Paper Marriage Proposition

  “Landon! God, Landon, there you are.”

  He did not glance up at the speaker, but stared at Beth with eyes so tormented they provided a peek into the darkest pits of hell.

  Her heart pounded a thousand times in only a couple of seconds.

  And still he didn’t speak.

  “Let me make this clear, Miss Lewis.” Whatever she’d seen in his eyes vanished as though a shutter had dropped. “I am not in the market for another man’s leavings—nor am I in the market for a wife.”

  “It will only be temporary, please, my family is helpless against his, I cannot even see my son! I crawl around the streets waiting for a glimpse of him. You’re the only man who hates my ex-husband as badly as I do. I know you hate him, I can see it in your eyes.”

  His lips thinned into a white, grim line.

  “Landon, are you enjoying yourself? Can I bring you anything, darling?”

  Not even the fluttery woman’s voice, coming somewhere behind his broad shoulders, could tear those lethal silver eyes away from Beth’s. He seized her chin and tipped her head back. “Perhaps I do hate him,” he said silkily. “More than you will ever know.”

  “Landon,” another voice said.

  His thumb slid up from her chin to explore her trembling bottom lip. A jolt shot across her body. An avalanche of longing unlike anything she’d ever imagined crashed in her. She trembled, head to toe.

  “Landon,” yet another voice said, this one male.

  He ground his teeth, grabbed her elbow and began dragging her through the tumult of people toward a back hall, into a little room. Slamming the door, he closeted them in shadows. Only a faint flicker of city lights was visible through a small window.

  “Bethany.” He seemed to struggle to grasp the last tatters of his patience. “You seem like a smart woman. I suggest you come up with another plan for yourself. I’m not interested.”

  “But you’re still talking to me, aren’t you?”

  “In two seconds, I won’t be.”

  She caught his arm, noting his eyes were getting a little dark, a little wild. She couldn’t help but think that if she pushed a bit…if she pushed just a bit more…

  “Please,” she implored, her voice praising. “The public loves you. The court will want to know my new husband to believe I am respectable. They will want to know how much you make and what you do…” Aware that she was squeezing his biceps—very hard, very strong biceps—and that he’d gone rigid as if he didn’t want her to, she let go. “You’re an enigma, Mr. Gage. You give to charities. You…you’re adored by the media.”

  Adored because he had been on the deep end of a tragedy. Adored because he—powerful, handsome, rich—had been shattered once, like a human being.

  “The media is twisted.” He leaned back on his heels and scoffed. “It is also mine. Of course it loves me.”

  “They fear you, but they revere you.”

  He glanced out the window, his brow creasing in thought. “What do you know of Hector’s dealings?”

  “Names. People he’s bought in the press. Future plans.” At the thoughtful angle of his chin, she plunged on more boldly. “I will tell you everything. Everything I know—and I promise you I know enough.”

  He silently weighed her words, considering. Yes! She could see that he was tempted, sorely tempted. Hope spread inside her like a winged shadow. Help me, Landon Gage, for Christ’s sake, help me.

  Because she saw in this stranger’s eyes the same lost, caged fury he must see in hers. And sometimes a stranger is all you have in the world when your friends don’t hang around to watch the bloodshed. When they’d picked corners and they had not picked yours.

  Landon Gage would understand. Someone, at last, would reach out a hand to her. Please.

  He gave a toss of his head, emphatically denying her. “Find someone else.”

  Stifling a rising bubble of hysteria, Beth slapped an arm across the door while fiercely clutching the book to her breastbone. “How can you do this?” she hissed through her teeth. “How can you let him get away with what he did to you? He destroyed your life. He still actively destroys it.”

  She could hear the furious scowl he wore in his words. “Don’t pretend you know anything about my life.”

  “Oh, I know all about it, I even watched while he did it. He did it to me, too!”

