Page 39 of Betting on her Best Friend
“Places, everyone!” The Mardi Gras ringmaster started arranging people like he was moving pawns on a chessboard. Before any of them knew what happened, Elvis stood behind the ticket podium with Alyssa and Dylan in front. Marilyn was placed next to Alyssa with the TSA model guy on the other side of Dylan. Everyone else was ushered into the seats behind them.
Alyssa raised her brows at him. “Um, Trent? What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said, gesturing to his handiwork proudly. “You said you couldn’t wait to get started, so I’m getting you hitched. I know the airport terminal is a tad gauche, but I figured since Elvis is a minister and we have plenty of witnesses, we can do this lickety-split and you two can move on to the honeymoon phase.”
Dylan’s entire body snapped to attention, and he decided Trent was officially his new favorite person outside of his fiancée. But Alyssa seemed a bit more startled than excited, if her wide eyes were anything to go by. Dylan swallowed the bile creeping up the back of his throat at the thought of her shutting down again.
“Hitched,” she repeated. “As in married?” She swiveled her head, taking in their surroundings and the people gathered around them. “Here?”
Trent raised a dubious eyebrow. “Asks the girl who wore a wedding dress to the airport.”
“It’s not a wedding dress, it’s a ball—” she started, then cut herself off with a sigh and shake of her head. “Okay, you’re right.” She turned her attention back to Dylan and placed her hands inside his. He placed a kiss on the tops of each before holding them over his heart, hoping she could feel how strongly it beat for her as she continued. “It is a wedding gown. The moment I tried it on, I fell in love with it. I bought it for the masquerade ball on the off chance the Matthews Curse is, you know, an actual thing.”
Dylan brushed a thumb along her cheekbone. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. And you can wear it every day for all I care. But you might want to think about replacing the buttons with Velcro.”
She screwed up her face in distaste. “Why would I do something as tacky as that?”
“It’s either that or get a seamstress on retainer to reattach the buttons I constantly rip off.” He lifted a corner of his mouth in a sly grin, then spoke softly against her ear. “Because I’ll have zero patience when I want you naked and writhing beneath me.”
He pulled back and watched a flush sweep up her chest and settle in the apples of her cheeks. He could almost see the illicit images running through his mind reflected in the swirl of lust in her eyes. Alyssa swallowed and wet her lips. “What do you say we follow Trent’s lead and throw up that framing you mentioned earlier with a quickie Vegas wedding so we can get to the teamwork part of this relationship?”
Dylan searched her face for signs of uncertainty…and found none. Her features were serious, waiting for his answer. He barely suppressed the need to haul her against him and kiss her breathless and damn their audience to hell. Instead, he opted to wrap his arms around her and pull her in until nothing but layers of fabric separated them.
She had always been the one constant in his life, and he couldn’t believe it’d taken this crazy town and a romance convention to make him come to his senses. Yeah, this was the perfect place for them to take their vows.
“I’d say hell yes,” he rasped through the emotion clogging his throat. Without taking his eyes off hers, he said, “Trent, you may proceed.”
“Finally,” Trent said with an exasperated sigh. “Any longer and I would have died of old age.”
“Still a drama queen, I see, Trenton,” said Dylan’s “best man” with an amused smirk on his face.
“You shush. I’ll deal with you later. And be prepared to move your ass back in with me where you belong.”
The blond TSA employee smiled like a kid on Christmas morning as the women whispered a chorus of “awwwwws.” There was clearly some history here that Dylan didn’t know about, but his best man looked about as happy as Dylan felt, so he clapped him on the shoulder in congratulations as Trent gave the order to start the ceremony.
Elvis slapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Man, I really like Vegas.”
Dylan grinned at the famous quote and couldn’t have agreed more. Vegas had given him the woman of his dreams in twenty-four hours—and delivered her in a wedding dress to boot. “And Elvis,” he added, pinning Alyssa with a heated look, “give us the short version.”
