Before Daylight Read online

  Her eyes narrowed into slits, and she slammed the door behind her. She wore a flimsy, cotton sundress, and he had to school himself not to give her the lazy once-over he was dying for. Somehow, he knew that flirting wasn’t going to get him out of trouble this time.

  “You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” She walked toward him, her right hand forming a fist. The light shining from the screens cast part of her face in shadow, which served to make her look even more pissed off, like a cartoon villain. Was she actually going to punch him?

  Confused, he held his hands up to cover his face. “I still don’t know what I did.”

  She stopped about three feet away from him, and he was kind of glad. He was down for whatever sort of bedroom shit she’d like to do with him, but face-punching wasn’t his kink.

  “Are you just playing dumb, or are you just as clueless as I was until this morning?”

  “Option B.”

  Her hand uncurled, and he finally breathed. She was still panting, and he wanted to offer her a seat, but she was a bit like a bomb about to go off right now, and he wasn’t sure of the right move.

  “We’re married.”

  His brain flickered on and off like the lights during a thunderstorm. She couldn’t possibly have said what he just thought she said. He looked at his left hand, wondering if a wedding band had suddenly appeared.

  “When?”

  She cocked her head and pursed her lips, regarding him as though he were an idiot. “When do you think, asshole?”

  The “asshole” didn’t have quite the same sting as the first one, so he guessed he was winning there.

  “In Bali?” His brain was a complete blank. Embarrassment crept in over his confusion. He hadn’t gotten blackout drunk since college. And, even then, it was once or twice. He even remembered making the stupid video, which was probably a big part of the reason Laura was so upset about being married to him. “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, I don’t either.” She put her hands on her slim hips, still looking down at him.

  “Do you want to sit down?” He gestured at the other editing chair, figuring she might need to take a seat. He’d have been on the floor in a very un-masculine dead faint had he been standing when she’d told him that they were married.

  “No. I won’t be here long.”

  “I think we have some things to talk about.” Like divorcing him. Fuck. No one in his family but him had ever been divorced. That’s not something Laughlins did. His parents would be devastated if he was the family’s first and second divorces. He could imagine his mother’s tutting over his failure right now. His brothers were all happily married and reproducing at an alarming rate—not him.

  “I don’t need to sit down for you to agree to an annulment.”

  Charlie shook his head, hoping to clear the cobwebs, but she must have taken it as a refusal to give her what she wanted.

  “You’re going to say ‘no’ to me?”

  “No. I’m just—I’m just confused. How the fuck did this happen?”

  She leaned over and he got a whiff of her scent. Fresh. Citrusy. He remembered that scent from burying his face in her neck and kissing up and down her pretty throat. Just that got his dick half hard, and he suppressed the groan that would probably bring back the fist.

  “You. Tell. Me.” Finally, she sat in the chair facing him. He looked at her face instead of her endless crossed legs. “I figure that you got me drunk and found the officiant because you knew that was the only way you’d have a shot.”

  Hard-on defeated. Anger, ready at the go. “Are you fucking kidding me?” It was his turn to stand up. “I would never do that.”

  “Well, one of the last things I remember was you telling me how much you wanted to get married, which I frankly thought was weird. And then, I told you that you were barking up the wrong tree.”

  Charlie didn’t even remember that. He recalled walking over to Laura as she sat at the bar alone while everyone danced. He’d ordered them both drinks. Those fucking tropical drinks that had fucked his whole life up.

  “The drinks—”

  Laura moved her finger back and forth in his face. “Uh-uh. You’re not going to pretend that this wasn’t your plan all along.”

  He wasn’t sure if the hair on his arms stood up because he was turned on or terrified of her. She was out of her damned mind, this one. “Why would I marry someone that I hardly know?” And someone who had made her clear disinterest in him plainly known as soon as he’d joined her at the bar. Charlie was an affable guy, a bit of a flirt, and they were two of the only single people at the wedding. He’d figured they’d have a drink and she could maybe make him look good on the dance floor.

  She’d shut him down immediately, like before he could get a word out. Sort of like she’d shut down his explanation.

  His shoulders collapsed, and he looked at the screen. He couldn’t take the Laura Delgado death glare any longer. He wondered if she deployed it in order to get the best roles as a principal dancer. If she frightened Charlie with a flash of her fathomless, almost-black eyes, then a ballet teacher wouldn’t be able to stand up to it.

  He shook his head again, hoping to rattle a memory loose, some sort of clue as to how this had happened. “How did you find out?”

  “My grandfather told me that he couldn’t file my taxes without my husband’s signature.”

  “So there’s actual paperwork on this?”

  “Apparently someone in the Balinese bureaucracy sent something to someone in the Dade County clerk’s office, so we’re all official.”

  Fuck. “I’ll give you the annulment”

  “Of course you will.”

  Her scoffing tone got under his skin—like the idea of marrying him was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. “What if I hadn’t wanted the annulment?”

  “We didn’t consummate the marriage, so I don’t think that would be an option for you.”

