A moment later, Stephanie pulled herself together and tugged her May–December date closer to her side as she pasted on another fake smile.

  “Poor Ryder. No one in town ever thought he’d get himself hitched,” she drawled in a bad Gone with the Wind imitation.

  Stephanie’s accent didn’t sound like that of anyone else Monica had met from this area so far, and she’d bet dollars to donuts the woman had picked it up from binge-watching too many episodes of Nashville.

  If she was trying to impress Monica, however, she’d missed her mark.

  “Stephanie and Ryder used to date,” Ruth Ann supplied nervously, apparently trying to protect Monica without making a public scene.

  Ahh. It all made sense now. Monica laughed inwardly. Cattiness was nothing new to her. She was more than used to dealing with uptight anorexic bitches—or as the world liked to call them, models. Stephanie was inconsequential compared to some of the spoiled ice princesses Monica handled on a regular basis.

  In answer to Stephanie’s jealousy-laced statement, Monica grinned and hitched her hips to the side just enough to show Stephanie that she wasn’t impressed. “I guess he just had to meet the right woman,” she said with a definite inflection of ownership.

  “And you’re the right woman, hmm?” Stephanie’s brows raised as she fixed Monica with a dubious, challenging glare.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Monica said softly, not the least intimidated. “You’d have to ask him, but considering that he hasn’t let me out of his sight—or out of his bed—since he carried me off to Vegas to elope, I’d say I suit him pretty well.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Ryder’s voice came from behind her a moment before his arms wrapped around her waist. Ruth Ann’s hold dropped from her shoulders as Ryder pulled her back against his body. His fingers slipped under the loose hem of her shirt and lifted it until her belly button ring was visible. Then he began toying with it in a slightly distracted, totally possessive gesture.

  “I hate to break it to you, Stephanie, but I really did get married.”

  Monica almost giggled at the look of disgust and pure hatred that crossed the jilted woman’s features. Leaning into the cradle of Ryder’s body, she put her hands over his forearms and let him dally with her stomach decoration.

  “It won’t last,” Stephanie hissed, pitching her voice low to avoid attention from the other guests. “She’s just some freak show oddity that you want to play around with for a while,” she said, casting a glance at Monica’s hair—which she’d obviously noticed had a streak of color running up the back—to her pierced abdomen, bare legs, and green-tipped toes. “As soon as the novelty wears off, you’ll wish you’d stuck to your own kind, Ryder. Mark my words.”

  Ryder’s grip on her waist tightened and Monica swallowed. Not because this Dolly Parton knock-off intimidated her, but because what she said was most likely true. Even if Ryder didn’t tire of her off-key personality, the marriage would be over. She wanted to smack Stephanie for being so right for all the wrong reasons.

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Steph,” Ryder replied easily, though Monica could feel the tension in the corded muscles of his arms and chest. With a nod to the young man on his ex-girlfriend’s arm, he said, “Why don’t you take your Flavor of the Month home and tell him about the birds and the bees.”

  Stephanie’s hackles rose visibly. Her padded shoulders went back, her chin rose in defiance. “Well, I never!” she huffed, the fringe of her dead animal dress waving like a flag on a windy day.

  Monica chuckled. “Yeah, it shows,” she muttered under her breath.

  And Ryder let out a loud guffaw that had the guests’ beer vibrating in their bottles.

  Stephanie stomped a high heel-clad foot, then turned and stormed away.

  “That was rather distasteful,” Ruth Ann said with a sniff.

  “But right up Stephanie’s alley,” Ryder added. “It was a mistake to ever date her at all.”

  Then he turned Monica until she stood staring up at him. “You okay?”

  Genuine concern shone on his face, and she smiled reassuringly. “With the exception of probably making an enemy for life, I think I came out of it relatively unscathed.”

  Ruth Ann patted her arm. “Count yourself fortunate, dear. That woman makes no better a friend than she does an enemy. You’re better off without her around.” She looked pointedly at her son. “Both of you,” she stressed.

