just one of the guys now? Go away.” She dropped into her office chair and motioned toward her door with the gun. She’d left the safety on, which was more than he deserved. “That was fun. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
He leaned against the edge of her desk and fished an envelope out of his jacket. “We’re married. Read for yourself.”
She opened it and pulled out a fancy-schmancy certificate with black calligraphy and plenty of gold foil. Once upon a time, the thing had probably been elegant as hell, but now it was full of creases from repeated folding. Hot sauce decorated one corner. Obviously, whatever it was, he highly valued it. Not.
The letter was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon and she got a bad, bad feeling in her stomach. “This is dated three weeks ago.”
He shrugged. “I was in a foxhole. The postal service doesn’t deliver out there.”
She read on and froze. “How can we possibly be married?”
“I imagine it was that part where the minister asked us if we ‘did.’ Shoulda lied, babe.”
“That was a fake ceremony.” She set the papers on her desk. Levi had to be joking for some sick, twisted, unfathomable reason. They couldn’t be married. They were the two least compatible people on the planet, not to mention she’d sworn off marriage after watching her parents’ union explode so spectacularly.
And if those weren’t good enough reasons, she had a performance review in four weeks, and a congressional hearing to attend in two. She’d blown the whistle on a team of DEA agents who’d treated their Central American posting as party central under the mistaken assumption that they could do whatever they wanted with impunity, so it definitely wouldn’t look good if it came out that she’d been involved in a fake wedding ceremony in Belize. A ceremony where the real bride and groom were supposed to be a notorious drug kingpin and his girlfriend, but they’d been a no-show because they’d been arrested and carted out to international waters by an undercover SEAL team. She could practically see the headlines now: DEA Agent Is Wedding Proxy for Drug Lord.
Levi lifted his broad shoulders in another shrug. “Apparently, the minister didn’t get the memo and someone in the registry department agrees with him—and sent us that commemorative piece of paper.”
“It has to be a prank.” God knew, the SEALs loved a good joke. This one seemed kind of elaborate, but sometimes the guys had too much thinking time on their hands. “Did you call the registry department and verify this? Or do you believe anything someone writes on a piece of paper?”
“The registry department,” Levi said tightly, “apparently had a close encounter with a tropical rainstorm two weeks ago. Most of the roof went and the filing system took a direct hit. No one is answering the phones because half the staff is on leave while the government rebuilds. The half of the staff that is still working has neither the time nor the inclination to wade through thousands of waterlogged pieces of paper looking for a certificate that might or might not be there.”
Ouch.
“Since it’s easy to blow someone off when there’s two thousand miles between you and them, I planned on going down there since I had some leave coming to me,” Levi continued. “Because I assumed you’d want this taken care of.”
For once, she had to agree with him. “If this is true, I want a divorce.”
Immediately. How fast could you get divorced in Belize?
“I wasn’t looking for a life sentence, either.”
No. It had to be a fake, a joke, anything other than real. “We can’t possibly be married. Whatever you did, fix it.” She slapped the papers against his chest.
“How is this my fault?” He got that stubborn, badass look on his face, but to hell with him. He didn’t scare her and she was tired of his crap.
“You’re here. You’re the one telling me we’re married. Prove it to me.”
He yanked the hem of his T-shirt up, revealing flat abs and, God, a perfect six-pack. “You want to skip straight to the honeymoon? Good idea.”
* * *
“YOU PIG. DO NOT get naked in my office.” Ashley pokered up the second he flashed her.
Ice queen didn’t like his approach? Too damn bad.
She didn’t get to tell him what to do. This mess wasn’t his fault. Of course, if he was being honest, it wasn’t hers either, but he didn’t feel like being fair right now. Hell, he’d just discovered that he was married to a woman who wanted to murder him. It hadn’t been a good week.
He leaned in and delivered his ultimatum. “Put in for vacation time, because we need to go down there and sort it out.”
If looks could kill, he’d be dead, planted and decaying. Vacationing with him was apparently not on her bucket list, but she’d just have to get over it. If he had to deal with this, so did she.
“It can’t be legal. We didn’t fill out an application or sign anything. This isn’t my fault.”
And that automatically made it his?
“You can’t make me go,” she continued petulantly. Fighting words. Yeah...she was pissed off, all right. He entertained the idea of unloading her gun, but he wasn’t suicidal.
“I think I can.” He knew the look she got when she was thinking about taking him out, and chances were his teammates had been right. Given the right opportunity, she’d skip the annulment and go straight for the kill shot.
“Really?” She drawled the question and his blood pressure soared. “Walk me through it, big guy.”
Jesus. Maybe, just once, she could lay off the sarcasm and admit that he was right. It wasn’t even like he wanted to be right about their just-married status. He’d have been deliriously happy to find out he’d been mistaken. “I’m not the one who has something to lose.”
She smiled and, okay, it was probably wrong that the mean look she got right before she went after him turned him on so much. He had a kink in his think that he should work on. Later. After he was single again. “Did you ask permission of your commanding officer before you went and got yourself married on a mission?”
“Nope, but I’m thinking the worst I get is an ass-chewing for being dumb enough to stand in for the groom.” His unit had already made it clear they’d never let him live the marriage down. They’d started calling him Wedding Ken and one wiseass had bought him a pair of matching his-and-hers ring pops. “But I can go out and announce to all of your colleagues that we’re married.”
She didn’t back down. “Awkward, but I’ll live.”
One of the useful things about Ashley was that she froze when she lied. She probably didn’t realize that she stilled, as if all of the brain cells in that downright enormous brain of hers diverted to creative thinking and forgot to keep her body in motion. The way she’d stopped moving when she’d dismissed his threat screamed concern. All he needed to do was push a wee bit harder and she’d be on that plane with him.
“I’ll give them all the details, Dixon. With photos. You in a white bikini with BRIDE bedazzled
