“As soon as the room stops spinning, I’ll start organizing.”
“What’s happened to you? You’re Ellie Carrington. You’re fucking fearless. You stared down the paparazzi, tabloid reporters, anyone who crossed you. You don’t run away.”
“Maybe I don’t feel much like that Ellie anymore. What do you think my father would say if he finds out that my first couple of weeks in the city, I end up getting married to a one-night stand?”
Rachel frowned. “That’s what this little pity party is about, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father. You’re worried about his opinion.”
“Of course, I am.”
“Sure, you married a stranger. You fucked up. You made a mistake. But that’s your own problem to deal with. Why does it always come down to him?”
Ellie had to think about it. Why was his opinion so important? She settled on her typical answer. “He was instrumental in me turning my life around.”
“Since when do you care what anyone—any man—thinks of you?”
“It’s more than that. This is supposed to be my opportunity to have a relationship with him.”
“All right. What’s your next step?”
Ellie sighed. “Put on my big girl panties and deal with this, right?”
“That’s right. And first?”
“Find Gabe. Talk to him. I don’t even know how to find him.”
“Girl, I can help you out there,” Rachel said, scrolling through the photos on her phone. “I might know more about your husband than you do. I took that picture of his driver’s license, remember?”
“You’re smart,” Ellie told her, taking her phone. She looked at Gabe’s photo. It was ridiculous, but she found herself missing him. She regretted walking out on him this morning. She dedicated his home address to her memory and handed the phone back.
“That is one handsome husband you have there,” Rachel said with a laugh, but then she turned serious. “So, you’re going to go see him?”
“Yeah, I kind of have to, right?”
“You do.”
“What do I say?”
Rachel shrugged. “I guess you can start with ‘Hey, hubby.’”
“You’re a jerk.”
“I know, but you love me anyway.”
With a plan in place, her hangover had dissipated, and she felt ready to tackle her problems head-on.
“I do. That’s my problem,” she said, smiling at her friend. “Okay. I’m going to go. But first I need a shower.” She turned on her bedside lamp and took in her reflection in her mirror. “I can’t go see my husband looking like this.”
* * *
Gabe, freshly showered, somewhat hydrated but still feeling horrible, sat at his kitchen table in front of his opened laptop and tossed both platinum bands down next to it. He didn’t know what to do with them. But he felt somehow closer to his missing wife when it was near.
Where was she? Why did she leave without saying goodbye? He’d been with his fair share of women, acquaintances, strangers he’d never see again, familiar lovers he’d seen multiple times, but he’d never married any of them in a sex-and-booze-filled stupor. He’d known the minute he saw Ellie, with her huge, dark eyes, and lush, full mouth, that there was something about her. He tried to shake her. But he knew he wouldn’t be successful. Not until he saw her again. He had to find her.
Normally, the type of anonymous, one-night arrangement he’d shared with Ellie was fine with him. It was the kind of thing he sought out at Di Terrestres. Last night was different, and now he couldn’t get sweet, sexy, wild Ellie—his wife—out of his mind. He had no idea how he would get on with his day and focus on anything but her, and figuring out a way to find her.
Gabe needed advice—needed to talk to his friends, to let them know that he’d royally screwed up and put them all at risk. With his phone still shattered, he turned to his laptop and started up a video chat with the other members of the Brotherhood. One by one, his four friends’ faces filled his screen as they answered.
“Gabe!” Alana was the first to speak. “Where have you been? You’ve been completely MIA.” It had been only twenty-four hours, but she was right. He hadn’t been out of contact with any of them, especially Alana, for that long, in years.
“I smashed my phone last night. I haven’t been out for a new one yet.”
“You look like hell. What happened to you?” she asked.
“I may have lost most of the night—and today—in a Bellagio penthouse, after too many bottles of champagne to count.” Stunned silence met him in every chat window on his screen. Within the group, Gabe was the straight man to every joke, the serious one, the quiet one. The studious one. The one who avoided scandal at every turn, while his friends had all found themselves embroiled in it at one time or another. “And that’s not all.”
“What happened?” Brett asked.
Gabe grabbed the marriage license and held it up to the screen. “There’s also this.”
“What the fuck is that?” Alex asked.
“I got married.”
More stunned silence. But Alana was the first to crack, and she laughed. Soon, it was echoed by a chorus of deeper, more masculine laughs. For a moment, as he took in their glee, Gabe hated his friends.
“So, who’s the lucky lady?” Alana asked, when she caught her breath.
“Her name is Ellie,” he started, and made a show of looking at the certificate, “and it seems as if her last name is Carrington.”
“Where is she?” Rafael asked. “Who is she? I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.”
“I’m not,” Gabe responded, his voice flat. “And who and where are both questions I would love to have the answers to, as well. She was gone when I woke up this morning. She left her ring, and an extremely short Dear John letter.”
As the rest of the group seemed to digest what Gabe had told them, Rafael spoke again. “Gabe, we all think this is pretty funny, but do I have to ask if there was any sort of prenup? I’m guessing there was not.”
