Chapter 7 Catarina
CATARINA
It might have been almost midnight, but his eyes didn’t look drowsy at all. On the contrary, they looked electric and full of life. His arm pressed into the door, holding it shut.
“So, this is what you do when the man of your dreams asks you to get married? You run away?”
“And the most modest man, too, apparently.”
“It was tongue in cheek. I might be a great fuck but I’d be the world’s worst husband.”
“You’re not exactly helping your argument. And where on earth did you get that ring?”
He shrugged. “After we spent all day together, I realized something. I enjoy your company, a lot. Us getting married will fix your visa problems. And I’m in dire need of some good PR.”
I felt my insides flip. “Are you sure this isn’t some sort of April fools joke?”
“It’s January.”
I cleared my throat. “Stranger things have happened.”
“I don’t joke around about these things, Cat. I take my fake marriage proposals very seriously.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“That sounds weird out loud, doesn’t it?”
I nodded, but inside, I realized I was actually considering Dustin’s proposal. The truth was: I was desperate, and I was seriously considering this. “So it’s a fake proposal? Or a serious one?”
“It’s a real fake proposal. For all intents and purposes, to the outside world, we’re a real couple.”
“So I’m just a figurehead for you to get some good publicity.”
“That’s a plus, yes. But just hear me out. We’ll stay together for the next, say, six months. That’s enough time that the hockey season will be over, and we’ll be able to straighten things out with your visa. So, it’s a win-win.”
“And you’re not going to be running around fucking your puck bunnies making a fool out of me?”
He laughed. “That gets tiring after a while. You’re gorgeous and smart. So I’ll actually enjoy just hanging out with you, too. And, yes, speaking of rabbit creatures, we’ll be doing a lot of what they do. It’ll be like friends with benefits . . .”
“With rings. And with a very public marriage.”
“Now you’re getting the picture,” he grinned.
“You know I’m smart,” I said. “But how do you know if we’ll have good chemistry in bed?” I asked with my hands on my hips.
He grinned evilly, then pressed my body into the wall, running a hand from my midsection down to my thigh. “You really think we won’t have amazing chemistry? Well, why don’t I prove it right now?”
I felt frazzled. “I’m kidding. This is not going to happen. This is crazy. I barely know you!”
“I don’t understand why you’re being so resistant to this idea. You stay in the country and keep your visa. We’ll have a prodigious sex life, and I get to stay on the down low from the public eye. The benefit of being with you is not having to waste time with those puck bunnies.”
“Why do you waste time with them right now?”
He exhaled loudly. “I like to fuck. A lot. As far as weaknesses go, it’s one of mine.”
My body, which had been temporarily relieved by Dustin’s tongue on the kitchen counter, was realizing that I still hadn’t been fully relieved of my nine-month sex drought. And that I was being somewhat illogical because my body craved him in every way.
I walked to the bar, poured a couple of shots of tequila, and handed him one. I needed to revive my buzz to think this through clearly.
“So if we went through with this, when would we do it?”
“So that’s a yes?”
“It is if you prove you’re serious.”
Pulling out his cellphone, he dialed some number and said a few words. “Yeah have a car out front. Perfect.” Then he turned to me. “You said you’d do anything to fix this little immigration papers problem. Well, consider me your genie. And I’m granting you this first wish.”
I thought hard about my life, and hope started to bubble up from somewhere deep within me. I was after something higher, and it dawned on me that there wouldn’t be another shot at something like this.
“What the hell,” I finally said. “Why not?”
“Is that a yes?”
We took the shots and chased them with limes.
“That’s a yes,” I breathed. “I’ll marry you.”
“Fuck yes.”
He took me in his arms and kissed me one more time.
Then we both freshened up. He put on a suit before we got into the elevator, headed downstairs, and got into his private driver’s limo.
“Where to, Boss?” the man asked.
“Freddie’s Walk-in Chapel.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. This was really happening.
“You sure you’re in for this?” he asked me.
I popped a bottle of champagne and poured a couple of glasses. “Till death do us part, honey.”
He wrapped his arm around me, and I shrugged and took out my phone. ”Or at least, from now until the summer.”
I grinned ever so slightly as we clinked glasses. The funny thing was, I never would have gotten married if I knew it was ‘until death do us part.’ I just wasn’t that kind of girl.
Six months of being married to Dustin seemed to me, at the very least, a sort of fun adventure.
What can I say? It seemed like a great idea at the time.
“Hey everyone, we’re getting hitched!” I said into my Snapchat, then kissed Dustin on the cheek.
After I direct-sent the snap to Pheobe—because I didn’t think she would believe me if I just messaged her—I turned to Dustin. “What are the terms, exactly?” I asked him as the limo rolled through the bright streets of Las Vegas.
