The Honeymoon Hoax

by Lisa Plumley

  Grinning, Dylan tossed his keys to a valet and headed toward them. He couldn't have come up with a better way to pull a knight in shining armor routine if he'd planned it himself. This taxi driver was heaven sent—even if he had nearly run Dylan over earlier.

  "Sir, you'll have to move your vehicle," one of the officers told the taxi driver. "You're blocking the—"

  "I ain't moving until I get paid," interrupted the driver. "She even promised me extra to ditch some loser with a bunch of flowers," he added, glaring at Stacey.

  Hunching her shoulders, she scooted closer to one of the police officers. "I told you," she said as Dylan neared their group, "I don't have any cash! I must have lost it someplace, or—"

  She spotted him, and the rest of whatever she was saying came out in a garbled series of mismatched syllables. "Or, or," she tried to rally, "or I could go to an ATM. Please? I swear you can trust me." Smiling wanly, Stacey looked up at the officer nearest her. "Really, I'm very trustworthy. Ask anyone."

  "Ask me," said the driver with a snort. "The guy she tried to stiff on the fare."

  The officer shook his head. "I'm sorry, miss—"

  "Sugarlumps!" yelled Dylan, smiling broadly. He reached them in two quick steps, then thrust the bouquet into Stacey's arms.

  "Hey, that's him!" cried the driver. "The loser with the flowers!"

  "He's not a loser," Stacey said. "He's, he's ..."

  Dylan could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. Suddenly her eyes brightened, and she gave him a smile even more syrupy than the one he'd tried out on her at the Renaissance show.

  Of course, his smile had been sappy and genuine. Stacey's probably wasn't, especially in this instance. But if Dylan had his way, she'd look at him like that and mean it by the time the weekend was up. It was something to look forward to.

  "He's my husband," she said with a ton of false cheer. Her gaze met Dylan's. "Isn't that right, honey?" she added through her smile, turning to face him so the others couldn't read her desperate please-stick-to-our-story expression.

  Both her hands clamped onto his shoulders. Help me! she mouthed.

  "Trust me," he told her, covering the whispered words with a loud smacking kiss on her lips. She nodded, looking scared but willing to bluster her way through whatever they had to do. "It's going to cost you, though," he warned. Her eyes widened.

  Grinning at the thought of the repayment he'd exact, Dylan hauled her up against his side and put on his best sitcom husband face. "I'll take care of this, Sweetcakes."

  He offered his hand to the closest policemen. "Richard Parker!" he boomed, shaking hands with each of them in turn. "What seems to be the trouble, officers? Don't tell me it's my little lady, Janie, here."

  Stacey raised the flowers. "Richard's going to kill you," she muttered from behind them. "You're making him sound like Fred Flintstone."

  Dylan smiled. "Guess that makes me Barney Rubble," he whispered. "I'm kinda tall for the part, don't you think?"

  Her smiling, up-and-down perusal made him feel tall enough to touch the top of the Atmosphere. This hero business had potential.

  "It seems your wife can't pay the taxi driver," one of the officers said. "And he won't move his taxi out of the drive until she does."

  The driver waved a strip of paper toward Dylan. "She's paying this ticket, too. You're lucky I don't charge you for lost wages. What kinda bubble brain tries to pay for a taxi with a check?"

  "Bubble brain?" Dylan asked.

  The driver looked uncertain.

  "This is my wife you're talking about, pal," Dylan said, stepping closer. He reached into his pocket. Both officers straightened, instantly alert.

  "Sorry, lady," mumbled the driver, darting a glance at Stacey.

  Dylan bared his teeth at him. "I don't think she heard you."

  "I'm sorry about that, ma'am!" He shoved the ticket into his front pants pocket, then wiped his palms across the wide bottom of his T-shirt. "I'll, uh, take care of the ticket myself."

  "Good idea." Pulling out his wallet, Dylan took out two ten dollar bills and gave them to the driver. "That ought to about cover it from the Renaissance to here, right?"

  "Uh, yeah," mumbled the driver, counting the money. He pocketed it, started to walk back to his taxi, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. "What about the fifty bucks?" he asked.

  Dylan's hand stilled midway through folding his wallet. "Fifty bucks?"

