Runaway Vegas Bride

by Teresa Hill

  “We’ll be right there,” she told Amy. “Uh…I’m with Mr. Gray’s nephew, so you don’t have to call him. I’ll fill him in. See you in a few minutes.”

  Wyatt groaned as she got off the phone. “Don’t tell me.”

  “They can’t find Leo or my grandmother. They’re canvassing the whole place to find Gladdy right now, hoping she knows where they are.”

  Jane groaned unhappily. She’d so been looking forward to an evening with Wyatt, even if the prospect did scare her a bit.

  “Can we throw uncle Leo into a dungeon in chains when we find him?”

  “I wouldn’t tell on you if you did.” Jane sighed. “So, where does he like to take his women?”

  “All sorts of places, but he doesn’t drive anymore. It was a battle, but we finally got rid of his car. Does Kathleen still drive?”

  Jane nodded. “Not often, but she does. She and Gladdy keep a car at Remington Park that they share. Gram and Leo could be anywhere by now.”

  They got to her grandmother and Gladdy’s cottage to find it in an uproar of worried older women, a few security guards and Ms. Steele in full-battle mode, questioning a withering Amy, who looked as if she just wanted to hide.

  At the sight of Wyatt, Ms. Steele made a face that actually scared Jane a bit. Amy came running over to her, whispering, “She wants to fire me, Jane, and I didn’t do anything wrong. I swear.”

  Jane eased around to put her body between Amy and Ms. Steele. She’d protect Amy. So would Wyatt.

  The administrator puffed up her chest and glared in their direction. “So, the two of you have no idea where Mr. Gray and Ms. Carlton might be?”

  “No,” Wyatt said.

  “Neither said anything to you about going away for a few days?” she grilled them.

  “Nothing,” Wyatt insisted.

  “What about Gladdy?” Jane tried. “Gram would never take off without telling Gladdy where she was going.”

  “We still have people looking for her,” Amy said.

  “Did you look in Gram’s room? Are any of her things missing?” Jane continued.

  “I looked, but I really wasn’t sure if she’d taken some things or not. But her big suitcase is there,” Amy offered.

  “There’s a smaller matching one, something made to fit under a seat on an airplane. What about that?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  Jane headed for Gram’s room, Wyatt and Amy following her. At first glance, it looked as if everything was in place. Jane opened the top two drawers. They hadn’t been cleaned out, but Amy was right. It was impossible to tell if Gram had packed for, say…a few days.

  She opened the closet, saw the big suitcase, pulled it out and unzipped it.

  Empty.

  “She keeps the smaller bag inside the big one, to save space,” Jane said.

  She did a quick sweep of the room looking for the smaller bag anyway. Wyatt helped, shaking his head when he came up empty.

  “So, she’s gone,” Jane said.

  They searched the grounds and Gladdy’s room for another twenty minutes before Ms. Bea, one of the residents of the cottage, woke up from her nap and came out of her room to hear that Kathleen was missing.

  “Oh, my goodness. I had no idea you were all looking for her,” Ms. Bea said. “She gave me a note to give you, Jane, as she was rushing out the door this afternoon.”

  The lady pulled out a familiar envelope in light yellow—Gram’s signature stationery—and handed it to Jane.

  Tearing it open, Jane read:

  My Darling Jane,

  Please don’t be upset. I know you think this is wrong, but I’m absolutely certain it’s right, and at our age, Leo and I simply don’t have time to waste. I hate that you won’t be there for the ceremony, but we’ll be back in a few days and have our own little family celebration then.

  All my love,

  Gram

  Wyatt, reading over her shoulder, swore softly and shook his head.

  “Eloped?” Jane yelled, then turned to glare at Wyatt. “They’ve eloped?”

  “No. Leo wouldn’t do that. He absolutely promised me that he would never get married again without letting me take care of the prenup,” he claimed. “I’ve cleaned up too many messes of his before, after the fact, but never again. He swore to me.”

