Page 26 of Never Marry the Best Man (Whatever It Takes #4)

Should I tell Nessa?

Should I tell Mame?

Nilly?

Kari and Katie?

Carmine?

Ranney

It felt to Ranney like things were moving both very quickly and very slowly here.

It was only yesterday morning that she’d been sitting at the office conference table in Boston, confident that she knew what her future looked like, both immediate and long term.

Then an unexpected phone call came in and thirty or so hours later, she was in Las Vegas, married to a virtual stranger.

Her daughter wasn’t speaking to her, her employer had no clear idea where she was, and for that matter, neither did she.

That was the fast side.

On the slow side, she had been trying to get to the Freestone Club for over twenty-four hours now, and she was still hours away.

Her totally inexperienced co-worker (at least, inexperienced in event protection) was alone on the scene of what promised to be a delicate situation to handle, she had been wearing the same clothes for far too long, and she was operating on minimal sleep.

Of course, much of that was par for the course in a high-pressure, high-stakes, unpredictable line of work like hers. Having a spat with Nessa was not unheard of, either. As far as she could tell, it was pretty typical for mothers and daughters, especially when they were close.

Marrying a virtual stranger on an impulse, though? Not par for the course.

Why had she done it?

Part of the impulse had certainly been that she was a born problem solver.

Tom had a problem and she thought she could fix it, so she did.

Simple as that. Simple–except for the legal, financial, professional, and familial risks.

She had basically put her whole life on the line to help someone she barely knew with a career glitch.

As for Tom’s reasons, they were not hard to figure out. He stood to gain a lot by winning that award–his firm had already offered a big promotion, and that was just the beginning. He was single, living in a new country, far from the scrutiny and influence of his family.

And he was young, with plenty of time to undo any awkward entanglements and get his life back on its smooth and comfortable track: Sir Martyn Thomas Chatsworth Phillips, lord of his realm. To him, the risks must seem practically non-existent. After all, she was much older, settled, alone…

Boring.

Boring . Every time her gold wedding band caught her eye, her pulse jumped. Every time she looked at him, her breath caught in her chest. The last time she’d felt like this was… never, and of all the different emotions swirling inside her, boredom was not one of them.

Despite his beautiful manners, despite all his efforts to put a good face on this silly situation, he was obviously playing a part. After all, what could he possibly see in her?

“Ranney, my love, will you take a look at this? Does it sound at all coherent?”

Taking her computer back onto her lap, she began reading his letter to the committee. Phrases jumped out at her: “my wife and I,” “as we start our new life together,” and especially “regardless of your decision, we look forward to attending the award ceremony in November.”

Really? They were going somewhere together in November?

“I think it sounds good,” she said, hitting a few keys. “I’m just correcting the spelling of my name, it’s -ey at the end, not -ie.”

“Ah! I’ll be sure to remember. I don’t have you in my contacts…” Their eyes met and they burst out laughing.

“Husband doesn’t know how to spell wife’s name–that has to be a first.” Tom wiped his eyes.

“Like an old-fashioned arranged marriage,” Ranney agreed, but she checked first to see that Achilles was still wearing his airpods. For some reason, it mattered to her that he believed in their fictional romance.

“A mail-order bride,” Tom chuckled. “If only it were that easy, I would have ordered you up years ago. But then again, when I was young, I wouldn’t have known what to ask for.”

The smile he gave her was so warm and intimate, she wanted to cry. Her new husband deserved an Academy Award, best performance by a fake spouse. Or something.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said brusquely, and turned back to the screen.

“Ranney-with-an-ey, I am totally sincere! You are–” He broke off, listening to something, and she could hear a slight squealing noise coming from the front of the car. Airpods firmly inserted, Achilles was softly repeating complicated English sentences, oblivious to the engine noise.

"I would like to inquire about my car registration. It has expired and I believe there has been an error" he repeated.

Then:

"No, thank you, Miss. I am married and am not interested in a happy ending. Massage only, please."

“If I thought that would be the case, I never would have asked for your assistance,” Tom murmured, wrenching Ranney away from the horror of Achilles' English lessons. “I would never have guessed that such a thing could be possible.”

