A Game of Vows

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.”