Trey was having the best dream. An entire weekend of wining, dining, and dancing with Sandy. No work, no worries—just her. The whole thing took a sharp left into the realm of weird when Elvis showed up and started singing a slightly off-key rendition of “Love Me Tender,” but who was he to complain? The guy made her laugh. She didn’t do that enough. Then the dream bled into an erotic montage that made his body tighten with need. Trey tried to cling to it, to burrow deeper into sleep so he could get to the end, but a pulsing pain in his skull dragged him inexorably back to consciousness.
The dull thump of agony in his head made him want to whimper. Okay, there was a lot of champagne last night. He hadn’t felt this hung over since…well, he couldn’t remember when. As a rule, he rarely overindulged. He didn’t like being out of control. Careful to remain utterly still, lest his brain decide to conga right out of his skull, Trey cracked one eye open. His bleary vision resolved itself to a dim room. Just enough light seeped in around blackout curtains that he could tell this wasn’t his suite at The Babylon. Where the hell was he? Turning his head just a little, he managed to catch sight of an enormous chandelier above the bed.
Vegas. He was at his hotel in Vegas.
A faint groan beside him had Trey going instantly on alert, hangover be damned. He wasn’t alone. With painstaking slowness
, he turned his head and saw the tumbled blonde hair, the slope of bare shoulder with a birthmark shaped like a butterfly. He felt an immediate urge to press a kiss there and had a flash of memory that he’d done just that, as he peeled off Sandy’s dress the night before. Why couldn’t he remember the rest of the night? Nights? What day was it?
He reached out to stroke a hand down Sandy’s arm. She rolled into him, nuzzling against his throat and making him excruciatingly aware of the fact that they were both very, very naked. She smelled of him—of sweat and sex and that curious, soft scent of sleep. Well, now he really wished he knew how they’d gotten here.
Something gleamed faintly in the space between them. Tipping his head down, Trey noted a gold band on the hand she pressed against his chest. Frowning, he peered closer. Had she been wearing that when they left Wishful? No, he’d have noticed. Still puzzling over that, he pulled her closer—and saw the matching band on his own left hand.
Uh-oh.
“Sandy.” His voice came out like gravel.
“Mmm?” Her eyes blinked open. “Trey?” After a long moment, her bleary expression cleared and her eyes popped wide, her body going stiff. “Trey.” She promptly winced, squeezing her eyes shut again as she dragged the covers up to her chest. “My head. What happened?”
Trey had a moment of regret that he couldn’t remember what she was hiding beneath that sheet.
“I think, possibly, we drank half the champagne in the state of Nevada.”
She squinted at him, as if maybe she was hoping he wasn’t real. “And we…um.” The wave of her hand seemed to encompass all the nakedness and what had inevitably come before.
“Seems we did. Probably repeatedly, although I’m pretty fuzzy on that point.” And that was a damned shame. After waiting thirty years to make love to this woman, he resented the hell out of not being able to remember it.
The flush began at her hairline and swept down her throat and the chest that was pressed so tantalizingly to his. “I’m pretty fuzzy on all of it.”
At least he wasn’t the only one.
“You don’t happen to remember getting these, do you?” He held up his hand where she could see the ring.
Sandy frowned, lifting her own hand and staring at it like it was an alien appendage. “What?”
“I think…we got married last night.”
She started to shake her head, then seemed to think better of it. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would we do that?”
Trey struggled to sift through his patchy memory. “I seem to recall something about thirty years apart being quite enough and announcing I never wanted to let you go.” He really hoped the drunken rendition of Sergio Mendes’ “Never Gonna Let You Go” was just a dream.
“We can’t be married.”
“Well, we are in Vegas, and we’re wearing wedding bands we didn’t have when we got here, so I’m thinking maybe we can.”
Sandy sat up, still clutching the sheet to her chest. “We can’t be married,” she repeated, panic underscoring her words. “I did not come to Las Vegas for the first time and get married by Elvis. I’m not that irresponsible.”
“Was Elvis real? I thought he was just part of my dream.”
“Oh God!” She rolled out of bed, dragging the sheet with her as she began to pace. “How did this happen?”
As it seemed highly unlikely he was going to talk her back into bed for a reprisal of the wedding night that was currently a blank, Trey reached for the pants puddled in the floor. He slipped them on and strode past her to the bar in the other part of the suite, pouring them both glasses of water. Stepping into her path, he stopped her frenetic pacing and pressed one into her hand. “Drink.”
“What are we going to do?”
Her face was wan and a little puffy from lack of sleep, and her hair was an absolute wreck. And she was, improbably, his. At last. It felt like every cell in his body began to grin at once—at least, all the ones not currently protesting his status as one of the living.
“Why are you smiling?” she demanded.