Authors: Patricia Burroughs
“Send down for a pot of espresso,” he said over his shoulder before shutting the door.
“Gracious.” She dropped back to recover from the disconcerting sight. It was a full two minutes before she’d collected her senses enough to dial room service.
She lay facing the windows until he emerged. With a finger she idly traced a pattern on the bedspread as if she were in the deepest reverie, biding time until she could tell by the sounds of his movements that he’d begun dressing. The thought of her own “nightdress” didn’t concern her in the least. Soft and faded it might be, but at least it covered her better than a pair of shorts. She rose and ambled toward the bathroom.
“Yosemite Sam. Cute.”
She glanced down at her T-shirt. “He’s not Yosemite Sam. He’s the Red Raider from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.”
“He looks like Yosemite Sam.”
“So I’ve heard.” She closed the door between them and then called, “But he’s not!”
“Is that where you went to school?”
“Nope.” She squeezed toothpaste onto her brush. “Rusk did.” Let him chew on that one for a while, she thought smugly, then added, “On a football scholarship.”
“Kicker?” Alex retorted.
“Linebacker!” she spat through a froth of toothpaste, smirking around the toothbrush that jutted from her mouth. When that brought no response, she rinsed her mouth. “Where did you go?” she called. “Hah-vahd?”
“MIT.”
“You aren’t an engineer or a scientist or something, are you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
She finished her preparations in silence. Reaching for her makeup bag, she struck her hand against the counter and bit back a barnyard expletive. Rubbing out the sting, she noticed that the polish on three nails was chipped and her pinkie nail was broken. She dropped onto the vanity stool and began the painstaking process of repairing her manicure.
When she emerged, Alex was perched on the corner of the bed, waiting for her, his hands clasped around one knee. “There’s something I really like about you, Kennie.”
“Which is… ”
“You certainly aren’t dull.” He grinned, his gaze skimming over her appearance from head to painted toenails.
She glanced down at her turquoise skirt and blouse, which were accented by her faithful pink accessories. “That’s what I like about fuchsia,” she said. “It makes a definite statement, and it goes with everything.”
“Then you’ll be glad to get these back.” He dangled her sandals from his outstretched hand. The high heels were intact, the color shining. In response to her quizzical expression he said, “Valet service did a remarkable job, don’t you think?”
“Wonderful.” She reached for them, but he shook his head.
“Your nails are wet. Let me.”
“Never mind. I’ll put them on later.”
He closed his hands around her ankle, sending a shock of awareness skimming up her calf.
“You don’t listen very well, do you?” she remarked dryly.
She raised her foot, and he slipped the sandal on and buckled the strap, his fingers sliding against the sleek nylon enclosing her ankle. “Thanks,” she rasped, taking a limping step backward.
The other shoe went on as quickly and efficiently as the first, despite her embarrassment. “What is this? You used to be a shoe salesman?”
“Never.”
That came to her as no surprise. Finally he was finished, and he raised his head to smile up at her. “You look dynamite.”
“Thank you,” she said, her fingers still splayed away from her skirt. “Now I think we’d better hotfoot it over to the courthouse before they decide to declare a national holiday or have a bomb scare or figure out some other way to keep us from getting our annulment.”
“You mean you don’t want to eat first?”
She gave her head a firm shake. “I won’t be able to eat a bite until we put this behind us.”
“Kennie, that was the court clerk’s office at the courthouse I had on the phone earlier.” Something in the tone of his voice stopped her cold.
“What is it now?” she asked, fearful of his response.
“There shouldn’t be any problem with the annulment, but....”
“But what?” she demanded. “What on earth can they do to us now?”
“We really need to see an attorney.”
“They didn’t put up any roadblocks before we got married! Now they decide to make things difficult for us?”
“It’s always more difficult to get out of a marriage than to get into one.”
As if she hadn’t heard those words before. “You sound like my mother,” she muttered.
“I hope that’s a compliment.”
“Sometimes.”
Alex placed a calming hand on her shoulder. She was in no mood to be calmed. She jerked away and crossed to the window, glaring down at the sunny street.
She thought for a minute. “Let’s eat.”
