Page 19 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #1)

more negotiations

NICOLAI ROMANOV

Thoughts were fragments were disconnected shards of light in my head.

The sidewalk rolled under my feet as my bride pulled me over the cement through the jostling crowd.

I hadn’t been properly jostled in years. My security detail kept crowds back.

Other people’s bodies bumped me like I was a cow in a herd. Repressing the urge to jokingly moo took effort, but I chortled at the thought.

How had my security not picked me up as I’d left Billionaire Sanctuary? Yes, I hadn’t contacted and made arrangements as usual, but I had been missing from the private club for nigh on fifteen minutes at that point.

I might have been kidnapped. I might have been dead by then.

If I had been dead, they would not be getting their bonuses this month.

My bride’s supple hourglass figure swayed as she ambled ahead of me, bending at her narrow waist.

The white ruffled fabric of her dress fluttered in the breeze and with her stride like the whole confection of her was wiggling.

She was fun to watch. I hadn’t engaged in anything so primally enjoyable as watching a beautiful woman move for years.

We sauntered past shops.

Past shops’ glittering windows.

Clothes splayed against the glass like bugs on a windshield.

Inside another window, people stuffed sushi into their mouths.

I tugged my bride’s hand. “I could go for sushi. Or a drink. Maybe sake.”

She whirled back to glare at me with her lovely dark eyes.

So lovely, so full of fire, even though her face was painted unnaturally white.

Her lovely dark eyes narrowed. “You’ve had enough to drink.”

“I haven’t even begun to drink.” I even believed that. “I’m in town for a week-long bachelor party. I’ll be out of my mind the whole time.”

Her scarlet lips parted, and I could almost see the machine gears grinding behind her serene little face and coming up aghast. “Your bachelor party? Are you a runaway groom?”

“No, no, no. Certainly not. I would never strand a woman at the altar. How awful.”

Her scarlet lips rounded in shock. “Right? Only a horrible person would do that, right?”

“Surely. Only a complete rat-arsed bellend would strand someone they purportedly loved. I can’t imagine the circumstance.”

“Okay, that’s good. I thought I was aiding and abetting a jilter for a minute. And I’m sorry, if that’s what happened to you, if you got left when you were getting married.”

“Not my bachelor party. The party is for John Borbon, one of my closest friends.” I nodded. “My best friend. And cousin. He’s my cousin, somehow, I think. Maybe once or twice removed. Anyway, solid chap when he’s not blitzed.”

“My ex’s family is like that.” The pretty little bride was nodding as she spoke. “Cousins, but the family tree doesn’t branch.”

“Right.” I liked how that sounded, so I said it again, but longer. “Right-o.”

She waggled my hand to get my attention, but little did she know that she already commanded my full attention. Every strand of her hair waving in the warm wind was a ribbon tying me to her. “Yes, my bride, my love?”

Her dark eyebrows dipped. “Okay, that’s a lot, sweetie. Maybe we should go to John Boy’s bachelor party and find your friends. Your cousin-ish person might be worried about you.”

“The main party is tomorrow at Omnia. Tonight is a small gathering for school friends.”

“Oh, well, we could go there. Small gatherings are good. You could talk to your friends at a small gathering about major life-altering decisions before you do them .”

“All right.”

“Good.” Her voice was firm, like I’d pleased her. “Now, where’s this small gathering at?”

“But we have to be married first.”

Her dubious gaze up at me was disconcerting. “Or we could get married after. We could go and find your friends, and you could ask one of them to be your best man. And talk to him. About this plan of yours to get married. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Her emphatic nodding seemed like she was trying to get me to nod along with her as if I were a toddler.

She continued, “Wouldn’t it be great to go find this John Bourbon guy and ask him to be your best man? And maybe you could talk this whole insta-marriage plan over with him?”

Her mispronunciation of John’s surname was adorable. Burr-bun like the liquor, instead of Boar-bohn. “Nope. Definitely not. No one else can know. It’s a secret marriage. We’re in Las Vegas. Let’s find a priest, and it has to be a Russian Orthodox priest, and become man and wife.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed her forehead like she was in pain.

“Do you have a headache?” I asked her. “I know just the thing for that. Vodka.”

She scoffed, “Vodka, huh? That explains a lot. I’m worried about you, Nico. Let’s go find your friends.”

I reached behind me with one leg and began to descend to one knee to ask her to marry me. It had worked the first time. I might as well try it again.

“Nope!” She caught my arm and hauled me back to my feet. “No more of that. You look too pathetic, and it breaks my heart. Okay, fine. Let’s go find a minister?—”

“A Russian Orthodox priest,” I clarified.

