to the top of my head. My glasses started fogging as the van heated up.
“This is stupid,” I said aloud to myself, still not taking the van out of Park. “It isn’t a real wedding. He’s going to divorce me.”
That word—it sounded terrible coming out of my mouth in the frosty air. I didn’t know why I was so worked up, so twisted with a feeling that was almost like hurt. I had been horrified for an entire year at the idea of marrying Wes Kane. I had dreaded it and sworn it would never happen. And now I was sort of, almost, mad at him because he was giving me the out that I wanted.
“I’m going to be a divorced woman,” I said aloud. “I won’t even be properly married, and I’ll already be divorced. I’m going to have to go to bars and try to pick up twenty-year-olds. I’ll be pathetic.”
A huge Pontiac pulled into the space opposite me and an old man got out. He saw me talking to myself and squinted. I was a crazy woman in a borrowed coat and a van with Christmas ornaments painted on the sides, sitting in a parking lot and ranting at no one.
I powered down the driver’s window and leaned my head out. “I’m a CEO!” I shouted at him. “Mind your own business!”
He grabbed his bag of groceries and hurried toward the building.
“Screw it,” I said out loud, putting the van in gear. “I am a CEO. And I’m going to buy a dress.”
The mall was still open—it would stay open until eleven o’clock to accommodate the last-minute Christmas shoppers. I drifted through the crowds, letting my gaze pass over the store windows. I wasn’t going to buy a real wedding dress, the white-lace kind. I was going to buy something else, but I wasn’t sure what yet. Something eye-catching. Something fashionable. Something sexy.
That made me think about sex with Wes again. I wondered if we’d still have sex even after we were divorced. Divorced people had sex, right?
Stop thinking about it, Penny. He doesn’t want you.
Except it hadn’t seemed like he didn’t want me. Not when he was kissing me and doing all of those other things to me. And not when he’d stood in the break room with me, looking so handsome under the Christmas lights, his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up and his gaze never leaving mine.
He hadn’t looked like he didn’t want me at all.
I was standing in front of a store window, looking at a dress on a mannequin as the crowds pushed past me. The dress was supposed to be for a holiday party, for some woman to wear on a hot date. It was bright red and sleeveless with a band of satin just below the breasts and a slim, sexy, knee-length skirt. It was elegant and not my style at all. I never wore sexy dresses, and I never wore red.
Except—I looked down at myself. I was wearing red right now, because I was wearing Sophie’s coat. So technically I was a woman who wore red.
I looked back up at the dress, thinking again.
I was the CEO of Kane Co., and it was Christmas. Maybe I should get a dress for the occasion.
Chapter 19
Wes
There was a storm coming on Christmas Eve. The best day of the holidays—at least in my view—and the day of the Kane holiday party. The day of my wedding. They said there could be ten inches of snow.
The city had mostly emptied out as I made my way through the snowy streets to City Hall. At seven o’clock Christmas Eve, the employees at City Hall were long gone and the place was dark. But my father had been friends with the owner of the Denver Nuggets, whose cousin was a Justice of the Peace, so I’d called in a few favors. Despite my father being in prison—or perhaps because of it—people were still willing to help me out.
I parked at a side door just as Penny pulled up in her Kane Co. van. I had offered to drive her, but she’d insisted she wanted to go home from work and change before coming to the ceremony. So I’d gone home myself and changed into my best suit after showering and freshening up. It wasn’t every day a guy got married, even if he was going to get a divorce right afterward.
The snow was starting to fall as I knocked on the side door, waving