“I came home from work Thursday night, started reading the Tribune, and saw my fiancé’s picture in the wedding announcements. Except that I wasn’t with him. I wasn’t even mentioned in the article.” She pulled a face.

  “How did an announcement get in a Chicago paper when the wedding was being held here in Nevada?”

  “Nevada,” Monica repeated in awe. At least she knew where she was. She also now knew that she’d only traveled to the state where Matt’s wedding was being held, not beyond. Whew!

  That sexy mouth of his lifted in another half-smile. “Where did you think you were?”

  “I didn’t have a clue,” she told him. “And don’t think that didn’t freak me out for most of the morning.”

  He smirked. “So you saw the announcement…then what?”

  “Well…” She ran a finger over the bridge of her nose, toward her forehead, racking her brain for details of the past few days. “Matt’s parents live in the Chicago area, I guess. I’ve never actually met them, but I assume that’s why the announcement was in the Tribune. I was fairly upset when I saw it, as you can imagine. I called my best friend and cried for a while, then sulked around the house the rest of the night, and by morning I guess I sort of decided to do something about it. I don’t recall much of what I had in mind now, I only remember running through the airport carrying my wedding dress. And maybe changing into the gown at some point…possibly on the plane.” She grimaced. Which meant she probably left her other clothes on the floor of the airplane restroom. God knew where they’d ended up, but even if the airline found them and stuck them in Lost and Found, there was no way she’d reclaim them now.

  “That explains that, then,” he said, his face showing no sign of what he was thinking.

  “Explains what?”

  “You showing up at the reception in a wedding gown.” He paused, letting the image sink in, then added, “It doesn’t explain why you were so drunk, though.”

  Monica gasped. “Drunk? How could I have been drunk?” And then she groaned. She and alcohol did not mix well. Oh, she liked it—sometimes a little too well. But more than a drink or two and she started to lose track of her thoughts…not to mention her inhibitions. “Oh, no. I didn’t get another tattoo, did I?”

  His brows raised with interest. “Another tattoo?”

  Her cheeks warmed. “The last time I was out with friends and drank too much, I ended up with this ugly frog on my…”

  “Butt?” he offered with a grin. Or was it a leer?

  She inhaled deeply and refused to look him in the eye. “No,” she said slowly. “Not my butt.”

  Definitely a leer. And his gaze began to wander just a little too far south for her peace of mind.

  But he’d already spotted her navel ring between the sagging waistband of her borrowed jeans and the knot she’d made of his oversize shirt and seemed completely captivated by it. His eyes rounded and his tongue all but fell from his mouth.

  It was just a belly button ring, for heaven’s sake; she’d had it for years—and gotten it while she was stone-cold sober, thank you very much. But from the expression on his face, she expected to look down and find herself naked.

  “Eyes front, cowboy,” she warned, scooting her stool even farther beneath the counter.

  He stared at the region of her hidden midriff a moment longer. He also swallowed, she noticed. Hard. She bit her lip to keep from smiling. No wonder some women could get a man to do anything for them. Show a little skin—and perhaps a bit of jewelry in seldom-seen places—and they became mesmerized. She tucked that piece of information away and tilted her head, waiting for him to continue.

  His eyes darted back to the counter below her breasts, searching. Then he seemed to shrug off his fascination with her body piercing altogether. “All I know is that you showed up three sheets to the wind. Made a complete fool of yourself in front of about two hundred people,” he added brusquely.

  “I showed up drunk?” she asked, confused. And then understanding dawned. “Oh, no. The little bottles of booze on the plane. And the champagne,” she added with a groan. His eyes locked with hers, silently questioning. “I bought a bottle of champagne at the airport before I caught a taxi to the reception. I was going to give it to Matt as a wedding gift. Or crack him over the head with it, I’m not sure which.” She twisted her fingers together to keep from fidgeting. “But it was a long ride, and I was upset. I must have gotten thirsty.”

