Paper Marriage Proposition

  Somewhere in the depths of her panic, she found her courage. She yanked her arm free, and said, “Go to hell.”

  But he moved fast and he seized her by the arm. This time he cut off her circulation. “Look behind you, Beth. Do you see my blue Lexus parked by the oaks?”

  Woodenly, Beth turned, his grip spreading a biting pain up her arm. She saw him. David. His little face pressed against the glass, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Panic choked her.

  “David!” she cried, and started for him without thought. Hector yanked her back by both arms and wheeled her around to face him.

  He pressed his face inhumanly close, so that when he spoke, she could feel his loathsome lips moving against her own pursed ones. “The only way you can see him and touch him and kiss him is if you return to me. If you return to my bed.”

  Beth didn’t know how she managed, only knew that she had to leave, now, before this became a public spectacle.

  She spat into his face, wrenched free, and ran, her breath soughing out of her chest like a hunted animal’s. She flung herself against the side of the Lexus and tried yanking open the door, but it didn’t budge. “Mommy!” she heard David wail from the inside, frightened, and her heart broke when she heard the muffled cry coming over and over like a litany.

  Tears flowed down her cheeks as she fought with the door. She was crying—crying for him, for her, for every mother.

  Helpless to get him out, she put her hand against the window and spread it wide and spoke as loudly as she could. “David, I’m going to be with you soon, I promise! I promise!”

  And then, before she could notice that David had also spread his palm open on his side of the window, fitting the shape of his small hand into hers, Hector had revved up the engine and sped off with a screech of tires.

  Taking her son, her baby, with him once more.

  Landon jotted down notes on the legal pad on his desk, then typed the data into his computer. His intercom buzzed, and Donna’s voice burst through the speaker.

  “Mr. Gage, Detective Harris here to see you.”

  “Show him in.”

  His office doors swung open. Harris was a little man with an unremarkable face and a keen eye—the perfect spy. He sat and pulled out a sheaf of papers, matching Landon’s brisk manner. “Your wife was out and about today,” he said.

  Landon’s answering smile was brief, cool, as he lifted another file to skim through. “I know. I was with her this morning.”

  “Well, she seemed to be in a rush to make an appointment this afternoon.”

  Landon’s movements halted. She’d gone out?

  When the man remained silent, Landon shot him an impatient look over the top of the report he’d been reading. “And she went where?” Landon set the report aside, and the little man shifted when he gave him his undivided attention.

  “To meet Hector Halifax.”

  Harris dropped the pictures on his desk and Landon’s chest muscles froze until he couldn’t breathe. He smiled thinly, but inside he experienced something he hadn’t felt before. Not in six years. Not ever. He thought he was going to get sick. “She went to see Halifax?”

  “Indeed.”

  An instinct to protect her, grab her close to him and never let anyone, much less a rat like Halifax hurt her, warred with the need to grab her little neck and shake some common freaking sense into her.

  Why? Why, Bethany, damn it, why?

  He gritted his molars in anger. “You must be mistaken,” he said.

  But Harris rarely was, and signaled at the photographs. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gage. But the pictures speak for themselves.”

  Landon glared down at them at first, still stunned by the fact that Beth had met Halifax today…

  Today, of all days, when they’d at last been granted a hearing date. What she’d done was both reckless and stupid, and finding out this way only poked at the ghosts of a dark, bleak past Landon had long ago tucked away.

  Forcing his hand to keep steady, he inspected the pictures on his desk, one by one. This was the second time the man across his desk had brought him this kind of news. The first time, it had enraged him. And now…

  His heart stopped at the sight of her in the photographs—the sight of her betraying him.

  They were touching… Halifax was touching her… Beth was letting him. His lips were… My God, they were against hers. What was this? What in the hell was this?

  “Did you witness this yourself?” he demanded.

  “I had some blind spots, sir, as I lingered inside the restaurant. But the times they were together, they were close. As you can see.”

  Landon saw.

