Fixing Justice (28 page)

“Oh, yes, loads better, thanks.” She smiled at him and then made that perfect little moue with her lips that drove him wild. “Do you even know how much champagne we inhaled? My head is telling me it was a lot.”

Handing her the steaming mug that he’d added a heavy hand of creamer to along with a good pile of sugar, Drae couldn’t help but laugh, shaking his head in agreement. “Probably more than was wise, but as they say,
YOLO
!”

She burst out giggling. “YOLO? Really? That’s what you have to say about last night …you only live once?”

“Fuck, yeah,” he chuckled. “Damn straight. YOLO!”

“I wonder if the newlyweds feel like my head does right now. Who knew there was such a thing as too much bubbly?”

Remembering the couple who shared their epic night, Drae went to find his suit jacket. “Speaking of the happy bride and groom, Stavros gave me a stack of papers after they sped off. Probably their license and certificate. I remember stuffing them in my jacket pocket.”

“Mmmm,” she chimed in, “that reminds me, where’s my cell phone? I’ve got a bunch of pictures saved. There’s definitely a shot of Shawn mugging with the statue of a very nude, very male Greek god that she might not want anyone to see.” Taking a hearty sip of the sweetened coffee, she put down the mug and slid off the high counter stool, going in search of her bag. “I love technology just as much as the next person but honestly, it’s almost too easy to record for all time the randomly stupid things we do.”

“I hear that,” Drae snickered. “Last year we did security for a teen heartthrob during his European tour. The fucking kid needed to have his head examined. He took snapshots of every inappropriate thing he could think of and posted that shit online. It was exhausting, staying one step ahead of the shit-storm those pictures created.” He reached into his jacket pocket, found the sheaf of papers and withdrew them, adding as an aside, “Although I wouldn’t mind catching a glimpse of the unseemly behavior you two ladies visited on a piece of nude, male marble!”

Victoria howled with laughter. “It was all her, I swear!” Finding her cell phone she quickly scrolled through the photos, squealing with embarrassment. “Oh my God! It’s so much worse than I remembered,” she giggled. “Yikes!” she laughed slapping her hand across her eyes. “Each picture is worse than the previous, although I think in all fairness I should admit to egging her on.”

When she held up on particularly salacious shot of the newlywed bride on her knees wagging her tongue suggestively at a nude statue, Drae bellowed with hearty laughter. “Is that what you women do when the men aren’t looking?” he teased good-naturedly.

She blushed and shrugged. “Maybe.” Sighing, she nodded at the papers he held. “Is there anything important in there? I have Garry’s assistant in my contact list. We could text him if there’s any need.”

“Mmm-hmm. Good idea.” Unfolding the papers, Drae eased onto the sofa and started ruffling through the pages. “Looks like the license and a bunch of legal stuff about filing for name changes.” He was about to put everything in his laptop case when something caught his eye. “What the fuck?” he yelled, jumping to his feet. An angry red mist flooded his brain.

Victoria nearly choked on her coffee, he startled her so bad with his outburst. Suddenly, a headache began pounding in his skull, and his eye began twitching. Anxiety grabbed him by the throat.

“What’s the matter?”

Drae shook his head repeatedly, as if that would make the words swimming on the paper in front of him change. His heart was pounding and a trickle of sweat started making its way between tensed shoulder blades. This had better be some elaborate punk’d scenario.

When he felt Victoria’s hand upon his arm he reacted as if she’d burned him, snatching his body from her closeness and moving away at the speed of light. “Draegyn, what’s the matter? You’re scaring me.”

He didn’t know what to say. Words were frozen in his throat while his mind careened in panicked haste, trying to make sense of what was happening. Waving the paper at her, he ran his hand through his hair and gritted his teeth. “Do you know what this is?” he shouted.

“No. Why? Oh my God, what’s wrong?”

