Page 20 of Plunge

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Fletcher

I WASN’T GOING to say anything to her. I wasn’t going to tell her about my paperwork problems or this ridiculous scheme of Khalil’s. She follows me outside and I can’t help but look her up and down, feeling 18 and 80 at the same time.

She shifts and tries to pull her coat tighter against the cold. “Don’t,” I whisper. She lets her hands drop to her sides and I keep staring at her in the street light. “I hated you,” I say. “For a really long time.”

She swallows, but forces herself to meet my eyes. “And now?”

“Now I need to ask you a favor.”

We walk around and around the block while I tell her all of it, about going nuts when Archer told me he was going to hire her. I tell her about Anya getting pissed and fucking up my work. Finally, I tell her about Khalil’s scheme to get me back in business.

Thistle starts to shiver in the cold, and I feel like an asshole, but I have to at least ask.

“So, will you consider helping me out? Three months, Thiss. Walk with me to the courthouse right now, marry me for three months, and I’ll bring you the divorce papers myself.”

She tilts her head to the side, considering. She stares at me for a long time and just when I think she’s going to kick me in the balls and walk away, she nods.

“I’m going to need another drink first,” she says.

I wake up with the sun streaming through a hotel window. I see an empty bottle of whiskey sitting on the little round table next to the bed and groan.

I roll onto my back and try to remember the sequence of events after Thistle and I left the bar.

I look over, very slowly, and see her sprawled on her stomach, her glorious ass bare and begging to be spanked.

We have the heat cranked unbearably high in the room, and I remember that we were cold after we walked here from getting married.

Shit. I got fucking married yesterday.

To Thistle McMurray.

For years, I haven’t even allowed myself to think her name and now I begged her to marry me.

I glance down at my dick and see that it has its own agenda unrelated to my hangover. Pretty sure it’s trying to catch a look at Thistle’s rosy pink folds, hoping for an invite to the party.

I cover her up with the blanket.

Very slowly, I sit up and shuffle around the room, looking for those little plastic cups that come wrapped in more plastic. I’m making a hell of a lot of noise, but Thistle doesn’t stir. She must not have maintained the high tolerance she once had for alcohol. Maybe once she was old enough to buy it legally, she didn’t need to pound it down as quickly.

I smile, remembering how we used to steal beer from her brother and chug it in the woods behind my parents’ house.

I take a leak and wash my hands before filling the cups from the tap. I drain mine down and fill another one, feeling slightly more human after hydrating. I set the other cup on the night stand by Thistle and work on locating the paperwork from yesterday.

My coat is thrown on the floor and when I pick it up, I see the manilla envelope in the inner pocket. I glance inside and see a copy of a marriage license I’m supposed to mail in so it’s legal. We had to answer about 7,000 questions about our parents and their parents and where everyone went to high school, but then we learned that in Pennsylvania, we could get a self-uniting license. We didn’t even need a judge.

We just snagged the first two people we could find wandering around, and asked them to be witnesses. I’m pretty sure, in retrospect, it was just people getting out of night court. But they were happy enough to share a shot of whiskey from the bottle and sign off that we were self uniting in holy matrimony. Or civil matrimony, at any rate.

I unfold the papers and call up Emily, forgetting what time zone she’s actually in right now. She answers on the second ring and says, “Denver,” before I even ask. She’s from Colorado. Must be home in between events. Shit, I’m not even keeping track of anything anymore, that’s how removed I’ve been from my entire company. “Tell me you’ve got news, boss.”

“Well, I met with Khalil,” I tell her.

“Ooh, excellent,” she says. I hear her closing a door and I realize she’s trying not to wake someone. It occurs to me that I should ask Emily about balancing home life with road life. She’s good at everything. I’m sure she’s better than me at keeping in touch with her circle in Colorado.

I fill her in on the basics of Khalil’s plan and am matter-of-factly describing my courthouse wedding when she interrupts me.

“I’m sorry, you did what yesterday?”

---