A bizarre wail came from the car.

Tom reached forward and shook Achielles' shoulder.

“Achilles!” he said urgently. “I think we need to pull over.”

“What?” But even as he asked the question, Achilles began wrestling with the steering wheel. Braking quickly, he used all his strength to bring the car to the side of the road.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, but heard only a stream of unintelligible, angry Greek, which was far preferable to listening to him turn down hand jobs from hypothetical masseuses. “What’s happening?”

Her phone rang. Claire.

And that was when Ranney did something that she had never, ever done before. She saw an incoming work call that she was perfectly able to answer, a call that most likely indicated a problem or even a crisis at a client event, and she let it go to voicemail.

She sat very still, holding the phone carefully by the edges so that she wouldn’t accidentally touch something that accepted the call, and she waited for it to stop ringing.

Then she stepped out of the backseat, adjusted her baggy skirt, and joined the men at the open hood of the car. Steam–the very last thing you would wish for on a hundred-plus degree day–poured out of the engine.

“I think it’s a belt, probably a serpentine,” Tom said.

“I have AAA,” Ranney volunteered. “Should I call them?” A vague sense of guilt passed though her; the AAA was paid for by Kari and Katie in case of emergencies just like this one, and here she was more or less shirking her duties to run around Nevada with a dead-sexy Brit fifteen years her junior.

And marry him.

Whereas her daughter, who had frequently been a handful and was not famous for always making wise decisions, was engaged to a minister and planning a traditional wedding for next year. If Nessa had done what Ranney was currently doing, Ranney and Carmine would have filed for conservatorship.

But at that moment, she looked up at Tom–tall, gorgeous Tom, standing next to her sweaty and rumpled, with a two-day beard, calmly handling yet another crisis–and knew without a doubt that she would do it again in a heartbeat.

If she were here with her first husband - first!

-- Carmine would have been red-faced and screaming at Achilles, throwing a full-grown man's version of a toddler temper tantrum, adding to the mess.

A mess Tom was calmly managing as best he could.

“We can’t drive it–we can’t even turn it back on or we could blow the engine,” Tom answered. “We’re a lot closer to Vegas than we are to Idaho. I guess we’ll have to be towed back there. You should probably call.”

The neon lights of Las Vegas are visible from very far away–the moon, it’s said–and it was long after the first sparkles appeared when they finally rolled into the city. Achilles, uncharacteristically silent, sat in front with the tow truck driver; Ranney and Tom were slumped in the back seat.

Worse for the wear didn’t begin to describe their condition.

Without being able to turn on the ignition, there had of course been no air conditioning while they waited for the tow truck.

If they sat inside the vehicle, there was shade but it was stifling; if they stood outside, they were exposed to the brutal late-day sun.

Achilles had his ball cap but Ranney and Tom had no hats, just an umbrella, and their only sunblock was a tiny, travel-size tube from Ranney’s toiletries kit.

She was pretty sure the SPF in her makeup had worn off six hours ago.

“How long did they say it would be, again?” Even Tom’s voice was noticeably fainter.

“They just said they’d be here as soon as they could.”

“And what time is sunset?” The lowering sun created shade on the eastern side of the little SUV, but the radiating heat from the road surface wiped out any relief.

“I don’t want to turn my phone on to check. Could you pass me another water?”

When they had spotted the tow truck’s flashing lights on the horizon, it felt like shipwreck survivors hearing an airplane’s propellers in the distance.

The driver hustled them all into the truck’s frigid cab, offered them more water, and set about loading the disabled car onto the flatbed.

By the time he finished, their core temperatures were back to normal; the case of water Achilles carried with him had saved them from more dire consequences.

But the experience had been harrowing and life-threatening, and with every hotel they rode past, Ranney yearned to soak in a tub full of cool, clear water and dry off with a fluffy white towel.

Suddenly Tom stirred at her side, sitting up and leaning forward. “Excuse me,” he said to the driver, “could you drop us off at that hotel up there? The, ah, the Merengue?” Turning to Ranney, he added, “Looks acceptable, right?”