“Okay, fine. We’ll find your particular flavor of clergy and see if they’ll marry us right away.

And I’m sure there won’t be mandatory counseling or publishing of the banns or whatever.

A priest probably wouldn’t talk you out of it, either.

As a matter of fact, I think finding a nice, sober priest of your favorite church who has a vested interest in your long-term welfare is a great idea. ”

“But we need a marriage license before that.”

Her heavy sigh actually pressed her into a curve as she cringed, biting her lip. “Dang, I was hoping you wouldn’t know about that part.”

“John told me that the marriage bureau is open twenty-four hours a day here, so we can go directly there and procure a license.”

“Yep,” she sighed again. “That is how it works.”

I turned and stepped onto the curb, bobbling, and she grabbed my elbow and steadied me.

Her hand on my arm was comforting as all hell. No one ever steadied me.

I loved it. I wanted her to steady me forever.

“I will hail a cab,” I announced.

I knew how to hail a cab. I’d seen it done in movies.

Raising my arm, I stood beside the street and waved.

And nearly fell off the curb just as a car whooshed toward me on the street, the occupants speeding to get to the next casino to empty their wallets on the roulette table.

I was leaning, falling, bright double-circles of traffic headlights rushing toward me and my face in the Vegas-sparkling dark, when my bride latched onto my arm and yanked, hard, and I was stumbling backward over the cement with her.

“Hey! You can’t run into traffic like that!” she yelled at me.

“I’m fine,” I reassured her.

From beside my arm, my bride rubbed the side of her face. “Nico, sweetie, I don’t see any taxicabs on this side street. Let’s take my car. It’s parked just another block this way. I should move it from the paid garage anyway.”

“All right.”

I followed her as she broke through the crowd and then turned onto a smaller side street, with me fluttering off her arm like a ribbon she trailed in her wake.

Maybe vodka should be my drink of choice. Everything my bride said seemed like a splendid idea.

Or maybe that was just her.

I was definitely absolutely trolleyed, and I was enjoying it a lot.

We stepped into a frightfully old elevator that creaked and groaned its way to the second floor of the parking garage while my bride muttered about how I might have killed myself on the concrete stairs.

That old beast might have become our double-wide coffin if it had wedged itself in the elevator shaft.

The metal-on-metal scrape squealed as it rose, but the doors parted to the hot desert night on the second level.

Her car was an older model with threadbare upholstery. My foot missed the doorframe twice as I tried to paperclip-fold myself inside, but I clutched the car door for my very life and succeeded on the third try.

My bride wrenched herself around and retrieved a package from the rear seat. She pulled large baby powder-scented tissues from it and wiped the white and black greasepaint off her face and arms, revealing stripes and then swaths of pinky-tan skin and the sweet shape of her face.

Oh, she was pretty, and my heart lifted more as the statue-makeup fell away and she became human beside me like Galatea.

Which made me Pygmalion. I snickered at the thought.

She dug the cash and my wallet out of her busking hat, wadded the paper money into the wallet, and opened my suit jacket to shove the whole mess into my inner breast pocket.

So organized. I liked her already.

Her vehicle ground its gears as she started it, but the car adequately conveyed us through the cement parking structure. The headlights glowed on the gray beams overhead. Its tire-thunks echoed in the concrete cave.

Once we were outside and driving on the street, crowds swirling on the sidewalks as we drove past, my bride shot me a side-eyed glance. “You’re not going to throw up, are you?”

“Of course not. How ill-bred.”

Light bulbs glowed and flowed up the towering walls of the casinos and reflected on the windscreen’s dirty glass.

“There are water bottles in the back seat. Why don’t you drink some water?” she suggested.

“Excellent idea.” I twisted under my seat belt and found a tepid bottle on the floor behind her seat. I was parched. The lukewarm water was divine on my tongue. “Thank you, my bride.”

“Your bride? You are so unserious right now.”

“Yes, my bride. You agreed, and you’re my bride.”

Her exaggerated blink with those luscious eyelashes seemed shocked. “Yeah, okay. I guess I’m your bride for now.”

She deftly parallel-parked on a downtown street, an excellent skill that I had pulled off once and only once during my driving test so many years ago, so many years, over ten years, and I staggered out of the car.

The Clark County courthouse was a tall red brick building sporting a glowing sign that read Marriage License Bureau in fat 1950s-style script font on the ground-floor office.

How clever. How retro.

How not royal and sophisticated.

I was vastly amused by it. “Absolutely perfect.”