“Am I laughing?”

He wasn’t. But then he rarely laughed. He rarely joked, either. That night, she’d later learned, was quite the anomaly for him.

A cold feeling invaded her stomach.

“We’re married, Kaitlin,” he told her, steel eyes unflinching.

They were not married. It had been a lark. They’d been playacting up there on the stage.

“Elvis was licensed by the state of Nevada,” said Zach.

“We were drunk,” Kaitlin countered, refusing to believe such a preposterous claim.

“He filed a certificate.”

“How do you know that?” Her brain was revving into overdrive, calculating the possibilities and the potential consequences.

“Because my lawyers tell me so.” He gave a meaningful glance past her shoulder, into the apartment. “Can I please come in?”

She thought about her mystery novels covering the couch, the entertainment magazines that were sitting out on the coffee table, the credit card and bank statements in piles beside them, revealing her shopping habits for the past month. She remembered the telltale, half-eaten package of Sugar Bob’s doughnuts sitting out on the counter. And, of course, there was the box of sexy underwear on full display in the afternoon sunshine.

But, if he was telling the truth, it wasn’t something she could ignore.

She gritted her teeth and ordered herself to forget about his opinion. Who cared if he found out she had a weakness for Sugar Bob’s? In a matter of days, he’d be out of her life. She’d leave everything she’d ever known, start all over in another city, maybe Chicago or Los Angeles.

Her throat involuntarily tightened at the thought, and her tears threatened to freshen.

Kaitlin hated being uprooted. She’d started over so many times already, leaving security and normalcy behind as she moved from one childhood foster home to another. She’d been in this small apartment since she started college. And it was the only place that had ever felt remotely like home.