Connal. Diana Palmer
save his pride. To save her flimsy relationship with him. To spare herself the embarrassment of why she’d let him force her into the ceremony. Steady, girl, she told herself. The marriage wasn’t legal in this country, she was reasonably sure of that, so there would be no harm done if she convinced him it had never happened.
“What marriage license?” she asked with a perfectly straight face and carefully surprised eyes.
Her response threw him. He hesitated, just for an instant. “I was in Mexico. In Juárez, in a bar. You came to get me… We got married.”
Her eyes widened like saucers. “We did what?”
He was scowling by now. He fumbled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “I was sure,” he said slowly. “We went to this little chapel and the ceremony was all in Spanish… There was a paper of some kind.”
“The only paper was the twenty-dollar bill you gave the bartender,” she mused. “And if it hadn’t been for Bud whats-his-name helping me get you to bed last night, you wouldn’t still be working here. You know how Dad feels about booze. You were really tying one on.”
He stared at the cigarette, then at her, intently. “I couldn’t have imagined all that,” he said finally.
“You imagined a lot of things last night,” she laughed, making a joke out of it. “For one, that you were a Texas ranger on the trail of some desperado. Then you were a snake hunter, and you wanted to go out into the desert and hunt rattlers. Oh, I got you home in the nick of time,” she added, lying through her teeth with a very convincing grin.
He relaxed a little. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have been a handful.”
“You were. But, no harm done,” she told him. “Yet,” she added, indicating the sheet under her chin. “If my father finds you up here, things could get sticky pretty fast.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he replied, frowning as if the insinuation disturbed him. “You’re only a little tomboy, not a vamp.”
Just what he’d said last night, in fact, along with a few other references that had set off her temper. But she couldn’t let on.
“All the same, if you and Dad want breakfast, you’d better leave. And your car is still in Juárez, by the way.”
“Amazing that it made it that far,” he murmured dryly. “Okay. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. Do I still get breakfast?”
She relaxed, too, grateful that she didn’t have to lie anymore. “Yes.”
He spared her one last scowling glance. “Pepi, you’ve got to stop mothering me.”
“This was the last time,” she promised, and meant it.
His broad shoulders rose and fell halfheartedly. “Sure.” He paused at the open door with his back to her. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.
“You’d have done it for me,” she said simply.
He started to turn, thought better of it, and went out, closing the door behind him.
Pepi collapsed on the pillow with a heartfelt sigh. She’d gotten away with it! Now all she had to do was find out just how much trouble she was in legally with that sham marriage.
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