Vegas Wedding to Forever

It wasn’t exactly the first time that Toby had woken up in a strange hotel room without much memory of how he’d got there, but it was a long while since the amnesia of alcohol had affected him this badly.

The curtains were drawn haphazardly across the floor-to-ceiling windows, letting in enough sunlight to make him wince as he opened his eyes. Through narrowed slits, he surveyed his surroundings. Four-poster bed, without the roof. Soft down pillows that were helpless against his pounding headache. Walls covered in some sort of fabric–like wallpaper that screamed I am luxurious! at him. A glimpse of a marble bathroom through the doorway. And through that chink in the curtain he could see mountains in the distance—and knew instinctively that below him would be a view of the famous Strip, with the sun rising over it.

The Four Seasons, then. Las Vegas. One of the Presidential Suites. Yes, that made sense. Finn had said that if they were going to do Vegas they were going to do it properly, and booked them in.

Finn. He’d be in one of the suite’s other bedrooms. He’d be able to fill him in on anything he’d missed. As long as his best friend was with him, nothing could have gone too wrong last night.

Except…if Finn had been there, he wouldn’t have drunk enough to forget anything. Finn always kept a tight rein on their alcohol consumption—he claimed because it impaired their betting ability, but Toby knew it was really because of his father’s own drinking, which was why he went along with it.

So maybe Finn wouldn’t be able to fill in the blanks in his memory. Which meant he had to keep trying himself.

‘You’re not just some student out on the piss, Toby.’ His older brother’s voice sounded in his head, a reminder of his university days long past, the words unwelcome but the tone familiar and comforting all the same. ‘You’re a Blythe. The son of the Eleventh Viscount Wishcliffe. You’re somebody. You need to act like it.’

Except he wasn’t any more. That much he remembered.

His father was dead. Barnaby was dead.

He wasn’t the son of the Viscount, or even the younger brother of the Viscount.

He was the Viscount.

The unlucky Thirteenth Viscount Wishcliffe, thousands of miles from home.

He’d never wanted to inherit the title, or the estates and the responsibility that went with it. Had never expected to, with his father, brother and nephew all happily above him in the line of succession. He wouldn’t have wished the pressure of it on his brother Barnaby, or eight-year-old nephew Harry either.

Toby had watched what the struggle to keep an old aristocratic name, reputation and estate going in the modern era had cost his father. After the second heart attack he’d begged him to consider other options—but he’d been shouted down.

Then the third and final heart attack had hit, and Barnaby had taken the reins. Toby hadn’t been able to stay and watch the estate drain the life and energy from his brother too.

He’d never imagined that it would take him so soon, or Harry with him.

His jaw tightened at the memory, which only made his head pound more.

‘Just one last adventure,’ he’d begged Finn. ‘One last night to cut loose and forget everything. I have to go home and take over the estate for real tomorrow. One last wild night in Vegas.’

Looked like he’d got his wish, anyway. Even if his body was regretting it now.

The giant king-sized mattress shifted under him, making his stomach roll, and Toby realised, belatedly, he wasn’t alone. God, how big were these ridiculous beds that he could lose an entire other person in one of them? Or how hungover did he have to be to not even check for company?

Finn had definitely left him alone if he’d brought a woman back with him. His best friend was no prude, but his current focus on his mission to regain everything his father had denied him had blinded him to romance, however brief. Besides, when they were out together the women always seemed to go for Finn first. Toby was very much a second choice.

The mattress hadn’t moved again, so Toby assumed his companion was still asleep. If she was anything like as hungover as he was, it was probably for the best, so he didn’t want to wake her. But he was curious. Like getting blackout drunk, one-night stands had also mostly been consigned to his university days. A decade later, he preferred more considered romances. Where both sides went in knowing exactly what to expect—a few weeks or months of fun together before they both moved on. At least that had been the case since Julia left him, marking the demise of his only real, long-term relationship—God, was it two years ago now?

