by Jane Graves
Tony shrugged. “I once woke up naked on a beach in Cancun. I still don’t remember the flight from Dallas to Mexico.”
“Did you end up married?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not as crazy as this. Congratulations. You now have a new personal best.”
She threw back the covers and started to get out of bed. He grabbed her arm. “Will you take it easy? This isn’t that big a deal.”
“Not that big a deal?” she said, shaking loose. “We got married!”
“But we can get unmarried. All we have to do is get an annulment.”
She stopped short. An annulment?
Yes. Of course. That was all they had to do. Nobody else even knew they’d gotten married. They could keep this to themselves, get a quiet annulment, and then get on with their lives as if last night had never happened. No one but the two of them would ever have to know.
For the first time since she saw her name on that marriage license, Heather’s heart stopped hammering in her chest. It was just as Tony said. No big deal. Just a little paperwork to cancel out the wedding, a bottle of aspirin to cancel out her monumental hangover, and pretty soon this whole experience would be nothing but a bad memory.
“You’re right,” she said, feeling so much better. “An annulment. That solves the problem. There can’t be much to one of those, right?”
“Right.”
“People do it all the time. How hard can it be?”
“Then it’s settled?” Tony said. “We’re getting an annulment?”
“Of course.”
“Thank God,” he murmured.
She turned back. “What?”
“Uh . . . nothing.”
“No. What?”
He laughed a little. “I thought maybe you were going to be upset.”
“About what?”
“You know. About the fact that I don’t want to be married.”
Heather blinked. “You thought I would be upset by that?”
“Uh . . . maybe,” Tony said. “But you’re not. That’s the important thing.”
“No. The important thing is that you dodged that bullet, right?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“You actually thought I’d want to be married?”
He frowned. “I thought it was a possibility.”
“In Vegas? To you?”
He looked offended. “For your information, there are a lot of women who would love to be married to me.”
“Will you get over yourself? How dumb would a woman have to be to think a guy like you is suddenly ready for that little house with the white picket fence?”
“What do you mean, a guy like me?”
“You’ve dated half the women at McMillan’s. And the other half are waiting their turn.”
“How do you know that?”
“Newsflash, Tony. Women talk. Men may not carry on conversations in the bathroom, but women do. I hear all kinds of things. But just for the record,” she said, rising from the bed and heading for the bathroom, “I’m not one of the women waiting her turn.”
“Yeah? You didn’t mind taking your turn last night.”
She looked back to find him staring at her hotly, a knowing look in those gorgeous green eyes. He knew. He knew just how easily she’d fallen for him last night and how she’d reveled in every hot, sexy moment of it.
“I was drunk,” she said. “People do stupid things when they’re drunk.”
“So that’s the only reason you were making out with me in the back of that limo?”
“Why else?”
“Because it’s fun?”
“Forget fun,” she snapped. “We need to concentrate on fixing this stupid thing we did.”
“Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”
He gave her a cocky smile that really irritated her. Of course it had been fun. But it was the kind of fun crazy, irresponsible people had, and she’d had enough crazy and irresponsible in the past twenty-four hours to last her a lifetime.
Last night Tony told her she was the woman he’d been waiting for all his life, punctuating every word with warm hands and warm lips in all kinds of inadvisable places. In her champagne-induced delusional state, he was a fun, charming, blindingly handsome man, and just being with him had turned her into a brainless, airheaded idiot. It was as if she’d been saving up her entire life to do one outrageously dumb thing, and this was it.
All at once the room phone rang, rattling Heather’s already painful skull. She grabbed the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Heather, what are you doing?” Regina said. “Your cell phone’s turned off. Where are you?”
“Uh . . .”
“You were supposed to meet us in the lobby at ten so we could catch cabs to the airport.”
Heather looked at her watch. Ten after ten? Damn it. “I must have overslept.”
“But we have a plane to catch. We’re leaving right now!”
She put her hand to her forehead. “I’ll catch a later one.”
“But you rode with me to the airport.”
“I’ll pick up a cab back to Plano.”
“Heather? What’s going on? Are you with that man?” She gasped. “My God. You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”
Well, wasn’t this ironic? Yeah, she’d slept with Tony. As in, they’d occupied the same bed. Given that they were still clothed, apparently they’d been too drunk to do much else except sleep. But Regina didn’t know that. She was clearly picturing something considerably more carnal, and in spite of everything, the thought of that almost put a smile on Heather’s face.
“I might have,” she said coyly.
“Heather!” Regina said. “It isn’t like you to sleep with strange men! What would your mother think?”
Heather couldn’t believe this. Her mother? Did Regina tell the other bridesmaids that their mothers were going to be horrified if they slept with strange men?
“For God’s sake, Regina,” she said. “Will you give me a break? I’m almost thirty years—”
Heather stopped short. Wait a minute. Mother?
