Married By Mistake

with their problems and melted the hearts of hotel managers.
    He wondered if it was a form of manipulation, and the thought provoked him. “What I see,” he said, “is that you’re as good at dealing out emotional blackmail as you are at taking it. You pressured that manager into something that’s most likely against his job ethics.”
    When Casey put a hand to her mouth, stricken, he felt no satisfaction.
    * * *
    A DAM WOKE FROM AN UNEASY sleep on the couch in the middle of the night on Sunday. Make that Monday. The digital display on the clock across the room glowed 1:30 a.m.
    He heard it again, the noise that must have woken him. A cry from upstairs.
    Casey.
    He pushed the sheet aside, rolled off the couch and grabbed his pants from the back of the chair. He hauled them on, then headed upstairs.
    “Casey?” he called softly, noting she’d left the door ajar.
    He snapped on the landing light and pushed the door open.
    She lay sprawled in the center of the king-size bed, the duvet twisted across her lower body. Her top half was bare save for a strappy, satin confection in turquoise, which he guessed she’d chosen for her wedding night.
    She didn’t stir; whatever dream had disturbed her must have ended. Adam’s mouth went dry and he felt like a voyeur. But, hell, how could any red-blooded man not notice Casey was gorgeous, even fully dressed? And Adam was as red-blooded as the next man. He also happened to be married to her.
    Don’t go there.
    His marriage to Casey was strictly business. As they said on the infomercials: No Obligation, For a Limited Time Only. Of course, on those infomercials, they also said Satisfaction Guaranteed....
    Damn. Adam pulled the door shut with a click that hopefully hadn’t woken her, and went back to his couch.
    And didn’t sleep.
    * * *
    M ONDAY , Adam’s favorite day of the week, found him overtired, overstressed and even more relieved than normal that the weekend had ended.
    If he’d planned to fake a marriage to someone, he would have chosen someone tougher than Casey. Someone who could plow past other people’s feelings in pursuit of her goal.
    Not a woman who bought into the sob story of a hotel maid she’d never met before and then didn’t hesitate to drag him into it, as well.
    He wouldn’t let her distract him from what he wanted to achieve in their month together, he told himself as he folded his clothes and packed his bag in preparation for their return to real life. He approached Casey, who had been packed and ready to go for ten minutes—he liked a woman who didn’t keep him waiting—and said, “We need to set some ground rules.”
    “Hmm?” She looked up from her cross-stitching.
    She’d taken a cross-stitch on her honeymoon. Adam wasn’t sure if he admired her practicality or pitied her. Had she been sleeping with Joe so long that she wasn’t anticipating any excitement?
    He scowled at the thought of the intimacy she might have shared with her fiancé. “Ground rules,” he said. “If we’re living together for a month, we need some rules.”
    “You mean who gets to go first in the bathroom?” She smiled sunnily. “You go first. I don’t have to get to work in the—”
    “I have more than one bathroom,” he interrupted, still trying to erase the idea of Casey in bed with that jerk. “I want to make sure we’re in agreement about what’s involved in this pretense. And what’s not involved.”
    As if they didn’t both know what was not involved. Casey kept her face blank, trying to appear undisturbed by what had hung heavy in the air between them all weekend. For goodness sake, they were virtually imprisoned in a honeymoon suite, with congratulatory cards and letters from complete strangers being delivered every half hour. Cards and letters addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Carmichael.
    “For example,” Adam said, “we’re both free to spend our time as we wish. We don’t owe each other any company.”
    “Sure,” she agreed. “The last thing we’ll want is to spend time together after we’ve been cooped up here so long.” If that was true, how come she’d felt more alive this weekend than she had in years?
    “But to convince our families our marriage is genuine, at times we’ll have to exchange caresses and endearments.” He sounded as if he was proposing some extreme form of torture.
    “We seem to do okay on the caresses,” she said, trying to be more positive than he was.
    His brows drew together. “I like you, Casey,