Married By Mistake

leaving a curious void.
    It took no great psychological insight to realize how little Joe really meant to her. How could she have planned to marry him? She’d convinced herself she could give him the no-strings love she wanted for herself, when really she was using him to get away from her family.
    In hindsight, she deserved to be dumped. Perhaps not quite so publicly...but she’d brought that on herself.
    Casey allowed the recriminations to chase around in her head as she lay in bed until eight o’clock, when she was sure Adam would have had time to get dressed. She showered, then looked in her suitcase at the clothes she’d packed for her honeymoon. She’d bought a couple of new items, skimpier than she would normally wear, with the idea, she supposed now, of turning Joe on.
    She rejected a strappy top in favor of a white, sleeveless T-shirt, which she teamed with a denim skirt. She checked her reflection in the full-length mirror. No way could Adam think she’d dressed to turn him on.
    He was standing at the dining table when she got downstairs. Someone must have brought his luggage during the night. He wore jeans and a black polo shirt, open at the neck. Casey’s gaze was drawn to his bare forearms, tanned and strong, as he lifted the covers off several dishes on a room-service trolley. He pulled a chair out for her, and Casey wiped her palms against the sturdy fabric of her skirt as she sat down.
    “I ordered breakfast,” he said. “It’s not safe to go down to the restaurant. The manager tells me a couple of journalists checked into the hotel.”
    Casey helped herself to fruit and yogurt, shaking her head at Adam’s offer of a hot meal. He piled his own plate with scrambled eggs, bacon and toast, raised his glass of orange juice to her in salute, and started on his breakfast.
    Casey took a sip of her own juice as she glanced at the newspaper that lay folded by her plate—and promptly choked.
    “Oh, no.” After all those photos she and Adam had posed for at the press conference, they’d published one taken in the TV studio, obviously at the moment Joe had jilted her. Her face, panic in her eyes, mouth open, gaped back at her from the front page beneath the headline Carmichael Rescues Jilted Bride. She grabbed a napkin, wiped away the rivulet of juice she could feel on her chin, without taking her eyes off the newspaper.
    “It’s not as bad as it looks.” Adam was presumably referring to the article and not to her photo, because that couldn’t be any worse. “They speculate that Channel Eight cooked up this scheme to boost the ratings of Kiss the Bride. They tried to get a comment out of your fiancé, but he wasn’t talking.”
    Casey unfolded the paper, then clamped a hand to her forehead at the sight of her father, peering around the front door of the house. “They spoke to my dad.”
    “That’s not so good,” Adam admitted. “They also talked to my stepmother. Seems she told them we’ve been secretly engaged for months.”
    “Why would she say that?”
    Adam shrugged. “My guess is she didn’t want to be caught not knowing about something as important as my wedding.” Casey gathered from the careful neutrality of his expression that he didn’t much like his stepmother. “Still, she’s probably helped confuse the press, which can’t hurt.”
    “Any word from the lawyer?” Casey asked.
    “I’ve had a few calls.” He gestured to the cell phone on the table between them. “But not from Sam.”
    His phone trilled again.
    “Hello, Eloise,” he said with resigned patience. “Did you like the show?”
    Who was Eloise? His stepmother? His girlfriend?
    Whoever she was, Adam was obviously enjoying her reaction to their wedding. Not his girlfriend, then. He grinned and held the phone away from his ear—Casey heard a spate of words pouring out. “Sorry, Eloise, I have another call coming through. I’ll get back to you.”
    That set the pattern for the next few minutes, with Adam receiving one call after another, mostly, she gathered, from family, all anxious to know how his marriage might affect their interests. His reticence must have infuriated them.
    Bored with waiting, Casey turned on her own cell phone. Almost immediately, it beeped with a text message from the answering service to say she had twenty-one new messages.
    She dialed the service and scrolled through the worried communications from her father (five messages), her sister (six) and her brother (one). There was