  “Listen to me very carefully, Beth.” His voice dropped, low and husky but laced with the unyielding iron of his will as he bent over her, a looming shadow eating up her soul. “It has been six years. I have put the past behind me, where it belongs. I’m not consumed by rage anymore when for years all I thought of was murder. Do not provoke me, or I may just take it out on you.”

  “This is your chance, don’t you see?” She was grasping at straws and she knew it. “I thought you would feel what I do. Don’t you just hate him?”

  He pried her arm aside and reached for the doorknob, but she blocked the exit, experiencing a horrible sensation of watching her last chance slipping through her fingers.

  “It will be over within a year, when I have David back. Please, what does a woman need to do to convince you!”

  The book crashed to the floor as Beth grabbed his jacket, rose up on tiptoe, and slammed her lips to his, giving the kiss everything she had. Her lips wildly tried coaxing his, and her eyes flew open when he twisted her around in a dizzying spin. With enough force to yank the breath out of her, he pinned her back against the wall. “Are you out of your mind?”

  She shivered, felt dazed and disoriented. Her lips burned from that kiss, a kiss he had not returned, one that had devastated her nonetheless. God, his chest was steel, his hands were steel, his annoying will was steel steel steel. “What will it take to make you help me?” she asked brokenly, sagging against the wall.

  “Why did you kiss me?” he demanded.

  He skewered her in place with his hands and the weight of his long, impossibly hard body. Her eyes widened. Her breasts prickled. An unmistakable stiffness bit fiercely into her pelvis. Oh, God. Somehow, with that awkward and pitiful excuse for a kiss, he’d gotten aroused.

  And Beth was so…so shaky. She hadn’t felt this in years. Ever.

  “I…”

  Wet by her, his plush, gleaming lips were the most distracting thing she’d ever beheld.

  His fingers tightened on her wrists and his rolling deep voice vibrated across his muscles. “I don’t play games, Bethany. My sense of humor runs thin and if you raise a little red flag at me one more time, I will charge.”

  “Lan, there you are. You’re up for the microphone.”

  He abruptly released her and Beth rubbed her sore wrists. A striking dark-headed man scrutinized them both from the doorway. Interest lit up his features and made his lips curve upward. “And who might the lady be?”

  “Halifax’s wife.” With that disgusted statement, Landon stormed out of the room.

  “I’m not his wife!” she shouted after him.

  The newcomer shot her a look of incredulity, and Beth spread her trembling hands down the plackets of her jacket, futilely attempting to regroup. She snatched the book, which lay open, facedown on the floor.

  “Garrett Gage,” the man said with a wry smile.

  She hesitated before seizing his outstretched hand. “B-Bethany. Lewis.”

  “Bethany, you need a drink.” He handed over his glass and easily tucked her free arm into the crook of his. He patted her fondly, like they were new best friends about to share intimacies. “Talk to me, Beth. May I call you Beth?”

  Two

  Revenge.

  Revenge on a blonde, blue-eyed, tempting little platter. Landon couldn’t quite push her image aside. Elegant in her blue suit, dignified with her chin jutting out defiantly. Bethany Lewis.

  With circles under her eyes.

  He doubted she slept any more than he did. He cursed under his breath, telling himself he did not care whether she, too, fought demons at night.

  He should have been
inclined to doubt her claims. A man became suspicious after the wind was knocked out of him…I’m leaving you for another man…

  But the story had flooded the papers. Bethany Halifax, now Lewis, had endured a dirty divorce and an even uglier custody battle.

  Which Landon shouldn’t give a damn about.

  On his fifth glass of red and after the ordeal at the microphone, he downed the liquid slowly, forcing himself to enjoy the taste as he rested his elbows on the stone balustrade and contemplated the hotel gardens. The night had grown quiet, so that through the sound of water lapping against the edge of the hotel pool, through the sound of lonely crickets in the distance and the faded sounds of traffic even farther away in the city, he could hear his own thoughts.

  Hector Halifax’s woman.

  Kissing Landon’s lips like her life depended on it. Kissing him not subtly, but hard and fast and desperately.

