Max pushed himself up off his chair. “No, what’s on your bucket list is to see the world. As soon as the harvest is in, we can do that. Together. Starting in Europe, as we discussed last night.”
Okay, so she’d pretty much told him everything. Parents dead, check. Dreams and ambitions, check. Real name, check.
Even Khara, who she’d worked with – and partied with – for nearly two months didn’t know more about her than her favourite music and movies. And she considered Khara one of the best friends she’d had in years.
Phoenix needed something stronger than coffee to deal with this. But since it couldn’t be more than…she glanced out the window…ten in the morning, she’d have to settle for the sofa and resting her fevered head in her hands.
Even if she could magically grow wings and fly out of this suite, she’d have to stay. There was no way she could run away from this. Not until there were signed divorce papers next those marriage papers.
Max came to sit beside her on the sofa, but he didn’t touch her. “Can I get you anything for your headache? Do you want to go back to bed?”
“Yes.” One form of escape was as good as another. Then as that infernal smile tugged at his lips, she added: “alone.”
Why waste such nice sheets and pillows? She could have a nap, and when the headache was gone they could have a rational conversation about getting divorced. And if she was going to sleep, it might as well be here in luxury, rather than in the motel where she could hear the couple next door bickering through the walls all day and all night. They’d lived there going on six years now. That was the thing with couples. They tended to get stuck in a rut, in a dead end. She wasn’t ever going to get caught in a rut. She wasn’t planning on staying in either the dead-end motel, the dead-end job or even this dead-end city, for more than a few months.
Besides, she’d come here for the memories, a final adieu to her parents before setting off alone into the wide world. But her parents weren’t here. Vegas had changed since they’d lived here. She’d changed.
There was never any point in going back, only moving forward.
She struggled up from the sofa, but Max was quicker. He caught her up in his arms and, ignoring her protest, carried her back to the bedroom. “Second time I get to carry you across the threshold.” His voice was low and husky, right by her ear.
“Please tell me we didn’t follow every cheesy wedding custom? If we were married at a drive-through or by Elvis, I think I might throw up.”
“Pink Cadillac, Elvis in a white suit, and everything.”
She must have turned green, because he laughed, a deep rumble against her chest. “That was a joke. Except for the glitter guns, it was classy and intimate. And very, very private.”
“I don’t suppose you have pictures?” Not that she planned to keep a scrapbook of the occasion, but maybe they’d trigger a memory…
“No pictures.” He smiled, and this time she had the distinct impression he was smiling at some secret. Almost gloating.
She narrowed her eyes. There was something she was missing here.
“Shall I tell you a bedtime story?” An odd way to divert her, but she nodded. No-one had told her a bedtime story since she was ten and her mother died. Since Dad almost always worked nights, she’d usually been tucked away to sleep in some dingy dressing room, or in the corner of a brightly-lit green room. Dad always said it was her greatest accomplishment: the ability to sleep anywhere at any time.
His death had robbed her of that gift. Sleep eluded her most nights now.
Max laid her down on the bed and pulled the covers over her, tucking her in. It was certainly nice to be taken care of, and made for a pleasant change. And maybe, if she was really lucky, she’d wake up and find this was all nothing more than a strange dream.
She closed her eyes and didn’t open them when Max climbed onto the bed next to her. He stayed above the covers but looped an arm across her hip. The weight of it was strangely comforting, in spite of the flutter in her heartbeat that accompanied it.
“A long time ago, in a kingdom far away,” Max began. “There was a king who lived in a big stone castle. Since his kingdom controlled access to the river, he was a very rich and powerful king. Like all kings of that time, he married a wealthy princess from another land. It was, of course, an arranged marriage, and the king never bothered to make any effort to know his bride, or to love her. Instead he flaunted his mistress for the entire kingdom to see, giving his bastard children great honours, and carving up the kingdom between them. His subjects grew to hate him, and they hated his mistress even more, and when he announced that he was divorcing his rightful queen to marry his mistress, the people revolted. They appealed to the queen’s family who sent an army, and for many years the little kingdom was torn apart by civil war.
“When the war finally ended, the kingdom was never again as prosperous as it had been. The new king who took the throne, after his uncle was brutally and publicly executed, made a vow to his people: never again would any member of the royal family divorce. They would love their spouses and live quietly without scandal for as long as the kingdom remained.
“A powerful sorceress witnessed his vow and cast a spell on his family, a blessing on their marriages. Ever since, every marriage in the royal family has been a happy one, and the couples have always found true love with the one they married.”
It was a very strange bedtime story. She’d never heard anything like it. But his voice was hypnotic, and his hand stroking down her hip was soothing. Phoenix sank back into sleep, the deepest sleep she’d had in months without the aid of sedatives.
Max lay beside Phoenix and watched her sleep. Awake, she had a vibrancy about her that made it hard to see the real woman behind the façade, but asleep the fragility beneath the surface was more apparent. Her slender face, with high, pronounced cheekbones and pointed chin, looked almost elfin.
After the restlessness driving him these last couple of weeks and the jet lag from all the travelling he’d done, it was an unexpected joy to do nothing. And to do nothing with the woman who turned him inside out every time he looked at her.
He hadn’t truly believed all those stories he’d been raised on about falling in love at first sight until the moment it happened to him. It had been that way for his parents, and his grandparents, but he hadn’t given his own marriage much thought.
But the moment he’d walked into that dive of a bar and seen Phoenix leaning over the pool table, concentration focussed on lining up her next shot, he’d been a believer. ‘Moth to a flame’ and all those other clichés had nothing on the instant attraction he’d felt for her. And it wasn’t all due to the sexy, slender figure wrapped in tight jeans. Her appeal had been more than physical. She’d laughed as she’d lifted her head and caught his eye, and he’d been dazzled.
He still felt dazzled.
And she still hadn’t removed his ring from her finger.
He stroked his finger lightly down her cheek, and Phoenix stirred in her sleep, full, pink lips curving in a brief smile as she sank deeper into sleep. She smiled a lot when she was awake, but that smile was nothing like this one. She seemed to have a public smile, a wide, bright one, and this smile, her more intimate, sexier one. Fitting. He knew all about the difference between the public persona and the private one, and it would make life easier on his wife if she did too.
He fluffed the pillow beneath his head and rolled on his back to look up at the ceiling. For the first time since he’d received the tearful midnight phone call from his mother, he felt at peace.
The big