the floor was preferable to being seduced by the deepest, darkest blue eyes she’d ever seen.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, tanned skin. He would make a good surfer boy if he ever decided to give up farming.
“So we signed a marriage contract?”
He laughed. “It’s on the side table. Knock yourself out.” The idiom sounded quaint in his subtle accent. She took advantage of his offer and leapt at the envelope on the small table he indicated. The papers inside seemed genuine. And that really was her signature, messy beside his large, looping, slightly old-fashioned scrawl.
“Is there a pre-nup?”
“We won’t need one.” His confidence bordered on arrogance. “There hasn’t been a divorce in my family in over three hundred years.”
She had news for him. She could only track back two generations of her family, and there hadn’t been a divorce in any of them that she knew of either. But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be a first time.
On the plus side, her impetuous little marriage could be her ticket out of a dingy motel in Vegas. Max had wealth and privilege written all over him. “So what’s your big plan for our future?”
He leaned back in his chair, lips curling in a smile. Did anything bother him? Did he ever stop smiling?
“We’ll go back to Napa, of course. And we’ll make wine, and enjoy the sunshine, and clean air and good food. We’ll have a family, and we’ll grow old together.”
Phoenix was ready to stick her finger down her throat. Stay in one place the rest of her life and grow old there? Stay with one man, forsaking all others? Over her dead body.
She dealt with the easiest issue first. “Why do I have to uproot myself and move to Napa? You could move here.”
“Because I have responsibilities in Napa, to my grandfather, to everyone who works on the farm. You don’t. Last night you told me Napa was as good a place to live as any.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was obviously out of my mind last night. I like not being responsible for anyone or anything.” Or to anyone. As long as she showed up for work every day and didn’t spill drinks on the customers as they threw their life savings into the slot machines, her life was her own, to do with as she pleased.
Max leaned back. “That’s a rather selfish way to live, don’t you think?”
“Of course it’s selfish. And I’m perfectly happy with that, thank you very much. So how do we go about getting a divorce?”
That wiped the smile off his face pretty quick. “I just told you there hasn’t been a divorce in my family for over three hundred years.”
“Then you’d better start making plans to have me bumped off, because there is no way in hell I’m going to settle down and play happy families with you. If the choice is between life as a soccer mom driving an SUV in the suburbs, and death, then it’s a very easy choice.”
“Who says it has to be either?” He laughed, and her tolerance level jumped from mild irritation to flat out anger.
She waved the papers in her hand. “This marriage is a mistake. Commitment is the quickest way to end a good relationship, and we don’t even have that.” Not to mention that it committed you to only one person, and where was the fun in that? No more waking up in strange hotel rooms and trying to climb out through windows? Thanks, but she’d skip it.
He frowned. “You don’t really believe that.”
“You don’t have a clue what I believe.”
“Last night we talked about having dreams. About a shared life together. I’d never met anyone before who wanted the same things I did until I met you.”
“Last night was last night, but this morning you’re dealing with me.”
His voice was low and soft. “You’re still the same woman you were last night, Phoenix.”
She shook her head, refusing to listen. Bad move. The headache still pressing at her temples thumped harder against her skull with the movement. “I know I have a tendency to be impulsive, but I don’t go around marrying strange men, and marriage is definitely not something on my Bucket List.”
Max pushed himself up off his chair. “No, what’s on your bucket list is to see the world. As soon as the harvest is in, we can do that. Together. Starting in Europe, as we discussed last night.”
Okay, so she’d pretty much told him everything. Parents dead, check. Dreams and ambitions, check. Real name, check.
Even Khara, who she’d worked with – and partied with – for nearly two months didn’t know more about her than her favourite music and movies. And she considered Khara one of the best friends she’d had in years.
Phoenix needed something stronger than coffee to deal with this. But since it couldn’t be more than…she glanced out the window…ten in the morning, she’d have to settle for the sofa and resting her fevered head in her hands.
Even if she could magically grow wings and fly out of this suite, she’d have to stay. There was no way she could run away from this. Not until there were signed divorce papers next those marriage papers.
Max came to sit beside her on the sofa, but he didn’t touch her. “Can I get you anything for your headache? Do you want to go back to bed?”
“Yes.” One form of escape was as good as another. Then as that infernal smile tugged at his lips, she added: “alone.”
Why waste such nice sheets and pillows? She could have a nap, and when the headache was gone they could have a rational conversation about getting divorced. And if she was going to sleep, it might as well be here in luxury, rather than in the motel where she could hear the couple next door bickering through the walls all day and all night. They’d lived there going on six years now. That was the thing with couples. They tended to get stuck in a rut, in a dead end. She wasn’t ever going to get caught in a rut. She wasn’t planning on staying in either the dead-end motel, the dead-end job or even this dead-end city, for more than a few months.
Besides, she’d come here for the memories, a final adieu to her parents before setting off alone into the wide world. But her parents weren’t here. Vegas had changed since they’d lived here. She’d changed.
There was never any point in going back, only moving forward.
She struggled up from the sofa, but Max was quicker. He caught her up in his arms and, ignoring her protest, carried her back to the bedroom. “Second time I get to carry you across the threshold.” His voice was low and husky, right by her ear.
“Please tell me we didn’t follow every cheesy wedding custom? If we were married at a drive-through or by Elvis, I think I might throw up.”
“Pink Cadillac, Elvis in a white suit, and everything.”
She must have turned green, because he laughed, a deep rumble against her chest. “That was a joke. Except for the glitter guns, it was classy and intimate. And very, very private.”
“I don’t suppose
