Married By Mistake

said.
    Adam let go of Casey. “You’d be wrong.” He glanced at his watch. “They’ll be starting the speeches soon, I need to find out when I’m on.”
    He left, and Casey excused herself a minute later.
    As the evening wore on, she found most people were interested to meet the woman who’d married Adam Carmichael on TV, but they were polite enough to keep a rein on their curiosity. Except for one man around her own age she could have sworn was flirting with her. He looked vaguely familiar.... Where had she seen him before?
    She’d been fending off his advances for nearly ten minutes when he said, “I guess congratulations are in order. Maybe a Happy Anniversary?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’ve been married over a month now, haven’t you?”
    It was true. She and Adam had been married for a month. Which meant any day now, the annulment would come through.
    The stranger’s words triggered the memory of where she’d seen him—below her bedroom window at seven o’clock on Saturday morning. This slug was a journalist. Casey struggled to keep her dawning realization from showing on her face. How could she use the knowledge to her advantage?
    As it turned out, he handed her the opportunity on a plate. With what looked like deep concern, he expressed sympathy about the press coverage she and Adam had been subjected to.
    She nodded gravely. “It was awful.” She let a tremor enter her voice. “And all of it lies.”
    “Really?” He could barely contain his eagerness. “So you and Adam are, uh, a proper couple?”
    With a naughty smile she said, “I don’t know about proper.” She leaned forward confidingly, and he did the same. “You’ve heard of spontaneous combustion?”
    He nodded.
    “Adam and I—we’re like that.” She winked, just to be sure he couldn’t mistake her implication.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    A DAM BROUGHT THE MAIL in with the newspaper at breakfast next morning.
    He opened a lilac envelope without a stamp, hand-addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. A. Carmichael,” and scanned the contents.
    “Casey,” he said silkily.
    She looked up from her cereal. “Uh-huh?”
    “This note is from Mr. and Mrs. Bob Harvey, saying they’ll be delighted to attend lunch here on Tuesday.... Tell me it’s come to the wrong address.”
    “Uh, not exactly,” she said around a mouthful of cornflakes.
    He scowled. “I distinctly remember telling you our marriage would be over if you invited the neighbors here.”
    “They brought flowers after those awful newspaper reports,” she said. “This lunch is to thank them for their support. You’ll be at work. You don’t have to get involved.”
    “And it’s just Mr. and Mrs. Harvey?” he asked suspiciously.
    “Uh, I invited Alison Dare on the other side as well, with her three preschoolers. She and the Harveys don’t know each other, but her kids don’t have any grandparents, so I thought...”
    With a snort of disbelief, he opened the newspaper and held it in front of his face. It was a milder response than Casey had expected. Relieved, she returned to her breakfast.
    “What the—” He lowered the paper to gape at her. “Have you seen the headline on page five?”
    “How could I when you’re the one with the paper?” she demanded reasonably.
    He turned it around for her to read, Casey Carmichael: My Husband’s Hot. “Did you really say that?”
    “Of course not. I told him I was hot.” How could that idiot journalist have got the angle so wrong? And since when did she and Adam only rate as page five news? “Typical man, giving you the credit for any heat that’s going.”
    “Entirely justified,” he assured her. “As you’ll find out very, very soon.”
    “I will not.” Had he heard the waver in her voice?
    * * *
    O N S ATURDAY MORNING , Adam proudly surveyed the Aston Martin’s dazzling red bodywork. It was time consuming, but he still preferred to polish the car himself.
    He just hoped he could do as good a job of convincing Casey’s family to relinquish their demands on her. She owed it to herself to finish her book.
    The other night, he’d asked if he could read some of her work.
    “Writers don’t let people read their stuff,” she said. Then she handed him her almost completed manuscript.
    Although Adam’s teenage years were a distant blur, he was pretty sure he hadn’t read anything this good back then. Casey had managed to capture teenage angst and put a comic spin on it. Adam figured her book might achieve the near