A Game of Vows

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.