Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

He was so content, he didn’t even get annoyed with his least-favorite subject. “I’m sure you can guess.”

“Your mother seriously named you Rhett Butler Ford?”

“Yep.”

She didn’t laugh. “I’m named after my father, who took off and left my mother and two little kids living in an RV.”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter where a name comes from, it’s whether you live up to its original intention.” Rhett yawned and reached down to drag the blanket up over their bodies.

“True. Which is why I was wondering how you’d feel about me being Shawn Hamby Ford.”

Rhett looked at her in astonishment, his heart squeezing. “I would be honored.”

This was real. And they both knew it.

“Now are you going to turn the light off?” she asked.

He grinned. “I was hoping you would.”

“I didn’t turn it on,” she pointed out.

He couldn’t argue with that. As he sighed and lumbered out of bed and across the cold room to flick the switch, he said, “Next week, I install the Clapper.”

She giggled. “I dare you.”

“Done.” Then he was back in bed, and she was in his arms, and the world was a perfect place.

SHAWN looked at herself in the mirror, Eve and the twins hovering around her, fussing with the long, flowing skirt of her white dress that Charity and Sandy had chosen off the rack at a retail store. She looked like a real bride.

And she promptly burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” Harley asked, reaching out and taking her cold hand in hers.

“You’ll mess up your makeup!” Charity shrieked, horrified.

“I’m sorry.” Shawn managed to stop the tears almost as soon as they started, sniffling and widening her eyes to keep herself under control. “I can’t help it. I miss my grandparents.”

It was the truth. But she also was realizing that not only did she look the part, she felt like a true bride. She was in love with her groom. She wanted to spend her life with him, regardless of the reasons they had come together in the first place.

How nuts was that?

Rhett had told her he loved her the night before, and she believed him. For the first time ever in her life, she had looked into the eyes of a man and seen that she was cherished by him. It was wonderful. It was wacky. It was overwhelming. She wasn’t sure how a woman was ever supposed to be prepared to fall in love, but she hadn’t been. Instead of enjoying their mutual emotions, she was still a ball of anxiety, because who was to say what was going to happen when six months had passed? It was too soon to ask Rhett for a real commitment, regardless of their legal marital status. Pressuring him or even asking could smother the spark of their newfound love. It had merely been the post-sex relaxation that had allowed her to say something about taking his last name, and while he had agreed, it could have been purely because he knew his family would expect it.

Despite everything he had told her, he still hadn’t said what was going to happen when he had a hundred grand in hand.

It was a lot to have swirling in her head when she was staring at herself in the mirror, looking every inch the part of a woman pledging her love and her life to her new husband.

“I’m going to puke,” she said, her stomach suddenly clenching in a violent spasm, bile clawing up her throat.

“Holy shit!” was Eve’s opinion as they all glanced frantically around the lounge area of the restroom of the Hamby Speedway banquet room for some kind of receptacle.

Sandy had come into the room in time to hear Shawn’s last words, and as Shawn covered her mouth and desperately breathed through her nose, Sandy cut through the girls and took charge. “Give her some space!”

Taking her firmly in hand, Sandy pushed her down into the deep sofa opposite the vanity area, and she sank down gratefully.

“Head between your knees,” Sandy said gently, pushing her shoulders forward and kneeling down to lay the back of her hand on Shawn’s clammy forehead. “You’re okay, you’re going to be fine. Just try not to swallow so much.”

Shawn started to calm down at the soothing tones of her mother-in-law.

“What’s wrong?” Harley asked. “You’re already married, no need to be nervous.”

“She’s not nervous,” Sandy said, running her hand down Shawn’s cheek in a way that made her realize in thirty-two years she’d never gotten that kind of touch from her own mother. It made her miss her grandmother even more. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you, sweetie?”

Shawn sat up straight at those words. “What? No! I mean, I don’t think so . . .” Was she? She supposed it was possible. She and Rhett had been having sex like it was going out of style. She was on the pill, but she tended to take it at various times of the day, which was a bit of an instructional violation. But still, what were the odds? Rhett would have to have supersperm.

