Paper Marriage Proposition (5 page)

Hector had married Beth, and for a time she’d believed he cared. But in mere months she’d realized the truth. She’d been the means to make another woman jealous. Hector had been crazy about Landon’s wife, feverishly wanting what he couldn’t have and loathing the man who had ruined his chances with her. Chrystine would’ve married him if Landon hadn’t been the better man. And Beth had never seen a man so hell-bent on ruining someone for being honest, richer, better, like Hector had.

“He was in love with my wife,” Landon said noncommittally as he crossed his arms, a neutral expression on his face.

“I’d say more like obsessed. He didn’t seduce her out of love, Landon. He seduced her to humiliate you.”

“You’re right, Beth.”

The words, steely and loaded with the promise of vengeance, whirled like a storm inside the room.

Beth felt it inside her, like one would feel a death wish, fury, hunger.

She had never understood this hatred of Hector’s—until now that it ate at her, demanded some sort of retribution, that she take a hand at justice once and for all.

Hector had lied about her. He’d taken
David!

He’d turned her into a sick person who only thought of revenge. She’d never been this vicious but the thought of hurting her ex-husband held so much appeal she felt flutters of evil, cruel excitement at the mere prospect. At night, her fantasies weren’t girlish or even romantic anymore. At night, she felt so angry, so frustrated, she imagined how good she’d feel once she’d clawed the bastard’s eyes out.

Did Landon feel this, too?

Would he stop at nothing, like her, until they’d ended up the winners?

Her pulse hitched when he pushed his chair back and rose with the ease of a wild cat. A large, stealthy wild cat who’d insisted that if she wanted to sleep with someone, she’d sleep with
him.

“You’re certain you’re up for tonight?” he asked. “The press can be exhausting and so can my mother.”

She wrinkled her nose. It was a miracle a powerful creature like Landon had even had a mother. That he’d been vulnerable once. And oh, yes, she’d been born for tonight, she was more than ready for it. “Believe me, so can mine be.”

His brows flew up in genuine interest. “What did you tell yours?”

“That I finally found a white knight.” When he didn’t smile at her stupid joke, Beth sobered up and hugged the pillow tighter. “I told her I was marrying a man who would help me get David back. She was ecstatic. And you? Your mother?”

“I mentioned she should prepare to welcome my new wife. She was stunned speechless after my announcement, which is unusual for my mother.”

“But she knows this is temporary?”

He didn’t seem in the least bit concerned, and gave a nonchalant lift of his shoulders. “I didn’t go into details, but she’ll know where I’m coming from when she realizes who you are.”

“Were,” she corrected, watching him head for the door. “I’m reinventing myself now.”

His interest clearly piqued, he turned around and crossed his arms over his broad chest, stretching the material of his shirt. “Who do you want to be now?”

“Me. Bethany. Whoever I was before Hector Halifax put his filthy hands on me.”

For the first time in many many years, she felt hopeful, and as she drank in the brooding dark image of Landon, she wondered if he even realized this gift he gave her without meaning to.

She could smell him in the room, cologne and soap, and the scent was oddly reassuring. A surge of warmth, divine and wicked, began to pump in her bloodstream. His neck was tanned and thick, and his hands were wide, large, the fingers long and blunt. She had always been fascinated by men’s hands, and his were so very virile.

“Have I said thank you?” she asked, her voice strangely thick.

He was silent for a moment, then, his voice equally terse, “Wait until you get your kid back.”

Her temperature spiked. He was frightening, so powerful, so male, that Bethany had to remind herself he was on her side.

“Landon,” she said before he could exit, “would you mind if I invited David to the celebration tonight? I’d like to invite my son.”

“I don’t mind.”

“But what if he comes with him?”

“Halifax?” Landon leaned negligently against the door frame as he contemplated, unruffled like only powerful, self-possessed men could be. “He wouldn’t dare.”

“But if he does? You will be civil, won’t you? I wouldn’t want David to be exposed to any violence.”

