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He shot her a bland look. “Your entire life has been acting. Don’t expect accolades now.”
Her smile faltered for a moment. “Look, I am on edge here.”
“You aren’t crying. No gnashing of teeth over leaving your fiancé at the altar.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with Zack, so don’t pretend you do. I care about him. I don’t want to leave him at the altar. I want you to come to your senses and give me the keys to your ill-gotten limo so I can drive myself to the hotel and marry him.” The image of Zack, in that black, custom tux, standing in front of all of their friends and coworkers … it made her feel sick. She’d never, ever intended to put him through that kind of humiliation. The idea of it being reversed made her skin crawl.
“Whether I drive you there or not, your marriage won’t be legal. I explained that already.”
“They gave me a marriage license,” she said, her voice sounding distant, echoey. Her hands were starting to shake. Why was she reacting this way? Why was she being so weak? Was she in shock?
“And we were married, and attempted to divorce out of your home country. Things get missed.”
“How could something this important just get missed?” she said, exploding. “I don’t believe for one second you … forgot to file the papers.”
His smile turned dark. “Stranger things have happened, tesoro.”
For the first time she noticed that he wasn’t exactly the same. She’d thought his eyes the same, but she saw now they weren’t. He used to sparkle. His brown eyes glittering with mischief. He’d been so amused at finding out her secret, that she wasn’t who she’d claimed to be. He’d been even more amused at the thought of marrying an American girl to gall his father, when he’d mandated his son take a wife to gain leadership of their company. To prove he was a family man. It had been the best joke to him, to marry a college student with no money, no connections and no cooking skills.
The sparkle was gone now. Replaced with a kind of black glitter that seemed to suck the light from the room, that seemed to absorb any kind of brightness and kill it. It did something strange to her. Pulled at her like the sparkle never had.
“Like getting kidnapped on your wedding day?”
“Coerced away, perhaps. But don’t tell me you haven’t got pepper spray somewhere in your purse. You could have stopped me. You could have called the police. You could have called your Zack. You didn’t. And you still aren’t doing it. You could turn and walk out of this room right now and get a cab. I wouldn’t stop you. And you know that.”
“But you know. You know everything. And I …”
“And it would ruin your reputation with your clients. No one wants to hear their financial adviser is a high school dropout who committed fraud to get her college degree.”
“You’re right, that kind of information does make client meetings awkward,” she said, her voice flat, a sick feeling settling in her stomach.
“I imagine so. Just remember how awkward it made our meeting back when you were my intern.”
“I think the real awkwardness came when you blackmailed me into marrying you.”
“You keep using that word. Was it really blackmail?”
“According to Webster’s Dictionary? Yes.”
He shrugged. “Either way, had you not had something for me to hold over your head … it wouldn’t have worked.”
“You’re so smug about it,” she said, seething now. The clock on the nightstand read five minutes to her wedding and she was standing in an opulent hotel suite, in her wedding gown, with another man. “But you’ve had everything handed to you in your life, Eduardo. You work because your daddy gave you an office. I had to make my own destiny, and maybe … maybe the way I went about it was a little bit shady.”
“The United States government calls it fraud. But shady is fine.”
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said.
“No, you’re right. I can hardly speak around the silver spoon in my mouth. What would I know about hardship?” His lip curled, his expression hard, cynical. A new look for Eduardo.
“Your only hardship was that your father demanded you give up your life as a partying man whore and find a wife. So what did you do? You twisted my arm, because you thought a gringa wife, especially one who wasn’t Catholic and couldn’t cook, would be a funny way to follow your father’s orders without actually following them. And I went along with it, because it was better than losing my job. Better than getting kicked out of university. Everything was a game to you, but to me, it was life.”
“You’re acting like I hurt you in some way, Hannah, but we both know that isn’t true. I gave you your own room. Your own wing of the penthouse. I never intruded on you, never once took advantage of you. I kept to our agreement and released you from our bargain after six months, and you left. With all the money I promised you,” he said. “You keep forgetting the money I gave you.”
She clenched her teeth. “Because I didn’t spend it.” She hadn’t been able to. Leaving him, or more to the point, his family and the city that had started to feel like home, had felt too awful. And she’d felt, for the first time, every inch the dishonorable person she was. “If you want your ten thousand dollars, it’s in a bank account. And frankly, it’s pennies as far as I’m concerned at this point.”
“Oh, yes, you are very successful now, aren’t you?”
She didn’t feel it at the moment. “Yes. I am.”
Eduardo advanced toward her. “You are good with finances, investments.”
“Financial planning, strategies, picking stocks. You name it, I’m good at it.”
“That’s what I want from you.”
“What? Financial advice?”
