Winter Wedding In Vegas

What an emotional roller coaster she rode.

Her safe, secure world felt as if it was crumbling around her.

She’d quit taking chances years ago. Had quit living in some ways. Oh, she lived through Gracie, but what about for herself? Nina was right. She didn’t do anything for herself, just lived in a nice controlled environment where she planned for all contingencies.

Too bad she hadn’t had a backup plan for an unexpected Vegas Christmas wedding.

While Slade was in the bathroom, she changed into her dress, took her hair down from its tight pin-back and pulled it up into a looser hold. She had her contacts in her purse, but wasn’t sure what it would say if she put them in when she almost always wore her glasses.

How ridiculous was she being? What did it matter what she looked like?

Still, she dug in her purse and put in her contacts. She was just blinking them into place when Slade stepped out of the bathroom.

Wearing only his suit pants.

Taylor’s body responded to his bare chest like a Pavlov dog to its stimulus. The man was beautiful.

And hers.

Not for long, but at this moment Slade Sain was hers more than any other man had ever been.

Just as she was his more than any other woman had ever been his.

Maybe.

She frowned because she really didn’t know that to be true. “Have you been married before?”

Her question obviously caught him off guard. “No. Why? Have you? Never mind, silly question with that one-guy thing. You haven’t.”

“No, I haven’t,” she agreed, averting her gaze from his intense blue one. “I just wondered if you had.”

Despite the tension between them, he grinned with wry humor. “Wondering if I make marrying a habit?”

Exactly. “Something like that.”

He slipped his crisp blue shirt on one arm at a time, then buttoned his cuffs. “I’ve never been married before.” He paused, stared at her with a serious look. “I’ve never even contemplated marriage.”

Her feet wanted to shuffle but she somehow kept them still. “Why not?”

Smoothing out his shirt, he shrugged. “I have other plans for my life besides a wife, two point five kids and a white picket fence.”

Her chest spasmed at just how different they really were, because once upon a time she’d dreamed of being a wife with kids and that proverbial white picket fence. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We’re human and made a mistake. People do it all the time.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know. So why did his words shoot arrows into her chest? “Not me. Not like this.” She winced. “I mean, obviously I have made mistakes before, but I thought I’d learned better than to make this kind.”

“Marrying me makes you realize you haven’t evolved as far as you’d hoped?”

“Something like that. We were practically strangers and got married.” Sighing, she closed her eyes. “Before last night you probably didn’t even know my eye color.”

“I knew.”

His answer was so quick, so confident, that she couldn’t question the truth of his response.

Staring at him, she asked, “How?”

He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “I know more about you than you seem to think.”

“Like what?”

“Like how much you love coffee.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lots of people love coffee, so that’s just a generic assumption that could be said about a high percentage of the population.”