He shook his head. And he was certain he could hear the sharp intakes of breath from each of the corners of the city. They now understood the seriousness of the situation.”
“Can you get it annulled?” Alana asked.
“I’m going to try. With the level of intoxication, it would be grounds for annulment. I’ve looked it up, and it’ll only be a minor headache. My biggest problem is that I can’t find Ellie to serve her with it.”
“Use my PI,” Rafael told him. Gabe could see he was already on his phone to get the information. “Harrison’s the best. This Ellie, is she local?”
Instead of responding, Gabe just stared into his laptop’s camera for a moment, urging his brain to remember any details she’d told him about her life. Then it hit him. “Yeah, she just moved here. She’s a lawyer, too. But I have no idea where.”
“Jesus Christ, Gabe,” Alana said with an exasperated sigh.
“I know. I fucked up. But it shouldn’t be too hard to track her down. Rafael, send me your PI’s contact info. I’ll call him.”
“You guys swinging by the club tonight?” Alana asked them, thankfully taking the attention off him. They discussed their evening plans while Gabe thought about Ellie. He needed to find her, and not just for the annulment. But because he wanted to see her. He genuinely missed her, and the longer he went without seeing her, the quicker he reverted to staid and serious Gabe. He liked how she made him feel, and he wondered how he could get that feeling back. You know, without the whole drunken Vegas wedding thing...
“Coming by tonight, Gabe?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve got to figure this out. See if I can find Ellie, and put it all behind me, before Burnham gets wind of it.” He hadn’t even thought about the repercussion his indiscretion would have on his career
, or his staunchly conservative boss’s opinion of him. He had to end the marriage. Now.
“Well, keep us posted,” Alana told him.
“And guys, I’m really sorry about this. I’ll make it right, though. I won’t let my slipup put us at risk.”
“It’s not the first time one of us has slipped up,” Brett assured him. “It’ll all work out.”
“But I’ve got to say, I never thought it’d be you,” Alana said with a smirk.
“Yeah,” he muttered, signing off.
He closed his video chat and opened Facebook. In the search bar, he typed her name. Several Ellie Carringtons showed up, but he had no trouble finding the woman he’d married. He clicked on her profile. It was secured, so he could only see her profile picture. It was an older photo—maybe like him, she hadn’t updated her profile in a long time. He couldn’t see anything so, not knowing what to do, he sent her a friend request, hoping she’d see it and get in contact. He navigated away from Facebook.
He turned to Google and ran another search on her. He saw the blog posts, the headlines, read through her wayward past as a troubled club kid. He scanned the headlines from more than five years ago, the teen daughter of an aging horror starlet, stumbling out of nightclubs, yelling at photographers, drinking. It felt wrong, looking into her past like that. It felt like a betrayal, and he wished he could protect her, and scrub it from the internet entirely. But still he perused the sites, hoping he’d find something that would help him find her today.
One hit brought him to the website for Stanford Law School. She was part of a group photo of the most recent graduating class. He found her, in the second row, with no problem. She was like a beacon. She looked more like the woman he’d married the night before, and nothing like the troubled teen she’d been. Her eyes were bright, her smile proud. As she should be with her honors degree. Gabe was impressed and kept looking, but no matter how much he looked, he couldn’t find a way to contact her.
With a frustrated sigh, he shut his laptop. Gabe felt impotent, unable to fix the situation he’d found himself in. He called Rafael’s PI and left a message for him to call him back. But for the moment, there was nothing else he could do. He wandered down the marble hallway. Being a lawyer had certainly lined his pockets, but it was the money that he’d earned as part of the Brotherhood that had given him the finest of luxuries. At the end of the wide hallway sat his piano. He hadn’t played in months. Between his work trip to Hong Kong and the ungodly hours he spent at the office, he had had little free time, most of which he spent at the gym or at Di Terrestres. He sat at the bench and lifted the cover revealing the shiny black-and-white keys. He placed his fingers on the keys, but before he could apply any pressure, his doorbell chimed.
Gabe wasn’t expecting company, nor did he feel like seeing anybody, but he stood, and as he made his way down the hallway, the doorbell chimed again.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” he said, even though he knew the person on the other side would not hear him through the heavy door. His head still pounded, and the third chime of the bell tested his patience.
He whipped open the door, not sure who he was expecting to see, but he was about to give them a piece of his mind. But his angry tirade stopped in his throat, and he was shocked to see Ellie standing on the other side.
“Ellie,” he whispered.
“Hi, Gabe.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ELLIE WASN’T SURE what sort of reception she should expect. But she stiffened when Gabe asked her, “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk about...well, everything. Can I come in?”
That seemed to shake him free, and he stepped aside and held open the door for her. “Yeah, sorry. Of course. Come in.”