  Outside, life continued. The office noise. The ringing phones. He set the last picture down and bent his head, his voice rough as tree bark. “What time?”

  “This afternoon. 4:30 p.m.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut against the emotions that assailed him. The thought of the bastard touching her, of Beth standing there while he held her delicate arms, Beth meekly waiting for the kiss to deepen, made Landon want to tear open a wall.

  There had been signals, warning bells. Telling him not to trust, not to want her. Landon had ignored them, every last one of them. Her meeting Halifax during their engagement party—her resistance to sleeping with Landon.

  He hadn’t understood why, but he’d forged ahead, first out of revenge perhaps, then out of sheer blind need, pretending he could build something with Beth, something that lasted, something that through the hate and anger and revenge shone special.

  Could he have imagined whatever had been growing between them? Could he be that blind? That stupid?

  Or had Beth simply thought to sweet-talk Halifax into relinquishing custody?

  But Halifax would use this evidence against her.

  Growling in frustration, Landon scraped a rough hand down his face, then he and the detective exchanged a glance that spoke volumes. “Did my wife leave with him?” Landon asked.

  “No. When I exited the restaurant, she was getting into her own car.”

  But not before they’d kissed!

  Rage stiffened his muscles, gripped his throat, made it hard to speak. Beth’s pretty profile in the photo blurred as his vision went red. Halifax. Once again, the bastard thought he could take his wife away from him.

  And Beth had gone to him. Despite Landon’s warnings, despite how delicate the situation was.

  She’d run to the enemy and cast Landon into a role he’d sworn never to be cast in ever again: the fool.

  Beth was waiting in the living room, listening to the patter of rain while the dogs slept by the dark fireplace, when she heard Landon’s car pull up in the driveway.

  After chewing most of her nails off wondering how to describe her encounter with Hector, she felt so glad to see Landon walk through that door, his hair wet, rivulets sliding down his jaw, tiredly dropping a portfolio at his feet, that she flung herself against him and eagerly pressed her mouth to his. “Thank God you’re home!”

  Stiff and unresponsive, Landon set her aside and commanded the dogs to back off.

  Stunned, Beth watched him carry his portfolio over to the desk where he kept his agenda. He set it down on the surface with a thump. “Do you have anything you wish to tell me, Beth?”

  He trapped her gaze, and her already-wrung heart seemed to die a sudden death.

  She sensed something was wrong.

  All around Landon—her husband, her lover, her new best friend—was a wall, emitting a signal to stay away.

  The romantic fantasies she’d been entertaining, the ones of kissing him and loving him before she confessed she’d seen Hector, were destroyed by this harsh reality.

  Landon was as closed to her as she’d ever seen him.

  Tight-lipped, he retrieved a folder from the inside of the leather case. With an impenetrable look in his eyes, he went to the small bar and prepared a drink. “Cat got your tongue?” he prodded, file in one hand as he poured with the othe
r.

  “What’s wrong with you…?” Beth asked, confused and wide-eyed. “And what’s with the file?”

  As he brushed past her, he put the folder in her hand. He fell into the chair behind a small desk with his drink in hand, and said, “Open it.”

  Beth’s hands trembled as she obeyed.

  It wasn’t the tone he’d used, icy with contempt, or the way he held himself unapproachable as he sat there that unnerved her. It was the look in his eyes.

  He knew.

  “Recognize the woman in those photographs, dear wife?”

  She stared at them and almost keeled over.

  The images were staggering, images of her and Hector, speaking and arguing and kissing. The bile rose to her throat as she tossed the photos aside. “It’s not how it looks, Landon.”

  Landon smiled, deceptively. Beth opened her mouth to explain more but was dazzled by the gleam of his eyes, stormy with something raw and masculine. Storming with jealousy.

  Beth could almost hear the trust between them shattering like glass.

  Oh, God, what had she done?

