Tall Tales and Wedding Veils (6 page)

She held up the marriage license. “What the
hell
is this?”

Chapter 5

H
eather’s mind was so hangover-fuzzy that she could think of only one explanation for the piece of paper she was holding. Somewhere in Vegas they sold fake marriage licenses you could take home and show your friends.
Ha, ha, ha! Look! We got married!

“This is a joke, right?” she said sharply. “Tell me this is a joke.”

She waited for Tony’s face to break into that million- dollar smile so they could both have a good laugh over it.

It didn’t.

Panic shot through her. “Are you telling me this is the real thing? We actually got
married?
”

Tony squeezed his eyes closed. “No shouting, sweetheart. If you shout, my head is going to explode.”

No kidding. If she shouted again,
her
head was going to explode.

“Why are you in my room?” she asked.

“Uh . . . we’re married?”

She swallowed convulsively. “Did we . . . ?”

“Have sex? Don’t think so. I woke up still dressed.”

Wincing a little, she lifted the covers and peeked beneath them.
Clothes, thank God.
Relief gushed through her.

“Tell me what you remember,” Tony said.

She bowed her head. Closed her eyes. Bits and pieces gradually came back to her, a jumble of images fading in and out. It was hard to make sense of them, though, when little guys with battering rams were trying to get out of her head.

“I remember winning the twenty thousand dollars,” she said.

“Good,” he said on a breath. “I was afraid I’d made that part up.”

Heather remembered driving up and down the Strip in the limousine. Lights flashing. Neon blaring. And champagne.

Lots and
lots
of champagne.

“I remember the stuff in the limo,” she said, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt.

“How about after that?”

Then they were standing on the seats, poking their heads out of the sunroof, waving to other cars, to people on the street, to stray dogs, to inanimate objects. And then they were back down in the seat together, and . . .

Just thinking about what came next made her face heat up. She’d found out last night what it felt like to be with a man who was charming and sexy and really knew how to kiss, whose hands were gifts from God, whose smile shone brighter than the neon on the Sunset Strip.

She closed her eyes. Like a film going from fuzzy to sharp focus, she saw an office of some kind. Bright lights. People at desks. She and Tony filling out forms. Then they were in the limousine again. There were stars and moons and little flying cherubs. What had been up with
that?

“There was a courthouse,” she said, panic rising in her voice. “Then a wedding chapel. It’s all kinda vague, but . . .”

Slowly the images coalesced. Came into focus. Organized themselves into a discernible timeline. And when they did, they led her to one horrible, undeniable conclusion. She put her hand to her throat, gasping out the words. “My God. We’re really married, aren’t we?”

“Looks that way.”

“But why did they let us do it? We were in no condition to know what we were doing!”

“If they refused to let drunk people get married in this town, half the wedding chapels would be out of business.”

Panic was setting in. Heather wasn’t used to panic. She hated the muscle tension. The crawly feeling in her stomach. Panic was for people whose lives were disorganized messes. Who didn’t know how to plan ahead. It was for people who were
spontaneous.

Then she thought about those stars and moons and flying cherubs against a canopy of a night sky, and suddenly she realized where she’d seen that. She closed her eyes in humiliation. “Please tell me we didn’t actually do it at a drive-through wedding chapel.”

“If I remember right,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “they called it ‘The Tunnel of Love.’”

Good Lord. Not only had she gotten married in Vegas, but she’d done it in the most tasteless way imaginable.

“This can’t be happening. This isn’t me. I’m the
sane
one in my family. I’ve never done anything like this before!”

Tony shrugged. “I once woke up naked on a beach in Cancun. I still don’t remember the flight from Dallas to Mexico.”

“Did you end up married?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not as crazy as this. Congratulations. You now have a new personal best.”

She threw back the covers and started to get out of bed. He grabbed her arm. “Will you take it easy? This isn’t that big a deal.”

“Not that big a deal?” she said, shaking loose. “We got
married!
”

“But we can get unmarried. All we have to do is get an annulment.”

She stopped short. An annulment?

Yes. Of course. That was all they had to do. Nobody else even knew they’d gotten married. They could keep this to themselves, get a quiet annulment, and then get on with their lives as if last night had never happened. No one but the two of them would ever have to know.

For the first time since she saw her name on that marriage license, Heather’s heart stopped hammering in her chest. It was just as Tony said. No big deal. Just a little paperwork to cancel out the wedding, a bottle of aspirin to cancel out her monumental hangover, and pretty soon this whole experience would be nothing but a bad memory.

“You’re right,” she said, feeling so much better. “An annulment. That solves the problem. There can’t be much to one of those, right?”

“Right.”

“People do it all the time. How hard can it be?”

“Then it’s settled?” Tony said. “We’re getting an annulment?”

“Of course.”

“Thank God,” he murmured.

She turned back. “What?”

“Uh . . . nothing.”

“No. What?”

He laughed a little. “I thought maybe you were going to be upset.”

“About what?”

“You know. About the fact that I don’t want to be married.”

Heather blinked. “You thought I would be
upset
by that?”

“Uh . . . maybe,” Tony said. “But you’re not. That’s the important thing.”

“No. The important thing is that you dodged that bullet, right?”

“No, I didn’t mean—”

“You actually thought I’d
want
to be married?”

He frowned. “I thought it was a possibility.”

“In Vegas? To
you?
”

He looked offended. “For your information, there are a lot of women who would
love
to be married to me.”