  She saw his mouth pull together as he fought a laugh. “You opened a bottle of champagne in a cab?”

  “The driver might have helped. I think he was hoping it would calm me down.”

  “It didn’t calm you down,” he said.

  She wished she could curl up on the floor and slip into a coma so she wouldn’t have to face any further humiliation. “You’d be a better judge of that than I would. I don’t really remember much after that.”

  “Would you like me to fill in the rest?” he asked charitably.

  She groaned. “All right,” she said slowly, reluctantly. “As long as you promise to bury my body afterward. Somewhere no one will find it. Maybe then the humiliation will die with me.”

  He chuckled again, shifting on the stool. “It wasn’t as bad as all that,” he assured her. “The talk will die down in ten or twenty years.”

  Chapter Five

  Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

  Monica let her head fall to the counter again, hoping the impact would knock her unconscious.

  “Matt’s new wife is my sister, you know.”

  She sat up so fast, the bones in her spine snapped. Her eyes rounded.

  “You don’t remember that part, huh?” he asked with a smug smile.

  “No.” She looked skyward, praying for divine intervention. “Oh, lord, what did I do?” Her gaze swung back to him. “If she’s your sister, and I ruined her wedding reception, then how did you and I… How did we…”

  “End up in bed together?” His grin widened and a devilish glint sparkled in his eyes.

  She wanted to slap that look off his face, but was too busy trying not to burst into flames of embarrassment. Her face flushed sixteen shades of red. She felt it. At the speed of light, heat rushed from the bottom of her neck to the top of her head, coloring every inch of skin in between.

  He was joking. He had to be joking. She knew they’d technically been in bed together, but she’d been passed out and he’d only been sleeping. Right? She’d know if they’d done more than that.

  “That’s a long but very amusing story,” he said, either ignoring or not noticing her abject horror and disgrace.

  She waited for the rest, not wanting to hear, but knowing she had to if she was ever to make sense of the day she’d woken up to.

  “You created quite a stir at the reception, I’ll give you that. Came in drunk off your ass, climbed onto the platform in front of the bridal party, and made a long speech about how you were supposed to be the one married to Matt. You called him ‘Matt the Rat.’”

  She snorted. That description was still accurate, in her opinion.

  “Matt tried to quiet you down. Josie was frantic.”

  “Who’s Josie?”

  “My sister.”

  She blushed again. “Oh.”

  “Josie asked me to do something about you, so I did.”

  Monica raised her eyes, meeting his gaze. “How?”

  “Threw you over my shoulder and carried you out like a sack of grain, that’s how.”

  She nodded. “That must have been very humiliating.” For both of them. “Thank you, I guess.”

  Smiling, he said, “You didn’t seem too grateful at the time. More green around the gills. You threatened to vomit on me.”

  Could this day get any worse? Could he possibly reveal anything more embarrassing than what he’d told her already? Unless…

  “Did I?” she asked weakly.

  “Nah. You were too busy hatching your plan.”

  “My…plan?” she choked out.

  His smile grew wider. “To get even with Matt. You figured that if we tied the knot, you could make him jealous so he’d leave Josie and come back to you.”

  “And you went along with it?” she asked, shocked. “Against your sister?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Not really against my sister. I figure, if Matt is a big enough jerk to mess around on Josie, then she’s better off without him. If he’s an okay guy and you’re just overreacting…”

  He paused as if he expected her to refute his words. But how could she? If putting on a wedding dress and crashing someone else’s reception wasn’t an overreaction, she didn’t know what was.

  When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Well, if your plan fails, Josie and Matt will still be married. No harm done.”

  Shaking her head, she ran slightly trembling fingers through her hair, then brought the left down to stare at the diamond weighing so very heavily on her hand and her heart.

  His explanation was fine as far as it went, but she suspected there was more to this than what he was leading her to believe. What kind of man married a total stranger ten minutes after they’d met?