  “Gram, too,” Jane admitted. “I made her promise the same thing. She actually has an investment portfolio thanks to me. I worked hard to make sure she’ll always be taken care of financially, and she promised she wouldn’t put it at risk.”

  Wyatt smiled at her admiringly, then took her face in his hands and gave her a quick, deep, satisfying kiss. “There you go. That’s my girl. Woman, I mean. What a woman!”

  He let her go, as if he might have forgotten where they were, or that he’d been surprised by the impulse to grab her and kiss her that way.

  Jane looked around, seeing Gram and Gladdy’s friends in the cottage beaming at them. Amy, too. Ms. Steele, on the other hand, looked at Jane as if Jane had surely lost her mind, no doubt thinking all the Gray men were troublemakers.

  “So,” Wyatt said, sounding very lawyerly once again. “We can hope they remember their promises to both of us and don’t go through with this. Or that we can find them in time to stop them.”

  “How can we find them?” Jane asked. “We have no idea where they went.”

  “If they’ve run off to get married, they’re headed for Vegas.”

  “How do you know?” Jane asked.

  “Leo always gets married in Vegas,” he stated, as if it was some kind of unwritten law.

  “Sentimental, is he?” Jane guessed.

  “Not so much about marriage, but about the city and this one little chapel on the strip, yes. What is that place called? It’s an Elvis song.”

  “Doesn’t every hurry-up wedding chapel in Vegas have something to do with an Elvis song?”

  “‘Love Me Tender.’ That’s it,” Wyatt confirmed. “The Love Me Tender Wedding Chapel.”

  “Oh, this is so exciting!” Ms. Bea said. “So romantic.”

  No, Jane thought, really, it’s not.

  It was foolish, crazy and completely irresponsible. Gram barely knew the man, and Gladdy…What about Gladdy?

  “We have to find Gladdy,” she remembered.

  They searched Gladdy’s room again, and finally, there in her jewelry box was a little note addressed to Jane.

  Jane, Darling,

  I know you’ll fret. Honestly, Jane, you fret too much. But Leo, Kathleen and I are going away for a few days by ourselves. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Leo and I are going to explain it all to Kathleen, and I’m sure when we do, she’ll understand. Leo and I can’t help how we feel about each other, Jane. He’s the most wonderful man. To think, when I come back, I’ll be a married woman again!

  All my love,

  Gladdy

  Jane let the note fall from her hand, simply unable to hold on to it any longer.

  Beside her, Wyatt just said, “No, no way! He’s not crazy. Irritating and infuriating, but not crazy.”

  “He’s eloping with two women?” Jane fumed. “How does any sane man elope with two women? What does he think he’s going to do? Make up his mind when they get there, and both women will put up with that? Give him whichever one he wants?”

  “I don’t know,” Wyatt admitted. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Or maybe he’s just going to marry them both!” Jane theorized, horrified. “Maybe he thinks he can get away with bigamy, too.”

  Wyatt actually looked hopeful at that.

  “What could possibly be good about a man committing bigamy?” she countered.

  “It would invalidate both marriages,” Wyatt said, shrugging apologetically. “We wouldn’t have to worry about the prenup thing.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose that’s one good thing.” And then she got mad all over again. “Wyatt, he’s going to break their hearts! He thinks he can have both of them, and he’s bo
und to break their hearts. We have to stop him!”

  “I know, Jane. I’m so sorry. I’ve already called my travel agent. I got us two seats on the last plane out tonight to Vegas, but we have to get to the airport right now.”

  They made it.

  Barely.

  No luggage or anything, but they made the plane, settling into two seats in the very last row of first class only moments before the plane backed out of the gate.

  Jane hadn’t done anything so impulsive as flying off to Vegas at the drop of a hat in years, and she hated to admit it—given the fact that Gram and Gladdy were going to get their hearts broken—but she was a little excited about the whole crazy trip.

