Drop Dead Gorgeous

  He didn’t strip me out of the robe, since it wasn’t in his way, just out of my underpants. The robe saved me from getting carpet burn on my butt, because he laid me on the dining room floor, spread my legs, and moved into position between them. His green eyes were glittering with lust and possessiveness and triumph and some other unnameable male things as he settled his weight on me.

  “Blair Bloodsworth,” he said in a tough tone, reaching down to position his penis. “No negotiation.”

  I caught my breath as he pushed into me, thick and hard and so damn exciting I could barely stand it. I dug my nails into his shoulders and tightened my legs on his hips, trying to hold him still even though my heartbeat was stuttering and my eyes were closing. He hooked his left hand around my knee and pushed my leg wider, allowing him to go deeper, all the way. He shuddered, his own breathing hard and raspy. No matter how shattered I was by our lovemaking, he was right there with me.

  “All right,” I gasped, with my last thread of sanity. “But you owe me! For the rest of our lives, you owe me.” No negotiation, my ass; what did he think we’d been doing?

  He growled something unintelligible, rocking against me while he bent his head to kiss my neck, and I literally saw stars.

  We were both sweaty and exhausted and very happy twenty minutes later when he raised his head and smoothed a tendril of hair out of my face. “One month,” he said. “I’ll give you exactly one month from today. We’re either married by then or we do it my way, regardless of where it is or who can be there. Got it?”

  Huh. I know a challenge when I hear one. I also know he wasn’t kidding. I had to kick things into high gear.

  Chapter

  Two

  I called Mom first thing the next morning. “I lost an argument with Wyatt, and we’re getting married within the month.”

  “Blair Elizabeth. How did that happen?” she asked after a shocked pause, and I knew she was asking about the first part of my statement.

  “Strategic battle,” I said. “Stupid of me, but I just realized last night that my name will be Blair Bloodsworth, so I told him I was keeping Mallory as my name and he hit the ceiling, and the upshot of the outcome is he either pisses on me to mark me as his territory, or I take his name.”

  She stopped laughing long enough to say “So now he owes you” before succumbing again. I love my mom; I don’t have to explain anything to her. She gets me immediately, maybe because we’re so much alike. Knowing Wyatt’s stubbornness and the deviousness of his mind, plus some other characteristics such as possessiveness, etcetera, the outcome of our argument last night had never been in doubt unless I wanted to break up with him, which I didn’t, so I had maneuvered to get the best terms possible. He owed me. Eternal debt was good.

  “But…he gave me an ultimatum. We’re either married within the month, or we’ll do it on his terms.”

  “And those terms would be?”

  “If I’m lucky, a courthouse wedding. If not, Las Vegas.”

  “Ugh. Not after Britney. That’s tacky.”

  See? It’s like I’m her clone.

  “That’s what I thought, but he made it a challenge. I have to kick the plans into high gear.”

  “First you have to have plans. ‘Get married’ isn’t exactly a plan. It’s an end result.”

  “I know. I was trying to be considerate of everyone’s schedule, but that’s out. Twenty-nine days from today—since this challenge officially started last night—we’re getting married, and people can either reschedule whatever they have scheduled, or they’ll miss it.”

  “Why twenty-nine, and not thirty? Or thirty-one?”

  “He’ll argue that since there are four months with thirty days in them, that constitutes a legal month.”

  “February has twenty-eight.”

  “Or twenty-nine. It can’t make up its mind, so it doesn’t count.”

  “Got it. Okay, twenty-nine days from today. That means you’ll be getting married on the thirtieth day. Will he count that?”

  “He has to give me the full thirty days, so, yeah.” I grabbed the pad and pen I’d been using the night before and started writing down items. “Gown, flowers, cake, decorations, invitations. No attendants. No tux for him, just a suit. This is doable.” A wedding didn’t have to be fancy to be memorable. I could do without fancy, but I refused to do without pretty. I’d originally thought maybe one attendant for me and a best man for him, but I was paring as much as I could.