“Not exactly.” He looked out the window, his expression inscrutable. “My father died two years ago.”
An image of the hard, formidable, amazing man that Eduardo had been blessed enough to call his father swam before her eyes. Miguel Vega had been demanding. A taskmaster. A leader. He had cared. About his business, about his children. About his oldest son, who wasn’t taking life seriously enough. Cared enough to back him into a corner and force him to marry. It was a heavy-handed version of caring, but it was more than Hannah had ever gotten from her own father.
Eventually, that man, his wife, Eduardo’s sister, had come to mean something to her. She’d loved them.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice muted now, a strange kind of grief filling her heart. Not that Miguel would have missed or cared about her. And she didn’t deserve it. She’d lied to him. And as far as he was concerned, she’d left his son.
“As am I,” Eduardo said. “But he left me in charge of Vega Communications.”
“And things aren’t going well?”
“Not exactly.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “No, not exactly.”
“Do you need me to look at your books? Because I can do that after I marry Zack.”
He shook his head, his dark eyes blazing. “That can’t happen, tesoro.”
“But it can,” she said, desperation filling her again. It was past bridal-march time. She could just picture the hotel, all decked out in pink ribbon and tulle. Her beautiful pink wedding cake. It was her dream wedding, the dream she’d had since she was a little girl. Not some traditional wedding in a cathedral, conducted entirely in Latin. A wedding that was a show for the groom’s family. A wedding that had nothing to do with her.
It was a wedding with a groom who didn’t love her, but at least liked her. A groom who didn’t find the idea of taking vows with her to be a joke. He at least wanted her around. Being wanted on a personal level was new for her. She liked the way it felt.
“Sorry, Hannah. I need you to come back to Spain with me.” He looked out the window. “It’s time I brought my wife back home.”
“No is the same in both of our languages, so there should be nothing lost in translation when I say no.” Hannah took a step back; her calf connected with the soft edge of the mattress, her dress rustling with the motion.
“Sorry, but this isn’t a negotiation. Either you come with me now, or I march you down the aisle at the hotel myself, and you can explain, in front of your guests, and your groom, exactly why you can’t marry him today. How you were about to involve him in an illegal marriage.”
“Not on purpose! I would never have done this to him if I would have known.”
“Once the extent of your past history is revealed, he may not believe you. Or, even if he did, he may not want you.” His lips curved up into a smile, his eyes absent of any humor. And that was when she had the very stark, frightening impression that she was looking at a stranger.
He was nothing like the Eduardo she’d once known. She didn’t know how she’d missed it. How it hadn’t been obvious from the moment she’d seen his eyes in the rearview mirror. Yes, he had the same perfectly curved lips, the same sharply angled jaw. The same bullheaded stubbornness. But he no longer had that carefree air he’d always conducted himself with. There were lines by his eyes, bracketing his mouth. A mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to smile.
Maybe the death of his father had taken a serious toll on him. But she didn’t care. She couldn’t afford to care. She had to look out for herself, just as she’d been doing all of her life. No one else would. No one else ever had.
“Bastard,” she spat.
“You’re getting repetitive,” he said dryly.
“So what? You expect me to come back to Spain and just … be your wife?”
“Not exactly. I expect you to come back and continue to act as my wife in name only while you help me fix the issues I’m having with Vega Communications.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need anyone to know there are issues. Not my competitors, I don’t need them smelling blood in the water. Not my mother, she has no need to worry. My sister … I don’t want to worry her, either. No one can know.” There was an edge to his voice, evidence of fraying control. She could work with that. She could definitely work with that.
The pieces started falling into place in her mind. “So you think it can look like a reconciliation five years in the making. Your wife is suddenly back in Barcelona and hanging on your arm. Rather than letting anyone in on the fact that you needed to bring in outside consultation to help straighten up your finances?”
“That’s the sum of it,” he ground out.
It made sense now. All fine and good for him to sweep in like a marauder and demand her cooperation. But all that sweeping was hiding very real problems.
And those problems meant she had a lot more power than she’d thought she’d possessed thirty seconds earlier.
Her lips curved into a smile, the heated adrenaline she always felt when presented with a battle spreading through her chest, her limbs. “You need me. Say it.”
“Hannah …”
“No. If I’m going to even consider doing this, you admit it. To me, and to yourself. You never would back then, but now … now I’m not a scared college student trying to hold on to my position at school.” She met his eyes without flinching. “Admit that you need me.”
“You were never a scared college student,” he bit out. “You were an angry one. Angry you’d been caught out and desperate to do anything to keep it secret.”
“Well, now you’re sounding a little desperate.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and cocked her hip to the side. “So, at least say please.”
