Halloween Honeymoon Read online

  “Maybe we can get an annulment,” she suggested in desperation. “Or do you have to be Catholic for that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Her fingers curled into the front of his red knit polo shirt. “I know! Your friend, Billy Bob! He could push a special bill through the legislature, invalidating that ridiculous law.”

  “Cari…”

  “He’d have to do it fast. The grant committee meets next week. On Friday, I think. You could call him. Right now.”

  “Listen to me, Cari. There’s an easier way. We can get a divorce.”

  Her whirling thoughts came to a sudden and complete halt. “A…divorce?”

  He nodded. “In Cancún, when the ship docks there, early next week.”

  Later, Cari would realize that her instinctive reaction sprang from her heart and not her head. At the moment, however, all she could do was gulp as distaste curdled like sour milk in her stomach. The word echoed hollowly in her mind.

  Divorce.

  She’d be divorced.

  Before she’d really been married.

  The thought depressed her to the depths of her hopelessly romantic soul. The idea of a divorce tromped all over her somewhat dented illusions about love and weddings and marriages that lasted a life-time. She clutched at the red knit shirt and fought the most idiotic urge to cry.

  Watching the play of emotions on the face so close to his own, Josh bit back a curse. Not two minutes ago, he’d been sure Harry’s worst predictions were about to come true. Now, he wasn’t sure of anything, least of all his sudden, compulsive urge to wrap his arms around Cari and cradle her against his chest. Even with the lancing ache in his skull that darkened the edges of his vision, he hadn’t missed her dismay. Or the bright sheen of tears that now filled her eyes.

  Blinking furiously, she stepped out of his hold. Josh’s arms dropped to his side.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, flags of embarrassment riding high in her cheeks. “I don’t know why, but divorce sounds so…so ugly and traumatic.”

  “It doesn’t have to be ugly. Or traumatic. Not if it’s quick.”

  “Right. Quick and painless.” She managed a strained smile. “Like our marriage.”

  “Right.”

  Shoving her hands into the pockets of her terry-cloth cover-up, she hunched her shoulders. “So, uh, how do we go about this?”

  “Harry…You met him the other night. He was the one in horns and a pointed tail.”

  “I remember.”

  “He’s arranging everything through an associate with contacts in Mexico.”

  “Won’t we need passports? Or a marriage certificate?”

  “Harry drafted a document detailing the validity of the marriage. He was going to get the judge’s signature when I left this morning. He promised to fax the document to me as soon as it was signed and notarized.”

  “And that’s all we’ll need?”

  “According to Harry’s associate.”

  “Oh. Well, we’re all set, then.”

  Josh drew in a slow breath. “Almost. We have to file for the divorce a minimum of five days before the hearing. Harry got the forms from the Mexican consulate. The sooner we sign them and get them off, the better.”

  She nodded, and Josh wondered why the hell he felt so guilty at her ready acquiescence. She wanted the divorce as badly as he did. Digging into his back pocket, he extracted a set of folded papers.

  “Here, why don’t you look them over while I find the captain and arrange for a cabin?”

  Her brows disappeared into the fringe of her feathery bangs. “A cabin? You’re joining the cruise?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “No, not a problem,” she replied, mastering her surprise with a visible effort. “I just assumed we’d meet a week from now, in Cancún.”

  Josh would have preferred to do exactly that. Get her signature on the forms and meet her in Mexico to do the deed. But a week was a long time. Given what he’d learned of Cari’s impulsive nature, there was no telling what she might do in the course of a week. Like change her mind. Or talk to the wrong people. Or otherwise foul up what Harry assured him would be an easy process. No, both Harry and his associate had agreed it would be better if Josh stuck close to her until the boat docked in Cancún.

  He passed her the forms. “Here, look these over. We can talk about them later, after I get settled.”

  He left her standing in the center of the cabin, staring at the blank forms.

  He was back below decks some fifteen minutes later, his leather hang-up in one hand and a crumpled fax in the other. Jaws tight, he rapped his knuckles on the polished teak door.

