Page 7

Easton

Consciousness returned like a sledgehammer to the skull. Merciless Vegas sunlight streamed through uncovered windows, my mouth tasted like concrete, and my head throbbed with relentless percussion.

None of that compared to discovering I wasn't alone.

Dark hair spilled across my Egyptian cotton pillow. Bare shoulders rose and fell with gentle breathing. Skin warm as honey in the morning light.

Harlow Clarke. In my bed.

The woman who'd dismantled my empire three years ago was sleeping beside me like we were lovers instead of enemies.

Broken memories surfaced through the alcohol haze. The chapel's neon glow. Her fingers intertwined with mine as we stumbled through doors that should have stayed locked. Elvis's gravelly voice pronouncing us husband and wife while she laughed like this was an adventure instead of career suicide.

Christ. What did we do?

I sat up too fast, and the room spun. My left hand moved toward the nightstand, and the simple gold band around my ring finger froze me solid.

"Fuck."

The whispered curse stirred the woman beside me. Harlow's eyes fluttered open—those hazel depths that had haunted my thoughts for three years. For one unguarded moment, she looked soft, vulnerable, beautiful. Then awareness hit.

She bolted upright, clutching silk sheets to her chest, scanning my bedroom like she'd woken in enemy territory. "Tell me this is a nightmare."

I raised my left hand. The metallic ring glinted accusingly.

Her face drained of color as she stared at her own matching band. Then she did something I'd never seen the unflappable Investigator Clarke do in all our encounters.

She screamed.

Not a delicate gasp or ladylike shriek. A full-throated, lung-emptying wail of absolute horror that probably rattled windows three floors down.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK DID WE DO?"

"Well," I said, biting back laughter because apparently my response to catastrophe was dark humor, "I believe the technical term is 'got hitched.' Congratulations, Mrs. Hardwick."

Her eye twitched. "Mrs. what now?"

"Don't tell me you don't remember Elvis asking if you'd take me to be your lawfully wedded husband? You said 'Hell yes' with enough enthusiasm to raise the dead. Quite touching, really."

"I did not say 'Hell yes!'" But even as she protested, recognition dawned across her features. "Oh God. I did, didn't I?"

"Right after asking if Vegas marriages came with a money-back guarantee."

She covered her face with both hands. "This isn't happening. This is some rare alcohol-induced psychotic break. Any minute now I'm going to wake up in my own bed with nothing worse than a hangover and vague memories of terrible pizza."

"Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but—"

"Don't. Call. Me. Sweetheart." Each word was delivered with surgical precision. "We are not married. We are accidentally licensed for marriage. There's a difference."

"Tell that to the State of Nevada. And the extremely legal document we both signed with surprisingly steady hands for people who could barely walk straight."

More memories surfaced in vivid, mortifying detail.

How she'd insisted on reading the entire marriage license before signing.

How I'd twirled her around the chapel afterward while she laughed like we'd won the lottery instead of signing our professional death warrants.

How we'd stumbled back to the Jade Petal at three in the morning, her shoes in my hand and my tie around her neck.

And the kiss. Jesus Christ, the kiss outside my penthouse door that had tasted like whiskey and reckless decisions.

"How much do you remember?" I asked.

"Too much." Her voice was muffled behind her hands.

"The chapel. That Elvis impersonator who kept calling you 'stud muffin.

' You spinning me around like we were starring in some romantic movie instead of destroying our careers.

" She peeked at me through her fingers. "The part where I apparently decided I was the kind of person who makes life-altering decisions based on neon signs and liquid courage. "

"In your defense, you did ask practical questions. Like whether Nevada marriages came with a cooling-off period and if we could get bulk pricing if we divorced within 48 hours."

"Please tell me you're making that up."

"Scout's honor. You also made Elvis promise the ceremony would be 'extra tacky' because, and I quote, 'If I'm going to ruin my life, it's going to be memorably ridiculous.'"

"Oh God." She flopped back onto the pillows. "I'm going to have to resign. Not just from this case—from everything. I'll have to move to Alaska and become a wilderness guide."

"Alaska's loss would be Nevada's gain. You'd make a terrible wilderness guide anyway. Too much hairspray."

She shot up again, glaring with enough heat to melt steel. "Are you actually critiquing my hair care routine while we're in the middle of the biggest catastrophe of both our lives?"