  And to be making it with Wyatt. He really was a very nice man, even if his uncle was a troublesome, potentially crazy womanizer. She actually wished she had hit the old man with her briefcase now. But none of that was Wyatt’s fault. She’d been looking forward to their date tonight, but she supposed a lunatic, last-minute trip to Vegas together was even better.

  Date, she remembered. Something about the date, she was forgetting.

  What? And then she got it.

  Oops.

  “What’s wrong?” Wyatt asked.

  “I just remembered. I’m not wearing any panties.”

  Chapter Ten

  Wyatt was certain he could not have possibly heard her right.

  Jane with no panties?

  “What?” he repeated.

  She leaned over to him this time, whispering urgently. “I’m not wearing any panties.”

  He looked down at her hot-pink suit, the color that had him thinking of tropical islands, the blazing sun, gleaming tanned skin and Jane. She came alive completely in that color.

  And if that weren’t bad enough, from the moment he’d opened the door to her apartment and seen her there, he’d been trying to figure out exactly what kind of top she was wearing.

  Because it looked like underwear.

  The cropped jacket of her hot-pink suit, buttoned with two buttons at the bottom and open in a wide, deep V-neck to show off…Well, it really looked like underwear.

  A lady’s camisole was underwear, wasn’t it?

  Silky and lacy and one of those tricky fabrics that was part white flowers and part…sheer. A really unfair trick that had him thinking what he was seeing was, for all intents and purposes, bare skin. But he couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.

  It was just enough to drive him crazy.

  Especially seeing it on Jane.

  Buttoned-up-to-here Jane.

  And now she claimed that under that pencil-slim, hot-pink skirt that stopped a couple of lovely inches above her lovely knees, she wasn’t wearing any panties?

  He stared at her waist, her hips, as if he could see through the fabric and find the answer. She’d turned in her seat, angling her body toward his, and the skirt was riding up even higher on the outside of her right thigh, but not nearly high enough for him to see how far up was pure skin and how far he might find the proof that she was lying.

  Surely she was lying. This was Jane, after all.

  “This isn’t funny, Jane,” he said, feeling hot and dizzy all of a sudden, seeing nothing but her, her legs and that gloriously sexy hot-pink skirt.

  “I’m not trying to be funny. I was ready for our date. I was really excited about our date, and right before I left your office yesterday, you said to wear one of my suits without any—”

  “Good God, I never thought you’d actually do it!” he yelled.

  Passengers in the rows in front of them turned to stare. The first-class flight attendant, who’d been openly flirting with Wyatt as they got on the plane, despite the fact that he was traveling with Jane, now shot him a worried look, as if he might be trouble on this flight.

  Jane leaned into him. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “Well, you certainly did,” he said, none too quietly.

  “I thought you’d like it,” she said, pouting a bit.

  “Like it?” He laughed, sounding as if he was being strangled, all the blood leaving his head and heading south, leaving him decidedly uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat. No help there.

  Did she have any idea what she was doing to him?

  “I was trying to be…you know…non-prudish,” she explained.

  “Well, you succeeded.”

  “I thought you’d be happy—” she repeated.

  “Jane, I’d love it, if only I could do something about it,” he told her. “But it’s a four-hour flight! You’re telling me I have four hours to sit here next to you, knowing you’re completely bare under that tiny hot-pink skirt and not do anything about it?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, I didn’t mean to end up this way on the plane. It was just, with all the commotion over Gram and Gladdy being missing and finding out they’d both eloped with your uncle, I wasn’t really thinking about my underwear or lack of it. Until right now.”

  Wyatt buried his face in his hand, then opened his eyes and stared at her legs again. Couldn’t help it.

  Jane had really nice legs, toned and lightly tanned.

  He looked around at exactly where they were on the plane. It was small. In each row, there were two first-class seats on either side of a single aisle. No one was in the seats directly across from them, and the wall of the first-class cabin was behind them. There were two people in the row in front of them, on the opposite side of the aisle, and Wyatt had taken the aisle seat. If he angled his body the right way…

  “What are you doing?” Jane asked suspiciously.