  It irked him immeasurably, her desperation, and he wasn’t certain why. Perhaps because he knew desperation. What shallow company it was, what a lousy counselor it became.

  Perhaps because despite his resistance, he’d responded to her. Why her? She was not even the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and certainly not that sexy with that man-eating fury in her gaze. But when he’d felt her coaxing lips against his, he’d experienced the strangest, most exhilarating ecstasy. With her, trapped between him and the wall, the urge to rip off that tasteful jacket and fill his hands with her, fill her mouth with his tongue, had been more than he could bear.

  He should’ve tasted her. He hadn’t felt this bothered, this turned-on, in years. He should’ve tasted that mobile, hungry little mouth—was it sweet? Hot?

  He tensed when behind him, long sure footsteps approached, followed by his brother’s voice. Garrett. The youngest, Julian John, had to be around somewhere, too. Maybe necking with a waitress.

  “I’m surprised you’ve stuck around this long,” Garrett said, propping his elbows on the weathered stone.

  Landon shrugged, not annoyed so much by the crowds when he was able to escape them. “I’m waiting for her to leave.”

  His brother chuckled, a sound much like Landon’s had been before he’d forgotten how to do it. “I admit I’m very intrigued about the contents of that little black book.”

  Landon remained silent. He was intrigued, too. But he was the eldest, the cool head. His mother, his brothers, depended on him to make decisions with level-headed precision, not stemming from rage.

  A breeze rustled across the nearby bushes.

  “I don’t remember seeing such hate in someone’s eyes before,” Garrett said. After a charged pause, “Except maybe yours.”

  An old, familiar rage crawled inside Landon’s stomach. He plucked a leaf from a prickly little bush, tore it in half, and tossed it aside. “If you have a point,” he said flatly, “then make it.”

  “You know, Landon, I’ve been waiting for you to do something about what happened all those years ago. Mother’s been waiting. Julian has been, too. You never mourned. You never got drunk. You went to work the next day, hell, you worked like a dog. You’re still working like a dog.”

  “And this is the attitude you all wanted me to take? I pulled Dad’s newspaper up from the ground, Garrett. I branched out online and tripled its earnings—you wanted me to get drunk?”

  “No,” he admitted, contrite. “I wanted you to do something that will balance things out. I think it’s long past the time you took a hand to this. You know goddamned well you can crush him.”

  “Halifax?”

  A glint of mischief sparked in Garrett’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

  “Every night.”

  “There you go.” With a satisfied grunt, Garrett emptied his wineglass and set it aside. “Landon, come on. You’re the loneliest bastard I know. We’ve stood by for six years watching you close yourself off. You’re not even interested in women anymore. The anger is reeking off your pores, its eating you inside.”

  Landon rubbed two fingers up the length of his nose, his temples beginning to throb. “Back off, Garrett.”

  “Why not take your revenge, brother?”

  He didn’t know what happened. One moment he clutched his wine and the next the glass shattered on the nearest stone pillar, the shards scattering across the floor. “Because it will not bring them back!” he roared. “I can goddamned kill him and they’re still. Not. Coming. Back!”

  The silence that followed felt like a noose around his throat. He’d said too much, had lost control, showed his brother just how very close he was to losing it, how perilous he found each day to be. How pointless it all seemed. Power, respect, even life itself. It was all one big nothing. Landon felt nothing but…hollow.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, cursing himself and that female for bringing thoughts of Hector Halifax to the forefront.

  Landon hated thinking about it, hated remembering, the phone call late at night, all the evidence the detective had discovered. But at the same time, it haunted him. How could he have been so blind? So fooled? Chrystine had been having an affair with Halifax for several months; the detective confirmed she’d been texting and emailing and stealing out into the night to see him. Landon hadn’t known of her betrayal until the day he’d buried her.

  He’d felt cornered into the marriage, hadn’t wanted her, but she’d been pregnant with his child and he’d done the “right” thing with every intention of making it work.

