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,” Lilly said with a misty smile. “That’s better. Come on, let’s get married.”
On her way inside, for the umpteenth time Lilly wondered if she was doing the right thing. After all, she was still kind of on the rebound from Elliot, and maybe a month wasn’t long enough to know someone before she married him.
Yeah, but on the flip side, she’d known Elliot Dinsmoore all her life. Could she help it if, during the brief time they’d both moved away from their hometown, the charming traveling insurance salesman had gotten married—and conveniently forgot to tell her during their whirlwind romance that he still was married?
Shameful heat crept up her cheeks at the memory of the horrific day he’d told her his news. The day she’d given him not only her virginity, but her heart. Even now, almost two months after the fact, she knew that if her perfect family, none of whom had ever done a bad, stupid or reckless thing in their lives, found out she was pregnant with a married man’s baby, they’d never forgive her.
Well, she thought, throwing her shoulders back at the same time she opened