  She had a point. They’d both been drunk, but by the time they’d made it to the hammock, he’d had the presence of mind to put a stop to her digging in his trousers for his dick. Even with a long-term partner, drunk sloppy sex was not his favorite. And, with a stranger, it was completely out of the question. When they had sex—and the way their sparks were flying off each other, they would have sex—he wanted her present and willing.

  Still, even though she was pissed at him and probably thinking of ways to detach his nads and serve them to him, he kind of wanted to consummate the fake marriage. Before she ended it. He wanted to kiss up and down her regal neck and unwind the tight bun so her hair would fall over and brush his chest. He wanted her to moan with pleasure like she had that night—their wedding night—when he’d rubbed her to a hard orgasm as a consolation prize for refusing to fuck her.

  But, what he needed to know was how and why this happened.

  And, he was sitting in the right room to do it. He hadn’t made it to the footage of the reception yet, where any incriminating video might be found. If there was any moment to skip to the good parts, that moment was now.

  Chapter 2

  He had no right to sit there looking so good and smelling so good. Not while she was panicking and furious with him. The smile he’d given her when she’d stormed into the room was knee-weakening. And resolve-deadening.

  “I was editing the wedding video while waiting for the Bali show to go through post-production. Maybe there’s a clue as to how the fuck this happened here.”

  Laura couldn’t stand how calm Charlie was about this whole thing. If she hadn’t menaced him quite thoroughly when she walked in, he probably would have shrugged a shoulder, opened a beer, and moved on. This didn’t even seem to register as a mild inconvenience for him. And, for some reason, that infuriated her.

  She wanted him to act like a dick so she wouldn’t feel guilty about yelling at him. He was bein
g so accommodating and unruffled, despite the video he’d made about his ex-wife and her opinions about his sexual prowess five years ago. She’d watched it after Carla had told her about the television show, and her cousin had assured her that Charlie was not that guy. Jonah and Carla even let him babysit Layla, which spoke volumes about how much they trusted him. Carla barely let her own brother hold Layla—she’d told him that he needed at least five years free of stripper glitter before touching her. She’d been joking, but barely.

  Delivering the news that his second marriage was about to be even shorter than his first kind of felt like kicking a puppy.

  “Want to watch the tape and figure it out?”

  That would be helpful, but she had to get out of this room before spending too much time with him. He was cute and helpful, and the idea of spending time with him—of him wanting to spend time with her even though she was completely broken—terrified her.

  “I don’t give a fuck how this happened. I just want it fixed.” She had to stop being such a bitch. When she’d told him about the impromptu wedding, he’d looked just as shocked as she’d been when her grandfather had shared the news with her. This hadn’t been a plot, just a terrible error in judgment. Even though a part of her was dying to know how they’d gotten from small talk to matrimony in a period of hours—or even minutes.

  “Come on. You’re not the least bit curious as to how we came to this state of wedded bliss?” He smiled at her, and she had to purse her lips to keep from smiling back.

  She was curious, and needing to know when combined with his charm got the best of her. More than how they actually had ended up getting drunkenly married, she wanted to know how this had happened with her entire family around.

  Because she could understand why someone would want to marry Charlie Laughlin—just not her. Just looking at him explained his marriageability. He was at least 6’3” or maybe 6’4” and had almost black hair and these arresting blue eyes. Black Irish, Lola had said. He was lean, and he clearly worked out—not as much as her, but no one worked out as much as she did.

  But his fabulous looks weren’t what made him so attractive, so disarming. Sure, part of it was the dimple and the mischief in his eyes when he’d looked at her. But it was more than that. When Charlie Laughlin put his attention on her, it was overwhelming.

  When he’d looked up as she entered the dark editing room, she’d felt a punch of lust so powerful that it was even more maddening than the fact that she’d drunkenly married a very hot stranger.

  And though she’d assumed he was a smarmy douche when they’d met before the wedding, none of that had been borne out by his behavior. He’d been editing his best friend’s wedding video when she’d found him, not snorting lines of blow off various sex workers’ body parts.

  She could very well remember why she’d thrown off her strict diet and gotten drunk at the wedding—it hadn’t been entirely clear that she’d be able to return to the company after her last injury anyway, so what was the point? And she knew why she wanted to kiss him—she liked the way his very kissable lips moved, and the sound of his voice made her hot and achy.

  He was basically the human equivalent of the flu: contagious, debilitating, and possibly deadly.

  While she’d been thinking about how dead sexy he was, he’d been fast-forwarding through video. He must have felt her gaze burning into the side of his face after a few moments because he looked up and said, “What?”

  She shook her head. “I guess I’m still in shock. Can’t believe I married you.”

  One corner of his mouth rose, revealing a dimple deep enough to stick her whole thumb inside. God, the editing room was cold. That had to be the explanation for her tight nipples and the goose bumps on her arms. And the reason her ribs felt tight around her lungs.

  “Come on, I’m not so bad.” His gaze returned to the monitor, and she felt like she could breathe again. “Some women even find me charming.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Her words had no fire because she found him charming, but she couldn’t show it. She wasn’t about to start showing weakness now.