The tiny hairs on her arms stood straight up, little vibes of dread sprinting along every nerve. No. She couldn’t have done what she thought she’d done. She couldn’t have.
She told Regina she’d see her back in Plano and hung up. She grabbed her cell phone, powered it on, and hit the CALL HISTORY button. And there it was. Last night, at eleven thirty, she’d called her mother. And not just to say hello.
“Oh, no,” she moaned.
“What?” Tony said.
“No, no, no!”
“What?” Tony said again.
“I called my mother last night!”
“You did?” His eyes shifted back and forth. “Oh, yeah. I remember that. After we left the wedding chapel. I even talked to her, didn’t I?”
She’d called her mother. How could she have forgotten that?
Because by that time last night, she’d guzzled about a gallon of champagne. By all rights, she should be in a coma right now.
“I take it this is going to cause a problem?” Tony said.
He had no idea.
In her drunken state of pure ecstasy, she’d told her mother all about their wedding. How wonderful her new husband was. How handsome. How entrepreneurial. On and on and on.
It was all coming back, and it horrified her.
At first her mother had sounded stunned. She’d asked the questions any sane mother would have under the circumstances, questions designed to determine whether her daughter had lost her mind. But when Heather had assured her that her new husband was from Plano, that he wasn’t a total stranger, and that she did indeed know what she was doing, her mother had let wishful thinking take over, probably writing off her daughter’s drunken delirium as the exhilaration any new bride would feel. After all, Barbara was getting something she’d wanted since Heather turned eighteen years old: a married daughter. Then she’d told Heather, You be sure to
bring that new husband of yours by the house the minute you get back in town!
And Heather had promised to do just that. Only now she was going to have to tell her mother that she really didn’t have a son-in-law after all, and those grandbabies she wanted so much weren’t going to be popping out anytime soon. Could this situation get any worse? Was there any way it could get worse?
“So you regret everything you did last night?” Tony said.
“I think I’ve made that pretty clear by now, haven’t I?”
Tony reached into his wallet and pulled out the check she’d given him. “Even this?”
That really irritated Heather. “I wasn’t incapacitated the entire evening. I knew perfectly well what I was doing when I gave you that money. It’s yours, Tony. You can keep it.”
He looked at her warily. “Are you sure about that? I don’t want you coming back later and telling me I cheated you out of twenty thousand dollars.”
“I said you could keep it, didn’t I?”
“It’s just a lot of money, that’s all. You said last night you’d feel guilty if you didn’t give it to me. To tell you the truth, I’m feeling a little guilty for taking it.”
“No,” she said. “I know how much you want to buy McMillan’s. I’d never take that money back from you. I really do want you to have it.”
Finally he nodded and returned the check to his wallet.
Heather took a deep, calming breath, trying to put this whole thing in perspective, telling herself this situation was manageable if she handled things logically. She ticked off her to-do list in her mind: Order coffee from room service. Drink three cups. Change plane reservations. Find out how to get an annulment. Mentally review your CPR training so when you get home and tell your mother the truth, you can bring her back from heart failure.
And do not, under any circumstances, fall into the hands of a man like Tony McCaffrey ever again.
Four hours later, Tony shoved his carry-on into the overhead compartment on the airplane, then sat down in his aisle seat and stuffed a pillow behind his head. He’d taken enough aspirin before getting on the plane to gnaw a hole through his stomach lining, but his head was still pounding.
He turned to see Heather coming up the aisle. The instant their eyes met, she looked away, taking her seat two rows up on the aisle across from him.
He hated that. He’d expected her to at least speak to him. Then again, he’d also expected her to collapse in a useless heap of emotions this morning, and that hadn’t happened, either.
Instead, she’d ordered coffee from room service, then got on the phone and changed her plane reservation. After that, she called a twenty-four-hour legal advice line and learned they could complete an online form to get the annulment ball rolling. She told him she’d go to the business center at the hotel to do that. It had amazed him that in spite of her tremendous hangover, she’d still taken control of the situation and handled things quickly and efficiently. He couldn’t fathom how competent she might be if she’d actually been clearheaded.
Later she went to the airport by herself, and if she hadn’t happened to book a seat near him, he wouldn’t have seen her at all. Besides some distress about passing on the news to her mother, there had been no regrets. No tears.
Not so much as a wistful backward glance.
Tony didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. Yeah, he wanted out of this mess. And he wanted Heather to want out, but not quite so insistently. Was the idea of being married to him really all that awful?
Stop it. You’re lucky she’s not a basket case right now, crying her eyeballs out.
After all, she wasn’t his kind of woman. Right now, she wore a pair of jeans and a blue shirt, but everything about her was beige. Every strand of her long, straight hair was like a soldier lined up for inspection. She wore makeup, but it blended into her face rather than making a statement all its own. She moved in a quiet, reserved manner, as if she’d scripted every step she’d taken since birth. Uptight women bugged him. He never knew what to do to make them happy, because nothing ever did.
