10 Ways to Steal Your Lover (9 page)

 
      
Delilah shared a questioning glance with
Kane before asking what was obviously on both of their minds. “We know this is
Vegas and service is pretty much what you do here, but…is there a particular
reason your staff is bending over backward for us at every turn?”

 
      
“Has anyone given you any trouble?”
Elaine asked, her perfect posture straightening impossibly more.

 
      
“Oh, no. No, not at all.” Delilah had to
fight the urge to push Elaine’s shoulders back into the normal, upright
position. “They’ve done everything possible to make us comfortable. Truly.”
From delivering their clothes at the speed of light to escorting them into this
almost frighteningly posh room and offering them everything but someone’s first
born to keep them happy.

 
      
Elaine’s gaze moved over their faces
once, twice, assessing. “You two have no idea what happened last night, do
you?”

 
      
“No.”

 
      
“Not a clue,” Kane answered at the same
time.

 
      
Elaine’s snort of laughter turned
Delilah’s face an unbecoming shade of red. She knew because blushes that hot
couldn’t look like anything but heat stroke.

 
      
“Well, it’s not like I haven’t heard that
before.” Elaine sighed, finally relaxing again. “How far have you gotten?”

 
      
“In what?” Kane asked with a frown.

 
      
“In figuring out what you did last
night.” Elaine was nice enough not to sound as if she was being impressively
patient.

 
      
Kane started to speak, but Delilah
squeezed his hand until her own fingers hurt. “Not far.”

 
      
Elaine was also nice enough not to notice
his slight grunt. “Well, I can tell you that at approximately eight-thirty last
night, the two of you came here and promptly spent your last twenty dollars on
the Royal Flush Super Jackpot bandit on the Casino floor.”

 
      
Delilah’s heartbeat turned into a weird
thud. “Our last twenty?” She didn’t have any money on her in her wedding dress,
which meant it had to be Kane’s.

 
      
“Oh yes, you apparently were having a
great time last night. According to our cameras, you two bombed in just about
every game you played for two hours before you ever came near the Royal Flush.
Rumor is you two lost about six thousand dollars.”

 
      
Luckily, Elaine was already pouring a
glass of water when Kane started choking. He leaned forward so far he was
practically laying on his knees, his face turning nearly purple. Delilah took
the glass, using her other hand to smack his back.

 
      
She held onto a groan. This was why
Delilah never gambled. She had the luck of the lepers instead of the
leprechauns, according to her father.

 
      
“What I heard is that your husband puled
the twenty from his boot and handed it to you to play the Royal Flush.”

 
      
“Is this the part where you tell us we
owe you a million dollars or something?”

 
      
Elaine laughed. “No, this is the part
where I tell you that you won the ten million dollar jackpot.”

 
      
Delilah didn’t hear anything after that.
She only had the fleeting hope that Elaine would be nice enough to pretend she
didn’t see Delilah falling to the floor in a dead faint.

 
      
Fantasy Castle wasn’t as impressive as
Delilah expected, given the name. The large parking lot led up to a squat white
building with painted turrets at the roofline.

 
      
More of a faded cartoon castle than a
fantasy one.

 
      
“This place must look amazing at night,”
Kane mumbled beside her.

 
      
“Why? Because it attracted us?”

 
      
“Because it looks like shit in broad
daylight.”

 
      
Delilah laughed, covering her mouth with
her hand. How had she not given much thought to how often this man made her
laugh? Always quiet, she’d fooled herself into thinking Kane didn’t say much.
While that might be the truth, now that she thought about it, he always had an
aside for her. Some wry truth muttered where only she could hear it. It hadn’t
been like that in ages, though. His withdrawal from her over the last year had
hurt, something she hadn’t let herself admit. The more he’d pulled away, the
more she told herself she didn’t get along with him in the first place. That
she didn’t feel comfortable around him. That she didn’t care.

 
      
Now they both stood here, staring at this
ugly little building and neither was in any rush to go in and find out if they’d
actually gotten married.

 
      
If only she could figure out what she
wanted to be the truth.

 
      
A future with Craig wouldn’t be a bad
future. She’d be financially secure, pampered even. Loved, in the comfortable
way one loved old shoes and fat pants after a holiday dinner. She might even
talk him into a child or two. It could happen. Maybe. But she would always be
longing for something she missed. Wishing for some sense that she belonged to
him and him to her. That she was where she was meant to be.

 
      
She glanced at Kane, taking in the
unrepentantly male lines of his face. He was missing his hat more than ever,
she realized at the grim set to his mouth and the hard squint to those
breathtaking green eyes. His hands were knotted into fists, thumbs hooked into
the hip pockets of his jeans as he leaned against the side of the limo Elaine
had insisted they use.

 
      
Their driver for the day, a college aged
kid named Pete, was contentedly reading a book in the front seat while they
stared at the building doing nothing.

 
      
“You wanna take a walk first?” Delilah
blurted out all of a sudden, the words not even hitting her brain before
escaping her mouth.

