Secretly Married

Secretly Married
Allison Leigh

Secretly Married

Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

ALLISON LEIGH

started early by writing a Halloween play that her grade-school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.

She has been a finalist for a RITA

Award and a Holt Medallion. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.

Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighborhood church. She currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at P.O. Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, or visit her Web site at www.allisonleigh.com.

For my family.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Prologue

The Moonlight Chapel of Love.

Delaney Townsend slid off her blazer and folded it over her arm. Even at two in the morning, the air in Vegas was hot. But it wasn’t the heat that disturbed her, particularly. It was the entire situation in which she found herself.

“Something wrong?” The man standing with her grazed her bare arm with a long finger.

Despite herself, despite the heat, despite…everything…she shivered from the contact. She glanced up at Samson Vega if for no other reason than the sight of him was far more reassuring than the sight of the Moonlight Chapel of Love.

If she repeated the chapel’s name often enough in her head, would some of the shock recede?

“It’s…blinking,” she finally said.

The corner of Sam’s mouth kicked up, and her stomach clutched in the odd little way it had done since the very first time she’d seen that half smile of his.

If only she’d been stronger against that disarming appeal, they wouldn’t be standing in front of a merrily blinking wedding chapel at two in the morning.

“It is pretty bright,” he allowed blandly.

Understatement. She felt a bubble of laughter rising inside her. Or maybe it was hysteria. “There’s a line of people waiting.”

He nodded, though his gaze was on her rather than the couples waiting outside the shiny white-and-gold double doors. She’d long ago given up the idea that his manner of focusing on a person was because of his profession. It wasn’t cop. It was simply him. Undiluted.

And it was lethal to a woman’s common sense.

“Well.” Delaney’s voice was faint. It had a tendency to get that way when he looked at her like that. As if he couldn’t wait to feast.

On her.

His lips curved slowly. Sam tucked his hand around her arm, his thumb dragging in a slow circle over the inside of her elbow. “Line isn’t going to get any shorter.”

The truth of which was proved by an impossibly young boy and girl who climbed from the rear of an ungodly long limousine that stopped at the curb. They ran—arms entangled, laughter spilling—across the brief grassy area to take a place at the end of the line.

She barely had a chance to realize that she, at the grand old age of thirty-four, felt old at the sight of their youthful enthusiasm when the shining double doors opened wide and a couple stepped from inside the chapel. Silly smiles lit their faces, and even from this distance she could see the gold bands on their fingers.

“They look like they belong on the top of a wedding cake.” She hadn’t realized people would dress in full wedding regalia to visit a place like…this.

“Is that what you wanted? The whole wedding getup?”

She realized she was watching the emerging couple with the sort of morbid fascination usually reserved for vehicular accidents. “No.”