Page 176 of The Winslow Brothers

Wow. This place is… Well, it’s not my dinky apartment in LA, that’s for sure.It’s a place for someone with money.

The silence, for the first time all night, is heavy. It’s laden with things unsaid—things I’m afraid to say—and even as I chip away at the block with my mental ice pick, I’m having the damnedest time trying to find some words to say.

I mean…what do you say in this situation? When you find yourself at the remote house of your new husband, about whom you know next to nothing?

“Do you…do you have a shirt I could sleep in, maybe?”

Oh God. I’m pretty sure that’s not it.

Under normal circumstances, with the men of my past, I might actually have the opportunity to be embarrassed. To wonder what he’s thinking as he stares at me in sheer disbelief. But not with Flynn. No. He turns without a word and walks down the hall. And, yeah, it’s things like that that let me know how wrong I am every time I try to convince myself that anything about what I’ve just done is normal.

That’s myhusband. And I don’t have a freaking clue what he’s going to do from one moment to the next.For the love of God, I kissed that man, not even an hour ago, after promising ourselves to each other until one of us reaches our ultimate demise.

Drag Marilyn fanned herself and asked someone for a glass of water, and all I could do was stare into the deep ocean of his eyes and wait for a tidal wave to knock me out of my misery.

The kiss…it waspowerful. Gravity shifting. So fucking exceptional that my lips have yet to stop tingling.

You just need to go to bed. Get your head right. Calm down, for Pete’s sake.

For now, though, while I wait on him to return with either a shirt or a weapon of some sort, I stand there swaying on my feet and survey the modern interior of his desert home. It’s filled with cool concrete on the floors and counters, and the black cabinets look perfectly in place. It’s not my personal taste, but as a designer, I can appreciate the intention of it and how good it looks juxtaposed against the heated backdrop of sand and shrub.

His footsteps are quiet, so I don’t hear him coming back until he’s there, exiting the mouth of the hallway and holding out a neatly folded T-shirt for me to take, his own now noticeably missing. I accept it gratefully, letting the folds fall open in front of me as I pull it toward myself and swallow hard at the ripple of his well-defined muscles.

The borrowed shirt is huge in comparison to my small frame, and for the first time since I wrapped my arms around him on the motorcycle leaving the Wynn, I’m reminded just how large he actually is.

“Thank you,” I murmur.

“You’re welcome.” The sound of his deep voice on those two simple words slides over my skin like a warm wind. I never realized how much I’m used to hearing people babble like me. Nevertheless, the simple exchange feels as if it unlocks the vise around my throat, and finally, I explode all over the room with hundreds of words.

“I’m sorry if I’m getting in the way of your plans. Surely you had things you intended to do before I asked you to take me on a wild ride. If you need to get back to them, I completely understand,you know? I’m…well, I’ll be fine, and now that we’re married—ha!—I guess I need to figure out what that means for what I need to do with Immigration.”

“It’s fine.”

“Okay, good. I mean, not good. None of this is good. It’s…well, it’s crazy, is what it is! I married you—a complete stranger—with Marilyn Monroe as the officiant. If that’s not worthy of a little bit of a freak-out, I don’t know what is. Liberace, sure, I could see that. But Marilyn Monroe as a member of the clergy? Seems like a stretch, you know?”

He raises his eyebrows but, by and large, doesn’t do anything else other than grab a glass from the cabinet beside the sink and turn on the tap to fill it halfway with water.

I swallow thickly as he turns his shirtless back to the counter to take a swig. When he tips his head forward again, he holds out the glass in offering.

I almost wheeze. “Oh, no. Thank you, but no. I don’t want to take your water.”

He smirks then, turning around and pulling another glass from the cabinet.Oh, right.He was offering to get me my own, not to meet in the middle of the noodle like we’re fucking Lady and the Tramp.

Placing the glass under the faucet, he fills it until it’s about an inch from the top and then holds it out to me. I tuck his T-shirt to my chest and reach out to take it.

“Thanks. Really. For all of this. You’ve been incredibly patient with me tonight, and I know that’s not the easiest task under thecircumstances.” I laugh almost manically again. “I, um, think I’ll just take this to bed with me. Try to get some sleep if that’s all right.”

He jerks up his chin, and I nod. “Um. Sorry, but, uh, which bedroom?”

“Second door on the left, bathroom is in the hall.”

“Great. That’s…great. Okay, well, thanks again. And goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he replies softly, so softly I almost don’t even hear him.

I take a hugely deep breath as I spin around and only let it out when I’m safely tucked into the hallway bathroom with the door shut and locked behind me. I set my glass on the counter and look at myself in the mirror, and for the briefest of moments, I don’t even recognize any of my features. My eyes are wide and bright, and my hair is wild in a way I never let it get. I suppose, however, that messy hair is to be expected after going on an unexpected joyride on a motorcycle.

I look down at the gold wedding band on my left ring finger and spin it around a few times with my thumb.

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