“My parents are going to kill me.” Marlee rolled off the bed and landed on the floor with athunk.
He leaned over the edge of the bed. She was fine. Dazed, but fine. He shook the bottle of aspirin and handed it to her. Drunk Eli was a bastard, but at least he remembered to get the aspirin.
Even in a mess of blankets on a motel floor, Marlee looked amazing. She might’ve had the same hangover as he did, but she didn’t look it. Just the same Marlee he’d always known. The blanket slipped, exposing the edge of her breast. Marlee didn’t have the fake breasts that one might expect on a socialite with her kind of money. Nope. They were all hers. Heavy in his palm, her brown nipples pert and ready for his mouth.
He knew this from firsthand experience.
“Your parents won’t find out,” he said, pretty certain they could tuck this away and no one would ever know.
The night before, he and Marlee had stumbled down the sidewalk to this room, laughing hysterically about what they’d done. They laughed about how pissed her ex-fiancé would be when he found out she’d gotten married without him and how funny her parents would find it.
Last night? Drunk last night? It was funny.
Today? Sober today? It was not funny.
“Mom and Dad are going to find out.” Marlee shuffled to the sink, poured a glass of water, and took two aspirin. “They find out everything.”
“Please don’t tell your parents,” Eli said. Marlee’s parents were more than slightly overbearing. They were also wealthy beyond belief. And they were not going to be happy that Marlee had gotten married to the caterer in charge of the food for the wedding that never happened.
“I have to tell my parents.” The comforter stayed wrapped around her body while Marlee rounded up her clothes. “They’ll figure it out when we show up together married.”
Every time she said them-word, he swore a vein in his head erupted in a small aneurysm. “We’re not going to stay…the way we are.”
“We can’t just not be married. Divorce takes time.” The comforter slipped and she quickly pulled it up.
“Stop saying that.”
“Divorce?”
“Them-word.” Did he have to spell it out?
She pulled her bra from the vine over the television. “Married?”
For fuck’s sake. “Stop.”
She blinked hard at him. “What do you want to call it?”
“Let’s just call it the mistake.”
“Okay, we can’t just not be mistaked. Divorce takes time.”
There would be no divorce. There was no need for a divorce in a…mistake…that should have never happened.
“We are going to call Sadie and we’re going to get thisthingannulled.” Not that he knew much, but he was pretty sure getting married while drunk in Vegas counted toward the qualifications for annulment. His attorney sister would be able to say for sure.
“Say it, Eli.” Marlee leveled her gaze at him. “Marriage.”
“No.”
“Marriage,” she said again.
If she kept at it, he’d be dead. Dead from multiple aneurysms. “I’m not saying it.”
“Marriage.” That time she drew it out, letting it melt on her tongue like the lemon drop martinis she’d drunk the night before.
He threw his arm over his eyes.
“Your sister was right. You do have an issue with marriage.”
