Wild Irish Envy (Copperline #2) (21 page)

“You’re serious,” I gasped. “You’re really serious.”

“What would it take, I wonder?” she murmured to herself as she jumped up and went to her pack. Pulling out her laptop, she settled back at the table, pushing her bowl aside, and fired it up.

“Fliss, I can’t ask you to—”

“Oh please, Denny,” she quickly interrupted, waving me off with her hand. “It’s not like you’re down on one knee begging for me to love you forever. I’m over wishing for that from anyone. Even you.”

Okay, that stung a bit.
A sharp jab to my heart, hurting way more than it should have.

“But it’s still marriage,” I shot back.

“It’s just an arrangement, something to get you back to Montana, back to your life. It doesn’t have to mean anything else. I’m just doing you a solid.”

“Why would you want to? I’m not sure if you recall, but I’ve been a bit of a wanker to ya.”

“Not exactly without cause,” she murmured. “I was hardly blameless in any of that, especially recently.”

“But—”

“Besides,” her voice rose when I tried to cut in, “you’ve actually done a lot for me over time. And you helped me a great deal on the way over. I’m not sure I could have made it out of Newark without you.”

“Fliss,” I began, but didn’t even know what to say, so I just sighed with frustration. Stubborn woman.

“Really, Denny,” she coaxed, “it doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. I just want to help you. Sort of a truce, I guess.”

As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I was actually considering it.

It was insane.

Fliss had two more weeks left before she was scheduled to go back to America, so the first thing she did was cancel her return flight. That weekend, we hopped on a plane to Edinburgh, all the documents in hand we’d been told we’d need to give notice at the registrar’s office. As the US Consulate was there, we’d picked that city to make things a little easier if we needed something for Fliss.

Taking a chance, we requested a civil ceremony for five weeks away. The laws said not more than three months, not less than thirty days. I wasn’t sure what we’d do once Fliss had to leave her flat since she only had a few days after her study abroad term ended, but, if nothing else, we’d get a cheap hotel or something.

Or maybe she would. It would be best for me to not stay with her. Not after the last time. Even if we were going to get married, which still knocked me for a loop every time I thought of it, things may be better if we avoided too much time together one-on-one. Especially at night when I closed my eyes and dreamed of her. I didn’t know what I’d do if I awoke to find her next to me.
Ravish her? Run away again?

She had my head all turned arseways, and I didn’t know how this was ever going to work. But Fliss seemed pretty sure, and she was very determined to help me get home to Montana.

I didn’t see her much for the following days while she finished up her studies. With all that she’d put into it, she needed to focus, a feat I couldn’t seem to accomplish with anything I did, even something so simple as brushing my teeth.

I scouted around for a place that Fliss could stay, but she booked another room at the Grafton Capital, where she’d stayed when we first arrived. A week later, and she’d gotten her stuff packed up, spending a few nights there before we flew back to Scotland.

And then, there we were, standing in front of the registrar vowing to love and honor one another until death did us part.

Feckin’ Jaysus.

And we hadn’t told a soul. Not a single person either of us knew. None of the guys back home. Not my family. Not her dad, who, if truth be told, terrified me the most. We grabbed two women off the streets of Edinburgh and asked them to bear witness. They looked at one another, laughed, and agreed.

Right after the ceremony, our witnesses, Jane and Dawn, decided to drag us off on a modified pub crawl in their attempts to offer us some semblance of a wedding celebration. We started in a pub listening to Avenged Sevenfold over and over and over (apparently Jane was quite the fan) on the jukebox, then ended up in a nightclub where a bartender had a massive crush on Dawn, which, she exclaimed, meant free drinks.

“Cheers,” they chorused, raising their glasses as the pulsing techno beat paralleled the flashing lights on the dance floor. The bartender in the lower level of Cabaret Voltaire, in an attempt to impress Dawn, had pulled out a couple bottles of cheap champagne, and we were quickly going through them.

“Here’s to the happy couple,” Jane shouted over the club music. “Let’s wish them a happy life together.”

“Congratulations to you both,” Dawn exclaimed as well. “Cheers!”

Fliss and I raised our glasses and drained them quickly. Quite honestly, this was a welcome distraction. Every now and then through the night, it would hit me that she was my wife.

Fliss was my feckin’
wife
.

We’d shared the barest brush of a kiss when the registrar had declared us man and wife, but my lips still tingled from that feathery touch. It had taken everything in me not to pull her hard up against me and kiss her like I really wanted to.

Fliss seemed equally willing to pretend it was a night like any other. That our lives hadn’t just drastically changed course, veering off on what felt like a single narrow lane full of dips and twists like a roller coaster. We drank our first glass followed by another… and another. We drank more quickly than we probably should have. The first bottle disappeared in no time, and we were well into the second, in addition to a few rounds of shots, when Jane and Dawn coaxed us down to the dance floor.

I was already desperately fighting the intense attraction to my wife. My
wife
.

Mine.

But then I’d remind myself…
This is just temporary.

She was mine, just not for long.

Back and forth, my brain waged war on my body, and vice versa. The internal struggle had me feeling frazzled and edgy.