Two years since the only woman he’d ever contemplated marriage with—proposed to, in a way—had walked out of his life and he’d barely thought about her since. He’d seen her at the funerals, of course, but other than that…her surgical removal from his life had left no apparent scars.

So. Who had he brought back with him last night?

Easing himself up on one elbow—slowly, so as not to disturb his companion or his hangover—Toby peered down at the mattress beside him. Long auburn waves of hair fanned out across the pillow, and a pale freckled nose peeked above the covers. Toby searched his faulty memory but couldn’t find a name to put with the face.

She shifted in her sleep, turning on her side to face him. He took in the soft lashes against her cheek and the rosy lips pursed as if about to ask a question, before her eyes suddenly fluttered open.

Bright green eyes widened and her hand gripped the covers tighter as she stared up at him. Her left hand, he registered, as he spotted the silver band wrapped around her ring finger. Oh, God, he’d seduced a married woman. This was so much worse than he’d thought.

Autumn, his brain provided unhelpfully. Her name is Autumn.

Silently telling his brain, Not now, Toby searched for the words to get him out of this situation. Barnaby would have known them. Well, Barnaby would never have got into this situation in the first place.

‘I—’ he started, and stopped, shutting his mouth before anything stupid could fall out.

Autumn scrambled to sit up against the bedhead, pulling the sheet with her to cover all that bare pale skin he suddenly realised had to be under there. Skin he must have touched, kissed, caressed—and had no memory of.

The world was a cruel, cruel place.

He reached out a hand to try and reassure her, realised it would probably do the opposite and started to pull it back.

Then stopped as he noticed something else he really should have seen sooner.

The matching silver ring on his own left hand.

*

Autumn blinked awake, froze, and tried not to panic. The man in her bed—well, his bed, she guessed, as she didn’t recognise the room—looked just as terrified as she felt, so that was something.

Slowly, she relaxed the muscles in her body one at a time and let the memories flow back in. She’d drunk enough last night that her head pounded and her mouth felt as if she’d swallowed a rat, but not so much that she couldn’t remember the sequence of events that had led her to this place. And, despite the hangover, her body still reacted to the sight of him, a warm flush racing up her chest at the memories of their night together. Of his hands on her body, suddenly steady and sure. His mouth on hers…then working its way down her body…

Autumn pulled the sheet up quickly to cover her blush as much as her nudity.

From the way her companion—Toby, her mind filled in helpfully—was staring at the wedding ring she’d pushed onto his finger after several tries, some time after midnight, she suspected he wasn’t remembering the same things.

Awesome. Looked like this morning was going to be ideal.

Marriage. What had she been thinking? Marriage was permanent. Or at least more difficult to get out of than the fun she usually let herself indulge in. Even surprisingly good drunken sex didn’t justify marriage.

Except, of course, the sex had come after the wedding. She wasn’t the sort of girl who made a habit of falling into bed with random British men she met at work. At least she could justify it to herself as being a one-night stand within the confines of the marriage bed.

Yeah, no. That didn’t make it any better.

Grandma had always said that she was just like her mother, diving in head first, wanting everything at once, all or nothing—until she got bored and walked away. But even her grandparents probably wouldn’t have predicted her taking it this far.

Granddad must be rolling in his grave right now.

Toby was still staring at her as if he’d never seen her before, so she decided she should probably start talking instead of imagining how bad her grandma’s reaction would be, if she were still alive.

‘Morning,’ Autumn said softly. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like I got run over by a hearse, and they might be about to circle back and take me with them.’

She almost laughed at the pain in his crisp, proper voice. How could he sound so British even hungover to high heaven?

‘Should I call for some coffee?’ She kept her voice to a whisper, in deference to his head. Like it or not, she was going to have to deal with the guy today, until they sorted this mess out, and that meant not poking the hungover bear. Or whatever. Her brain wasn’t up to metaphors yet.

Toby ran a hand over his chocolate-brown hair—it hung a little longer than she suspected he usually kept it, since it seemed to be annoying him. Even at the altar last night he’d been shaking it out of his face.