His rich laughter filled the air. “Somehow that response doesn’t surprise me in the least.” He swung open the door for her. “You must have a very active metabolism.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“For someone who loves food as much as you do, you certainly don’t seem to be carrying any extra weight.”
“Mr. Carruthers, the way you go on. If I’m not careful, you’ll plumb turn my head.” The bite in her tone was lost as the elevator door whooshed shut.
“Linebacker?” Alex queried innocently.
“Yes. A very big linebacker.” She watched the floor numbers change. Ping. Ping. Ping.
“Exactly what is he to you? Boyfriend?”
“A good friend,” she said.
“How good?”
She didn’t answer.
“How come I get the feeling there’s something about this Rusk you’re not telling me?”
She cocked her head. “How come I get the feeling that it’s none of your business?”
The doors whooshed open and she stepped into the teeming lobby.
~o0o~
“The situation you find yourself in is not as unusual as you might think,” Judith Gramm remarked from behind her polished slate-topped desk. “Inebriation is a perfectly valid reason for annulment, and you certainly aren’t the first to use it.”
Kennie met the older woman’s kindly gaze and forced a smile. “Maybe it’s not unusual around here, but where I come from it’s a downright scandal.”
“I understand. I also realize that you may have some questions about what is going to happen. You both must appear in court in order for your situation to be assessed. Unlike in a divorce, both parties must be present to attain an annulment in the state of Nevada. There are several issues that might be raised when you go before the judge. Consummation—”
“We didn’t!” Kennie quickly assured her.
“I can assure you, Ms. Gramm—” Alex began.
“Please, let me continue.” The woman raised her hand and shook her head, a slight smile on her lips. “As I was about to say, your physical relationship, especially in light of the brief span of your acquaintance, should have little bearing on the matter. So many relationships are consummated before marriage is even considered that whether or not the physical act is performed after the marriage does not interest the court.”
Kennie shuddered. “It’s not a marriage in any sense of the word.”
“I believe you’ve made your point,” the woman replied, shifting a stack of papers before her. “In that case, there are the following items: a $99.00 filing fee; my fee, which is $175.00 per hour; and a few pertinent details, such as scheduling a hearing with the calendar clerk’s office.”
“Calendar clerk? Calendar, as in days, weeks and months?” An icy tendril of alarm curled down Kennie’s spine.
“Exactly how long will this take?” Alex asked, his own brows knitted with concern.
“I really can’t say without checking the docket, but we can probably assume it will be longer than days and shorter than months.”
The room appeared to spin a half revolution before Kennie could respond. “I think I’m going to be ill.”
~o0o~
Kennie leaned against the rail and watched the Truckee River rush under them.
“Don’t let this worry you,” Alex insisted. “We’ll work something out.”
“Who, me worry? I have a marriage that isn’t really a marriage, a husband who isn’t really a husband, and—” she raised her left hand and stared forlornly at her knuckles “—I don’t have a ring to throw in, but I might as well throw in my body and save us both a lot of headaches and embarrassment.”
“Spare me the dramatics, Kennie. I’d only have to go through an inquiry, and that would be infinitely more trying for me, with none of the pleasure.”
“Pleasure?” she asked, unable to resist the impulse to turn an imploring face up to him.
“Yes, pleasure.”
The man’s dimples ought to be outlawed, she thought.
“Alex Carruthers, you have a perverted sense of pleasure.”
His brows lifted. “You shouldn’t judge until you’ve something to base your opinion on, my dear.”
And the expression on that wolfish, devilish face told her that he’d be glad to provide her with a basis for a judgment. She averted her face toward the rushing river which was by far the less powerful of the two “natural” forces she was confronting. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve got my customers at home to think of, and I’m also waiting to hear about a job interview in Odessa.”
“What kind of job?” He leaned against the rail, bracing himself with his elbows, his legs stretched before him.
“Probably with one of the oil companies, though they haven’t been hiring lately. I have a friend who’s keeping an eye open for me.”
“Do you climb oil rigs, or what?” Only the suppressed chuckle in his voice belied his noncommittal expression.
