I pulled back to study him. “What kind of man says that? You’re broken.”

Finally, he gave me a dark, hungry look. “I promise you, I’m not broken. I’m getting this done so I can focus on wearing you out later.”

“Wear me out now,” I whined, standing and walking over to him. I slid my fingers into his hair and tugged. Adrenaline dripped hot and electric into my veins when his eyes fluttered closed and he suppressed a groan. “Where’s all this money you have? Why haven’t we hired someone to do this?”

Laughing, Bennett wrapped his hand around my wrist and pulled my fingers from his hair. After kissing my knuckles, he very deliberately set my hand back at my side. “You want to hire someone to fold programs the night before we leave for San Diego?”

“Yes! Because sex!”

“But isn’t it nicer like this? Enjoying each other’s company and,” he said, lifting his wineglass to take a dramatic sip, “conversing like the happily affianced lovers we are?”

I glared at him, shaking my head at his attempted guilt trip. “I offered sex. I offered hot, sweaty, floor sex—and then I offered to give you a blow job. You want to fold paper. Who is the buzzkill here?”

He picked up a program and studied it, ignoring me. “Frederick Mills,” he read aloud, and I began pulling my shirt up and over my head, “together with Elliott and Susan Ryan welcome you to the wedding of their children, Chloe Caroline Mills and Bennett James Ryan.”

“Yes, yes, it’s so romantic,” I whispered. “Come here and touch me.”

“Officiant,” he continued, “the Honorable James Marsters.”

“If only,” I sighed, and dropped my shirt on the floor before working my pants down my hips. “I’m going to pretend it’s Spike performing our wedding ceremony instead of that hilarious gentleman with early dementia we met back in November.”

“Judge Marsters performed my parents’ wedding ceremony almost thirty-five years ago,” Bennett chastened me gently. “It’s sentimental, Chlo. The fact that he forgot to zip up his pants is a mistake anyone could have made.”

“Three times?”

“Chloe.”

“Fine.” I did feel a little guilty for making the joke, but I stood quietly for a minute, letting my memory of the old, frazzled man take shape. He’d met us at the wedding site when we went out to see it last fall, and got lost on each of three trips to the men’s room in under an hour, returning with his fly open each time. “But do you think he’ll remember our na—”

Bennett cut me off with a stern look before he realized I was only wearing my bra and underwear, and then his expression went a completely different kind of dark.