He snorted dismissively at her. “What’s wrong?” His voice had the distinct tenor of someone in free-falling panic. “I’ll tell you what the fuck is wrong. According to this…” He bristled while still waving the paper crumpled in his fist. “It seems we are married.” Somehow he managed to make the word
married
sound like a vulgar curse and a sentence of death all in the same breath.

“What?’ she wheezed, as she gulped in air. “Married? Who’s married? Garry and Shawn you mean?” When he didn’t answer, just stood numb and frozen glaring at her, she paled before his eyes. “This is a prank, right?”

Something inside Drae detonated like a bomb. Married! Married. No, it just couldn’t be. Marriage was not on the agenda. Ever. Didn’t matter who it was. He’d learned that lesson early in life. Marriage was for chumps, and he didn’t ever intend to be counted in that category.

“Here,” he snarled, pushing the papers in her shocked hands. “See for yourself.” Jabbing a finger accusingly at the sheet he pointed to her signature. “Look, see? You signed this. What the fuck were you thinking?”

“What was
I
thinking?” she screamed back. “Convenient of you to ignore your signature right next to mine.” She looked as frantic as he felt.

He felt sick. If these papers were correct, not only had he and Victoria somehow gotten married, they’d very conveniently consummated the arrangement.
Motherfucker
. He was screwed.

Tori was horrified at what she held in her hands. Draegyn was right. They had gotten married. Searching her champagne infused memories for any clues to how this happened was useless. Most of the evening was a blur. They’d had way too much to drink over many hours making some moments crystal clear while others, well….blurry didn’t do them justice. She looked at him over the offending document, taken aback by the fury she saw in his expression. This angry man wasn’t the person she’d come to know. Something else was going on but right now all she could deal with was the current situation.

“Okay, let’s calm down and figure this out,” she offered. “I think that…”

Cutting her off in mid-breath, Draegyn erupted, sending her a scathingly dismissive glance. “I
cannot
be married,” he bit out in terse, no nonsense language that spoke volumes. “Marriage is not in my wheelhouse.”

Was he kidding? Disregarding the blazing rage evident in his face, she felt her ire go up at the anger she felt was directed solely at her. So much for any post-coital afterglow. Hurt and confused by his overreaction to their predicament Tori blurted out the first stupid thing that came to mind. “Oh, so…what? This is all about
you
? Marriage puts a crimp in your style, then? No more find, feel, fuck and forget for Draegyn St. John? Poor baby.”

He winced at her pithy use of the expression he knew people used to describe him. It sounded so wrong coming out of her mouth but he was fucked-up in the head at the moment and wasn’t thinking straight. “I do
not
want to be married,” he yelled for no good reason.

“Fuck you, St. John,” was her tart response. “Sorry to disappoint that infernal ego of yours, but you’re not my idea of husband material. I want an annulment. Now!”

He snapped and started yelling like a madman, “Who are you fucking kidding? An annulment?” Sneering derisively he spit angry, hurtful words at her. “I think you’re a couple orgasms short of meeting that goal. Last time I checked, we fucked each other pretty thoroughly last night. And there’s still the issue of the unprotected sex yesterday morning. Scratch an annulment.”

Drae was gripped by anger. A cold, dark fury exploded inside. When his rage connected with her fierce indignation she became a hellcat, spitting and hissing at him. What was she so mad about? This wasn’t about her. This was about him, dammit. What a mess. In twenty-four hours he had made himself a husband and a potential baby daddy. The corner of his eye twitched harder. “Get ready to leave. I need to get out of this place and think.”

His turbulent emotions overrode any awareness of her stricken expression when he’d thrown down the orgasm taunt or the ugly fact that he’d fucked her with no protection. Drae knew he was callously riding roughshod over her part in all this, but the realization didn’t stop long-held beliefs from taking control of his mind.

