Winter Wedding In Vegas. Janice Lynn
her enough to walk down the aisle to have her.
“We were drunk,” she offered as an out. “We can get an annulment because we were drunk.”
His expression pained, he narrowed his gaze. “Maybe.”
His hands went to his hips and, again, she had to force her eyes upward to keep them from wandering lower than his face. The man was beautiful, she’d give him that.
“I wasn’t sober,” she persisted, clinging to the fact that she hadn’t been in her right mind. She wasn’t in her right mind now either. Her head hurt and, crazy as it was, she wanted him, but she couldn’t tell him that. “Regardless, I want a divorce.”
* * *
Raking his fingers through his towel-dried hair, Slade eyed Taylor grasping the covers to her beautiful body as if she expected him to rip them off and demand she succumb to his marital rights whether she wanted him or not. Did she really think so poorly of him? Despite the fact he’d not been able to say “I do” fast enough the night before, he didn’t want to be married any more than she apparently did.
Probably less.
Sure, he’d been attracted from the moment he’d met her. But although he’d have sworn she felt a similar spark, she’d brushed off his attempts to further their relationship.
Until last night.
Last night she’d looked at him and he’d felt captivated, needy, as if under a spell he hadn’t been able to snap out of.
He took a deep breath. “A divorce works for me. A wife is not something I planned to bring back from Vegas.”
Or from anywhere. He had his future mapped out and a wife didn’t fit anywhere into those plans. He’d dedicated his life to breast-cancer research and nothing more.
Marrying Taylor had been rash—the effects of alcohol and Las Vegas craziness—and wasn’t at all like his normal self. Women were temporary in his life, not permanent figures. He preferred it that way.
A divorce sounded perfect. His marriage would be one of those “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” kind of things.
Thank goodness she didn’t harbor any delusions of happily-ever-after or sappy romance. They’d chalk last night up to alcohol and a major lapse of judgment.
Maybe there really was something about Vegas that made people throw caution to the wind and act outside their norm. Or maybe it had been the smiley little elfish limo driver, who’d kept puffing peppermint spray into the car, telling them they were at the wedding chapel that had made the idea seem feasible. Had the spray been some type of drug?
“Good.” Taylor’s chin lifted a couple of notches. “Then we’re agreed this was a mistake and we can get a divorce or an annulment or whatever one does in these circumstances.”
“I’ll call my lawyer first thing Monday morning.” Relieved that she was being sensible about calling a spade a spade and correcting their mistake, he pushed the room-service cart over next to the bed and stared down at a woman who’d taken him to sexual heights he’d never experienced before. Maybe that peppermint stuff really had been some kind of aphrodisiac.
Even with her haughty expression, she was pretty with her long blond hair tumbled over her milky shoulders and her lips swollen from his kisses. Until the night before he’d never seen her hair down. He liked it. A lot.
He liked her a lot. Always had. He’d wanted her from afar for way too long. Despite the whole marriage fiasco, he still wanted her. Even more than he had prior to having kissed her addictive mouth. She’d tasted of candy canes, joy and magic. Kissing her had made him feel like a kid on Christmas morning who’d gotten exactly what he’d always wanted.
Which was saying a lot for a man who hadn’t celebrated Christmas since he was twelve years old.
“Now that that’s settled, there’s no reason we can’t enjoy the rest of the weekend. Let’s eat up before this gets cold.”
The covers still clasped to her all the way up to her neck, she crossed her arms over her chest. Her eyes were narrow green slits of annoyance. “Don’t act as if we’re suddenly friends because we both want a divorce. We’re not and we won’t be enjoying the rest of the weekend. At least, not the way you mean.”
“Fine. We won’t enjoy the rest of the weekend.” He wasn’t going to argue with her. “But we’re not strangers.” Ignoring her I-can’t-stand-you glare and his irritation at how she was treating him as if he had mange, he lifted the lid off one of the dishes he’d ordered and began buttering a slice of toast. “I’ve been working with you for around a year.”
“You see me at work.” She watched what he did with great interest. “That doesn’t make us friends. Neither does last night.”
She had to be starved. While satisfying one hunger, they’d worked up another. He’d ordered a little of everything because he hadn’t known what she liked. Other than coffee. Often at the clinic, he saw her sipping on a mug of coffee as if the stuff were ambrosia. Funny how often he’d catch himself watching for her to take that first sip, how he’d smile at the pleasure on her face once she had. He’d put pleasure on her face the night before that had blown away anything he’d ever seen, anything he’d ever experienced.
“You make your point.” He sat down on the bed and waved a piece of buttered toast in front of her, liking how her gaze followed the offering. “But as we’re in agreement that we made a mistake, one we are rectifying, I don’t see why we can’t be friends and make the most out of a bad situation.”
Scowling, she shot her gaze back to his. “You and I will never be friends.”
She grabbed his toast and took a bite, closed her eyes and sighed a noise that made him want to push her back on the bed and, friends or not, taste her all over again.
Perhaps she’d prefer it if he told her how much he was enjoying how she’d just licked crumbs from her pretty pink lips? How much, now that he knew disentangling himself from their impromptu marriage wasn’t going to be a problem, he was anticipating making love to her again, because for all her blustering he wasn’t blind. She’d looked at him with more hunger than she had the toast. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was as affected by him as he was her. They had phenomenal chemistry.
She leaned toward the tray, got a knife and a packet of strawberry jam, then nodded while she spread the pink mixture on what was left of her toast. Not an easy task because she refused to let go of where she clutched the bed covers, which seemed a bit ridiculous to him since he’d seen every inch of her. Seen, touched, tasted.
Slade swallowed the lump forming in his throat and mentally ordered one not to form beneath his towel. “In case you need reminding, we had a good time last night.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie.” He’d been there. She hadn’t faked that, couldn’t have faked her responses, and he wouldn’t let her pretend she had. “Yes, you did.”
“Okay,” she conceded with a great deal of sarcasm. “You’re good in bed. Anyone can be good if they get lots of practice and we both know you’ve had lots of practice.”
“Lots of practice?” He hadn’t lived the life of a monk, but he didn’t go around picking up random women every night either. Sure, he never committed, but the women he spent time with knew the score. He wasn’t the marrying kind and avoided women who were. “You want to discuss my past sex life?”
“Not really.” Her face squished, then paled. “Although I guess we should discuss diseases and such.”
He arched his brow. “You have a disease?”
“No.” She sounded horrified enough that he knew she was telling the truth. They should have discussed all this the night before. And birth control. Because for the first time in his life he hadn’t used a condom. Because for the first