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

The truth was, she had been secretly attracted to Beau Chamberlain from the very first. So attracted, in fact, that she’d had to use every ounce of attitude she possessed to keep him at arm’s length. At first he had been amused. But as time wore on, he’d become increasingly irritated by her standoffish behavior. To the point he had begun sniping back, annoying her and getting under her skin every chance he got in much the same way the boys had used to tease her at recess. Dani—and everyone else in Hollywood, it seemed—had sensed that a mutual attraction was behind Beau’s verbal sparring and increasingly public attention to her. To stop it, all she had to do was let her defenses down, talk to him with the same openness and vulnerability she showed her other friends.

But that hadn’t been an option for Dani two years ago, not in the film industry. She had mixed business and pleasure once before, and been stung when she gave the movie that her boyfriend, Chris Avery, was in one star and then been dubbed the Lady with the Poison Pen. It was a moniker everyone in Hollywood, including Beau, had repeated at one time or another either in anger or in jest. Dani had no intention of letting that happen again. So she had kept her attraction to Beau to herself. And she hadn’t let any of what went on between them color her reviews of Beau’s movies. She had made sure she was just as tough on him as she was with everyone else.

And she had known, even if the impossible happened and they did manage to become friends when they went off to Mexico together, that would continue. Dani did not do favors for people she knew in the business; her professional reputation was much too important to her.

Which made what had eventually happened—the two of them ending up married and in bed together—even more puzzling. Not just for her, but for him.

“And what else do you remember?” Beau prodded.

Dani spread her palms helplessly on either side of her. “I remember arguing with you in sort of a flirtatious way all afternoon and into the night, and that’s it.” Dani paused, aware they hadn’t actually gotten married until the next day if the date on the marriage certificate he had shown her was correct. That left a very big blank in her memory. A thirty-some-hour blank she found very dismaying, especially after all the bantering and teasing that had been going on prior to that. Like it or not, from the moment they stepped on that plane, her defenses had been going down. And apparently so had his.

Reminding herself not to be too trusting, Dani asked cautiously, “What about you?” Up until this afternoon, she had assumed he was the mastermind of this whole folly. That he had designed the whole thing as payback to embarrass her and throw her for a loop for the not-so-glowing reviews she had given his movies and the way she had deliberately held him at arm’s length, refusing to let him work his movie-star charm on her. But now, given the stunned and curious way he kept looking at her, she couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t as much an innocent victim of whatever had happened to them as she was. And if that was the case, she had no reason at all to be mad at him. And that was a notion she found even more unnerving. Because it was her anger, their mutual resentment, that she had been counting on to keep them apart and prevent them from doing whatever it was they’d done down in Mexico again.

Beau frowned, stroked his jaw and continued filling her in matter-of-factly. “When it comes to that night, I draw a complete blank. I’d like to think it’s because the whole evening was so traumatic,” he teased, beating her to the punch with a wink.

“Har-de-har-har, cowboy,” Dani responded, determined not to let him joke his way out of anything when it came to the two of them. “And if that evening was traumatic,” she asserted stubbornly, “it was traumatic for both of us.”

“True.” Beau paused, stroked his jaw again. As the thoughtful moment drew out, his eyes sparkled wickedly. He rolled his weight onto his toes and leaned toward her conspiratorially. “And yet there must be some reason we got married that night and made a baby,” he said.

“Complete utter insanity?” Dani quipped drolly. The only reason she would ever have gotten married—knowingly anyway—was for love. Her heart quickened its pace as she feared where this line of questioning was leading. Deftly she stepped back.

He stepped toward her. “That, sweetheart, goes without saying.” He laced his hands around her waist and tugged her against him until they were touching breast to chest, tummy to tummy, thigh to thigh. “The truth is,” Beau continued resolutely, looking down at her with soft serious eyes, “whatever happened that night had nothing to do with where we were or what we were doing at the time or even what we were arguing about. Instead—” his velvety voice dropped another compelling notch “—it had everything to do with what has been going on with us since the first day we met.”

He sounded so sure. So smugly certain! “And that is what exactly?” Dani prodded, afraid from the amorous gleam in his eyes she already knew precisely what he was going to assert.

“Desire,” Beau whispered softly, sifting a hand through her hair, watching it as it fell in silky copper strands across her cheek. “Pure unadulterated desire.”

Dani laughed uneasily and tried, unsuccessfully, to step out of the warm confining hopelessly erotic circle of his arms. “Now I know you’re insane,” she claimed as she splayed both hands across his chest and felt the strong heavy thudding of his heart, so like her own. “I have never, not for one day, not for even one second, desired you!” Dani fibbed as his gaze traced the parted contours of her lips.

Beau’s sexy smile widened. He slid a hand beneath her chin and tilted her face up to his. “Sure about that now?” he asked as his head slowly lowered.

“I’m positive,” Dani whispered. Trembling at his nearness, she drew in a jerky breath. This was not going to happen. He was not going to kiss her.

Beau touched his lips lightly to hers once, and then again. “Okay, let’s see,” he murmured seductively. The next thing Dani knew her eyes were closed and his lips were on hers, nudging them apart. It was the kind of kiss you saw in the movies. Tender, evocative, erotic. Sensitive, searching. It was the kind of kiss you never really expected—in real life—to get. But getting it she was, and she had to admit that, even as she stood on tiptoe and let herself be drawn into the seamlessly sexy kiss, it was rocking her to her very soul. Making her tingle all over. Making her want. Need. Desire. Oh, heavens, she had never felt such desire. Or experienced anything so wonderful and dangerous and right. And it was then, just as she should have suspected, that Beau let the soft kiss come to a slow effortless conclusion.

Still holding her in his arms, Beau searched her eyes. “Now do you remember?”

Suddenly Dani knew what was happening and why. She couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. Worse, she had almost—almost—bought the I’m-head-over-heels-in-love-with-you look in his eyes! Only her common sense had saved her from admitting something equally foolish to him. But thank heaven she was one woman who was firmly rooted in reality. She knew—better than most—that this life did not come with happily-ever-afters. Especially ever-afters that good. She might wish one of the most famous movie stars in the world was totally enthralled with her, but it wasn’t happening. No matter how hard the Texas lothario was currently pushing to convince her otherwise.

“Now I get it,” Dani said as she shoved away from him.

“Get what?” Beau studied her with highly exaggerated confusion.