 
      
“God, yes.” She never got the chance to
question his vehemence. He had her hand and had thumped the hood of the limo
twice to let Pete know they were on the move. With his long stride all but
dragging her along, Delilah was breathless by the time they’d gotten half a
block away. Noticing, finally, Kane slowed enough for her to get a few breaths
in. His mumbled apology didn’t ring with his usual honesty when the hand he put
on her back to rub soothingly also maintained a subtle pressure to keep her
moving forward.

 
      
“You really didn’t want to go in there,
did you?”

 
      
His snort was far more expressive than
his muttered, “Can you blame me?”

 
      
No, she couldn’t. “What exactly do you
think will happen if you do?”

 
      
The push at her back increased slightly.
“Oh, you know, dissolution of my every fantasy for the last three years.
Ruination of my every hope I’ve held since I was a kid. No pressure or
anything.”

 
      
Delilah slanted her gaze at him, ignoring
his only-slightly sarcastic response. “You’ve barely said boo to me for the
last year, Kane. Why does being married to me now mean so much to you all of a
sudden?”

 
      
He cocked his head to the side, tsking as
if that were the most ridiculous question he’d ever been asked. His hand
slipped from her back, down her arm to reclaim her hand. But he didn’t answer
the question.

 
      
For some reason, that just amped up the
tension she’d been feeling since she’d stepped out of the limo to stare at the
building now one corner behind them. Just like that, the insecurities and
uncertainties clamoring in her mind seemed so overwhelming. “I mean, seriously.
What will it change, if we’re married or not? We’re not really in a
relationship. We’ve never even been on a date. It’s not a real marriage, legal
or not. If you think about it, this is just one more episode of impulsive
insanity to add my long list of stunts my parents are tempted to disown me
for.”

 
      
His hand tightened around hers. Like a
reflex against her words. They didn’t feel good coming out of her mouth,
either. In fact, with every one she uttered, a frown creased deeper and deeper
into her face and her stomach tightened until it hurt. But she couldn’t stop
herself from talking. As if her father’s voice in her head had somehow,
horribly, stolen her own, leaving her feeling lacerated and wrong.

 
      
She didn’t want to think what it was
making him feel like.

 
      
Still, he kept them moving, though his
steps finally slowed. Long moments passed in silence while they both brooded
uncomfortably. A second corner turned, but nothing else changed. He didn’t
argue. He didn’t drop to his knees and tell her he loved her so much the sky
would fall if she didn’t love him back. He just kept walking and so did she.

 
      
She was insane to be disappointed at the
intrusion of reality. Since waking up, nothing about this day had been truly
real. Not the money, the room, the shower or even something as simple as
breakfast. She hadn’t realized how far she’d fallen into the surreality of it
all until now.

 
      
Because until she had said it wasn’t a
real marriage, she didn’t have to admit she’d been considering it one. The only
thing she’d been worried about was whether or not to stay married. To Kane.
There was something wrong with that, wasn’t there?

 
      
After all, she’d spent three years
talking herself into marrying Craig. Good looking, great guy Craig, whose worst
crime was that he didn’t make her heart leap.

 
      
But Kane did. The brooding man with his
under-the-breath humor and searing stare that seemed to say I see you every
time she dared to meet it. He always had.

 
      
And right now, in this moment, the
thought of not being married to him physically hurt.

 
      
God, she knew then that she must have hit
her head sometime last night too.

 
      
“Why would they even consider disowning
you?”

 
      
She could hear the frown in his tone, but
she couldn’t look up and face it. Kane, whom she knew valued family more than
anyone she’d ever met, probably couldn’t imagine a world where family turned
its back on family. When his parents had died, his grandparents had raised him
as if he were their own. Simply put, because to them, he was. But in her
family…

 
      
“They probably wouldn’t, but that doesn’t
mean they wouldn’t think about it. Or that he’d speak to me for a long time.
The Colonel has never had a lot of patience when it comes to screw ups.”

 
      
“You seriously call your father ‘The
Colonel’? When you introduced him the other night, I thought you were just
being formal.”

 
      
Delilah shrugged. “It’s what I’m used to.
No one on the base would dare refer to him by his first name. Even his friends
would ask for him that way. When I talk to him, of course, I call him Dad, but
talking to others…”

 
      
“Most people just called my grandfather
Mr. Wilkensen or Gramps. I never thought about it beyond that.”

 
      
She almost laughed. “The only person,
other than my mother, who calls my father by his first name is Rainbow, and
that’s just to annoy him. Trust me, stick with Colonel or Sir, like you did the
other night. You see less of the vein in his forehead that way.”

 
      
Kane nodded. “He did hit me as a
stickler.”

 
      
How she didn’t snort at that
understatement, she didn’t know. “He grew up in a military family, had military
siblings and he’s had an incredible career because he’s a discipline machine.
Me, not so much.” Another massive understatement. “He doesn’t understand how a
person can even consider living their lives outside the lines already drawn for
them. So I confuse him and he doesn’t know what to do with me. I mean, I know
he loves me. It’s just...when you keep disappointing someone who loves you, you
kinda want to stop doing it after a while, you know?”