felt only moments earlier, Dallas’s kiss had left her that weak. Her knees felt rubbery and her chest strangely tight with anticipation and tingling warmth. Was a marriage of convenience supposed to be this much fun?
“How can I ask you to marry me when I don’t know your name?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, your, ah, full name.”
Thank goodness. Her full name. Of course. She’d almost been back to her original worry that maybe this man wasn’t Dallas after all. “My given name is Lillian Diane Churchill. But, please, feel free to keep on calling me Lilly. There’s no need for you to get formal on me now.”
“Okay, Lilly…” He paused after drawling the l’s. Never before had just hearing her name brought such heady pleasure. “Will you marry me?”
Would she marry him? She’d follow him to the end of the earth and back—that is, assuming he never lied to her. Elliot had lied, and look what she’d gotten from him. That’s why she knew things were going to work out great with Dallas. Their relationship was based upon total honesty.
She licked her lips, took a deep breath and committed every second of this moment to memory. She’d remember the way Dallas smelled, like…well, a little like beer and cigarette smoke, but beneath all that, she detected citrus aftershave and a distinctly delicious scent that was all him—and soon to be all hers! “Yes, Dallas. Of course, I’ll marry you.”
“Good. Then how about you and me getting this show on the road?”
“Mr. Lebeaux, it would be my pleasure.”
“Who’s Mr. Lebeaux?”
“Oh, Dallas,” she said, her giddy laugh carrying across the still night air. “You’re so funny.”
Not so funny, though, was when, a few minutes later, Dallas calmly opened her car’s passenger door to reach for her keys. How could she have been so scatterbrained as to not even check the other door to see if it was unlocked?
“This is embarrassing,” she mumbled. She would have added that since finding out about the baby, she hadn’t been feeling herself, but the problem was that incidents like this were exactly herself. Good grief, she was soon going to be a mother. She had to start being more responsible.
“There you go,” Finn said. Wearing a bemused grin, he handed her a wad of interconnected souvenir key chains. “Guess we’ll chalk this incident up to bridal jitters.”
“I’m afraid it’s more than that,” she said, placing her hand protectively over her tummy.
“Oh? Confession time?”
“Only on the matter that you’re about to wed a misfit. I thought our marriage would instantly transform me, but so far, I guess it hasn’t worked.”
“We’re not hitched yet,” he pointed out. “Maybe saying those all-important vows is all you need to turn your life around?”
“You think?” She looked at him, really looked at the man she would spend the next fifty years with. And what she saw wasn’t just a handsome face and warm, expressive brown eyes, but for the first time in the month they’d corresponded, she saw that perhaps instead of this marriage being the platonic business arrangement she’d expected, there just might be a chance of something more.
THE NEXT MORNING, after finally pulling into the chapel parking lot for some shut-eye, Finn woke to a delicious weight resting on his chest. From his perch behind the wheel—somewhere around one in the morning he’d taken over the driving—he saw a crown of silken gold contrasting with the black wool of his tux. To test if his latest fiancée was real, he looped his finger around one of her baby-fine curls. She shifted and moaned, granting him a breathtaking view of her profile.
Yep, she was real all right. A real knockout.
Let the games continue!
Warm sun beat through the car windows, illuminating honeyed highlights in her eyebrows and lashes. Her lips looked every bit as plump and kissable as they had the night before, and the brief memory of the way that mouth had felt touching his caused a swelling down south that made his pants even more uncomfortable.
As his future bride again stirred against him, spilling the softest of mews, Finn wondered what the hell he was doing? The marriage license they’d obtained near dawn rested heavy in his chest pocket, as did the fact that he’d had to slip the clerk a hundred while Lilly had been in the courthouse bathroom to fill out the document in his real name.
During the night’s long drive, while Lilly softly snored, he’d reconfirmed his belief that her calling him Dallas had to be part of Mitch’s grand scheme. For if Finn were to marry Lilly using a false name—to insure that she didn’t know he was on to her plan—their marriage wouldn’t be legal, thus giving Mitch the right to drive off in Abigail on a technicality. But as usual, Finn was one step ahead of his nemesis.
The one thing Finn hadn’t counted on was being this attracted to his bride. Still, he supposed his attraction to her would add a certain touch of realism to their ceremony—even if it was just pretend.
“Lilly,” he said, deciding the time had come to guarantee his winning the bet. “Hello? Are you ready to tie the knot?”
“Hmm?”
“Hello? Wake up.” He softly tickled behind her right ear. “We’re at the Wayne Newton Chapel, just like you requested.”
She took a second to wake, then eased upright, quickly processing the fact that she’d been using his chest as a pillow. “Sorry,” she said, unaware of the adorable red mark on the left side of her face from where she’d pressed her cheek against his lapel.
“How do you feel?” she asked, scooting to her half of the front seat. From the dashboard, she reached for her bouquet, which had wilted during the night. The heavy scent of fading pink roses filled the air.
“Feel?” Even as he said the word, his head pounded. “Oh right. Feel.” He flashed her a wry grin, hoping his beer breath didn’t smell as bad as it tasted. “Actually, not so hot.”
“You don’t make a habit of drinking that much, do you?”
He shook his head. “Must have been all the excitement.”
“Sure. 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