  Beside him, Stacey seemed to shrink a couple inches. "I, umm, promised him a little extra money," she said.

  "Fifty bucks?"

  She bit her lower lip, twisting her purse strap tight enough to cut off circulation to her wrist. She nodded.

  "Big tip."

  "It wasn't ... exactly ... a tip."

  "Nah, it wasn't a tip," agreed the driver. "Well?"

  Sighing, Dylan opened his wallet again. "What's it for?" he asked Stacey as he counted out fifty dollars.

  "Ummm ..." She shifted her weight from foot to foot, looking like a kid caught red-handed with her hand in the cookie jar. "I paid him extra," she whispered finally, "to get rid of you back there. When you were chasing the taxi."

  Dylan raised his eyebrows and handed over the money. No, he was paying extra to get rid of himself, he thought. "Next time," he said aloud, "just make sure you can fork over the dough before making a promise like that. Okay, lovey?"

  Stacey mumbled her assent and something that sounded like 'tigerlips,' if he wasn't mistaken, then buried her face in the roses. With everything apparently in the clear, the police helped escort the driver and his taxi onto the street again, leaving Dylan and Stacey alone.

  "Now that that's taken care of," he said, grinning, "it's payback time."

  Stacey ducked into the crowd and bolted for the casino.

  "You're fast," Dylan told her an hour later at the top of the Atmosphere's viewing tower. He braced his hand on the glass window over her head and leaned over her shoulder, trying not to show he was winded. He'd chased her through the Atmosphere's casino, up the stairs, down the stairs, across the shops lining the corridor to the hotel's featured space-needle-like attraction, up the elevator, and halfway around the viewing tower walkway. An Olympic runner would be breathing hard after all that. "I almost caught up to you when you stopped to check out that shoe sale."

  Stacey grinned, but she was panting, too. "I had a pretty big head start on you by then," she said, sinking down to sit at the edge of the viewing glass. Still holding her bedraggled bouquet of roses, she tucked her feet beneath her and nodded for him to join her. "And I figured I can always use a pair of shoes at fifty percent off. It was worth the risk. Besides, you didn't catch me."

  Her eyes were shining, her face rosy with the aftereffects of their chase, and damp tendrils of chestnut-colored hair clung to the back of her neck. Still smiling, she turned her face to the view as Dylan hunkered down to sit cross-legged beside her.

  "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she asked. Stacey spread her fingertips against the glass and gazed out at the blanket of Las Vegas lights spread against the darkness for miles below them.

  "Beautiful," Dylan agreed. But the view was ordinary compared with the way she looked to him now, triumphant from winning their chase and relaxed beside him. She might have been a different woman than the one who'd greeted him warily at the door to the honeymoon suite earlier, no less beautiful but twice as appealing ... because now she was beginning to feel comfortable with him. "And so are you," he said.

  Stacey laughed and raised her hand to wipe away a streak of smudged mascara. "Come on, Dylan. There's nobody around to hear us." She nodded her head to indicate the sparsely-populated viewing area and then hunched her shoulders, fiddling with a rose petal. "You don't have to be Mr. Honeymoon when it's just us."

  "I'm not, I—"

  "It's okay," she interrupted, stealing a glance at him from beneath her lowered eyelashes. "After all, you did your best to act like a honeymooner back at the Renaissance, and I kind of put the kibosh
on that, didn't I?" With a short laugh, Stacey twisted the petal from the stem and smoothed it between her fingers. She stared into the darkness and twinkling lights below and said, "I'm sorry about that, Dylan. I shouldn't have run out on you like I did."

  He couldn't believe she was taking the blame for ... for what? Dylan still wasn't sure exactly what had gotten her all riled up during dinner, and at this rate he wasn't likely to find out. "I think you skipped a step, here," he said, laying his hand on the smoothness of her knee and smiling at her. She didn't look up to see it, though, so his good-faith gesture was wasted. "I never—"

  I never figured out what all the trouble was, he started to say, but before he could get the words out, Stacey twisted off another rose petal and interrupted.

  "Please, I don't want to keep fighting with you," she said, looking up at him at last. "I can't stand it." More rose petals followed the first, twisted, scrubbed between her fingertips, then dropped onto the growing pile beside the viewing glass in front of her. "You were doing your best to pull off the honeymoon charade, and I ... I overreacted. I'm sorry. Let's just leave it at that, okay?"

