Halloween Honeymoon Read online

“But we need our big celebrity to start the auction for the—Oh! Excuse me.”

  Cari peered around Keegan’s shoulder to see a tall, silver-haired man in striped prison garb, complete with ball and chain dangling from one hand. The newcomer’s mouth curved as he took in their intimate embrace.

  “Fast work, Josh, even for you.”

  “Get lost, Billy Bob,” Keegan instructed, not bothering to turn around.

  Billy Bob? Gulping, Cari recognized the state’s lieutenant governor, William Robert Oglethorpe.

  “Well, I’d like to, ol’ buddy,” he replied, chuckling. “But we came here tonight to raise some cold hard cash, remember? Think you can let your prize go long enough to get with it?”

  “No can do,” Keegan replied, grinning down at Cari. “We’re hooked.”

  “Josh Keegan, hooked?” Oglethorpe hooted in derision. “That’s something I’d like to see.”

  “Me too!” another voice boomed.

  What was this? Cari thought in embarrassment. A meeting of the Josh Keegan fan club? Twisting her head, she saw a red-suited devil with a three-pronged pitchfork join their little group. His tufted black brows soared upward when he noticed her hands playing with Keegan’s belt. Heat warmed her cheeks as she realized she was adding another notch to Josh Keegan’s reputation.

  “Seeing Josh bite the dust is something a good number of us would pay to see,” the lieutenant governor said, chuckling. “I don’t know what it is about a confirmed bachelor that makes every married man ache to see him shackled.”

  He rattled his ball and chain to emphasize his point. Lucifer stared at him for a moment, then thumped the floor with the end of his pitchfork in sudden enthusiasm.

  “Hey, you’ve got something there, Billy Bob! Instead of auctioning off a bunch of prizes no one needs or particularly wants tonight, let’s auction off Josh.” He gave Cari a sideways glance. “Or better yet, marry him off, since he appears to have already found a partner.”

  “Wait a minute, Harry,” Keegan protested. “Let’s not get carried away here.”

  “Trust me, Josh, it’s a great idea,” the devil insisted. “We’ll stage a mock ceremony and collect ‘wedding presents’ from the guests, all of which will be donated to the Special Olympics. I’m telling you, we’ll raise a bundle.”

  “Sounds good to me,” the felonious legislator put in. “Come on, Josh. You’ve done a lot crazier stunts in your time.”

  “Well…”

  “It might sound good to you gentlemen,” Cari put in, a little piqued at the way the three men assumed she’d fall in with their scheme. “You can marry Mr. Keegan off if you wish, but you’ll have to find him another bride. I’m not in the market for a groom right now.”

  Not now, and not anytime in the near future. Maybe after the next presidential election. Or the next appearance of Halley’s comet. Whichever came later.

  “But you’re so well matched,” Lucifer protested. “The lady and the pirate. The Spanish noblewoman and the buccaneer who carries her off.”

  Cari didn’t bother to point out that the elaborate embroidery on her costume made it distinctly English in style, not Spanish. Or that she had no intention of being carried off by anyone. She fumbled with the lace caught on Keegan’s belt buckle, wanting out of this ridiculous situation.

  “Come on,” Satan coaxed, in much the same voice he might have used with Eve. “It’s just a gag.”

  Ignoring him, Cari gave the lace a tug, then winced when it tore free. She’d paid far more for the trim than she could afford, but once she spotted it in a musty antique store in Savannah, she’d had to have it. Still, she wasn’t about to let it bind her, even symbolically, to any man.

  Freed of her tether, she tried to step back. To her surprise, Keegan’s hold didn’t slacken. She glanced up to find his eyes—correction, his eye—on her chest. Correction, her cleavage.

  Another wave of heat washed up Cari’s neck at the gleam of masculine appreciation in its hazel depths. Hard on the heels of her embarrassment came a lowering thought.

  Maybe Edward had been right. Maybe she’d devoted herself and her studies to the wrong century. The wrong culture. The Elizabethans had been bold, bawdy and blunt. Cari, in her former fiancé’s considered opinion, qualified for only one out of three. Impulsiveness didn’t equate with boldness in Edward’s book. And she had too many inhibitions to shed before she came anywhere close to bawdy. She would’ve been more at home a century or two later, he’d told her. Among the Puritans.

