Allison Leigh - Vegas Wedding, Weaver Bride

“Ten days!”

“Could be sooner.” He told her everything the marriage bureau employee had told him.

“So we were lucid enough to apply for a marriage license. Presumably get through a ceremony of some sort and sign our names on the marriage certificate. Then pass out in bed. It doesn’t mean we can’t get an annulment.” Her cheeks were red. “We don’t know that...that...anything physical happened.”

“Don’t pretend you’re that naive. I can’t see us being in bed together and not being in bed together.” The way they’d woken all tangled together was proof enough for him. He’d been hard as a rock and she’d been warm and wet.

She’d pressed her hands over her ears and was shaking her head. “I’m not listening.”

He went over to her and gently wrapped his fingers around her wrists. Her pulse rate was off the charts. “Like it or not, Penny, it’s a given that you and I consummated whatever vows we exchanged.” He exhaled heavily and admitted the worst. “But I can’t even be certain that you were willing!”

Her lips parted. She swallowed. “Quinn—”

He let her go and shoved his hand through his hair. “If you want go to the hospital, I can take you. Or arrange for someone else to, if you’re more comfortable that way.” His voice was gruff. The thought that he might have coerced her was nauseating. “You can get an exam. If you were forced—”

“Oh my God!” She looked horrified. “I don’t need an exam to prove what I already know. You were just as much a victim of this as I was. Maybe you were the one who wasn’t, you know...on board.” Her cheeks turned red. “That’d be more in line with our history.”

“Trust me.” His voice was dark. “I would’ve been more than willing back then if you’d have been legal. And now—” He broke off because her face was nearly scarlet now. He exhaled. “You’re a beautiful woman, Penny. Let’s just leave it at that.”

She cleared her throat, not looking at him. “And you’re a handsome man.” The words seemed to come reluctantly. “Anyway, it’s all moot,” she continued abruptly. “I don’t care what sort of influence you were under. You’d never do something against a woman’s will. You wouldn’t even be worried if not for what that scum of a man did. So just stop thinking about it and talking about...about tests and stuff.”

His chest felt tight. Trust like that was more than a little humbling. And he still wasn’t sure it was merited. How could he ever be truly sure?

“Promise me, Quinn.”

It was the second promise she’d asked of him that day. “Fine.”

Fortunately, she accepted the answer. She put a few paces between them, busying herself with retying the knot in the silky scarf. “And maybe we didn’t. It’s possible,” she insisted at his look. “Maybe we both just passed out before we could—you know.”

“Have sex?”

“Yes.” Obviously, the very idea of it embarrassed her. “Regardless, we’re the only ones who would know. And if we say we didn’t...consummate things, we could still get an annulment.”

“You mean lie.”

“It’s not a lie if there’s any room for doubt.”

He made a face and she huffed. “Neither one of us wants to be married to the other. This is just one big fiasco from start to finish. And the only way to rectify it—if there’s anything to actually rectify—is to get an annulment. Everything’ll be right back to normal.”

“You’re forgetting one thing.”

She raised her brows, waiting.

“When we had sex—”

“If we had sex.”

“When we had sex,” he repeated over her interruption, “we didn’t use anything.” No condom. No condom wrapper. No evidence of any sort of protection had been in his hotel suite. “Now, I’ve had every medical test known to man over the past few months. You don’t have to worry about catching anything from me. I’m assuming you’ve always been careful in the past?”

Her cheeks had gone red again. After a moment she gave a stiff nod.

“Then there’s just one question left. Are you on birth control?“

Chapter Four

Quinn’s words jangled inside Penny’s mind.

He was standing there, annoyingly handsome and militarily straight, waiting for an answer.

She wanted to ask him if they hadn’t already had enough blows for one day.

She was still grappling with the notion that some idiot had spiked their drinks. The only thing gained by knowing that fact was that they now had an explanation for ending up in Quinn’s hotel suite the way they had. They had an explanation for not being able to remember any of it. She already knew Quinn had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. If he learned she’d also been a virgin—

“Penny?” Quinn took a step toward her. His eyebrows were like straight slashes above his level brown eyes. “Are you on birth control or not?”

“I don’t really think that’s any of your business,” she said evasively.

His eyebrows shot up. “Until I know otherwise, you’re my wife. I think that does make it my business. So are you on the pill? Implant? Anything?”

“Mmm-hmm.” She managed a nod, trying valiantly to pretend her neck wasn’t getting hot.

His eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

The heat spread up her jaw and into her cheeks. Her forehead. Until her entire head felt like it might well be smoking. “Why would I lie about that?”

He suddenly leaned back against the dresser in front of the bed and folded his arms across his wide chest. “I don’t know,” he said calmly. “Why are you?”

She’d been a better liar when she’d been ten than she was now.

She turned her back on him and went over to look out the window. Unlike his suite with that stellar city view and balcony, her room looked out over a roof and a bunch of mechanical equipment. There was one window. No balcony. And it was still costing Mrs. Templeton over four hundred dollars a night.

“No, I’m not on the pill,” she admitted flatly. “There’s nobody in my life. Hasn’t been for a while.” She wasn’t going to tell him that there’d never been anyone. Not that way. She and her fiancé, Andy, had been foster kids living in the same foster home. They’d never chanced it, knowing that they’d be separated in a nanosecond if they were caught doing anything improper. Then he’d graduated from high school, announced to their foster parents during his graduation party that they were engaged, and he’d headed to boot camp a day later, leaving Penny behind to finish high school.

Quinn’s silence penetrated her memories and she looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“You’re not on anything?”

She shook her head.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingertips against his temples. “So you could be pregnant. On top of everything else.”

“What? No!”

He gave her a look. “I don’t have to spell out the details of unprotected sex, do I?”

She made a face. “Obviously not.”

“Then you know there’s a chance just as well as I do.” He inhaled deeply, then straightened once more. “Which means nothing’s happening about anything until we know one way or the other.”

She couldn’t remember making love. She darn shooting couldn’t imagine having conceived a baby with him. She and Andy had talked about having a half-dozen kids. About having the kind of real family that neither one of them had grown up with.

Her throat felt tight. “I can’t talk about this anymore.” She hurried past him and yanked open the room door. “I need you to go.”

“Penny.”

She stared hard at the gold patterned carpet beneath her sandals, willing away the tears that burned behind her eyes. “Please, Quinn. Not now.” Not ever, if she was lucky.