“Well, we get married, you keep your visa, and you stay in my bed as my sex slave for life,” he said.
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m serious,” he said, then winked. “I had Freddie write that language into the marriage certificate.”
I laughed. “I get what’s in it for me—the visa. But what’s in it for you? This is all just for good PR?”
He rubbed his hand along my thigh, as my dress rode up my leg. Something coiled inside me when he touched me. “Arm candy,” he winked.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t usually get dressed up like this. I’m a doctor, so I’m much more often in a white lab coat then a skintight red dress.”
“Well I’m going to see about changing that,” he said. I shook my head and took a shallow breath as his hand rode up my leg, close to cupping my ass.
“I don’t believe you. You need to tell me the truth, or this isn’t happening.”
Taking his hand away from my leg, he grabbed his champagne glass and clinked it with mine. “I don’t have the best reputation.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“I told you earlier how I’m on the cusp of being traded, right? Well, my agent told me today if I don’t do something drastic, I’ll be gone—tomorrow. Well, I could be traded anyway. But I need to shake things up and change the tide of this PR machine that’s raining down arrows on me. And you—”
He leaned in closer. He was intoxicating.
“You’re truly good. People like you. And most important, I could see myself spending more than an hour per week with you.”
I scoffed. “If you have a problem spending more than an hour a week with someone, the problem probably isn’t them. It’s you.”
He sank back into his chair in the limo and ran a hand through his hair. “If you don’t want to do this, we can back out now. I know it’s a crazy idea.”
I looked outside the window and watched a couple of cars go by.
“You know, when I was a little girl, I pictured myself getting married on some picturesque bluff in Spain, maybe Granada, overlooking a valley.
Everyone was wearing white, and my father walked me down the aisle before he handed me to my dashingly handsome husband-to-be.
“That dream of my father walking me down the aisle died when my father passed away in my childhood.”
He put his hand on my knee. “Forget it. This is a crazy idea, let’s turn around.”
Pressing the button so the window between us and the driver went down, he yelled out, “Lenny, it’s off. Turn around.”
“Okay, Boss.”
Despair tightened in my throat when I thought about Matt, the little third-grade boy who was halfway done with treatment, and whom I’d be abandoning by heading back to Spain.
“Wait,” I said in a shy voice. No one seemed to hear me. “Lenny,” I said louder, “Don’t turn around. We’re doing this.”
His eyes flitted to Dustin. He nodded, and the driver turned around again to head back to Freddie’s.
“Might as well,” I grinned. “We’ve already posted the snapchats.”
As our limo pulled up in front of Freddie’s Walk-In Chapel, my pulse raced.
When I was a little girl, I didn’t even know places like this existed.
Up until this moment, I’d only seen such places in the movies.
Really outlandish movies, at that. The ones where people got married on a whim because they were drunk and woke up in the morning wondering what on earth they had done.
This was different, though.
Right?
I had finished near the top of my class at Yale.
I was smart, and I’d thought this through.
Maybe I was sacrificing my dream of getting married on a hill overlooking the Alhambra in Granada.
Maybe I was just a teensy bit buzzed. And maybe, yes, it was after midnight.
I recalled something my grandfather had always said to me as rationale for enforcing my curfew when I was a rebellious teenager: nothing good happens after midnight.
But I was down to my last option here as far as staying in this country.
This was not impulsive. This was a stroke of luck.
As I saw the marquee lights flashing from Freddie’s, a shudder came over my body. I was about to give up every part of the fantasy except for the devilishly handsome man.
Dustin was positively intoxicating. His body was hard and his demeanor was tough, but under that tough outer covering was something mysterious. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
“Are you a serial killer?” I asked.
He gave me a funny look. “Excuse me?”
“If I’m going to marry you, I’d like to know whether or not you’re a serial killer. Be honest.”
He smirked. “Even if I was . . .” he leaned in toward me and whispered. His hand landed between my thighs. “I’d have to be the biggest monster in the world—and the dumbest—to do away with a pussy this sweet.”
I sucked in a breath and leaned back against his hard chest. He’d taken off his suit coat and given it to me to cover my shoulders. Yet I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a gentleman. No indeed. He liked to talk dirty. Noted.
“Well,” I whispered as I felt the heat rush between my legs. “I guess that answers that.”
“Here we are, Sir,” the driver said when we arrived.
“Perfect.”
“I’ll wait out here for you.”
“No, Lenny,” Dustin answered.
“No?”
“You’re coming in. We need a witness. Park this baby. Come on.”
The driver seemed flustered, but he got out, opened our door for us, and followed us into the chapel. Dustin led me, holding my hand as we crossed inside.