  “Just taking stock of the situation we’re in, of the options….”

  “Options?” She looked aghast. “I want you to know right now that I am not doing anything with you in the lavatory of this airplane. So you can forget that—”

  “I didn’t ask you to. I wouldn’t. I have trouble believing it’s even possible myself. I can hardly get my whole body into one of those things, as small as they are these days, although I know people who swear it can be done. Still, it’s just not my thing, to do it in an ultra-cramped airplane bathroom. Of course, I’ve never been on a plane for four hours with a woman with no panties on before.”

  “You sound so mad at me—”

  “Jane, I think I’m going to lose my mind before we ever get off this plane. I’m starting to sweat, and we haven’t even taken off yet. Because all I can think about is you…sitting there…and how much I want my hand under your skirt.”

  She pressed her thighs together as if he’d have a fight on his hands if he tried that.

  “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  “Surely you’re capable of showing some kind of restraint. You’re a grown man, Wyatt—”

  “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve undressed you in my head?”

  She fell silent, looking a bit scared of him, as if he might turn into a raving, sexual beast at any moment and devour her.

  “Yeah,” he said. Maybe she was beginning to understand the problem now. “I’ve done it slowly. I’ve done it in seconds flat. I’ve taken suits of every color off you, unbuttoned crisp, prim, white blouses with excruciating attention to detail to every bit of skin I uncover. I’ve ripped buttons away with my teeth, Jane!”

  She eased away from him, as far as the side of the airplane would allow, and just stared up at him with wary eyes. “Men don’t do those kinds of things to me.”

  “This man is going to.”

  “Not here!” she whispered urgently.

  “Four hours,” he replied. “It’s a four-hour flight. I really don’t think you understand the urgency of my situation.”

  “How spoiled are you? You can’t wait four hours for a woman?”

  Wyatt saw that she still just didn’t get it. Did that mean she hadn’t even thought of him undressing her seventeen different ways, including with his teeth? Was she completely oblivious to him and this crazy attraction he felt for her?

  Maybe all the Gray men had g
one crazy at the same time.

  Wyatt had an idea.

  Jane watched him warily as an odd sense of calm came over him and he stopped arguing with her. His sudden silence, his seeming acceptance of the situation, made her all the more uneasy. But he just sat there, like a man perfectly at ease, big and gorgeous and sexy, taking up way more room than he should have in the seat beside her. He sat there as the plane took off and climbed into the air, wordlessly downing two bourbons during the beverage service, sat there as the captain dimmed the lights and people quieted down and settled in to get some sleep.

  Which made Jane feel a little uneasy.

  It was darker than she thought it should be, more private here in the last row of the first-class cabin, the curtains behind them drawn shut, the flight attendants settled in, too, up front, no one in the seats immediately to their left.

  She clicked on her overhead light.

  Wyatt laughed softly, reached across her and clicked it off.

  Jane put her hands up to ward him off, but he didn’t do anything else, just sat back in his seat, waiting.

  For what?

  Nervously, she scanned the cabin again, finding it even quieter now, soft voices heard here and there, but muffled, more like the impression of sound than sound itself, the hiss of the plane’s ventilation system leaving a kind of white noise around them that enveloped them in a kind of privacy.

  So, it was dark and quiet.

  That was bad, Jane feared. Very bad.

  The truth was, she had put this suit on thinking about him looking at her in it, looking at her as if he was going to devour her whole, which is exactly how he’d looked at her when he found out the secret to this outfit. She’d had vague thoughts about him undressing her very slowly, very carefully, almost politely, although she had known even then that the polite part was definitely more her fantasy than anything he’d ever come up with. And she’d been right about that. He had fantasized about ripping off buttons with his teeth, after all.

  So Jane sat there, huddled into her corner, watching him, getting all warm and sleepy and wondering if, given his mood earlier, using him as a big comfy pillow on the way to Vegas was out of the question. She found herself nodding off a bit, her head sinking down to the side of the plane, then jerking awake again.