Keeping his voice hard and gruff, he laid out how he expected things to proceed with the absolute conviction that she would simply do as she was told. After all, he was the one calling the shots. “I will find out what has to be done to fix this - mistake.” She flinched at his delivery. A feeling somewhere between cringing and disgust when he referred to fixing something he’d done, pushed him half a bubble off plumb. Awareness roared in his ears, momentarily blinding him to the presence of the other person in the room.

Draegyn was lucky she had the presence of mind to hold herself back. Why, that arrogant, son-of-a-bitch just called her a mistake! Outrage flooded her mind. And the way he was talking down to her, as if she was a piece of dirt on his shoe! Without thinking, Tori went into fighting pose, legs spread and unyielding, ready to kick some serious ass. Hands planted firmly at her waist, fingers twitching as if readying to slap a certain someone’s conceited face.

The cause for this irrational display of anger was still a mystery, but his ugly words were not. His loathsome putdowns referencing her orgasms, and the very real likelihood that she could be pregnant, hung in the air like the aftermath of artillery fire. Oh, so this was somehow all
her
doing. She’d stolen his precious semen with her Jezebel ways and plotted to marry his unwilling ass, apparently all just to fuck with him. What. A.
Dick
.

“No one is to know about this,” she hissed tersely. “I mean that. Absolutely no one. There cannot be even the slightest chance that some enterprising paparazzi might stumble upon this information and use it to build a salacious story. More importantly, I expect you to do as you’ve said. Fix this
mistake
, as quickly and silently as possible.” She made absolutely sure to insinuate a wealth of meaning into her use of
his
description. “And stop with the icy blue-eyed stare. It doesn’t scare me,” she bit out, waving her hands dramatically in imitation of being frightened. “Save it for someone who gives a shit.”

Dismissing him with a final look seething with distaste, Tori retreated to her room to gather her belongings. Needing to say one final thing to put a stamp of finality on something that had started out so exciting that was now crashing and burning in spectacular fashion, she snarled in his general direction. “Don’t speak to me again, Mr. St. John. We have nothing further to say to each other. Understood? Unless it has to do with business, I don’t want to hear from you. Ever.”

The super-charged emotional silence between them made the noiseless conditions in the main cabin of the jet deafening. Drae had been boiling over with raw, undignified emotions since the moment their confrontation ended. When she’d railed at him, calling him ‘mister’, he’d wanted to drag her back into the room by the hair and make her take back her words. Don’t talk to her ever again? No one told him what he could or couldn’t do.
The bitch
.

That was how he’d felt ever since. Angry. Raw. Out of control. He seriously wanted to hit something and had even measured up the damage he’d cause by slamming his fist into a wall before they’d made their silent, angry retreat from the hotel. Drae wasn’t a fool. His rational mind was keeping up a running commentary while his irrational one drove his thoughts and actions. He knew that finding a marriage certificate with his name on it had detonated a psychological time bomb that had been silently ticking inside him for a very long time. It was one thing to have his normal Mr. Cool ways completely obliterated by a brown-haired pixie with a smart mouth and a sexy pout. Yet another altogether to find himself embroiled in the one thing that was sure to blow his world to smithereens.

Married
. The word made his stomach lurch. He didn’t do married. Didn’t do relationships. Never wanted to either. Drae knew deep in his heart that he was far too emotionally scarred by his parents’ bullshit to ever contemplate tying himself to another human being. He wasn’t built that way. Didn’t matter who the woman was.

He didn’t so much as glance in her direction. Didn’t need to. He knew what she was doing without having to look. If ignoring him were an Olympic sport, she’d be scoring straight tens in every category. Reluctantly acknowledging the psychology at work inside him that made him grind his teeth, Drae carefully checked the sigh he felt before it hit the air.

When the pilot announced descent for landing, she fidgeted with her seatbelt, turning sunglass-shielded eyes toward the window. He could have run through the cabin naked with his hair on fire and know with certainty that Victoria wouldn’t have reacted at all. He should be glad, or relieved at the very least. But he wasn’t, and didn’t know why.