“Going to the chapel?”

Hannah froze, her blood turning to ice as the limo pulled away from the curb and mainstreamed into the San Francisco traffic. That voice. She knew that voice.

She couldn’t look up, her eyes still set on her phone. She curled her fingers more tightly around the heavy fabric of her wedding gown as she took a breath and raised her gaze, locking with dark, intense eyes in the rearview mirror.

She knew those eyes too. No one had eyes like him. They seemed to cut through you, possessing the ability to read your innermost secrets. Able to mock and flirt in a single glance. She still saw those eyes in her dreams. And sometimes in her nightmares.

Eduardo Vega. One of the many skeletons in her closet. Except he wasn’t staying put.

About the Author

MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.

Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.

Recent titles by the same author:

A ROYAL WORLD APART

ONE NIGHT IN PARADISE

GIRL ON A DIAMOND PEDESTAL

HAJAR’S HIDDEN LEGACY

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Game of Vows

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

HANNAH WESTON swore as she tripped over the hem of her wedding dress, her focus diverted by the scrolling numbers on the screen of her smart phone. She’d said she wouldn’t work today. She’d lied.

The exchange was closed today, but she had a lead and she needed to chase it up before she made her vows. She had clients depending on her. And he would never know.

She dropped into the limo, her eyes still trained on her phone as she gathered her dress up into a satin ball and pulled it inside, slamming the door behind her.

“Going to the chapel?”

Hannah froze, her blood turning to ice as the limo pulled away from the curb and headed into the San Francisco traffic. That voice. She knew that voice.

She couldn’t look up, her eyes still set on her phone. She curled her fingers more tightly around the heavy fabric of her wedding gown, as she took a breath and raised her gaze, locking with the dark, intense eyes in the rearview mirror.

She knew those eyes, too. No one had eyes like him. They seemed to cut through you, possessing the ability to read your innermost secrets. Able to mock and flirt in a single glance. She still saw those eyes in her dreams. And sometimes her nightmares.

Eduardo Vega. One of the many skeletons in her closet. Except, he wasn’t staying put.

“And I’m going to get married,” she said tightly. She didn’t get intimidated. She did the intimidating. Back in NY she’d had more guts than any man on the trading room floor. She’d had Wall Street by the balls. And now, she was a force to be reckoned with in the world of finance. She didn’t do fear.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Hannah. Not today. Unless you’re interested in getting arrested for bigamy.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “I am not a bigamist.”

“You aren’t single.”

“Yes, I am. The paperwork was …”

“Never filed. If you don’t believe me, do some research on the matter.”

Her stomach squeezed tight, the world tilting to the side. “What did you do, Eduardo?” His name tasted so strange on her tongue. But then, it had never been familiar. He was a stranger, essentially, her ex-husband. She had never known him, not really.

They had lived together, sort of. She’d inhabited the spare room in his luxury penthouse for six months. They hadn’t shared meals, except on weekends when they’d gone to his parents’ home. They hadn’t shared a bed. Hadn’t shared more than the odd hello when they were in his massive home. It was only in public that he’d ever really talked to her. That he’d ever touched her.

He had been quick, blessed with money, a strategic mind and a total lack of caring in regards to propriety. She’d never met a man like him. Before or since. Of course, she hadn’t been blackmailed into marriage before or since, either.

“Me?” His eyes met hers in the mirror again, a smile curving his lips, a flash of white teeth against dark skin. “Nothing.”

She laughed. “That’s funny. I don’t believe you. I signed the papers. I remember it very clearly.”

“And you might have known they were never finalized if you had left a forwarding address for your mail. But that’s not the way you do things, is it? Tell me, are you still running, Hannah?”

“What did you do?” she asked, refusing to let his last barb stick in its target. She didn’t have to answer to Eduardo. She didn’t have to answer to anyone. And she most definitely didn’t have to run.

She met his eyes in the mirror and felt a sharp pang of emotion that mocked her previous thought. Why was this happening now? She was getting married in an hour. To Zack Parsons, the best man she’d ever known. He was respectful, and honorable. Distant. Able to help give her a career boost. He was everything she wanted, everything she needed.

“It’s a complicated process,” he said, his accent as charming as ever, even as his words made her blood boil. “Something perhaps … went amiss?”

“You bastard! You utter bastard!” She shut the web browser on her phone and pulled up the number pad, poised to dial.

“What are you doing, Hannah?”

“Calling … the police. The national guard.”

“Your fiancé?”

Her stomach tightened down on itself. “No. Zack doesn’t need to know ….”

“You mean you didn’t tell your lover about your husband? Not a great foundation for a marriage.”

She couldn’t call Zack. She couldn’t let Eduardo anywhere near the wedding. It would topple everything she’d spent the past nine years building. She hated that he had the power to do that. Hated facing the truth that he’d had power over her from the moment she’d met him.

She gritted her teeth. “Neither is blackmail.”

“We traded, mi tesoro. And you know it. Blackmail makes it sound sordid.”

“It was. It continues to be.”

“And your past is so clean you can’t stand getting your hands dirty? We both know that’s not true.”

A very rude word hovered on the edge of her lips. But freaking out at Eduardo wasn’t going to solve her problem. The very pressing problem that she needed to get to the hotel and take vows. “I’m going to ask you again, before I open the door and roll out into midday traffic and completely destroy this gown: What do you want? How do I give it to you? Will it make you go away?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’m taking you back to my hotel. And I’m not going away.”