  Blunt, however, she could manage.

  “I don’t want to marry you, Mr. Keegan. Any more than you want to marry me.”

  “I don’t know,” he murmured, his hands roving her back. “The idea’s kind of growing on me.”

  The glinting laughter in his gold-flecked eye told Cari he was playing with her. She should have been annoyed. She should have pulled out of his hold. She should have told all three men to get real. She had every intention of doing just that when Keegan dropped his arms and stood back.

  “What do you say, Miss—?” He lifted a brow. “Or is it Mrs.?”

  “It’s Ms.,” she replied, refusing to admit that she instantly missed the feel of his arms around her. Was she an idiot, or what? “O’Donnell. Caren O’Donnell. Cari to my friends.”

  Lucifer and the felon exchanged glances, smirking over the fact that two people who’d been wrapped around each other like kudzu vines until a few seconds ago hadn’t bothered with introductions.

  “Well, I’d say a prospective groom might qualify as a friend. What do you say, Cari? It’s for a good cause. Shall we do it?”

  In the face of his good-natured willingness to go along with the scheme, she found it difficult to refuse without sounding churlish. It was for a good cause, one she believed in.

  “Well,” she replied slowly, “I think the whole idea’s silly, but I suppose I can play along.”

  The devil banged his pitchfork against the floor in delight. “Great! Billy Bob, you can give the bride away. Come on, Josh, let’s go announce your imminent nuptials. Then I’ll have to find a cardinal or a bishop or someone to perform the ceremony.”

  He dragged Keegan away before Cari had time for second thoughts. Which she did. Immediately. Second, and third, and fourth thoughts. But her pride wouldn’t let her admit that the idea of a fake wedding ceremony stung just a bit. More than a bit.

  Okay, so she’d learned the hard way that Edward wasn’t the man for her? So she’d begun to suspect it even before she discovered that he’d used her research in the paper he presented to the American Historical Society? So a niggling sense of relief at her close escape had begun to edge out her anger in recent weeks? Still, she’d spent one whole summer planning a future with him.

  Their wedding would have been a small, elegant affair, Cari mused as waves of delighted laughter greeted the devil’s announcement of Josh Keegan’s imminent transition from carefree bachelor to careworn spouse. Tuning out Satan’s cheerfully blunt demands for generous “wedding gifts,” Cari swallowed and thought about what might have been.

  They’d intended to invite only the family and a few close friends. Her parents would have flown in from Indiana, and her dad would have given her away. Cari would have worn an antique lace mantilla with a tealength dress in soft, creamy satin. Afterward, she would have held a small reception. She’d planned to serve champagne and the heavenly spice cake baked by her neighbor, Mrs. Wilder.

  She would not have walked down an aisle formed by a grinning crowd of bumblebees and clowns and Frankensteins. She would not have clutched the arm of a felon. She most certainly would not have found a half-naked pirate waiting for her at the end of the aisle.

  Flicking the pirate in question a quick look, Cari was struck by the differences between her pretend groom and her almost-groom. Dry-witted and at times acerbic, Edward had cultivated a properly professorial, distinguished air. Josh Keegan, on the other hand, possessed an overabundance of charm and carried himself with the
natural grace of a professional athlete.

  Tall, tanned and too darn handsome for his own good, he towered over Lucifer on the low stage. Light from the chandeliers burnished his dark hair to the luster of polished teak. His billowy white shirt gave tantalizing glimpses of shoulders and arms that were smooth and well muscled, as Cari could personally attest. Tight black pants shaped narrow hips and strong thighs.

  Strangely, though, his easy, laughing manner stirred her far more than his admittedly awesome physical attributes. He joked with the crowd and with the devil, whose skill at extracting money made Cari suspect he was either the event’s organizer or a very good lawyer, or both. As she watched from the sidelines, pledges began to pour in. After some spirited giveand-take, a smiling dark-haired woman with the pointed ears, quivering whiskers and sleek body of a black cat stepped to the microphone.