"Just saying, the wilderness doesn't appreciate good grooming the way Vegas does. And you do have spectacular hair." I couldn't help myself—even in crisis, she was magnificent when angry. "Especially when it's spread across my pillow."

Her cheeks flushed. "You're impossible."

"Impossibly charming? Impossibly handsome? Impossibly good at making questionable life choices? You'll have to be more specific, wife."

"Stop calling me that!" But she was fighting a smile now, which was somehow worse than her panic. A smiling Harlow Clarke was dangerous to my sanity.

My phone erupted in buzzing. Bryce's name flashed insistently.

"Answer it." Her voice carried that razor-sharp tone I'd learned to fear. "Something's wrong."

She was right. Bryce wouldn't call repeatedly at eight in the morning without good reason.

"What's the emergency?"

"Thank Christ." Bryce's voice crackled with panic. "I've been calling for an hour. We've got problems—multiple problems involving reporters and words like 'impropriety' and 'scandal.'"

My stomach turned to lead. "What kind of reporters?"

"The hungry kind. Liv Chen called my personal line asking for comment about your 'romantic evening' with a certain commission investigator. She has photographs, Easton."

I closed my eyes. Vegas thrived on surveillance and scandal—privacy was just another commodity to be traded. "Photos of what?"

"You two at the gala. Dancing. Looking... intimate. She hinted at more."

Across the bed, Harlow had gone pale, clearly catching enough to understand we'd graduated from personal catastrophe to public relations nightmare.

"Buy us time," I said. "No comments until I figure out damage control."

"What exactly am I controlling damage from? If there's more to this than dinner and dancing, I need to know."

I glanced at Harlow, who was frantically mouthing "Don't tell him." She was right. The fewer people who knew about our accidental marriage, the better our chances of quietly undoing it.

"It's complicated. Keep everyone away from the hotel. Give me an hour."

"Easton—"

"One hour, Bryce."

I hung up and found Harlow already climbing from bed with military efficiency.

She'd slipped into my dress shirt sometime during the night—probably when the air conditioning turned arctic—and seeing her in my clothes sent an unwelcome jolt of possessive satisfaction through me.

The shirt hit her mid-thigh, revealing legs that belonged in fantasies.

"This is a disaster." She paced to the windows, staring down at the Strip like surveying a battlefield. "If the commission discovers last night, I'm finished. Not reassigned or demoted—obliterated. Blacklisted from every regulatory agency in the country."

"They won't find out." I injected more confidence than I felt. "We'll get an annulment. Quietly. Today."

She whirled to face me, and even disheveled and panicked, she was breathtaking. "You think it's that simple? Nevada has waiting periods, paperwork trails. Any legal filing creates records that can be subpoenaed or leaked."

Of course she was right. Harlow's mind worked like a precision instrument, dissecting problems to expose their most vulnerable points. It made her a formidable investigator—and dangerous to men who operated in regulatory gray areas.

"Then we don't file anything yet." I headed for my walk-in closet, grabbing a fresh shirt. "We control the story. Present a united front until media attention dies down."

"A united front?" Her laugh held no warmth. "Easton, I'm supposed to be conducting an impartial evaluation. How do I maintain objectivity when I'm..." She gestured helplessly between us.

"When you're what?" I emerged with the shirt, noting how her gaze dropped to my bare chest before snapping back to my face. "When you're married to me?"

The words landed like grenades. Marriage implied partnership, intimacy, a future neither of us had planned. It suggested feelings we hadn't acknowledged and commitments we'd never made.

"This isn't real," she said, though her voice wavered. "Just paperwork. A mistake to be corrected."

"Absolutely." I pulled on the shirt, using the mundane task to steady myself. "Temporary complication. Nothing more."

But I remembered how she'd looked at me in that tacky chapel, the trust in her eyes as she placed her hand in mine. For those alcohol-soaked hours, it had felt like something good instead of a nightmare in the making.

My phone buzzed with a text from building security: Mr. Ricci here to see you. Says urgent.

The timing reeked of opportunism. Enzo showing up the morning after my very public evening with Harlow meant he knew more than I was comfortable with.

"We have a visitor who thinks he can use last night against us," I said. "Enzo Ricci. He owns the Mirage Continental as you’re already aware and has been hunting for excuses to sabotage the Jade Petal."

"What does he want?" Harlow asked, then her gaze dropped to our hands. "Oh shit. The rings."