Her lip curled. “Have you got a thing for women in wedding dresses? Because you got me into one quickly last time we met, and now you seem interested in me again … and here I am in a wedding dress.”

“It’s not the dress.”

“Give me one good reason not to call the police and tell them I’ve been kidnapped.”

“Hannah Mae Hackett.”

Her real name sounded so unfamiliar now. Even more so coming from him instead of being spoken with a Southern twang. Even still, a lead weight settled in her stomach when he said it.

“Don’t even say it,” she bit out.

“You don’t like your name? Well, I imagine not. You did change it.”

“Legally. I am legally not that name anymore. My name is Hannah Weston now.”

“And you illegally gained scholarships, and entrance, to the university in Barcelona by falsifying your school records.”

She clenched her teeth, her pulse pounding hard. She was so very screwed. And he knew it. “This sounds like a conversation we had five years ago. If you recall, I already married you to keep you from spreading it around.”

“Unfinished business.”

“The only thing unfinished, apparently, is our divorce.”

“Oh, no, there is so much more than that.” He pulled the limo against a curb in front of one of the famous boutique hotels in San Francisco. Marble, gold trimming and sharply dressed valets signaled the luxury of the place to everyone in the area. It was the sort of thing that had drawn her from the time she was young. The sort of thing she’d really started hungering for when she realized she had the power to change her circumstances.

Every time she checked into a hotel, as soon as the door was closed and she was isolated from the world, she would twirl in a circle and fall onto the bed, reveling in the softness. The cleanliness. The space and solitude. Even now that she had her own penthouse with thousand thread count sheets, she still did it.

The hotel wasn’t evoking those kinds of feelings in her today. Not with Eduardo present.

The valet took the keys and Eduardo came to Hannah’s door, opening it. “Wait … did you steal this?” she asked, looking at the limo.

As Eduardo bent down, Hannah fought the urge to shrink back. “I bought it from the chauffeur. Told him to go buy one that was newer. Nicer.”

“And he didn’t seem to care that he was supposed to pick me up?”

“Not when I gave him enough money for two new limousines. No.”

“He was going to leave a bride stranded on her wedding day?”

Eduardo shrugged. “The world is filled with dishonest and self-serving people. You, my dear, should know all about that.”

She snorted and rucked her dress up over her knees, climbing out of the car without touching Eduardo. She straightened and let her dress fall neatly into place. Then she tugged on her veil, fanning it over her shoulders. “Don’t say it like you aren’t one of the self-serving, my darling husband.”

She looked at him fully. He was still everything he’d been five years ago. Tall, broad, arresting, a vision of perfect male beauty in his well-cut suit. His bronzed skin was highlighted perfectly by his white dress shirt; his dark hair reached the collar of his jacket.

He’d always made her feel like someone had put both hands on her shoulders and shaken her. He’d always had the power to disrupt the order of her life, to make her feel like she was dangerously close to losing the control she’d worked so hard to cultivate over the years.

It was the thing she’d always hated most about him. That he was so darned magnetic. That he always had the power to make her tremble when nothing else could.

It wasn’t just that he was good-looking. There were a lot of good-looking men in the world, and she was too much in control of herself to let that affect her. It was the fact that he exuded a kind of power that she could never hope to achieve. And that he had power over her.

She breezed past him, ignoring the scent of his cologne and skin, ignoring the way it made her stomach tighten. She strode into the hotel lobby, well aware that she was making a spectacle and not caring at all. She breathed in deep. She needed focus. She needed to find out what he wanted so she could leave, as quickly as possible.

“Mrs. Vega, Mr. Vega.” A woman that Hannah assumed was a manager, rounded the check-in desk with a wide, money-motivated grin on her face. “So lovely to have you here. Mr. Vega told me he would be bringing his bride when he came to stay this time. So romantic.”

She had to bite back a tart curse.

Eduardo closed the distance between them and curled his arm around her waist. Her breath rushed from her body. For a moment, just one crazy moment, she wanted to lean against him. To draw closer to his masculine strength. But only for a moment.

“Very,” he said.

“Is there liquor in the room?” she asked, wiggling away from him.

The manager, whose name tag identified her as Maria, frowned slightly. “There is champagne waiting for you.”

“We’ll need three,” she said.

Maria’s frown deepened. “I …”

“She’s kidding,” Eduardo said.

Hannah shook her head. “I’ve been hammered since I took my vows. I intend to spend the rest of the day that way.”

“We’ll just go upstairs.”

“Send champagne,” Hannah said as Eduardo attempted to drag her from the desk in what she imagined he thought was a loving, husbandly manner.

He ushered her into a gilded elevator, a smile pasted on his darkly handsome face until the door closed behind them.

“That was not cute, Hannah,” he said.

She put her hand on her hip and gave him her sassiest smile. She didn’t feel sassy, or in control, but she could fake it with the best of them. “Are you kidding me? I think I’m ready for my close-up. That was fine acting.”

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.”

“I did. He didn’t do his job.”

“Basically, you didn’t notice that he was screwing up?”

The thought of it, of trying to keep track of that, plus the day-to-day running of Vega, made his head swim, made his temples pound. His breath shortened, became harder to take in. Panic was a metallic taste on his tongue.

Would he ever feel normal? Or was this normal now? Such a disturbing thought. One he didn’t have time to dwell on.

“I didn’t have time,” he gritted.

“Too busy sleeping around?” she asked.