With an amused, wolfish quirk of his lips, he shook his dark head. “Beth, I’m posting a dozen reporters around the premises so they can capture me ogling over you. Believe me, I’m not announcing to the world what we’ll be doing.” Did he just wink at her? “Don’t fret. They’ll think we make love, not war.”

The nervousness welling inside her made her breathless as they drove to the engagement party.

Landon sat behind the wheel of his sporty blue-and-tan Maserati, tearing through the highway while Beth replayed the phone call she’d just made in her head.

She hadn’t expected David to answer; he was too young and was observed too closely for that. But to the nanny who’d picked up in his stead, Beth had explained about her engagement party and how much she’d love for David to be there. Beth prayed that the kindnesses she had shown this young woman in the past would be repaid now.

Say you’re taking him out,
she’d thought as she’d given her the hotel address,
take him out for a walk, and let me see my son tonight.

She considered the possibility of Anna mentioning her call to Hector and shuddered. No. The next time she hoped to see her ex-husband was in court.

Facing her
and
Landon.

Landon studied her in the dark interior of the car. She shuddered again, this time, in pure feminine awareness. She’d never known she could respond to a man like this.

He wasn’t even doing anything, for the most part kept his eyes on the highway, but she was somehow inhumanly aware of his presence and his occasional straying gaze—her own gaze felt magnetized to it. His darkened eyes said more than they should as he quietly watched her.

In his eyes, she saw vengeance, justice and something just as dark, just as dangerous she dare not put a name to.

“Relax, Beth,” he said, his voice, although mild, powerful and commanding as it cut through the silence. “Trust me a little. By the time he loses his pride, his word, his company and his child, Hector Halifax will have no idea what hit him.”

But it was Beth who felt struck an hour later, while their petite celebration was underway in the sprawling gardens of the prestigious La Cantera Golf Resort. And Beth knew exactly what hit her.

The sight of the looming figure blocking her entry to the hotel lobby.

She’d thought it proper to rush inside a moment and check her makeup and hair before the press took their pictures. She had to look sharp, smart—respectable. Show the world that no, she wasn’t a slut, and she wasn’t the clouds-for-brain careless mother Hector had painted her for, either.

She’d been eager to discover if David had come.

But she didn’t see her boy. She didn’t even make it to the ladies room.

Instead, she found Hector.

Correction: Hector found her.

Her blood froze. She felt his presence at five feet like an open assault on her person, there was such antipathy in the air.

He just stood there, blond and blue-eyed in the cool, calm moonlight. People always used to think he was her brother. But no. He was a monster. A polite, cold-hearted monster.

He’d taken things from her he shouldn’t have taken, abused her in mental and emotional ways she should never have allowed, trampled her innocence, her self-respect.
Do you know how to do anything except stand there looking pretty, Beth? Are you goddamned stupid?

Bethany had sucked it up, because that is what her mother had taught her to do. “Beth, if your father didn’t like the eggs, I’d suck it up and make him new ones. Suck it up, baby, I didn’t raise whiners in this house.”

Except with Hector it wasn’t the eggs. It was how Beth ran the house with a free hand, how she put their child in danger if he licked his hands and ate germs from the supermarket cart. It was everything about Beth.

Her father had been strict and her mother had sucked it up. But her mother had received love and praise from her husband, too, while Beth had received nothing. Months after a lavish wedding and a hopeful “I take thee,” Beth had found herself a shell of a person, glancing at women out in the street and envying how carefree they looked, how independent.

Beth had forgotten how to laugh for her kid.

By the day she packed her and David’s bags and left Hector, she’d spent months building up her self-esteem, gathering the remains of what had once been a person and trying to become someone again. A mother.

Even
that
he’d taken away from her.

Now they faced each other, and she wasn’t sure who appeared more stunned. They’d spotted each other in the same instant. His mouth parted. She expected something would come out of it, but for a moment nothing did.

He took in her appearance—the dress Landon had provided at the last minute. Elegant and midnight blue, it made her skin seem smooth as porcelain and her eyes more electric.

