“Okay. Take good care of her, please.”

“Of course. And come back later,” Lila adds, then more softly, “Sometimes a woman just needs a few minutes alone.”

“Thank you.” Even though my heart is torn by my own stupidity, a brief calm descends on me thanks to Lila’s advice. The woman has always been good to us. She’ll look out for Natalie while I figure out how to sort out the mess I made. I hang up and check my email again. Nothing.

The whole afternoon looms ahead of me like a giant black hole. I want to work, to hammer, hang, and drill, not roam aimlessly around a city I barely know, all because I’m a pigheaded idiot.

But as the driver swings onto the Strip on his way to the Bellagio, I realize this isn’t just a city I barely know. This is the city where I started this love affair with Natalie, and it’s the city where I don’t want us to end.

I lean forward and ask the driver if we can change the destination.

“Sure thing. Where to?”

“Give me one minute to find the address,” I say, doing a quick search on my phone.

I find it, and he enters it in his GPS.

Ten minutes later, I walk up to a small chapel, looking for a guy in a gold leisure suit. I want to ask Larry if he remembers my wedding. If he can help me figure out where I screwed up. It’s a straw, but it’s the one I’m grasping at.

Once I enter the chapel, though, and hear the music, I’m whipped back in time to my wedding night, when Elvis crooned of how he couldn’t help falling in love.

And as that most romantic of romantic songs plays again, the notes somehow unlock the faint words that were tickling the back of my mind a mere hour ago. The drunken blur of my wedding ceremony is no longer a haze. It’s clear, and I can hear everything I said after the vows.

I stumble into a pew as the memory crashes into me like a tsunami.

I stand at the altar, clasping her hands, looking into her eyes as Elvis soundtracks our ceremony.

“You’re beautiful, Nat, and every day when I see you at work, I think how much I love coming into the office and working with you. But it’s not just because you’re gorgeous. You make my business better.” I grip her hands harder, holding tight, making sure she knows even in my intoxicated state that everything I say comes from my heart. “You make the business fun, but you also make it really fucking good. Without you, it’s nothing.”

She shakes her head, but she can’t stop smiling. “That’s not true. You’re so talented.”

Elvis sings about fools rushing in, and that word—fools—sticks with me. I don’t want to be fooled again. I can’t take that chance.

“No. It is true. You turned WH around, and I can’t thank you enough. And I’m so fucking lucky that we get to keep working together. You want to, right?”

She nods, laughing. “Of course. Why? You’re not going to fire me tonight, are you?”

I sway closer, plant a sloppy kiss on her mouth, and tell her no. “No. No. No. No fucking way am I firing you. But you’ve got to know that work is why we can’t stay married. I’ve had the best time with you, and I want so much more, but we have to get an annulment in the morning.”

Her eyes are intensely serious even as she hiccups. “Duh. Of course.”

Then, I thread my fingers more tightly through hers. “This night has been incredible, and a part of me feels just like this song because I kinda can’t help falling in love with you.” Her eyes widen in surprise, and maybe even hope, but I power through with the rest of the unplanned thoughts that I’ve simply got to share now. “But when that happens, Nat, I make mistakes and fuck up, and I screw myself over by being foolish and too trusting. I’ve gotten burned. So don’t let that happen to me. I want us to keep working together. Don’t you?”

“Yes, God yes.”

“Then promise me something.”

“What is it?”

“Promise me we’ll end this tomorrow. That you’ll divorce me. I’ll probably ask you to stay with me because I’m already crazy about you. I’ll probably ask you a ton of times. I’ll try everything to convince you, but I need you to promise me, no matter how convincing I am, that we’ll end the marriage. Because I can’t mix business and pleasure. It’s my Achilles’ heel, and I need you to help me. Promise me, promise me, promise me,” I say, with a harsh swallow, and then I wait.

But not for long.

Her eyes are full of truth as she answers solemnly.

“I promise, Wyatt. I promise. I promise. And I get it. I do. I really do.”

I drop my forehead into my palm as everything snaps into twenty-twenty hindsight. That’s why she stuck to her guns. Because I asked her to. Hell, I begged her to have my back for me. I made her swear she’d keep to the plan. I even said as much to her once again on the day I ripped up her check.

I made you a promise, and I goddamn intend to stick to it, whether I had a few beers or not. I’m a man of his word, and I sure as hell expect the people I work with to treat me like it, and to act the same way.

She held to the promise I asked her to keep. She protected me from me. But now I’m the one breaking other promises to her. Unspoken ones that came in the way we kissed, in the times we shared, in the way we were so good together.

Gripping the pew in front of me, I stand up, nearly bumping into a man in a gold jumpsuit.

“Hey there. You looking to get married today, son?”