Page 13 of It's Holy Matrimony, Baby

“I’m not sure how we go about this. I’ve been trying to work it out.” She pats the couch beside her. “I looked it up to see if perhaps we were lucky and it had never been registered.”

“And?” I sit down beside her, carefully, giving her space. Don’t want to throw her off just yet.

“Unfortunately, we’re very married, Mr. Casey.”

“Nox. Call me Nox.”

“Okay then, Nox. We’re very married and have been these past twenty-one months. Proving the marriage invalid might be a touch difficult considering the amount of time that’s passed and that we consummated it.” She glances at me out of the corner of her eye while she blushes.

They’re some of my favorite memories too. “It was quite the night.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” She squirms away from me. Not enough to be rude, just enough that I notice. “All that alcohol. I have little recollection.”

I glance at her thigh, where one of her hands is balled up in a fist, and then reach for a magazine in the spread on the table. “Rock Rag? August 2001?”

“Yes. Research.”

“Sophie Valentine was the spread, right?” I flick through. “You said you were a fan of The Valentines, if I recall.”

“I did.” She plucks the magazine from my hands and puts it back with High Frequency and Chorded. “I met her once. Didn’t marry her though.”

“I suppose if you had you wouldn’t be trying to work out how to void it.”

“Would anyone? She’s amazing. That voice.” She puts the laptop down on the glass topped table. Last time we’d been near a glass table she’d been more than eager to make our wedding night real. “Like an angel.”

“I might know a guy.” I shrug. “Who thinks she’s the devil.”

She snorts, settling back into the plush leather and dragging a pillow onto her lap. “I think I remember you making me laugh.”

I had. As much as possible. Couldn’t get enough of the way her eyes lit up and crinkled in the corners because of me. “I liked putting a smile on your face. Made me happy.”

“You weren’t when you came to the bar.” She frowns as she drops the pillow over the side of the couch and gets up.

No, I wasn’t, but she’d made me smile. It was some kind of magic. I follow her movements across the room. “It had been a rough day.”

She opens the fridge and pulls out another one of those mini champagne bottles along with a couple of tiny liquor bottles. “Do you drink red label?”

“Sure.”

“Great.” She snags a tumbler from a tray on top of the fridge and walks back to where I’m sitting. I watch her legs. Long, tanned pins, shapely, flexible, and dangerous to a man’s pulse. She’s wearing tiny crushed cotton shorts with daisies on them and a long-sleeved T-shirt, despite having the air conditioning running at an almost icy level. Can’t drag my gaze from them. Even when she stops right in front of me and drops the glass in my lap. “Time to work out the quickest and easiest way out of this mess.”

Might be the nicest mess I’ve ever found myself in.

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