for the door, but Penny grabbed his arm, feeling sheer panic flow through her veins.
“You can’t tell them!”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “How do you know they don’t already know?” He held up the certificate. “Maybe they were our wedding guests.”
She felt the blood drain out of her face. He was right. If neither one of them could remember the events of the previous night, how could she assume anything? “Don’t bring it up if they don’t,” she whispered fiercely. “Promise me!”
His eyes searched hers.
The knocking on the door got louder.
“Your leave is going to end. You’ll go back to your life,” she reminded him. “I’ll still be in Weaver. I don’t want the notoriety, okay? Gossip is the town’s best industry.”
His beautifully molded lips compressed. He looked like he wanted to argue.
“Please, Quinn. I’m begging here.”
“Fine.” He sounded none too pleased about it.
Relief still flooded through her. One thing she knew about Quinn Templeton was that he always kept his word.
She dashed around the bed, snatching up the items of her clothing that were visible, and raced toward the bathroom, only to nearly fall on her face as the sheet caught around her feet.
Quinn’s hand shot out, grabbing her arm and righting her.
“Quinn!” The knocking on the door hadn’t ceased.
“Dammit, Greer, I heard you the first time,” he said loudly. “Keep your pants on!” He pushed the crumpled marriage certificate into Penny’s hand and nudged her gently toward the bathroom. “Be more careful,” he murmured.
She ducked her chin, grabbed the sheet higher around her calves so she wouldn’t trip again and hurried into the luxuriously appointed bathroom, closing the door quietly after her.
The sight of her reflection in the wall-size mirror made her shudder. Guilt. Horror. Shock. All of that was in her face. Added to her rat’s nest hair and the whole bedsheet thing, she looked exactly as she’d expect a woman to look after waking up in a strange man’s bed.
Only he wasn’t really a stranger, was he, if she’d known him since she’d been a teenager? Or was that negated by the fact that—aside from his brief visits home to Wyoming—he’d been gone for more than the last decade?
She dumped the certificate, her dress and the one high-heeled sandal she’d found beside the bed on the marble counter and pressed her ear against the closed door.
All she could hear were muffled voices.
She raked her tangled hair away from her face. It was only then that she noticed the narrow band on her left finger. It was gold. Set with sparkling diamonds that circled all the way around. And it was beautiful.
She slid it off so fast it flew out of her fingers and rolled out of sight.
Her conscience nipped at her and she crawled around until she found it. Feeling decidedly nauseated, she set it on top of Quinn’s leather shaving kit, then went to sit on the side of the enormous round bathtub. Pins prickled behind her eyes and she pinched them closed. It was one thing to know she’d slept with him. But how could she have married him?
Once upon a time, she was supposed to have been a bride. A real one. Only instead of marrying Andy, she’d—
“Hey—”
She looked up to see Quinn had opened the door. He’d added a T-shirt over his jeans. The light gray cotton looked stretched almost to breaking point over his shoulders.
“You all right?”
She swiped her cheeks. “You ever hear of that thing called privacy?”
“That’s what locks are for.” His dark, dark eyes roved over her. “There’s no reason to cry. At least my cousin Greer didn’t mention anything unusual. This isn’t the end of the world.”
“Waking up married?” She waved her hand, only to feel her sheet slipping, and yanked it once again up to her neck. “Sure. Nothing to be worried about at all.”
He scrubbed his hand down his bristly jaw. The thick, wavy hair on his head was as dark as ever, but the whiskers there definitely held a touch of gray.
She wished she could say they detracted from his appeal.
But at least that long-fingered hand of his wasn’t sporting a wedding ring.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
“I don’t know how you can sound so calm.” She hitched up the long ends of the sheet and stood. “This is a disaster.” She slipped past him to return to the bedroom area. As oversize and opulent as the bathroom was, it was still too small with him in it.
His voice turned flat. “Stop being melodramatic.”
She spotted her other shoe peeking out from beneath the gold silk bedspread that was hanging off the mattress, and grabbed it. She couldn’t remember how the evening had ended the night before, but she distinctly remembered how it had started off—with her fully clothed and wearing her usual complement of panties and bra underneath.
“Maybe it’s not a disaster in comparison to your usual life.” She knew he was part of some special operations thing in the air force. To Penny, that was just code for some really dangerous thing in the air force. “But it is to mine. I have no desire to be anyone’s wife. Certainly not like this.” Not to another man already married to the military. She’d been through that before. Thanks to the army in which Andy had served and a close encounter with an IED on his way home for their wedding, she’d never even had the opportunity to be a widow. Much less a wife.
She went down onto her hands and knees to look under the bed. But the ivory carpet there was smoothly vacuumed and untarnished by discarded undies. She sat back on her knees.
“What are you looking for?”
“The rest of my clothes, obviously.” She hitched up the sheet again and stood. “I need to get back to my room. Clean up. Make sure everything’s set for the flight home tomorrow.”
“What about my grandmother’s lunch?”
“That’s for all of you. I’m the hired help, remember?” She shoved her long hair away from her face again as she walked back into the bathroom, carrying her second shoe.
She shut the door.
Pushed the door lock for good measure.
She dropped the sheet and pulled her stretchy dress over her head, dragging the dark purple fabric down over her bare hips and thighs. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious that she was entirely commando under the dress.
She raked her fingers through her hair, trying to restore a little order to the dishwater-blond mess, and splashed water over her face, using one of the plush towels stacked on a glass shelf before she pushed her bare feet into her high-heeled sandals and opened the door again.
Quinn was leaning against the wall opposite the door, his arms folded over his wide chest. “Feel better?”
She could feel herself flushing, but she gave a brisk nod anyway as she walked out of the bathroom. Without high heels, she was taller than average. With them, she stood close to six feet, putting her generally eye-to-eye with most men.
But not Quinn. He was still several inches taller than she was.
Which was a completely irrelevant point, she reminded herself as she scanned the room, hoping to spot her purse, because she truly did not want to have to go down to the lobby and get a new room key. Not looking the way she did.
Her relief when she finally found it half-hidden among the ivory leather couch cushions was almost comical. Her room key was tucked safely inside