“The clerk back there in the courthouse,” Drake said.
“What about her? I thought she seemed pleasant and efficient.”
“She thinks I’m marrying you in an MC because it’s a socially acceptable way for a man to keep a mistress happy for a while.”
“Oh, that,” Alice said, relaxing. “Well, naturally. What else would she think under the circumstances? I didn’t realize that you had noticed.”
“You didn’t think I was aware of how she was looking at me?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not important. She has no way of knowing that you married me to protect me from my ex-mother-in-law.”
Drake flattened one hand on the roof of the car and looked off into the shadows of the garage.
“There’s something you should know before we drive out of here,” he said.
“You’re starting to make me nervous. We’ve already discussed sea monsters, paranormal weather disturbances, dangerous ocean currents, and an overheating island. What else is it that you want me to know?”
He turned to look at her. Light from the overhead fixture glinted on his mirrored shades. “When the clerk said that I could kiss the bride, I wanted to.”
Once again everything within her seemed to still. Her intuition spiked but not the way it had a moment ago. There was danger here but not the kind that she had been running from for the past year.
“Oh,” she said. It took everything she had to squelch the thrill that feathered her senses. She managed another stage smile. “Well, why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I?” he said a little too evenly.
“I would have understood.” She waved one hand in a dismissing motion. “A kiss would have made the scene look more natural to her.”
Drake did a single staccato drumroll on the car roof with his fingers. His jaw tightened.
“I didn’t kiss you because I knew what the clerk was thinking. Also, I was pretty sure I knew what you were thinking and I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Well, that was very thoughtful of you, but I can assure you that after what I’ve been through this past year, it would take a lot more than a fake kiss in front of a courthouse clerk to embarrass me.”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” Drake said. “The kiss would not have been fake.”
She caught her breath. “Oh.”
She did not dare to move for fear of shattering the crystalline moment.
“It would have been this kind of kiss,” Drake said.
He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, drew her close, and covered her mouth with his own.
Chapter 7
THE KISS WAS REAL, ALL RIGHT. SHE HAD BEEN OUT OF practice for a year, but she had no problem recognizing the genuine article when it sent shock waves across all her senses.
Behind the shock waves of that first intimate connection came the slow burn of an exquisitely controlled but breathtakingly masculine passion.
Fire and ice splashed through her veins. The kiss was beyond real. At least it was beyond the reality of any kiss she had ever before experienced. It dazzled and astonished her. A strange confusion and a sparkling chaos made her head spin. It was just a kiss, she thought. Just a kiss. Get a grip.
But the energy of the embrace was having a bizarre effect on her. She was breathless, overwrought, and overwhelmed. It was too much. She had been walking an invisible tightrope for so long, lurching from crisis to crisis. She ricocheted between bursts of adrenaline and fury at her own inability to escape Ethel Whitcomb’s net. There had been too many nights when she had slammed her fist into her pillow, which were nights of bad dreams and cold sweats. Too many useless crying jags in the shower. Too many times when she had been forced to vanish at a moment’s notice. Too many times when she walked the floor until dawn with Houdini in her arms, searching for a way out.
Everything within her had been precariously balanced on high-alert status ever since she had run from the man who had tried to kill her. The edgy fire of Drake’s kiss sent her over the edge.
She clutched at his shoulders and threw herself into the embrace with ferocious abandon. She was frantic for release, any kind of release. She needed something, and in that moment she did not care if it came in the form of an act of violence or an act of passion. She just wanted to be free of her invisible prison, if only for a short time.
If Drake was startled or taken aback by her fierce response, he did not show it. There were a few seconds—the span of a couple of fast heartbeats—during which he seemed to be adjusting to the unexpected development in their short acquaintance. And then, like a driver who thought he was going to be getting behind the wheel of a compact car but discovers that he is piloting a turbo-rezzed sports car instead, he took back control of the kiss and floored the accelerator.
With a low, husky groan, he whipped her around and pushed her up against the nearest concrete pillar, caging her in. He deepened the kiss, giving her the kind of wild, over-the-top intensity that she wanted and needed. She fought him for the embrace with a passion that bordered on violence.
Until that moment she would not have believed that she was capable of such a response to a man. She could feel the hard shape of Drake’s heavy arousal and knew that she was not going into the wildfire alone.
Drake finally broke free of her mouth to kiss her throat. He flattened one hand against the pillar, leaning into her, and started to unfasten the front of her jacket. She found his belt buckle with her fingertips and fumbled with it until she got it undone.
The sound of an approaching car shattered the overcharged atmosphere.
Drake surfaced first. His fingers stilled on her jacket. He wrenched his mouth free and rested his damp forehead against hers.
“Damn,” he said. He was breathing hard. He used his hand on the pillar to push himself away from her. Quickly he refastened his belt. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
“Good grief,” Alice whispered.
She was stunned. Her legs were shaky. She was breathing too fast, and her senses were sparking and flashing, leaving her thoroughly disoriented.
A car turned the corner and entered the aisle in which the rental was parked, the driver cruising for a free space. Drake bundled Alice into the front seat, closed the door, and went quickly around to the driver’s side. He got behind the wheel.
Together they both sat silently, staring straight ahead through the windshield, as the innocent sedan moved slowly past the rear of the rental.
When the sedan disappeared around the corner, Drake made no move to start the car. Instead he continued to focus on the view of the shadowed garage. Alice did the same. Her brain seemed to have gone blank.
“Are we going to talk about this?” Drake asked evenly.
Alice took a deep breath. “Probably better if we don’t.”
“Maybe, but sooner or later we’re going to have to talk about it.”
“Stress,” she said. “It’s been a tough year.”
“That’s your excuse,” he said. “What’s mine? I was about to have sex with you in a parking garage.”
“I take it you don’t do that on a regular basis?”
“No,” he said. He gave that some thought. “Not that I’m against sex in a garage, or anywhere else, for that matter.”
The laughter welled up from out of nowhere. It swept through Alice in a cathartic kind of hysteria. She laughed until she cried. Houdini jumped down onto her lap and made soft little sounds. She clutched him close and sobbed into his fur.
Drake sat quietly until the tears stopped flowing. When it was over he handed her a tissue without saying a word.