  “The cake will be the problem. The other refreshments can be gotten anywhere, but the cake…”

  “I know,” I said. We both took deep breaths. A wedding cake is a work of art. It takes time. And people who do good wedding cakes are usually booked solid, for months in advance.

  “I’ll take care of the cake,” Mom said. “I’ll call in favors. I’ll get Sally on the job, too. She needs a distraction now, to get her mind off Jazz.”

  That was a sad subject. Sally and Jazz Arledge were on the verge of seeing a thirty-five-year marriage dissolve if they couldn’t work out their problems. Sally was Mom’s best friend, so we were solidly on her side, even though we felt sorry for Jazz because he was so clueless. Sally had tried to hit Jazz with the car and maybe break his legs, and really he should have let her do it instead of jumping out of the way, because then she would feel the scales had been balanced and she would have forgiven him for getting rid of her priceless antique bedroom furniture, but I guess survival instinct tripped him up and he did jump out of the way and Sally hit the house instead, and the airbag deployed and broke her nose, which made the situation even worse. Jazz was in big, big trouble.

  “I’m opening today so Lynn is closing”—Lynn Hill is my assistant manager at Great Bods—“and I’m going shopping tonight,” I told Mom. “Heavy shopping. Any suggestions?”

  She named a few shops, and we hung up. I figured we’d talk several more times during the course of the day, as she kept me updated on how she had marshaled forces. My sisters, Siana and Jenni, would be called to action, that was for certain.

  My immediate goal was plain: find a wedding gown pronto, so there would be time for alterations if any were needed. I’m not talking about a fairy-tale wedding dress; I’ve already had one of those, when I married the first time, and it didn’t work: there was no fairy tale. What I wanted this time was something simple and classic that would make me look like a million bucks and make Wyatt go almost blind with lust. Hey, just because we were already sleeping together was no reason why I should forgo a memorable wedding night, right?

  There had to be a way I could keep him away from me for the next month, to make damn certain he was blind with lust. So far, though, when it came to Wyatt I wasn’t real great in the keeping-away department. He has a way of overcoming my few and pitiful defenses, mainly because I go blind with lust for him.

  I thought I might have to go live with his mother for the duration. That would put a crimp in his sexual expectations—though he’s perfectly capable of kidnapping me and carrying me away to his lair for a night of blissful raunchiness. God, I love that man.

  It occurred to me that if he couldn’t have sex, neither could I. Going an entire month without him…maybe I could get him to kidnap me more than once.

  See? I’m truly pitiful, a fact he has used to his advantage more than once.

  Oh, man, the next few weeks looked like fun.

  Wyatt called my cell early that afternoon. I was in the middle of an intensive workout—because I own Great Bods, I have to keep in shape or people will think it must not be a great place—but I stopped to take the call. Not that I knew it was Wyatt, because I didn’t until I saw his number in the Caller ID window; with all the activity that had been started that morning, Mom could have been calling.

  “I think I can get out of here on time, for once,” he said. “Want to go out for dinner?”

  “I can’t, I have to go shopping,” I said as I went into my office and closed the door.

  He had a man?
??s normal respect for shopping, which means none at all. “You can do that later, can’t you?”

  “No, because there is no later.”

  Silence fell, because whenever I make statements like that he pauses, as if he’s looking for hidden meanings or traps. It’s heartwarming, the attention he has paid to me and my methods.

  Finally he said, “If the end is nigh, why bother to shop?”

  I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see. Excuse me, if the end was nigh, what else would you do but shop? Those hot shoes you’ve been eyeing but wouldn’t buy because you didn’t know where you’d wear them and they cost the earth anyway? Go get ’em, honey. It isn’t as if you’d have to worry about the credit card bill, with the end nigh and all that. Maybe you really can’t take it with you, but do you want to take that chance? What if you can, and you find out too late? There you’ll be, without all the stuff you really wanted but didn’t get because you didn’t see the use in stockpiling.

