Kitabı oku: «Vegas Vows, Texas Nights»

One

Las Vegas, Nevada

Katie woke slowly, snuggling into her cushy pillow, her eyes refusing to open. A warming ray coming through the hotel room window caressed her skin, telling her it was later than her usual 4:00 a.m. wake-up-and-bake time.

But she wasn’t in Boone Springs today and Katie’s Kupcakes and Bakery was closed this weekend. She’d planned a super fun bachelorette party for her best friend, Drea, and fittingly, she’d just had the best dream of her life. Though the details were fuzzy, she’d never woken up with such delicious contentment before. From head to toe, her entire body tingled.

A nudge to her shoulder popped her eyes open. What the…?

“Sorry,” a deep male voice whispered from behind her.

Her eyes opened wider as she tried to make sense of it. She hadn’t imagined or dreamed the voice, had she? No, she was fully awake now, and it had been real. She could feel the warmth of the sheets beside her. A hand brushed over her bare shoulder and she gasped.

Oh no. She recognized that voice.

Taking the sheets covering her bare body, she rolled over, hoping her mind had played a nasty trick on her. But that hope was dashed the second she laid eyes on him, Lucas Boone—her sister’s ex-fiancé, the man who’d crushed Shelly’s heart.

Her stomach began to ache.

She clutched the sheets to her chin and sat up. That’s when her head started pounding. “Luke, what on earth?” Dizzy, she swayed and struggled to focus.

“Sweetheart, lay back down. You drank me under the table last night and my head’s aching like a sonofabitch. Your hangover’s got to be much worse than mine.”

“My…hangover? Luke, damn it. Is that all you have to say? Look at us! We’re in bed together. And unless I miss my guess, you’re as stark naked under the sheets as I am.”

He reached for the sheet.

“Don’t you dare look,” she warned.

He set the sheet back down. “I guess you’d be right.”

Her cheeks burned. Being in bed with Lucas Boone was wrong on so many levels, she could hardly believe it. “What on earth did we do last night?”

Luke glanced at their shed clothes littering the hotel room and arched a brow.

“We couldn’t have. I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…”

Goodness. She thought back to how Luke had called off the wedding to Katie’s sister three days before the ceremony and had immediately enlisted in the Marines.

He’d claimed he wasn’t ready to settle down and took all the blame upon himself, but that didn’t make up for all the time he’d spent leading Shelly to believe they’d had a future together. That had been five years ago. Now Luke was living in Boone Springs again, the town founded a century ago by his ancestors. He was his brother Mason’s best man, while Katie was maid of honor for Mason’s fiancée, Drea. Unwittingly she and Luke had been thrown together in a joint bachelor/bachelorette party in Sin City. Vegas, baby. What happened here stayed here.

She thought about her sister again. How her scars remained. Poor Shelly faced the humiliation bravely but she’d never forgotten what Luke had done to her, how he’d betrayed her love and trust. She’d become bitter and sad and never let her mother, Diana, or Katie hear the end of how Luke had ruined her life. So the thought of Katie sleeping with Luke, her one-time friend, drunk or not, would be the worst of the worst.

Luke rolled over onto his side and braced his head in his hand, as if they were discussing what to have for breakfast. “What do you remember about last night?”

“What do I remember?”

“Yeah, do you remember leaving the party with me?”

She moved away from him as far as the bed would allow and thought about it. She remembered drinking and laughing and dancing with Luke most of the night. She’d felt guilty having so much fun with him, but they’d always gotten along, had always been friends until he’d backed out of the wedding.

The Boones had been good customers at her bakery. She and Luke also shared a love of horses and both volunteered at the Red Barrel Horse Rescue. Still, ever since his return from military service nearly a year ago, they’d been overly cautious with each other, their conversations often stilted and awkward. Katie, too, had been hurt when Luke had dumped her sister. Katie had also trusted him.

“I remember you offering to walk me back to my hotel.” Which was only a few blocks away from the nightclub.

“We’d both had too much to drink.”

The pain in her head was a reminder of that. “Yes.”

Luke stared into her eyes; his were clear and deep blue. Kinda mesmerizing. “You pleaded with me not to take you back to your hotel. You didn’t want the night to end. You…uh…”

Katie rubbed her aching head. This was getting worse by the second. “What?”

Luke remained silent.

“What did I say?” she demanded. She had to know, to make some sense out of this.

“You said you wanted what your friends had. You wanted someone to love.”

“Oh God.” She covered her face with her hands, her long hair spilling down. She was embarrassed that in her drunken state, she’d revealed her innermost secret desire. And to Luke no less. “And so we ended up in your hotel room?”

Luke flinched and his eyes squeezed shut. The concerned expression on his face really worried her. “Not exactly. We went somewhere else first.”

“Another club?”

