Chapter Two

Carlos's POV

I had been thinking about our situation all morning. Anyone who knew me would never use words like impulsive or reckless to describe me, but I was hard-pressed to think of this scenario as anything but that. It was a surprising position to find myself in. What had happened last night that compelled Steph and me to do something so drastic and, for me, out of character? After all, what did I know about Stephanie besides that she was stunningly, naturally beautiful and had a friend named Mary Lou?

To that end, I decided to try and get to know a little about her to determine why I had been ready to marry her after only a few hours in her company.

Before we left her friend at her hotel, I suggested to Steph she bring her suitcase with her. I suspected we might be talking for quite a while, and if she spent the night with me in my hotel room again, I wanted her to have her things to be more comfortable.

The hotel cleaning staff had been in while we were gone, and the room was fresh and clean again. The curtains were spread wide, inviting in the warm Las Vegas sunshine. The marriage paperwork was in a neat stack on the bedside table beside the phone. Steph set her suitcase down next to the desk and sat down on the edge of the bed. I picked up the pages and sat next to her. She looked over at me, then down at what I held, and sighed.

"I can't believe I married a stranger in Vegas," she said. "That is so unlike me."

I chuckled. "Ditto, Babe. I'm not exactly a spontaneous guy." I shrugged. "I was wondering about that myself."

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask. I may not answer."

"How come you're wearing the wedding ring?"

"Because we're married."

She wrinkled her brow. "Not really, though."

"Yes, really. It's legal. I checked the paperwork." I held it out to her. "Look at the date & time stamp on that license application. We got there right before they closed, and they approved it at eleven-fifty p.m. We must've gone directly to a chapel after that."

"We only knew each other for a couple of hours before that. And, according to your friends, I was shamelessly checking you out before we started making out."

I grinned at her. "You wanted me bad."

She shoved me lightly in the arm. "You must've wanted me bad, too!"

I looked her over lasciviously. "Doesn't surprise me. My turn to ask a question?" I waited for her to nod. "What brought you to Las Vegas?"

She blushed and looked down. If possible, she was even prettier with that soft flush staining her porcelain skin.

"It's not a nice story," she began. "I was engaged to a man I had been with since college. Our wedding was supposed to be next week, on Valentine's Day. When I came home after work a few days ago, I found him cheating on me with an old middle-school rival, Joyce, on our new dining room table. I started throwing stuff at them, broke off our relationship, and went home to my mother for some sympathy. Instead, my mom ordered me to go home and make up with him, saying that the scandal would rock the 'Burg and that it was natural for a man to have some of his needs met outside of marriage, especially if his wife wasn't satisfying his desires," I didn't imagine the bitterness seeping into her story, but she soldiered on. "I told her I wouldn't stay with a man who cheated on me and went to Mary Lou's house. She got married a year ago, and she and her husband are deliriously happy and expecting their first baby. She convinced me I needed an escape from the worst of the gossip in our neighbourhood. I'm not sure I could adequately explain how toxic living there is. I felt so humiliated because, of course, everyone knew. Anyway, she convinced me I needed to get out of there, so I bought two tickets to Vegas and dragged her with me."

A single tear rolled down her cheek as she concluded her monologue. I'm not sure she was even aware of it. I thought that withstanding that sort of pressure from her mother and her community made her very strong, but I was willing to bet she didn't view herself that way. "Do you think you'll stay in Trenton after that?"

She looked at me in surprise, and I smiled broadly. "I don't have ESP. The application has both of our current cities of residence listed. You were born in Trenton, New Jersey, and currently live there. I was born in Newark, though I'm currently based out of Georgia."

"What are you doing in Georgia?" she asked.

"I'm in the Army, based in Fort Moore."

"Oh. What do you do in the Army?"

"Well, if I told you, I'd have to kill you."

She gaped at me and then narrowed her eyes. "You're fucking with me!"

I laughed. "You're rather easy to fuck with."

"So, does that mean you're going to tell me what you do in the Army?"

"I'm a Green Beret."

"That's like some kind of special thing, right?"

"Something like that, yes. What do you do?"

"I just graduated with my Master's degree in Social Work. My fiancé—I guess he's my ex-fiancé now—wanted me to wait until after we married to look for a job. He thought I should work until we started having children, then quit to stay home and raise them. No matter how often I told him I wouldn't give up working to stay at home, he still believed I'd want to. I don't know why I ever thought we should get married."

"Where did you go to college?"

"Rutgers."

"That's where I went, too."

"When did you graduate?"

"1991."

"That's when I finished my undergrad. We were there at the same time?"

"I guess so. Small world."

"What did you study?"

"History."

We fell silent then, but it didn't feel uncomfortable. I don't think I'd had one awkward moment in her presence since I met her.

"What do you think made us do it?" Steph bit her bottom lip and chewed on it, making her look adorable and utterly kissable.

"Honestly, I don't know, Babe. I'm not usually a spontaneous sort of guy."

"I am spontaneous, but I've never done anything like this before!" she said, giggling softly. She re-situated herself on the bed, leaning against the headboard and stretching her long legs straight ahead. "My mom will kill me when she finds out!"

"Why does she need to find out?" I asked.

"She's Ellen. She'll find out. She has like this maternal radar and seems just to know anything I might want to keep from her."

"We could look into getting an annulment. If we're not eligible, we'd have to get divorced." I paused, unsure how to frame my next thought to her. "I have a proposal, though."

She raised her eyebrows again, waiting for me to continue.

"We could stay married, at least for a while." Her eyes widened in shock, and I could understand how she felt. I've been thinking about this since I found the forms this morning. "Hear me out. I never do anything like this. Not ever. I've never even been in a relationship before." I made air quotes around that word, relationship. "And you said this isn't like you either. I can't help but be curious about what happened in the two or three hours we knew each other before we went to the Marriage Bureau to apply for a license. Maybe our drunk selves knew what they were doing. Maybe we'll discover it was a mistake. But while we're figuring it all out, I wouldn't mind staying married."

She appeared to mull it all over. I was pleased to see she didn't seem repulsed by the idea, though.

My hands were entwined with hers and clasped over her head on the bed. Her eyes were closed, and she was sexily biting her bottom lip while her long legs were wrapped around my waist, encouraging me to thrust deeper, harder, faster.

I stilled. I guess I know now how we celebrated our nuptials.

A/N: This version of Carlos is not the Ranger we know from canon and other FF works. He hasn't done anything so dark that it's stained his soul, and he never met Rachel, married her, or fathered a daughter. He's not as secretive, and he's open to possibilities that canon Ranger has not been so far (we can always hope, Book 31!)