  Her gaze, brown-eyed and imploring, met his. Stacey might not want him there at all, but if they were going to be forced into cooperating on the honeymoon charade, Dylan realized, it was important to her that they do it peacefully.

  "It means a lot to you that people get along, doesn't it?" he asked, placing his hand over hers to keep her from shredding the other two and a half dozen red roses he'd given her. She looked at his hand, startled, then at the pile of petals she'd made, and her cheeks pinked. "That's why you're doing this," he went on. "The honeymoon charade, I mean. To keep the peace."

  "Yeah, I'm a real peacenik," Stacey said with a rueful smile. "That's why I bashed you with a blow dryer and almost got you run over tonight. If I were you, I'd get the heck out of Dodge before the real shooting starts. You might get really hurt."

  He was already hurt. Hurting without her, only it had taken him too long to get it through his bone-headed brain. "I'm not going anyplace," Dylan said.

  "Oh, that's right, I forgot. You gave your word to Richard and Janie, didn't you?" She patted his knee, frowning sympathetically. "You're honor-bound for the whole weekend."

  That wasn't what he'd meant about staying, but he couldn't pass up an opportunity to solidify his alibi. "You've got it. The whole weekend. Especially now, with all those honeymoon surprises still to get through," Dylan said, trying to fake a little resistance to having to go through with the charade for two more days. "We've got a full line-up tomorrow."

  "Let's keep a low profile this time, okay?" Stacey asked.

  He raised two fingers. "Scout's honor, remember? I'll try to impersonate Richard a little more, umm, quietly, if you'll agree not to get Janie arrested."

  He stuck out his hand for a deal-making handshake. Stacey blushed at his mention of her run-in with the police, but slipped her hand into his anyway. "I never did thank you for rescuing me from the taxi driver," she murmured, squeezing his hand gently.

  Dylan used it to pull her closer. She had no choice but to come; her other hand was filled with the tissue-wrapped flowers. "You can thank me now. You still owe me, remember?" he murmured, raising his hand to her cheek. Beneath his fingertips her skin felt softer than the roses, and the feel of it lured him closer.

  "Th—thank you," she whispered, ducking her head. She tried to turn her face away, but Dylan tipped her chin up with his knuckles and gently shook his head.

  "That's not what I meant," he told her, cradling her cheek in his hand. He stroked her again, and the roses Stacey held between them started to tremble, filling the air with their perfume. "My payback demand is a thank you kiss."

  "A thank you kiss?" She glanced up at the few people standing near them. "But there's hardly anybody here to—"

  "That's not why I asked. Kiss me," he said, and the faint rustling of the roses underscored his words. Was she afraid, or excited? Her trembling could mean either one, and he didn't want to scare her. He did want to kiss her, kiss her long and hard and make the past melt away so they could start again.

  "Kiss me," Dylan said, "and I'll call it even."

  That reasoning she could accept, he saw. The roses stilled, and the hunted expression left her face. Stacey raised up slightly, her hand still linked with his, and quickly pressed her lips to his. She started to lean back ... and Dylan stopped her with a hand to the back of her neck. His fingers kneaded into her hair, and its softness sifted through his fingers like silk. "You're welcome," he said.

  More, he thought.

  Her eyes closed briefly, then opened again to focus on his mouth. "I ... you're welcome, too." The roses dropped to the floor. Heat passed between them, and Dylan hardly dared move for fear of scaring her away. An instant later Stacey's mouth found his again, and it was as though nothing had ever come between them. She was Stacey, his Stacey, warm and tempting as he remembered. She brought both hands to his shoulders and kissed him harder. He was lost, falling for her all over again, and Dylan wanted to tell her, tell her how he felt and how much he'd missed her, except just as he thought it he literally was falling. Backward.

  She'd unbalanced him by leaning forward. Dylan tightened his hold on her and tried to ease them upright again without breaking their kiss. Hell, he'd be nuts to end a kiss like this one. He slipped his arm around her middle and held her close, digging his heels into the carpet to keep them both from toppling over.

