Page 19 of Accidental Vegas Vows

What the fuck was happening?

Marissa, my ex, hadn’t spoken to me in five years. Surely, she would have told me if I had a son. Surely, I’d have been notified, been there for the birth, co-parented with her, or worse, stayed with her. There wasn’t a world, in my mind, where she would have kept this from me. We didn’t end well, but it wasn’t so bad that she’d cut me out entirely — right?

“I need to call her,” I breathed.

“Well, you can’t, ‘cause she’s dead.”

I blinked at him. Somehow that little nugget of information had gone in one ear, swirled around, and right back out my other. “She’s dead?”

“I just said that. Twice, actually,” Ethan said, slipping the stack from my lap and flicking through the paperwork. “Cancer, apparently. Happened last week. She had time to get all of this set up.”

Marissa… was dead.

“Dead dead?”

“Christ, Damien, yes. Cold as ice. Six feet underground—… no, wait, she was cremated. Scattered over the Pacific by her sister, then, probably,” he deadpanned.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around this. I’d spent two years with her, considered marriage with her, spent God knows how much on an engagement ring — she was the first and only person I’d ever thought I could settle down with.

Stuffing down the suffocating thought that I’d never felt as drawn to Marissa as I did to my actual wife, I swallowed. We’d broken up due to her brief infidelity, and I needed to focus on that. “We can’t be sure the kid is mine,” I challenged. “There was someone else involved at the end.”

“I’m aware. I’ve ordered a paternity test in the meantime, but supposedly, Noah looks like a copy of you. Just… smaller, obviously,” Ethan said.

“What do I need to do?”

“You’ll attend the appointment I’ve arranged for tomorrow to submit your DNA. It’s just a simple mouth swab. And you’ll need to prepare for his arrival in two weeks.” He shoved the stack of papers back into his briefcase and locked it as we pulled into the parking lot of Blackwood Energy Solutions. “Marissa’s sister will be taking care of him in the interim, so for now, focus your attention on figuring out how to be a father to a five-year-old while I sort out the annulment.”

Chapter 7

Olivia

Sophie sipped at her latte as we sat in the back corner of the bookstore, the plush sofas and little table giving us a decent amount of privacy. It was located on the ground floor of the Blackwood building, and during working hours, it was the perfect place to sneak away for a quick break and a conversation about what the actual fuck I was doing with my life.

“My parents are going to kill me.”

She pressed her lips together as she leaned forward on the sofa beside me. “You honestly think they’d have a problem with it?”

My eyes nearly bugged out of my skull. “You have no idea what they’re like,” I insisted. “You think I’m backwards? My brother and I weren’t allowed friends of the opposite sex at home. My parents didn’t kiss until their wedding day. They had chaperones for every date they went on and were barely allowed to hold hands. Damien and I did… a lot more than that.”

“Damn,” she breathed. “Surely they’re not like that with you, though, or they’d have moved out here with you.”

I nodded. “They left the church when I was a kid, but a lot of those ideals stuck with them. They’re still incredibly conservative. And if they find out I married my fucking boss in Vegas…”

She offered me a tight-lipped, sympathetic smile and placed a single hand on my knee. I tried not to imagine it was Damien’s, like when he’d touched me at two thirty in the morning before I dragged him into a bathroom, but failed miserably, and found myself wishing her bare hand was covered in platinum rings and an antique watch. “They won’t find out.”

I picked up my flat white from the table, wanting the warmth of it between my hands to calm me down. “They will if it goes on a little longer. He’s not some nobody, Sophie. It could end up in the news or something.”

“The marriage or information about what you two did?”

“Either,” I groaned. “We weren’t exactly discreet.”

Her blonde braid fell to one side as she tilted her head, the sneakiest grin tugging at her lips. “Don’t tell me you two were doing whatever you got up to in public.”

My cheeks heated uncomfortably as I cast a quick, cursory glance over my shoulder to check we were alone. “Yeah,” I said quietly, just in case. “Most of it was in public.”

“Oh my God.” The words were too loud, and she noticed immediately, covering her mouth with her hand as her eyes went wide. She checked behind her, too, as if I hadn’t already. “Sorry. What the hell? You can’t just give me tidbits of information and keep the rest hidden away.”

I sipped at my coffee, perfectly content to do just that. “I absolutely can.”

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