Vegas Wedding, Weaver Bride

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  He scrubbed his hand down his bristly jaw. The thick, wavy hair on his head was as dark as ever, but the whiskers there definitely held a touch of gray.

  She wished she could say they detracted from his appeal.

  But at least that long-fingered hand of his wasn’t sporting a wedding ring.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said.

  “I don’t know how you can sound so calm.” She hitched up the long ends of the sheet and stood. “This is a disaster.” She slipped past him to return to the bedroom area. As oversize and opulent as the bathroom was, it was still too small with him in it.

  His voice turned flat. “Stop being melodramatic.”

  She spotted her other shoe peeking out from beneath the gold silk bedspread that was hanging off the mattress, and grabbed it. She couldn’t remember how the evening had ended the night before, but she distinctly remembered how it had started off—with her fully clothed and wearing her usual complement of panties and bra underneath.

  “Maybe it’s not a disaster in comparison to your usual life.” She knew he was part of some special operations thing in the air force. To Penny, that was just code for some really dangerous thing in the air force. “But it is to mine. I have no desire to be anyone’s wife. Certainly not like this.” Not to another man already married to the military. She’d been through that before. Thanks to the army in which Andy had served and a close encounter with an IED on his way home for their wedding, she’d never even had the opportunity to be a widow. Much less a wife.

  She went down onto her hands and knees to look under the bed. But the ivory carpet there was smoothly vacuumed and untarnished by discarded undies. She sat back on her knees.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “The rest of my clothes, obviously.” She hitched up the sheet again and stood. “I need to get back to my room. Clean up. Make sure everything’s set for the flight home tomorrow.”

  “What about my grandmother’s lunch?”

  “That’s for all of you. I’m the hired help, remember?” She shoved her long hair away from her face again as she walked back into the bathroom, carrying her second shoe.

  She shut the door.

  Pushed the door lock for good measure.

  She dropped the sheet and pulled her stretchy dress over her head, dragging the dark purple fabric down over her bare hips and thighs. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious that she was entirely commando under the dress.

  She raked her fingers through her hair, trying to restore a little order to the dishwater-blond mess, and splashed water over her face, using one of the plush towels stacked on a glass shelf before she pushed her bare feet into her high-heeled sandals and opened the door again.

  Quinn was leaning against the wall opposite the door, his arms folded over his wide chest. “Feel better?”

  She could feel herself flushing, but she gave a brisk nod anyway as she walked out of the bathroom. Without high heels, she was taller than average. With them, she stood close to six feet, putting her generally eye-to-eye with most men.

  But not Quinn. He was still several inches taller than she was.

  Which was a completely irrelevant point, she reminded herself as she scanned the room, hoping to spot her purse, because she truly did not want to have to go down to the lobby and get a new room key. Not looking the way she did.

  Her relief when she finally found it half-hidden among the ivory leather couch cushions was almost comical. Her room key was tucked safely inside one of the pockets, exactly where she’d put it before joining Vivian and her family for dinner the evening before.

  She felt her eyes drifting toward the bed and yanked them front and center.

  Quinn hadn’t left his position against the wall. Which meant she had to walk past him once again to get to the door of the suite.

  “You can’t run far, Penny.”

  “I’m not running. You, however, are supposed to be sitting down to lunch with your grandmother.” She opened the door.

  But he reached out and closed his hand around her wrist before she could leave. “Viv can wait. It’s not every day I wake up to a wife.”

  Heat rushed up her throat into her face. “I’m not your wife.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Really? I know they say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but we’re talking marriage here. And we’ve got a certificate that strongly suggests you’re most definitely my wife.”

  She didn’t know if it was deliberate or not, but his thumb was pressed right against the racing pulse in her wrist. “Then we’ll get another certificate that undoes it! Annulments must be almost as popular in this state as weddings.”

  “Annulment means there’s been no marriage—or anything associated with the marriage—at all.”

  “That’s right.” She pulled on her wrist, but his fingers held fast. They weren’t hurting. But they weren’t giving so much as a centimeter.

  Instead, he reeled her in closer. He tucked one finger beneath her chin, and her mouth went dry.

  He turned her face until she was looking back into the hotel suite.

  Right at the bed.

  “You sure an annulment is going to be all that easy?” His voice was low. Intimate. “We have a consummated marriage here, sweetheart.”

  A flush ran through her veins, and her skin seemed to tingle.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” she reminded, wishing that she sounded a lot less hoarse and a lot more certain.

  His callused thumb moved slowly over her inner wrist. “You don’t remember the way we woke up?”

  She wanted to block out his words as badly as she wanted to block out the truth. Because she did remember exactly the way she’d awakened.

  Engulfed in his warmth. His hand on her breast. His hair-roughened thigh between hers.

  He hadn’t been inside her. But he could have been. Everywhere she’d been soft and wanting, he’d been hard and insistent.