  I jerked my thoughts away from eternity and back to Wyatt. “I didn’t say the world is ending. This is all about you and your precious deadline.”

  “Ah. I get it. My deadline.” He sounded very self-satisfied about his deadline; it had accomplished exactly what he intended, which was to galvanize me into action so I would ride roughshod over everyone else’s conflicting schedules. I knew him well enough to know he meant exactly what he said, too, otherwise his galvanizing tactics wouldn’t have worked.

  “Because of your deadline,” I continued sweetly, “I probably won’t have time to eat for the next month, much less go out for a leisurely meal. I have to find a wedding dress tonight so there’ll be enough time for alterations. You do have a black suit, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s what you’re wearing for the wedding then, unless it has frayed cuffs, in which case you’d better go shopping, too, because if you wear frayed cuffs to our wedding none of us will ever forgive you for it, and I swear I’ll make your life miserable.”

  “I could always divorce you if you tried.” Lazy amusement was in his tone now. I could just imagine his green eyes glinting.

  “You could always try to divorce me, because I’d fight it tooth and nail, and I’d hound you to the ends of the earth. Siana would hound you, too. And Mom would get all her sorority sisters to hound you.” Siana’s a lawyer and that maybe gave him pause, but he’s around lawyers all the time so they’re no big deal to him. On the other hand, he has a healthy respect for my mom, based on real fear. She would get all her sorority sisters to hound him.

  “So you’re going into this for life?”

  “You bet your ass I am.” I waited a beat and added, “Your life, anyway.”

  It was really annoying when he laughed at something I’d meant to give him food for thought. “I’ll check those cuffs,” he said. “What color shirt?”

  Okay, he had been taking notes, after all. “White or gray. I’ll let you know.” I didn’t believe in the groom taking attention away from the bride. Yes, I know it would be his wedding, too, but all he cared about was making it legal so I’d finally consent to live under the same roof with him and have his kids, though I’m pretty sure the kid part wasn’t his most immediate concern.

  “Make it easy on me. I already have white shirts.”

  “Make it easy on you? After what you’ve done to me with your stupid deadline?”

  “Other than having to shop tonight, exactly what have I done to you?”

  “Do you think invitations order themselves? Or send themselves? Or that refreshments just magically appear?”

  “So hire a catering firm.”

  “I can’t,” I said even more sweetly than before. “Catering firms are booked months in advance. I don’t have that kind of time. Ditto on the wedding cake. I have to find someone who can do a wedding cake on a moment’s notice.”

  “Buy one from a bakery.”

  I pulled the cell phone away from my ear and stared at it, wondering if it had somehow connected me to an alien. Putting it back to my ear I asked, “Did you do anything for your first wedding?”

  “I showed up and stood where I was told to stand.”

  “You’ll have to do more than that this time. You’re in charge of the flowers. Get your mother to help you. I love you, gotta go now. ’Bye.”

  “Hey!” I heard him yelp as I ended the call.

  I entertained myself for the rest of the afternoon imagining his panic. If he were smart, he’d call his mother right away, but even though he’s a very smart man he’s first and foremost a Man, so I figured he’d instead maybe ask the sergeants and detectives who were married if they actually remembered anything about their weddings, and if so what kind of flowers was I talking about? By the end of the day he’d have figured out the flowers in question weren’t the kind planted in pots of dirt. He’d maybe think I was talking about my bridal bouquet, which I wasn’t—no way would I leave that to a man, no matter how much I loved him. Sometime tomorrow one of the guys would remember some sort of arch with stuff on it, maybe roses, and sometime tomorrow Wyatt would also find out that I wasn’t free tomorrow night, either, and the awful truth would be dawning on him: his sex life was ruined for the next month, all by his own doing.

  I just love it when a plan comes together, don’t you?

  Not that I left something as important as flowers totally to chance. I called his mother, who is so cool I can barely believe my own luck in getting her for a mother-in-law, and filled her in on the details.

