Cathy Gillen - The Bride Said, 'I Did?'

Beau propped one boot on the bottom step. Leaning forward, he rested an elbow on his thigh. His sunglasses dangled from his hand.

“I am talking,” he enunciated clearly, looking deep into her eyes, “about waking up in Mexico three weeks ago with you in my bed.”

Dani recalled waking up alone in a hotel room and being naked beneath the sheets. And very little before that. Embarrassed to the hilt—as he had no doubt intended her to be, Dani thought angrily—she felt all the color leave her face. Her sisters looked similarly distressed. Darn it all, anyway. She hadn’t wanted them, or anyone else for that matter, to know about this!

“Oh, dear.” Meg consulted her watch with customary tact. “I think I better go pick up Jeremy. That birthday party he’s attending is supposed to be over at four and it’s three-thirty now.”

Jenna cleared her throat and patted her chest with the flat of her hand. “That reminds me. I think I have a customer coming in for a fitting.”

Kelsey dug in the pocket of her blue jeans for the keys to her pickup truck. “You know cattle and horses—they wait for no one. And I’ve already taken off enough time today.” That quickly, all three of her sisters scattered, leaving Dani to work out what was obviously a difficult situation with as much dignity and privacy as possible.

“Way to clear out a front porch,” Dani told Beau sarcastically, not sure when she had wanted to deck a cowboy more. And Beau Chamberlain was one heck of a cowboy, both on-screen and off. There hadn’t been one with as much charisma and raw sex appeal since John Wayne. Worse, the man practically exuded courage, integrity and the determination to do right, no matter what the cost.

Men liked and respected him.

Women adored him and lusted after him.

Children found him irresistible.

And animals instantly trusted him.

Only Dani, it seemed, found him lacking in any way.

A fact, she knew, that had gotten to him like a spur in the side.

She regarded him in a devil-may-care way as he shrugged his broad shoulders. “You could have asked them to stay,” he said. Clearly aware he was annoying her terribly, he looked her over from head to toe, taking in the delicate U of her collarbone and the shadowy hint of cleavage in the open V of her marine-blue blouse. His glance moved still lower, checking out the fit of her tailored white linen slacks before returning to her eyes. “I’m sure they’d like to know all about our marriage,” he taunted softly.

“Stop saying that.” Dani felt herself flush with embarrassment. She didn’t know what he was up to now, but she didn’t like it one bit.

“Why?” He tipped the brim of his hat back with his index finger and looked up at her with a taunting smile. “It’s true.”

Dani’s eyebrows climbed higher. “It can’t be,” she countered just as emphatically, even as her knees grew weaker still.

“Really,” he said, still holding her gaze. “And how do you figure that?”

“Because—” Dani marched down the steps until they stood at eye level, and poked a finger in his chest—“we’ve been sworn enemies for two years. I would never marry someone and not remember it! Never mind my sworn enemy,” she contended hotly.

Beau moved up two steps, so they were standing on the same one and he was once again towering over her. “But you do recall waking up in that little inn in Mexico with a raging headache,” he said, glaring down at her.

Dani’s shoulders stiffened. Insensitive cretin. He would have to bring that up! She lifted her chin, drew a deep breath. “I was also alone.”

“Only because I left to find out what the devil had been going on,” he pointed out.

The way he’d looked at her then—as if he’d known what it was like to make love with her—sent shivers of awareness sliding willy-nilly down her spine. “What do you mean?” Dani demanded, hanging on to her composure by a thread.

Beau angled a telltale thumb at his chest. “I woke up with one helluva headache, too. I also wondered what in the heck had been going on that would have landed us both in bed and naked as jaybirds, to boot.”

Dani winced at the potent fantasy his words evoked. Beau’s beautifully muscled body, covered with light whorls of hair, stretched alongside her own. Everywhere she was soft, he’d be hard. Everywhere he was male, she’d be female. And surely no good could come of that! “Must you be so graphic in your descriptions?” Dani said, frowning all the more. She did not want to think about making love with him! Because that was never going to happen. It never had happened, no matter what things looked like. If it had, she certainly would remember it. Wouldn’t she?

“As I had no memory of having gotten there with you, not to mention having shucked our clothes,” he said softly, his low sexy voice doing strange things to her insides, “I decided to get up to investigate.”

“Of course.” Determined to irritate him as much as he was irritating her, Dani blinked her eyes at him coquettishly. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Steadfastly ignoring her goading manner, Beau continued with daunting seriousness. “Only, there was a marriage certificate on the bedside table. It had both our names on it.”

If he was pulling her leg, he was doing a damn-fine job of it, Dani thought. “Let me guess. And you didn’t remember getting married, either.”

Beau exhaled. “Not initially, no,” he told her grimly.

Despite her desire to stay cool, calm and collected, Dani’s heart took on a quicker beat. She rolled her eyes, not believing a word of it. “But you do now, of course.”

Beau nodded and eyed her seriously. “The more I looked at the marriage certificate that morning, the more I had a fuzzy memory—sort of a single freeze-frame image of the two of us standing in front of a priest, with candles all around us and guitar music playing softly in the background. At first I thought it was a dream, but then when I checked out the church where the marriage had supposedly taken place and spoke to the village priest, who confirmed he had indeed married us the night before, I knew it was true. Why or how I remember that and nothing else leading up to it, or following it, I don’t know,” he said. “But I do remember that. Just a millisecond of it, anyway.”

Dani had to admit, he spun a convincing yarn. He looked sincere, too. But that was also his stock-in-trade as an actor, making the unbelievable believable, she schooled herself firmly. “You need a better script.” She gave him an arch look and started to turn away. “So tell the writers you hired to come up with this preposterously lame joke to go back to their computers and write you a better exit scene.”

With maddening nonchalance, Beau clamped a hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him. His strong capable fingers radiating warmth through her blouse to her skin, he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a folded piece of parchment paper. “Perhaps this will refresh your memory,” he said, pushing it into her resisting fingers.

Dani stared up at him, her throat dry. She had to hand it to him. He was playing out this prank to the end. The only way she could end it was by playing out her part, too. “Fine,” she said tartly. She unfolded the finely crafted sheet with stiff fingers, determined to get this farce over with once and for all. She stared down at the certificate of marriage. It was a convincing fake, she had to give him that. Even the signature of the bride—her signature—looked suspiciously real.

Her fingers began to tremble.

“Now do you remember?” Beau prodded impatiently. Sweeping off his hat, he raked his fingers through his hair.

Dani pushed the memory of a hauntingly beautiful Spanish love song from her head. “No,” she retorted more stubbornly than ever, handing him the certificate right back. Her pulse picking up for no good reason, she angled her head at him. “I don’t remember that,” she said just as firmly. “So it can’t be valid.”