rocks. Tyler blew out a breath and ran sweaty palms down the denim on his thighs. It was time to face the music. Squaring his shoulders, he took a breath and prepared to enter the bathroom. To greet—and console—his wife.
…
Waking up face-first on the bathroom floor may not be cause for alarm for everyone, but for Sherry, it ranked right up there. Especially since she knew the second her eyes cracked open that it wasn’t her bathroom.
Fuzzy-edged memories pranced around her brain, just out of reach, as she hooked a hand on the toilet seat and pushed to a sitting position.
The world tilted.
As her stomach heaved, she dove for the porcelain throne, but nothing came up. Nothing other than slightly sharper memories. Ones that told of dancing, magical fountains, way too much alcohol, and some very, very sexy time between the sheets. The images pulsed like an old movie, blanking out too much for her liking, but a flush heated her skin at what she could recall.
Hot damn. She’d been right. A night with a roadie like Tyler would definitely keep her fantasies occupied for years to come. Shame she couldn’t remember more.
Resting her head on the cool surface, she surveyed the fancy digs with half-lidded eyes. It was a hell of a room, particularly on a roadie’s budget. Further proof that either Tyler was in tight with his boss, or Blue wasn’t nearly the egotist she’d pegged him to be. Too bad she hadn’t had a chance to meet him the other night.
“Tyler?” she called out again, wincing at the roughness of her voice. She sounded like an old lady who smoked a bazillion packs a day. Lovely. Grabbing hold of either side of the toilet, she wobbled first to her knees, and then her feet. The mirror was just a few feet away. Time to inspect the damage.
Eyes half closed, she fumbled forward and latched onto the counter to steady herself. Hangovers really didn’t suit her. She turned on the faucet, and as she waited for the plastic cup to fill with water, Sherry raised her eyes to her reflection.
“What the freaking hell?!?”
She was wearing a wedding veil.
A wedding veil was on her head. It was white. It had lace. And it was on her freaking head.
She didn’t have a single stitch of clothing on her body otherwise, but she did have that.
“Hubba, hubba, wubba…what?”
She blinked hard, repeatedly, thinking her reflection would change. It didn’t. Cold water ran over her hand, and it didn’t wake her from the bizarre dream. The door behind her started to creak open, and Sherry jumped, snatching a towel off the floor.
When she saw a huge honking diamond on her finger, she ditched the towel and screamed instead.
“Whoa!” Tyler walked in, shirtless with jeans riding low on his hips, holding up his hands. “Do you want people to call security?”
Ignoring his flippant response and her naked glory, Sherry thrust her left hand in his face. “Is this real?”
A muscle popped in his jaw, and his eyes glared at the ring on her finger like it was the bloody Ebola virus. “I don’t think it’s a cubic zirconia if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Not the freaking diamond!” she screamed again. The sound echoed off the hard surfaces of the room and reverberated in her skull. Heeding his warning—seriously, the last thing she needed right now was witnesses—she lowered her voice and clarified through gritted teeth. “What it represents.”
“Oh, yeah. That.” Tyler’s lips formed a tight smile that belied his casual approach to the horrible situation they’d found themselves in. “Apparently we’re hitched.”
Sherry turned and thumped her head on the wall.
Perfect. Just perfect. The one time in her life she actually attempted a fling—a one-night stand—and this was the result. Something permanent. She could never get it right.
“Ugh,” she groaned, the sound half drowned by the wall. “How much did we drink?”
“Judging from my massive migraine and the fact you woke up in the bathroom, I’m going with a lot.” Sherry shifted her head so she could peer at her groom with one eye. Tyler slid her a crooked grin. “Cheer up. We’re not the first idiots who’ve done this. Getting wasted and waking up married in Vegas is pretty much a cliché, isn’t it?”
Sherry blew out a breath. “My bookshelves are filled with that very thing,” she agreed. Those stories also involved happily ever afters—an outcome that would not be happening here. “Okay, so what do we do? You have a life, a tour to get back to, and I, I have…” What? What did she have? A great family, a job that she enjoyed, even if it wasn’t her dream, and a love life that was in the toilet. But… “I have a life plan!”
Picking up her head, she stared at him with what she was sure screamed desperation. “No offense, Tyler, but I was through with love screw-ups. This weekend was supposed to be my last hurrah. Starting today, I was going to be a new woman. A one-eighty from the relationship disaster of the past. I was going to find Mr. Boring!”
