Hank busied himself with his phone, a deep worry line denting his forehead. She was about to ask what the trouble was when the jingle of her own phone announced it was ready.
The blinking red message light at the top of her cell flashed like crazy. Between taking a shower, getting ready and finishing her Power Point, she'd received forty-five texts.
CLAIRE: WHAT HAPPENED? U OK?
CLAIRE: ARE WE SISTERS? SO EXCITED!!!!
CLAIRE: WHAT'S GOING ON? UR NOT ANSWERING.
CLAIRE: U AND HANK GETTING IT ON? :)
CLAIRE: THAT WAS A JOKE!
CLAIRE: OOPS, JUST TALKED 2 MOM AND IT SLIPPED OUT. KINDA SORTA ON PURPOSE. DON'T HATE.
UNKNOWN: YOUNG LADY, DID YOU ELOPE WITH MY SON? MAKE HIM ANSWER HIS PHONE. I HAVE CALLED TWELVE TIMES. HE IS NOT TOO BIG FOR ME TO STRAIGHTEN OUT.
CLAIRE: CALL ME IF UR NOT ON UR WAY TO TAHITI.
Her fingers hesitated over the tiny keyboard. What to say? That she made a massive fool of herself with Hank? Again? No, that just sounded pathetic. That she'd probably been drugged by God-knows-who? Not unless she wanted the entire Layton clan to descend upon Vegas en masse. That she wished Little Elvis had pronounced them husband and wife? Definitely no. Just the thought made her body as jittery as the time she ate an entire bag full of chocolate-covered espresso beans.
Forget it. She'd call later. Firmly, she shoved the phone into her briefcase. It took all of three heart beats for the second thoughts to come rushing in. This was not a conversation she wanted to have via text, but she couldn't not respond. Knowing Claire, if she didn't answer soon, her best friend would be on the first flight to Vegas. She pulled the phone out and started typing with her thumbs.
BETH: AM OK. NOT MARRIED. EXPLAIN LATER.
After hitting send, she slid her finger across the screen until Hank's mother's text appeared. Glenda Layton was not someone to toy with. When it came to her children and getting them married off, the woman was a five foot, eight inch Pit Bull with an attitude problem. No way was she explaining this fiasco to Glenda. That little bit of heaven was all Hank's.
“You need to call your mom.”
“Yeah, she left me a million messages.” He ran his hands through his brown hair, leaving tufts of it sticking straight up. “She even texted. I didn't think she knew how to do that.”
“What are you going to say?”
The giant Eiffel Tower gleamed up ahead. The driver zipped the car o
ver to the right-hand lane and turned his blinker on. The click, click of it echoed in the silence after her question.
Hank sighed and sank back into his seat. “You know my mom, there's nothing I can tell her. Knowing her, she'll have dug up every bit of gossip from the last six months, scoured the online marriage certificates in Vegas, gotten every little piece of information out of my brothers—that is, if Chris and Sam are out of their poker game yet—and made contact with a private eye.”
The description made her laugh. “She does always seem to know everything about everything.”
The light bulb went off in Beth's head as bright as the sun. Why hadn't they thought of it earlier? She opened her mouth, but Hank cut her off before she could utter a word.
“I'm already on it. I'll text her now and call her after I have a chat with Little Elvis. With any luck, he'll be willing to share his surveillance video from last night.” His large fingers crawled across his phone, too big to type quickly on the tiny keyboard keys. “Mom will give me all the rumors and innuendo there is about who wants to buy your grandparents' house.”
Chapter Fourteen
Her perfume filled the cab with its warm, inviting scent until all Hank wanted to do was bury his face in the soft curve of her neck and breathe in his fill. This was torture; pure, blissful torture, and if he wasn't so pissed off, he'd be in heaven. The need to touch her wreaked havoc on his ability to function, let alone compose a decent text to his mom that wouldn't send her through the roof.
Mentally groaning, Hank hit the itty-bitty delete key on his phone. Again. He hated texting. If God had wanted man to text, He would have made the keyboard bigger.
HANK: DON'T KNOW WHAT CLAIRE SAID, BUT NOT MARRIED. ALL WELL HERE. HOPE YOU ARE GOOD. TALK TO YOU SOON. LOVE HANK.
Giving the message another look, his finger hovered over the delete key. He sounded like an idiot. Even in a text, his mom would know something was up. The woman always did.
The cab stopped in front of the Paris Hotel, leaving him without a choice but to hit send. There was no time to figure out a better way to lie because things were far from okay.
He slapped a wad of bills into the cabbie's hand and stepped out of the car. Beth emerged right behind him, still eerily silent. The lack of chatter spoke volumes about just how much he'd hurt her feelings. She tucked a strand of dark-brown hair behind her ear and sighed as she walked past him into the hotel. Her normal jaunty swagger had disappeared, thanks to him and his big mouth.