Okay. A gallon of champagne had made this one pretty happy, but how often did a woman like her pop the cork and go after it?
She buckled herself in, and as they took off, she became the only passenger in the history of air travel to actually watch the flight attendants’ safety speech. Then she pulled a copy of Forbes magazine from her tote bag and began to read.
Forbes? Weren’t women her age supposed to read Cosmo and Glamour and that Marie-whatever magazine?
Definitely not his kind of woman.
He leaned his head against the pillow and closed his eyes, but even though he felt tired enough to sleep for a week, he couldn’t doze off. Over the next few hours, he listened to music, ate stale peanuts, sipped a soft drink, and chatted with one of the flight attendants who was friendly beyond the scope of her job responsibilities. When she gave him her phone number, he smiled automatically and stuck it in his shirt pocket. Later he was going to tear it into tiny pieces, shove it into his garbage disposal, and flip the switch. Casual flings had lost their appeal about the time he woke up this morning a married man. Worse, he was a married man who hadn’t even gotten a wedding night to go along with it.
Oh, hell. What difference did that make? He wouldn’t have remembered it, anyway.
When they finally landed, Heather got up right away, retrieved her bag from the overhead compartment, and got off the plane ahead of him. When he walked through the jetway and emerged in the terminal, he didn’t see her. He rode up the escalator to the parking garage level.
He went through the automatic doors and stepped outside, and when he did, he caught sight of Heather standing at the front of a line of people waiting for a cab. He started to cross the street to head to the parking garage, but his conscience nagged at him. Cab fare for the thirty-mile trip back to Plano was going to cost her a bundle.
Not your problem. Keep walking.
But he couldn’t get his feet to move. He just stood on the curb, looking at Heather and feeling really crappy about the whole thing. After everything she’d done for him, was it right to let her pay to get home when he could take her home himself?
A cab pulled to the curb, and the driver got out to grab Heather’s bag. Tony walked over and took it from the man’s hand.
Heather spun around. “Tony? What are you doing?”
“A cab will cost you a fortune.”
“I don’t care.”
“We’re both going back to Plano. I’ll give you a ride.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s also no big deal.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll ride with you,” even though she didn’t seem the least bit happy about it.
Ten minutes later, Heather and Tony were in his Explorer heading east on 635. And being with him felt every bit as awkward as Heather had expected it to.
After the plane landed, she’d grabbed her stuff and gotten off as quickly as she could so she wouldn’t have to talk to him. She’d spent the past three hours thinking about him sitting two rows behind her, telling herself the whole time not to turn around, not to look at him, not to give him even the tiniest indication that she couldn’t get last night out of her mind.
Because she couldn’t. Not for five consecutive minutes.
And she hated that. When she should be smacking herself for her spur-of-the-moment wedding, all she seemed to think about was every sizzling moment that had led up to it.
But apparently she was the only one who felt awkward. Tony didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. He’d jacked up a country-and-western CD and was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel along with the music. She glanced at the speedometer. The speed limit was sixty. He was going almost seventy. It didn’t surprise her that he was one of those men who took traffic signs as suggestions, not rules.
“You were reading Forbes on the plane,” he said.
&
nbsp; She looked at him warily. “Yeah.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who read that before.”
“Then you probably don’t know many women who are CPAs.”
“You’re a CPA?” He laughed a little. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
Heather sighed. Just once she’d love to hear a man say, CPA? No way! I would have sworn you were a supermodel!
Maybe in her next lifetime.
“What I mean is that you seem pretty detail oriented,” Tony added.
She shrugged.
“Not me. Guess I’ll have to learn to be, though, right? Running a business and all?”
“Uh-huh.”
Silence, except for the country music twanging through the speakers.
“So where did you go to college?” Tony asked.
Did he always chatter like this? “Rice University.”
“Good school. I went to the University of Texas. Only one year, though.” He smiled. “I majored in tequila drinking and minored in class skipping. As soon as they offer a degree in those things, I’m going for my Ph.D.”
She didn’t respond, so he kept talking. He was clearly one of those people who didn’t like dead air and felt obligated to fill it. She would have asked him if he’d consider becoming the strong, silent type, but she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
“Tell me why you’re not talking to me,” he said.
She whipped around. “What?”
“You didn’t speak to me on the plane. You’ve barely said anything to me since we left the airport.”
“I’m just tired after last night.”
“A little conversation might be nice.”
“I’m really not in the mood.”
“Come on, Heather. It really doesn’t take much to—”
“Look, Tony. I know we spent last night together, doing God knows what, because I still don’t remember everything, but I barely know you. What more could we possibly have to talk about?”
His smile evaporated. “Okay. I just hoped there weren’t going to be hard feelings.”
She turned away to look out the window again, only to feel her conscience nag at her. She was just as responsible for this mess as he was, yet she was treating him as if it was all his fault.