“Will you get
over
yourself? How dumb would a woman have to be to think a guy like you is suddenly ready for that little house with the white picket fence?”

“What do you mean, a guy like me?”

“You’ve dated half the women at McMillan’s. And the other half are waiting their turn.”

“How do you know that?”

“Newsflash, Tony. Women talk. Men may not carry on conversations in the bathroom, but women do. I hear all kinds of things. But just for the record,” she said, rising from the bed and heading for the bathroom, “I’m not one of the women waiting her turn.”

“Yeah? You didn’t mind taking your turn last night.”

She looked back to find him staring at her hotly, a knowing look in those gorgeous green eyes. He knew. He knew just how easily she’d fallen for him last night and how she’d reveled in every hot, sexy moment of it.

“I was drunk,” she said. “People do stupid things when they’re drunk.”

“So that’s the only reason you were making out with me in the back of that limo?”

“Why else?”

“Because it’s fun?”

“Forget fun,” she snapped. “We need to concentrate on fixing this stupid thing we did.”

“Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”

He gave her a cocky smile that really irritated her. Of course it had been fun. But it was the kind of fun crazy, irresponsible people had, and she’d had enough crazy and irresponsible in the past twenty-four hours to last her a lifetime.

Last night Tony told her she was the woman he’d been waiting for all his life, punctuating every word with warm hands and warm lips in all kinds of inadvisable places. In her champagne-induced delusional state, he was a fun, charming, blindingly handsome man, and just being with him had turned her into a brainless, airheaded idiot. It was as if she’d been saving up her entire life to do one outrageously dumb thing, and this was it.

All at once the room phone rang, rattling Heather’s already painful skull. She grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Heather, what are you doing?” Regina said. “Your cell phone’s turned off. Where are you?”

“Uh . . .”

“You were supposed to meet us in the lobby at ten so we could catch cabs to the airport.”

Heather looked at her watch. Ten after ten?
Damn it
. “I must have overslept.”

“But we have a plane to catch. We’re leaving right now!”

She put her hand to her forehead. “I’ll catch a later one.”

“But you rode with me to the airport.”

“I’ll pick up a cab back to Plano.”

“Heather? What’s going on? Are you with that man?” She gasped. “My God. You didn’t
sleep
with him, did you?”

Well, wasn’t this ironic? Yeah, she’d slept with Tony. As in, they’d occupied the same bed. Given that they were still clothed, apparently they’d been too drunk to do much else
except
sleep. But Regina didn’t know that. She was clearly picturing something considerably more carnal, and in spite of everything, the thought of that almost put a smile on Heather’s face.

“I might have,” she said coyly.

“Heather!” Regina said. “It isn’t like you to sleep with strange men! What would your mother think?”

Heather couldn’t believe this. Her
mother?
Did Regina tell the other bridesmaids that their
mothers
were going to be horrified if they slept with strange men?

“For God’s sake, Regina,” she said. “Will you give me a break? I’m almost thirty years—”

Heather stopped short. Wait a minute.
Mother?

The tiny hairs on her arms stood straight up, little vibes of dread sprinting along every nerve. No. She couldn’t have done what she thought she’d done. She
couldn’t
have.

She told Regina she’d see her back in Plano and hung up. She grabbed her cell phone, powered it on, and hit the
CALL HISTORY
button. And there it was. Last night, at eleven thirty, she’d called her mother. And not just to say hello.

“Oh, no,” she moaned.

“What?” Tony said.

“No, no, no!”

“What?” Tony said again.

“I called my mother last night!”

“You did?” His eyes shifted back and forth. “Oh, yeah. I remember that. After we left the wedding chapel. I even talked to her, didn’t I?”

She’d called her mother. How could she have forgotten that?

Because by that time last night, she’d guzzled about a gallon of champagne. By all rights, she should be in a coma right now.

“I take it this is going to cause a problem?” Tony said.

He had no idea.

In her drunken state of pure ecstasy, she’d told her mother all about their wedding. How wonderful her new husband was. How handsome. How entrepreneurial. On and on and on.

It was all coming back, and it horrified her.

At first her mother had sounded stunned. She’d asked the questions any sane mother would have under the circumstances, questions designed to determine whether her daughter had lost her mind. But when Heather had assured her that her new husband was from Plano, that he wasn’t a total stranger, and that she did indeed know what she was doing, her mother had let wishful thinking take over, probably writing off her daughter’s drunken delirium as the exhilaration any new bride would feel. After all, Barbara was getting something she’d wanted since Heather turned eighteen years old: a married daughter. Then she’d told Heather,
You be sure to bring that new husband of yours by the house the minute you get back in town!

And Heather had promised to do just that. Only now she was going to have to tell her mother that she really didn’t have a son-in-law after all, and those grandbabies she wanted so much weren’t going to be popping out anytime soon. Could this situation get any worse? Was there any
way
it could get worse?

“So you regret everything you did last night?” Tony said.

“I think I’ve made that pretty clear by now, haven’t I?”

Tony reached into his wallet and pulled out the check she’d given him. “Even this?”

That really irritated Heather. “I wasn’t incapacitated the entire evening. I knew perfectly well what I was doing when I gave you that money. It’s yours, Tony. You can keep it.”

He looked at her warily. “Are you sure about that? I don’t want you coming back later and telling me I cheated you out of twenty thousand dollars.”