even close. In fact, I suppose the case could be made I actually drugged her.”
There she was. Back from the coffee bar, a tray loaded with a couple of roadies and a pastry bag in one hand, a laptop backpack hanging from the other. He slowed his steps, preferring to get this cleared up out of earshot.
“Um...Connor, what are you talking about?”
“I let her drink too much and she ended up blacking out most of the night.”
“Let me guess,” came Jeff’s dry reply. “She remembered the part about getting married, though.”
“Yeah, but unfortunately she didn’t remember why she’d thought it was such a great idea at the time. Took some effort on my part to remind her. Even now, she’s still on the fence, but she’s willing to give it a chance. We’re on our way to Denver to pack her things.”
“You’re serious?”
He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Jeff’s voice squeak that way, and the sound of it pushed the smile he’d started this call with back to his lips.
“As a heart attack. You’ll have to take my word for it, but, Jeff, I know her. And I like her a hell of a lot.”
Then because he simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity to goad an old friend when the opportunity was right there, he added, “Back on the horse, like you said.”
“Speaking of... Does she know about Caro?”
“She does. I told her the first night.” He cleared his throat and looked out over the tarmac. “Then again yesterday.” He’d been damn lucky she’d asked him about any serious relationships during their refresher course in Know Thy Mate. Caroline had been the dead-last thing on his mind, and something told him it wouldn’t exactly have fostered the trust they were building if he hadn’t gotten that tidbit on the table. And even now, he realized there were details he should fill in. Specifics that didn’t actually change anything, but—hell, Megan’s capitulation in giving this marriage a try had been a close thing. Too close. He wasn’t willing to risk some unfortunate chronology putting her off, at least not until they were on more solid ground.
“Can’t believe you didn’t introduce us yesterday. I want to meet this woman...now that I know she didn’t drag you down the aisle at knifepoint,” Jeff clarified.
Connor grinned and started walking again, raising a hand when Megan turned his way, her too-wide smile doing too many things to him at once.
“Soon. For now, I’m ready to get her home.”
“Good to hear it. But I want details. Start at the beginning.”
“You’d been gone about thirty seconds when the ‘gymnast’ shows up at the table, with this whopper of a line.”
“The gymnast? Dude!”
Megan met him halfway and, apparently having overheard the last bit, arched an amused brow. Leaning toward the phone, she piped in, “I’m not a gymnast.”
Connor ducked and dropped a quick kiss at her temple, relishing the faint blush in her cheeks. “Only, she’s not a gymnast, and it’s not actually a line...”
* * *
Megan woke to the steady thud, thud of Connor’s heart beneath her ear, the constant weight of his arm around her waist and the whirl of a mind anxious to put sleep behind it.
After two nonstop days in Denver, they’d packed the bulk of her apartment, leaving only the barest essentials behind. Laughter and fun like she’d never known had punctuated intense negotiations, strict limits and hard deadlines as a plan for the next three months came together. Sleeping arrangements, travel and social obligations, their respective professional commitments and myriad other details of this life they were embarking on had to be addressed. With so much to do, and so many decisions to make...it had been after midnight when Connor finally carried her over the threshold of his spacious San Diego home and about five minutes after that when they’d collapsed into bed.
Now Megan was blinking the sleep from her eyes, a silly grin curving her lips as the phrase “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” came to mind. Squinting around the unfamiliar room, she located a clock at the far corner and winced at the realization today was beginning at the ungodly hour of four.
Megan made a stealthy escape from the bed and padded down the stairs, flipping on one light after another as she tried to familiarize herself with a house not yet her home, searching for clues about the man she’d married along the way. What she’d discovered was an immaculately decorated showplace, where each room had a central piece of artwork around which everything else flowed. Horses in charcoal tore across an open plain in the massive study, a bronze figurine capturing the essence of a weary rider atop his mount was the central focus in a reading room, and aged leather behind glass in the living room revealed her husband had the heart of a cowboy.
Such a contrast to the clean lines and neat cut of his made-to-measure everything else. At least everything she’d seen so far. But perhaps that had just been Vegas.
There was so much left to learn.
Her mother’s parting words from their previous morning’s conversation whispered to her.
“You’re going to have to step up your game if you want to hang on to this one...”
She shook her head. Some advice.
There was no game. There never had been.
She knew better, thanks to the lessons learned at her mother’s knee.
Turning from the relic of the Old West, her gaze caught on the floor-to-ceiling glass doors making up the southwest wall. The inky black of the early hours had faded to blue and the landscape around them had begun to take shape. Palms stretched like dark cutouts against the morning sky and elusive streaks of white rushed the shores.
Slowly she stepped forward, wanting to put her mother’s words and the memories they spurred behind her. Lose herself in the beauty revealed by the approach of the rising sun. Only, the past had already taken hold. All the “daddies” who’d walked through her life. The great guys Gloria Scott had been willing to do anything—be anyone—to keep ahold of. The wild changes to her mother’s personality and personal goals heralding the arrival of each new man. Megan’s own determination not to let this one get too close—no matter how nice or fun he was—because it wouldn’t last. It never lasted. The tug at her little girl’s nerves once things started to slip. The sidelong looks, the downward pull of a mouth. The hope that maybe she was wrong. That maybe if she was good enough, if she tried hard enough, this one wouldn’t leave.
But they all did.
Eugene, Charlie, Pete, Rubin, Zeke, Jose and Dwayne. Seven husbands come and gone, and still her mom hadn’t figured it out. A person couldn’t make something last if it wasn’t meant to, like a person couldn’t be someone they weren’t. And trying only prolonged the inevitable.
Some were easier to let go. And some—she let out a heavy sigh as the memory of sun-crinkled eyes winking at her from across a worn dock squeezed her heart—the echoes of their absence were so deeply ingrained in her psyche they touched every relationship she’d ever attempted.
Her fingers trailed the wood frame of the sliders as a thread of anxious tension stitched through Megan’s belly. In spite of her determination not to, was she just repeating her mother’s mistakes?
She’d married a man she’d known for less than a day. A man who’d been so sold on the woman he met that first night—a night she couldn’t remember—he was determined not to let her get away. Sure, Connor thought he knew her. But what if he was wrong? What if she hadn’t been herself and he was so caught up in the hard-won victory he was after that he simply hadn’t realized it yet?
How long before he saw past the illusion of who he wanted her to be—and actually saw her?
Would it be within the span of this trial or would