Peggy Moreland – In Name Only (страница 4)

“Oh, my stars,” she murmured, darting her eyes from one side of the street to the other, where elaborately designed hotels and brightly lit casinos seemed to mushroom from the very edge of the sidewalk and shoot straight up to the sky. A billboard at the intersection they approached pictured a woman on a swing inside a gilded cage, wearing nothing but feathers and spangles.

“Did you see that?” she whispered on a long, disbelieving breath. As they passed through the intersection, she twisted her head around, keeping her gaze riveted on the scantily clad woman pictured on the massive billboard.

“Ever been to Las Vegas before?” Troy asked, unable to suppress the smile her shocked expression drew.

“No,” she said and turned to look at him, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed.

“Welcome to the den of iniquity,” he said, waving an expansive hand at the view before them.

She sank back against the seat and swallowed hard, staring. “Is it always like this?” she murmured.

“Like what?”

“So…so full of life,” she said, gesturing helplessly to the people who crowded the sidewalks.

“Yep. Nobody sleeps in Las Vegas. It’s one of the unwritten rules.” Realizing that he had no idea where he was headed, Troy steered the truck onto a side street beside a hotel’s entrance and stopped.

She peered through the window at the hotel’s revolving door, then turned slowly to look at him. “Why are you stopping here?”

He saw the suspicion in her eyes, heard it in her voice, and snorted, pulling on the emergency brake before killing the engine. “’Cause I don’t know where we’re going, that’s why,” he reminded her. “Do you?”

She turned to peer through the window again at the hotel beyond. “No,” she said, her nervousness obvious. “But I’d think we’d need to find a chapel or something, wouldn’t we? Not a hotel.”

“That’d be my guess.” He braced a hand against the steering wheel, inhaled deeply, then slowly released it, questioning again his sanity in allowing himself to be suckered into this crazy scheme of hers. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

She snapped her head around to peer at him, her eyes wider than before. “Yes! I have to.”

“You don’t have to,” he reminded her. “You could always just tell your parents about the baby. They might be more understanding than you think.”

“Oh, no,” she said, frantically shaking her head. “My father would never understand.” She gulped, swallowed, then turned to stare at the windshield, though he was sure she saw nothing on the glass but an image of her father’s irate face. “Never,” she repeated in a hoarse whisper.

Troy sighed. “What about a friend, then? Surely there’s someone you know who would agree to marry you?”

“No,” she said, and shook her head again. “No one. Dunning is a small town. Everybody knows everybody.” She lifted a shoulder. “And even if I did ask someone, everyone in town, my father included, would know the real reason for the marriage before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate. I won’t subject my family to that embarrassment.”

Sighing, Troy pushed open his door, but his foot had barely touched the ground before Shelby was diving across the console and grabbing his arm, stopping him.

“Where are you going?” she cried, her eyes wide with alarm.

He eased his arm from the death grip with which she held him. “I’m just going to step into that hotel there,” he said, nodding toward it, “and see if they have some brochures on wedding chapels in the area. I’ll be right back.”

Sinking back onto her seat, she slowly nodded. “Good idea,” she murmured, then caught her lower lip between her teeth and turned her face toward the passenger window. A woman strolled past, wearing three-inch-spike heels, her hips swaying suggestively beneath a skintight gold lamé miniskirt, her breasts overflowing the top of a leopard print bustier. The woman glanced Shelby’s way, puckered her heavily painted lips and blew a kiss.

Shelby gasped and whirled to look at Troy. “Did you see that?” she cried in a shocked whisper. “That woman was a man!”

“Transvestite,” Troy corrected, trying not to laugh. “You’ll see a lot of them around here.”

Shelby whipped her head back around to the window just as a man staggered by, obviously drunk. He fell against the hood of the truck, cursed soundly, then straightened and staggered on. Shelby gulped, then swallowed as she lifted a discreet hand to depress the door lock. “Maybe you better hurry, okay?” she whispered to Troy.

He planned to do just that, but hadn’t made it more than halfway up the hotel’s inclined drive when he heard the truck door slam. He glanced behind him and saw Shelby hurrying toward him, her shoulder bag hugged tight at her side.

