Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on the Strip, and because of the mirrors on the walls and ceilings, it gave the illusion that the room was decorated in twinkle lights. It was like being inside a jewelry box, she thought, sighing in appreciation. She stepped down two carpeted stairs into the large bedroom suite, which held two queen-size beds, a sofa, and a table with two chairs, not stopping until her fingers gingerly touched the massive plates of glass.
"Wow!"
Eleanora looked over her shoulder at Evie, whose mouth gaped in wonder.
"Oh, Ellie!" said Evie, approaching the first of two beds, then looking up at Eleanora with a beaming smile. "Look!"
Draped across the bed was a white gown covered in clear dry cleaning plastic.
"It's a wedding dress! Try it on, Ellie!"
Eleanora crossed the room slowly, her eyes glued to the beautiful dress. She carefully slid the plastic up and lifted the hanger from the bed. The dress was strapless and calf length, made entirely of white lace, except for a pale blue sash around the waist. It was, hands down, the most beautiful dress Eleanora had ever seen.
"There's a card!"
Evie picked up a white envelope from the bedspread and held it out to her cousin.
With trembling hands, Eleanora opened the envelope and read aloud, "Every bride deserves a wedding dress. Thank you for marrying me tomorrow. Tom."
Evie fell back on the other bed, hands pressed over her heart, sighing dramatically. "I wish I'd gone for him! He's utterly dreamy, Ellie!"
Just then, the doorbell rang, and Evie leaped up. Hoping it was Tom, come back to kiss her good night, Eleanora rushed to the stairs, only to find a bellhop wheeling in a table covered with a white tablecloth. On it, there was a silver ice bucket with a bottle of Champagne, two glasses, and a platter of chocolate-covered strawberries.
"Here, miss?" asked the young man, carrying the table down the two stairs and wheeling it beside the windows.
"F-fine," stammered Eleanora, holding Tom's card to her breasts as she watched the bellhop slide the chairs from the room table to the linen-covered table.
"He asked me to say, ‘Welcome to Las Vegas, Watters cousins. If there's anything you need, the Imperial-and Tom English-are at your command.'" He grinned at them, eyebrows raised, and Eleanora realized that he was waiting for instruction.
"Um. Oh, well . . . thank you. We're fine. We're great. N-no commands just now."
"Very good. Enjoy!"
He sped toward the door, opened and closed it, leaving the girls alone.
Evie turned around in slow motion to face Eleanora, her eyes wide as saucers, then started jumping up and down and clapping, racing over to the table by the windows and begging to pop the cork.
Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Eleanora shrugged and giggled, "Go ahead!" and a moment later the cork flew across the room. And the unlucky Watters cousins were suddenly the luckiest girls in the world, sitting on top of Las Vegas, sampling chocolate-covered strawberries for the first time in their lives, and marveling at the kindness of Eleanora's temporary intended.
Chapter 4
Tom left a message that Eleanora and Evie were to meet him and Van in the lobby at one o'clock the next afternoon. First they needed to go to the Regional Justice Center to secure a marriage license, and then they could head to the Wee Kirk o'the Heather Wedding Chapel, which Tom had reserved for a three o'clock ceremony. A busy afternoon.
And frankly, Tom would have been looking forward to seeing her again if his head wasn't pounding like someone kept swinging at his skull with a sledgehammer. Slumped in a lobby chair, he couldn't remember the last time he'd drunk so damn much or felt so completely awful the next day. At least Van didn't look much better.
"I should have said no to the second bottle," griped Van, his head resting on the back of a low, brightly colored floral chair. "But you were so pissed off, and the first bottle made you so much more . . . pleasant."
Tom groaned, staring up at the ceiling, where a multifaceted crystal chandelier made his head ache even worse. He fished his sunglasses from the pocket of his short-sleeved white dress shirt and put them on. Better. Not much, but better.
"And why the hell I made that promise to keep you from knocking on her door, I'll never know, but you owe me your firstborn as payment. I have bruises all over my body from keeping you off the tenth floor last night. I think I missed my calling as a linebacker."
Tom winced, wishing it wasn't true, but it was.
He didn't remember much from last night, but he definitely remembered Van physically sitting on him to keep him from waking up Eleanora to "get to know her better."
"Sorry," he rasped. "I'll make it up to you."
"Have I mentioned that I think this whole thing is a risky, shitty idea?"
"Yeah," muttered Tom. "Multiple times."
"I'm not even sure a notarized prenup will hold up in court. It hasn't been filed."
"Doesn't matter," said Tom. "I'm still doing it."
"I hope you at least get fucked," said Van, quickly adding, "You know, in the good way."
"Shut up, Van."
Van leaned back in his chair again and sighed loudly to mark his disapproval. He needn't have bothered. Tom already knew that he was in trouble.
It was bad enough that he was marrying a complete stranger. On top of it, he was wildly attracted to his temporary child – bride, and now, in some warped, pathetic, predictable, cautionary-tale twist of fate, he'd actually started falling for her too. Somewhere between watching her tell off that asswipe at Auntie Rose's, swapping favorite books, drinking Asti Spumante, and ending up in Vegas, thirty-one-year-old Tom English had let twenty-two-year-old Eleanora Watters get under his skin.
He scrunched his eyes shut under his sunglasses and shook his head. It was so clichéd, it made his stomach flip over with disgust, and yet . . . there it was, deep in his gut: he liked her. He liked her more than he'd ever liked, well, anyone.
Not that it mattered.
Because today was just a means to an end: get married, secure his inheritance, and get a divorce. He wasn't interested in messing up her plan to go to college and open a business, and fuck knew she wasn't an appropriate choice, on any level, for the wife of Tom English. Aside from the gaping decade age difference between them, they were incompatible in every possible way, right? Right.
But while such clearheaded thinking should have squelched Tom's infatuation, it didn't. He felt like a lovesick teenager when he remembered the way she'd looked at him when she murmured, "You're something between a dream and a miracle." His heart had doubled in size as he stared down at her face, stroking her soft, twenty-something skin, while his mind had fantasized about every filthy thing he'd like to do to her in bed.
Damn it.
He'd been so furious with himself, he'd grabbed Van and made his friend help him polish off a bottle of Dewar's before ordering another.
Fuck.
"Tom?"
And fuck again.
Because he would have known her voice anywhere, and he was reminded of a line from Romeo and Juliet: "My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound: Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?"
Nope. She's Eleanora. And almost an English.
He opened his eyes, and they instantly widened, his fingers moving to the stem by his ear to pull his glasses off his face. His head stopped aching as he rose slowly to his feet, never taking his eyes off her.
If he was a goner before, now he had one foot in the grave.
She was stunning. She was heartbreakingly, mind-bendingly, gorgeously, stupendously beautiful.
"You got the dress," he murmured.
"I love it," she answered, grinning up at him, her face a mix of pleasure and shyness.
She'd curled her long blonde hair into soft waves that fell past her shoulders, pinned over one ear and secured with a white blossom. Her skin was luminous, and her eyelashes were dark and long, framing the loveliest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Dropping his gaze to her lips, he felt his body tighten in response to the glossy pink pillows he found there. He stared at her as they formed his name.
"Tom?" she prompted.
He cleared his throat and jerked his eyes to hers. "Yeah, uh, the dress looks . . . I mean, I'm glad it fits. You look . . ." He may as well be honest with her. His voice dropped lower and sounded gravelly in his ears. ". . . stunning."