Last Name - Dr. Rebecca Sharp Page 0,13

who was half-mine and half-mystery.

Once I found her, then I’d figure out what to do with her.

Clearing my throat, I refocused and shifted in my seat.

This whole situation was unreal, there was no questioning that. But the strangest part of it all was when I thought about finding the woman who was my wife, my next thought wasn’t how to dissolve the marriage though that seemed the most logical next step.

The strangest part of it all was that I wanted to find her, to find her. Not to lose her once again.

“Mr. Arden.” I heard Lucy’s voice announce her return, my head dragging back up as she finished. “This is Carrie Bishop.”

I knew her name.

Just as surely as I knew those expressive eyes and that delicious mouth. Just as surely as I knew that perfect lush body and the way it had come alive underneath my touch.

I knew the woman standing in front of me.

The woman I’d saved and spent one night in Vegas with.

Carrie Bishop.

The woman I was about to fire was my new wife.

It was him.

“James?” My voice leeched from my throat in high, thready notes sharpened with complete and utter shock.

The man who toasted champagne with me in the Eiffel Tower, who rowed me down the canals of The Venetian, and who married me at a drive-through Vegas chapel was standing in front of me—standing behind a desk that belonged to him.

That now belonged to the new owner of this hotel and casino.

He looked different without the glitz and glimmer of the Vegas lights. Like looking at the lake when the sun was blazing down on it, reflecting off the water in bright white flashes—beautiful but blinding. Here… now… the water approached dusk—still lit, but the rich hues, the details and depths, and all the vast beauty shone with perfect clarity. I could see him without the flashing lights and costumed hats, without alcohol or distraction clouding my vision.

The hard lines of his cheekbones and jaw, dusted with the unshaven scruff of a few days. His hair looked as though it was well-trained this morning before fingers had been run through it a few times. His suit was crisp and clean though the tie was pulled ever so slightly from his neck as though after each previous meeting that had taken place in this office this afternoon, he’d reached in and tugged the tight fabric away from his neck—a sign that letting some of my co-workers go wasn’t unfelt by the corporate CEO who was worth far more than I really cared to know.

He was still devastatingly handsome, and the frayed edges of his picture-perfect attire only made him more so.

James.

James Arden.

I hadn’t known his name when they announced the purchase last week, just that Arden Corporation was buying out the casino, and rumor had it my job was on the chopping block.

The owner of Arden Corporation wasn’t just my new boss—he was my husband.

And he was about to fire me.

“Carrie,” he said my name, testing to make sure I was really there. “Carrie Bishop.”

It was only the mutual shock in our gazes clashing like lightning in the space between us that kept me standing, an electricity thrumming up my spine, forcing it straight. A strange type of electrocution holding me upright, but one that was no less deadly in the way it arrested all my senses and made my heart pump erratically.

“Lucy, you may leave us,” he told his secretary who’d been a kind presence out in the hall where I’d been waiting.

I caught the way she balked at him. She was the witness; she was supposed to stay in the room when he fired someone for legal purposes. Still, she obeyed her boss with a slight dip in her chin, she let herself out of the room, all the while James’ attention never left me. Just like that night.

Neither of us made a move as the door clicked shut.

It was as though we’d bet everything and now the cards were flipped over on the table—and I was just waiting to see if I’d lost it all or won the jackpot.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered first with a shake of his head.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out—in hindsight, a dumb question, but I couldn’t believe he was here. That after a week of freaking out, a week of wallowing in how ashamed my mom was going to be when I told her I married a man whose name I didn’t even know, a week of