The altar.

Oh, Jesus H Christ, she’d got herself into a real mess this time. But, in her defence, only to try and get out of a different, very real mess.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…

The old nursery rhyme about compounding errors ran through her head and she knew she’d be singing it all day, the way she used to make her grandfather sing it to her when they were working in the garden.

She just had to make sure not to compound her errors any further. Autumn was damn sure that if there was a way to make this situation worse, she’d find it. She always did.

Of course, she always got herself out of any mess she found herself in too. At least there was that. Look at the time with the Russian fire-eater. That could have been really messy, but she’d—

‘Yes,’ Toby said, interrupting her runaway train of thought. ‘Coffee. That sounds…yeah.’

Clutching the thin white sheet to her chest to try and protect any remaining shreds of dignity she might possess, Autumn reached across for the phone and called down to Room Service, asking for their largest pot of strong black coffee. ‘And maybe some pastries?’ she added for good measure. Toby nodded, which was good. From what she could tell, they were at the Four Seasons—one of the Presidential Suites by the look of things—and Autumn definitely couldn’t afford their pastries.

Toby could, though, if he was staying here. Even if he’d been down a little before they got chucked out of the casino where she worked—well, had worked until last night, anyway. Looked like he could afford to lose it, which was good.

If he’d married her for her money he was going to be really disappointed.

The giggle bubbled up in her, and there was just no way to stop it. Autumn pushed her fist—and the sheet—against her mouth, but the laugh came out anyway.

Toby shot her a censorious look, which only made her laugh harder, until she was rolling on the bed with uncontrollable giggles. Oh, it had been so long since she’d done something like this—something spontaneous and ridiculous and life-changing—just on a whim. She’d thought she’d forgotten how, after everything that happened with Robbie. It was good to know she still had it in her.

Her unexpected husband didn’t seem quite so pleased, however.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the corner of the bedsheet. A little mascara came away with it. Great, she probably looked like a panda. ‘But you have to admit, this situation is kind of hilarious.’

‘Is it?’ Toby raised one dark eyebrow as he stared at her, clearly horrified by her antics. Or just by her mere existence; it was hard to tell.

She stuck with her argument all the same. ‘Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve been working in Vegas for over a year now, never had so much as a one-night stand, then you come along and suddenly I’m married!’ She laughed again, but this time it died in her throat as she saw his expression.

It wasn’t just embarrassment or discomfort or any of the things she’d expect to see on the face of her morning-after, one-night stand husband. It was downright horror.

‘You know we can probably get it annulled, right?’ Autumn tried to sound reassuring. ‘I mean, this is Vegas. This has to happen all the time.’ She’d never needed to look into the rules for ending an accidental drunken marriage, but surely there had to be some.

‘Not if we consummated it.’ Toby looked meaningfully at the sheet protecting her modesty. ‘I mean, I assume we did consummate it?’

His hands, sliding up her sides, cupping her breasts. Her nipples aching against his palms. His kiss, as he slid home inside her, filling her… The memories were sharp and fresh—and distracting.

Stop thinking about sex. Married people never have sex anyway, right?

‘Yes, we consummated it,’ she said shortly, trying not to sound annoyed.

But really. How could he not remember? Despite their inebriated states, it had been some of the best sex she’d ever had in her life. Which, actually, might say more about the low bar she’d set for that. Perhaps it had been mediocre for him, and that was why he’d blocked it out. Unless…

Autumn blinked as some of the horror he was feeling settled onto her. She’d guessed that perhaps Toby didn’t have complete memories of the events that had led them to his hotel room, but if he didn’t even remember the night they’d spent together at all…

‘Toby?’ she asked cautiously. ‘How much do you remember about last night? About why you married me?’

He met her gaze finally, his dark blue eyes totally serious. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

*

A knock on the outer door signalled the arrival of coffee—thank God—and pastries to soak up last night’s indulgences. It broke the awkwardness of the moment too, which Toby appreciated more than he could say. The horror in Autumn’s bright green eyes was more than he could take.

