“I did. We’ll be unmarried before you know it,” she says, then makes a shooing gesture. “Move it along.”

“Did you book the annulment before we even tied the knot?” I say, trying to make a joke. “Admit it—you brought me here planning to get me down the aisle and have your wicked way with me. You tricked me, didn’t you?”

But judging from the furrow of her brows, I’ve failed miserably in the humor department. “Tricked you?”

“Yeah. So you could have me all night long.”

She sighs heavily. “That would imply I’d intended to marry you last night.”

“Wait. Whose idea was it, then?”

She stares at me like the words coming out of my mouth are foreign. Maybe they are. When she speaks, her tone is laced with frustration. “Both. We got married because we were drunk and daring and having fun, not because I planned it,” she says, tapping her chest. “We both woke up hungover. We both woke up shocked. I’m simply the one trying to untangle the mess we both made and make sure we still get home on time. Thanks to my amazing googling skills, as well as my astonishing ability to wake up before you, I accomplished that. Not through some feat of supreme trickery. Anyway, I tracked down a paralegal that’s not too far out of the way as we head to the airport. The car service will be here in thirty minutes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to blow-dry my hair.”

She turns on her heel. But before she leaves, she snaps her gaze back to me then roams her eyes down my body. “By the way, nice boner. In case you forgot that part of last night, we screwed four times, and you came harder and louder than I’m sure you ever did before.”

She leaves, and my feet are glued to the tiles of the bathroom, and my dick points in her direction, wanting a repeat.

“Down, boy,” I mutter, but my dick doesn’t listen because what she just said was fucking hot. So were all those orgasms last night.

“You were loud, too,” I call out as I trudge to the shower, turn it on high, and try to wash off the regret. Because as hot as the sex was, I was sure I’d moved on from my stint of bad choices with women. I’d been to rehab, I’d learned my lesson, and I’d followed my own guidelines.

Till last night.

When I fell off the wagon big time.

I bend my head under the stream, letting the hot water scald my neck and run down my back. As I soap up, a blast of memories fights its way to the front of my head, reminding me of the two big mistakes in my past when it comes to women. I picture Roxy, her sexy smirk that won me, then the letter from her years later trying to rip me to shreds. Given how all the shit went down with her, I was cautious and careful with Katrina. Little good it did. The bitch hacked me anyway.

My chest tightens painfully as I picture that sweet, blond beauty in the other room doing the same. Natalie could skewer me and have my business for lunch. She’s Mrs. Hammer now. She’s got access to what’s mine, and I can’t stop imagining her taking my credit card numbers, stealing my shit, digging her claws in.

But it’s crazy to think that.

“Get a grip,” I mutter, because Natalie would never screw me over. She’s not like those others. She’s not a kick-’em-in-the-balls kind of woman.

Except . . . you’ve only known her six months, dude.

I scrub my skin harder and try to talk myself off the ledge. I’m being ridiculous. Natalie and I spent one night together, and she already organized the annulment to fix our mistake. Just because I’ve got a couple of nutso chicks behind me doesn’t mean the chick I nailed last night will go cuckoo, too.

But, calling her the chick I nailed seems wrong, especially as the metal on my finger glints at me, reminding me of how much more than nailing it was with her. Bits and pieces of laughter and lightness jostle in my brain, along with a memory of sweet, tender kisses, of a connection that felt deeper.

I didn’t just nail her last night. I’m sure of it. What happened between the two of us was way more than that.

I’m equally sure it can’t happen again.

16

Thirty minutes later, my shades are on, my headache has dialed down to dull, thanks to the aspirin, and I slide into a cool, air-conditioned car that takes us to a strip mall. We don’t talk the entire ride. I don’t even know what to say. She doesn’t seem to want to engage, either. Maybe I pissed her off with my tricked me comment. Or maybe she’s just got a mother of hangover headaches, too.

We park in front of Easy Out Divorce.

A thirty-something man with a diamond earring and a striped purple shirt strides out to greet us. He shakes hands gregariously, ushers us into his bare-bones office with a metal desk, and walks us through the process with a cheerful demeanor.

“And that’s all you need to do,” he says, flashing a smile. “It’ll be $199 for the preparation of the paperwork, and then you’d need to file it at the courthouse yourself, and the filing fee is $269. You can do that on Monday. We’ll give you instructions.”

Natalie shakes her head. “We need the full-service package. We’re flying back now.”

He snaps his fingers, awareness dawning. “Right, right. We talked about that on the phone this morning. You’re the New Yorkers.” He claps his big hands together. “We’ll need to kick this up a notch and do it all for you. We’ll prep the joint annulment, file it, and pay the court fees.” He makes a swooping gesture with his hand. “Then, we pick up the annulment decree signed by the judge.” Now, he mimes signing a paper. “And all that is only $799. You can pay a deposit and make payments, or pay it all now. What sounds good to you?”