  “I promise you, Landon, it’s not how it looks.” With legs that felt ready to buckle, she approached the desk one step at a time and struggled to find the words. But the words seemed to tumble one after the other, fighting to come forth. “He insisted on seeing me, and I needed to know what he wanted. I didn’t…kiss him. He forced me. He… Landon, I didn’t kiss him.”

  All expression left his face, but his eyes blazed hot enough to incinerate her. “And what did he want? Huh, Beth? You?”

  It hurt to speak. “Yes,” she said tightly. But I’d rather die.

  Lightning struck outside. Rain slammed against the windows, and the howl of the wind echoed in the household. Like the night Landon’s first wife died, the night Hector abandoned Beth to meet her; the weather was just as tempestuous and volatile tonight.

  Beth felt a worse kind of storm brewing inside her. Fury. It came with a vengeance, overpowering her. She leapt forward as though she’d just been unleashed from captivity and pushed her finger into Landon’s chest as he leapt to his feet, too. “How dare you spy on me, how dare you! I did nothing wrong. I’m not…I’m not Chrystine! My baby is with that beast. How can you expect me to not do anything?”

  He caught her finger in his hand. “I told you to stay away from him, Beth!”

  Her chin jerked up in defiance. “I’m a mother and I’d do anything for my child! What about you, huh? Are you even helping me? Or do you conveniently find obstacles in order to keep me around to slake your lust?”

  He scoffed. “Slake my lust, that’s what you call it?”

  “That’s what it is! What else would I call it?”

  “I didn’t slake my lust with you last night, Beth. I made love to you. Love, damn you!”

  “Well, excuse me if it doesn’t feel like it!” she lied.

  Making a sound of frustration, he flung her hand aside as if she’d singed him and drained his glass in one long gulp.

  Breathless with fury and emotion, Beth cradled her finger to her chest with one hand, hating that it tingled after he’d grasped it, and when he remained quiet, she shook her head.

  “I’m your revenge, Landon, why don’t you just admit it!” she cried. “Tit for tat. A wife for a wife.”

  He’d been so insistent about getting her in bed, she just knew it was his personal war against Hector.

  She heard a faint click outside and saw a sudden flash of light then…thunder.

  Landon moved far away from her, to the opposite side of the room. He put a hand up to the window as he watched it rain. A strange gravity entered his voice. “Then the joke’s on me.”

  The tension thickened between them, black like tar in an equally black silence.

  The clock ticked under the staircase.

  She gazed at his wide broad back. She was so angry and at the same time so in love her throat hurt. Inside she felt dark, dark and lost. She was paralyzed, shattering in panic. Because she loved him. And suddenly it felt like he would never return that love.

  “Why did you let him touch you, Beth. Do you miss his touch? Do you want it?” he asked raggedly.

  “No!” She gasped, aghast that he would think it.

  “You rejected mine all this time because it was him you wanted? Did you pretend I was him last night? When you came for me did you—”

  “Stop it, stop it!”

  His head fell forward, against the window, and he shook his head ruefully. “Why don’t you trust me?” he hissed.

  “I do, Landon, I do. I was frightened. I had to know my son was okay. I was helpless all my life, standing like a good little wife by his side. I don’t want to be that person anymore!”

  He whipped around and pointed a finger. “You’re not his wife anymore, Beth, you’re mine. My wife!” he thundered. “I know that!” she shouted back.

  “Then aren’t I entitled to know my wife is meeting my mortal enemy? I vowed to protect you, Bethany—you and your son. My God! That man, that bastard takes my first wife, and he thinks he can take my second?”

  She sucked in a gust of air, for the first time realizing that he’d not only been concerned for her safety, but he was terribly jealous, too. And he was speaking of her as a real wife. Touched in places no one in her life but Landon had ever touched before, she lowered her voice. “I’m all right,” she said, so vaguely she wondered if he’d heard her. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  He met that with silence.

  Dark, emotionless silence.