“Different heiress every night,” he said, almost laughing out loud at his own lie.

“Better than toying with the domestic staff, I suppose. Or blackmailing interns into marriage.”

“Ours was a special case,” he said.

“Oh, yes, indeed. I suppose that’s why I feel suffused with a warm glow of specialness.”

He chuckled, gratified when Hannah looked stymied by the reaction. She wanted to make him angry. He wouldn’t allow it. One of the gifts of his head injury, one of the few. It had cooled his passions, and while that had been inconvenient in some ways, in others, it had proven valuable. He was no longer hotheaded. Usually. No longer impulsive. According to some, he was no longer fun. But he didn’t know how to fix that. He found he didn’t care anymore. Another gift.

“Well, it is your big day. Shouldn’t a bride feel special?”

She uttered a truly foul word and sat on the edge of the bed, the white skirt of her dress billowing out around her. Like an angry, fallen, snow angel. “Low.”

“Do you love this man? The one you were meant to marry today?” He found that did trouble his conscience, even if it was only a bit of trouble.

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

He shook his head. “Using someone else?”

“Hardly using him. Zack doesn’t love me, either. Neither of us have time for some all-consuming passionate affair. But we like each other. I like him. I don’t like the idea of him being stood up. I don’t like the idea of humiliating him.”

“More humiliating, I think, if he finds out his almost-wife has been lying to him. About so many things.”

She looked down at her fingernails. “Zack has his secrets. He doesn’t think anyone realizes it … but he has them. I can tell. And I know better than to ask about them.”

“And that means …”

“He would have accepted that I had mine. We didn’t share everything.”

“I doubt he intended to share you with another husband.”

“Well, it’s not going to happen now.” A brief expression of vulnerability, sadness, crossed Hannah’s features. And as quickly as he’d glimpsed it, it disappeared. Clearly, she had some amount of feeling for her lover, no matter what she said.

“Plans change.” As he knew all too well.

“I have to call … someone,” she said, her heart twisting.

“It’s too late to salvage the day.”

“I’m aware,” she snapped. “Just … give me a minute.”

She pulled her phone from her purse.

“Who are you calling?”

“My assistant. She’s in the office minding things since I’m away. Shelby?” Her tone turned authoritative.

She paused for a moment, her cheeks turning a dull pink. “I know. I can’t … I can’t go through with it. It’s complicated. And I can’t get to the hotel.” She gave him a pointed look. “Can you drive over and … and tell Zack?”

“Tell him what?” Eduardo heard her assistant’s shriek from where he was standing.

“That I’m sorry. That I wish I had been brave enough to do it differently but I can’t. I know it’s rush hour and it’s going to take forever, but please?” Hannah paused again.

“Thank you. I … I have to go.” She hit the end call button and rounded on him. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.” He wasn’t, not then. But this wasn’t about how he felt. This was about what had to be done. This was about trying to fix Vega. Trying to fix himself.

“Not really. But I promise you in the end you will be.”

“I doubt that.”

“Once everything is resolved I will give you permission to speak of your part in the resurrection of my family’s company.”

He hadn’t intended on giving her that much. The offer shocked him. He wasn’t usually spontaneous anymore.

“Really?” she asked, her expression guarded, but the interest in her eyes too keen for her to conceal entirely.

“Really. I promise, in the end, I’ll divorce you and you can crow your achievements. What I don’t want is anyone undercutting the business while it’s vulnerable. But afterward, say whatever you like, drag me through the mud, talk about my inadequacies. It’s only pride,” he said. Pride he’d had to give up a long time ago. He clung to what he could, but it was limited.

“You’ll really divorce me this time? Forgive me for not trusting you.”

“If you don’t move around like a gypsy, then you should get papers letting you know when everything is final.” The first aborted divorce hadn’t been intentional. Another side effect of the accident that had changed everything. But, this side effect happened to be a very fortunate one indeed.

“Fine. We have a deal.” Hannah extended her slender hand and he grasped it in his. She was so petite, so fine-boned. It gave the illusion of delicacy when he knew full well she possessed none. She was steel beneath that pale skin.

A smile curved his lips, satisfaction burning in his chest. “Good girl.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU made me buy my own ticket.” Hannah stood in the doorway of Eduardo’s penthouse, exhausted and wrinkled from travel, still angry at the way everything had transpired. She’d had short notice, and limited options. She’d had to fly economy.

An infuriating smile curved Eduardo’s lips. “I did. But I knew you could afford it.”

“Doesn’t chivalry dictate you buy your blackmailed wife’s plane ticket?” Hannah dropped her suitcase next to her feet and crossed her arms. The most shocking thing about Eduardo’s appearance had been his departure, with a demand that she meet him in Barcelona in twenty-four hours. And she could get there herself.

It had been a blow to her pride, and he knew it. Because she’d been forced to get herself to Spain. She’d been the one to board the plane. If he’d tied her up and thrown her into cargo she could have pretended he’d truly forced her. That she was a slave to him, rather than to the mistakes of her past and her intense need to keep them secret.

But there was nothing more important than her image. Than the success she’d earned. Than never, ever going back to that dark place she’d come from.

Because of that, she was a slave to Eduardo, and a coward where Zack was concerned. More than a day since their almost-wedding and she hadn’t called him. Of course, he hadn’t called her, which spoke volumes about the quality and nature of their relationship.

“I checked and there was no specific entry in the handbook about the most chivalrous way to force one’s estranged bride to come and do their bidding.”