  Dammit! This whole situation was rapidly sliding from the farcical into the absurd.

  He rapped again, harder. When Cari didn’t answer, he inserted the key the captain had presented him with just moments ago and stepped inside. The steady drum of a shower explained why she hadn’t heard his knock.

  Tossing his hang-up and the fax onto the leather sofa, Josh crossed a half acre of pale carpet to the wet bar built into the starboard bulkhead. He ignored the impressive array of premium labels and splashed two fingers of tap water into a heavy cut-crystal snifter. Digging in his pants pocket, he extracted his prescription painkillers. As much as he hated to take the damned things, he wasn’t about to let the ache in his forehead blossom into full-fledged, sledge-driving pain. Not until he explained the latest development in their on-again, off-again marriage to…He gulped down the pills. To his wife.

  While he waited for the pills to work and for Cari to emerge from the bathroom, Josh surveyed the opulent suite. Concerned only with Cari’s reaction to his news, he’d noted few details before. He now saw that the lavish stateroom extended the full width of the yacht. A huge bed awash in a sea of pale gold satin dominated one half of the room. The other half served as a living room, with the jade leather sofa and matching easy chairs grouped around a massive oak and brass coffee table. A sophisticated high-tech entertainment system took up a good portion of the rear bulkhead. To the right of that, sliding glass doors gave onto a small private deck with a breathtaking vista of the turquoise bay beyond.

  Josh had sailed aboard luxurious private yachts before. He’d spent a weekend cruising the California coast with a group put together by a well-known movie star who also happened to be a golf addict. He’d angled for marlin several times off the Florida Keys with a sporting-goods magnate. Once, he’d joined the U.S. President for dinner aboard the Sequoia after a pro-am charity event in Washington. But the Nautilus III outclassed all the other boats, even the presidential yacht.

  Idly Josh wondered how Gulliver’s Travels could afford to donate a prize package that included a cruise aboard a boat like this, even at a substantial discount. From what he’d seen of the travel agency during his hasty visit yesterday, it carried on a brisk trade, but still…

  His gaze fell on a set of folded papers on the desk in one corner of the sitting area. Frowning, he crossed the length of the stateroom and unfolded the wrinkled sheets.

  She’d signed the divorce petition. With no discussion. No arguments. No demands.

  Josh waited for the rush of relief that should have come with the sight of her signature, but all he felt was a strange dissatisfaction with the whole damned business. And a curious sense of anticipation. For the first time since the accident, an echo of his former vitality hummed in his veins. The eagerness reflected his decision to get on with his life, Josh knew. As soon as this business with Cari was settled, he’d follow through on the agenda he’d outlined yesterday morning.

  By the time the sound of running water ceased, the painkiller had done its work. In control once again, Josh waited for his soon-to-be-ex to appear.

  She strolled through the door a few moments later, her head buried in a thick white towel and her body wrapped in another. The wide band of white around her middle covered more of her trim figure than the blue-striped swimsuit had, but it covered her…differently.r />
  Less demurely.

  More precariously.

  It took Josh a moment to realize that the sudden, furious pounding in his forehead had nothing to do with his eye injury. A whole lot more than vitality hummed through his veins at the sight of the moisture beaded on her shoulders. He had the craziest urge to lick those dewdrops from her skin, one by one. He cleared his throat, more noisily than he’d intended.

  Cari jumped half out of her towels.

  Josh’s heart jumped all the way out of his chest and lodged in the vicinity of his Adam’s apple.

  Yanking the towel off her wet, tangled hair, she held it in front of her and shot him a fierce glare. “Listen here, Keegan! We may be sort of married, but that doesn’t give you unlimited conjugal visitation rights. How about knocking the next time you—”

  She broke off, her glare tipping into a ferocious scowl. “Wait a minute. I’m sure I locked the door before I got in the shower. How did you get in?”

  “With a key.”

  “A key? Where did you get a key?”

