“I won’t lie to anyone who asks about us.”
“You’re going to tell people that you married me so you could have sex with me?”
When she said it out loud, he agreed the reason sounded ridiculous. Still...
“Isn’t that why most men get married?” he said, fighting to keep his tone light. “Because they want to have sex with the woman they are marrying? I definitely want to have sex with you, Taylor.”
“I suppose so,” she responded, ignoring his last comment. “Or we could just tell them that we were drunk and didn’t realize what we were doing.”
He certainly hadn’t been thinking clearly, but he distinctly recalled exchanging vows with her, promising to care for her forever, to cherish her and yet they were planning to end things before they’d even got started.
He stared at her, wishing he could read whatever was running through that sharp mind of hers. “Shall we tell them we married because we were drunk or because we wanted to have sex?”
Her gaze darted about the room as if seeking the answer somewhere within the four walls. Finally, she shrugged. “Take your pick. Both are true.”
* * *
Taylor pulled her dress out of the closet. Her gaze settled on Slade’s clothes hanging next to hers.
Other than her father, she’d never lived with a man, so seeing the mix of Slade’s belongings with hers had her pausing, had her eyes watering up again.
What an emotional roller coaster she rode.
Her safe, secure world felt as if it was crumbling around her.
She’d quit taking chances years ago. Had quit living in some ways. Oh, she lived through Gracie, but what about for herself? Nina was right. She didn’t do anything for herself, just lived in a nice controlled environment where she planned for all contingencies.
Too bad she hadn’t had a backup plan for an unexpected Vegas Christmas wedding.
While Slade was in the bathroom, she changed into her dress, took her hair down from its tight pin-back and pulled it up into a looser hold. She had her contacts in her purse, but wasn’t sure what it would say if she put them in when she almost always wore her glasses.
How ridiculous was she being? What did it matter what she looked like?
Still, she dug in her purse and put in her contacts. She was just blinking them into place when Slade stepped out of the bathroom.
Wearing only his suit pants.
Taylor’s body responded to his bare chest like a Pavlov dog to its stimulus. The man was beautiful.
And hers.
Not for long, but at this moment Slade Sain was hers more than any other man had ever been.
Just as she was his more than any other woman had ever been his.
Maybe.
She frowned because she really didn’t know that to be true. “Have you been married before?”
Her question obviously caught him off guard. “No. Why? Have you? Never mind, silly question with that one-guy thing. You haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t,” she agreed, averting her gaze from his intense blue one. “I just wondered if you had.”
Despite the tension between them, he grinned with wry humor. “Wondering if I make marrying a habit?”
Exactly. “Something like that.”
He slipped his crisp blue shirt on one arm at a time, then buttoned his cuffs. “I’ve never been married before.” He paused, stared at her with a serious look. “I’ve never even contemplated marriage.”
Her feet wanted to shuffle but she somehow kept them still. “Why not?”
Smoothing out his shirt, he shrugged. “I have other plans for my life besides a wife, two point five kids and a white picket fence.”
Her chest spasmed at just how different they really were, because once upon a time she’d dreamed of being a wife with kids and that proverbial white picket fence. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We’re human and made a mistake. People do it all the time.”
He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know. So why did his words shoot arrows into her chest? “Not me. Not like this.” She winced. “I mean, obviously I have made mistakes before, but I thought I’d learned better than to make this kind.”
“Marrying me makes you realize you haven’t evolved as far as you’d hoped?”
“Something like that. We were practically strangers and got married.” Sighing, she closed her eyes. “Before last night you probably didn’t even know my eye color.”
“I knew.”
His answer was so quick, so confident, that she couldn’t question the truth of his response.
Staring at him, she asked, “How?”
He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “I know more about you than you seem to think.”
“Like what?”
“Like how much you love coffee.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lots of people love coffee, so that’s just a generic assumption that could be said about a high percentage of the population.”
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