Society Wives: Love or Money: The Bought-and-Paid-for Wife

“It makes no difference.”

“You’re that callous?”

“I am what I am.”

She nodded slowly. And the disappointment in her eyes hit him like a full-throttle shoulder charge. “You are also more like your father than you know.”

“Kind. Generous. Concerned,” he quoted back at her.

“Proud. Stubborn. Unprepared to step back from your line in the sand.” Her eyes narrowed with a mixture of challenge and speculation. “Why is the inheritance so important to you? Your success at football carried on into business. You just sold your company, advantageously, I gather. You can’t need the money.”

“Money isn’t everything, duchess.”

“Is it the house you want?” she persisted, ignoring his gibe. “Does it have special meaning?”

“Not any more. Does it to you?”

“It meant a lot to Stuart, so, yes.”

“I’m asking about you.” And even as he asked the question, he felt its significance tighten in his chest. “Is this your idea of home, Vanessa?”

“It’s the only place I’ve ever felt happy to call home.”

“You’re happy here, living this life?”

She looked him square in the eye. “Yes, I am. I work hard on fund-raising committees. I love the volunteering work I do.”

“A regular philanthropist, are you?”

It was a cheap shot but she took it on the chin without flinching. He sensed, in the briefest of pauses before she responded, that she’d taken a lot of hits in her life. That she was a lot less delicate than she looked. “I do what I can. And just so there are no misconceptions—I like most everything about my life. I like the security of money, of knowing all my needs are taken care of.”

“Not to mention the things that money can buy.”

“I don’t care about the things.”

Really? “You told me you love your car. Your clothes aren’t from Wal-Mart. And what about the trinkets?” Forgetting the self-defensive caution that had driven him to keep a garden’s width between them, he rounded the end of the bay and closed down that separation. “If things don’t matter, then why were you so upset when the figurine smashed?”

“It was a gift.”

“From Stuart?”

A shadow flitted across her expression but her gaze remained clear and unwavering and disarmingly honest.

“A New York socialite my mother worked for gave me that figurine for my twelfth birthday.”

“Generous of her.”

“Yes and no. It was nothing to her but a kind gesture to the housemaid’s poor daughter. But to me … that little statue became my talisman. I kept it as a reminder of where it came from and where I came from. But, you know, it doesn’t matter that it broke.” She gave a little shrug. “I don’t need it anymore.”

Maybe not, but there was something about her explanation’s matter-of-fact tone that belied the lingering shadows in her eyes. She could shrug it off all she wanted now, but he’d been there. He’d witnessed the extent of her distress.

Damn it all to blazes, he’d caused it by backing her into the corner and shocking her with his kiss.

And here he was, forgetting himself again. Standing too close, infiltrating her personal space, breathing the sweet scent of roses and aching with the need to take her in his arms, to touch her petal-soft skin, to kiss every shadowed memory from her eyes and every other man from her rose-pink lips.

The physical desire he understood and could handle. It had been there from the outset, crackling in the air whenever they got too close. But this was more—dangerously, insidiously more—when he needed less.

“You mightn’t need it,” he said gruffly, “but it matters.”

“No. What matters is how Stuart wanted his wealth distributed. We talked about this—about which charities and the best way to help—but everything is tied up because of your legal challenge. Why are you doing this?” Her eyes darkened with determination. “Why, Tristan? Is it only about winning? Is it only about defeating me?”

“This isn’t about you.”

“Then what is it about?”

The first time she’d asked about his motivation, Tristan had turned it into a cross-examination. And she’d answered every one of his questions with honesty. The least he could do was offer equal candor. “It’s about justice, Vanessa.”

“Justice for whom?”

“My mother.” He met her puzzled eyes. “Did you know she got nothing from my parents’ divorce?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly. After fifteen years of marriage … nothing.”

“Is that how you count yourself, Tristan? As nothing?” Her voice rose with abject disbelief. “Is that how your mother counted what she took from Stuart?”

He’d heard the same message from Liz Kramer. She took you, Tristan, the most valuable thing.

But the other side to that equation set his jaw and his voice with hard-edged conviction. “She counted herself lucky to gain full custody.” Except to do so, to prevent an ugly court battle and a possible injunction preventing her move to Australia, she’d ceded her claim on a property settlement. “I guess that kind of payoff made me worth a hell of a lot.”

For a long moment his words hung between them, a cynically-edged statement that conveyed more of his past hurt than he’d intended. He could see that by her reaction, by the softening in her expression and the husky note in her voice. “He thought Andrea would reject that offer. He thought they would negotiate and reach an agreement of shared property and shared custody. He didn’t want to lose you, Tristan.”

“Then why didn’t he fight to keep me?”

She shook her head sadly. “He didn’t want to take you from your mother. It broke his heart to lose his whole family like that.”

“He kicked us out. He divorced my mother. His choices, Vanessa.”

“I was under the impression that Andrea was at fault,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “That she had an affair … which Stuart found out about and forgave. The first time.”

Tristan went still. “What do you mean, the first time?”

“I mean …” She paused, her face wreathed in uneasiness. “How much of this do you know? I’m not sure it’s my place—”

“You don’t think I need to hear this?”

She nodded once, a brief concession to his point, and moistened her lips. “He took her back because he still loved her and because she promised it was a once-only thing, because she was lonely, he was working too hard. He took her back and when she announced she was pregnant, he was ecstatic.”