  “I’ll keep him hopping,” she promised. “There’ll be all sorts of emergencies and delays, but don’t worry, I’ll make certain everything is what you want.”

  With that taken care of, I finished my workout, showered and dried my hair, did a fast swipe with mascara and lipstick, and changed clothes. Lynn had everything under control, as usual, so I ducked out earlier than normal and drove to the better of our two malls. There were several formal-wear stores scattered around town, but I might find what I wanted in one of the higher-end department stores in the mall. The formal-wear stores took forever on alterations.

  There was a parking deck at the mall, as well as ample outdoor parking. Everyone tried to park in the deck, of course, which usually left some prime parking spaces free in the outside lots. I cruised around, my little black Mercedes convertible taking the corners like an energetic cat, and located one of those prime spaces just outside one of the department stores. I whipped into the space, smiling a little at the handling. Nothing drives like a Mercedes.

  There was a little skip to my step as I entered the department store. There’s nothing like a challenge to get me revved, plus I had a mission that involved trying on clothes. Sometimes all the planets are in alignment or something, and these little bonuses just happen. Color me happy. I wasn’t even particularly upset when the first store didn’t have what I wanted, because I’d been prepared for a long search. I did find a pair of shoes that were just what I’d envisioned, strappy and comfortable, with a two-inch heel that I could wear for hours. Best of all, they glittered with gold sequins and crystals. I like a shoe with some pizzazz to it, plus I really needed the shoe I’d be wearing for the wedding so I’d know if the dress, when I managed to find it, would need hemming or not.

  I was looking for a gown in a pale champagne color. Nothing white, not even off-white or cream, because, let’s get real, shall we? White does still carry the traditional message, which seems really silly in a second marriage. Besides, I look really good in champagne, and since the whole idea was to make Wyatt blind with lust…

  I gave it the old college try. I shopped myself into the ground, stopping only for a quick salad for dinner in the food court. Along the way I found some fabulous underwear sets, some earrings that I just had to have, another pair of shoes—killer black pumps, this time—a great pencil skirt that fit just right, and even a few Christmas gifts since my gift-buying this year would be double what it had been before, with Wyatt’s family added
in, so I needed to get an early start.

  What I didn’t find was a champagne-colored gown.

  At nine-ish, I gave up for the night. I’d have to start hitting the stand-alone formal-wear stores tomorrow, and unless they had changed since my prom days in high school—okay, so that was fifteen years, roughly, and change was possible—even if I found a gown I liked it probably would have been tried on by so many people that a new one would have to be ordered, which took time, and time was what I didn’t have.

  As I left the mall, my thoughts were racing. A seamstress. I needed a seamstress. I’d try one more time to find a ready-made gown, which would be the easiest solution, but if I didn’t find something tomorrow night I’d go with my fall-back plan, which was buy the material and have the dress made. That was more time-consuming, but doable.

  I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, I admit. I had important things on my mind. As I left the store I did notice that there weren’t many cars left in the parking lot, but I’d parked close to the store, the light was good, no suspicious stranger was lurking around my car, other people were leaving at the same time, etcetera.

  I juggled my packages so I could dig my car key from my pocket, and hit the unlock button on the remote as I stepped off the curb. A van was parked in the handicap slot, which of course was the first slot on the row, and I’d parked in the second slot. My beautiful little car flashed its lights at me in welcome.

  I heard the smooth sound of a car accelerating and stopped a few feet from the curb; with a quick glance I judged I easily had enough time to cross ahead of the oncoming car, and resumed my asphalt trek.

  Everything seemed normal. I didn’t pay much attention to the car as it neared; my left hand had started aching from the weight of all the plastic bags I was carrying, and I adjusted my grip. Still, something—some whisper of instinct that said the sound of the car was getting too close—made me look up as the car seemed to surge right at me, as if the driver had floored the gas pedal.