  “Yes, Mother.” One side of Ryder’s mouth twitched up in a grin.

  “Sorry about that little fib I told about how quickly Ryder and I got married after we met,” Monica made a point of saying to Ruth Ann. Just because it was the truth didn’t mean his mother needed to know that. It had just sort of slipped out, because she’d wanted so badly to put Stephanie in her place.

  “No worries, dear. It’s about time someone wiped the smirk off her face.”

  For a moment, they all stood there, not speaking, but sharing their small victory over the Wicked Witch of the Leather Dress.

  “If you’re finished introducing my wife around,” Ryder said to his mom, “I think I’ll take her over and get her started on dinner.”

  As they walked away, Monica heard someone behind her comment on the stripe of pink hair running up the back of her head. For a minute, her heart slowed in trepidation. Was this the moment everything would hit the fan?

  Then she heard Ruth Ann’s calm reply, as though the few simple words explained everything: “She’s from Chicago, dear.”

  Monica didn’t know whether to be impressed by Ruth Ann’s easy acceptance or upset that no one other than Stephanie seemed to disapprove of her yet, so she let Ryder lead her toward the trestle tables and hand her a plate to fill from the buffet. A real plate and real silverware; apparently Ruth Ann and every other adult female in town would have no part of disposable party supplies. Being slightly fanatic about non-recyclable waste, Monica had to commend the women on their environmentalism. There were no fewer than six mismatched sets of dishes put out for the guests. She would have to remember to offer her services when it came time to clean up and wash all the assorted dinnerware.

  “You won’t be able to eat all of this, even if you were a sideshow freak,” Ryder said as he guided her slowly past all of the delicious-looking foods.

  “She said ‘freak show oddity,’” Monica corrected. “Not ‘sideshow freak.’”

  He chuckled. “My mistake.” Then he leaned down close to her ear and whispered, “What’s the difference?”

  She shot him a withering glance over her shoulder as they stopped in front of a pan of baked beans. “One implies that I’m the Bearded Lady. The other merely suggests that I have a few too many body piercings.”

  “You mean like this?” he asked, giving her navel ring a little flick while he wiggled his brows suggestively.

  “Exactly like that.”

  He dug a serving spoon into the baked beans and dropped a good-sized dollop on her plate. “Good thing she didn’t know about the tattoo.”

  Ryder was lucky he knew about it, and she still didn’t think he’d figured out what it said yet. He’d looked close, but not close enough. She smothered a laugh. Wait until the lights were on and he happened to have a magnifying glass in his hand.

  Ryder moved to shovel out more beans and Monica looked closely at the serving on her plate. “What are those little brown specks?” she asked.

  He put down the spoon and studied the beans. Then he picked out a piece of the questionable food with his fingers and popped it in his mouth. “Bacon,” he answered. “Why?”

  Her nose wrinkled, and she pressed her plate into his abdomen. “I don’t eat bacon. Here, trade with me.”

  He took her dish and handed her his empty one. “Why don’t you eat bacon?”

  “Because it’s an animal.”

  For the first time since she’d known him, he was struck speechless.

  “You’re not a vegetarian,” he said, as though the word “vegetarian” was akin to “axe murderer.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but, yep, I’m a vegetarian.”

  He stared at her, totally flummoxed.

  “Sweetheart,” he whispered almost conspiratorially, “you do realize that I’m a cattle rancher. That means I raise cows and butcher them for meat. That’s a pig over there, raised by one of our neighbors. You’re not likely to find many meatless meals in these parts.”

  She crinkled her nose in distaste. Although she knew it was there, she couldn’t bring herself to even look in that poor pig’s direction. And while she’d heard several people comment on how good it smelled, she tried not to breathe too deeply because the scent of roasting pork made her nauseous.

  “Yes, I understand that. But you’re not a hopeless case. We’ll work on it,” she said with a pat to his stubbled cheek before moving on to closely study the rest of the dishes on the table.