Given he had eight siblings, and six of them had produced sixteen children, maybe that wasn’t so out of the question. Fertility was a Ford virtue.

“Well, we’ll know in a week or two. But for now, I think you should skip the champagne tonight and stick to ginger ale to settle your stomach.”

“Yeah, okay.” Truthfully, the thought of alcohol did make her want to gag. Oh, Lord. What if she was pregnant?

“Whoa,” was Eve’s opinion on the matter.

Sandy hugged her and Shawn melted into the warmth of that embrace. “Welcome to the family.”

“Thank you.” She meant that most sincerely. She had deceived Rhett’s family, and they were showing her nothing but love. She was truly grateful for that.

Especially given that her own mother chose that moment to come into the room. “What’s going on, Shawn? Why are you serving so many beef products?” she said by way of greeting.

Raising her head, Shawn swallowed hard. “Mom, please. Everyone was nice enough to help me with this party, I don’t want to hear any criticism.”

“I’m just saying.” Her mother pouted, her long hair loose from its usual braid, gray streaked throughout since she didn’t believe in using chemicals to dye it. Her dress was more of a wrap-and-sari combination in a vivid purple, which Shawn knew was not a color that could be achieved with natural dye. So, as usual, her mother selectively chose her moments to be environmental.

Still feeling a little weak, she took a deep breath and was standing up, holding on to Sandy’s arm, when Rhett came into the room, with a pointless knock on the door as he was already entering.

“This is the ladies’ room,” Charity told him.

“I’m coming to see what’s taking so long. Everyone is here, and they’re devouring the appetizers.”

He looked very handsome in his suit, his tie straight, a jaunty red for the Valentine’s Day theme, and Shawn willed him to meet her eye. She needed him to look at her, to reassure her. He did, giving her that sexy smile that she had first noticed in The Wet Spot, her insides turning to liquid.

“Hey, beautiful. You ready to do this thing?”

She nodded, immediately feeling better, then immediately after that freaking out that she needed him to make her feel better.

He held his hand out for her.

She took it.

SHAWN looked a little green, but Rhett knew she was nervous about being the center of attention. He found it interesting that for a woman who ran a business and had spent all those years on the youth racing circuit, she wasn’t comfortable with entertaining. Parties and anything that could be classified as an event seemed to generate nerves. Yet in his mind, every weekend at Hamby Speedway during the season was an “event.”

Maybe it was just that she didn’t really like wearing dresses, which was a damn shame, because she was a knockout in them. Especially this one. It looked every inch what he would imagine a bridal gown to be, from the strapless fitted top, to the flowing skirt that looked a little like soft-serve ice cream to him. He wanted to lick her.

“You hungry?” he asked her, as they moved down the hall, her friends and their mothers following them. “There is enough food in there to feed the fans at the Daytona 500.”

It was an inane thing to say, but he wanted her to relax. He squeezed her hand a little and she squeezed back.

“I actually have an upset stomach,” she said. “I think I’m having stage fright.”

“It’s just our friends and family. And the hard part is over. If you didn’t faint in that courthouse,” he murmured to her, “I think you’ll be fine. I mean, let’s face it, it takes a strong woman to agree to put up with me for even six months.”

She gave a brittle laugh, but the tension lines in her forehead smoothed. “True. You are a whole lot of something, Rhett Butler Ford.”

He winced. “Don’t trot out the middle name unless you’re pissed off at me. Or I may not contain my spankings to the bedroom.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

She smiled up at him, and he was glad to see she was genuinely amused and looking less sallow. “Don’t try me,” he teased. Then he pushed open the doorway to the banquet room that his sisters had spent the last two days decorating.

“A big Charlotte welcome to the brand new Mr. and Mrs. Rhett and Shawn Ford!” his brother-in-law Mark boomed as they stepped into the room.

Mark had gotten a microphone from God knows where, and he appeared to have nominated himself for MC/DJ, an iPod and speakers set up behind him.

Even Rhett wasn’t quite prepared for the loud pronouncement of them as man and wife and the thundering applause and hoots and hollers that followed. For a second he just blinked.