The Maverick's Accidental Bride. Christine Rimmer

I’m more concerned with—” she turned away again and cleared her throat “—the question of whether or not you and I...” And then she looked at him again, her eyes huge and haunted. “Did we have sex, Will?”

      Damn. Direct question. He tried to think of a gentle way to tell her that he had no idea if they had or they hadn’t.

      But he took too long, and she went on. “I hope you know, because I don’t. I don’t know how we got here, Will. It’s all just vague, cloudy images, flashes of us dancing. Of us laughing together. Of us kissing...” Her too-pale face colored slightly.

      He remembered those kisses, too, remembered that she smelled so good and tasted so sweet, that her slim body fit just right in his arms. “I remember kissing you, too.”

      “So then tell me. Please. Did we...?”

      He was forced to confess, “I’m sorry, Jordyn. But I don’t remember, either.”

      She stared at him as though he’d just slapped her across the face. “Oh, fabulous.” More color flooded her soft cheeks—angry color now. “So I’m that forgettable, am I?”

      “Jordyn, be fair. You don’t remember, either.” He said it roughly, letting his own frustration show—and then regretted his harsh tone when her eyes welled with tears. “Aw, come on, don’t cry...”

      Too late. Fat tears spilled over and trailed down her cheeks. She sniffed. “I...I can’t help it. I’m a virgin.” His mouth dropped open when she said that. She let out a sad little sigh. “Or I was a virgin.” He gaped at her as she swiped furiously at the tears running down her face. “Can you just not look at me like that, please?” She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears still leaked out. “Oh, I can’t believe I just said that, just told you that...”

      He tried to soothe her. “Jordyn, it’s okay...”

      “It is not okay, and don’t you say that it is. Everything is very, very not okay.”

      He pleaded, “You have to believe me. I can’t see how I would ever take advantage of you that way.” But he couldn’t be sure, damn it. Because he just plain did not remember.

      Jordyn cried harder. “Oh, look at me. What a mess. And now I’ve said it. Now you know. I was a virgin—or I am a virgin. That’s what’s so awful. I don’t know if I am, or just was, because I can’t remember what happened.” And with that, she buried her head in her hands again. Her slim shoulders shook with desperate sobs.

      Will had no idea what he ought to do to comfort her, so he just sat there and watched her cry. He felt lower than low. Not only had he possibly had sex with little Jordyn Leigh—if he had, she’d also been a virgin.

      He didn’t have sex with virgins. He knew better than that.

      Still sobbing, Jordyn shoved back the covers, scooted aside and stared at the sheets. “Nothing, no blood,” she said with a moan as she tugged on the hem of the robe. Then she whipped a few tissues from the box by the clock, blew her nose and declared, “I don’t see any blood, and I don’t feel like anything happened.” She tossed the used tissues toward the wastebasket, flipped the covers over her again and folded her arms across her middle.

      Silence. Jordyn gazed into space. Will had no idea what she might be thinking.

      But he needed to comfort her. He needed to wipe that lost look off her pretty face. So in the interest of injecting a positive note into this train wreck of a situation, he blurted, “Listen, it could be worse. If we did make love last night, at least we were married first.”

      She missed the positive angle altogether and screeched, “Married? Have you lost your mind?” And she whipped one of the pillows from behind her and tossed it at his head. He put up both hands and caught it before it hit him in the face—at which point Jordyn screeched again. “Oh, my God! Will! Your finger!”

      He peered cautiously around the pillow at her. “Huh?”

      “You’ve got a ring on your ring finger, too!”

      He just wasn’t following. “Too?”

      She muttered something discouraging under her breath, tossed back the covers again and jumped to her feet.

      “Jordyn,” he asked warily, “where are you going now?”

      She didn’t answer, just headed for the bathroom. A moment later she returned, plunked herself down on the side of the bed and held up a ring like the one he wore, only smaller. “It freaked me out when I saw it on my finger,” she confessed glumly. “So I took it off and stuck it under a stack of extra towels.” She dropped it on the nightstand. It spun for a moment and then settled. Jordyn cut her eyes to him again. “I don’t remember getting married...though maybe, well, I do remember that little man with the black-rimmed glasses. He was the county clerk. Do you remember him?”

      “I do. I remember him and his wife, the judge...”

      She nodded, her eyes staring blankly into the middle distance again. “I stood beside you, Will. I remember that. I stood beside you under the moon. We were holding hands, and people were all around us, and Her Honor, the judge, was in front of us. And after that...”

      “Yeah?”

      A long, sad sigh escaped her. “After that, it’s all a blank.”

      He couldn’t bear to see her looking so dejected, so he got up and went to her. She didn’t jump away when he sat down beside her, and that gave him the courage to wrap an arm around her. “You have to look on the bright side.”

      She made a doleful sound. “There’s a bright side?”

      “Yes, there is. Think about it. You saved yourself for marriage—and, well, if we had sex, we have proof that we were married at the time.”

      At first, she said nothing, only eased out from under his sheltering arm and faced him. Her expression was not encouraging. Finally, she demanded, “That’s the bright side?”

      He knew he’d stepped in it again. He gulped. “Er, it’s not?”

      Proudly, she informed him, “You don’t get it, Will. It’s not marriage I was waiting for. It’s love. Or if not love, then at least special.”

      He nervously scratched the side of his neck. “Ahem. Special?”

      “Yes. Special. That’s what I waited for, something really special with a special, special man. And I have to tell you that having sex with you while unconscious is not the kind of special I was going for—plus, just because we woke up with rings on doesn’t mean we’re really married. Don’t you need a license to be really married?”

      He gave her a long look as he wondered if he should even go there. And then he threw caution to the wind and asked, “So if there was a license, you would believe that our marriage was real?”

      She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that a trick question?”

      “Stay right there.”

      “Where are you going?” she demanded crossly as he got up, turned around and crawled across the mattress. “What are you doing?”

      He crawled back, swung his legs to the floor so he was sitting beside her again—and held out the marriage license. “Believe it. It’s real.”

      * * *

      Jordyn read the document over several times before she could let herself believe what she was seeing.

      Again, she remembered the skinny little clerk and his pink Cadillac, that briefcase where he kept those official documents. He could so easily have kept a box of cheap rings in there, too...

      Will said, “So you see. I think it’s real. I think we really are married.”

      Married. To Will Clifton.

      She