“You sound awfully familiar with this scenario, Mr. Blackstone. Do you have a collection of veils that you want to tell me about?”
He winked at her. Then shushed her because she was laughing too loudly.
“No,” he said, “but I’ve dated this scenario repeatedly, and my sister is the same way. I knew all that, Wendy, but I made you feel, if that was your personal position, that you should give it up for the sake of business. That’s what I’m sorry for. I was watching your face during the ceremony. There was one point when I was sure you were going to faint.”
“And that would have been terrible PR,” Wendy joked. “Difficult to cover up. These pesky ambulances that keep following us around.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“I am,” she said with equal gravity. “I hear you. But I’m not that girl. I’ve met this girl you’re describing. There are a lot of her out there. That girl is in love with weddings, or with the idea of getting married. I was never like that. In West Virginia, people didn’t understand me. When I first got to New York, though, I thought I would get married someday. I would meet some fast-talking funny guy who loved art and good parties and traveling. He was part of my new future.
“But even then, I concentrated more on the fact that we would be soul mates and we would bop around New York together. The idea of what dress I would wear to my wedding never entered my mind, I promise you. And gradually, even the idea of this guy faded, because he didn’t exist. I dated, but nothing ever lasted. I discovered, to my utter astonishment, that I am hard to get along with.”
She choked a little on her last few words and was embarrassed into silence. He watched her solemnly, his face unreadable as ever. The neon lights of the Strip danced behind him.
She found her voice again. “Even when I thought it would happen, I didn’t care so much about the wedding itself. I cared about the vow. Some people wouldn’t want to swear to love someone for the rest of their lives if they didn’t really mean it because God would be watching them. Some people wouldn’t want the government to sign off on that officially if they didn’t mean it. But to me, the person I feel like I’m letting down is myself. I mean, both our jobs are set up around spinning the facts. Coming as close as we can to lying without going over. Going ahead and lying if that’s what we need to do to get the job done. But at the end of the day, I guess I don’t want to lie about that. I don’t want to lie to myself, about myself.”
He took a sip of wine. The cheap gold band she’d given him glowed on his finger in the soft light. She marveled all over again at how he could look so masculine and elegant simultaneously. But what she saw was what she got: a professional, an elitist, with his priorities in all the wrong places, but at heart a genuinely kind man.
She prompted him, “You’re still awfully quiet for a quiet guy.”
He smiled grimly. “You’ve made me feel worse.”
“Don’t. I could have said no.” She reached forward and covered his hand with hers. “Anyway, to me, the real beauty of a wedding isn’t the dress or the flowers or the chapel or Elvis. It’s finding the right person to be with, and—”
He broke in, “I already have.”
She flushed with warmth. “I was about to say the same thing.”
He looked at their hands on the table for a moment, then looked up at her. He held her gaze for so long that her skin tingled with anticipation. She knew exactly what he meant by that look, and what he wanted.
However, because he was Daniel, he asked politely, “Would you like dessert?”
“Yes, I would,” she said with gusto. “If you know what I mean.”
He gaped at her in outrage but couldn’t hold the expression when he was overtaken by a laughing fit. He held up one finger and the check suddenly appeared in front of him. As he took out his wallet, he said under his breath, “This night is going to be even better than I thought.”
* * *
He shut the door of their room behind them. The lamps were off. The only light was the neon in the panoramic view of the casinos across the street. She watched his body move in that soft glow as he turned the dead bolt. They were locked in together.
He turned and stopped, seeming surprised that she was watching him. The vague light softened his features but highlighted his cheekbones and the perfect arch of his brow, like a stylized sculpture of a man rather than the real thing. His eyes were so dark that in the shadows, she could only tell he was looking at her by the reflection of the window, a light in his eye that disappeared momentarily when he blinked.
The silence stretched into awkwardness. She wanted to tell him that he might be racking his brain for something to say in the uncomfortable silence, but she was not. She was content to pause in this rare, magical space between one stage of their relationship and the next, taking in how handsome he was, and how lucky she was that he had ever kissed her.
His lips parted. He took a slow breath to speak. She was afraid he would say he’d changed his mind. They’d gotten married for work, and now they should go their separate ways.
To prevent those words from crossing his lips, she spoke up so suddenly that he blinked again. “My friends will die when I tell them we waited until we got married to have sex.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Then tried to stop himself from laughing and couldn’t, holding his side and choking a little.
She loved to watch him laugh. It happened so rarely, and this was the longest she’d seen his laughter go on. To prolong it a bit more, she added, “I don’t know about you, but saving myself for marriage is somewhat out of character for me.”
Still laughing, he placed one hand on the wall behind her and leaned in, so close that she caught a whiff of his cologne. She suppressed a shudder at the chill that raced through her.
He said, “I’m glad you wanted to be pure for me.”
Now Wendy cracked up. Through her giggles, she said, “Sorry. I haven’t been pure since I was fifteen. And if my virginal status in the marriage bed is important to you, we should never discuss my sophomore year in college. Also, 2009.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” he said in a sexy rumble. Still bracing himself on the wall above her with one hand, he used the other hand to stroke a lock of hair that framed her face. “But that’s okay. I like my women experienced.”
Her snort of laughter was cut short as he kissed her.