The Officer Says "I Do" (5 page)

Wide, a little shocked, a little wild. But no fear.

He bent his head and did what he’d been dreaming about doing. What had been playing on a God-awful loop in his mind since the day they left Vegas. He kissed her. A testing brush first, but when she didn’t haul back and slap him, he tried another. Her lips rose to meet his, and he was lost at holding back. Her hands came up to pull him closer, and she widened her stance to cradle him. Her message was clear.

Take
it, it’s yours.

And he did.

Teeth clashed as they each moved in desperate strokes to get deeper. He let his fingers tangle in her hair, vaguely remembering the weight of it in his hands before. He definitely remembered the soft skin of her jawline, how her pulse jumped as his tongue flicked over it. There was no forgetting how responsive she was when he ran a hand under the sheer top she wore to cup her breast over the layering tank beneath. How her body arched into his touch. How she moved under him like they were a carefully choreographed duo on the dance floor.

“Tim,” she gasped. “Tim, hold on, we need to talk.”

“Talk,” he muttered into her shoulder. No talking. Why did she always want to talk when they were in these positions?

“Yeah. Talk.” She gasped when his teeth scraped along her collarbone. “About our marriage.”

A kick to the crotch wouldn’t have slowed him down as fast as those three simple words. He let go and took a big step back, breathing heavily. Fuck. How did he forget that? The marriage mix-up. He was trying to find the best way to end this painlessly, and instead he practically attacked her against a wall. Damn.

“Yeah.” He screwed his eyes shut and pressed into his eyelids with his thumbs, willing his erection away. The cammies had room, but not that much. “Yeah, marriage. Sorry.” He opened his eyes and saw a still-flushed, still-mussed Skye leaning against the table with one hand. The image wasn’t doing anything to cool his head, so he turned away and walked toward the living room. “Let’s talk in here.” She followed without a word.

He got to the room and saw glasses of lemonade. Perfect. He picked one up and took a big gulp, hoping the tangy sweetness would clear out the cotton that seemed to be lining his throat. Just when he wondered whether he should sit on the couch with Skye or not, or what she expected, she did him the favor of choosing the armchair, crossing one leg over the other. He sat on the couch, catty-corner to her spot. Close enough to touch, but he didn’t dare.

He waited for her to talk, but instead she sat with her hands in her lap, staring at them like they held the answer to world hunger. Finally he cleared his throat and decided to give it a shot.

“I need to apologize for being such a dick that night.”

The way her head shot up and she stared at him, that wasn’t what she expected. He wasn’t sure why, but it stung.

“I’m not a teenager anymore. I know better than to run out on a woman and not even say good-bye. Not that I do the one-night thing all that often,” he added quickly when her brows drew together. “I just know it’s not what a man should do, and I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “Thank you. But obviously I didn’t chase you down here for an apology.”

Understatement of the century. “Right, yeah.” He took another drink. “Um, exactly how did you find me anyway? I know the Internet’s good and all, but—”

“Friend who works at the hotel.” She gave him a smile. “I wouldn’t know where to start with the Internet, but I do know someone at the front desk of the hotel. And you filled out a customer form before they gave you the key to the suite. It had your address on it.”

“Thought that stuff was private,” he grumbled, then saw how one brow raised. “Not that I’m not glad you found out. God, I keep shoving my foot in my mouth, don’t I?”

“I think I’ll forgive you for odd circumstances,” she said with a chuckle. Then she laughed a little harder, and he had a flashback to the casino. Skye smiling at him from across the blackjack table. Breathless behind some tree, in a dark corner while his hand crept up… Okay. That wasn’t helping the boner he was fighting off.

He was grateful for her understanding… and her happy attitude. He was wound too tight, like any sudden movement would cause him to snap. But Skye just smiled, slid her feet out of her sandals, and tucked them under her on the chair. God, she was adorable.

“So, um, where do we go from here?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” She took a sip of her own glass of lemonade and leaned forward to set it down on the table. Her shirt dipped forward, and he caught a glimpse of the tight tank under the sheer, gauzy fabric of her top.

Focus, man.

He cleared his throat, and hopefully his mind along with it. “Well, I probably don’t need to tell you that the night is a little blurry for me. Bits and pieces are there, but not the whole thing. So this is kind of a shock.” Yet another understatement.

“Yeah, I got that from Madison. It’s funny, though. You never acted drunk. At least, not until you blacked out,” she added with a sly smile. “Then it was kind of hard to miss.”