Her heart beat one, two, three times.

Hector’s doctorly face—the one he used to persuade his patients to do whatever he told them to because he, in fact, was a god—failed him. His mouth clamped shut and color rushed up to his face, as though the sight of her—alive and looking well—infuriated him. He took a step.

“You’re marrying Gage.” The sneer lashed at her like a whip crack, and she hated that she instinctively flinched, panicked into immobility.

“You’re marrying Gage and you expect me to let you see our son? Why did you call him? You’re forbidden to talk to him. You’re forbidden to see him, or have you forgotten?”

Confrontation. God, she hated this.

Not here,
not here.

Beth glanced around the patio, and when she saw nothing but shadows, her chest constricted with foreboding.

No one was within hearing range, unless she screamed.

But with reporters here?

She didn’t want to. She hadn’t screamed the time she’d found a hairy tarantula in her kitchen, and she wouldn’t scream now.

Oh, God, taking in the sight of his boyish, pretty face, she couldn’t believe she could be disgusted by any living being so much. Not even cockroaches.

In the space of six years, this man had managed to turn a healthy human being into a puddle of fear, a nobody, a robot, and even now as she stared at him, she felt that fear, that anger, that despair that he had her son with him and she didn’t.

He had everything.

But she had Landon.

Struggling to tame her emotions at that thought, she eased back a step, but that only made him move forward. Hector seethed with palpable anger, while fury and hurt churned inside her belly.
He took my little boy from me.
Her voice sharpened. “David is as much my son as he is yours.” How dare Anna tell him she’d called? How dare he take David away from her? How dare they?

“And you’re not seeing him again, I’ll make sure of that!”

Blasted by the frigidness of his words, she could do nothing as he caught her elbow before she could run and yanked her forward, his serpent’s hiss thrust into her ear.

“If you ever, ever, tell Gage anything about me or my practice…”

With a breath-clogging twist, Beth wrenched free and cried mutinously, “What? What are you going to do?”

“You don’t want to know, Beth, but I assure you, you’ll wish you hadn’t opened your mouth to speak.”

A gust of wind lashed at her, kicking up strands of her hair. She pushed them back and glanced around one more time, frantically now, unable to help wishing Landon could see her. Hell, she almost wished his dogs were here, flanking her. She’d never thought she’d be so happy to see two beasts like that near her person before, but the relief she felt thinking of the bodily harm they could inflict on Hector made her suddenly love that pair.

“If you put a hand on David,” she warned with renewed courage, her nails biting into her hands as she clenched her fists.

“I don’t need to put a hand on him to hurt him and you know it. I’ll just tell him the truth about his mother and see how he likes it.”

“Lies, all lies!” Nearly bursting with rage, Beth edged backward, wanting to flee.

“I’m not alone now, Hector,” she said, sucking in a calming breath. His eyes flared slightly and Beth remembered Hector saying how much he’d relish destroying the Gages. Well, she wouldn’t let him! “Landon is much more powerful than you are,” she informed him proudly. “And he won’t rest until David’s back where he belongs.”

She didn’t know if Hector believed her, but in her panic-ridden thoughts, she prayed he did and put a cork on his threats already. This didn’t have to get so bloody. For David’s sake, in fact, she wished she could come to a satisfying arrangement in the most quiet way possible—but she knew her new husband deserved better. He deserved his revenge.

And she was so starved for Hector’s blood, she wanted him to get it.

“You’re mine, Beth.” Hector hissed out the poisonous words. “I’m here, right here.” He knocked his head with his knuckles, hard. “You’re weak, and I’ve got you, I
control
you, and I will have you again, you will come crawling back to me, mark my words.”

With that, Hector spun around and walked away. Her eyes burned as she watched his retreating back until everything in her line of vision became a blur. The encounter left her limp. She fell in a pool of her own skirts, and sat back against the wall of the building.

“God,” she shakily gasped, suddenly covering her face in her hands. How could a person you hated so much have given you the thing you most loved in the world?