  And for a moment, a wonderful, blissful moment, she’d imagined Andy weren’t dead. That he was there with her. They were together, finally, just the way they’d planned to be.

  And then she’d realized the dream wasn’t a dream at all. But a nightmarish reality.

  Because it wasn’t Andy’s arms surrounding her, causing her to feel so deliciously safe and cherished. It wasn’t Andy’s soft blue gaze and sweet smile she saw when she opened her eyes.

  It was Quinn.

  Quinn, with the seductive grin, and the devil-dark eyes that had always made her want to do anything and everything with him. Sanity had thankfully kicked in then, and she’d jumped out of bed like the hounds of Hades were nipping at her feet.

  “I don’t care what that marriage certificate says. And I don’t care what went on in that—” she swallowed hard “—that bed. I am not your wife. You are not my husband. We are not married.”

  Then she finally twisted her wrist free and rushed through the doorway to escape.

  Chapter Two

  Quinn sighed, watching Penny race away from him. Her golden-streaked brown hair bounced around her shoulders. Her shapely hips swayed with every step.

  Then she reached the end of the hallway and turned with almost military precision and marched out of sight altogether.

  She didn’t look back at him.

  Not that he’d expected she would.

  He rubbed his hand over the throbbing pain inside his head and turned back into the hotel suite.

  The digs his grandmother was footing the bill for were a helluva lot more luxurious than what he’d been used to for pretty much the last two decades. He couldn’t say that he didn’t appreciate all the comforts.

  He did.

  Nor could he say that he’d been overly disappointed waking up to find a beautiful, sexy woman draping her long
legs and long hair all over him.

  Because he hadn’t been.

  Not until clarity had come blinking into Penny Garner’s startlingly blue eyes, and she’d bolted out of his arms as if he were the worst sort of snake alive.

  If he’d really been a snake, he’d have taken what she’d offered all those years ago when she’d been just a precocious, well-developed teenager.

  He wasn’t a snake. But he also wasn’t going to apologize for the way they’d woken up in this fancy hotel suite, tangled together. Because—he was thankful to say—these days, he was a relatively healthy man. And Penelope Garner’s teenage years were thankfully long past.

  Yet her very existence was still causing no small amount of mischief.

  Could that marriage certificate actually be authentic?

  He closed the door to the suite and found the piece of paper—badly wrinkled now—on the counter in the bathroom.

  Their signatures were plain. Recognizable.

  Nothing about the document suggested it was a fake.

  Which meant that until he could prove it was, he had to assume it was not.

  He lifted his gaze to his reflection. He had more gray in his beard than he used to have. There were lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and lines in his forehead. His body had more aches and pains than he wanted to admit to.

  In some circles, thirty-six wasn’t all that old.

  In his line of work, though, it didn’t exactly make him young.

  He was a member of the United States Air Force. Proud of it.

  But no matter what his age, certain behaviors were frowned upon whether he was on duty or off. Finding yourself married after a night you couldn’t even remember didn’t exactly qualify as responsible behavior.

  And now, regardless of Penny’s refusal to acknowledge it, he found himself apparently married.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing he could will away the throbbing pain inside his head. Instead, he turned away from the certificate and flipped on the shower before stripping off.

  He wasn’t particularly concerned about pleasing or not pleasing his grandmother by being late for lunch. He hadn’t met her until he’d come home on leave a month ago. Until then, he’d only known the stories his father and uncle would occasionally tell about the dragon lady who’d been their mother.

  Far as Quinn was concerned, the old lady was eccentric, for sure. But he had no gripe with her the way his dad did.

  Of course, if Quinn hadn’t let himself be talked into coming along for this damn Las Vegas trip, he wouldn’t be in the situation he was in now, either. His triplet cousins—or the trips, as everyone referred to them—thought they’d maneuvered him into it. But really, he hadn’t agreed until he’d learned that Penny would be there.

  Still, he could just imagine the case his father would make out of the mess. David Templeton was a pediatrician. But for all of his peaceful attitude when it came to dealing with his patients and their families, he’d still find some way to lay the blame for Quinn’s current predicament squarely at Vivian’s door, even though Quinn was a fully capable and functioning adult.

  Maybe he was getting soft. But he didn’t want to be the cause of more dissension in his family. Not if he could help it, anyway. It wasn’t as if his grandmother was going to be around forever. She’d moved to Wyoming a few years ago to make peace with her estranged family. Only she’d had a lot more success with her grandchildren than she’d had with her two sons.

  He stepped under the steaming shower spray and groaned a little as the heat penetrated. It’d been three months since he and the rest of his unit had woken up to grenades exploding right outside their quarters. Three months since his life had been thrown into chaos.

  Three months since his closest friend had died in the attack. Three others had been badly injured. Men, good men, who reported to Quinn. Their lives had, fortunately, moved on. Two were already headed back to the Middle East. The third was due to head out to Japan in a few weeks.

  Quinn’s status, however, was less certain.

