“If money had ever been my goal, I’d have become an officer like you were,” Quinn drawled. His first impressions of Mike Lansing had held up over the years. The hot five-mile walk from the marriage bureau building hadn’t made him want a shower as badly as sitting there with Mike did.
Mike laughed again. “You’re a master sergeant now. Good reason to feel uptight right there. Must suck being stuck running the action from the ground.”
Quinn hadn’t been stuck running things from the ground, but it was a definite possibility facing him. Even though every single member of the combat rescue team was valuable, running things from the ground wasn’t a role he relished. He’d spent too long in the action. Too long as a team leader.
“Just say the word and I’ll hook you up with another hit that’ll have you loosening up again in no time.” Mike grinned, mimicking dropping something into his drink.
His attention abruptly targeted on Mike. “Another hit. Of what?”
“A little something I keep handy.”
Quinn’s fists curled. “Exactly what little something?”
“Nothing that’ll pop in a blood test,” Mike assured, as if that made everything all right. “Just an herbal cocktail I learned about last time I was in India. Makes life a little...brighter. Your sister thought it was pretty hilarious. She switched drinks with yours—” He broke off when Quinn stood and started walking away. “Hey, Sarge. Where’re you going?”
Anywhere other than there.
Quinn didn’t stop. Didn’t even bother looking back. If he did, he was afraid of what he’d do to the other man.
Mike was a worm. Always had been and it seemed nothing in the intervening decade had changed.
But the last thing Quinn needed was to be caught grinding his fist into a worm’s face. He didn’t need an assault charge haunting him, no matter how well deserved his actions felt.
He strode through the casino until he located the elevators and went up to Delia’s hotel suite. Banged on the door. “Delia!”
Relief hit him when she finally yanked open the door. She was clearly dressed for the swimming pool in a bikini and a flimsy cover-up that didn’t cover up a damn thing. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, obviously.” He sounded annoyed and didn’t care. Because he was annoyed. Not only at Mike’s stunt, but also with her. “What the hell are you walking around like that for? You’re practically naked.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she propped her hand on her hip. She was dark-haired like him but that was about the end of the similarities. “I’m a long way from naked and I’m not exactly sixteen anymore, so can the protective growl!”
He would always feel protective where Delia was concerned. Mostly because she was the baby of his family. But also—and he ordinarily said it with love—she was kind of a ditz.
Their father was a pediatrician. Their mother was a retired psychologist. Their other sister, Grace, was doing her residency at Duke. Much to his father’s chagrin at the time, Quinn hadn’t taken the educational route, but he’d still made a career out of his military service and gotten a hell of a lot of education along the way.
Delia, though? She seemed entirely happy coasting through life, never settling on anything or anyone for any length of time.
“Did you see Lansing doctor my drink last night?”
She pursed her lips. “Maybe.”
God help him. He wanted to shake her. “Yes or no?”
“Good grief, Quinn. Keep your shorts on.” She picked up an oversize shoulder bag sitting on a chair. A floppy hat and a rolled towel were sticking out of it. “Of course I saw. He put some drops in Penny’s drink, too.”
“And you switched drinks.”
“So?”
He wanted to yell at her. But Delia never responded well to shouting. She just crumpled up in tears and shut down. “Are you crazy? I suppose you just drank it, too. Did he spike anyone else’s?”
She glared. “No, I did not drink it,” she snapped. “I dumped them both in a plant by the table! And no, I didn’t see him do anything else.”
“Did it occur to you to say anything? He could have been putting anything in our drinks. I can’t even remember coming back to the hotel last night.” But that wasn’t entirely accurate, either. Because already he had images hovering on the edges of his pain-addled brain. Vivid city lights. Penny’s blue gaze. A glossy limousine interior...
“When was I supposed to tell you, Quinn? When you were busy feeling up Penny on the dance floor? Besides, the guy was all hands! By the time I got that dealt with, you and Penny had already disappeared!”
“You could have found a way,” he said through his teeth. “You have no idea what a mess this has caused.”
“Well?” She spread her hands, clearly waiting. “What mess?”
He clenched his jaw, remembering his promise to Penny. “Lansing’s been a lost cause for ten years. But you’re my sister. You’re twenty-seven years old. You see something wrong, you speak up!”
“At least I was more aware of what was going on than you were.” She snatched a small vial from her pool bag and thrust it at him. “I stole it from his jacket while he was trying to stick his tongue down my throat. You’re welcome.”
He exhaled roughly, rubbing his hand down his face as he swore. At her. At Lansing. At the fact that he’d found himself married to a woman who was more appalled at the idea than he was. But mostly at himself. Because Delia was right. If he’d been more aware, none of this would have happened. “Thank you,” he muttered.
Delia sniffed, clearly unimpressed as she shoved past him with her pool bag and strode away.
“Perfect.” He opened the nearly empty vial and took a sniff, which told him nothing. He twisted the cap back in place and pocketed it.