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He could feel the heat radiating from his skin. Pure, simple embarrassment mixed with a healthy dose of shame. “I don’t drink like that often… basically never. I just—”

She held up a hand. “I work in Vegas. Trust me, you don’t have to explain it. And because I can see you’re already struggling with this and you’re embarrassed, I believe that you don’t make a habit of this. So I’ll end the misery of wondering and just say that you were a gentleman and didn’t do anything obscene or obnoxious.” But she blushed as she said it.

What did that mean? When he arched a brow, she just sighed and looked at the fireplace while she mumbled, “You didn’t do anything I didn’t want.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” he muttered. “But obviously I made a cake out of myself. How the hell did we get married if I can’t even remember it?”

“Short version is you proposed. I accepted. We took a limo to the courthouse and then to a small chapel off the strip, then limo back to the hotel where your suite was waiting. No driving involved, hardly any paperwork.” She grinned. “They like to make it easy for couples in Vegas. It’s kind of our thing, obviously.”

“Our thing.” What the hell did that mean? How could she be so nonchalant about the entire thing?

“Yeah, Vegas in general. Tourism, the casino, you know.” She waved a hand enthusiastically while she talked. She was a hand-talker, clearly. “People come in for just a short vacation, and then get the wild hair to get married but aren’t sure how to make it happen. Vegas, as a whole, makes it easy. It’s our stock in trade.”

“Our?”

“Oh, I lived there. And worked there. I was a manager at one of the restaurants in the Celestial Palace. Cloud Nine.”

“Ah, I see.” No, he really didn’t. But that wasn’t the biggest of his problems. “So we got married. How legal is that?”

She threw her head back and laughed again. He stared at the exposed pulse point, wanted to go back to making her moan while he paid extra attention to her throat.

“It’s legal. I have the license. So no worries there.”

No worries? He felt like she was talking circles around him. And this time he wasn’t even drunk. “Okay, so how do we fix that?”

“Fix what?”

He stared at her, waiting for the “gotcha” face, or for her to start laughing again. Or for Ashton Kutcher to bust down his door and tell him he’d been punked. Instead, she stared at him like he was the crazy one. “What do you mean? The marriage. The… the thing. What do we do?”

Her face went carefully blank. “I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t think there was actually anything to fix, to be honest.”

He let that sink in, let her change in demeanor wrap around his mind. Huh. Maybe he was the crazy one. Because if she meant what he thought she meant…

She must have grown impatient with his silence, because she blew out a breath and asked, “Do you believe in Fate?”

He snorted. “No. Not really.”

“Okay, how about destiny? Chance? A belief in some invisible string pulling us along a path? People call it different things.”

He shook his head. “No. Our future is what we make of it. I’ve seen too much shit in my life to believe that it’s all out of our hands completely. I want to go into war knowing that my future is dependent on the choices I make, not on the whim of some deity or whatever. I control me.”

“Well, and I agree. At least to an extent.” She folded her hands in her lap, then looked at them for a moment. Suddenly, she jumped up so fast it was as if there was an eject button under her butt. When he started to stand as well, she waved him down. “No, I just think better on my feet.” And with that, she started to pace the floor in front of the fireplace. Her thin top billowed as she made turns in the tight area, her bare feet made no sound on the floor, and her hands were fluttering in front of her. Then she stopped.

“If you don’t believe in Fate, then how do you explain this?”

“This what?” He was really starting to lose it. Maybe the AC on the bus was laced with some noxious gas.

“This. Us. Our marriage.”

“I explain it as too much alcohol and a misguided desire to let loose for the evening.”

She snorted and started to pace again. He sat back and watched, equal parts amused and concerned. He’d never seen someone so animated before, so vibrant. She made thinking exciting. But then again, this wasn’t exactly the time for excitement and animation. A serious topic called for calm heads and cool conversation.

Excitement and animation led to a quickie wedding in Vegas. Yeah. They needed more level thinking here.

Suddenly, his mind went back to something she’d said. She’d
lived
in Vegas. She’d
worked
there. Past tense.

“Skye,” he said, measuring his tone carefully. “When you said you worked and lived in Las Vegas, was that a tense slip? Do you still live there?”

An about-face had her staring at him with a
Man, you’re an idiot
look. “No. If I still lived there, I’d say I live in Vegas. I know English.”

“Okay. So where do you live now?”

She tilted her head to one side. “Where do you think?”

He was starting to piece the Skye-shaped puzzle together, one bit at a time. And what he assumed was the finished product both exhilarated and terrified him.

“Maybe you should tell me exactly what you’re after here, Skye. Why did you go through all that trouble to find me?”

