Marrying Mr. English: The English Brothers #7 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 11) (4 page)

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.

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
.”

“Told you, Ellie,” said Eve Marie from behind her, nudging her cousin’s arm with a simple bouquet of calla lilies and looking up at Tom. “We charged the flowers to you.”

“That’s fine.”

Van finally stood up, huffing loudly to draw Tom’s attention.

“Last chance,” he mouthed over the cousins’ heads.

Tom looked back down at Eleanora’s expectant face.

Too late.

***

The chapel Tom had reserved wasn’t at all what Eleanora had expected for her impromptu Vegas wedding. Honestly, she had cringed inside at the thought of an Elvis impersonator officiating—but then, Tom was surprising her at every turn. The Wee Kirk o’the Heather Wedding Chapel, though situated beside a gas station on the Strip, was surprisingly traditional inside.

Once they arrived via limo, Eleanora was quickly whisked away by a wedding coordinator, while Tom, Eve Marie, and Van were shown into the chapel. She waited in the vestibule just outside the sanctuary, her hands sweating around the bouquet of flowers Evie had ordered, her breathing quick and choppy.

Even though he barely knew her, Tom had done everything possible to make today special for her, and Eleanora couldn’t help but be deeply touched by his kindness.

Unlike other little girls who dreamed about the man they’d eventually marry at their perfect fairy-tale wedding, Eleanora Watters hadn’t indulged in such fantasies. All three of her older siblings had children, but none was married, and while Eleanora had attended the wedding of Evie’s mother to her second and third husbands, she didn’t have any fond memories of the events.

Most of Eleanora’s ideas about love and weddings came from the books she’d read and the movies she’d watched, though she was enough of a realist to separate fact from fiction and recognize that such fanciful notions would probably never apply to her and her life.

And yet . . .

Here was Tom English, the very epitome of a rich, handsome, fairy-tale prince, treating her with kindness, looking at her with those hot, dark eyes, and touching her face like she was, somehow, already precious to him.

“Are we ready, dear?”

Eleanora nodded at the wedding coordinator, and the older woman knocked twice on the closed double doors in front of them. Instantly, the wedding march sounded from inside the chapel, the doors magically opened, and Eleanora walked down the aisle toward Tom.

***

If he’d thought her beautiful in the lobby of the Imperial Palace, here, in a tiny Vegas chapel, walking toward him in white with a sweet smile, she looked almost angelic.

She handed her bouquet to Eve Marie, and Tom raised his hands so she could take them, her small fingers threading effortlessly through his.

“You sure you want to do this?” he whispered once the music ended.

Her smile grew a little bigger, and she nodded at him, giving him the same words she’d said when she accepted his proposal. “Why not?”

“Okay,” he said, grinning back at her before turning to the officiant. “I guess we’re ready.”

He’d paid for the basic wedding package. No Elvis. No silliness. No cheesy tomfoolery. Just the vows necessary to pronounce them husband and wife, and a dozen posed photos after the service. Why he’d sprung for the photos, he wasn’t sure—he’d checked the box before giving it a lot of thought. She could throw them away later if she didn’t want them.

“Then let’s begin.”

Tom nodded, then looked back at Eleanora, whose fingers tightened around his as the older gentleman started speaking.

“Friends, we are gathered here today to join Thomas English and Eleanora Watters in marriage. At Tom’s request, I will begin this ceremony with some words by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

Eleanora’s eyes widened for a just a moment before she tilted her head to the side, smiling up at him with wonder.

The officiant read in a clear voice: “An excerpt from a letter to Robert Browning, from his wife, Elizabeth:
You cannot guess what you are to me—you cannot—it is not possible:—and though I have said
that
before, I must say it again . . . for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between dream and miracle, all of it—as if some dream of my earliest brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light.
Can
it be, I say to myself, that
you
feel for me
so
? can it be meant for me? . . . Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for you?”

“
They leave the ground fallow before the wheat
,” she murmured, her intelligent eyes glistening and yet somehow severe as she stared up at him. “How in the world did you—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered, his heart throbbing with tenderness for her.

It had taken the hotel concierge hours and hours—and a couple hundred dollars—working with a lady at the Las Vegas Public Library this morning, to track down the source of the words Eleanora had whispered to Tom last night. But it was worth it. Looking into her eyes now, he decided that every second he’d waited, every cent he’d spent on the search, had been worth it to ensure that she was married to him with a few words that actually meant something to her.

“It matters,” she answered softly, her voice breaking a little even as she managed a smile for him.

“Thomas English,” intoned the officiant, “repeat after me.”

Tom stared into Eleanora’s eyes as he repeated the vows, promising to love, honor, and cherish her. And he’d be lying if he said his own eyes didn’t burn a little as she returned the words, her expression bright and confident as her lips moved softly to form the words that bound her life to his.

“And now, by the authority vested in me by the state of Nevada, I pronounce you man and wife. Mr. English, you may kiss your bride.”

It hadn’t occurred to Tom that he’d be given permission to kiss Eleanora, that it would be expected. After last night, he’d sort of made a deal with himself that he wouldn’t touch her, knowing that if he did, his feelings for her would tumble into an emotional abyss, and he strongly doubted he’d ever be in possession or control of them again.

She must have seen the fear cross his face, because her expression cooled as she straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “You don’t have to.”

Did she think he didn’t
want
to? Could she possibly believe—even for a second—there was a universe in which he
didn’t
want to feel the softness of her lips beneath his? It wasn’t okay with him for her to believe that . . . because it simply wasn’t true.

“I
want
to.”

Releasing her hands, he palmed her cheeks, gently urging her closer. Eleanora took a step toward him, closing the distance between them, the fitted lace of her bodice flush against the crisp white cotton of his shirt.

Tom bent his neck, closing his eyes as he leaned toward her, feeling her fingers wrap around his forearm and tighten as his lips alighted on hers. She gasped softly as they made contact, stealing his breath as surely as she was stealing his heart. Her breasts pushed against his chest as she surged forward, arching into him, and he flicked his tongue along the seam of her lips to see if she would open to him. When she did, he tilted his head to the side, lowering his hands to her waist so he could gather her into his arms.

His toes curled in his shoes. His blood sluiced to his groin, where it pooled, hot and demanding, making him hard and needy for her—for this woman who could now legally call herself Mrs. Thomas English.

Eleanora English. His wife.