Even in Las Vegas, when a girl in a wedding dress walked into a bar, people turned to stare. The bride, minus groom, seemed unaware of the attention. She walked right up to the bar, put down her suitcase and hauled herself up on the stool next to Leo’s.
It was then he realised that the gawping was less to do with the big, foofy white dress and everything to do with her beauty. Leo liked to think he was immune to beauty. He’d spent the last year in LA where you couldn’t even pick up a carton of milk from the neighbourhood bodega without seeing at least one woman who’d spent thousands of dollars on her appearance. A little nip here, a hell of a lot of tucking there.
But this woman was so breathtaking that he was grateful she’d sat down next to him so he could gaze at each perfect feature on her face and marvel at the way they came together to form an impeccable whole. She’d had some work done, but it was very discreet. A few injectables, just enough Botox that she could still show emotion.
Her honey-blonde hair was swept up in a fancy plaited arrangement and topped with a tiara. Leo could tell by the smug glint of the stones even in the dimly lit bar that the tiara was adorned with proper, honest-to-goodness diamonds.
There were more diamonds sparkling on her ring finger, but no wedding band, which could explain why her cupid-bow mouth drooped at the corners. Though, when Leo caught her eye, she acknowledged his interest with a half-hearted twist of her lips.
‘Hello,’ she said in an English accent far more precise than his, as she settled herself more comfortably so the full white skirts of her dress floated around her like petals.
‘Hello,’ Leo said and before he could say anything else, the surly bartender who’d taken his sweet time before he served Leo was breaking the land-speed record to stand in front of her and wait expectantly for her to order.
The woman eyed the collection of bottles behind the bar doubtfully.
‘Walked out on your husband already, did you?’ the bartender asked and she blinked.
‘I’m not married.’ Her voice was so neutral, it was beige. She gestured at the acres of tulle and silk taffeta around her. ‘Appearances can be deceiving.’
‘Runaway bride, then? You got cold feet at the last minute?’
The woman set her shoulders back as if she were about to bristle and shut the man down, but then she smiled.
Before she smiled, she was beautiful. But once she smiled properly so her blue eyes twinkled like her diamonds, she was absolutely fucking beautiful . It was all Leo could do not to drool.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said to the barman, who’d now stopped pretending to polish the glass he’d been holding. ‘Really, it’s too boring to talk about.’
Though she seemed self-possessed as she sat there, her shoulders were so stiff that Leo’s ached in sympathy – as if it were a superhuman effort to hold herself upright when all she wanted to do was wilt.
‘So, did you break it off or…’
She held up her hand in protest. ‘Please, no more questions. Not until I’ve had a drink.’
‘What are you having? On the house,’ the barman said as if he really thought he was in with a chance, despite his greasy, sparse hair coaxed into a sad little quiff, quivering chin and the fact that he was polishing glasses and serving drinks in a dive bar. Still, you couldn’t blame a guy for trying.
‘A glass of champagne, please.’
He stared at her like she was speaking Martian. ‘We don’t serve champagne by the glass. We don’t got no champagne.’
‘Really? How extraordinary!’ She turned to Leo and shook her head, inviting him to share her disbelief. He shrugged and this time she rewarded him with a conspiratorial grin, before she turned back to the barman. ‘Well, what do you have, then, darling?’
She made do with a dirty martini. She wrinkled her nose as she took the first sip and it was then that the barman realised that he was batting way, way, way out of his league because he started fussing over his bowls of tired-looking bar snacks and left her alone.
They sat there, Leo and the woman, in silence and it wasn’t until she’d almost finished her drink that she turned to him. ‘I’ll be twenty-seven tomorrow,’ she said.
He wasn’t sure where she was going with this or if he wanted to find out. Women who looked like her, women wearing that calibre of diamond, had to be nothing but trouble, but since when had that ever stopped him? ‘Happy birthday for tomorrow.’ He lifted his tumbler of scotch and gently clinked it against the side of her glass.
She leaned in closer so Leo thought he might drown in the warm, sweet-scented nearness of her. ‘The thing is, darling, I made a vow I’d get married before I turned twenty-seven.’
‘Twenty-seven isn’t that old,’ he said. ‘I managed to survive being twenty-seven without getting married.’
‘It’s different for men,’ she insisted, glancing down at her engagement ring. ‘For women, twenty-seven is… well, it’s hard to explain.’
Leo waited for her to at least try but she was twisting the huge rock on her finger so it shimmered in the spotlight above her and stars clouded his vision. ‘Look, you’re obviously having a bad day but…’
‘The baddest of all bad days.’ She held her hand in front of her and stared at her engagement ring as if it were responsible for all her current woes. ‘The baddest day since records began.’
He hardly had to think about it at all. ‘You know, I could marry you. If you wanted? ’
This vision, this goddess, choked on a mouthful of martini. ‘You’d marry me?’ she asked once she’d recovered. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’
Leo shrugged. ‘I used to be a boy scout. I still like to do a good deed every day.’
She shifted on her stool so she was facing him, the whipped white froth of her dress brushing against the knee of his jeans. ‘You’re not married already, are you?’
‘No.’ He smiled at her confusion; tremulously she smiled back and he was starting to like this game he was playing even if he didn’t know the rules.
‘Do you have a fiancée or some girl who you have an understanding with?’
‘No.’
‘Are you gay? Not that it really matters but…’
‘No!’
She spread her hands wide. ‘Still, darling, this is all quite sudden. Give me one good reason why I should marry you.’
There were a million and one lousy reasons – except being married was about the only thing he hadn’t tried. And this had to be fate – a gorgeous girl walks into a bar all ready to say ‘I do’ and the only thing she’s missing is the groom. He summoned the bartender with a lazy finger and ordered another whisky and a vodka tonic for her, as the dirty martini hadn’t been a great success. ‘Give me one good reason why not?’
She shook her head as the barman placed a fresh drink in front of her. ‘Where to start?’
‘It’ll be midnight in a few hours. I thought you were on a clock.’
She pouted a little, her gaze darting round for a more likely candidate. There wasn’t one. Only a couple of old men who’d been nursing a bottle of beer apiece for the last hour and a man in the far corner staring disconsolately at his empty glass like he’d just put his life savings on black and red had come up. Still, her eyes narrowed as she considered her options.
‘You don’t have to marry me,’ Leo said and he had her attention again. ‘But let’s have a little drink and a chat and see how we both feel about it in an hour or so. Deal?’
She picked up her glass and gave him another one of those smiles that made Leo want to find a puddle so he could drape his jacket over it for her. ‘Deal.’