She walked over and plopped down on the chair again, bouncing once before settling. “I thought it was obvious, but maybe not.” She clapped her hands together and sat forward. He blinked and made sure to keep his eyes above her neck.

“You and I are legally married. You don’t subscribe to the idea of Fate, but I do. But for whatever reason, you asked me. And I said yes. We got married. And after you left I had a lot of time to think about what that meant.”

There was no censure in her voice, no judgment. Even though she’d be justified in giving him hell. Still, Tim internally flinched at the reminder of his own ass-like behavior. Skye didn’t seem to notice his own thoughts and kept going.

“Basically, what I’m saying is, there’s a reason we’re married. And I’m ready to find out what that is.”

“In plain English, that means…”

She looked him straight in the eye, all seriousness as she said, “I want to stay married.”

His heart skipped, then slowed, then rolled down into his shoe. Holy shit. She was dead serious.

Tim forced himself to breathe and remember his own plan of attack. All the things he had been ready to suggest.

A quiet divorce. Quick annulment. Simple, clean break. A quick roll between the sheets, just for old time’s sake.

She wanted none of them. And Tim couldn’t quite understand the stab of fierce relief that filled his chest before he remembered the entire reason he’d stopped kissing her in the hallway. The reason they couldn’t just do whatever the hell they wanted to.

It wasn’t responsible. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t the right thing to do.

But first, he needed to work at untangling the mess one knot at a time. “What do you think the reason for our marriage is?”

She threw her hands up in the air and gave a sort of strangled, feral cry to the heavens. “How the hell should I know? That’s not for me to understand. At least not yet. But there’s a reason. Fate’s waiting for us to catch up. And we’ll figure it out.”

He shook his head. “I told you that’s not my thing.”

Skye visibly deflated in front of him, like a balloon without the stopper. Just like that, her explosive, dramatic show was over. She gave another sigh, then plopped back down in the chair. Leaning back, she tucked her legs under her in what looked like an impossible position. “Okay, we’ll ignore Fate for a second since She makes you uncomfortable.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand. “Let’s just focus on the rational for a second.”

Ah, finally they were on his level. “The rational thing is to divorce.” He looked at the tray of glasses, for some reason uncomfortable looking at her while he brought it up. “Or get an annulment. Not sure exactly which would be more appropriate in this situation.”

“Neither. And let me tell you why.” She leaned over and grabbed one of his hands, lacing fingers. He barely stopped himself from jerking back at the jolt. It was like all the pulsating energy she held within her body vibrated down her arm and made his own hand tingle. Pins and needles, like the limb had fallen asleep and was just starting to wake up again.

Or was that another body part?

He met her gaze, saw the little smile in her eyes. “You feel that too. That’s why. There’s something between us, and even with your death grip on logic and reason, you feel it too.” She gave him a quick grin. “I’ll be nice, and I won’t even make you say it out loud. Maybe we didn’t go about it in the most logical manner, at least to you. But I feel like we’re supposed to see where this takes us.”

She squeezed his hand, then slithered out of his grip. His hand felt empty without her smaller one in it. “We’re already married. The deed is done. Which would look worse? A two-week marriage? Or a marriage that just didn’t work out down the road, after some time and effort put into it?”

She did have a point. While he didn’t relish explaining the quickie wedding to anyone—parents included—an even quicker divorce would be humiliating. “So exactly what are you saying, Skye?”

“I quit my job in Vegas.” She paused, as if waiting for him to tell her how crazy that was. But really, at this point, wasn’t crazy expected? When he said nothing, she continued. “I’m here. You can’t come to me, obviously, so I’m here with you. I figure with my experience I could look for a management position at a hotel or a restaurant. There are enough of them around, it seems. I’m earning my keep, not looking for a handout.”

“Never thought you were,” he murmured and realized that it was true. As many pathetic stories as there were floating around about female con artists taking advantage of servicemen and cleaning out their bank accounts and homes while they deployed, it never once occurred to him that Skye was one.

“Well, good. Because I’m not,” she reiterated fiercely. “I’m here because I believe in this. And you.” She ran a hand through her hair, fingers tangling in the long, wavy ends. He had a vague memory of his own hands gripping those silky strands, angling her head so he could access her mouth more deeply with his tongue, giving himself better position to—

“Tim?”

“Yeah?” Shit. One of the most important conversations of his life and he was in the middle of his own wet daydream.

She smiled knowingly. “I could be a bitch and take that ‘yeah’ as your answer, but I won’t. So I ask again… do you want to go out with me?”

“Go out with you.” Did they step back in time and hit the seventh grade?

