“You can just see how in love you two are.” Betty sighed.
“Yes,” Katie managed after a moment, her voice an odd croak as if her throat was swollen. She stared at the picture a moment longer, not daring to look at Cort, although she could tell out of the corner of her eye, he stared at it, too.
She pressed the button.
“Actually I was wrong,” Betty said, leaning in on the other side of Katie. “That one is my favorite.”
This time the picture actually sent chills through Katie. She looked at herself, held in Cort’s strong arms, kissing. And not just a peck, but a deep, passionate kiss. His hands on her back and tangled in her hair. Her hands held his face. Anyone looking at this would see a couple sharing an intimate moment, a truly romantic kiss.
Katie stared at those people, unable to correlate that she was looking at herself and Cort. They might look like them, but those people had to be someone else.
And in truth, she felt jealous of them. She wanted that for herself. She wanted those feelings. She wanted that connection. That touch.
She couldn’t look at him, and the total truth was, she wanted them with Cort.
“I was just telling Ed today that I can tell a couple who will last. And you two, well, I can just tell you two are going to last an eternity,” Betty said, although her voice sounded far away like Katie was hearing it in a dream.
Katie continued to stare at that couple kissing. She and Cort kissing. She’d wanted to kiss him from the moment she’d met him. And apparently she had, but she didn’t remember. Nothing.
“Here you go,” the bartender said, placing glasses in front of both Katie and Cort.
At the same time, they reached for the tall glasses, and in unison, they both downed half of it.
Chapter Twelve
867-5309
(Who Can I Turn To?)
BESIDE him, Katie pulled in a deep breath while Cort took another long swallow of his drink, nearly polishing it off.
Clearly they were both shaken.
Her finger stayed on the button, as she clearly debated if she wanted to see more. Cort understood. Looking at these pictures was hard. It was hard to believe these things happened without them even knowing it.
But to her credit, she did press the button again. A picture of Betty and Ed with them lit up on the small screen. There was also one of Cort and Raven giving each other bunny ears. Now that was total weirdness. A picture of Drake and Wyatt doing shots. That was normal. Another of Saxon doing the hang-loose sign to the camera. Equally normal—if anyone could describe Saxon as normal. One of Katie sitting on Cort’s lap, both of them laughing, but he could still see that expression on both their faces. It had been there in all the pictures of just the two of them.
Love. They really did look in love. Totally and genuinely in love.
Katie’s hand shook as she lifted her glass to her lips, nearly finishing off her drink.
She pressed the button again to see a photo of a man who seemed to be covered in a layer of dirt and sweat, his filthy gray shirt that might very well have been white at one point clung to his tall, skinny frame. His equally dirty shorts threatened to slip off his narrow hips as his pose revealed he was dancing madly.
“Oh, that’s some vagrant who came in to dance while we were listening to a band at Cajun Cabin right before we met up with you,” Betty said with a chuckle, taking the camera. “That guy could really dance. Couldn’t he, Ed?”
Ed nodded.
“What time was that?” Cort asked.
Betty pursed her lips in thought. “Oh let’s see. That must have been around eleven or so, because your wedding happened around midnight. Isn’t that right, Ed?”
Ed nodded.
Cort knew Ed wasn’t exactly a bastion of accuracy, given that he’d agree to anything his wife said, but if Betty was right, they must have been off the riverboat fairly quickly after they all blacked out. Cort knew that Stella had reserved the riverboat until 2 A.M. Why hadn’t they stayed on the boat and partied? Had something happened? Was Katie crossed over on the boat or afterward? Or had they married before the actual bite?
More mysteries. Damn.
“I guess that’s all I have, although I could have sworn I took more,” Betty said as she took the camera back. The older woman began browsing through the pictures, talking to Ed about this one and that.
Katie signaled to the bartender for another drink. Cort could see her hand still trembled.
“Are you okay?” he asked even though he knew the answer.
She nodded, then she shook her head. “Is it possible to feel embarrassed, ashamed, disappointed—and excited all at once?”
The bartender arrived, giving him a moment to think about her question. A question he didn’t really like. Or rather he didn’t like the implications of it. He could understand embarrassed. He was, too. And excited—well, he was assuming she was referring to having another clue about what happened last night. But ashamed and disappointed. Wow, now that didn’t sound good at all.
Real or sham marriage, no man wanted a woman to be ashamed and disappointed about it. Okay, maybe he couldn’t speak for all men in this position—if any other man had ever been in this position—all he knew was he wasn’t pleased with her feeling these things about their nuptials.
He certainly hated the fact that he’d looked at those photos and felt excitement, too. Excitement at seeing himself touching her. Kissing her. Doing all the things he’d imagined doing to her.
And he had—and he couldn’t remember a bit of it. Oh, cruel irony.
The bartender returned, and again Katie downed her drink. Another sure sign she was very agitated. In the time he’d known her, she’d never been a major drinker. He’d noted that, not only because he noted most things about this beautiful woman, but because the fact that she wasn’t an overdrinker or major partier stood out in a town like New Orleans.
She was very upset. And that upset him.
“Well,” she said once her drink was gone and she’d pulled herself up, stick straight, “those didn’t reveal too much.”
Cort nodded, even though he was in total disagreement. Those pictures revealed a whole damned lot to him. For example, how much he was into Katie. His desire for her might as well have been written on his face in marker.
I’m crazy about Katie Lambert.
He wondered if she saw it, too. Was that part of why she felt the way she did?
“Well,” he said, willing himself to sound as calm as she did, “we know we were at the Old Opera House at some point. And Raven was with us. And that, again, it would seem that we are married.”