  She watched as he fast-forwarded the tape, stopping here and there. His hands were kind of beautiful. He had long fingers. Although he was way too rough and tumble to be a ballet dancer, there was something about him that moved with grace and economy.

  Needing to stop looking at him, she turned toward the monitor, too. The tape revealed the sun diving behind the horizon, and she knew that the moment—if it was on tape—was coming.

  Charlie stopped right at the moment he’d walked over to her at the bar. When she saw her own face, screwed up, trying to feign some imperious nature she didn’t possess, her cheeks flamed. Her parents might have sheltered her from a lot growing up to keep her focused on her burgeoning ballet career, but they’d never taught her to be rude. And she’d been rude to Charlie. But something about him scared her, as though he was going to tip her apple cart right over and destroy the life she had built for herself.

  She liked the way he looked too much—and he’d been even better in a linen shirt and pants that had shown his top-shelf ass. Not sure if it was out of embarrassment or a need to see that his posterior really was that distracting, she glanced over now.

  Yep. Top. Shelf. Ass.

  He just happened to turn at the same time, catching her. Her skin all over was on fire, and it made her feel like she was losing her mind. She was around gorgeous bodies all the time, and didn’t have this reaction. Hell, men nearly as good-looking as Charlie had their hands right up near her business on an almost daily basis, and she didn’t get to the same level of worked up that she was at right now.

  Hastily, she looked back at the screen, just in time to see them do the first in now what she remembered as a series of shots. So many shots. And she couldn’t even blame him for getting her drunk because she was clearly making a motion at the bartender for more. And more. And more.

  “Can you fast-forward this?”

  “No.” His voice held a kind of bewilderment. “I need to understand how you didn’t throw up.”

  “We can’t know that I didn’t throw up.”

  “Sure we can. I remember kissing you later that evening, and I clearly remember that you didn’t taste like tequila vomit.”

  Laura only remembered flashes and scraps of kisses, and she suddenly felt like she’d cheated herself out of something special. She felt even more cheated when past-Laura grabbed Charlie’s hand and dragged him out onto the dance floor. It made her downright salty to not recall the feel of his big hands with the graceful fingers all over her body as they swayed to a slow song. Past-her was such a bitch to be keeping all of those smiles and whispers and jokes that had actually made her laugh to herself. Past-Laura knew how to have fun, and past-Charlie had known how to give it to her.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. Because she certainly hadn’t done much laughing since returning to work three months ago.

  “Can you please just fast-forward?”

  Charlie complied, and she was both thankful and bereft of the moments she was now deliberately, soberly ignoring. He stopped the tape again when they surrounded the officiant and dragged him into a corner. After a few minutes of what looked like tense negotiating, past-Laura, past-Charlie, and the officiant disappeared from the screen.

  He stopped the tape and they stared at each other for a long moment, neither of them saying anything.

  “Well?” She wasn’t precisely sure what she was asking, never having accidentally married a stranger who happened to be a family friend.

  “I can call Javi and see who handled his divorce.” That wasn’t a call that Laura wanted to make. Her older cousin would be discreet if she begged, but he would hold her shenanigans over her head if it suited him. “I think we can get an annulment because we were both drunk and we didn’t fuck.”

  Wh
en she said the word “fuck,” Charlie flinched as though she’d punched him. “I like that you’re blunt, Delgado.” He seemed to collect himself, and nodded. “Go ahead and call Javi. I don’t want to pull in the studio’s lawyers on this one.”

  “You have lawyers on hand for accidental weddings during shoots?”

  The amusement was back in Charlie’s gaze, and it immediately affected her below the belt. “No. We have had on-camera personalities and producers get into legal trouble, but the people we have on staff are business affairs guys. If it was someone else, I’d probably hand this over to them, but neither of us needs my mom finding out that I got married.”

  “Would you be embarrassed if your mom found out you’d married me?”

  “I thought the whole point was that no one should find out?” He sighed, and clenched his jaw so his dimple made an appearance. “And I’d prefer it if neither of my parents found out about my second failed marriage.”

  She was surprised to hear him joke about it, and felt a pang in her chest. Getting married had been a terrible decision for both of them.

  “Yes.” She almost choked on the words because she didn’t want anyone to find out, but the idea that she was an embarrassment to him didn’t sit right with her. It probably sat about as well as her coming in here, guns blazing, demanding to know how he’d tricked her into marriage had less than an hour ago.

  After that, they sat in silence for long moments. Very awkward silence. Finally, as she was leaning over to get her purse, he said, “Want to grab dinner?”

  She wanted to say yes. It seemed like the right thing to do, the normal thing to do, grabbing a bite to eat with her husband, but she couldn’t. Even this hour in the editing room was stolen from her true love—ballet.

  “I can’t. Rehearsal.” He winced again when she said that. “Maybe some other time.”

  He stood as she did, like a gentleman. Though she’d stormed into this room, thinking he was the bad guy, he was a gentleman. “How about tomorrow?”