  "Mmm-mmm," Stacey moaned, deepening the kiss. "Mmm-mmm ..." Briefly, Dylan wondered if she'd mistaken his maneuverings for increasing passion. He leaned forward, nearly succeeding in guiding them upright again. But then her kiss made him wild, made him forget where they were and who was around ... and what was happening.

  Teetering, he grabbed for leverage, caught an armful of woman instead, and they both toppled backward. Their mouths popped apart. Stacey sprawled atop his chest, looking disheveled, disoriented—and sexy as hell. Also confused. But she wasn't jumping up off him right away, so Dylan decided to savor the experience.

  He smiled, wanting to feel nothing except the curving softness of her body pressed against him. Something sharp poking into the back of his shirt changed his mind and sent his attention to less good-feeling parts of his anatomy. It felt like two dozen tiny needles stabbing him in the back, like cactus spines from the ones planted outside the hotel or maybe midget shish kebab skewers or swizzle sticks, which somehow seemed more suited to the glitz of Las Vegas than anything else.

  It felt like rose thorns working their way into his shoulder blades.

  Because it was.

  "Youch!" Rearing upright, Dylan snatched the limp flowers Stacey had dropped behind him. He held them out to her. "Let's try that again—without your instruments of destruction behind me this time," he said with a grin.

  But it was too late. She was already getting to her feet, yanking down her dress as though it was supposed to come to her ankles instead of just above her knees, filled with apologies and the same damned misplaced modesty she'd given him before.

  Hell.

  "Sorry," she said again, taking the flowers from his hand. They dropped in her grasp, several blossoms bending over the tissue paper with broken stems and crushed petals. The thorns, Dylan noticed with a pained glance, seemed perfectly intact.

  "I didn't mean to attack you like that," Stacey said, trying to prop up one of the roses. "One minute I was thanking you, and the next ..." She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Guiltily, she looked around the viewing tower, as though expecting the kissing police to come skulking by at any second. "For Pete's sake," she cried, waving her arm toward the floor, "I had us both sprawled all over the carpet! I just don't know what happened."

  He did. They'd connected, really connected, for a minute. And it scared her.

  "Let's try it again," Dylan offered, "and maybe we'll be able to figure it out."

  As an attempt to lighten the mood between them, it di
dn't. Probably because yearning still sounded in the sandpapery rasp of his voice, still showed in the shadows he felt in his eyes. He wanted her too much, and no amount of kidding around would change that.

  "We'd better just go," she said, shaking her head. Cracking a half-rueful smile, she added, "The top of a 1,000-foot tower is probably not the safest place to be with me right now."

  Dylan got up too, and looked out over the lights of Las Vegas through the glass. "It's okay," he said, thumping its cool, smooth surface. "I think the brochure said this is bullet-proof glass. I'm probably safe enough."

  "Ha, ha."

  "You said it, not me." Dylan raked his fingers through his hair, watching Stacey fiddle with her purse and then the straps on her sandals and then the straps on her dress, like they might somehow have flopped down from the force of their kiss. Actually, as kisses went, that one might have been scorching enough to accomplish it.

  But that was beside the point. He and Stacey might be on slightly more civil terms with each other now, he realized, but as far as she was concerned he was still a danger to be reckoned with. The wary glance she sent his way told Dylan that much. It looked like he was back to square one.

  The trouble with that was, their kiss had done nothing to satisfy his yearnings for Stacey. If anything, it had only brought back everything they'd ever shared and made him want that closeness more.

  He put his hand to her waist to guide her toward the elevator again, wondering how he'd ever been dumb enough to let her go in the first place. They were right for each other, Dylan was sure of it. All that remained was convincing Stacey of that fact before the honeymoon suite charade—and especially his part in it—was discovered.

  Chapter Five

  Stacey sensed the morning sunlight on her face, screwed her eyes tighter shut, and rolled over in bed. Something big, warm and solid blocked her path. Feeling muzzy-headed, she opened her eyes.

  And looked into Dylan's face, only inches from hers on the neighboring pillow.

  "Aaack! What are you doing here?" she shrieked, scooting madly backward. Her backside met empty air at the edge of the bed. With two feet of empty ivory silk sheet between her and Dylan, she was able to relax long enough to stare back at him. "Well?"