  “The captain gave it to me. Right when he handed me the fax Harry’s secretary sent through the on-board communications link.”

  She tilted her head, dangling a mass of wet wheatcolored hair over one shoulder. “I’m missing something here. Why would—?” Her brown eyes widened as comprehension dawned. “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes,” Josh confirmed. “The captain had read the fax and found out about the recent ceremony. He offered his heartiest congratulations, by the way.”

  “He thinks we’re really married?” she squeaked.

  “We are married,” Josh reminded her. Then he dropped the next bombshell. “Unfortunately, a few of the passengers overheard our conversation.”

  “Oh, no. Does everyone on the boat think we’re married?”

  “We are married.”

  “Stop saying that!” She drew in a steadying breath. “What did they say when you told them we were on our way to a divorce?”

  “Well…”

  She peered at him suspiciously. “You did tell them, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Josh shoved a hand through his hair. “It gets complicated.”

  Cari groaned. “Do I want to hear this?”

  Despite his own disgust with the latest turn of events, Josh felt a grin tug at his lips. “Probably not.”

  She plopped down on the edge of the bed, towel still clutched in both hands. “Tell me.”

  “If word of our marriage or divorce leaks, the media will swarm all over us like blood-starved mosquitoes. We’ll have boatloads of reporters following the Nautilus, and news helicopters buzzing us day and night. We wouldn’t have a moment of privacy or peace during the entire cruise. Nor would anyone else aboard the Nautilus III.”

  “Oh, wonderful.”

  “The only way I could think of to avoid a media plague was to let the captain and the passengers think we were on our honeymoon and ask them to respect our privacy.”

  Dismay filled her face. “They all think we’re on our honeymoon?”

  “Well, we are.”

  Her mouth opened. Snapped shut. Opened again.

  “Look, I’m not any happier than you are about this ridiculous situation,” Josh told her.

  She raked a hand through wet, tangled hair, leaving a crown of spiked bangs above her forehead. Josh waited in mounting anticipation to hear what she’d say about the latest installment in their continuing soap opera.

  “I’m getting a little dizzy,” she said at last. “In the space of twenty minutes, I’ve gone from wife to divorced woman to honeymooner. Just out of curiosity, when do I go back to being unattached again?”

  “In Cancún, as planned. If we can keep everything under wraps till then, we might be able to get out of this mess relatively unscathed. Until then, though, you’re stuck with me.” He glanced around the cabin. “Literally.”

  She let out an indignant squawk. “Wait a minute! Sharing a cabin wasn’t part of the deal. Not that there ever was a deal, but that definitely wasn’t part of it.”

  Josh shrugged. “Can you think of a logical reason for honeymooners to occupy separate cabins?”

  She chewed on her lower lip, obviously unhappy, but unable to come up with another alternative.

  “All right,” she conceded, with something less than graciousness. “But I was here first. I get the bed. You can take the couch.”

  Josh couldn’t help himself. She looked so put out and prissy-prim, despite her spiked hair and nearnaked state. Slipping into a familiar role, he smiled lazily.

  “It’s a big bed. Sure you don’t want to share?”

  He watched in amusement as a tide of pink rose from her shoulders to her neck to her cheeks. She couldn’t hide her emotions if she wore a golf bag over her head. As he’d learned the night he met her, however, embarrassment didn’t blunt her ability to lay things on the line.

  “Let’s get one thing straight. Married or not, I don’t intend to…to get naked and play bride and groom with you.”

  “Fair enough.” His half smile deepened to a wicked grin. “And I’ll try not to play ravishing pirate to your outraged captive.”

  The pink in her cheeks flared into red. “Try hard, Mr. Keegan. Very hard!”

  “We’re on our honeymoon, remember? Don’t you think you should call me Josh?”

  “I can think of several things I’d like to call you,” she muttered. She chewed on her lip a moment longer.

  then leveled him a straight look. “This situation is difficult enough as it is. Please, don’t make it worse by turning on the playboy charm. I’m not in your league. I don’t know how to handle it…or you.”

