Yours for the Taking Read Online Free PDF Page A

Carlos, if you say so much as a word, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
    “Eh, Gina. No need to get nasty now. I get it.” He switched lanes, cutting off a bus, and she almost put her eye out with the liner pencil. “So, I was thinkin’, maybe we should, you know, go out sometime. I got season tickets to the Yankees. What’a’ya say?”
    “Thanks, Carlos, but no. I’m busy.”
    Carlos stopped short at a light and Gina had to brace herself against the front seat. When she looked up, he was watching her in the mirror. “I didn’t tell you what day.”
    She pulled out her mascara. “Believe me, Carlos, I’m busy every day.” For the next year at least, and even if she wasn’t, life was too short to date men who wore pants large enough to double as a parachute. You don’t have to be Einstein to know women like seeing a man’s body in clothes that actually fit. Give her a man in a well-tailored suit or a nice-fitting pair of jeans any day. No, Carlos, as nice as he was, was not her type.
    Being midday, the traffic wasn’t bad. She paid Carlos, gave him a $20 tip for his silence, and watched as he pulled away before walking the rest of the way to the Marriage Bureau.
    Gina entered the 1920s Art Deco building and saw Ben waiting for her. She was about to turn around and go out the same way she came in but he spotted her before she could.
    “You’re late.” He tossed his keys in the air and caught them, which set her teeth on edge. “I’ve been waiting twenty minutes vacillating between hoping you’d show up and praying you wouldn’t.”
    “You’re lucky I’m here. I’ve been doing some major vacillating of my own. I’m sorry I’m late, but I couldn’t help it. I knew the cabby and I had to have him drop me at City Hall. I hoofed it the rest of the way.”
    Ben looked as if he was about to blow his top. Gina guessed no man, gay or straight, liked to be kept waiting and then told he was lucky his date showed up at all.
    “If you had let me send a car for you, you wouldn’t have had that problem.”
    Gina rolled her eyes as Ben took her arm. “We need to sign the prenup and a wedding chapel is being held for us.” He led her to an office where Gina signed the prenup with a shaky hand before it was witnessed and notarized. She returned Ben’s pen and stood. “All done.”
    “Not quite.” Ben didn’t look happy, but then why should he? Gina was sure gay men all over Manhattan were crying in their lattes over Ben being taken off the market for the next year. “The chapel is just down the hall. Rosalie picked up some flowers. Oh, and nice move inviting your ex to be a witness.”
    “What?”
    ***
    “I, Benjamin Walsh, take you Gina…”
    This was a nightmare. A waking nightmare. Gina stood in the wedding chapel, wearing a white dress, in front of witnesses, hearing a veritable stranger speak the words she knew by heart but swore she’d never say aloud.
    She looked up at Ben holding her hand and never realized how very tall he was, at least as tall as her last boyfriend, Rich Ronaldi, who topped out at six feet three inches. Gina knew this because Rich was serving as Ben’s best man and wasn’t too happy about it. Neither was Ben, not that it was her idea. She was definitely going to have a word with Rosalie after this whole fiasco. When Gina called Rosalie and asked her to be a witness at this sham of a wedding, she expected Rosalie to bring Nick, her husband. Bringing the newly married Rich Ronaldi was a cruel joke.
    Ben stalled at her name and all the blood ran from his face. Gina prayed he’d come to his senses, or was having second thoughts until she realized he had just forgotten her last name. She leaned forward and whispered, “Reyez.”
    Ben gave her hand a thankful squeeze. “Gina Reyez. To be my lawfully wedded wife—”
    Por Dios! She probably should have mentioned her own second, third, and fourth thoughts before she signed the prenuptial agreement, but definitely before the