“No, I don’t climb oil rigs. I worked in purchasing at Granger Oil until the oil crunch hit. What about you? Don’t you have a secretary going crazy wondering where you are? An office? A job?”
“No, no and no.”
“No job?” she demanded, scandalized.
He flashed one of his gorgeous smiles, and in an instant she recognized it for what it was: a shield that dazzled, that bounced a gleam right back into her eyes to keep her from seeing past it. Could someone hide behind a smile? If that smile was as breathtaking as Alex Carruthers’s, one could hide the intentions of the devil himself behind it, which didn’t lessen its impact one iota.
“I have ways of getting around the demands of an office job,” he conceded. “I suppose you might say I dabble in investments.”
The man “dabbled” at work. He didn’t need the money, so he played. She thought of Rusk, of the men in Tahoka Springs, and felt an uneasiness creep into her mind. She was playing with fire.
Alex gazed into the water, his arms braced on the railing, his expression pensive. “I’ll be glad to get out of here,” he muttered.
“Reno?”
“Nevada. It’s not the scenery or the people I have problems with. It’s the casinos that I can’t abide.”
“You really despise gambling, don’t you?” she asked, feeling strangely as if she were close to touching something real behind that debonair façade.
But the eyes he turned in her direction were more heavily shaded than ever, the brilliant smile evident once more. “Be careful of this tendency to jump to conclusions, Kennie. Especially when you have so little foundation for them.”
“So what do we do now?” She studied the wet trail a drop of perspiration had left on his neck. Her own arms were pleasantly warm in the sunshine. Beneath the layers of his Italian suit, he must be sweltering, she thought.
“I haven’t quite figured that out,” he said easily, slipping his hand around her upper arm and closing his fingers over the soft flesh. He steered her toward the opposite side of the river, his long-legged gait surprisingly well matched to hers. “The attorney is supposed to leave us a message at the hotel if she turns up any alternatives. Otherwise, we can just hope for a quick hearing.”
“This is a nightmare,” she muttered softly.
He stopped. “Is it really?” He placed a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face. “Is it really a nightmare for you?” The intensity she saw etched on his face, the hollowness around his eyes, the tension that radiated from him as he awaited her response, all made her feel as if what she said...mattered, truly mattered, and suddenly she didn’t know how to respond.
“Well, it’s very bizarre,” she murmured.
“I agree.” His intense gaze demanded truth beyond what she even knew herself. “But is it horrible?”
“In a way, because I feel so foolish.”
“And that’s so awful?”
“It’s not a comfortable feeling,” she insisted.
“The best things rarely are,” he said enigmatically. “Until after the fact.”
“You’re confusing me.”
He gave a slight shrug, then they moved forward again. “Have you ever seen a marathon runner look comfortable during a race? Yet without that exertion, that challenge, there wouldn’t be any high afterward, now would there?”
“Are you telling me that after we get this disaster behind us we’re going to feel like a million dollars?”
There was a moment’s silence between them, a moment during which traffic noises provided a muffled backdrop to what was happening between them. And then he said, “No. That’s not what I meant at all.”
“Then I must be really dense. You’ll have to explain what you—”
“It’s not important. Not now, anyway,” he said crisply. They walked another block in silence, but his question still nagged at her. Her answer was alarming, and she would be a fool to reveal it...but the words came tumbling out. “As a matter of fact, this hasn’t been like a nightmare at all.”
His grip tightened on her arm, his fingers tensing, their heat soaking into her. “What has it been, then?”
Her words were softly spoken, but there was no doubt in her mind or heart that he heard her.
“Everything a fantasy should be.”
CHAPTER SIX
ALEX SAT ACROSS the café booth from Kennie, watching her topknot bounce as she chattered on about Texas. More intently he watched her lips purse around the straw, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked gently at the syrupy cola. His burger grew cold; the ice melted into his own cola. And he didn’t even care. He could sit and watch this woman eat and laugh and chatter for hours, and the effect was more nourishing to him than food could ever be. She was a brightly plumed bird with straightforward opinions. Even her chagrin was an emphatic wonder to behold whenever she paused long enough to remember exactly why they were still together.