  While Ryder went right on eating anything and everything that had even the slightest relation to meat—just to vex her, she suspected, given the looks he tossed her way every time he took a bite of chicken pot pie or sawed on a big chunk of roast pig—she stuck with the three-bean casserole, peach cobbler, and anything else that wasn’t created by way of animal suffering. And just to show him she hadn’t given up on the idea of talking him into vegetarianism, she sat across the table from him, mmming and aaahing over every bite.

  As soon as the plates were cleared and all the guests were groaning, practically unbuckling their belts, a band set up on a small platform near the old barn. Several guests moved closer to the band, turning the bare ground in front of the raised dais into a makeshift dance floor. Others remained seated, tapping their feet to the beat.

  The music was blatantly country, which she wasn’t all that familiar with. She knew some of the more popular country artists and songs that got airtime on Sirius XM’s “The Blend” or whatever other Pop/Rock station she might end up listening to, but a lot of the more “down home” tunes were new to her. Even so, the band wasn’t terrible, and her ears didn’t bleed.

  She thought it was especially sweet that they started out playing love—or at least romantic-sounding—songs, in honor of her and Ryder’s newlywed status. The lyrics of the first song were about some guys having fame and fortune, but this guy having love, which made him luckiest of all. It was a lovely sentiment, even if it didn’t suit Ryder’s circumstances as much as everyone assumed.

  Having eaten more than was wise, and feeling a little claustrophobic crushed between two guests on the picnic table’s bench seat, Monica loosened the knot at the front of her borrowed shirt and smoothed aside the wrinkled material to hang open over the sleeveless crop top she wore underneath. It was one of the short tops Brooke had thrown in with her camera—as well as a few pairs of boy shorts for Monica to sleep in, not realizing she’d end up spending most nights wrapped around Ryder, both of them naked as jaybirds—and happened to be the perfect addition to her outfit. Not because it matched, but because it was her last-ditch effort to shock Ryder’s friends and family. So far, nothing else had, at least not noticeably.

  The band rolled into what she actually recognized as Keith Urban’s “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” and she gave herself a mental pat on the back for that one. Then they started playing “Friends in Low Places”—an all-time favorite, judging by the cheers that rang out after only a few beginning notes. She might not know much about country music, but she didn’t live in a cave, so even she knew who Garth Brooks was and was familiar with a handful of his songs.

  She began tapping her foot in rhythm as more people got up to dance. The idea of crashing an ex’s bash and telling him—Matt, of course—over a glass of bubbly to kiss her ass had its merits.

  The thought of Matt brought her head around to briefly study the crowd. He and Josie had been due in on a late afternoon flight, and Ruth Ann had mentioned last-minute complications to their trip home, but it was almost seven o’clock and Monica had expected them to be here by now. Then again, maybe it was good that they hadn’t shown up. Now that she’d contacted Simon and decided to keep her distance from Matt so he wouldn’t get suspicious and try to move her money, the less time she spent around him and Josie, the better.

  …

  Ryder studied Monica across the picnic table as she watched the band. A slight smile lit her face as she fiddled with the front of the shirt she was wearing—his shirt—and he wanted to drag her away from this group of neighbors and let her strip for him. Maybe make love to her while she was wearing nothing more than one of his soft, cotton shirts. They had all those condoms to try out, after all.

  Old Yancy Ingram and some of his friends, with Yancy’s son singing vocals, rolled from a fast-paced Hank Williams Jr. song into Shania Twain’s much slower “From This Moment.”

  Ryder reached across the picnic table and took Monica’s hand from where it was busy fiddling with one of the small, round mother-of-pearl buttons on the front of the open shirt. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s dance.”

  “To this?” she asked, glancing at him in surprise. But she stood before he’d even had a chance to answer.

  “Unless you’d care to go inside and make a little music of our own.” He waggled his brows suggestively.

  She rolled her eyes and moved a step closer to keep their conversation private. “Number one: how do you manage to function on a daily basis with that sex drive of yours?” she asked loftily. “And number two: keep your voice down. We want these people to think we’re madly in love, not that you married me just so you could legally jump my bones every five minutes.”

