Paper Marriage Proposition (15 page)

This was the day she’d been waiting for.

Her heart pounded a nervous beat as she gazed around the space they’d been appointed. The courtroom was exactly the one in her earlier trial: impersonal and cold.

The judge’s seat above them loomed empty while their lawyer busily shuffled his notes. His name was Mason Dawson, a young, ruthless attorney already reaping the benefits of his killer reputation. He had assured Beth and Landon every time they met that he didn’t lose.

Beth prayed his winning streak wouldn’t end with her.

Hector’s lawyer, on the other hand, sat at the table on the opposite side, stealing glances at her wristwatch. It was a smart choice to have a woman represent him—someone female to soften his image.

Beth’s parents, Mrs. Gage, Garrett, Julian John, Kate and even Thomas had settled themselves in the benches.

But what Beth was most aware of, with every atom, cell and fiber in her body, was the man at the table beside her.

Landon fairly reeked of fury. He stood tall and solid to her right, a tower of testosterone that pricked her body with awareness.

She couldn’t help but think of the Akris dress she wore, the underwear she wore beneath. Would Landon even attempt to discover if she’d worn the red lingerie like he’d told her to?

God, she was lovesick. Or just sick.

“He’s late,” their lawyer muttered to them.

Just then, the doors burst open, and Hector appeared.

He looked like a man who’d just had an encounter with a rabid lion and had barely come out of it on his feet.

He stumbled forward, a dark coffee stain on his olive green coat. His hair was rumpled, his face streaked with dirt as though he’d tripped in a mud puddle.

He whipped off his coat as he went to his table, his cheeks flushed with two bright red flags. His lawyer, concerned, immediately rose, and he bit out, “I’m fine! Just an inconvenience.” He glared in Landon’s direction.

Beth frowned, her eyes sailing to his inscrutable profile.

Had Landon somehow planned Hector’s…inconvenience?

The object of her wondering edged closer to her, and the back of his long fingers grazed her knuckles, the contact as sudden as it was exquisite. Landon prolonged that touch, and finally snatched up her hand in his.

Her knees turned to jelly, and a lump of emotion lodged in her throat. She could cry. She knew he held her hand for appearances, pretense, and yet she squeezed and curled her fingers through his and held on to him like a lifeline.

His breath stirred the hair on top of her head, and when she trembled slightly, he laced his fingers tighter through hers. His voice softened. “Relax. Look confident.”

Beth tried. This was not the moment to get emotional, to dwell on the past horrible weeks. But she couldn’t stop weeping inside.

There was no removing that sensation, that horrible sensation of having been hanged. Stabbed in the chest. Or shot.

She’d hurt him in the worst possible way, and now Landon hated her.

She stiffened when the judge appeared in a swish of robes. He was a bald man with a beard, a determined set to his jaw, and clear eyes.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Prescott presiding. All rise.”

Beth’s mind whirled with images of David’s toothy grin, memories of how his face had been streaked with tears the last time she’d seen him, and her heart felt ready to implode. She may have nothing, she realized, straightening her spine, but she fought for everything.

When she stood up, she met Halifax’s sparkling blue gaze—icy cold. She made her own expression glacial.

Together, her parents and Landon’s group crowded the two front rows on their side. They presented a united front, a respectable family. Standing so close and so proud, the Gages emitted that same power Landon did.

But…why was that not reassuring?

Because without Landon’s respect, Beth felt apart, not one of them. Because without Landon’s interest in her, the caring way he’d protected her before, she felt…fraudulent.

Like Hector.

“Your Honor,” Mason began in a crisp opening statement. “I stand before you today on behalf of my clients, Landon and Bethany Gage, with a petition for full custody of David Halifax. Landon Gage has been an upstanding citizen of this community for the past thirty-three years. His wife, Bethany Gage, has been outrageously accused in the past—and has suffered a great injustice. A mother. Robbed of the opportunity to give love and affection and participate in the raising of her son.”

A dramatic pause ensued while Mason raked the courtroom with his eyes, continuing only when convinced everyone’s focus lay on him.

“I beg you to consider today, who is the better custodian? A father who’s suspected of fraud, a father whose very nature of work keeps him long hours at the office, such as Dr. Hector Halifax? Or a solid, upstanding couple, a well-respected businessman and a dedicated mother whose guidance is indispensable to a young child David’s age?”

He allowed the question to linger before he resumed his seat in dramatic silence, and Hector’s lawyer opened her own statement with a receding chuckle.

“Your Honor, Dr. Hector Halifax’s reputation is pristine. His entire life he’s been dedicated to the well-being of others, especially his own son. Should a man be punished for loving and protecting his child from his mother’s neglect? Should a man who has nurtured and cared for young David during the past year be discriminated against for being a single parent?” She glared at Bethany. “Considering the petitioner’s numerous love affairs while she was married to my client, I doubt her marriage to Mr. Gage will even last long.”

The petitioner, in this case Beth and Landon, was the first to call up a witness. Beth.

She took a series of measured steps to the stand, inhumanly aware of the sexy lingerie that hugged her body under the dress. She sat and concentrated on inhaling, in and out, in and out. But for the way she truly felt, she could’ve been naked and strapped to an electric chair.

“Mrs. Gage, how long were you married to Hector Halifax?”

Beth focused on Mason’s striped tie. That lone, harmless tie was the only spot she would allow herself to focus on.

“Almost seven years.”

“Were you happy during those seven years, Mrs. Gage?”

She wrung her hands. “I was happy when our son was born.”

Mason thoughtfully paced the floor before her. Playing the game she supposed all lawyers played, he allowed her heart to beat three times before he spoke again. “Were you happy during the remainder of those years?”