“What’s the point of even having a handbook, then?” She let out a long breath and looked pointedly at the doorway Eduardo was blocking with his broad frame. “Aren’t you going to invite me into our home?”

“Of course,” he said.

They’d shared the penthouse for six months five years ago. They’d been the most bizarre six months of her life. Sharing a home with a man who hardly acknowledged her presence, unless he needed her for a gala or to make a show of togetherness at a family dinner.

It was a six months she’d done a very good job of scrubbing from her mind. Like every other inconvenient detail in her past, it had been chucked into her mental closet, the door locked tight. It was where every juicy secret belonged. Behind closed, difficult-to-access doors.

But now it was all coming back. Her fourth year in Spain, when she’d been accepted into a coveted internship at Vega Communications. Everything had been going so well. She’d started making connections, learning how things worked at a massive corporation.

Then one day, the boss’s son had called her into his office and closed the door.

Then he’d told her he’d done a little digging and found out her real name. That she wasn’t Hannah Weston from Manhattan, but that she was Hannah Hackett from Arkansas. That she hadn’t graduated top of her class, but that she had no diploma at all.

And then, with supreme, enraging arrogance he had leaned back in his chair; hands behind his head; humor, mocking, glittering in his eyes, and he’d told her that her secret would be safe.

If she would marry him.

That sickening, surreal moment when she’d agreed, because there was nothing in the world that could compel her to lose the ground she’d gained.

Eduardo stepped aside and she breezed past him, leaving her suitcase for him to handle. Things were rearranged. His furniture new, but still black and sleek. The appliances in his kitchen were new, too, as was the dining set.

But the view was the same. Cathedral spires rising above gray brick buildings, touching the clear sky. She’d always loved the city.

She’d hated Eduardo for forcing her into marriage. Had hated herself nearly as much for being vulnerable to him, for needing to keep her secrets so badly.

And then she’d moved into his home, and she’d started to think the forced marriage wasn’t so bad after all. It was so expansive, plush, and refined. Like nothing she’d ever experienced.

Secretly, shamefully, she’d loved it. As long as she could ignore the big Spaniard that lived there, too, everything was wonderful. Comfortable.

She’d made it into school, but she was still living on a meager budget. And Eduardo had shown her luxury she’d never seen before. She’d thought she’d known. She hadn’t. Her imagination hadn’t even scratched the surface of what true wealth meant. Not until she’d met the Vega family.

It had given her something to aspire to.

“Everything looks … great.” Surreal. She’d never gone back to a place before. When she left, she left. Her childhood home, Spain, her place in New York.

“Updated a bit. But your room is still available.”

“Haven’t had any other temporary wives in my absence?”

“No, unlike some people I think having more than one spouse at a time is a bit too ambitious.”

“Yes, well, you know it wasn’t my intention to have more than one,” she bit out, a sour feeling settling in her stomach. “Zack was decent, you know.” She eyed the open door, and her suitcase, still occupying their position in the hall. “He was one of the few truly good people I’ve ever met. I hate that I did this to him.”

“Have you been in contact?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you should …?”

She clenched her teeth. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Anyway, he hasn’t called me, and he didn’t come by my house, so, maybe he doesn’t care.” That actually hurt a little.

“If he thinks you’re missing, he may send out a search party. I didn’t think you wanted to publicize our marriage. Or rather, why you ran out on your wedding. It doesn’t matter either way to me.”

She swore and took her phone from her purse. “Fine. But Shelby did go and speak to him.” She bit her lip and looked down at the screen. Still no calls from him, and she’d been sort of hoping there would have at least been one. There was a text from Shelby.

“And have you heard from him?”

“No.” Strange. But she couldn’t really imagine Zack playing the part of desperate, jilted groom. Decent he was, but the man had pride. She opened the text from Shelby and her heart plummeted. “Zack wasn’t at the hotel when she arrived.”

“So he still hasn’t heard from you at all.”

She clutched the phone tightly against her chest. Eduardo was watching her far too closely. She needed a moment. Just a moment.

“Why don’t you bring my bags in?” she asked.

Dark eyes narrowed, but he walked over to the entry and pulled her bags just inside the door, shutting it behind him.

She bit her lip and looked back down at her phone.

“Scared?” he asked.

“No,” she muttered. She opened up the message screen and typed in Zack’s name, her fingers hovering over the letters on the touch screen as she watched the cursor blink. She really didn’t know what to say to him. “Nothing about this in the chivalry handbook?” she asked.

Eduardo crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned against the back of the couch. “I think we both have to accept that we’re on the wrong side of honor at this point in time.”

“Good thing I never gave honor much thought,” she said.

Except she was now. Or at least giving thought to what a mess she’d made out of Zack’s life. She growled low in her chest and shot Eduardo one last evil glare.

I’m so sorry about the wedding, Zack.

She let her thumb hover over the send button and then hit it on a groan.

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing really yet.” She pulled up another text window.

I met someone else. I—She paused for a moment and looked at Eduardo. If she’d been speaking, she would have gagged on the next word.—love him.

She closed her eyes and hit Send. Let him think that emotion had been in charge. She and Zack were both so cynical about love … he might even find it funny. That had been the foundation of their relationship really. Zack had wanted a wife, the stability marriage would bring. But he wanted a wife who wouldn’t bother him about his long working hours, and who didn’t want children. Or love.

They’d been so well suited.

“There. I hope you’re happy. I just ruined things with my best bet for a happy ending.”

