Dear Reader,
We’ve all heard that old saying: ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ But it doesn’t always … Sometimes a girl marries the wrong man who might just end up being the right man!
Slade Sain is about as opposite to what Taylor Anderson wants in a man as he can possibly be. Except that he’s sexy as sin, makes her feel good about herself, and he’s a fantastic, compassionate oncologist. Now he’s her husband. So this year all she wants for Christmas is a quickie divorce and for what happened in Vegas truly to stay in Vegas.
Slade dedicated his life to breast cancer research at the tender age of twelve, when his mother died from the horrible disease. He knows the path his life is destined to take. Getting married is a bump on that road he never intended to travel over. Sure, Taylor has always fascinated him—but he’s a good-time guy, not a for ever kind of man. She’s vulnerable, a single mum, and still believes in Christmas. He should have known better. Only maybe his heart has been headed in the right direction all along …
I hope you enjoy their story, and that Santa stuffs your stockings with all the things you really want.
Merry Christmas!
Janice
CHAPTER ONE
DR. TAYLOR ANDERSON woke from the craziest dream she’d ever had. Apparently sleeping in a glitzy Las Vegas hotel stretched one’s inner imagination beyond all reason.
Married. Her. To Dr. Slade Sain.
As if.
The man was such a player, she wouldn’t date him, much less consider a more serious relationship with the likes of him. Sure, he was gorgeous, invaded her deepest, darkest dreams from time to time, but the man’s little black book had more phone numbers than the Yellow Pages.
If and when she married, no way would she make the same relationship mistakes she had made during medical school. Never again was she walking down that painful path of inevitable unfaithfulness from a man she should have known better than to trust.
Yet her mind warned that last night hadn’t been a dream, that she had married Slade.
Last night she’d drowned her awkwardness around him. She rarely drank, but she’d felt so self-conscious surrounded by Slade and her colleagues in a social setting, that she had overimbibed. She didn’t think she’d been out and out drunk, but she hadn’t been herself.
These days, the real her was quiet and reserved, steady and stable. Responsible. Not the kind of woman to go to a tacky Sin City year-round Christmas-themed wedding chapel and marry a man she respected as a brilliant oncologist, had found unbelievably attractive from the moment she’d first laid eyes on him, but thought as cheesy as the Jolly Old Saint Nick who’d, apparently, also been an ordained minister. Who knew?
Mentally, she counted to ten, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes. She was in her hotel room queen-size bed and Sexy Slade Sain was nowhere in sight.
She glanced at the opposite side of the bed. The covers were so tangled, who knew if there had been anyone other than herself beneath the sheets? Just because she usually woke with the bedcovers almost as neat as when she’d crawled between them didn’t mean a thing. Really.
She wasn’t in denial. No way.
Neither did the fact she was in the middle of the bed, sort of diagonally, and sprawled out. Naked. What had she done with her clothes?
What had she done with her naked body?
A knock sounded on the door leading out of the room. Feeling like she was suffering a mini–heart attack, Taylor grabbed at the tangled sheets.
“Room service,” a male voice called through the door.
Room service? She pulled the covers tightly around her body. She hadn’t ordered room service.
The bathroom door opened and a damp, dark-haired pin-up calendar model wearing only a towel—dear sweet heaven, the man had a fine set of shoulders and six-pack!—undid the safety chain.
Slade was in her hotel room. Naked beneath the towel and he was buff. The towel riding low around his waist, covering his perfect butt, his perfect... She gulped back saliva pooling in her mouth.
Despite her desperate clinging to denial of the cold hard facts she’d been willfully repressing, she knew exactly what she’d done with her naked body. What she’d done with his naked body. Why her bedsheets were so tangled. The details of how she’d come to the conclusion that marrying Slade was a logical decision might be a little fuzzy, but she’d known exactly what she’d been doing when Slade’s mouth had taken hers. Hot, sweaty, blow-your-mind sex, that’s what she’d done. With Slade. As much as her brain was screaming No! her body shouted, Encore!
“That was quick,” Mr. Multiple Orgasms praised the hotel employee pushing a cart into the room. He stopped the man just inside the doorway. “I’ll take it from here.”