“I thought I might just as well go with you,” she murmured, glancing nervously around. “Might save us a little time.”

Shaking his head, Troy took her by the elbow and guided her up the walk. An angel’s first visit to Sodom and Gomorrah, he thought wryly. He wondered if she’d get soot on her wings.

Stepping back, he allowed Shelby to enter the revolving door first, then slipped into the compartment behind her, following as she stepped out, gaping into the ornately decorated hotel. Seeing the concierge’s desk, he caught her elbow and quickly ushered her toward the rack of brochures displayed beside it. While she waited behind him, he thumbed through the brochures, selecting several that advertised wedding chapels.

“How about this one?” he asked, holding up a brochure over his shoulder for her approval. When she didn’t respond, he turned, and his heart skipped a beat when he found she wasn’t standing behind him. Sure that he’d lost her—or worse, someone had kidnapped her—he started walking, casting his gaze left and right, searching for her.

He found her not more than thirty feet away, standing in front of a slot machine, her eyes round in wonder as she stared at the machine’s flashing lights.

“Damn, Shelby,” he complained. “I thought I’d lost you.”

She jumped, startled, then turned to look guiltily up at him. “I’m sorry. But I’ve never seen a slot machine before and wanted to see how one works.”

Unable to believe that anyone was that innocent, he dug a hand in his pocket and pulled out a quarter. “Here. Give it a try.”

She hesitated a second, biting her lower lip, then took the quarter from him and sat down in front of the machine. “What do I do?” she asked uncertainly, placing her purse primly on pressed-together knees.

“Just slip the quarter in that slot there,” he said, pointing, “then push the spin button. Or, if you want to do it the old-fashioned way, you can pull down the arm at the side of the machine.”

He bit back a grin when he saw the way her fingers trembled as she dropped the coin into the slot. Bracing his hands on his thighs, he leaned forward as she pulled down the arm, putting his face on the same level with hers, then watched with her as the images flashed by. When the wheel stopped, three cherries were displayed. Immediately lights started flashing, the national anthem blared from a hidden speaker within the machine…and Troy gaped.

She jumped up from the stool, nearly knocking him down. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked, pressing herself against his side, trembling, as she stared in horror at the machine.

“Wrong?” Chuckling, Troy leaned over and punched the cash out button, and tokens clinked musically as they began to spill into the payoff return. “I’d say you definitely did something right. You hit the jackpot.”

“Jackpot?” she repeated, staring at him. Then her mouth dropped open and she let out a squeal that had more than a few heads turning their way. Before he had a chance to brace himself, she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Troy! That’s marvelous! You won! You won!”

For a moment Troy could do nothing but hold on to her as she jumped up and down in his arms, painfully aware of the swell of her breasts chafing against his chest, the slender arms wrapped around his neck, her womanly scent. But then what she’d said slowly registered.

He’d won?

Before he could argue the point, she was whirling away and dropping to her knees to pick up coins from the floor as they spilled from the brimming payoff return. “Oh, my heavens, Troy!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining brighter than any star he’d ever seen light a night sky. “There must be hundreds of dollars here. Maybe thousands! You’re rich!”

“Me!” he said in dismay, staring at her as she scrambled around on the floor, retrieving dropped tokens. “Hell, that money’s not mine.”

She stopped suddenly and glanced up, looking like a kid who’d dropped her ice cream cone before she’d gotten the first lick. “It’s not?”

“Hell, no! That money’s yours! You were the one behind the controls.”

“Oh, no,” she said, and dropped the tokens back into the bin, then dusted her hands, as if to deny ownership. “It’s yours. It was your quarter that I inserted into the machine. Not mine.”

Troy stared at her a long moment, unable to believe what he was hearing. Any other woman would probably already be at the cashier’s box, cashing in the tokens and thinking about a zillion ways to spend the money, not arguing over ownership. Shaking his head, he pulled off his cowboy hat. “An angel,” he muttered under his breath as he stooped to scrape the mountain of tokens into the crown of his hat. And a lucky angel, at that.