Vegas Vows, Texas Nights. Charlene Sands

Epilogue

       About the Publisher

       One

      Las Vegas, Nevada

      Katie woke slowly, snuggling into her cushy pillow, her eyes refusing to open. A warming ray coming through the hotel room window caressed her skin, telling her it was later than her usual 4:00 a.m. wake-up-and-bake time.

      But she wasn’t in Boone Springs today and Katie’s Kupcakes and Bakery was closed this weekend. She’d planned a super fun bachelorette party for her best friend, Drea, and fittingly, she’d just had the best dream of her life. Though the details were fuzzy, she’d never woken up with such delicious contentment before. From head to toe, her entire body tingled.

      A nudge to her shoulder popped her eyes open. What the…?

      “Sorry,” a deep male voice whispered from behind her.

      Her eyes opened wider as she tried to make sense of it. She hadn’t imagined or dreamed the voice, had she? No, she was fully awake now, and it had been real. She could feel the warmth of the sheets beside her. A hand brushed over her bare shoulder and she gasped.

      Oh no. She recognized that voice.

      Taking the sheets covering her bare body, she rolled over, hoping her mind had played a nasty trick on her. But that hope was dashed the second she laid eyes on him, Lucas Boone—her sister’s ex-fiancé, the man who’d crushed Shelly’s heart.

      Her stomach began to ache.

      She clutched the sheets to her chin and sat up. That’s when her head started pounding. “Luke, what on earth?” Dizzy, she swayed and struggled to focus.

      “Sweetheart, lay back down. You drank me under the table last night and my head’s aching like a sonofabitch. Your hangover’s got to be much worse than mine.”

      “My…hangover? Luke, damn it. Is that all you have to say? Look at us! We’re in bed together. And unless I miss my guess, you’re as stark naked under the sheets as I am.”

      He reached for the sheet.

      “Don’t you dare look,” she warned.

      He set the sheet back down. “I guess you’d be right.”

      Her cheeks burned. Being in bed with Lucas Boone was wrong on so many levels, she could hardly believe it. “What on earth did we do last night?”

      Luke glanced at their shed clothes littering the hotel room and arched a brow.

      “We couldn’t have. I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…”

      Goodness. She thought back to how Luke had called off the wedding to Katie’s sister three days before the ceremony and had immediately enlisted in the Marines.

      He’d claimed he wasn’t ready to settle down and took all the blame upon himself, but that didn’t make up for all the time he’d spent leading Shelly to believe they’d had a future together. That had been five years ago. Now Luke was living in Boone Springs again, the town founded a century ago by his ancestors. He was his brother Mason’s best man, while Katie was maid of honor for Mason’s fiancée, Drea. Unwittingly she and Luke had been thrown together in a joint bachelor/bachelorette party in Sin City. Vegas, baby. What happened here stayed here.

      She thought about her sister again. How her scars remained. Poor Shelly faced the humiliation bravely but she’d never forgotten what Luke had done to her, how he’d betrayed her love and trust. She’d become bitter and sad and never let her mother, Diana, or Katie hear the end of how Luke had ruined her life. So the thought of Katie sleeping with Luke, her one-time friend, drunk or not, would be the worst of the worst.

      Luke rolled over onto his side and braced his head in his hand, as if they were discussing what to have for breakfast. “What do you remember about last night?”

      “What do I remember?”

      “Yeah, do you remember leaving the party with me?”

      She moved away from him as far as the bed would allow and thought about it. She remembered drinking and laughing and dancing with Luke most of the night. She’d felt guilty having so much fun with him, but they’d always gotten along, had always been friends until he’d backed out of the wedding.

      The Boones had been good customers at her bakery. She and Luke also shared a love of horses and both volunteered at the Red Barrel Horse Rescue. Still, ever since his return from military service nearly a year ago, they’d been overly cautious with each other, their conversations often stilted and awkward. Katie, too, had been hurt when Luke had dumped her sister. Katie had also trusted him.

      “I remember you offering to walk me back to my hotel.” Which was only a few blocks away from the nightclub.

      “We’d both had too much to drink.”

      The pain in her head was a reminder of that. “Yes.”

      Luke stared into her eyes; his were clear and deep blue. Kinda mesmerizing. “You pleaded with me not to take you back to your hotel. You didn’t want the night to end. You…uh…”

      Katie rubbed her aching head. This was getting worse by the second. “What?”

      Luke remained silent.

      “What did I say?” she demanded. She had to know, to make some sense out of this.

      “You said you wanted what your friends had. You wanted someone to love.”

      “Oh God.” She covered her face with her hands, her long hair spilling down. She was embarrassed that in her drunken state, she’d revealed her innermost secret desire. And to Luke no less. “And so we ended up in your hotel room?”

      Luke flinched and his eyes squeezed shut. The concerned expression on his face really worried her. “Not exactly. We went somewhere else first.”

      “Another club?”

      He shook his head. “Not according to this.” He grabbed a piece of paper from his nightstand and gave it a once-over. “Another thing you said you wanted…” He handed her the paper.

      She looked down at the bold lettering on the piece of parchment she held and her hand began shaking. A marriage certificate. Both of their names were listed and it had today’s date. “You can’t be serious.”

      “Hey, I don’t remember much from last night either. My head’s spinning like a damn top right now.”

      This was ridiculous. It had to be a bad joke. Where was the hidden camera? Someone was pranking her.

      Yes, it was true she’d thought of her secret wishes, often. She’d wanted to find love and be married, though she’d never voiced those wishes to anyone. She didn’t want her friends to worry about her or think she envied their happiness, but she wouldn’t have told Luke that, would she? Certainly she wouldn’t have acted upon it.

      Yet, the proof was staring her in the face. Dated today, as in they’d gotten married after midnight, about the time they’d walked out of the club together. The facts added up, but she still had trouble digesting all of it.

      “I can’t believe this. No, this isn’t happening.” She lowered her voice. “We didn’t…do anything else, did we?”

      Was she being naive to think that she’d end up naked in bed with handsome, appealing Luke without having sex with him?

      “I remember some things. From last night.” The blue in his eyes grew darker, more intense. “Don’t you?”

      She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to think it possible to spend the night with the one man in the whole world who was off-limits to her. But darn it, vague memories started to breach the surface of her mind.