He shook his head. “Not according to this.” He grabbed a piece of paper from his nightstand and gave it a once-over. “Another thing you said you wanted…” He handed her the paper.

She looked down at the bold lettering on the piece of parchment she held and her hand began shaking. A marriage certificate. Both of their names were listed and it had today’s date. “You can’t be serious.”

“Hey, I don’t remember much from last night either. My head’s spinning like a damn top right now.”

This was ridiculous. It had to be a bad joke. Where was the hidden camera? Someone was pranking her.

Yes, it was true she’d thought of her secret wishes, often. She’d wanted to find love and be married, though she’d never voiced those wishes to anyone. She didn’t want her friends to worry about her or think she envied their happiness, but she wouldn’t have told Luke that, would she? Certainly she wouldn’t have acted upon it.

Yet, the proof was staring her in the face. Dated today, as in they’d gotten married after midnight, about the time they’d walked out of the club together. The facts added up, but she still had trouble digesting all of it.

“I can’t believe this. No, this isn’t happening.” She lowered her voice. “We didn’t…do anything else, did we?”

Was she being naive to think that she’d end up naked in bed with handsome, appealing Luke without having sex with him?

“I remember some things. From last night.” The blue in his eyes grew darker, more intense. “Don’t you?”

She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to think it possible to spend the night with the one man in the whole world who was off-limits to her. But darn it, vague memories started to breach the surface of her mind. Being held, being kissed, her body caressed, loved. She grimaced. Dear Lord, the memories were fuzzy, vague, but they were there.

“Oh no,” she whispered. Tears touched her eyes. “Why didn’t you stop it?” she asked.

It was unfair of her to throw this all on him. The way he flinched at her question said he thought so, too. “I…couldn’t.”

He couldn’t? What did that mean?

“Katie, it’s going to be okay. We’re married. I didn’t take advantage of you. I mean, from what I remember, you weren’t complaining about any of it.”

She gripped the sheets closer to her chest. “That’s what you think I’m worried about? It’s okay that we had sex because we’re married? My God, Luke. Do you have any idea how bad this is? You were engaged to my sister! You practically left her at the altar. My mom and sister were devastated. I’m not worried about my virtue here. It’s way bigger than that.”

“Okay, okay. Calm down.” Luke ran a hand down his face. “I’m going to take a shower and get dressed and we’ll discuss it. Unless you want to go first?”

“No, no.” Married or not, she wasn’t about to let him see her naked. “You go first.”

“Fine. And Katie…it really is going to be all right.”

She frowned. The frown only deepened when Luke rose from the bed as if they’d been married for years and walked into the bathroom, giving her a stunning view of his broad shoulders, muscular arms and perfect butt.

Her heart pounded hard. She’d married a Boone, one of the richest men in all of Texas, the man who’d betrayed her sister, the man she’d tried hard to avoid since he’d come back and resumed his life in Boone Springs months ago.

As soon as she heard the bathroom door close, she rose and scrambled to gather up her clothes from the floor. That’s when she spotted an open condom packet, the top torn off, the contents empty. Now there was actual proof they’d consummated the marriage, as if her own sated body wasn’t already screaming that to her.

She dressed and waited for him. They had to resolve this immediately. She wasn’t going home as Katie Boone. No, sir. When she heard the shower faucet turn off, she braced herself, finger combing her hair, straightening out her cocktail dress, her resolve as sharp as her annoyance.

The door opened and out walked Luke, his hair wet, his skin glowing in the morning light. He wore a soft white towel around his waist, but the rest of him was hard, ripped muscle and brawn.

Good Lord. Was he the man in her dreams?

No, he couldn’t be. Just because they’d once been friends and they shared a love of horses didn’t mean she’d ever think of him that way, even subconsciously.

“Luke, we need to talk.”

He looked her up and down, his eyes raking over her black dress, and suddenly she felt amazingly warm. She shifted her attention to a drop of water making its way down his bare chest, tunneling through tiny hairs to drip past his navel and absorb into the towel.

Luke caught her eyeing him and smiled. “I need a cup of coffee. We both do. I’ll order breakfast while you take your shower.”

He seemed too accommodating, too casual, as if he also hadn’t made the biggest blunder of his life. Where was his panic?

“And we’ll resolve this then?”

He nodded. “We’ll talk, I promise.”

Thirty minutes later, Katie stepped out of the bathroom refreshed and feeling a little better about her predicament. Her stomach still churned, but her outlook wasn’t nearly as bleak. They were in Las Vegas, after all. How hard would it be to dissolve their quickie marriage, to seek a divorce from a wedding that should never have happened? Surely there were hundreds of people who found themselves in the same situation after a wild night and too much drinking.

Luke waited for her at the rolling table that had been delivered by room service. Thankfully he was fully dressed now, in jeans and a navy shirt that made his eyes pop an even darker shade of blue. She had only the clothes she’d come with last night and her purse. Luckily her cell phone had enough charge for her to text Drea this morning telling her not to worry, she’d explain everything later.