  Technically, his injuries were supposed to be healed. But that didn’t mean he didn’t still feel a gnawing ache every time he lifted his arm, courtesy of the shrapnel he’d taken during the attack. He’d spent an entire month in the hospital while the surgeons put together his shredded insides. Another month in physical therapy while the powers-that-be decided whether or not to give him the leave he’d requested.

  Ultimately, he’d gotten the leave, as well as orders for ongoing therapy. The leave was supposed to last another month, if he wasn’t called back up—even for light duty—because of some new disaster.

  And whether his leave lasted or not, a huge question remained. What role would he be called back to?

  Which was another reason to have a throbbing pain inside his skull.

  Quinn was a PJ. A Pararescueman. It was what he loved. It was where he excelled. “These things we do, that others may live,” was the PJ motto, but it was more than that for Quinn. It was a way of life. If a service member was in need of rescue on sea or on land, Quinn and others like him recovered and returned them to safety. They were commandos and they were paramedics. And they were equipped to handle anything and everything they encountered in order to complete their mission whether it was military or humanitarian in nature.

  But if Quinn couldn’t stand up to the physical rigors of the job, he wasn’t going to be cleared for flight status. Which meant he wouldn’t be going back as a PJ.

  And if he couldn’t go as a PJ, he wasn’t sure he could stand to go back at all.

  Which left him with what?

  There were too many questions circling his head, not the least of which was the matter of Penny Garner.

  He ducked his head beneath the shower spray, feeling the hot water sluice down his shoulders. Even after a month Stateside, he hadn’t tired of the luxury of taking a shower that lasted as long as he wanted it to last.

  Finally, though, aware of his grandmother’s expectation, he shut off the water. He pulled on clean jeans and shirt and left his room to join his grandmother and the others for lunch.

  Even before he reached the double doors of Vivian’s suite, he could hear peals of laughter coming from inside.

  One thing Quinn could say about the women in his family—they did know how to laugh.

  He knocked on the door and a moment later, it was pulled open.

  Only instead of facing his sister, Delia, or one of his cousins, it was Penny.

  Like him, she’d obviously showered. Her wet hair was pulled to the back of her head into a ponytail. She’d also changed into a gray skirt that skimmed her ankles and a scoop-necked white T-shirt that lured his attention toward her lush curves.

  Her eyes shied away from his as she backed out of the doorway so he could enter. “Everyone’s in the dining room.”

  “I didn’t think you were going to be here.”

  “Neither did I.” She toyed with one of her tiny gold stud earrings. “But when Mrs. Templeton says jump, it’s my job to ask how high.”

  “Quinn, darling.” Vivian appeared in the archway leading to the dining room. She’d been widowed four times, and all of her husbands except the last had had money. Not as much as her, though, because her first husband—Quinn’s grandfather—had been a steel magnate. As a result, not even a regular hotel suite was good enough for her. Nope. For his granny, it was the presidential suite. Complete with two stories, four bedrooms—three of which were going empty—a full kitchen and butler’s pantry, and a formal dining room, all surrounded by an encompassing terrace if one was inclined to bake themselves in the hot Nevada sun.

  “I was just getting ready to send Penny after you,” Vivian said. She was petite, white-haired and typically dressed in a pale pink Chanel suit. “Come.” She held out a bering
ed hand. “We’ve just been waiting for you.”

  He allowed her to pull him into the dining room where places had been set at one end of the long, mahogany table. His cousins were already there. But not his baby sister. “Where’s Delia?”

  “Still sleeping,” Greer drawled, with a roll of her eyes.

  “Give her a break,” Maddie said calmly. “She was out all night.”

  “We were all out all night,” Ali commented. She was spreading something green and obnoxious-looking across a tiny triangle of toast, and she pointed the tip of her knife at Quinn. “Except you.” She waved the knife a little, taking in Penny, who’d silently come up beside Quinn. “And you, Penny. The both of you disappeared around midnight shortly after we ran into that friend of yours.” She was a cop in Braden and she gave him what she obviously figured was her cop stare. But then she ruined it with a grin. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d be a little suspicious what you’d gotten up to with our dear Penny.”

  He pulled out a chair across from Ali while Penny hurried over to the buffet that was laid out with silver serving dishes. “And what do you figure I was up to?” He poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver urn sitting in the center of the table.

  “He was probably down in the fitness center working out like usual,” Greer answered before her sister could. “As if he’s not already in great shape.”

  “Yeah, well, great shape’s not all it’ll take to get me cleared for parachuting again.” For that he might need a miracle. He managed a smile as he looked at their grandmother. On the bright side, at least he now knew for certain that none of his cousins had been participants in his and Penny’s marital antics the night before. “Viv, how’d you sleep after all that champagne last night?”

  “Like a baby. Champagne is practically mother’s milk to me.” She waved an indolent hand. Her attention was on Penny as she fussed with the buffet. “Penny, dear. We have you to thank for this resplendent display. Sit down and enjoy it.”