3 Brides for 3 Bad Boys (23 page)

She had no idea if Las Playas del Blanco had a courthouse, but Puerto Vallarta was just a few hours south.

She started walking through the door, but his hand snaked out so fast she didn't even see it until his fingers were wrapped in a loose hold around her bicep.

"Where are you going?"

"To find a motel. You can meet me at the taverna tomorrow morning, and we'll deal with the divorce then."

"The only motel in Las Playas del Blanco is above the taverna. You can't stay there."

She tilted her head to look at him. It hurt, but she made herself keep eye contact. "Why not? Is it full, or something?"

"You saw what the taverna is like. Garcia will be there tonight, looking for a way to restore his machismo. He might decide banging down your door just might be the way to do it."

"Then I'll drive out of town and sleep in my car somewhere. Whatever. What I do has nothing to do with you."

"You said that I'm your husband."

"And you're denying it." Was this guy nuts, or was she? Suddenly tired of arguing, she yanked her arm from his grasp. "I'll stay where I darn well please."

"You're being hasty. We have a lot to discuss, and there's no reason for you to take off." The soothing tone of his voice was at odds with the tense stance of his body.

"There's every reason. I don't know what weird game you're playing, but I'm not going there."

"Honey—"

"No." She put her hand up, completely incapable of dealing with that one small endearment. "You've made your position very clear. I was a one-night stand that got out of hand. The marriage meant nothing to you and neither do I. Fine. I've got it. We'll file for divorce tomorrow, then go our separate ways as if we'd never met."

Well, okay, she wouldn't be able to act as if she'd never met him, but she was getting out of his life, and then she was going to do something about picking up the pieces of her own.

His hand clamped down on her shoulder, this time the hold a whole lot firmer than it had been before. "I don't remember that night. I'm not trying to blow you off."

She rolled her eyes. Right. "I want to leave now."

His jaw went rigid, as though he was trying to hold something in. "No."

"No?
Look, buddy—"

"I was drunk, all right? I never drink, and I consumed an entire bottle of champagne. I do not remember anything after the third glass."

She stared at him.

Truth burned down at her from his dark brown eyes.

No, she'd believed those eyes once. This time he wasn't fooling her. "You were drunk my fanny. You were sober enough to talk me into a wedding night. Like hell you were sauced."

She turned to leave, pulling away from him, but found herself swept up into his arms for the second time that day. She immediately tried to get loose, but his hold was too firm. Not painfully tight, but impossible to break.

He carried her to the armchair and sat down with her in his lap. She tried to get up, but the only change she affected was under her left hip.

He was getting a hard-on.

She hit his chest with her fist. "No. Don't you even think you're going there. I'm never letting you touch me again."

"I'm sorry.
I can't help it. Stop squirming and maybe I can recite multiplication tables or something until it goes away." He sounded really irritated, and she glared at him.

But she stopped moving.

He sighed, like he was really relieved.

"If you hadn't picked me up like some big ape and set me down in your lap, neither of us would be uncomfortable."

"You were set on leaving, and we need to talk."

"All we need is to file for a quick Mexican divorce, and then we can both put this whole sorry mess behind us."

"That is not going to happen."

She remembered when he'd said that in the bar. He'd used the same mean tone, and she wasn't drunk like that idiot who'd tried to manhandle her. She was sober enough to realize Colton meant business.

"What exactly do you want to talk about?" Maybe if he said whatever it was he needed to say, he'd let her go, and she could find a nice private place to fall apart.

"Tell me what happened that night."

She opened her mouth to blast him again, and he must have known it because his big hand gently covered her lips, effectively cutting her off.

"When I'm drunk, I act like I'm sober, except I'm a lot friendlier. If you need verification, I'll let you call my mother. Moonbeam will tell you that I'm not a fall-down drunk, just a goofy one."

Moonbeam? This guy had a mother named Moonbeam? She could have believed that of the man she met six weeks ago, but not Mr. Sobersides.

"You didn't act goofy," she mumbled against his hand.

He moved it. "What?"

"You didn't act goofy."

"I talked you into marrying me the same night we met. In my book, that's goofy behavior."

Colton wanted to cut out his own tongue as he watched her face tighten with pain and lose color once again. Damn it, he'd hurt her, and he hadn't meant to.

He'd been trying to explain, but he realized his explanations were not going to go over well with her.

"You weren't drunk that night, were you?"

She shook her head, vulnerability shining in her green eyes and reaching out to wrap around his heart.

He'd been out of his mind, but she hadn't been. That meant that when she agreed to marry him, she'd wanted it. As improbable as it might seem, she had really wanted him. His leaving her, forgetting her, denying their marriage …

they'd all hurt her. A lot.

He wished he could believe something else.

Like that she was an opportunist who had taken advantage of him, a woman who had realized he was a rich man and had engineered the wedding with an eye toward a hefty divorce settlement. That picture of her didn't ring true, however.

For two reasons.

The first was that he knew he did not act drunk, which meant she'd had no way of knowing that he wasn't operating under his normal superconservative approach to life.

The second was, she was too damn defenseless.

He was a pretty good judge of character when he wasn't drunk, and his gut was telling him that this woman had married him in good faith. Which meant what?

That she'd believed herself in love?

From the lethal expression in her green gaze, he figured she was no longer under any such illusion.

"I'm sorry." He didn't know what else to say.

Nothing he said would undo the damage he'd done to her already.

"Me, too." She turned her head, but he could see the tears leaking out of her eyes, and this time he knew their cause. Him.

It was like taking a punch to the gut without tightening his muscles first.

He pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. "Shh… It's going to be okay. We're going to work this out."

She shook her head and pushed against him, but when he held tight the fight drained out of her, and she let him cuddle her. "How can it be okay?" The words were muffled by his chest, but he heard them. "You don't even know my name."

He'd known six weeks ago that would be a problem, and now it seemed like a mountain he had no way of climbing over.

"What is it?"

"Fayre Denning." She sucked in a huge breath and then let it out. "I mean Cranston. I'm not really a Denning."

Aw, crap. He couldn't stand the sadness in her voice. "Fayre's a beautiful name."

"Thanks. You thought the same thing the night we met."

He lifted her face away from his chest, his hand under her chin. She'd stopped crying, but her eyes were empty of emotion, and he didn't like that any better.

"Will you tell me about it? Please."

She sighed and nodded. "But could I have some water first, and maybe some soda crackers?"

How could he have forgotten her nausea? "Sure, honey." He stood up with her still tucked in his arms and started heading toward the galley.

"You don't have to carry me."

"I like it."

She hit him again, and it shocked him into stopping. "What was that for?"

"Don't say stuff like that. You don't mean it."

He'd hurt her, all right, and he didn't know if he could undo the damage, but he had to try.

Because holding her didn't just feel good, it felt right, and he wasn't letting her go for a quick Mexican divorce before they explored the possibilities of their unexpected marriage.

C h a p t e r F o u r

F
ayre tried not to slump into the bench at the small table in the galley.

She was not a slumping sort of person. She was a glass half-full type of woman.

Life had never gotten her down for long, no matter how hard it was, and growing up in the foster care system had thrown a few stones her way. But this gig was doing things to her heart that were really challenging her positive attitude.

Like obliterating it.

He really did not remember her. At all. How demoralizing was that?

Colton set a glass of water in front of her and a small plate of crackers. "Is this all right?"

She nodded and picked up the glass of water. Beyond thirsty, she drank half of it before setting it down again. Then she started nibbling on a cracker.

Colton sat down across from her, a quiet brooding presence.

"I'm a dancer in the follies." She didn't know why she started with that bit of information. It wasn't exactly the most important piece of news she had to impart, but it just popped out.

"I figured that much out the morning after."

Thinking of the morning after was not good for her emotional well-being, so she ignored his comment. "You came backstage after our last show and you … I don't know how to put this without sounding like a total bimbo."

"I won't think you're a bimbo, no matter what you say, okay?"

He seemed really serious about that, so she nodded.

"You swept me off my feet. Literally. You picked me up and told me you'd fallen in love at first sight. You'd paid to watch the second show just so you could watch me, you said." Embarrassment crawled up her skin. "I fell for it like a mentally challenged ton of bricks."

It had felt so right in his arms, and something
had
happened to her heart the first time she looked into his warm and, she could have sworn,
loving
brown eyes.

"I must have been very persuasive."

"You were." He'd been so horny and such a gentleman at the same time, careful not to overwhelm her physically, but he'd let her know he wanted her from the first moment. The fact he didn't try to cop a feel had been one of the reasons she'd gone to eat with him. "You took me to supper. We talked for something like three hours."

He looked appalled. "About what?"

Now that she thought about it, he probably didn't want to know how much of his private life he'd shared with a complete stranger. She'd never been good at lying, so she told him, but hoped to keep it vague. It would be less disturbing for both of them.

"Your family. My family." Or lack thereof. "You told me about the brothers you'd just met and how the three of you were coming down here to look for lithium deposits on Luna Island."

The look of horror was growing.

"Don't worry. I didn't take an ad out in the
Vegas Times
or anything. Okay?"

"Did I tell you about Moonbeam?"

"She's your mom, right? You had a lot to say about her, but you didn't tell me her name."

He'd talked about what it had been like growing up the son of a flower child from the sixties who had never really grown up herself. How hard it had been to have a dad who had given only one concession to his existence—financial support. Moonbeam's lifestyle choices had made Colton uncomfortable. The taciturn nature of the man before her made a lot more sense when Fayre considered the things he'd said that night, than the man who had so effectively seduced her body and heart.

"And you told me about your family?"

"Yes." He'd forgotten, and she wasn't about to elaborate now. It wasn't the same, and she saw no reason to expose her past to a man she planned to divorce the next day.

"You said we talked for three hours?"

"Yes." She had felt as if she knew him better than friends she'd had since coming to Vegas when she was eighteen and full of crazy dreams. "Then you asked me to marry you. I thought you were insane, but you were adamant. You talked me into it, and we got married." It was an extremely simplified version of how he'd begged her to marry him, had promised to love her forever and give her the family she'd never had. "Then we went back to your hotel room and made lo…

had sex."

His gorgeous face was set in unemotional lines that worried her. "We used a lot of condoms for the few hours we could have spent in bed."

Typical of a man to notice that kind of thing.

"We broke two of them. You were pretty impatient."

He was back to looking horrified. "Did I force you?"

She rolled her eyes and munched on a cracker before answering. "Don't be a dolt. Do you really think I would have come all the way down here after you if you'd treated me badly in bed? Trust me, if you'd
tried
to force me, I would not be sitting here and neither would you."

"I left without saying goodbye." He said it like that was just as bad.

And it was. It had hurt more than she would ever admit to him. If she hadn't had other reasons for coming after him, she probably never would have.

"You left a note." The words were indelibly imprinted on her memory.

Thanks for everything. The room is paid through tomorrow, so you don't have to
rush getting out o f here.
He'd signed it with a C. Not even his full name.