The squiggle on his forehead said he was either highly confused or extremely amused by her confession, but honestly, she was too distraught to care. Without breaking eye contact, Tyler bent at the knee, stooped down, and then popped back up. “Here.”
She glanced down to see he had a towel in his hand, and she felt her cheeks go hot. D’oh. Conversations about screwing up your life and ways to dig yourself out of that mess were best handled clothed. He waited until she’d wrapped the terry cloth around her body and tucked it securely before speaking.
“Listen, I get it. This wasn’t my plan, either. I like my life easy, and no offense to you,” he said with a smile, “but marriage is far from that. Especially one to a stranger—no matter how gorgeous she is.”
Sherry felt herself smiling, despite the extreme awkwardness of the situation. The man she married (married!) was a charmer, no doubt about that. In fact, that was the reason they were in this mess in the first place. He’d literally charmed the pants right off her.
A horrid thought struck the smile clear off her face. “Last night…did we…?” Chewing her lip, she stared at him and asked, “Did we use protection?”
Tyler frowned, and Sherry squeezed her eyes shut. How could she not remember? Could they have been that stupid?
Or, stupid-er?
“Yeah, we used protection.” She opened her eyes to see him rake his fingers through his hair. “That much I do remember.”
“Thank you, Jesus.” Sherry made the sign of the cross, kissed her fingers, and pointed to the ceiling. “Okay, so no permanent damage done. Right? Not really. We can get out of this easily enough.” She began pacing the length of the room. “I mean, not today. It takes time. And I have a plane to catch. And I still have to go back to my room and pack.” She lifted her head. “What hotel am I in right now?”
“The Moonshine,” he told her. “Same as yours.” She nodded, and he placed his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, I need you to take a breath for me, okay? I know you’re freaking out. I am, too. But honestly, this will be fine. I’ll call the band’s lawyers and get them on it, and we’ll have this taken care of in no time. I promise.”
“You think Blue will let you use his lawyers?”
An odd look washed over Tyler’s face, but it was gone in an instant. “Yeah. But uh, like you said, you have a plane to catch. You let me worry about all of the other stuff, and you just lay low for the next few days. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”
Sherry nodded again, the effects of the hangover and marital un-bliss making the edges of her vision fuzzy. Lay low? She wondered briefly why she’d have to do that, but then was distracted by the sight of his jeans slipping dangerously low as he trudged into the hotel room and grabbed his cell phone off the floor. Oh, right. She was married, and she didn’t even have her husband’s number.
She slumped against the door as he walked back.
/> “Here, put your information in.” He handed her his phone, and she quickly called herself so that she would have his number, too. He took it back and shoved it in his pocket. The action made his jeans dip even more on his hips, and Sherry had to force her gaze back up. “Why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll order room service?” he asked.
The offer was sweet, but she could tell he was as twitchy about this predicament as she was. It seemed cruel and unusual punishment for the both of them to delay her leaving. Plus, even the idea of food right now made her want to hurl.
“Nah. I’ll get out of your hair. I really do need to pack and get to the airport.” Tyler nodded and turned to give her some privacy. “But, hey, Ty?” He glanced back with a raised eyebrow. “You’ll call me the second you hear anything, right?”
He gave her a tight smile. “Absolutely.”
And with that, he closed the door behind his glorious backside, and she was alone. In her husband’s bathroom.
What in the hell have I done?
Chapter Five
“Sure, abandon me. I see how it is.”
Angelle looked up from her opened bag, a worried line etched between her eyes. Sherry winked. “I’m just teasing, girl. If you want to shack up with my brother, go and live in a sappy, pre-marital squishy love fest. Who am I to complain? We’re gonna be sisters soon. I figured you’d leave me eventually.”
Sherry was well acquainted with being the odd duck out. Everyone around her was in love and settled, and dang it all, that’s what she wanted, too. It was the entire motivation for her relationship makeover resolution. But for some reason, even though the bliss surrounding her was nothing new, it felt bigger post-Vegas. Knowing she was in a loveless mistake of a marriage—and that much further from her ultimate goal—made the depressing lonely truth sting all the more.
Being way too embarrassed to tell anyone the truth didn’t help any, either.
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