Or not.

But she’d have to tell the bride-to-be something. They shared a hotel room and Drea had seen her leave with Luke last night and knew she hadn’t returned to her room.

“Ready for breakfast?” Luke was already sipping coffee, the pot of steaming brew sitting on the table beside dishes of bacon, eggs, French toast, roasted potatoes and a basket of fresh pastries.

Ugh. None of it looked appetizing. She couldn’t eat. “No, thanks. Coffee’s good.”

She grabbed the coffeepot and poured herself a cup, taking a seat facing him. She dumped in three sugar cubes and stirred, Luke giving her an arch of his brow. What could she say? She loved sweet comfort food and right now, sugar was her healing balm. His silent disapproval had her reaching for a fourth sugar cube, and she stared right at him as she dumped it into her coffee.

“You’re not eating anything?” he asked.

“I’m not hungry, Luke. My head’s still fuzzy.”

“I thought the shower would help.”

“The shower made me realize that if being in Vegas got us into this mess, then why can’t being in Vegas get us out of it?”

Luke gave her a long stare and slowly shook his head. “What?”

“I want a divorce. Immediately. Surely there’s someone in this city that can accommodate us.”

Luke scratched his head, looking at her as if she were a child asking for the moon. “That’s not possible, Katie.”

“How can you say that? We haven’t even tried. Look, I wasn’t myself last night and you know it. How long have we known each other? Ten years?”

“Twelve and a half.” She stared at him and he shrugged. “I have a good memory for dates. We met at the first anniversary of the Red Barrel Rescue.”

Katie remembered that day. She’d chosen the rescue to be the subject of her high school term paper and had gone there not knowing what to expect. She’d taken one look at the beleaguered and maimed horses being cared for and had fallen in love. Luke had been a mentor of sorts, and through her, he’d met her sister, Shelly.

“And in all those twelve and a half years, have you ever known me to be impetuous or wild or, as you put it today, the kind of girl who could drink you under the table?”

“No.” He scratched his head. “But then, I’ve never been with you in Vegas.”

She rolled her eyes. “This is serious, Luke. I don’t recall all that happened last night, but I do know we have to undo the problem as soon as possible.”

“I…agree.”

“You do? Good, because for a second there, I was starting to believe you didn’t think this was a big problem.”

“I can’t get a divorce until I speak with my attorney. I’m sorry, Katie, but this isn’t going to happen today.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s more complicated than that. I’m a Boone, and that means divorce proceedings can get pretty nasty. My attorney isn’t going to let me sign my name to anything until he sees it.”

“Goodness, Luke, I don’t want anything from you or your family. If that’s what you’re getting at, you can go straight to—”

“It’s not me, Katie. It’s just the way things are when you’re…”

“Rich?”

“A Boone.”

“How horrible it must be for you not knowing who you can trust. I suppose you had those very same issues with Shelly?”

“Let’s leave your sister out of this.”

“Easy for you to say.” Katie’s stomach burned now, the acid churning violently. This was not going well. He was being obtuse and the implication that she was somehow out for Boone money only ticked her off. “There’s nothing we can do? Maybe if you give your attorney a call—”

Luke frowned. “I can’t. He’s out of the country on a personal matter.”

“Personal matter? You could say this is your personal matter.”

He sighed. “His mother is extremely ill and he’s there to help get her affairs in order. That is, if the worst happens.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Can’t you use someone else?”

Luke shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. At least not for me.”

She jammed her hands on her hips and his attention immediately was drawn there. Gosh, how much of last night did he remember? He was looking at her differently than he ever had before. As if he was taking their marriage seriously, as if she was…his wife. “I can’t go back to Boone Springs married to you, Luke.”

“Looks like you’re going to have to. Our flight leaves in a few hours.”

Katie sighed and tears welled in her eyes. “I can’t believe this.”

He kept silent.

She had no choice but to relent. She saw no other way out. If she prolonged her stay here in Las Vegas, the entire wedding party would get suspicious. She didn’t need that. She had to keep what happened between her and Luke quiet. She’d think of something before the Boone company plane took off.

“Fine. I’m not happy about this. If the truth comes out, I’m doomed. It’ll ruin my relationship with my family. And who knows how this would affect my mama’s health. Promise me that no one will know about this, promise me you’ll keep our secret.”

Luke touched her hand, his slight caress sweet, comforting and confusing as hell. “I promise, Katie. No one will know.”

Luke waited until everyone boarded the Boone company plane, keeping his eyes trained on Katie. She took a seat by the bridesmaids in the back, all the girls huddling around the bride-to-be.