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “You’re sure the marriage was real? I mean, you could have just slapped a ring on my finger to play along, and I wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  Without warning, Ryder shoved his stool back and stood, shifting nervously. “You’re making it worth my while.”

  Monica narrowed her eyes, wondering why he seemed so uncomfortable. The man had married her—actually married her rather than just pretending, which is what she’d have done had she been in her right mind—but suddenly he felt ill at ease? Too bad that case of nerves hadn’t come up before he said “I do.”

  “Worth your while?” she asked warily. “How exactly am I going to do that?” If it had anything to do with sex, she was going to claim insanity brought on by the consumption of alcohol and hop the next flight back home. If he tried to hold her to a devil’s bargain, she’d have every lawyer in Chicago on retainer before her plane touched solid ground.

  He speared her with a sharp glance. “You know what you promised—a fifty-thousand-dollar investment in my ranch.”

  She clutched a handful of shirt over the region of her heart. “Fifty thousand dollars? Where am I supposed to get fifty thousand dollars?”

  And then it dawned on her. Her jaw dropped into a long O. “Oh, that fifty thousand dollars,” she said quietly. “But I don’t have it anymore. Matt ran off with every penny I had to my name.”

  Ryder kicked his stool out of the way, causing it to teeter precariously on two legs before settling again, and moved closer to the counter. He loomed over her, making Monica wish she could sneak out of the room and finish the rest of this conversation via Skype—with an ocean and three continents between them.

  “What do you mean you don’t have the money?” he asked through clenched teeth. He yanked a worn leather wallet from his hip pocket and tossed some folded papers at her. “There’s our marriage certificate and the agreement you signed, so don’t even think of backing out,” he added with a growl. If his fists tightened any more, his knuckles would pop off like the buttons on David Banner’s shirt as he turned into the Incredible Hulk.

  “I mean I don’t have the money. I don’t have any money,” she said as she unfolded the papers in front of her. Sure enough, there was a brand new, bona fide marriage certificate—signed by her and Ryder, sealed by a modern-day minister-slash-officiant, and delivered by one very ticked-off new husband. There was also a random envelope with the previous day’s date scrawled across the top, followed by the words, I, Monica Blair, do hereby promise to invest $50,000 in the Rolling Rock Ranch in return for Ryder Nash agreeing to marry me for an unspecified amount of time. There was some additional information about accruing interest on top of a fifty-fifty split once something called EAT started making money. The majority of it may not be in her handwriting, but that was definitely her printed name at the top and her signature at the bottom.

  She threw her arms up in supplication. “I’m sorry if I told you I had this much, and even sorrier if I said you could have it, but except for last month’s paycheck, I honestly don’t have two nickels to rub together. Matt convinced me to give him my life savings, and then he up and ran off with that…with your sister.”

  Ryder’s molars ground back and forth in fury. She could almost hear them being worn down to nubs. With shoulders tense and feet spread, he looked prepared to fight. And all Monica could think was that if he took a swing at her, she should duck and run for cover.

  “Why would you give that man your life savings and then let him run off with another woman?” he charged.

  She almost rolled her eyes, then thought better of it. Ryder probably wouldn’t appreciate such a gesture in his present mood.

  “I didn’t know he was going to run off,” she answered, with just as much accusation in her tone as he’d used with her. “I thought we were going to be married. I thought we were going to start a new fashion magazine together. I thought I was going to be the head photographer of that magazine.”

  She thrust out her chin and stuck clenched fists on her hips in a mirror image of Ryder’s own defensive stance. The papers crinkled in her grip. “I did not think my fiancé was going to run off with another woman and leave me high and dry. So excuse me very much for making plans for the future.”

  Ryder stared at her a moment with crazed rage in his eyes. Then he snorted at her. A leave-it-to-a-woman-to-screw-up-this-badly, I-should-have-known, you-idiot snort.