Ellie walked into Gabe’s home. His place was modern, yet classic. Spacious, light, with large windows, clean lines. Not only was it uncluttered, but it looked as if nobody lived there at all. She ventured farther inside. She walked down the spotless marble floor, her high heels clicking as she went, and passed a large media room—his man cave, she assumed—where lush leather furniture was pointed toward one of the largest television screens she’d ever seen. She pictured Gabe and his friends watching sports in front of it, and wondered which sport was his favorite, or if he even liked sports at all.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“Water’s good,” she told him. She still felt fatally dehydrated from the night before, and just looking at Gabe had made all of the moisture evaporate from her throat.
“Sure thing. Kitchen’s on the left,” he told her. “Make yourself at home.”
The kitchen was like the rest of the place—large, clean, devoid of the clutter and knickknacks that littered her own living space. It said a lot about Gabe, that he lived a neat, ordered existence. And she did not. Her life, ever since she’d been a child, was chaos—a wild ride—with brief detours into ordered and serious. They might have gotten married, but they weren’t husband and wife. She took a seat at his table, wishing that it wasn’t too dark to see into what was probably a beautiful backyard, judging by the house.
Gabe poured each of them a glass of water from the fridge dispenser and passed hers over while taking a seat next to her. “We need an annulment,” he said, his voice firm.
“That goes without saying,” she agreed. “I’m not familiar with divorce law in Nevada. What do we have to do?”
She could see the change in Gabe’s demeanor as he launched into a speech about law. He looked at ease, and no longer volatile. “The first step is to file a complaint for annulment, which includes basic information about both of us, and the grounds for an annulment—intoxication should cover that. It won’t be the best reason the court has seen, but that’s what happened.” His smile was lopsided and wry. “I can file it and get the papers ready by tomorrow.
“After you’re served, you file an answer, the court will schedule a hearing within ninety days and a judge will schedule a hearing to determine whether an annulment is appropriate. It’s not ideal, but at the hearing, we’ll have to testify before a judge.”
“Ninety days? Testify at a hearing?” Ellie’s panic began to rise again. “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? There isn’t an easier way?”
“We could have not gotten married,” he said, with a grim smile. “But it’s too late for that.”
She didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor. “God, this is the longest one-night stand in history.”
He left the table and came back with a notepad and pen. “I can draw up the papers and have someone serve you with them on Monday. Where will I find you?”
Ellie knew that like every other workday, she would be spending most of the day and night at the office. “I’ll be at work,” she told him.
“Okay, where’s that?” he asked, poised to write.
She started to tell him, but she could picture the rumors that would be started if someone saw her getting served with legal papers at the law office. Word would ultimately reach her father, and there’s no way she could explain that she’d drunkenly married a stranger at a cheesy twenty-four-hour wedding chapel. “Can we meet somewhere else?”
“Yeah, sure.” He seemed to think for a moment, before writing down an address. “Why don’t you stop by here sometime tomorrow evening?”
“Where is this?”
“It’s a club.”
“I work late,” she told him.
“It’s open late,” he assured her.
Ellie raised her glass to her lips, and Gabe did the same. They watched each other over their glasses, letting the silence enfold them, just as they’d done before. And just this once, Ellie allowed herself to revel in the memories she’d made with him the night before. How Gabe had touched her, how they’d connected, and she could tell from the way his pupils dilated, darkening his eyes to a deep emerald, that he was also thinking about the same.<
br />
Gabe put down his glass and exhaled. “You know,” he started. “No matter how it all turned out, I really did have one of the most fun nights of my life with you.”
“It really was a lot of fun.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever think of the High Roller in the same way again.”
Ellie laughed. “I still can’t believe we did that. We could have gotten arrested.”
“That would have been pretty embarrassing, huh?”
“At least we probably would have skipped the cheesy Elvis wedding.”
They laughed together. Such a simple moment between two people, but Ellie could feel the still present sexual tension between them, just as surely as she could feel the desire that caused her to clench her thighs together.
“Oh.” Gabe stood, suddenly disrupting the moment. “I should give this back to you.”
“What is it?”
He reached into a bowl that sat on his dark marble countertop. “Here,” he said, extending his hand. She stood in front of him, and it took her a moment to see what he’d pinched between his thumb and forefinger. It was the elegant, delicate band she’d had on her finger when she’d woken up that morning. The overhead lights splintered off the diamonds that encircled it. It was stunning. But he was trying to give it to her.
“That isn’t mine,” she insisted.
“It is.”
“It must have cost a fortune.”
He shrugged. “Probably a small fortune,” he said with a wink. “But you should have it. I mean it.”
She wasn’t going to keep the ring. Even though, judging by his house and lifestyle, Gabe had money, it wouldn’t be right. But it didn’t stop her from reaching out. She took the ring, but as she did, her fingers grazed his. Their eyes connected over the band. She couldn’t have known who made the first move, but in just two seconds, the ring had bounced on the tiled floor, and their arms were around each other. And the ring forgotten, she went to him.
Forbidden Sins Page 4