She laughed. “I know, not the most adult way of wording it. But it comes to the same. Do you, for the moment, want to forget we’re married and just date? If it doesn’t work out, then we’re no worse off than if we’d divorced today, except maybe you save some face and I feel like I wasn’t going against the plan of Fate. And who knows, maybe we’ll surprise ourselves.”

She wanted to stay married. And date. It was crazy. It was insane.

And yet he was struggling to bite back the urge to drag her upstairs and whisper yes in her ear… preferably while in the middle of getting her naked.

He drank the Kool-aid. Or rather, lemonade. Where’d he put his new white Nikes again?

Tim thrust the idea of her, pink-skinned and glowing and lying in his bed, out of his mind. “Are we telling people we’re married?”

She bit her lip, and he wanted to soothe the mark with his tongue. “That’s up to you, I guess. Though I think it makes more sense to tell people than not. They always say the truth comes out eventually, and all that.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I have a deal with an extended stay motel, but I thought I’d look at rentals in the area after we were done here.” She glanced at the door and said ruefully, “I’d thought Madison might want to come with me. Help me find the nicer areas and—”

“My wife isn’t staying at a motel,” he bit off, then swore at himself. The caveman routine was not attractive, nor was it going to help him get through this rationally.

She shrugged one shoulder, shifting the fabric of her shirt to drop over the other one, exposing her shoulder. He was thirteen again. That was the only excuse for why that completely innocent slip of skin had him harder than Kevlar.

“You’ll stay here.”

She raised one brow, as if to say,
Do
you
know
what
you’re saying?

But he did. Being in control gave him some sense of normalcy, and he grasped onto it for dear life. “We’re going to go get your things from the motel, and you’re coming back here. With me.”

“But Madison lives here.”

“So it’s one big party, then. Don’t you girls always have sleepovers and stuff?”

She smiled. “Fine. But you don’t have to come with me. I can pack myself up.”

“How about you get started, and I’ll come by to do the heavy lifting?” Before she could argue, he stood, taking her hand and pulling her up with him. In her bare feet, the top of her head reached his chin. She looked up at him, disbelief and skepticism clear in her eyes. Two things he never wanted her—anyone—to feel with him. To wipe them both out of her mind, he pulled her flush to his chest, bent his head, and kissed her with determination.

She resisted for a nanosecond, then melted against him. Her arms crept up around his neck, her hips cradled his erection, and her mouth opened on a sigh. He took the smallest of tastes, not trusting himself with more, then took a step back.

“Grab a head start on packing. I’ll catch up soon.”

***

Skye struggled to breathe normally as she packed her things in the sparse, but clean, motel room. She hadn’t really relished spending any more time in there than necessary. But at the same time, she wasn’t prepared to be so close to Tim on a daily basis.

She tossed her skirts into the open duffle, not caring if they wrinkled. Someone invented an iron for a reason. With her work clothes from Cloud Nine, she took more care, more out of habit than anything else. Though she had no love for the restricting, monochromatic black pants, white collared shirt, and black vest, she still respected the uniform from her old job. It fit the image the restaurant wanted to uphold, and she wore it with pride.

She threw another gauzy top into the bag and thought about how Tim had stared through her shirt at one point. The memory turned her both hot and cold, causing her skin to feel clammy and her face to feel flushed. Sure, he wanted her. That was both an obvious and delicious fact. But did he want her for more than her body? And why the sudden one-eighty on the trial time period?

Skye realized she’d been twisting a skirt into a knot and deliberately smoothed it out on the bed, then folded it and put it in the bag. She just had to accept that this was another way of Fate lining up things in their favor. So she would move in, and spend time with Tim, and see where it led them.

Skye’s cell phone rang and she picked it up absently, still finding things to toss in the suitcase.

“You haven’t called in a few days. I was getting worried!”

“Tasha.” Skye breathed a sigh of relief and sank down on the bed, crossing her legs under her. The sound of her best friend made her miss home, miss her simple life. Just not enough to turn back around. “What’s up?”

“Jessie’s here too, on speaker, just to warn you. So has he come back yet? Did you see him? Deets, please.”

Skye sighed and ran fingers through her hair, frowning when they got tangled around her shoulders. She pried them out while she spoke. “I saw him today. He finally came home.”

There was a silence, very unusual for her friends.

“And after a thoughtful conversation”—and some super-hot making out against a wall—“we’re going to give the marriage a shot.”

“Yes!”

“No!”

Skye held the phone away from her ringing ear. “Okay, care to share which of you was which?” she called so they could hear her.

“I think this is great.” Jessie. The marriage fan. “You deserve happiness. And you liked the guy enough to marry him, so this really just works out for the best!”