They weren’t actually going toenforcethe weird marriage clause… were they?
Surely not.
He’d heard the hushed stories—guys getting married to secure their contracts, loopholes exploited with wedding rings and rushed engagements—but none of them had seemed panicked about it. Most of the other players looked downright smug, parading their wives around like trophies. They were all happily married. Maybe it was lucky timing - or so he assumed. Maybe they’d already been in love? Already headed toward marriage or something… but him?
No - he wasn’t married and he sure wasn’t dating.
Now, they were asking abouthis wife. He stared into oblivion, mind scrambling for a solution that didn’t exist. The contract had seemed harmless at the time. A mere technicality. A strange formality… and that was it?
Alaric Finnegan’s sharp gaze flicked toward him, assessing. Calculating. The guy was the owner of the Wolverines, and Marcus had not prepared himself for this kind of ‘big leagues’.
“I, uh… well?—”
“Hey, Honey,” a husky voice said gently as several stunned faces looked past him – before bursting out laughing. Not little chuckles. That would have been easier to handle. These were wild guffaws and a few knee slaps. Were they laughingathim – and then he froze.
They were laughing at whatever wasbehindhim.
A shadow, his shadow before him from the lamps above had just grown about a foot, and looked oddlyfuzzy. Slowly, like something out of a horror movie, Marcus turned… and felt hisknees buckle as his ears rang. The mascot was standing there holding a ‘mocktail’.
He was holding out the drinktohim…fromhim?
Something twitched painfully in his brain – and his nether regions as his butt-cheeks suddenly clenched.I’ve got a charley horse in my left cheek and zero dignity left in this life…
“You…and Harper?”the coach crowed in delight, laughing harder and wiping his eyes. “Oh, this is rich…”
Harper.
The fill-in mascot.
A dude.
Oh my gosh, the coach thought he was married to a dude…?
“It’s not what you think,” Marcus screeched in a high-pitched voice that cracked like a teenager’s, causing the men to laugh wildly again while the rest of the room had gone silent. He was standing in a room full of tuxedos and suits, fancy gowns, even fancier cocktail dresses, with all sorts of silent auctions for the charity event… and one lone guy in a fuzzy, blue Wolverine costume that was acting like they were a couple.
Kill. Me. Now.
He had no problem with alternative lifestyles – they just weren’t his choice. When he fibbed about being married, pretended to have a wife at home, never in his wildest dreams did it ever occur to him that this sort of misunderstanding could happen. Heck, his best friend was gay, and he’d given the speech at their reception – but him?
Marcus was definitely into girls.
And about to be unemployed if they found out that he’d lied on his contract – to the owner’s face.
Career, this is it. We say our goodbyes now… it was nice knowing you.
“Honey, I got you a drink…” the voice came again.
“Stop it. Not now,” Marcus hissed, breaking out in a cold sweat as his right leg began to tremble and wobble like a nerve had been cut, severed, or pinched. He might actually collapse on the floor in front of everyone.
“You and Harper… are married?” Mr. Finnegan asked pointedly – and out of the corner of his eye before he could answer, time seemed to crawl to a stop. The blue fuzzy Wolverine mask came off in slow motion as he turned to see his new ‘spouse’… and nearly swallowed his tongue.
Standing there, holding the mask on her hip, was a tall woman with a flushed face and a loose blonde bun on the top of her head, smiling at him. Like this was all the most natural thing in the world happening, unfolding, before him.
Or insanity. Maybe this is what insanity looks like,he thought wildly.
“Drink?” she said simply. “I thought you might be thirsty…honey.”
His brain rebooted at warp speed.