  “In recognition of this momentous occasion, Gulliver’s Travels has converted the grand prize for best costume into a honeymoon cruise.”

  Laughter swelled through the crowd, and someone yelled that they should christen the ship the Titanic II, since Josh Keegan was about to go under.

  “This package is for the participants, for being such good sports,” the woman announced with a lively smile. “Mr. Gulliver has authorized me to match the cost of the cruise with a donation to the Special Olympics.”

  “Way to go!” Lucifer exclaimed.

  Thunderous applause greeted her announcement, and more donations followed. When the barrage of wedding presents finally halted, a gleeful Satan announced that the pledges came to almost ten thousand dollars.

  Cari gasped. “Ten thousand dollars!”

  The idea of raising that much money for a worthwhile cause wiped away her last hesitation. Tossing the memories of her quiet, elegant wedding into a mental trash bin, she managed a smile as the lieutenant governor offered his arm.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered, slipping her arm through his.

  He signaled to the orchestra, which began a slow, mournful march. It sounded like a dirge, Cari thought. It was a dirge, she realized with a start. A full-fledged funeral march. Shaking her head, she clutched the prisoner’s arm and started down the aisle.

  A fanged Dracula suddenly stepped out of the crowd. “Wait a minute! The bride needs a bouquet.”

  He plucked a long-stemmed calla lily from the spray decorating the cardboard coffin strapped to his friend’s back. Bowing, he handed it to Cari. She murmured her thanks, tucked the waxy flower into the crook of her arm and fell into step once more. With each measured pace that brought her closer to the broad-shouldered buccaneer, her heart thumped painfully against her ribs.

  This was only pretend, she reminded herself. Just a gag.

  Josh stood on the low platform and watched his bride approach. At the sight of her strained smile and her soft breasts pushing against her costume, he grinned wryly to himself.

  Marriage had been the last thing on his mind when he first spotted this pint-size but superbly packaged female. At the time, all he was interested in had been whether she was going to fall out of the gown she kept trying to pull up. When she ducked behind the pillar to give it another yank, he’d followed her on pure instinct. An instinct that had led to this sappy charade.

  It might be sappy, Josh reminded himself, but it had raised almost ten grand. And raising money had been his main function tonight as celebrity host.

  Celebrity host. The title echoed hollowly in his mind, drowning out the solemn notes of the wedding march.

  Christ! Six months ago he’d come in second at the Masters. Four months ago he’d won the British Open, playing the finest round of golf of his life. A week later, a ball had ricocheted out of the woods, and now all he played was charity events like this.

  Although he concealed his injury behind an eye patch and his uncertainty about his future behind the lazy grin the media and the groupies loved, Josh was starting to resent the new role he’d been thrust into. He supported a number of causes. Had always done so. But he wasn’t quite ready for a full-time career as a celebrity spokesperson for the physically challenged.

  He was a golfer. That was all he’d ever been. All he ever wanted to be. The game came as naturally as breathing to him, and he was good at it. Damn good. He refused to believe he wouldn’t shake this blurred vision and these blasted headaches and get back on tour.

  He’d go through with this final charade for Billy Bob, Josh decided. He owed his boyhood friend that much, and more, for all his support since the accident. But he wouldn’t get involved with any more charity events for a while. He needed to start swinging a club again. He needed to reestablish a training regimen, or he’d never make it back to the winner’s circle. Shoving the doubts about his future that had plagued him for weeks to the back of his mind, Josh summoned up a grin and forced himself to focus on his bride.

  Lord, she was an intriguing bundle of femininity. She glided toward him like a queen, her heavy skirts swishing and her breasts quivering above that ironing board of a dress. Everything about her hinted at rigidly constrained sensuality, from her gown to her wide pansy-brown eyes. The idea of being the one to release her from her constraints, physical and otherwise, added spice to the proceedings.

  Maybe, Josh thought with a resurgence of his natural optimism, just maybe, his luck was changing. Maybe he’d find himself enjoying a wedding night, as well as a wedding.

  His bride stopped a few feet away, gripping Billy Bob’s arm as though it were a lifeline. The bleary-eyed little judge standing beside Josh harrumphed and waited for the funeral march to come to a mournful end.

