Married on Paper: The Argentine's Price / The Inherited Bride / Marriage Made on Paper

“What is it you don’t want?”

“You have to be faithful to me, Lazaro,” she said, her throat tight. The entire conversation made her body feel hot, restless and edgy. She knew that she would be sleeping with Lazaro, and just the thought made her feel charged with adrenaline.

But the sex would be a purely physical act, with legal paperwork to make it all legitimate. There would be no feelings. No love. She didn’t even have to ask him about that. The hardness in his dark eyes answered that question.

Fair enough, since she couldn’t imagine falling in love with the cold man standing before her. It was shocking enough that her body seemed to respond to him. But she didn’t want to share him either. There were a host of reasons why that thought didn’t sit well with her, her health being foremost among them. Another being pure, possessive jealousy. But what woman would want to share her husband? None. Love or not.

“You have to give me that at least,” she said. “If we have children … I assume you want children?”

“I need them.”

He was talking in terms of producing heirs, and in that sense, she needed them too. It felt wrong to think of them that way, when it never had before. She’d always been confident that she would love her children, so it had never mattered if that was part of the incentive for marriage. But now, knowing Lazaro felt the same way made her see just how cold it was. Made her worry that he wouldn’t ever see the children as anything more than vessels for his legacy.

Like your father?

She shook the thought off and continued, “If we have children, I think they need to know they can aspire for better than a marriage filled with lies and infidelity.”

“I will honor the vows I speak,” he said, clenching his jaw tightly.

“Good. Then I’ll honor mine. And even if we’re a miserable, distant, sexless couple, I will stay with you.”

“Inspiring.”

“Why should it be?” she asked. “This is a cold, mercenary agreement. I’m not pretending it’s anything other than that. I don’t want or expect you to fall in love with me, but respect would be nice. I consider knowing that the person you’re sleeping with isn’t out sleeping with other people to be a great sign of respect.”

“Then you will be faithful to me,” he said, his voice hard.

“I said I would be.”

“And you will not deny me when I come to your bed.”

Vanessa put her hand on her stomach, trying to calm the butterflies that were staging a riot inside of her. “After the wedding.”

He nodded once, his eyes trained on her face. “After the wedding.”

“My father isn’t going to like this. I have to … Well, there’s the arrangement I mentioned. And his family will be—”

“You are engaged to this other man?”

She held up her ringless left hand. “No. But there was an understanding.”

“Your father will be grateful to you if he finds out the circumstances surrounding the union.”

“No.”

“You don’t want him to know?”

She shook her head. “No. I can’t … I don’t want him to know how far things have fallen … how … how bad things have gotten.”

“He will have to know what I’m bringing into the union,”

Lazaro said, dark eyes glittering. “I want him to know that I intend to revamp Pickett. I want him to know that I am saving it. That I’ve done what he could not. If you want to take credit for meeting me while pursuing my help, it is of no concern to me. But I want him to know that I was the one to pull this dying, outdated company into a new life in the modern era.” His voice was hard, uncompromising. He knew what it would do to her father to have to accept help, let alone to have to accept help from someone he believed to be beneath him, and Lazaro was relishing it.

Vanessa had never been able to believe what her father said about some people being better than others thanks to their bloodlines. She’d seen too many cruel, horrible people in her social class. People who wasted their money and used those around them with no thought to anyone but themselves. Believing that those people were somehow better than the rest of humanity was depressing.

And when she’d been sixteen, her emotions had been held captive by a boy her father considered to be lower than them. A boy who had grown into the man standing before her.

Looking at him, she felt her chest get tight, pride swelling within her. It shocked her. But she was, she realized, proud of what Lazaro had become, professionally at least.

“Showing you have the real power?” she asked softly.

“Money is the real power, Vanessa. Money is how I got into this position, how I managed to purchase Pickett’s shares.”

“Then why do you care about the rest of it? Why do you need me at all?”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “Because I can have you.”

Her stomach tightened. “The proof of how far you’ve come?” she asked, voice dry.

“Perhaps. But it has very little to do with anyone else’s perception. I want every door open to me. I have earned it. Money, I have—I want the social power as well.”

Lazaro’s blood burned in his veins, adrenaline spiking through him. He wanted everything. To be at the top of absolutely everything. To sit as a social equal with the man who had had him beaten for daring to touch his precious daughter.

And to make Vanessa his. To finally to satisfy his desire for her.

“The old-money society, the American aristocracy, it’s as outdated as your father’s business model,” he said.

“And you’ll tear down centuries of it all by yourself, Lazaro?”

“I don’t want to tear it down,” he said, his voice rough, his accent taking over his words. “I want in.”

She looked away, turning her focus out her office window and onto the Boston skyline. “And it frustrates you that you can’t do it without help.”

Lazaro bit down hard, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “None of this is done out of necessity, Vanessa. It is a bonus. You wouldn’t know about the necessities in life, not when your biggest concern is staying employed in a multi-million-dollar position you’re not qualified to do. You could walk away and there would be no great tragedy to either of us.”

She just sat, frozen behind her desk, dark eyes wide, her mouth pressed into a firm line. She wouldn’t walk away. She was too married to the tradition, to the lineage of her family, just as her father had been.

What will people think?

He wondered if she’d had a share in his broken nose if, after refusing him, she had told her father all about how the low-class housekeeper’s son had made an attempt to touch her with his filthy, laborer’s hands.

He wondered if Vanessa shared culpability for putting his mother and him out on the streets.

That had been the worst part about all of it. As he’d spat blood out onto the grimy pavement in the alley after being beaten by Michael Pickett’s men, after he’d been warned never to set foot on the Pickett estate again, been warned that if he so much as looked at Vanessa again, the consequences might be fatal, the very worst part had been wondering if Vanessa had been complicit in it. If she might have wanted her father to make sure she was rid of him.

His mother had lost her job. He’d lost his job. They’d lost their home and his mother had paid the price with her health. Ultimately with her life.

But now he knew that whatever part Vanessa had played in what had happened, she had never intended it. She was thoughtless, but she wasn’t evil.