“We can quietly pursue who did this to us while we get the marriage annulled.” Did Vegas have a drive-through courthouse for the dissolution of unintentional marriages? And if so, did this place also serve lattes and donuts? Because I suddenly needed to drown my anxiety in sugar and caffeine.
“Yeah,” Lachlan said distractedly. “We’ll get it annulled.”
“Nobody has to know.” This was perhaps the most important point, one that I felt deserved flashy lights and bolded letters. “No one but us, right?”
Before he could respond, Lachlan’s phone buzzed from somewhere beneath the tangle of sheets. Then it rang.
Somehow, some way, I knew it was a harbinger of doom.
Lachlan’s hands disappeared beneath the comforter, and he patted down the bed until he found the demanding phone.
When his face whitened and a curse left his thinned lips, I felt yet another wave of despair.
“I have forty-two text messages and seventeen voicemails.” Lachlan held up his screen for my consideration. “Does this picture look familiar?”
A blurry photo revealed the two of us at what was clearly a wedding chapel, laughing. Another photo of us hugging. Then a short video of an underfed, poorly coifed Celine Dion impersonator announcing us man and wife.
The evidence was irrefutable.
“Who sent the video?” I asked. “My family? Because I can keep them quiet. I’ve got dirt on every one of them, and half of them owe me big fat favors.”
“The photos are from your sisters,” he said.
“Oh. Thank goodness.”
“But the video’s from ABC News. It’s one of many.” Lachlan lifted his bloodshot eyes to mine. “Olivia, the whole entire world knows.”
ChapterNine
LACHLAN
In gaming terms,I’d had a random encounter and had just been nuked.
Married?
Me?
I would’ve thrown up, but I wasn’t sure my head could handle the effort.
To make matters worse, the news had hit every major news outlet. Some onlookers had taken video of our nuptials and posted it all over the internet. Technology had changed my life years ago, and it had just done it again.
I thought of my dad and brothers—could see them having a big laugh as their maid served them breakfast. “Lachlan’s done it again,” my father would say. “Screws up everything he touches.” Then my brothers would smile at one another, thinking of how lucky they were I’d finally left them alone years ago.
No, I wouldn’t think of them now. Who cared what they thought? The real problem was my career. Because this was bad.Verybad. I couldn’t afford a personal misstep, and this was the equivalent of throwing my body on a land mine.
While Olivia continued to walk the floor and mumble to herself in disbelief, anger heated my blood. I would find whoever did this to us and make them pay. In the meantime, I had myself a wife. Olivia Sutton, of all people. If I had to wake up accidentally married to someone, why couldn’t it have been Gisele Bündchen?
But no. In this twisted nightmare, my bride was Olivia Sutton, the girl who’d made my life hell in college, spoke sass and sarcasm as fluently as she did English, and loathed me probably more than I disliked her.
My phone buzzed again, and I made the mistake of glancing at it.
Maxwell Barclay. My CFO.
The man had been my best hire three years ago, adding order and strategy to the company while I focused on the creative. “I’ve got to take this call.”
“Now?” Olivia swiveled from her spot at the window, yesterday’s makeup still stuck to her face. “I’m only halfway through my freak-out. I haven’t even hit my peak yet—and we still need a plan.”
“And we will. After this call.”
