“How about you, Queen Elizabeth? Do you have someone who’s going to want to use my face as a punching bag for marrying his girl?”
She grabbed her own water and drank. “No.”
At least we didn’t have to deal withthatroadblock. “I have an idea.”
Olivia returned to the bed and pressed her back to the headboard. Her pink dress fanned out around her slender legs, daring me to look. “Lachlan, what are we going to do? I have thirty text messages from one sister alone. My parents are going to freak.” Relocatinga chunk of tangled hair she’d missed, Olivia regarded me warily. “My grandma will probably kill you in some innovative and horrendously painful way.”
“I could have our solution—”
“I can’t be married,” she went on. “We have to make this go away. My boss said she’d fire the next person who brought scandal to her door, so there goes my promotion. I’ll have to sell my apartment and live in my car. Or even worse, live with Sylvie. I stayed with her once for a month. She practices fire drills at two a.m. and eats cold SpaghettiOs for breakfast. And don’t even get me started on—”
“Olivia.”
“She booby-traps her backyard and conducts nuclear attack simulations. She yodels and makes me pledge allegiance to the United States of Sylvie. I cannot live there.”
Ms. Uptight was unraveling right in front of me. Couldn’t say I blamed her, but still, it was absolutely fascinating to watch. Dress wrinkled and askew, feet bare, and a face that for once didn’t say, “I have the answers, and I expect you to like them.”
Rubbing my eyes, I stepped over the wedding debris littered about the room. We had multiple options to fix our predicament, but coffee was crucial to each solution. Making short work of plugging in the room’s Keurig, I felt the smallest measure of relief at the first scent of French roast.
One long minute later, I handed a still blabbering Olivia a steaming mug.
“And my boss is going to fire me. Did I mention Celeste will have my walking papers drafted before our plane touches back down in Arkansas?”
“You might’ve mentioned it once or twice.” The coffee slid warm and potent down my throat, and the crashing cymbals in my head reduced to a snare drum’s tap.
“She’ll probably have me drawn and quartered in the town square. Something very public and humiliating.” Olivia hung her head in her hands. “She warned us. Celeste warned us all. ‘No more drama,’ she said, and what did I do?”
I assumed the question was rhetorical and wasn’t in the mood to answer anyway, so I just sipped my coffee and wished it was a better blend.
“I don’t think you understand how this will ruin my life,” Olivia said.
Good Lord, my own life had just gone DEFCON 1. “That makes two of us.”
“Okay.” She took my outstretched cup of coffee and inhaled at least twice. “I’m in PR. Damage control is what I do. It’s my thing.” Leaving the bed again, she paced the room for a full minute before sitting in a chair and staring helplessly at the wall. “I’ve got nothing! The closest thing to this I’ve dealt with was helping an influencer who accidentally posted her skinny-dipping frolic with the gardener.” She pressed her fists into her eyeballs. “There simply is no precedent. I have no idea how to fix this.”
And then the tears started. Plump, tragic droplets slipped down Olivia’s cheeks, and my heart had the nerve to feel a pang of sympathy.
“It’s not our fault,” I said gently. “Something was in our drinks.” It was the only explanation.
The horror of the reality caught her up short. “Who would do such a horrible thing?”
“I’ll call the Las Vegas police and my attorney. We’ll ask for security footage from the club.”
“So that’s our angle? We were drugged, and we get an annulment?” Relief softened the tense features of her face. It was a shame I was going to have to pop that balloon of hope.
I scrolled through my phone, clicking and swiping with angry stabs. “This is CBS News.” I flashed her the page.
She pulled the phone closer. “Does that say ‘Tech Tycoon Picks His Princess’?” Her revulsion was as strong as my coffee. “That’s ridiculous.”
I clicked and swiped some more. “Here are more reports from TMZ, CNN,Peoplemagazine, NBC…Need I go on?”
Her head went back into her hands. “I’m begging you not to.”
“This has gone viral, Olivia.”
“Why did you have to go and get all nerdy-famous?” she wailed.
“Believe me, it wasn’t by choice.” Kind of like our marriage. “An investigation could take weeks, and who knows if it will even turn up anything. In the meantime, nobody's going to believe we got married because we were drugged.”