Did she think he’d married her because they’d fallen in love at first sight? God, he hoped not.

But she obviously remembered their brief courtship, which meant she knew exactly what she hoped to get out of this union. If it was money, well, he supposed he could pay her off, distasteful as it seemed. If it was his title…well. That was less easily given.

Luckily Finn was nowhere to be seen as Toby pulled on a robe to answer the door and retrieve the refreshments. Tipping the porter, he wheeled the trolley into the bedroom himself and found Autumn sitting cross-legged on the bed, having donned the other fluffy white bathrobe from the bathroom.

He supposed they could have taken breakfast in the main room of the suite—the one with the sofas and tables and another stunning view over the Vegas Strip towards the mountains. But something about this situation made Toby want to keep it confined to the bedroom until he’d figured it all out.

Not to mention the fact that he didn’t relish the idea of Finn walking in on this conversation.

Still, he didn’t sit back down on the bed beside her, choosing one of the padded chairs by the window instead, even if he was more focused on the view inside the room than out.

‘You don’t remember anything,’ Autumn repeated, even though he’d been perfectly clear the first time.

‘I remember going out for a last night in Vegas.’ Toby poured her a coffee and handed it to her, wincing as she leaned over to add copious amounts of milk and sugar to her cup. He also tried to avert his gaze from the way her robe gaped open as she did so. They might be married, but that didn’t give him the right to ogle. Unfortunately.

‘That guy must have hit you harder than I thought,’ she muttered, which didn’t bode well.

Autumn blew across the top of her coffee before taking a small sip. She looked so young, sitting there. But Toby knew from experience that young and beautiful didn’t always mean naive, or honest. ‘You don’t remember going to Harry’s Casino?’

He shook his head. ‘Never heard of it. Is it on the Strip?’

‘Just off. It’s where I work. Worked,’ she corrected herself.

Toby had a bad feeling about this. ‘Do I have something to do with that sudden shift to the past tense?’

Autumn sighed and reached for a croissant. ‘This is going to be easier if I just tell the story from the beginning, isn’t it?’

‘Probably,’ Toby admitted, and sat back in his chair to listen.

The first parts he could have guessed. He and Finn had arrived at some dive casino and sat down at a table. He’d been drinking, Finn hadn’t. Autumn had served them—or him. A lot, by the sound of things.

‘So, basically, you got me drunk and took advantage of me?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘No. Now, do you want to hear this or not? We’re just getting to the interesting bit.’

Toby fell obligingly silent.

‘You won a hand—your first in a while, actually; you weren’t doing so well before that. Your friend suggested you should leave, but you weren’t having any of it, so he left you there.’ She looked disapproving of that, which Toby found a little endearing.

‘You think he should have stayed?’

‘I think a good friend would have made sure you got home safely.’

‘And unmarried?’

‘That too.’

Hmm. Maybe she wasn’t as on board with this sudden elopement as he’d thought.

‘What happened next?’ Toby asked.

‘You played a few more hands, had a few more drinks, lost some more money.’ Autumn shrugged. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. But then you had another spectacular, unexpected, implausible win. You grabbed me around the waist to celebrate.’

Toby winced. ‘Sorry.’

‘I wouldn’t have minded so much, but you made me spill my tray of drinks over the guy playing opposite you. Who also wasn’t very sober, and got kind of mad about it. Then he accused you of cheating—’

‘I never cheat!’

‘Counting cards or whatever.’

‘I’ve never been good enough at maths for that.’ Finn was the maths whizz. Maybe that was why he didn’t have the patience for sustained gambling. He was too good at calculating how bad the odds were.

Toby, on the other hand, just set himself a limit of what he was willing to lose and stuck to it. He’d just never considered adding his single man status to the list before now.

‘He swung for you, you swung back, I tried to stay out of the way… I guess you can see how it went from there?’ Autumn guessed.

