The CEO's Accidental Bride / Paper Marriage Proposition: The CEO's Accidental Bride / Paper Marriage Proposition

“The paper we signed?” Zach continued in the face of her silence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied to him.

In fact, she’d come across their mock wedding license just this morning. It was tucked into the lone, slim photo album that lived in her bottom dresser drawer beneath several pairs of blue jeans.

It was stupid to have kept the souvenir. But the glow from her evening on Zach’s arm had taken a few days to fade away. And at the time she’d put the marriage license away, those happy minutes on the dance floor had seemed somehow magical.

It was a ridiculous fantasy.

The man had destroyed her life the very next week.

Now, he drew a bracing breath. “It’s valid.”

She frowned at him. “Valid for what?”

“Marriage.”

Kaitlin didn’t respond. Was Zach actually suggesting they’d signed a real marriage license?

“Is this a joke?” she asked.

“Am I laughing?”

He wasn’t. But then he rarely laughed. He rarely joked, either. That night, she’d later learned, was quite the anomaly for him.

A cold feeling invaded her stomach.

“We’re married, Kaitlin,” he told her, steel eyes unflinching.

They were not married. It had been a lark. They’d been playacting up there on the stage.

“Elvis was licensed by the state of Nevada,” said Zach.

“We were drunk,” Kaitlin countered, refusing to believe such a preposterous claim.

“He filed a certificate.”

“How do you know that?” Her brain was revving into overdrive, calculating the possibilities and the potential consequences.

“Because my lawyers tell me so.” He gave a meaningful glance past her shoulder, into the apartment. “Can I please come in?”

She thought about her mystery novels covering the couch, the entertainment magazines that were sitting out on the coffee table, the credit card and bank statements in piles beside them, revealing her shopping habits for the past month. She remembered the telltale, half-eaten package of Sugar Bob’s doughnuts sitting out on the counter. And, of course, there was the box of sexy underwear on full display in the afternoon sunshine.

But, if he was telling the truth, it wasn’t something she could ignore.

She gritted her teeth and ordered herself to forget about his opinion. Who cared if he found out she had a weakness for Sugar Bob’s? In a matter of days, he’d be out of her life. She’d leave everything she’d ever known, start all over in another city, maybe Chicago or Los Angeles.

Her throat involuntarily tightened at the thought, and her tears threatened to freshen.

Kaitlin hated being uprooted. She’d started over so many times already, leaving security and normalcy behind as she moved from one childhood foster home to another. She’d been in this small apartment since she started college. And it was the only place that had ever felt remotely like home.

“Kaitlin?” he prompted.

She swallowed to clear the thick emotions from her throat. “Sure,” she told him with grim determination, stepping aside. “Come on in.”

As she shut the door, Zach took in the disarray of packing boxes littering the apartment. There wasn’t anywhere for him to sit down, and she didn’t offer to clear a chair. He wouldn’t be staying very long.

Though she tried to ignore it, her glance shifted involuntarily to the underwear box. Zach tracked her gaze, his resting on the mauve-and-white silk teddy her friend Lindsay had bought her for Christmas last year.

“Do you mind?” she snapped, marching over to pull the cardboard flaps shut.

“Not at all,” he muttered, and she thought she heard a trace of amusement in his tone.

He was laughing at her. Perfect.

The cardboard flaps sprang back open again, and she felt the unwelcome heat of a blush. She turned to face him, placing her body between Zach and her underwear.

Behind him, she spied the open box of Sugar Bob’s. Three of the doughnuts were missing, transferred from the white cardboard and cellophane container to her hips around nine this morning.

Zach didn’t appear to have an ounce of fat on his well-toned body. She’d be willing to bet his breakfast had consisted of fruit, whole grains and lean protein. It was probably whipped up by his personal chef, ingredients imported from France, or maybe Australia.

He perched his briefcase on top of a stack of DVDs on her end table and snapped open the latches. “I’ve had my lawyers draw up our divorce papers.”

“We need lawyers?” Kaitlin was still struggling to comprehend the idea of marriage.

To Zach.

Her brain wanted to go a hundred different directions with that inconceivable fact, but she firmly reined it in. He might be gorgeous, wealthy and intelligent, but he was also cold, calculating and dangerous. A woman would have to be crazy to marry him.

He swung open the lid of the briefcase. “In this instance, lawyers are a necessary evil.”

Kaitlin reflexively bristled at the stereotype. Her best friend, Lindsay, wasn’t the least bit evil.

For a second, she let herself imagine Lindsay’s reaction to this news. Lindsay would be shocked, obviously. Would she be worried? Angry? Would she laugh?

The whole situation was pretty absurd.

Kaitlin anchored her loose auburn hair behind her ears, reflexively tugging one beaded jade earring as a nervous humor bubbled up inside her. She cocked her head and waited until she had Zach’s attention. “I guess what happens in Vegas sometimes follows you home.”

A muscle twitched in his cheek, and it definitely wasn’t from amusement. She felt a perverse sense of satisfaction at having put him even slightly off balance.

“It would help if you took this seriously,” he told her.

“We were married by Elvis.” She clamped determinedly down on a spurt of nervous laughter.

Zach’s gray eyes flashed.

“Come on, Zach,” she cajoled. “You have to admit—”