"I want a divorce!" Naomi snapped.
Reporters collectively realized they had just been handed tomorrow morning’s headline for free. Every camera outside the courthouse swung away from Dorian Heathcliffe’s recently acquitted client and straight toward him.
Fantastic.
A file came flying at his face. He caught it one-handed. The reporters descended.
"Mr. Heathcliffe, when did you get married again?"
"Will this be your fourth divorce?"
"Were you keeping this marriage secret?"
"Mr. Heathcliffe, is she your wife?"
Then came the one that made Naomi’s blood boil.
"This one is different from your other wives. Where did you get her?"
Naomi turned sharply toward the reporter. Where did he get her? Like she had been picked up from the clearance section of a department store.
The condescension in the woman’s voice was impossible to miss. Dorian, meanwhile, looked almost insultingly calm.
He opened the file. The first page made him frown. The second made his eyes narrow. By the third, the noise around him seemed to disappear entirely. His name stared back at him in cold black ink.
Naomi Bennet and Dorian Heathcliffe.
There was only one minor problem. How exactly was he supposed to get divorced when he wasn’t married?
His gaze lifted slowly. Naomi stood several feet away, glaring at him. He remembered her but she looked different. Dorian’s eyes narrowed.
What the hell was this woman trying to pull?
"Mr. Heathcliffe!"
"When was the wedding?"
Dorian stepped through the reporters, grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him.
"What are you—"
"Move."
"Don’t tell me to move."
He yanked her through the crowd. Naomi stumbled against him. His hand tightened automatically around her arm.
Her body brushed his. Of all the men she could have accidentally married, why did hers have to smell this good?
Dorian opened the door of his waiting car. Another wave of reporters surged closer.
"Mrs. Heathcliffe!"
Naomi froze.
Mrs. Heathcliffe?!
Oh, absolutely not.
Dorian took advantage of the distraction, bundled her into the car and slammed the door. Cameras pressed toward the tinted windows.
As if the nickname Serial Husband wasn’t damning enough, now another woman was asking him for a divorce in front of dozens of reporters.
Dorian gave the reporters a quick, clipped, "No comment," then walked around the car and got into the driver’s seat. He barely had the door shut before Naomi started again.
"I had no other choice. I saw on the news that you would be in court today. I have been trying to get hold of you for the past month after I found out. Your people at your office were always shutting me out. Apparently, I didn’t look like some big-shot client, so I couldn’t see the almighty Dorian."
Dorian started the engine. He said nothing.
"Because I think you should know your receptionist is very rude. Extremely rude, actually. She looked at me like I had walked into the building to sell homemade soap."
Dorian pulled away from the courthouse.
"And the security man wasn’t much better. I told him I needed to see you about something personal, and apparently, ’personal’ is not enough of an explanation to get into your office. Which I understand, because obviously people cannot just walk in and see you, but I explained that it was important."
Dorian kept his eyes on the road. The more she talked, the more the memories came back.
Las Vegas.
Her sitting beside him, talking.
Talking.
And talking.
He remembered wondering back then whether she ever stopped to breathe. Apparently, she did not. He also remembered the overwhelming need he’d had to shut her up.
Not with words, though. His fingers tightened slightly around the steering wheel. Her mouth beneath his.
Soft.
Warm.
Surprised for approximately half a second before she kissed him back.
Dorian’s jaw hardened. He did not need to be remembering that.
"I even called twice yesterday," Naomi continued. "The second time, somebody put me on hold for twenty-three minutes. I didn’t even mean for it to happen like that. I was going to wait until you finished with the reporters, but then I saw you standing there looking all smug and successful, and I thought about how many times your office ignored me, and then I got angry."
"And then everybody started asking questions, which obviously wasn’t my fault."
Dorian slowly turned his head.
Naomi hesitated.
"Okay, maybe slightly my fault."
Slightly?
Dorian checked the rearview mirror.
No reporters.
She was still talking.
Five minutes.
Five uninterrupted minutes.
Dorian was beginning to suspect there was some dysfunction going on with her lungs. Normal people needed oxygen.
"I’m just saying, if your staff had let me speak to you when I first called, none of this would have happened. We could have handled it privately. Calmly. Like adults."
Did the woman come with a mute button, for God’s sake? Maybe he could kiss her again. That had worked once.
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth before he dragged it back to the road.
No.
Absolutely not.
The last time he kissed her, he apparently married her. If he did it again, maybe in another three months she would produce a baby.
"I didn’t even know we were married until a month ago. Do you understand how insane that sounds? and—"
Dorian pulled over. Naomi stopped mid-sentence. He parked at the side of the road and turned off the engine.
Silence finally filled the car.
Beautiful.
Glorious.
Naomi looked around. "Why are we stopping?"
Dorian lowered his hands from the steering wheel. He took one deep breath. Then another. Reminding himself that murder remained illegal, regardless of how persuasive the circumstances were. He turned toward her.
Naomi shifted slightly beneath the full force of his stare. Up close, he looked even more intimidating than he had outside the courthouse.
There was no crowd now. Just the two of them inside an expensive car that suddenly felt much too small.
Dorian loosened his tie slightly. Naomi’s eyes followed the movement before she quickly looked away. Dorian leaned back against his seat and stared at her. "What...the...fucking...hell?"