“You said you didn’t love him,” Eduardo said.

“I know. But I like him. I respect him. How often do you get that in a marriage?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever had separate bedrooms and blackmail in my marriage. What excuse did you give him?”

“I told him how much I loved you, dearest,” she bit out.

He chuckled. “You always were an accomplished little liar.”

“Well, I don’t feel good about this one.”

“You felt good about the others?”

She truly didn’t know the answer. “I … I never thought about how I felt about it. Just about whether or not it was necessary. Anyway, I don’t lie as a matter of course.”

“You just lie about really big things infrequently?”

“Every job application has started with questions about college. Didn’t I get near-perfect grades at university? Didn’t I have a prestigious internship at Vega Communications? No lies. No one wants to know about high school, not once you’ve been through university.”

“And your fiancé?”

“Never asked many questions. He liked what he knew about me.” And neither of them knew all that much. Something she was realizing now that she was being haunted by her past. She and Zack had never even slept together. Not for lack of attraction. She’d been quite attracted to him, impossible not to be, but until things were legal and permanent between them she’d felt the need to hang on to that bit of control.

It was so much easier to deny her sex drive than to end up back where she’d been nine years ago. Being that girl, that was unacceptable. She never would be again.

“Lies by omission are still lies, querida.”

“Then we’re all liars.”

“Now, that’s true enough.”

“Show me to my room,” she said, affecting her commanding, imperious tone. The one she had gotten so good at over the years. “I’m tired.”

A slow smile curved his lips and she fought the urge to punch him.

“Of course, darling.”

This time, he picked up her bags without incident and she followed him into her room. Her room. Her throat tightened. Her first experience with homecoming. Why should it mean anything? He had replaced the bedding. A new dark-colored comforter, new sable throw pillows, new satin curtains on the windows to match. The solid desk she’d loved to work at was still in its corner. Unmoved. There was no dust on it, but then, Eduardo had always had a great housekeeper.

“This is … perfect,” she said.

“I’m glad you still like it. I remember you being … giddy over it back when we were first married.”

“It was the nicest room I’d ever been in,” she said, opting to give him some honesty, a rare thing from her. “The sheets were … heaven.”

“The sheets?”

She cleared her throat. “I have a thing for high-quality sheets. And you definitely have them here.”

“Well, now you get to live here again. And reap the benefits of the sheets.”

She arched a brow. “My fiancé was a billionaire, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I would expect you to find nothing less,” he said.

“I’m not sure how I feel about your assessment of my character, Eduardo. You express no shock over Zack’s financial status, or over the fact that we weren’t in love.”

“You’re mercenary. I know it … you know it. It’s not shocking.”

She was mercenary. If being mercenary meant she did what she had to to ensure her own success. Her own survival. She’d needed to be. To move up from the life she’d been born into. To overcome the devastating consequences of her youthful actions. And she’d never lost a wink of sleep over it. But for some reason, the fact that it was so obvious to Eduardo was a little bit unsettling.

“Is it mercenary to try and improve the quality of your life?” she asked.

“It depends on the route you take.”

“And the resources available to you are a major factor in deciding which route to take,” she said.

“I’m not judging you, Hannah, believe it or not.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “No, you’re just using me.”

“As you said, you do what you must to improve the quality of your life.” His expression was strange, tense. Dark.

She looked away. “I have to do something.”

“What is that?”

She looked down at her left hand, at the massive, sparkly engagement ring Zack had given her a few months earlier. She tugged it off her finger, a strange sensation moving through her like a strong wind. Sadness. Regret. Relief.

“I have to send this to Zack.” She held it up and realized her hands were shaking. She couldn’t keep it. Not for another second. Because mercenary she might be. But she wasn’t a thief. She wouldn’t take from Zack. Wouldn’t do any more damage than she’d already done.

“I can have someone do that for you. Do you know where he is?”

“Thailand,” she said, without missing a beat. “We were supposed to honeymoon there.”

“And you think he went?” he asked, dark eyebrows raised.

She smiled. “Zack had business in Thailand, so yes, I think he went. No, I know he went. He’s not the kind of man to let a little thing like an interrupted marriage keep him from accomplishing his goals.”

Eduardo studied her, dark eyes intense. “Perhaps he was perfect for you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying not to dwell on that.” She held the ring out and Eduardo opened his hand. She dropped it into his palm. “I have the address of the place we were meant to stay at.”

“Bien. I’ll call a courier and have it rushed.” He closed his hand around the ring, the glittering gem disappearing. All she could think of was that he held her future in his hand. The future that might have been. The one that was not eclipsed by Eduardo.

She looked up, their eyes clashing. Her throat tightened, halting her breath.

“Good,” she said, barely able to force out the words. She turned to the desk and saw a pad and pen slotted into the wooden slats built into it for organization. It was where she’d kept them when she’d lived here. She bent and scribbled the address for the house she should be in now, with Zack.

Her fingers felt stiff and cold around the pen. She straightened and handed him the note. “There. That should do it.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to keep the ring.”

“Why? I didn’t keep the one you gave me, either.”

“We had a prior agreement. I get the feeling you didn’t have an agreement like that with him.”

“Separate beds, separate lives, unless a public appearance is needed? No. We were meant to be married for real.” She swallowed hard. “And all things considered, I don’t feel right keeping his ring. I was the one who wronged him.”

“Careful, Hannah, I might start thinking you grew a conscience in our time apart.”