He realized he didn’t know the number of Penny’s room as he headed toward the elevator. He used the house phone to call the front desk and, thanks to the beauty of dropping his granny’s name, received the information he needed.
He took the elevator down to Penny’s floor and knocked on the door. Given the way the day had gone so far, he didn’t expect her to be there, so when the door opened a second later, he couldn’t hide his surprise.
At least that was the excuse he used while he adjusted to the sight of her. She was wearing a black swimsuit with an opaque black scarf tied around her hips. The sleek one-piece was a lot less revealing than Delia’s bikini had been, but disturbed him a hell of a lot more.
It wasn’t easy to believe he’d wedded Penny, but it was all too easy to understand why he’d bedded her.
No amount of artificial stimulants needed on that score.
“I see you went shopping for a swimsuit.”
Her hair was still pulled back in a ponytail—dry now—and she had a pair of sunglasses hiding her eyes. “Yes.”
“Can I come in?”
She hesitated.
He led with what he considered the most critical info. “The guy Maddie mentioned at lunch—Lansing. He drugged our drinks last night.”
Her lips parted. She slowly pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head.
“With what?” She backed away, pulling the door open wider so he could enter.
Her hotel room was just a regular hotel room. Nice, yeah. But nothing at all like the fancy-dancy suites the rest of them had. It was also neat as a pin. The bed perfectly made because she hadn’t even spent the last night in it. “Supposedly it’s some herbal crap.” He showed her the vial.
She paled. “What kind of herbal crap?”
I don’t know, but I know someone who can test it. He pushed the vial in his pocket again and put his hand on her forehead. The skin was cool. Velvety smooth. “How are you feeling? A headache? Any nausea? Problems breathing?”
She shook
her head, pulling away from his touch. “No. Well, a headache. But I just attributed that to...you know.” She turned away from him.
The back straps of her swimsuit were comprised of an intriguing series of strings crisscrossing over the small of her spine in a way that only emphasized her hourglass figure. And even though he couldn’t see beneath the scarf, he had no problem imagining her long legs and curvy butt being shown off to perfection...
He cleared his throat and looked away.
She was pacing in the space between the bed and the window. “We’ve all heard to watch out for that sort of thing, but to have it actually happen—” She plopped on the side of the bed. “Has this happened to you before?”
He sighed and went to sit beside her. “No.” He folded her hand in his. “I’m sorry.”
“Because your friend is an ass?”
“He was kicked out of the service ten years ago. And he was never my friend. But yeah.”
She looked at him. Her brows were pulled together over those oddly luminous eyes. “You didn’t know. None of us knew.”
“Except Delia.” He let go of her hand, pushing off the bed. “She saw him do it. And if she’d said something—” he yanked the marriage certificate out of his back pocket and tossed it on the bed beside her “—maybe we wouldn’t have that to deal with.”
She got off the bed as if she didn’t want to be anywhere near the certificate. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“That’s what you’re worried about? No, I didn’t tell her. I told you I wouldn’t say anything to anyone yet and I haven’t.” He gestured at the paper. “The guy who signed it is registered with the county to perform marriages. I’ll have to keep checking back to get proof it’s legal, but we’ll know that within ten days. That’s how long he has to file the paperwork.”
“Ten days!”
“Could be sooner.” He told her everything the marriage bureau employee had told him.
“So we were lucid enough to apply for a marriage license. Presumably get through a ceremony of some sort and sign our names on the marriage certificate. Then pass out in bed. It doesn’t mean we can’t get an annulment.” Her cheeks were red. “We don’t know that...that...anything physical happened.”
“Don’t pretend you’re that naive. I can’t see us being in bed together and not being in bed together.” The way they’d woken all tangled together was proof enough for him. He’d been hard as a rock and she’d been warm and wet.
She’d pressed her hands over her ears and was shaking her head. “I’m not listening.”
He went over to her and gently wrapped his fingers around her wrists. Her pulse rate was off the charts. “Like it or not, Penny, it’s a given that you and I consummated whatever vows we exchanged.” He exhaled heavily and admitted the worst. “But I can’t even be certain that you were willing!”
Her lips parted. She swallowed. “Quinn—”
He let her go and shoved his hand through his hair. “If you want go to the hospital, I can take you. Or arrange for someone else to, if you’re more comfortable that way.” His voice was gruff. The thought that he might have coerced her was nauseating. “You can get an exam. If you were forced—”
“Oh my God!” She looked horrified. “I don’t need an exam to prove what I already know. You were just as much a victim of this as I was. Maybe you were the one who wasn’t, you know...on board.” Her cheeks turned red. “That’d be more in line with our history.”
“Trust me.” His voice was dark. “I would’ve been more than willing back then if you’d have been legal. And now—” He broke off because her face was nearly scarlet now. He exhaled. “You’re a beautiful woman, Penny. Let’s just leave it at that.”
