He had to be there to obtain the license with me, but the man didn’t even bother to look up as we approached, seemingly too preoccupied with his phone to care. We literally went through with obtaining a whole marriage license without him once looking in my direction. It was the oddest thing I’d ever seen and clearly the woman at the desk who had been helping us thought so too, judging by the concerned looks she kept throwing my way. I just shrugged my shoulders at her and smiled until we were done. Tucker turned then, in the opposite direction of where I was standing. “Meet you there,” he mumbled and then he was off, leaving me with his best friend once again.

“Remember that time you offered to marry me?” I asked as we stood there watching Tucker’s steadily disappearing form before he made it out of the door and out of sight.

“Yeah,” Wes answered.

“Maybe we should rethink that,” I told him. “We’re here already, we can get the paperwork redone and honestly, even if it was annulled a few hours or days later, I think I’d love to see the look on your friend’s face when I married you instead.”

Wes laughed. “I bet you would.” He put his hand on my lower back, damn close to touching skin, considering how low the dress draped open in the back. “Come on Trouble, let’s go get you hitched.”

I sighed. Then I pouted the whole way there, until I realized we had gone back to the hotel. “Are you smuggling me out of here?” I couldn’t hide the hopeful lilt of my voice.

Wes laughed at me. “No, this is where you’re getting married.”

I turned shocked eyes to him. “What? Are you serious? I didn’t even know they did weddings here. Wait, is he sending someone up to officiate in the suite, so no one sees?”

“Not quite,” Wes murmured and then he ushered me along until we found ourselves in the Venezia Pool Gardens. Tucker stood there, under a green archway that was trimmed with beautiful aqua-hued wisteria, transforming an already gorgeous place into a fantasy. Wes guided me further along until I noticed there was a man standing before Tucker. When I glanced off to the side, I saw two very familiar brunettes standing there grinning at me as well.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I mumbled under my breath causing Wes to stop in his tracks.

“What?”

“He brought last night’s hookups to our wedding? Of all the dirty, underhanded,” my tangent was cut short when Wes spun me to face him.

“He never slept with them last night. Neither of us did.” When I gave him a look of disbelief, he huffed. “Okay, we were going to before you effectively cockblocked the whole situation, but if you remember, we came back up to the suite with you last night.”

“That doesn’t mean you stayed there.”

Wes sighed, but continued to explain while ignoring my challenging statement. “We ran into them this morning and they ended up asking if they could be witnesses to your wedding. We needed another person, Mina. There has to be two witness signatures on that certificate.”