Free (Rainshadow, #2) Deception Cove by Jayne Castle Page A

appeared to enjoy the short ceremony was Houdini. He went into full-on cute mode and blinked his baby blue eyes at the clerk.
    “Aren’t you adorable,” the clerk cooed.
    Houdini stared at a jar of wrapped candies and made encouraging noises. The clerk looked at Alice.
    “Is it okay to give him one?” the clerk asked.
    “I think so,” Alice said. “He seems to be omnivorous.”
    The clerk whipped the glass lid off the jar and plucked a candy wrapped in gold foil from the bouquet inside.
    Houdini ignored the offering. He sidled up to the jar and selected a different piece of candy—one wrapped in red foil—instead. Chortling with glee, he scurried back to Alice’s shoulder and went to work tearing off the wrapper.
    “He likes red,” Alice explained. “It goes with his bow tie.”
    The clerk smiled. “I can see that.”
    Ignoring them all, Drake signed the last piece of paper registering the MC and handed it to the clerk.
    “How long before the record gets into the system?” he asked, indicating a nearby computer.
    “Right away,” she assured him. “I’ll enter it as soon as you leave.”
    “We’ll wait,” Drake said. “I want to be sure the MC comes up immediately if anyone does a search.”
    The clerk raised her brows but merely nodded and moved to the computer. Alice got the impression that people rarely said no to Drake.
    It took the clerk only a few minutes to enter the record of the MC.
    “There you go, Mr. Sebastian,” she announced. “Congratulations to you both.” She winked at Drake. “You may kiss the bride.”
    “Thanks,” Drake said. There was a distinct chill in his voice now. He clamped a hand around Alice’s elbow and steered her toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. We have a plane to catch.”
    So much for kissing the bride,
Alice thought, torn between chagrin and amusement. A phony embrace in front of the clerk would have been very awkward under the circumstances, but being hustled out of the building by her new groom was embarrassing, too.
    They started down the stairs to the first floor of the courthouse. It finally dawned on her that Drake was not merely in a hurry. He was quietly furious.
    “Why were you so concerned about getting the MC registered immediately?” she asked.
    “Ethel Whitcomb is obsessed with you,” Drake said. “Trust me, when she hears you’re married to me, she’ll verify the facts.”
    Alice glanced at him, fascinated by his certainty. “You’re probably right.”
    “If I sent an investigator to find you and he came back with a story about an MC, I’d sure as hell double-check.”
    She was not sure how to take that. He sounded as if he would be seriously annoyed if he discovered that she was in an MC with another man. It was hypothetical, but why was he simmering?
    Drake whisked her outside and across the street to the parking garage. They walked through the shadowy space to the slot where the rental car waited. Drake opened the door on the passenger side.
    Delighted at the prospect of another car ride, Houdini fluttered down from Alice’s shoulder, scurried into the front of the vehicle, and hopped up onto the back of the seat.
    “He’s a little speed junkie,” Alice explained.
    “He’s going to love the company jet.”
    “Probably.”
    Alice made to slip into the front seat, but Drake touched her shoulder. She stilled, intensely aware of the energy flaring in the atmosphere around them. Her heart rate kicked up and her intuition went into the hot zone.
    “What is it?” she whispered, searching the nearby shadows. “Something wrong?”
    His hand tightened gently on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe. No need to disappear again.”
    “Sorry.” She tried for a smile. “I have a tendency to overreact these days. Parking garages always make me nervous. So many shadows. So many hiding places. I sometimes wonder if one day Ethel will go over the edge and escalate her campaign of harassment to physical