His lip curled into a sneer, a muscle in his jaw ticking. He was weighing his options. “Please.”
She tilted her chin up and smiled, the sort of smile she knew would make his blood boil. “Good boy.”
The feral light in his eyes let her know that she’d just about gone too far. She didn’t care. He couldn’t screw up her day any more than he already had.
He didn’t move for a beat. She could see him, calculating, making decisions. For a moment she thought he might reach out and grab her. Take her in his arms and … strike her? Certainly not. No matter what Eduardo was, he wasn’t a monster. Kiss her?
That he might do. The thought made her stomach tighten, made her heart beat faster.
She saw him visibly relax. “A lot of confidence and attitude coming from a woman who could face criminal charges if the right words were spoken into the wrong ears.”
She put her hands on her hips. “But you showed your hand, darling,” she said, turning his use of endearments back at him. “I may be over a barrel, but you’re tied to me. If I go over the cliff, you’re coming, too. I might be stuck, but you’re just as stuck. So, let’s be civil, you and I, huh?”
“Let’s not forget who stands to lose the most,” he said, his voice hard.
She examined his face, the hard lines etched into it. Brackets around his mouth, creases in his forehead. Lines that had appeared sometime in the past five years, for they hadn’t been there back when she’d first met him. “I have a feeling you might have a bit more to lose than you’re letting on.”
“What about you? At the least you stand to lose clients, your reputation. At the most?”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. It was possible she could lose … so much. Everything. That she could face criminal charges. That she could find herself with her degree revoked. That she could find herself back in Arkansas in a single-wide mobile home that had a lawn with more pink plastic flamingos than it had grass.
She couldn’t go back to that. To that endless, blank hell that had no end. No beginning. No defining moments. Just an eternity of uncomfortable monotony that most people she’d lived around had tried to dull with the haze of alcohol or the high of drugs.
No. She wasn’t taking any chances on returning to that life. Not ever.
“Your point is taken,” she said. “Anyway … I can’t go and marry Zack now, no matter what, can I?”
“Not unless you want to extend your list of criminal activity.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone, Eduardo,” she said stiffly.
Eduardo surveyed the slim, cool blonde standing in front of him, arms crossed over the ornate bodice of her wedding dress. His wife. Hannah. One of the images in his mind that had remained bright and clear, no matter how thick the fog was surrounding other details, other memories.
His vision of her as a skinny college student with a sharp mind and more guts than any person he’d ever met, had stayed with him. And when he’d realized just how much of a struggle things were becoming with Vega Communications, it had been her image he’d seen in his mind. And he’d known that he had to get his wife back.
His wife. The wife who had never truly been his wife beyond her signature on the marriage certificate. But she was a link. To his past. To the man he’d been. To those images that were splintered now, like gazing into a shattered mirror. He had wondered if seeing her could magically put him back there. If she could make the mirror whole. Reverse things, somehow.
Foolish, perhaps. But he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and there had to be a reason. Had to be a reason she was so clear, when other things simply weren’t.
Thankfully, he’d managed to get his timing just right. And in his new world, one of migraines and half-remembered conversations, good timing was a rarity he savored.
“Does that make falsifying school records all right, then?” he said, watching her gray-blue eyes turn a bit more gray. A bit more stormy, as she narrowed them in his direction.
He personally didn’t care what she’d done to get into university. Back then, he’d selected her to be his intern based on her impeccable performance in college, and not on anything else. Clearly she’d been up to the task, and in his mind, that was all that mattered.
But he’d use every bit of leverage he had now, and he wouldn’t let his conscience prick him over it. Hannah knew all about doing what had to be done. And that’s what he was doing now.
“I don’t suppose it does,” she said tightly. “But I don’t dwell on that. I gave myself a do-over in life, and I’ve never once regretted it. I’ve never once looked back. I messed up when I was too young to understand what that might mean to my future, and when I did realize it … when it was too late …”
“You acted. Disregarding the traditional ideas of right and wrong, disregarding who it might hurt. And that’s what I’m doing now. So I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said, aware that no sincerity was evident in his voice. He felt none.
She was testing him, needling him, trying to make him angry. It had worked, but it wouldn’t divert his focus. She was his focus.
“So you think that makes it okay?” Her full lips turned down.
“I’m not overly concerned with questions of morality at the moment. I need to drag Vega back up to where it belongs.”
“How is it you’ve managed to let it get so bad?” she said, again, not hesitating to throw her own barbs out.
There was no way in hell he was talking about his shortcomings. Not now. Maybe not ever. It wasn’t her concern.
“We all have strengths,” he said tightly. “It’s the budget I’m having an issue with. Investments. Taxes. I am not an expert.”
“Hire someone.”
