I tried not to move my lips. “Hey, buddy. I’m working here. Get lost.”
“I need abride.”His voice was loud, like he was announcing that he was taking auditions. “I need to be marriedright now.”
Yeah, he definitely sounded like he’d escaped from the upstairs of Downton Abbey. His jaw barely moved when he spoke. He would have made a pretty good living statue, too, except for the drunken flailing.
A sigh escaped my lips, moving my chest more than I usually did. I spoke through barely parted lips like a ventriloquist. “My guy, I’m sympathetic. Really, I am. But I need the money, so please stand up so people will put some money in my hat there.”
“Hat?” His head swiveled, mussing his dark hair further. “Where?”
“You’re kneeling on it.”
He looked down. The shops’ neon lights reflected lines on his healthy hair. “This hat?”
“Yeah. That one.”
“How much do you generally make?” He took his wallet out of the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Like, ten?”
I sighed without moving even my chest. At least ten bucks could buy a burger. “Sure. Ten would be good.”
He reached into his wallet, grabbed a huge handful of cash with all his fingers like he was ripping deep weeds out of compacted soil, and dropped itallin my hat. “There. I think that’s ten or so.”
I couldn’t help myself. I leaned over and looked, but I made it look like a pose and froze there, bent at the waist.
The top bill was a C-note, and the bills underneath had double-zeros in their green corners, too. “Is that—is that tenthousanddollars?”
Somebody’dwon big at the Texas Hold ‘Em tables that night.
My voice came out between my unmoving lips like a harsh stage whisper. “Why are you doing this?”
He looked up at me from where he still kneeled, his slightly dazed blue eyes staring straight into mine. “You said ten thousand. Do you want more? Is it usually more?”
“No, I—what are you doing?”
He dropped his floppy wallet into the hat, too, and spread his long arms wide again. “Proposing. I want to marry you.”
My hands were braced on my hips, still holding onto my bouquet of heat-wilted purple hydrangeas in one fist. “Seriously, my dude, you’re drunk. You’reverydrunk.” I was still bending over him from where I stood on the suitcase, and I could detectalcohol from my perch. “Put that back in your wallet. Can I call someone for you?”
“No.”He shook his head violently like only a drunk would. “I can’t trust anyone. Come on, marry me. We’ll go right over to Van Cleef and Arpels and pick out a ring.” He leaned forward a little over his knee. “Las Vegas has a Van Cleef, right? Or at least a Cartier? Or we can buy any ring for the ceremony, and I’ll have one made for you later.I just need you to marry me.”
Everyone in the crowd surrounding us had pulled back, watching the chaos.
Except for one other guy, who was also drunk but was wearing the merchandise of a southern-state basketball team. He’d been leering at me and guffawing with his equally drunk, sportsball-clad friends.
Basketball Drunk had five o’clock stubble sprouting on his shaved head, and he staggered over and reached toward me while the gorgeous drunk guy kneeled on the sidewalk.
I watched the new guy out of the corner of my eye but didn’t move. Living statues don’t flinch at feints, or else we’d be twitching all the time.
The drunk basketball fan flopped against me, grabbed my waist, groped my ass and my boob, and slurped a moist kiss on my white-painted cheek.
I turned to shove him off, but he was already falling backward, eyes flipped open wide in fright, as the hot guy who had been kneelingover therejust an instant ago peeled Basketball Drunk off my side and flung him to the ground, yelling,“Get away from my wife!”
His what?
Basketball Drunk stared up at him and stammered an apology.
And he was apologizing tothe other manbut not tome,the woman he’d assaulted, the typical dickhead. I rolled my eyes andturned away, resuming a pose with one hand held aloft like a ballerina bride.
The blue-eyed hottie held his fist near his shoulder, his back foot planted firmly on the cement.“Get the fuck up. I wish you would.”
