He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

I’m a good girl—until I got drunk in Vegas and married a panties-flaming-hot Irishman.

Oops.

I’ve always lived my life by the rules. Unlike my two sisters, I’m the good one. The responsible one. Going outside my comfort zone is when I wear red lipstick before five PM.

That comfort zone of mine? It’s smashed to smithereens on a wild night in Las Vegas when I met—and married—Liam Gallagher.

After one shot of tequila, then two, then too many to count, a good girl’s rules tend to disappear. And so do her panties, and her bra, and various other articles of clothing when she’s with an Irishman who knows his way around a woman’s body.

Now my husband wants us to stay married. For six months. He says it’ll be worth my while. Considering our chemistry underneath the sheets, I can’t say that he’s wrong.

Liam isn’t safe, though. Liam definitely isn’t comfortable. He’s like the male equivalent of wearing red lipstick in the daytime all wrapped up in an irresistible, dangerous package.

Yet this stubborn Irishman isn’t about to let me go, drunken Princess Bride-themed Vegas wedding or no.

Now I have to decide if I’m brave enough to break the rules for love.

The moment I woke up after my best friend’s raucous bachelorette party in Las Vegas, I realized two things in quick succession:


1. I was spooning with a man who was very, very naked. 
2. And I had no idea who he was.


To my horror, the man had his arm slung across me, and it weighed at least a thousand pounds, I was sure. My bladder yelled profanities at me as I pushed at the ridiculously heavy arm trapping me against the bed. 


Finally, he turned over, taking his arm with him. I shuffled to the bathroom and didn’t feel the panic hit me until after I’d peed and saw the ring on my left hand.
Ring. Left hand. I didn’t wear a ring there anymore since I’d caught my ex-fiancé cheating on me. I’d thrown the ring David had bought me in his face.


This ring wasn’t that diamond David had gotten me. I peered more closely at it. It was—plastic? Was it from a ring pop?


Did I call the police? No, that was stupid.

911, I got married last night to a stranger. Yeah, that’d go over well. I was sure the Vegas police would just laugh and tell us to get a lawyer. 


I heard movement in the room. I froze. Glancing in the mirror, I saw a wild-eyed woman with bedhead, smeared lipstick, raccoon eyes from melted mascara, and a whole bunch of hickeys across my collarbone. 


I very rarely swore, but at that moment I wanted to swear until I was blue in the face.
What had I done last night? And who was in my bed with me?
I wasn’t that kind of girl—you know, the wild girl. The girl who had one-night stands in Vegas. The girl who threw caution to the wind. 


I’d been about to get married to a man who drove a Prius and was an accountant. I always got the perfect attendance certificate in elementary school. I’d been one of the valedictorians at my high school; I’d gotten an A- once because my teacher had dared to think my essay on fashion in The Great Gatsby was “insipid, at best.” (She’d been wrong, by the way.)


I was Marigold Wright, and I was a good girl. 


I prided myself on my good girl-ness. Where my sisters were either oddballs or outright deviants (at least in my mind), I never crossed lines. I liked lines. Lines were comforting. They existed for a reason; otherwise the world would be in utter chaos.


My one real indulgence in life was my makeup obsession. My collection was scattered across the bathroom counter—an excessive amount of products for one person on a brief trip—and strangely enough, having this man see it all seemed like a violation of my privacy. Even more than being in bed with me and him being naked.

I began to put my makeup away, knowing in my haste I’d have to go through it and reorganize it when I got home.


“Are you done in there?” a growling male voice said through the bathroom door. “I’m fuckin’ dying out here.”

An accent tinged his speech, but I was too tired to try to place it.
I tossed the last products into my makeup bag and scrubbed at my face. Realizing it didn’t matter, I opened the door with a frigid expression. 


The man—who wore only a sheet draped around his hips—smiled down at me. No, he didn’t smile; he smirked. I’d never been the recipient of a true smirk before, but this man clearly had perfected the look.
He was tall, so tall I had to tilt my head back.

He had to be at least six-five; I was five-ten, so it was rare that men were tall enough that I felt short in comparison.

But what arrested me most was how dark his eyes were. Oh, and the fact that he was jacked. Muscles for days, his chest covered in dark hair that matched the beard shadowing his cheeks and jaw. 


“Are you done or can I take a piss now?” he said. 


I blushed to the roots of my hair. Being a redhead, my blushes tended to be bright and extremely obvious, and this man in front of me seemed very amused with my red cheeks. I wanted to ask him if he remembered what had happened last night, but it was as if the words had dried up in my throat.


Or maybe it was because I had a large male glaring down at me because I wouldn’t let him pee.