Married By Mistake

wasn’t nice,” she said. “But...you know.”
    Yes, he knew it was a dumb idea to get distracted from fixing this catastrophe. But she’d enjoyed that kiss as much as he had, so he was damned if he was going to apologize.
    At the sound of rustling, they turned to the door. A piece of paper had been slid underneath.
    Adam picked it up and scanned it. “It’s a message from Sam. He’s at home and ready to take my call.” He’d instructed the hotel reception not to put any calls through to their suite. He reached for the phone on the sideboard next to the dining table and started dialing.
    Casey took the opportunity to move as far away from him as she could. She plunked herself on the blue-and-gold-striped couch, grabbed up the room service menu from the coffee table and held it open so Adam couldn’t see her face. Her red face.
    Good grief, she’d acted like a sex-starved wanton, wrapping herself around him that way. She’d be the first to admit that her sex life with Joe had been rather lackluster the past few years—and nonexistent for nearly a year—but that was no excuse to throw herself at the first man she met. Even if he was her husband.
    From behind the menu, she listened shamelessly to Adam’s side of the conversation with Sam. Which didn’t tell her much; he was a man of few words. When he’d finished, he dropped the receiver back into its cradle. He muttered something under his breath that Casey didn’t quite hear, but it didn’t sound like, “Yippee, we got our annulment.”
    “Is there a problem?” she asked.
    He came to the couch, stood over her with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, his eyebrows drawn together. “Getting an annulment will be difficult.”
    Casey gulped. “How difficult?”
    “They’re something of a rarity in Tennessee. There’s no statutory basis for annulment here. Each case has to be argued on common law principles.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning,” he said, “there’s no official annulment process. My lawyer will put a case together and argue it before a judge. If the judge agrees, we get our annulment.”
    “And if the judge doesn’t agree?”
    “We get a divorce.”
    “But I don’t want to be divorced,” Casey protested.
    “Right now, I’d rather be divorced than married,” he said, with a flat finality that prickled the back of her neck. He sat down on the couch opposite, saving her the strain of looking up at him. “Sam tells me he can make a good case for annulment. Nonconsummation of the marriage is a definite plus. Even stronger is the fact we didn’t know it was a real wedding. Still, some of those old judges take marriage pretty seriously.” Cynicism twisted his mouth. “Sam wants to make sure he gets a sympathetic judge, and that might take up to a month.”
    “So we’ll be married for a month,” Casey said, “and then it’ll be as if it never happened.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Everything will be just the same as before.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Nothing will have changed. Nothing. ”
    “Yes,” Adam said impatiently. Didn’t she understand plain English?
    “No,” she said.
    Adam’s head hurt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I’m not going back to Parkvale. I’m done with that place.”
    “You can go wherever you like,” he said. The sooner the better.
    “They’ll make me go back.” Her eyes flickered toward the door.
    He’d married a paranoiac.
    She stood and paced to the window. There was something hunted about the way she put her palms against the glass. Staring out into the distance, she said desperately, “Can’t we—can’t we just stay married?”
    A delusional paranoiac.
    Keep her calm, Adam told himself. Talk up the joys of a future on her own, then get Sam here fast with some kind of agreement for her to sign, relinquishing all claim on me.
    She turned around, perched that derriere he’d enjoyed caressing— that was before I knew she was nuts— on the windowsill. “Stop looking like I’m about to jump you.” She folded her arms under her breasts. “I didn’t mean it about staying married. Even if the past twenty-four hours hadn’t totally turned me off wedded bliss, you’re not my type.”
    He didn’t believe that for a second, not after the way she’d kissed him. He started in on the keep-her-calm stuff. “No one can make you go anywhere,” he soothed. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”
    “You don’t know my family,” she said gloomily. Her eyes narrowed