She takes a moment of consideration, but it’s not more than a few seconds before she’s nodding and taking me by the arm to lead us toward Marilyn. “That’s us.”
“Great,” Marilyn coos, shooting us a wink before waving a hand and escorting us through the doors to the chapel. “Let’s do it.”
The door bobs and bounces against itself as I reach out to catch it without pushing through. Instead, I turn to Daisy with a raise of my eyebrows. You sure about this?
Her words are a declaration—and the first step in a whole new part of our lives. “Let’s do it.”
For better or for worse and until Daisy gets a green card, Mr. and Mrs. Winslow, here we come.
Daisy
Flynn tosses the keys to his motorcycle into the bowl beside the door and walks down the hall, leaving me to follow. I watch silently as he puts down the duffel bag from his bike that houses our normal clothes and then works off the tie at his neck. His strong shoulders work to take off his tuxedo jacket, and I bite my lip to stop my mouth’s nervous quiver when he reaches back to ruffle the hair at the back of his head with long, tanned fingers.
And I thought he looked good in leather. This sophisticated tux look takes Flynn Winslow’s hotness to a whole new level. It’s almost a shame it’s a rental that will have to be returned.
You do realize that this marriage is fake, right? You’re not going to, like, move in with him and pop out 2.5 kids…
His house is dark, but lights set to motion sensors illuminate each space as we move through it. First, down a long, large, high-ceilinged hallway, and then through a living room with modern, dark-green velvet sofas, and finally into a huge kitchen, set against a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and a terracescape in the backyard. Even outside, lights begin to dot the hillside as Flynn walks in front of the windows.
Wow. This place is… Well, it’s not my dinky apartment in LA, that’s for sure. It’s a place for someone with money.
The silence, for the first time all night, is heavy. It’s laden with things unsaid—things I’m afraid to say—and even as I chip away at the block with my mental ice pick, I’m having the damnedest time trying to find some words to say.
I mean…what do you say in this situation? When you find yourself at the remote house of your new husband, about whom you know next to nothing?
“Do you…do you have a shirt I could sleep in, maybe?”
Oh God. I’m pretty sure that’s not it.
Under normal circumstances, with the men of my past, I might actually have the opportunity to be embarrassed. To wonder what he’s thinking as he stares at me in sheer disbelief. But not with Flynn. No. He turns without a word and walks down the hall. And, yeah, it’s things like that that let me know how wrong I am every time I try to convince myself that anything about what I’ve just done is normal.
That’s my husband. And I don’t have a freaking clue what he’s going to do from one moment to the next. For the love of God, I kissed that man, not even an hour ago, after promising ourselves to each other until one of us reaches our ultimate demise.
Drag Marilyn fanned herself and asked someone for a glass of water, and all I could do was stare into the deep ocean of his eyes and wait for a tidal wave to knock me out of my misery.
The kiss…it was powerful. Gravity shifting. So fucking exceptional that my lips have yet to stop tingling.
You just need to go to bed. Get your head right. Calm down, for Pete’s sake.
For now, though, while I wait on him to return with either a shirt or a weapon of some sort, I stand there swaying on my feet and survey the modern interior of his desert home. It’s filled with cool concrete on the floors and counters, and the black cabinets look perfectly in place. It’s not my personal taste, but as a designer, I can appreciate the intention of it and how good it looks juxtaposed against the heated backdrop of sand and shrub.
His footsteps are quiet, so I don’t hear him coming back until he’s there, exiting the mouth of the hallway and holding out a neatly folded T-shirt for me to take, his own now noticeably missing. I accept it gratefully, letting the folds fall open in front of me as I pull it toward myself and swallow hard at the ripple of his well-defined muscles.
The borrowed shirt is huge in comparison to my small frame, and for the first time since I wrapped my arms around him on the motorcycle leaving the Wynn, I’m reminded just how large he actually is.
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“You’re welcome.” The sound of his deep voice on those two simple words slides over my skin like a warm wind. I never realized how much I’m used to hearing people babble like me. Nevertheless, the simple exchange feels as if it unlocks the vise around my throat, and finally, I explode all over the room with hundreds of words.