He couldn’t keep from admiring Katie’s beautiful blond hair tied up in a ponytail, the strands framing her face making her look wholesome and sweet. She was all those things, but last night at the club, he’d seen her flirty, passionate side. Mischief had glowed in her soft green eyes, especially while she’d been dancing in her sexy black dress. Now, in a denim jacket and jeans, she contrasted beautifully with the creamy leather seats and ambience of the custom designed plane.

She was his wife now. He could hardly believe it. He was actually married to Katie Rodgers. While Mason was engaged to Drea and his other brother, Risk, was engaged to April, Luke had inadvertently beaten his brothers down the aisle.

Katie glanced his way and their eyes met. He could look at her forever and never tire of it. But as soon as she caught him eyeing her, she turned away.

He smiled inside but didn’t dare appear content around a quiet, sullen Katie. She was just cordial enough to her friends to ward off questions. She’d told everyone she’d gotten sick last night, barfing up her brains and Luke had taken her to urgent care in the wee hours of the morning to make sure she wasn’t dehydrated. It was a feasible fib, one everyone seemed to believe, with the exception of his brothers. While Drea had thanked him for taking care of her best friend, both Risk and Mason had given him the stink eye.

Hell, he certainly hadn’t planned any of this, but hearing Katie’s softly spoken desire about wanting love in her life, wanting to be married, had reached down deep inside him and wrung out his lonely heart. He’d been drunk, too, and his willpower around her had been at an all-time low. She’d flirted with him, practically asked him to make love to her, and well…he didn’t have much defense against that. Not with her.

The pilot, a navy veteran, came by to say hello to the passengers and make sure everyone was ready for takeoff.

Luke shook his hand. “Hey, Bill. Hope you didn’t lose too much at the tables while you were here.”

“Nah, my big gambling days are behind me. The penny slots are just my speed.”

“I hear you,” Luke said. He’d never been a gambler. He didn’t like to play games he couldn’t control. And he didn’t like the odds in Las Vegas, with the exception of his recent marriage.

The odds of him marrying Katie had been slim to none. Yet he’d beat them and no one was more surprised than he was. Except Katie. He’d won the jackpot and now he had to convince his new bride being married to him wasn’t a big fat mistake.

“Any time you want to come up and copilot, you know where the cockpit is,” Bill said.

“Maybe later. Right now I’m still feeling the effects of last night’s party.” Luke grinned. “I’m afraid you’re the designated driver today.” He was in no shape to navigate anything, much less fly the friendly skies. He’d become a helicopter pilot while living on Rising Springs Ranch and had gotten his pilot’s license in flight school during his stint in the service. Yet Mason had insisted he not pilot the plane so Luke could let loose and not have to worry about his alcohol consumption. His brother wanted everyone to have a good time.

“Sure thing. I’ll see that you all have a good flight.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

Luke buckled up and glanced back at Katie. She was all set, looking like she’d just lost her best friend, even though Drea was sitting right next to her.

He sighed and as he turned his head around, he came eye to eye with Risk in the seat beside him. “Something going on between you two?” he asked.

He’d promised Katie he wouldn’t give away their secret and he wouldn’t betray that vow. “Who?”

“Don’t be obtuse. You and Katie.”

“No, nothing.”

“I’m not judging,” Risk said. “And if you do have something going with her, it’d be a good thing. I can read you like a book. You’re hot for her.”

Luke shot him a warning look.

Risk’s hands went up. “I’m just saying, if you get together with her, you have my approval.”

“Like I’d need it.”

“Hey, just want to see you happy for once.”

“You do know who she is, right?”

Risk smirked. “The best pastry chef in all of Texas. She’d keep us silly in gourmet cupcakes.”

“She’s Shelly’s younger sister. And she barely tolerates me.”

Years ago, Katie had dragged Shelly to a Red Barrel charity function and had introduced them. There’d been instant attraction between them and Luke had begun dating Katie’s big sister. The engagement had seemed to fall right into place. Until the day Luke had woken up and realized he was making a big mistake.

“You two took off together last night,” Risk said, “and today, you can’t take your eyes off her.”

“Leave it alone. Okay?”

Risk seemed to read the emotion on his face. “Okay, I’ll back off.” He slapped Luke on the shoulder. “But if you run into a problem, I’m here for you.”

“Appreciate that. Why aren’t you hanging with your fiancée?”

“Seems the girls won’t call it quits on their bachelorette party until the plane touches down in Boone Springs.”

Risk eyed April, giving Luke a chance to seek out Katie again. And there she was, trying her best not to spoil everyone’s fun, trying to smile and conceal the pain she must be going through. The thought that he was the cause of her pain ate away at him. It was the last thing he wanted. But he couldn’t let her go. Not now.

She was the girl who shared a love of horses with him, the girl he’d danced with most of the night, the impossible girl who’d been in his dreams for the past five years.

He needed a chance with her, and this was the best he was going to get.

One chance.

Was that too much to ask?