She cleared her throat, not looking at him. “And you’re a handsome man.” The words seemed to come reluctantly. “Anyway, it’s all moot,” she continued abruptly. “I don’t care what sort of influence you were under. You’d never do something against a woman’s will. You wouldn’t even be worried if not for what that scum of a man did. So just stop thinking about it and talking about...about tests and stuff.”
His chest felt tight. Trust like that was more than a little humbling. And he still wasn’t sure it was merited. How could he ever be truly sure?
“Promise me, Quinn.”
It was the second promise she’d asked of him that day. “Fine.”
Fortunately, she accepted the answer. She put a few paces between them, busying herself with retying the knot in the silky scarf. “And maybe we didn’t. It’s possible,” she insisted at his look. “Maybe we both just passed out before we could—you know.”
“Have sex?”
“Yes.” Obviously, the very idea of it embarrassed her. “Regardless, we’re the only ones who would know. And if we say we didn’t...consummate things, we could still get an annulment.”
“You mean lie.”
“It’s not a lie if there’s any room for doubt.”
He made a face and she huffed. “Neither one of us wants to be married to the other. This is just one big fiasco from start to finish. And the only way to rectify it—if there’s anything to actually rectify—is to get an annulment. Everything’ll be right back to normal.”
“You’re forgetting one thing.”
She raised her brows, waiting.
“When we had sex—”
“If we had sex.”
“When we had sex,” he repeated over her interruption, “we didn’t use anything.” No condom. No condom wrapper. No evidence of any sort of protection had been in his hotel suite. “Now, I’ve had every medical test known to man over the past few months. You don’t have to worry about catching anything from me. I’m assuming you’ve always been careful in the past?”
Her cheeks had gone red again. After a moment she gave a stiff nod.
“Then there’s just one question left. Are you on birth control?“
Chapter Four
Quinn’s words jangled inside Penny’s mind.
He was standing there, annoyingly handsome and militarily straight, waiting for an answer.
She wanted to ask him if they hadn’t already had enough blows for one day.
She was still grappling with the notion that some idiot had spiked their drinks. The only thing gained by knowing that fact was that they now had an explanation for ending up in Quinn’s hotel suite the way they had. They had an explanation for not being able to remember any of it. She already knew Quinn had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. If he learned she’d also been a virgin—
“Penny?” Quinn took a step toward her. His eyebrows were like straight slashes above his level brown eyes. “Are you on birth control or not?”
“I don’t really think that’s any of your business,” she said evasively.
His eyebrows shot up. “Until I know otherwise, you’re my wife. I think that does make it my business. So are you on the pill? Implant? Anything?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She managed a nod, trying valiantly to pretend her neck wasn’t getting hot.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”
The heat spread up her jaw and into her cheeks. Her forehead. Until her entire head felt like it might well be smoking. “Why would I lie about that?”
He suddenly leaned back against the dresser in front of the bed and folded his arms across his wide chest. “I don’t know,” he said calmly. “Why are you?”
She’d been a better liar when she’d been ten than she was now.
She turned her back on him and went over to look out the window. Unlike his suite with that stellar city view and balcony, her room looked out over a roof and a bunch of mechanical equipment. There was one window. No balcony. And it was still costing Mrs. Templeton over four hundred dollars a night.
“No, I’m not on the pill
,” she admitted flatly. “There’s nobody in my life. Hasn’t been for a while.” She wasn’t going to tell him that there’d never been anyone. Not that way. She and her fiancé, Andy, had been foster kids living in the same foster home. They’d never chanced it, knowing that they’d be separated in a nanosecond if they were caught doing anything improper. Then he’d graduated from high school, announced to their foster parents during his graduation party that they were engaged, and he’d headed to boot camp a day later, leaving Penny behind to finish high school.
Quinn’s silence penetrated her memories and she looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”
“You’re not on anything?”
She shook her head.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingertips against his temples. “So you could be pregnant. On top of everything else.”
“What? No!”
He gave her a look. “I don’t have to spell out the details of unprotected sex, do I?”
She made a face. “Obviously not.”
“Then you know there’s a chance just as well as I do.” He inhaled deeply, then straightened once more. “Which means nothing’s happening about anything until we know one way or the other.”
She couldn’t remember making love. She darn shooting couldn’t imagine having conceived a baby with him. She and Andy had talked about having a half-dozen kids. About having the kind of real family that neither one of them had grown up with.
Her throat felt tight. “I can’t talk about this anymore.” She hurried past him and yanked open the room door. “I need you to go.”
“Penny.”
She stared hard at the gold patterned carpet beneath her sandals, willing away the tears that burned behind her eyes. “Please, Quinn. Not now.” Not ever, if she was lucky.
She heard the impatience in his sigh as he came over to the door. But there was no hint of impatience at all in the way he touched her shoulder. And no matter how badly she wanted to ignore him, she couldn’t help looking up at him.
For a man who could look as fierce as he could look, he also had an unsettling capacity for showing extreme gentleness.
Vegas Wedding, Weaver Bride Page 4