And then Fliss began to dance.

I watched her, trying not to watch. I danced with her, trying not to touch. We moved closer and closer to the palpable rhythm, allowing the magnetism between us to take over until my lips were just a breath away from hers.

“Give her a snog!” Jane whooped.

“Yes,” Dawn exuberantly agreed, “kiss her!”

Quickly the crowd around us began to echo her demand, urging us on.

Fuck it
, I thought to myself.

I kissed her hard. Demanding and thorough. The crowd around us erupted into cheers and whistles, but it almost felt like we’d slipped into another dimension where only Fliss and I existed. Those around us seemed to fade away as her arms curled around my shoulders. She clung to me while the techno beat throbbed through our bodies.

Feeling they’d accomplished what they’d set out to do, Dawn and Jane managed to talk one more bottle of champagne out of the bartender, then offered us up all kinds of advice on procreation and a happy marriage. With the reckless lust still smoldering inside me, the taste of her kiss still fresh on my lips, we left them there and started back to the hotel.

We’d planned to spend the night in Edinburgh before flying back to Dublin – and the real world – the following day. Jane and Dawn assured us that the hotel would only be a short walk from the Cabaret Voltaire.

I redirected Fliss about a million times on the way, though. A bit on the inebriated side, she had the tendency to look the wrong way when crossing the street, expecting traffic to come from the opposite direction. She also didn’t seem to have the faintest idea where we were at any given time, and would have ended up going the complete opposite direction we were supposed to if I hadn’t grabbed her and steered her right a few times.

At least I thought we were going the right direction. My head was swimming with the incredulity of what we’d done that day, the knowledge that she was mine, and the champagne-turned-shots at the club. Finally, after wandering the streets of Edinburgh for almost an hour, I realized I was as lost as Fliss, so we flagged down a cab to go back to the hotel.

“Jaysus, Fliss,” I laughed as she walked into the hotel room and flopped face down on the bed, “you’re right pissed.”

She leaned up on one shoulder and chuckled back, “I am not. Why would you think that?”

“Not pissed as in angry, ya eejit, but drunk. Shlossed.”

“Oh,” she giggled, “yeah, I am that.” She rolled to her back, stretching out on the mattress. “This is the first time I’ve drank in weeks. Not since…” Her voice trailed off and the humor disappeared from her face. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked up at me. “Well,” she said softly, “not since that night. With you and me.”

The silence in the room after her quiet words roared around us. It was deafening. It was dangerous in its seduction. Because it allowed me to almost hear those memories of her. Those soft moans from that night we’d been together began to echo in my head.

I suddenly wanted more to drink, so I walked to the dresser and opened the bottle of champagne, taking a long swig straight out of the bottle.

“We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow,” I said over my shoulder, my back to her. “Should probably get some sleep.”

“Right,” she murmured after a long moment.

I could hear the motion of her climbing off the bed, walking into the bathroom, stopping only to grab some clothes from her bag.

As the door closed behind her, I walked to the other side of the bed and sat there, willing the frustration and want from my body as I sipped at the bottle of champagne. I could hear her in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, the rustle of clothing. She came out and pulled back the blankets, curling up on her side and facing away from me.

That tension was still there. That ache my intoxicated mind fought against. I couldn’t bear it, but we had made a deal. It was an agreement. Something invaluable that she’d done for me so I could go back to my life in Ophir. I needed to follow the rules. Not that we really had discussed any, but I was pretty sure that taking her on a savage ride was against them.

So I set the champagne bottle on the small table by the bed and went to change into some sleep pants. Fliss had barely moved when I came out, and I wondered for a moment if she had passed out. She’d drank buckets. We both had.

Sleep. We needed to sleep.

So I turned off the bedside lamp and lay down on the other side, close to the window. A faint stream of light filtered in, shining on her form next to me.

“Goodnight, Fliss,” I softly said, not knowing if she could even hear me.

Her head shifted just a bit on the pillow, then settled back into it. “Goodnight, Denny,” she whispered in response.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I lay there, half drunk and wide awake, unnerved and uncomfortable, wanting her, but knowing I shouldn’t… even if we were man and wife.

It was just an agreement
, I kept telling myself over and over. I replayed Fliss’ words again and again.

It doesn’t have to mean anything.

But it didn’t do any good.

“Fliss?”

My faint voice was barely a whisper in the darkness. Almost a breath.

“Yeah, Denny?”

I turned my head and looked across the small room, through the shadows, to see her shifting to her other side. Facing me. Her eyes glittered in the dim stream of light that peeked through the curtains.

“Well, I was just thinking…” I trailed off.

“That’s not good,” she said with an intoxicated giggle.

I laughed as well, still rather fluthered myself. “I’m a horrible liar,” I admitted after a moment.

Her face became pensive in the shadows. “What did you lie about?” she asked cautiously.

“No,” I quickly said, tucking my arm under my head as I nervously continued. “I’m just not sure I’ll be very good at it. It’s one thing to not tell people about the agreement. To just play it off that we got married and that’s that. But… well… what if immigration starts asking questions? D’yaknowhwatimeanlike?”