‘Partly,’ Toby replied. ‘Although not the bit where we ended up at a wedding chapel.’

She sighed. ‘My boss came out, broke up the fight, fired me on the spot.’

The injustice of that rankled. ‘But it was my fault, not yours.’

‘Which you told him at the time, not that it made any difference. Anyway, you said you’d make it up to me. Help me find another job at one of the casinos. Which was a ridiculous idea, but you were so stupidly eager it was hard to tell you no. And you said you’d buy me dinner, and I was hungry, and it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.’

‘Still not seeing the chapel in this.’ The trying to fix his mistakes, though, however misguidedly, well, that sounded like him, Toby had to admit.

‘Obviously, none of the casinos were going to hire me on the spot, with you as my only, very drunken reference. This is where I started drinking, incidentally, so things are a little hazy after this.’ Hazy was better than non-existent, though, so Toby kept listening. ‘We ate dinner and drank a lot of cocktails as we came up with plans for my next career. You decided I was too good for this place, anyway. I think you wanted me to be a ballerina at one point. Even though I have two left feet and no training.’

‘It was probably your grace,’ he replied without thinking. ‘Or those long legs.’

Autumn raised her brows at him. ‘Yeah, you definitely mentioned the leg thing. Then and, well, later.’

Later. From the way her eyes darkened as she spoke the word, he knew she had to be remembering exactly what had happened later that night, once they were married and alone… He hoped it might spark a memory in him, but no luck. All the same, the room seemed suddenly smaller, the distance he’d put between them nowhere near enough to quell the heat that seemed to be rising around them from just that one word. One look…

He swallowed and she looked away, and the moment broke.

‘Anyway,’ Autumn went on, ‘I declared I was going to leave Vegas, and we toasted to it, and you decided I should come to the UK to find work, except I didn’t have a visa, and you said there was an easy solution to that and, well…’

‘That’s how we ended up at the chapel,’ Toby finished for her.

Autumn nodded and reached for another pastry.

Toby slumped back in his chair, replaying the story she’d told him in his mind. While his memory of events was still mostly absent, bits and pieces of the night were coming back to him, and they tallied with her story—and the bruise he’d noticed on his cheekbone as he’d passed the bathroom mirror to grab the robe.

But there were still some things he didn’t understand. For instance…

‘You were obviously far more sober than me. Why didn’t you say no?’

He held his breath waiting for her answer, praying that it wouldn’t be something along the lines of, I didn’t feel I could, or even, I was scared to. He knew himself well enough to know that, however inebriated, he would never force a woman to do anything she didn’t want to. But she didn’t know him well enough to be sure of that, and Finn told him he could be…overly enthusiastic when drunk. What if he’d made her feel like she had no choice, even if she did?

This was why he shouldn’t drink. A viscount should never lose control that way. Both his father and Barnaby had both been very clear on that.

Just another reason he wasn’t up to the job.

‘Honestly?’ Autumn shrugged lightly. ‘It was just…fun. I mean, it was crazy and ridiculous, but it had been so long since I’d just cut loose like that, and you were so excited about the whole thing. And I was drunk; don’t get me wrong. Probably I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.’

‘Probably?’ He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. Who would only probably have not married a total stranger if she’d been sober? That didn’t ring true.

Autumn’s smile was lopsided, and it charmed him more than he wanted to admit. ‘I’ve done more crazy spontaneous stuff. Nothing lasts for ever, you know. You have to go out and enjoy life while you can.’

He wanted to know more about the crazy spontaneous stuff she’d done, but there was something more pressing he needed an answer to first. Because there was one thing she hadn’t mentioned once when recounting the events of the previous night. And he’d have thought it to be one of the most important factors of all. Which meant either she didn’t know it, or she wanted to pretend it didn’t matter.

He needed to know which one.

Toby took a breath and braced himself, because there really was no good way to ask this one.

‘So, you didn’t marry me because I told you I’m Viscount Wishcliffe?’ he asked, and watched her eyes widen.