  He’d failed. And he’d failed to protect that chubby little infant, who’d already learned to sit, and grin and say “Papa.”

  His son had died because of her.

  And because of Halifax emailing in the middle of the night, demanding of Landon’s wife that it was now or never. She either went to him now or they would never be together.

  Chrystine had been taking medication, medication Halifax had prescribed, medication no nursing mother should have been taking and no sane person should be driving on. Halifax had known, and he’d still made the demands. Demands he knew Chrystine would follow when he’d threatened not to “prescribe” for her any longer, vowed not to see her anymore if she did not follow. The night had been stormy, dark and though Chrystine had anxiously thought now, she would go to him now, the crash had said never.

  Neither she nor her son had taken another breath.

  Landon never again felt his son’s tiny, dimpled hand wrap around his finger. He’d never see him as a young boy or guide him through the painful process of becoming a man.

  “I know they’re gone.” Concern etched in his features, Garrett reached out and firmly seized Landon’s shoulder. “Maybe they’re not coming back, brother, but I was hoping you would.”

  Bethany sat outside on a carved wooden bench next to the valet parking booth, staring at the black book on her lap. You’ve brought the anger back to my brother, Garrett Gage had said with a marveled smile. I might even thank you.

  She was still puzzling over his words, mulling over her own situation.

  Now what?

  Spotting Landon Gage’s burly chauffeur lounging by the hood of a black Lincoln Navigator across the street, a man who’d earned both her respect and her frustration when he had refused to be bribed or coerced into letting Bethany climb unsuspected into the back of Gage’s car, she returned his knowing smile and sighed.

  She’d stopped believing in fairy tales the instant she’d realized she had married a toad and no, they did not change into princes after a kiss after all. So why had she ever thought a stranger could help her? The enemy?

  In his mind she was a Halifax. She’d always be a Halifax, and he must hate her for it.

  But Gage had been damaged by Hector Halifax, and although he had gone on with his life, the death of his family had been irrevocable. Bethany could still do something, would fight as long as there was breath in her body.

  She wouldn’t live apart from her son.

  She blinked when Landon strode out of the revolving doors
, his square jaw clenched so tight she’d bet it hurt. He swept his gaze across the moonlit sidewalk and, when he spotted her, skewered her with a look. He halted only a foot away. “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When do you want to marry? Friday? Saturday?”

  Bethany gaped at him, at this big self-possessed man with the wild gray eyes. She shook off her daze, and the words leapt off her tongue. “Friday. Tomorrow. Now.”

  “Be in my office tomorrow. I’ll have a prenup drawn.” He tossed a black credit card into her lap. “I want you in an expensive dress. Buy it. Look virginal if you want to get your son back. And buy yourself a ring.” When all she could do was gawk in disbelief, he pointed a finger in her direction and gave her a grim, warning look. “You get nothing, you understand? When we’re through.”

  She rose to her feet, her nod jerky. “I want nothing but my child back. I’ll find a job where I can work at home, I’ll never lose him again.”

  His fingers curled around her bare wrist and guided her close enough for the granite strength of his body to threaten hers. He was so big Beth couldn’t help but feel…tiny.

  “Be sure this is what you want, Miss Lewis. By the time I’m finished with your husband there won’t be anything left.”

  With that, he spun around, leaving her breathless with exhilaration, gratefulness, strange little flutters in her stomach.

  “Mr. Gage!”

  He swung back to face her, running a big tanned hand along his face. “Landon.”

  “Thank you, Landon.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “I’m not doing this for you.”

  “I know. Thank you, anyway.”

  He hesitated, then retraced his path back to her, seizing her elbow and ducking his head. “Will there be something else on the menu, Beth?”

  Her lips parted, closed, parted again. “What do you mean?”

  God, his face was cruel, it was so handsome. His mouth, beautiful. His eyes, entrancing. His touch…my word, his touch.

  His thumb brushed against the sleeve of her jacket, giving her flutters. “I’m asking if we’ll be reaching some other kind of understanding, you and I.”