more out of confusion than celebration. He strode over to where Casey clung dazedly to her stool, and took both her hands in his. She clutched them as if he’d thrown her a lifeline.
“Casey—” he spoke loudly so his words would carry to the audience without a mic “—will you marry me?”
He heard a shriek from someone in the crowd. Casey stared at him. He leaned forward, and his lips skimmed the soft skin of her cheek as he whispered in her ear, “We’re going to fake a wedding.”
He stepped back and said again, for the benefit of the crowd, “Casey, will you marry me? Please?”
He wondered if she’d understood, she sat there, unresponsive, for so long. Then she expelled a slow breath and smiled radiantly, her gray-green eyes full of trust. “Yes, Adam, I will.”
For a second, he felt a tightness in his chest, as if he’d just seriously proposed marriage to the woman he loved. Whatever that might feel like. A din exploded around them, the audience cheering, Sally yelling to make herself heard. Someone called for a commercial break.
Five minutes later, the clerk had issued a marriage license. Under Tennessee law there was no waiting period, no blood test. Adam announced he would use his own marriage celebrant, and beckoned to Dave. His friend looked around, then twigged that Adam meant him. He bounded forward, and by the time he reached the set his face was a study in solemnity. If you discounted the gleam in his eyes.
Dave patted his pockets, then turned to the ousted minister. “I seem to have forgotten my vows. Could I borrow yours?”
Just as they went back on air he clipped on a microphone. He began laboring through the “wedding.”
“Adam James Carmichael, do you take—” He slanted Casey a questioning look.
“Casey Eleanor Greene,” she supplied.
“Casey Eleanor Greene to be your wife? To have and to hold, for—”
“I do,” Adam said.
“Right.” Dave moved down the page. “Casey Eleanor Greene, do you—”
“I do,” Casey said.
“—take Adam James Carmichael to be your husband?”
“She said she does,” Adam snapped.
At the same moment, Casey repeated desperately, “I do!”
Dave got the message and started to wrap things up. “Then, uh—” he lost his place and improvised “—it’s a deal. You’re married, husband and wife. You may—”
“Kiss the bride!” the audience yelled on cue.
Why not? They’d gone through all the other motions of a wedding. Adam turned to Casey and found she’d lifted her face expectantly.
One kiss and this nightmare would be over, Casey told herself. She could escape the scene of her utter humiliation, and barricade herself in the house in Parkvale for the next hundred years.
Going after your dreams was vastly overrated.
She leaned toward Adam, went up on tiptoe to make it easier for him to seal this sham. Just kiss the guy and we can all go home.
She wasn’t prepared for the same current of electricity that had left her fingers tingling earlier to multiply tenfold as their mouths met.
Shaken, she grasped his upper arms to steady herself, and encountered the steel of masculine strength through the fine wool of his jacket. His hands went to her waist and he pulled her closer. The shock of awareness that somewhere deep within her a flame of desire had been kindled snapped Casey’s eyes open. She met Adam’s gaze full on, saw mirrored in it her own realization that this was about to get embarrassing. Even more embarrassing.
Slowly, he pulled back.
The audience hooted in appreciation. Casey blushed.
“Folks, none of us expected this when we came on stage an hour ago, but there you have it. Casey Greene married Adam Carmichael, right here on Kiss the Bride.” Sally ad-libbed with ease, now that time was almost up. “These three lovely couples will head off on their honeymoons, courtesy of Channel Eight. Don’t miss next week’s show—anything can happen on Kiss the Bride!”
Casey and Adam didn’t wait around for the inevitable interrogation. By unspoken agreement, they headed offstage and back to the boardroom where they’d met—could it really have been just two hours ago?
Casey sank onto the leather couch, trying to control the shaking that had set in now she was out of the public eye.
Her savior scrutinized her as if she might be dangerous. “Are you okay?”
She heard a wild quality in her laugh—no wonder he looked nervous. She took a deep, calming breath. “I’ve had better days.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told you to go ahead with the wedding.”
“I probably would have done it anyway.” She ran a hand down her face, suddenly exhausted. “I’m the fool for agreeing to go on the program in the first place.”
“I should have cancelled that stupid show the minute I heard of it.”
A gruff voice said, “When you two have stopped arguing over who’s to blame for this mess, you might want to think about how you’re going to get out of it.”
A middle-aged man, tall and trim, dressed conservatively in a dark suit and tie, had entered the room. Adam introduced him as Sam Magill, Channel Eight’s in-house legal counsel and Adam’s own attorney. The lawyer’s sharp eyes narrowed to a point where Casey thought they might disappear.
“What you do in your private life is your business, Adam,” he said. “But I’m amazed you’d get married without a prenup.” “Hey!” So what if it hadn’t been a real wedding? Casey resented the implication she was after Adam’s fortune, which presumably, since Sally Summers had described him as Memphis’s most eligible bachelor, was considerable. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Missy, everyone’s that kind of girl when there’s enough money involved,” the lawyer said. “I don’t like what happened to you back there, but if you plan on taking advantage of this situation to feather your own nest, I’m warning you—”
“That’s enough, Sam,” Adam said sharply. “That wasn’t a real wedding, and as soon as Casey has a chance to work out where she’s going next, I’ll make an announcement to that effect.”
The lawyer’s jaw dropped. Then he broke into the wheezy laugh of a chronic smoker, a laugh that sent a tremor of unease through Casey.
“What’s so funny?” Adam demanded.
It took a moment for Sam to regain his sober countenance. “Am I wrong, or was that David Dubois who performed that little ceremony out there?”
Adam nodded.
“The same David Dubois who served as a commissioner
