Wolf’s own jaw firmed, but wry amusement touched his eyes. “Hard not to. You have such a way with words.”
Glancing down into Alexandra’s pale face, he smiled a small, mocking smile. “It’s a California wedding.”
They never did have lunch, and Alexandra found the long drive back to Wolf’s house nothing short of agonizing. Wolf was beyond quiet. He looked like the Grim Reaper at the wheel. She did her best to avoid looking at him, but even with the sun shining and the temperature outside in the seventies, Alexandra couldn’t stop shivering.
Wolf had promised her brothers a California wedding.
In less than two weeks.
A wedding in less than two weeks. That was laughable. Hilarious. So why wasn’t she laughing?
Why did she want to cry?
Alexandra squeezed her eyes shut as her teeth began to chatter. It was just the shock, she told herself. As soon as she and Wolf figured a way out of this mess, she’d be fine. They just needed to put their heads together and come up with a plan.
Fast.
“Take a hot bath when we get home,” Wolf said, merging into traffic on Highway 1. They were probably just ten or fifteen minutes from his house now. “Or better yet, I can turn on the hot tub for you. It’s just off the deck in the garden. Has a great view of the water. That might help your chill.”
She bundled her arms across her chest. “We’ve got to think of a way out of this, something plausible, something that will keep my family out of Los Angeles and away from me.”
Wolf gave her a peculiar look. “Were you not at the Mondrian with me? Did you not hear what I heard? Those brothers aren’t going away until you’re married. They’re taking hotel rooms in town and camping out until the dirty deed is done.”
And that just might be why she was violently shivering. She was doomed. Wolf, too.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m really sorry about all of this. If I’d just stayed at the party, none of this would have happened.”
“Celebrity is a messy business.”
Alex grimaced. Talk about cold comfort. “So what do we do now?”
“We get married.”
“You mean pretend to get married.”
Wolf shot her a darkly amused glance. “Your brothers don’t strike me as the pretend type, and frankly pretending has gotten us into this mess. I think it’s time we sorted things out properly. A real wedding with a real priest, real guests and real champagne.”
Which meant real publicity, too, she thought, stifling a groan.
The PR game had completely taken over her life, and she didn’t like it. She’d didn’t even know who she was anymore, what with the stylists and designers and makeup artists constantly fixing her up, making her presentable. She was ready for the old Alexandra to return. The one that went to work every day on time, slept seven and a half hours every night and wore black, navy and gray because that way people might take her seriously.
Lately she’d actually begun to miss just being ordinary.
“I think this has gone far enough, Wolf, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
“If I did, I wouldn’t have just proposed.”
She ground her teeth in mute irritation. “It wasn’t much of a proposal.”
“Apparently I am your dream man.”
She could have screamed with vexation. “That was a mistake.”
“One your brothers latched onto.” He signaled a lane change as they neared the house. “I imagine they’ve already been in contact with your dad by now.”
Alexandra pressed her fists against her eyes. She didn’t want to hear any more, didn’t want to picture her brothers on the phone with her dad. Because Wolf was right. That’s exactly what Troy and Trey would have done. Called Dad. Then called Brock, Dillon and Cormac. They’d all be jumping on airplanes soon.
“If I got down on one knee, would you feel any better?” Wolf asked without the least bit of sympathy for her plight.
She lifted her head, glared at him. “No.”
He shrugged and turned down the small green-hedge-lined lane leading to his beach house. “Exactly. So why bother with the theatrics?”
No two weeks had ever passed faster, and no elaborate, star-studded wedding had ever been planned so quickly. Wolf made a few calls to industry insiders, and within a day the wedding ceremony was set, the reception site booked. Within three days the myriad details—including guest list, bridal gown, colors, flowers, dinner menu and entertainment—had been addressed. And by the fourth day the hand-embossed wedding invitations were sent.
Alexandra laughed until she cried when she received an invitation to her own wedding.
It was all so horrible it was funny.
She, Alexandra Shanahan, who’d lost a lot of sleep at fifteen fantasizing about Wolf Kerrick, was now marrying him in Santa Barbara in little over a week.
Santa Barbara, a ninety-minute drive north of Los Angeles on Highway 1, perches snugly between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the gorgeous Pacific Ocean. The town, a mixture of red-tiled adobe homes, huge estates and historic landmarks, also has some of the best surfing in California. Little wonder that everyone from John Travolta to Oprah Winfrey has a second home there.
And now Alexandra was about to be married there.
Pacing her small dressing room at the Denzinger estate, she kept glancing at the little clock on her dressing room table. Just a half hour now until the ceremony began.
She trembled in her white satin beaded shoes.
She couldn’t believe Wolf was insisting they go through with the wedding. There was no reason to get married. Wolf could just head to Africa and she could make excuses, claim cold feet, lack of compatibility. Anything but marriage!
Alexandra marched back across the carpet and stole yet another look at the clock. Twenty-five minutes.
Twenty-five minutes until she became his wife.
And Alexandra, who hated to cry, knew she was about to cry now. Not delicate tears but huge, depressed sobs.
Until now she had always thought of herself as the ultimate cynic, a bona fide nonromantic. She didn’t believe in falling in love, had never felt an urge to marry or to be a mother for some guy’s children. But now, confronted by a very public w
edding to a man she still barely knew, Alexandra was aghast.
She couldn’t believe she was marrying to seal a business deal, to propel herself higher up the ladder of success. Even for a cynic, this was a really big deal.
Even for a cynic, this was wrong.
She couldn’t do this. Not for Wolf, not for her family, not for anyone. She needed to get out of here, escape before she made a fool of herself in front of every guest and every camera.
Alex stopped pacing, turned, pressed a knuckled fist to her mouth, forgetting her carefully applied lipstick.
She didn’t like running away, but she didn’t know how else to get out of this. Her family certainly wasn’t going to listen. And Wolf … well, he was heading to Zambia day after tomorrow. He’d be fine.
Glancing down, she took in her full white gown, a fairy-tale dress for a fairy-tale wedding that she refused to let happen.
She reached for the back of her gown, tried to tug the hooks open, but there were too many—absolutely dozens—hidden in a satin-lined seam in her dress. She couldn’t undress without assistance, and there was no one she could ask to help.
If she wanted to go, she’d have to leave like this.
Alexandra crossed to her travel tote bag tucked between the vanity and the corner of the room. She checked inside for her wallet. With a sigh of relief she saw it was there. Good. For a moment she’d feared all her cash and credit cards would be, with her luggage, already at the hotel.
Alex grabbed her wallet and left the rest.
She’d just buy what she needed whenever she got wherever she was going, because she certainly couldn’t go back to her house in Culver City. She wasn’t even sure she’d have a job waiting for her after she stood Wolf up at the altar. But those were problems she’d worry about later.
Alexandra left the changing room, slipping quietly down the mansion’s long sunlit corridor, away from the spacious public rooms to the working quarters of kitchen, laundry and garage.
She passed several uniformed housemaids but didn’t make eye contact, too intent on getting away before someone checked on her in the bridal dressing room and discovered her gone.