  “I’d say you handle both pretty well,” he replied, feeling firmly put in his place.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll finish dressing for dinner. Then you can have the bathroom.”

  Head high, she padded to the closet, pulled a frothy yellow dress off a hanger and disappeared into the other room.

  Cari soon discovered that she’d underestimated the difficulty of their absurd situation by exponential degrees.

  Decently clothed in her faithful scoop-necked tealength cocktail dress in bright canary-yellow chiffon, her hair swept up and her makeup in place, she tried to ignore the sounds emanating from the bathroom. Strange, she’d never realized before that waiting for a man while he showered could be such an intimate act.

  Josh hummed a popular, bluesy tune, his rich baritone floating over the patter of the water. Cari rubbed her arm to erase the ripples of sensation his voice raised, then prickled all over again when she heard the thunk of soap dropping. Immediately the image of his hard, muscled body all sudsy and lathered sprang into her mind.

  Gulping, she sank into the soft leather sofa. This was crazy. She didn’t even like the man. Much. She had no business imagining him wearing nothing but soapsuds and an eye patch.

  Drumming her fingers on the arm of the sofa, she tried to channel her thoughts to the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, every time she envisioned a gentleman in a white ruff, slashed doublet, tight hose and bulging codpiece, he bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain twentieth-century rogue.

  Cari’s cheeks warmed as a wayward thought crept into her mind. During medieval times, the codpiece had been a simple, utilitarian flap at the front of men’s breeches. By the Elizabethan era, it had evolved into a separate article of clothing that males often padded for, ah, effect. From her brief contact with Josh’s hard, muscular body in his hotel room, Cari suspected he wouldn’t require padding. Of any sort.

  Moments later, the shower shut off. She breathed a sigh of relief—prematurely, as it turned out. More water splashed into the sink, and then the scent of spicy shaving lotion drifted through the closed door.

  Another image leaped into her mind. Of Josh. At the marble sink. A towel wrapped around his lean flanks. Sleek muscles rippling as he rasped a razor down his cheeks. Cari felt the glide o
f each slow stroke against her own skin. Her heart thumped with a loud, painful beat. Her nails dug into her palms.

  Good grief, was he going to spend all night in there?

  Desperate for distraction, she snatched up one of the books she’d stacked on the coffee table. She was still staring at the same page when Josh emerged from the bathroom some time later.

  “Ready to go up on deck?” he asked. “Or would you like a drink first?”

  Cari glanced up, a polite refusal forming. The words got stuck somewhere in the middle of her throat and stayed there.

  Josh Keegan in black eye patch, tight pants and a billowing white shirt was enough to make greatgrandmothers conjure up erotic fantasies. In tan slacks and red knit shirt, he’d had pretty much the same effect on Cari earlier this afternoon.

  In exquisitely tailored midnight-blue slacks, a starched light blue shirt and an ivory linen jacket, he literally took her breath away. Of course, the lopsided smile he’d wound up, and the deep mahogany tints glistening in his still-damp hair, might have something to do with her sudden breathlessness.

  Oh, Lord! Cari had said she wasn’t in his league. The truth was, she didn’t populate the same universe as this sophisticated, self-assured, eye-watering hunk of male perfection. She managed to keep from gaping—barely—and propelled herself off the sofa.

  “We might as well go upstairs and get it over with.”

  Chuckling, he tucked her arm in his. “Do you think you could manage a smile? Or a soulful look or two? This is supposed to be a honeymoon, not a funeral.”

  “Shows what you know,” she muttered.

  Just a few hours ago, she’d been stretched contentedly in a deck chair, contemplating ten days of boneless, mindless relaxation. Now she was shivering with tension.

  “I’m a terrible liar,” she warned. “I’ve never been able to pull off even the littlest social lies. I hate the idea of spending the whole evening, not to mention the remainder of the cruise, pretending to the rest of the passengers that we’re married.”

  “You’re not pretending. We are.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Temporarily.”