  “I didn’t kiss him,” she repeated, her voice threatening to crack. Landon’s face was twisted in torment, and Beth felt twisted on the inside. “Hector wanted me to…to go back to him. I froze when I saw David in the car, watching us, but I swear to you when Hector pulled me close I shut my mouth tight and I—”

  Landon growled so angrily, so deeply, so possessively, she fell quiet.

  The wind rattled the window casements. Beth shook with the urge to set things right, but she didn’t know how. “I spat at him,” she continued, after a moment. “It felt amazing, it did…until he drove away with David.”

  She made a choked sound at the memory and put her arms around herself.

  Revenge had been so simple once. Now Landon thought her a liar, as vile as Halifax, as vile as Chrystine had been, and the thought of being compared to them in his mind distressed her.

  “I didn’t kiss him,” she insisted, staring down at the floor when looking into his accusing eyes became unbearable. “Please believe me.”

  “Those pictures, Beth—” his voice was low, weary “—could be used against us at court if he ever finds them. He painted you as a Jezebel once—he’ll do it again.”

  She gathered her fortitude and met his gaze. “I don’t care what anyone thinks as long as you believe me.”

  Watching her, he plunged his hands into his pants pockets as though he didn’t know what to do with them. “What we need is to convince the judge you’re a good woman, Beth.”

  She made a distressed sound and flung her hands up in the air. “He threatened me! He grabbed me! I yanked away when I could. What was I supposed to do!”

  “I’m going to goddamned kill him.”

  Stunned by the words, Beth blinked.

  Landon cursed and approached, the concern and anger etched across his face making her hope soar. “Did he hurt you?” he demanded.

  Beth held her breath as his hands briskly sailed down the front buttons of her shirt, unbuttoning and parting the material, then she gasped when he shoved the material down her shoulders and arms until it dangled from one of her wrists.

  Dying with lust, she stood meek as Landon frowned and studied her, skimmed his fingers along her throat, the tops of her arms, her elbows. The skin was unmarked. He expelled a relieved breath and met her gaze, a look of male awareness settling in his eyes.

  When he cursed low in his throat and left her standing there, struggling to rearrange h
er clothes, she’d never felt so cold, so abandoned and rejected.

  “I had a child once,” he began, his ragged words gaining force as he turned around, “and if you cared for yours as much as you say you do, you’d have played it safe and stayed away from Hector Halifax, Bethany.”

  “He wasn’t even your son, Landon!” she screamed, out of her wits with fury over his accusations, his blindness. Didn’t he know, damn him? Couldn’t he see she was achingly, painfully in love with him? She hadn’t kissed Hector. All she wanted, needed, was Landon’s support tonight, not his accusations.

  The tomb-like silence that followed her cry shattered when Landon spoke.

  His timbre was dangerously, warningly soft. “What did you just say?”

  Beth lowered her voice. “He was Hector’s son. He wasn’t yours.”

  His hands balled and his arms trembled and then, then he made a low, terrible sound that tore through her like a knife cut.

  That’s when it struck her. When the horrible words she’d said dawned on her. What she’d said, how she’d said it, angrily, meant to hurt him.

  “Landon, I’m sorry, I—” When she reached out for him, he cursed and stepped aside, giving her his back. “Landon, I didn’t mean it like this. It’s just that Hector demanded a DNA test before he and Chrystine ran away. I saw the results. He’s the father. They fooled around for years, he and Chrystine. They loved making each other jealous. They married us to spite each other off, Landon. Chrystine loved to rub it in Hector’s nose how she was able to snag you when you were the best catch—”

  His smile grew chillier, and he began to laugh, holding up a hand to stop her. “Don’t. Say anymore.”

  Stopped by that cynical sound, Beth helplessly stood a few feet away, and the ground under her feet had never felt so perilous. What had she done?

  Her throat was so clogged she barely heard her own voice, which sounded strangled when she spoke. “I realize I should’ve told you before, about your son.”

  “You knew, all this time. You knew about my son and you let me think…you let me talk to you about him…you—”

  “It makes no difference!” she cried.