“No.”

Mason swung round to face her fully. “No. You weren’t happy married to Hector Halifax.” He approached, his expression as intent as his voice. “Can you tell the court why you were unhappy?”

Skewered under not only Mason’s sharp brown gaze, but also a dozen others, Beth struggled to find a starting point.

“Did he physically abuse you, Mrs. Gage?” Mason leaned back on his heels and waited. “Was he unfaithful?”

She seized her cue, almost leaping. “Yes. He was unfaithful.”

Mason stole a brief glance in the judge’s direction. “Hector Halifax was unfaithful to you. When did you decide to leave him?”

“When I realized he’d loved another woman all the time he’d been married to me. And when I realized I didn’t love him anymore, maybe never really had.”

“How did Hector take it? Your separation?”

Aware of Hector’s eyes burning holes through the top of her head, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him.

“We had several failed attempts to separate, but he persuaded me to stay. I was only successful when David turned six. Over a year ago.”

“Did his method of persuading you to remain married include blackmail, Mrs. Gage? Perhaps…in the way of these pictures? Presented to court during your first hearing?”

Beth spotted a wad of pictures in Mason’s hands, and the humiliation she felt threatened to overwhelmed her. Just to think of Landon seeing those pictures of her in different men’s embraces, even if they were fake, made her stomach roil. “Yes, that did play a part. And of course, he threatened to take David away.”

“Your Honor, may I present for evidence both the pictures
and
lab report which concludes these photographs have been tampered with?”

The judge received the stack of pictures and the lab paper Mason produced and reviewed them in tense silence. Beth squirmed in her seat, part of her wishing she’d had such a kick-butt lawyer on her side the last time she’d been in court, and another part dreading what came next. Hector’s lawyer looked so pale and pissed Beth was sure she was going to be that woman’s lunch.

Mason continued the interrogation, his questions expertly phrased in ways that shed light on the good, caring mother she was. A loving wife who hadn’t been properly appreciated by her first husband.

Her nervousness escalated when the topic led to the new man in her life. Landon. To speak of Landon and Hector in the same conversation almost felt like blasphemy.

Beth struggled to put up a brave front, an image of a new family, but in the deepest, darkest part of her, she knew what she said was a lie every bit as bad as those Halifax loved making. She didn’t offer a wonderful new family and a new father to David—she offered only herself and her love.

Suddenly, it didn’t feel like enough next to the Gages.

It didn’t feel like enough next to the protection, the safety Landon represented.

Everything he’d promised he’d do for Beth, he had. Whatever the verdict, Landon Gage had come through for Beth.

He’d gotten her a new hearing.

And what had
she
done for
him?

Her throat felt crowded with unspoken words and remorse for how she’d hurt him. She hadn’t been his wife who’d betrayed him, who’d abandoned him one rainy night, but she felt like she was—because she’d opened his eyes and he loathed her for it.

Her spirits plummeted when Mason finished off his questioning, and now the other lawyer’s turn came up. Beth braced herself for the attack. The female lawyer’s eyes glimmered as she approached, not even bothering to hide the fact that she enjoyed every second of Beth’s anxiety.

“Mrs. Gage, tell me one thing,” the smooth-talking woman began. “Why did you marry Landon Gage? Was it because you needed to clean up your image? Or because of his money?”

Mason slammed a hand down. “Objection, Your Honor!”

“Objection sustained.”

“Your Honor,” the defense argued, adding a winning smile to drive her point home, “her motivations for the marriage are dubious, at best, especially so soon after her divorce from Mr. Halifax. I insist Mrs. Gage give us a direct answer to a direct question. Why did you marry Mr. Gage?”

Beth waited for someone to object, her dread escalating.

No one objected.

“I’ll allow it,” the judge conceded, sighing. “Answer the question.”

Frantic, her eyes searched a pair of familiar gray ones across the room. The instant her gaze locked with Landon’s, her chest exploded with emotion. “I love him,” she said, lowering her face as the words, so true and so audible, trickled into her own ears.

“Mrs. Gage, please speak up, we couldn’t—”

“I love him. I love Landon.”

Landon stiffened as though the truth had been a lie, the confession a slap.

Peering at him through her lashes, Beth’s hopes of forgiveness were pulverized. His jaw hardened, and his eyes flashed with accusation. The look in his eyes destroyed her confidence.
Pretend you love me well and hard or by God this’ll blow up in our faces,
he’d said.

He thought she was pretending!

“You say you love your husband, and yet my client mentions you’ve been speaking of a reconciliation?”

Her stomach felt so cramped she thought she’d vomit. “There’s no reconciliation.”

“Mrs. Gage…” Hector’s lawyer lifted a shiny flat object in her hand. She lengthened the moment until the curiosity to discover what she held up for inspection ate at Beth on the inside—like the attorney surely intended it to. “When was this picture taken? Contrary to your attorney’s claims on the former pictures, this one is fully authentic, is it not?”

Her entire world, her entire perfect world which consisted of her enjoying a lifetime of full and complete custody of David, seemed to crumple as she gazed down at the photograph. Somehow, these people had managed to produce a new set of photographs from the meeting at Maggiano’s. God! How many of these vulgar folks had been watching them? How many cowards had stood there, snapping pictures while her life fell apart, and done nothing to help her?

Outraged, Beth scrutinized the close-up of Hector’s lips a breath away from hers. Landon had known this would occur. He’d warned her. He’d told her not to go, and one morning over coffee, she’d agreed.

Then she’d gone to meet that stinking rat Halifax anyway.

And guess what? Landon had been right, and Beth had been utterly
wrong.