  Monica inhaled so deeply, she thought her lungs would burst. “Don’t you snort at me,” she demanded, all but shaking a finger in his face. “I’m not the one who married an intoxicated woman after my own sister’s wedding. Just how drunk were you to believe I was going to give you fifty thousand dollars just to marry me? I could have had any man in Chicago for fifty bucks and a six-pack of beer!”

  He took several deep breaths, relaxing enough to cross his arms over his chest instead of letting them hang like two-by-fours at his sides. “Are you finished?” he asked quietly.

  His sudden turn from anger to almost unbothered left her momentarily speechless. Then she let her own arms drop and shrugged. “I guess.”

  He slipped the papers from the tight fist at her side and tucked them back into his pocket. Then he turned away and headed for the fridge to root around in one of the compartments.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked tentatively, taking a small step forward.

  “About what?” he asked over his shoulder.

  About global warming and the fate of sea turtles in Portugal, what do you think? But she didn’t say that. “About us,” she stressed instead, slipping her hands into her front pockets.

  “I don’t know about you, but I have a legally binding piece of paper that says you’ll be putting fifty thousand dollars into my ranch. One way or another, I plan to collect.” He straightened, a slice of bologna in his mouth. “But for now, I have work to do.”

  Her nose wrinkled at the sight of that disgusting piece of processed meat by-product hanging from between his teeth. She didn’t particularly like meat, and bologna was the worst. Snouts and beaks and assorted rat parts, she was sure.

  He crossed the kitchen again, heading for the front door, totally ignoring her.

  “Wait,” she called after him, pulling her hands from her front pockets as though that would stop him. “We haven’t figured out what to do about this mess yet. And what am I supposed to do while you’re working?”

  Pausing on the threshold, he finished chewing the bite of lunchmeat. “Whatever floats your boat, darlin’,” he said, fixing her with a cocky, too-sexy grin. “Cook, clean, go bungee jumping with that little belly button ring of yours.” His eyes fixed on the small silver hoop above her navel for a moment before sliding up to meet her gaze.

  “Or maybe you can sit down and figure out some way to come up with that fifty thousand dollars you owe me. ’Cuz you aren’t leaving until I get my money.”

  Chapter Six

  If you’re in doubt about whether to kiss someone, give ’em the benefit of the doubt.

  “Excuse me?” Her mouth went as wide as her eyes, and she was sure she’d heard him wrong. She wasn’t leaving until he got his money? That sounded eerily like a threat to her. Like he planned to hold her hostage until she paid up.

  She expected him to turn around and explain what he’d meant, but he kept walking with that damn infuriating, careless stride of his, acting as though he hadn’t heard her half-shriek.

  “Wait a minute,” she called after him. He ignored her. She caught the front screen door before it could swing closed behind him and stepped onto the front porch. He still didn’t stop.

  Since she wasn’t wearing shoes—and Ryder didn’t seem inclined to slow down so she could run back to the bedroom for the satin pumps she’d worn with her wedding gown—she clamped down on the tiny bit of dread she felt at the thought of going barefoot just to follow him and sank her feet directly onto the warm, dry ground.

  The sun hit her full force the minute she stepped off the porch. She threw a hand up to block the rays and tried not to squint. Squinting caused crow’s feet. Sun caused other assorted wrinkles, not to mention dry skin, sunburn, age spots, and cancer. Dirt seeped between her toes and a sharp stone bit into the sensitive flesh of her instep. She grimaced but said nothing.

  The glare of the sun turned Ryder into a dark outline of human form a yard or two ahead of her as she tried to keep up.

  Covering her eyes with one hand, holding her jeans up with the other, she tiptoed a few steps, loathe to grind even more dirt and grit into her soft, once-white feet. She wobbled and winced with each step, and probably looked like a dizzy penguin.

  Pavement. That’s what she needed. Nice, flat pavement that wouldn’t bruise the bottoms of her feet and put her in line for an emergency pedicure.