“I’ve always had one,” she said. “It’s been inconvenient sometimes.”

“Not too inconvenient.”

“Oh, what would you know about a conscience, Eduardo?”

“Very little. Only that it occasionally takes the form of a cricket.”

A reluctant laugh escaped her lips. “That sounds about right. So … if you could mail my ring to him, that would be great.”

“I’ll call now.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving her alone.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her emotions a blank. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel. Why she suddenly felt more relieved than upset about leaving Zack behind. Marriage to him would have been good.

And yet, when she thought of the honeymoon, when she thought of sharing his bed … she couldn’t make the man in her vision Zack.

The man she saw was darker, more intense. The man she saw was Eduardo. His hands on her skin, his lips on her throat …

She flopped backward and covered her face with her hands. “Stop it,” she admonished herself. She rolled onto her side and grabbed a pillow, hugging it tightly to her chest. She hadn’t done that since high school. Comforting then, even when the world was crumbling around her, and just as comforting now.

Eduardo had always been handsome. He’d always appealed to her. That was nothing new. But she’d never once been tempted to act on any kind of attraction while they’d lived together. It hadn’t been part of her plan. And she didn’t deviate from her plans. Plans, control, being the one in charge of her life, that was everything. The most important thing.

Not Eduardo’s handsome face and sexy physique.

“Feeling all right?” Eduardo asked from the doorway.

She snapped back into a sitting position, pillow still locked tightly against her breasts. “Fine.”

Eduardo couldn’t hold back the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips. Hannah Weston, flopped on her bed like a teenage girl. A show of softness, a show of humanity, he hadn’t expected from an ice queen like her. Like her reaction when he mentioned her fiancé. Like when she’d given back the other man’s ring.

It suited him to think of Hannah as being above human emotion. It always had. He needed her. He didn’t know all the reasons why, but he did. And that meant it was easier to believe that she would simply go with the option that benefited her most and feel no regret over leaving the inferior choice behind.

But that wasn’t how she was behaving. And it gave him a strange twinge in his chest that seemed completely foreign.

Hannah stood up from the bed and put the pillow gingerly back in its place. She cleared her throat and straightened. She looked … soft for a moment. Different than he’d ever seen her before. She was beautiful, no question, more so now than she’d been as a too-thin college student.

She was still thin, but her angles had softened into curves, her cheekbones less sharp, her breasts small but round.

Instantly, an image of him pushing her on the bed, tugging her shirt up, filled his mind. He could take those breasts into his hands … suck her nipple between his lips, his teeth …

A rush of blood roared through his body, south of his belt. How long had it been since that had happened? Since he’d been aroused by an actual woman. In solitude, with a fantasy, he could certainly find release. But with a woman? One he had to somehow seduce and charm when he had no more seduction and charm left in him? That had been beyond him for quite some time.

“I can see that. You epitomize ‘fine.’”

“I’m ready to find out what your game plan is, Vega,” she said, crossing her arms beneath those small, gorgeous breasts.

“My game plan?”

“Yes. I don’t like not knowing the score. I want to know exactly what you have planned and why.”

“Tomorrow, I plan to take you to the office, to let you look at things and get a feel for the state of the company.”

“All right. What else?”

He felt the need to goad her. To shake her icy composure. As she was shaking his. He took a step forward, extended his hand and brushed his knuckles over her cheek. Her skin was like a rose petal, soft and delicate. “Well, tonight, my darling bride, we dine out.” Her eyes darkened, blush-pink lips parting. She was not unaffected by him. His body celebrated the victory even as his mind reminded him that this had no place in their arrangement. “I intend to show all of Barcelona that Señora Vega has returned to her husband.”

CHAPTER THREE

GLAMOROUS events and upscale restaurants had become typical in Hannah’s world over the past five years. But going with Eduardo wasn’t.

The car ride to La Playa had been awkward. She’d dressed impeccably for the evening, as she always did, her blond hair twisted into a bun, her lips and dress a deep berry color, perfect for her complexion.

Eduardo was perfectly pressed as always in a dark suit he’d left unbuttoned and a white shirt with an unfastened collar.

All of that was as it should be. The thing that bothered her was the tension between them. It wasn’t just anger, and heaven knew she should feel a whole lot of anger, but there was something else. Something darker and infinitely more powerful.

Something that had changed. It was directly linked to the change in Eduardo, the dark, enticing intensity that lived in him now. The thing she couldn’t define.

The thing that made her shake inside.

Eduardo maneuvered the car up the curb and killed the engine. She opened the door and was out and halfway around the car when she nearly ran into him. Her heart stalled, her breath rushing out of her.

“I would have opened your door for you,” he said.

She inhaled sharply, trying to collect herself. “And I didn’t need you to.”

“You’re my wife, querida, here to reconcile with me. Don’t you think I would show you some chivalry?”

“Again with the chivalry. I thought you and I established that honor wasn’t our strong point.”

“But it will be as far as the press is concerned. Or, more to the point, our relationship needs to seem like a strength.” He leaned forward and brushed his knuckles gently over her cheekbone, just as he’d done back in the penthouse.

And just as it had done back at the penthouse, her blood pressure spiked, her heartbeat raging out of control.

She’d had a connection with Zack, and certainly physical attraction. They hadn’t slept together, but they’d kissed. Quite a bit. Enough to know that they had chemistry. Now the idea of what she’d shared with Zack being chemistry seemed like a joke.