  Josh glanced down at the man garbed as a barrister, wondering where in the world Harry had come up with him. He wore a shiny black robe and a moth-eaten old-fashioned wig that draped over his bald head at an odd angle. He looked, Josh decided, like a refugee from a law-office rummage sale. And if the bourbon fumes wafting from him at regular intervals were any indication, he’d consumed more than his fair share of the potent punch.

  When the music ended, the judge squinted at the couple standing before the platform.

  “Who—?”

  He broke off, swaying to one side. Josh steadied him with a firm hold on his arm. Over the judge’s head, he caught his bride’s startled look. Then rueful laughter sprang into her brown eyes, and Josh sucked in a quick breath.

  Flushed and flustered, Cari O’Donnell had intrigued him. Sparkling with suppressed laughter, she barreled into him like a runaway golf cart.

  “Ahem.” The judge swiped his tongue across his lips and tried again. “Who gives this woman to be married?”

  “I do,” Billy Bob announced in ringing tones. He patted the bride’s hand, then offered it to Josh.

  Cari shivered as strong, callused fingers intertwined with hers and pulled her gently toward the dais. This wasn’t real, she reminded herself. Her groom wasn’t real. An hour from now, two at the most, she’d be tucked in bed, with her books scattered around her. This would all be a crazy memory to shake her head over. Yet his touch seemed to sear her skin, and she shivered as she stepped up to stand beside him.

  “I don’t remember all the words,” the judge muttered, frowning at the couple before him as though his memory lapse was their fault. “Just the pertinent ones. Do you—?” He squinted up at the groom. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Josh. Keegan.”

  “John?”

  “Josh. Joshua.”

  “Do you, Joshua Keegan, take this woman to have and to hold, and so on and so forth?”

  A silence fell, then stretched on. And on!

  The crowd tittered. Male voices called last-minute warnings. Female laughter tinkled through the ballroom. The judge crooked his neck, blinking owlishly.

  Cari wondered if the world’s most determined bachelor would chicken out at this crucial moment. She tilted her head, glancing up at him out of the corner of her eye. He was playing to the crowd, she
realized. Or waiting till he’d snagged her full attention. Once he had it, he flashed her another of those lopsided grins that did strange things to her heartbeat.

  “I do.”

  The judge glowered at Cari. “Do you—?”

  “Wait a minute!” A surgeon in gore-stained garments stepped forward.

  “We’re not to that part yet,” the barrister snapped. “I’ll tell you when you can speak or forever hold your peace.”

  “But they need a license. And a blood test. I’ve got a scalpel. Anyone got a pen?”

  “No way,” Cari protested. She wasn’t going to let some nut puncture her, not even for ten thousand dollars in pledges. Not in this day and age. “No scalpels.”

  “Now see here,” the judge said testily, obviously annoyed at being interrupted. “They don’t need any license, or a blood test. I’m a retired state supreme court justice. Under the Judiciary Reorganization Act of 1877, I retain full plenipotentiary powers over certain state laws.”

  The surgeon backed off, laughing. “If you say so, Judge.”

  Josh was impressed. Despite his tipsy state, the little barrister could think fast enough on his feet. That small matter settled, the judge swung back to Cari.

  “Well? Do you?”

  “Oh! I…I guess so.”

  “You guess so?” The moth-eaten wig flapped as he shook his head. “Do you or don’t you?”

  Cari swallowed. “I do.”

  “By the authority vested in me, and so forth and so forth, I pronounce you man and wife.”

  That was it? No rings? No stirring words about the sanctity of marriage? The abrupt conclusion left Cari feeling hollow and wondering what they were supposed to do next. She didn’t wonder for long.

  The judge turned to Josh with a snort. “Well, go ahead and kiss her.”

  Josh didn’t need further prompting. Folding Cari into his arms, he bent her backward with the force of his kiss.

  Half laughing, wholly embarrassed, she clung to him, as much to protect her modesty as to keep her balance. Applause thundered around them, giving way to hoots and catcalls as the kiss went on.

  And on.