I understand.” Pulling down the visor, she gazed into a small lighted mirror and pursed her lips into a frown. “Ugh, looks like that drive took even longer than I thought.” She reached to the floorboard for her purse and dove inside, pulling out a tube of lipstick. After giving her lips a pretty sheen, she eyed him funny. “Are you sure you feel up to this?”
“What kind of question is that? You trying to back out on me?”
If he could have bottled the feeling her grin gave him, he’d be a rich man. Gone was his headache and, oddly enough, all his doubts about the vows he was about to take. How the marriage ended they could figure out later. Right now, he planned to enjoy the moment, starting with appreciating his lovely bride.
Her lipstick was the sheerest of pink and, just as she had at Lu’s the night before, she did a fluff-and-tuck routine on her hair that left it a tousled, yet somehow elegant, shoulder-length mess. She capped it with her veil, mesmerizing him with the sight of filmy white lace whispering to flushed cheeks. What was she thinking? Did she find herself in the similarly bizarre situation of being as attracted to him as he was to her?
She lifted her hand to his cheek. Here it came, she was about to tell him how hot she was for him….
“You’ve, um, got something on your face.” His heart plummeted when she brushed at a spot to the left of his nose, then held up a gray lint ball for his inspection. “See? I didn’t want you wearing this in our wedding photos.”
“Right. Ah, me neither.” Damn. Could he have possibly misread that situation more completely? This temptress was so sly that for a second she’d almost made him forget why they were there.
Trying to hide his consternation with both himself and his bride, he fumed out the dusty car window. At dawn, he’d parked the vehicle in an alley they shared with a primer-gray Impala up on blocks and two overfilled Dumpsters. What were the odds that he’d smell motorcycle exhaust at his first wedding, then week-old trash at his second? “So,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “Should we do this thing?”
“You’re sure?”
“Why do I keep getting the feeling you’re not?”
Lilly returned her attention to her purse. “I don’t know…because I don’t feel the slightest bit apprehensive.” Her digging took on a furious pace. Could she really go through with this? Sure, making her parents proud and all was a very big deal, but after what Elliot had put her through, did she feel ready to open her heart to another man?
Whoa.
She scavenged her purse even faster.
Who’d said anything about doing anything with her heart? This was a marriage of convenience. The love-match line formed on the other side of the building.
“What are you looking for?”
“Mints. I’ve got to have mints. I don’t want to say my vows with bad breath.”
Grasping her by the wrists, he stilled her hands, then took them in his. “Lilly, you smell fine, you look beautiful. Trust me, there’s nothing for you to be worried about.”
“Really? I look okay? I don’t look as though I was up all night driving?”
He grinned. “How could you when you’ve been sleeping on me for the better part of the last—” he eyed his watch “—eight hours. It would have been nine, but remember when we dealt with that pesky business of getting our license?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. So I slept all that time?”
“Peaceful as a baby.”
Smoothing the front of her gown, she said, “Yes, well…”
Finn’s stomach took a dive. Was she thinking of backing out? She’d better not. He had a lot at stake. Not only a brand-new truck that wasn’t even paid for, but a massive amount of pride. He had to win this bet. Still, maybe if she was getting cold feet, he should take it easy on her, act as if he had all the time in the world for them to make their vows. “Maybe we should wait?” he suggested. “We could get a room. You could take a nap and freshen up, then, once you feel up to it, we’ll get hitched tonight.”
“You want to get a room? Now?” There went those eyes of hers again. Big blue saucers brimming with disapproval.
“Well, sure. Why? What’s the matter with our sharing a room?”
“I thought you knew how I felt about such things.”
“What things?”
“You know…” She ducked her gaze, aiming it on the yucca plant thriving between Dumpsters number one and two. “Premarital—and in our case, even aftermarital—relations.”
“Huh?”
“S-E-X.”
“Oh. Ooh. Well, who said anything about doing the mattress mambo? All I suggested was that we get a room so you could take a nap.”
“That’s okay. I’d just as soon get this over with.”
Get it over with? What kind of a thing was that for a bride to say? Even a pretend bride! “Ah, sure. Let’s go.”
He bolted from the car, racing around the now dusty sedan intent on opening her door, but he was too late. She’d already done it. Didn’t she know she was being paid to let him do manly stuff for her so that she felt more like a woman and he felt like more of a—
Dope.
While he’d stood there contemplating his manhood, she’d already hustled past the weed-choked side of the pink chapel. Coming around the corner, Finn looked up to see a gigantic statue of smiling Wayne Newton. He held a wedding cake in his hands, and an inscription across the top of the chapel read, Wayne’s House of Love, and beneath that, Danke Schoen for your patronage.
Dear Lord, what am I getting into?
“Lilly! Wait up!” He tried shoving the keys into his pocket, but they wouldn’t fit. Her massive key chain was loaded down with a pink rabbit’s foot and mini snow-globes from every cheesy destination in the West. “Can you please put this in your purse?”
“Sure,” she said, pausing to grab the wad of fuzz and plastic from him, then slip it into her white bag. She glanced at her slim gold watch. “We’d better hurry. We’re almost late. Do you have the license?”
“Yeah.” Only it doesn’t quite read the way you think it does. How would she take the news when she learned he’d been on to her scam from the start?
“Hello? Dallas?”
“Huh? Oh—right. I’m ready and rarin’ to go.”
“No, not yet.” She approached him, then, standing on her tiptoes, buttoned his collar and retied his bow tie. The warm brush of her fingers against his throat startled him. Her act was intimate—the kind of thing a wife does for her husband before they attend their daughter’s wedding. Again Finn’s conscience reminded him of how badly he yearned for that kind of lifelong bliss, and of just how far this sham marriage was from the real thing.
“There,”