It had been easy to kiss Zack and say good-night. To walk away. His lips on hers only made her lips burn.

A look from Eduardo made her burn. Everywhere.

She’d lived with him before, though, and nothing had happened between them. There was no reason to think she couldn’t keep a handle on it this time.

She turned her face away from him, the night air hitting her cheek, feeling especially cold with the loss of his skin against hers.

He cupped her chin with his thumb and forefinger, turning her face so that she had to look at him. “You can’t act like my touch offends you.”

“I’m not,” she said, holding her breath as she took a step closer to him, as she slid her hand down his arm and laced her fingers with his. “See?”

She was sure he could hear her heart pounding, was certain he knew just how he was affecting her. Except … he wasn’t gloating. He wasn’t poised to give her a witty comeback, or make fun of her.

“You seem so different,” she said, following him to where the valet was standing. He ignored her statement and gave his keys to the young man in the black vest, speaking to him in Spanish, his focus determinedly off Hannah, even while he held on to her hand.

He tightened his grip on her as they walked on the cobblestones, to the front of the restaurant. It was an old building, brick, the exterior showing the age and character of Barcelona. But inside, it had been transformed. Sleek, sophisticated and smelling nearly as strongly of money as it did of paella, it was exactly the kind of place she’d imagined Eduardo would like.

It was exactly the kind of place she liked.

A man dressed all in black was waiting at the front. His face lit with recognition when Eduardo walked in. “Señor Vega, a table for you and your guest?”

“Sí,” he said. “This is Señora Vega, my wife. She’s come back to Barcelona. I’m very … pleased to see her.” He turned to the side, brushing her hair off her face. Heat sparked, from there down through her body. She tried to keep smiling.

The man cocked his head to the side, clearly pleased to be let in on such exclusive news. “Bienvenido a Barcelona, señora. We’re glad to have you back.”

She could feel Eduardo’s gaze on her, feel his hold tighten on her waist. She forced her smile wider. “I’m very glad to be back.”

“Bien. Right this way.”

He led them to a table in the back of the room, white and glossy, with bright red bench seats on either side of it. There was a stark white curtain shielding part of the seating area from view, giving an air of seclusion and luxury.

Eduardo spoke to their host in Spanish for a moment before the other man left and Eduardo swept the curtain aside, holding it open for her. She looked at him, the smile still glued on her face. “Thank you.”

Back when they’d been married, they might have gone to a place like this late on a Saturday night. And everyone inside would know Eduardo. Would clamor for his attention. And she would play her part, smiling and nodding while mentally trying to decide what appetizer to get.

There was none of that tonight. If people had looked at them, it had been subtle. And no one spoke to Eduardo. No one stopped to ask about business. Or where the next big party was. Or which nightclub was opening soon.

She looked behind them and saw that people were staring. Trying to be covert, but not doing a good job. Their expressions weren’t welcoming. They looked … They looked either afraid or like they were looking at a car crash and she couldn’t figure out why.

“You play your part very well,” Eduardo said, not paying any attention to the other diners, “but then, you always did.”

“I know,” she said. She played every part well. A girl from the Southern United States with bad grades, a thick-as-molasses accent and a total lack of sophistication had to work hard to fit in with the university crowd in Barcelona. But she’d done it.

She’d dropped most of her accent, studied twice as hard as anyone else, and perfected an expression of boredom that carried her through posh events and busy cities without ever looking like the country mouse she was.

It was only when she was alone that she gave herself freedom to luxuriate in comfortable sheets and room service, and all of the other things her new life had opened up to her.

“And you’re never modest, which, I confess, I quite like,” he said. “Why should you be? You’ve achieved a great a deal. And you’ve done it on your own.”

“Is this the part where you try and make friends with me?” she asked.

He laughed, a sort of strained, forced sound, nothing like the laugh he’d once had. It had been joyous, easy. Now he sounded out of practice. “Don’t be silly, why would I do that?”

“No reason, I suppose. You never did try to be my friend. Just my fake husband.”

“Your real husband,” he corrected. “Ours just hasn’t been a traditional marriage.”

“Uh, no. Starting with you calling me into your office one day and telling me you knew all my secrets and that, unless I wanted them spilled, I would do just as you asked me.”

A waiter came by and Eduardo ordered a pre fixe meal. Hannah read the description in the gilded menu and her stomach cramped with hunger. She was thin—she always had been—but it had more to do with her metabolism than watching her diet. Food was very important to her.

When the waiter had gone, she studied Eduardo’s face again. “Why did you do that? Why did you think it would be so … funny to marry me?”

He shook his head. “Very hard to say at this point in time. Everything was a joke to me. And I felt manipulated. I resented my father’s heavy hand in my life and I thought I would play his game against him.”

“And you used me.”

He met her eyes, unflinching. “I did.”

“Why?”

He looked down, a strange expression on his face. “Because I could. Because I was Eduardo Vega. Everything, and everyone, in my life existed to please me. My father wanted to see me be a man. He wanted to see me assume control. Find a wife, a family to care for. To give of myself instead of just take. I thought him a foolish, backward old man.”

“So you married someone you knew he would find unsuitable.”

“I did.” He looked up at her. “I would not do so now.”

She studied him more closely, the hardened lines on his face, the weariness in his eyes. “You seem different,” she said, finally voicing it.

“How so?” he asked.

“Older.”

“I am older.”

“But more than five years older,” she said, looking at the lines around his mouth. Mostly though, it was the endless darkness in his eyes.

