“What kind of power do you have to marry people?” Trix demanded. “Is this legal? They want legal, at least she does. If this is some plot to screw her over?—”
Horse smiled at her, but his eyes were hard. “You’ll what, screw me over first? I’d love that almost as much as you would, Trix, but I really am certified to marry people in Nevada. It’s one of my least impressive accomplishments. Now if you don’t mind, we have a romantic wedding to finish. Where was I? Ah, by the power vested in me by the state of Nevada, I pronounce youhusband and wife. You may kiss the bride, or you may kiss the groom, since we’re all about equality these days.”
I kissed Dirk. Elvis had said that I could kiss him, and I wasn’t taking the chance. I needed to kiss him. He brought life to my soul, which had been nothing but ashes for too long. Not that I believed in souls, but if I did, he was the other piece of me that had been missing for as long as I could remember.
He didn’t resist; instead, he pulled me and my skirt onto his lap and kissed me back. He was so sweet, so right, so exactly what I’d been craving my whole life. I never wanted this reprieve to end.
Horse cleared his throat. “Yeah, you’re going to have to sign papers before the drive-thru gets clogged up.”
I pulled away. All good things come to an end, but this time Dirk was reluctant, hanging onto me and following my mouth until I broke contact. I stared at him while my heart flew higher than his drones, up with the stars. His sweet brown eyes burned with something that looked like devotion, commitment, forever. He was such a good liar. I loved that about him. He would make it easy for me to lose myself completely. I needed to get lost.
“Rings,” Dirk said, blinking and turning to Horse. “Rings.”
“Right.” Horse handed him a black box that looked so serious and expensive.
Dirk popped one open and slid one ring over my knuckle, then frowned at the diamond-studded band as it slipped around my finger. It was much too large. And the diamonds looked much too real.
“Wrong one.” Horse said, handing out a different box. “Sorry about that.”
“Yes, you’re definitely certified for something,” Trixie muttered.
I took off the band and pushed it on Dirk’s left-hand ring finger, sliding it around the finger to make sure it wouldn’t falloff. It seemed secure enough on Dirk’s calloused yet gracefully tapering hand. Mine. To have and to hold. That meant I could hold his hand whenever I wanted.
“Let’s try this again,” Dirk said, sliding the other ring on my finger, his own finger sparkling, matching my platinum band studded with diamonds, but then he slid another ring next to it, a simple band with an enormous pink rough cut solitaire.
I stared at that ring. Was it fake? It looked fake, but also not fake, because there were striations in the stone that you couldn’t find in a fake rock.
Dirk kissed my fingers, gazing into my eyes past the enormous rock. “It’s a pink diamond. It goes with the pink lemonade you tainted the water supply with. Such a villain,” Dirk said with a quick wink and a mischievous smile that sent my thoughts tangling.
I kissed him quickly before catching his fingers in mine. Our hands looked so good together, matching rings sturdy, permanent, the kind of rings that you had to cut off the hand to get off a corpse. I wanted until death. I wanted him with a burning ache that could be seriously dangerous.
A blinding flash went off, then another and another as Death-Hammer’s crew took photographs of us with less subtlety. After everything was set, our signatures on the marriage certificate, rings firmly on our fingers, Dirk kissed my hand again, more lingering and sweet than ever before. Shivers. Happiness. Please make this last at least until Christmas. Or forever.
Dirk cuddled me in his arms, like I was his teddy bear, in spite of the tulle. “Well, Mrs. James Russell Jefferson Dirk Prescott, are you ready for your chocolate cheesecake?” he asked with those softer-than-sin eyes.
Horse got into the passenger seat next to Trix. She whirled around like she was a cat and someone had stepped on her tail. Maybe it was her dragon’s tail that Horse had stomped on.
“I brought champagne,” he said, holding up the biggest bottle I’d ever seen. “You’re the driver, so you can’t drink,” he told Trixie, and then popped the cork and started pouring, handing a glass over the seat to me and then to Dirk with only a moment’s hesitation.
“Are you okay drinking?” I asked him.
Dirk kissed my hair again. “The only thing I’m in danger of overdosing on is your beauty. Daniela, you really are the most stunning woman I’ve ever met, and you’re my wife. I am the luckiest man in the world. I will drink a glass of champagne with you to celebrate the beginning of our lives together. I will protect you with my name, my strength, and my genius for as long as you’ll let me.”
I threw back the champagne, draining the glass with a tickle in my nose, and then held it out to Horse for a refill while I stared at my husband, as bewildered as I was delighted that he actually was mine, that I’d actually gotten what I’d wanted more than anything I’d wanted in such a long time, before I’d stopped letting myself want anything other than music.
“At least until Christmas,” I said, leaning in to kiss him only for a moment. The problem with that was how little I wanted to stop. He was mine, and he had to kiss me as long as Horse was dressed as Elvis. Eventually, I pulled away, gazing at him in the pink-hued lights of the Chapel of Love drive-through.
“Don’t be too soft,” I whispered while my heart pounded and ached from happiness and something else, something that begged me never to let him go.
He brushed my nose with his and took a sip of his champagne. “Soft things bounce back more easily. With you, I will be as soft as possible until the very end.”
I clung to him and drank my champagne, somehow not spilling on my dress. “At least until Christmas,” I repeated.
“At least one,” he agreed. “Probably fewer than seventy-five, but it’s good to have ambitious goals.” He kissed my hair and drank champagne with me in the back seat while Trix and Horse bickered in the front in low voices so they didn’t disturb us in our white tulle nest. As long as I was with Dirk, my husband, nothing else mattered.
I wouldn’t let it.
28