  He grinned and yanked her against his chest, letting his hands drift to the curve of her buttocks. “Number one: I function just fine—as I think you well know, given this afternoon’s demonstration. Number two: married or unmarried, every inch of your body is a felony. And I don’t give a baboon’s ass who knows it.” With that, he delivered a pinch to her ass. “Now let’s dance.”

  He backed up enough to begin pulling her toward the dance area, but she pulled away for a second and quickly shrugged out of her shirt, leaving her in a short-waisted top with no sleeves and a scooped neckline that molded to her breasts like cellophane.

  The fact that the top was scarcely more than a thin cotton undershirt raised Ryder’s blood pressure enough. But it was the writing on the front that sent it skyrocketing.

  There, in bold rainbow lettering that his neighbors could probably spot from a hundred yards, were four words that would kill his parents and have everyone else wondering if he’d married one of those “lipstick lesbians.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  If women are foolish, it’s because the good Lord made ’em a match for men.

  GAY FOR A DAY.

  Gay for a freakin’ day. What the hell did that mean?

  “You’re trying to give me a seizure, aren’t you?” he snapped, his eyes riveted on her bustline.

  She looked startled and pulled her head back a fraction. “What?”

  “First leaving the hair for my parents to see, then the announcement that you’re one of those tofu-eating animal rights zealots. And now this.” He ran a hand through his hair with impatience. “The belly button thing was my doing, I admit. You were keeping it pretty well covered, and I was the one who had to make that little power play in front of Stephanie. Okay, I’ll take the blame for that one. But Gay for a Day?” His voice lowered so no one would hear. At least not those who hadn’t already noticed the catch phrase emblazoned on the most eye-catching part of his wife’s physique.

  “You can’t tell me you couldn’t find another damn thing to wear tonight.” Granted, she didn’t have that many clothes with her—just what she’d stuffed in that equally ridiculous bag on the way to Hawaii and the things he’d bought her this afternoon. But she’d been wearing his shirts like she owned them. Why the hell couldn’t she keep one on while his friends were around? If his father got a gander at this, he’d jump out of his wheelchair so fast he’d break his other leg.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, which only managed to lift her breasts higher and frame the blazing motto. “Would you have rather I wore the one that says ‘Meat Is Murder’?” she asked pointedly.

  Her question momentarily stopped the rise of his anger. “You city folk just don’t believe in wearing plain old plaid, do you?”

  She lifted her chin and glared at him in defiance. “Nope. But they’re having another gay rights marathon next year, if you want to come and get one of these for yourself. You’d probably be better off with the T-shirt version, though. I’m not sure you could pull this off.” She flicked a wrist in front of her chest in reference to the much-too-appealing crop top.

  His lips thinned as he watched her, running his tongue over his teeth while he mulled over her words. Then he burst out laughing, grabbing her up and kissing her hard on the mouth. In front of God, Mom and Pop, and every neighbor for ten kilometers. To hell with what they thought. Monica was one for the record books. And he was beginning to feel a fondness for dyed hair, navel rings, frog tattoos, and left-wing slogans that would have most people in town reaching for their shotguns.

  He lifted his head, still grinning. “Meat is murder, huh?”

  Her hands rested on his shoulders, and he was pleased to note a slight dilation to her pupils, glad his kiss had put that glassy, absent-minded look in her eyes.

  “Absolutely,” she said with a nod.

  With his arms wrapped around her waist and his lips at her temple, he asked, “So just how gay were you that day, Rapunzel?”

  He felt her body shake as a laugh moved all the way up from her diaphragm. She leaned back to look in his eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teased.

  “Yeah, I would.”

  She gave a toss of her head, grinning at him wickedly. “Break open those glow-in-the-dark condoms and I might just tell you.”

  A bolt of desire chased down his spine, and he pressed close so she could feel how much he wanted to do just that. Right now. “Hot damn,” he whispered.