“You flatter me.”

“You know I would never flatter you, Eduardo. I would never flatter anyone.”

A strange expression crossed his face. “No, you wouldn’t. But I suppose, ironically, that proves you an honest person in your way.”

“I suppose.” She looked down at the table. “Has your father’s death been hard on you?”

“Of course. And for my mother it has been … nearly unendurable. She has loved him, only him, since she was a teenager. She’s heartbroken.”

Hannah frowned, picturing Carmela Vega. She had been such a sweet, solid presence. She’d invited Eduardo and Hannah to dinner every Sunday night during their marriage. She’d forced Hannah to know them. To love them.

More people that Hannah had hurt in order to protect herself.

“I’m very sorry about that.”

“As am I.” He hesitated a moment. “I am doing my best to take care of things. To take care of her. There is something you should know. Something you will know if you’re going to spend any amount of time around me.”

Anticipation, trepidation, crept over her. He sounded grave, intense, two things Eduardo had never been when she’d known him. “And that is?” she asked, trying to keep her tone casual.

Eduardo wished the waiter had poured them wine. He would have a word with the manager about the server after their meal.

Before he could answer Hannah’s question, their waiter appeared, with wine and mussels in clarified butter. He set them on the table and Eduardo picked up the glass, taking a long drink.

When the waiter left again, he set it on the table, his focus back on Hannah, his resolve strengthened.

“I was involved in an accident, very soon after you left.”

“An accident?”

“At my family’s stables. I was jumping my horse in a course I had ridden hundreds of times. The horse came to a jump he’d done before, but he balked. I was thrown.” That much, he had been told by others later. It was strange how vividly he remembered the moments leading up to the accident. The smell of the dirt, grass and the sweat of the horses. He could remember mounting his horse and coaxing him into a trot, then a canter. He could remember nothing after that. Nothing for days and days after. They were gone. “I wasn’t wearing a helmet. My head hit the edge of the jump, then the ground.” The regret of that burned in him still. It had been a simple thing, a commonplace activity, and it had changed his life forever. “It’s funny, because you see, I did forget to file the divorce papers.”

Hannah looked pale, her cheeks the color of wax, her lips holding barely a blush of rose. For the first time since he’d known her, she looked truly shaken. “It doesn’t sound funny.”

“You can laugh at it, querida. I don’t mind.”

“I do. I mind, Eduardo. How badly were you hurt?”

He shook his head. “Badly enough. There has been … damage.” He hated to speak of it. Hated to voice the lasting problems the accident had caused. It made them seem real. Final. He didn’t want them. Five years later and he couldn’t believe he was trapped with a mind that betrayed him as his did.

“I have issues with my memory,” he said. “My attention span. Frequent migraines. And I have had some changes in my personality. At least I’ve been told so. It’s hard for me to truly … remember or understand the man I was before.”

He looked at her face, stricken, pained. Strange to see her that way. She had always been as cool and steady as a block of ice. Even when he’d called her into his office all those years ago to tell her he’d discovered she’d faked her paperwork to get into college, she’d been stoic. Angry, but poised.

With a calm that women twice her age couldn’t have affected, she’d agreed to his foolish marriage scheme. It seemed foolish to him now, anyway. He’d been such a stupid boy, full of his own importance, laughing at life.

Yes, he certainly had changed.

Even now, sitting across from Hannah, as he had done that day he’d coerced her into marriage, he couldn’t understand the man that he’d been. Couldn’t understand why it had been so amusing. Why he had felt entitled to drag her into his game.

He had been convinced that being near her would …

“I noticed,” she said, her voice soft.

“I suppose you did.” He lifted his wineglass to his lips again, trying to ignore the defeat that came when the crisp flavor hit his tongue. Wine didn’t even make him feel the same. It used to make him feel lighter, a bit happier. Now it just made him tired. “It is of no consequence. With the changes came no desire for me to change back.” It wasn’t true, not entirely, but he was hardly going to give her reason to pity him. He could take a great many things, but not pity.

“Is this why you’re having problems with Vega?” she asked.

“Essentially.” The word burned. “I had someone hired to …” He chose his words carefully. He disliked the word help almost as much as he disliked saying he couldn’t do something. Of course, the verbal avoidance game was empty, because it didn’t change reality. “To oversee the duties of managing finances and budgets. Someone else to do taxes. Neither did an adequate job, and now I find myself with some issues to work out, and no one that I trust to handle it.”

“And you trust me?” Her tone was incredulous, blue eyes round.

“I don’t know that I trust you, but I do know your deepest and darkest secrets. In the absence of trust, I consider it a fairly hefty insurance policy.”

She took another sip of her wine. “There are some things about you that are still the same,” she said.

“What things?” he asked, desperate to know.

For a moment, she felt like the lifeline he’d built her up to be. No one else seemed to see anything in him from before. They saw him as either diminished in some way, or frightening. His mother and sister, loving as ever, seemed to pity him. He felt smothered in it.

“You’re still incredibly amused by what you perceive to be your own brilliance.”

Unbidden, a laugh escaped his lips. “If a man can’t find amusement with himself, life could become boring.”

“A double entendre?” She arched her brow.

“No, I’m afraid not. Further evidence of the changes in me, I suppose.” And yet with Hannah, sometimes he felt normal. Something akin to what and who he had been. It felt good to exchange banter, to have her face him, an almost-friendly adversary. For the moment.

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