Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  She was a bought bride, no more important than any of the other signs of status that were evident in Lazaro’s home: a home with the right view in the right neighborhood, some high-end art on the wall and a wife with the right bloodline.

  She was no more important than any of it. And it killed her. She wanted to be special to someone, and she truly never had been. Her father had seen her as a last-resort way to continue his dynasty, her ex-almost-fiancé had seen her as a great acquisition in a merger of families, and Lazaro … well, she was his ticket to the top. The checkmate to her father. Revenge and power in one move.

  She didn’t care about Craig Freeman’s feelings—or lack thereof—for her, and there was no point in wishing her father would suddenly gain the ability to see people as anything other than pawns to be moved around at his every whim.

  But Lazaro … she wanted him to love her. Her. Not what she could give him. Not as an addition to his almighty empire.

  He was the only one who truly mattered, and every day he slipped further and further away from her. He was closing himself off to her, his guard never slipping, his eyes never betraying what he was thinking or feeling.

  And even though he held her every night while she slept, she felt alone.

  She took a deep breath and walked out of her bedroom, fastening her earring and pushing her foot the rest of the way into her high-heeled shoe. She wasn’t going to be passive anymore. She understood the things that were holding Lazaro back. At least, she hoped she did. She prayed she did.

  Because if she was wrong, it would only end in devastation. Hers specifically.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dashed off a quick text to Lazaro. Specific instructions on where he was supposed to meet her tonight, because she wanted to show him and she knew it was going to take more than sweet words spoken in private to undo all of the hurt that was inside him. It might even take more than she had planned.

  But she was willing to try.

  She pressed Send and grabbed her coat, covering her daring dress with the sedate, gray wool outerwear.

  Now she just had to hope her husband followed her instructions. She smiled slightly at the thought. If there was one thing Lazaro didn’t do, it was follow orders.

  She needed him to tonight though. Because tonight, she was going to reveal her heart to him. There was a time for self-protection, and this wasn’t it. Lazaro had given her the strength to find out who she really was.

  And he was going to have to deal with the consequences of that newfound strength.

  Lazaro wasn’t sure what to expect when he walked into the smoky, downtown club. A rare experience, although, with Vanessa rare experiences seemed to be getting more and more common. She surprised him. Challenged him. Turned him on and made his heart pound faster.

  She was like no other woman, no other person he’d ever known.

  He shut off his line of thinking and scanned the dense crowd for his wife. His wife. The thought still made his chest feel tight. Made his stomach ache with longing because while he had her, he would never truly have her.

  She had not married him because of any great love for him. She didn’t stay with him out of a desire to. He was making her stay.

  Then he saw her, weaving through the tightly packed bodies. She was wearing a shockingly brief dress, black and tight, revealing the killer curves of her body. Possessiveness coursed through his veins. Possessiveness and pride. She was his wife, and she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

  Not only that, she was the smartest, the bravest, the most artistic. She was everything.

  She smiled at him and his heart began to pound, hard, heavy and fast in his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath and tried to regain control. He had let his defenses drop and he’d spent the better part of the past two weeks trying to rebuild them, trying to hold Vanessa at a distance when he knew it was a futile effort. She was in him. Entwined with him. In his blood, flowing through him, keeping his heart beating.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him in greeting, in front of everyone in the club, passionately and shamelessly.

  When they parted, she smiled. “Dance with me.” Not a request, but an order he didn’t want to refuse.

  “Like in Buenos Aires,” she whispered when they were on the dance floor.

  He pulled her to him, one hand clasping hers, the other planted firmly on her lower back. “Here? But people will see.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m proud to be seen with you.”

  His heart expanded inside him, making everything in him feel tight, as though he might burst with the feelings that were taking over his body. He swallowed hard. “I feel the same way.”

  She didn’t dance with precise skill, but she put everything into it, the freedom she’d found in life that he’d watched grow in her over the past weeks. When she smiled now it came from deep within her, a light that radiated from the inside out.

  And yet the smile could not be for him. He had forced her into marriage, had treated her the same way her father had always done.

  His heart seized in his chest. When the opportunity had presented itself, he had become so consumed with the undoing of Michael Pickett that, in the process, he’d become him. He had taken Vanessa, a vibrant force of life and beauty and tried to bend her to his will. To make her fulfill his needs, without thinking of hers.

  And, just as she’d done with her father, she was doing her duty. Doing what she knew she had to do, the honorable thing. Bile rose in his throat when he thought of the soft sighs she made in bed, the way she gripped his shoulders. Was that duty to her? The only way to preserve the company she loved?

  She leaned in, her lips grazing his ear. “I was doing research on some really interesting ways we can bring energy-efficient manufacturing techniques into Pickett. I was also thinking we might try and do something about the packaging? I know that you consulted for someone who makes boxes and containers out of recycled materials.”

  He pulled back from her, his heart thundering in his chest. “Is that why you asked me here?”

  She moved her hands over his shoulders. “Of course not. But we haven’t really talked in a few days and I had the idea earlier. I think with a little more money invested we can see some huge returns. You really did have a fantastic idea on how to resurrect the company.”

  Lazaro felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. Every doubt that had ever gnawed at the back of his mind roared to the forefront. Of course this was about Pickett. She had married him to save it, to keep people she cared for employed. He had been a fool to think that any part of their relationship, their marriage, had been separate from that.

  He had forced her into it. He had no right to stand in judgment of her. She hadn’t lied to him. He was the one who’d asked her to be his wife, who’d wanted her in his bed. He had created the deception for the world, but he was the one who had fallen prey to it.

  A sharp pain stabbed at him, ripped through his chest. It was real, physical pain unlike any he’d ever known. He pulled away from her, stumbling back a step before righting himself. He took a breath and concentrated on shielding himself, his emotions. He had lied to himself, pretending any part of what they shared had been real. It could not be. How could she ever care for a man like him? Why would she?

  “Lazaro?”

  He ignored her and turned, walking off the dance floor, away from the throbbing beat of the music and the heavy crush of people, out into the crisp air. He shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to find the man he’d been before Vanessa had walked back into his life. The man who thrived on emotionless dealings, success without any personal ties.

  The man who had ruthlessly pursued what he wanted with single-minded determination. The man who had been willing to do whatever it took to reach his goals.

  “Lazaro?”

  He turned and saw Vanessa standing a foot away, her arms crossed in an attempt to keep warm. She’d left her coat inside, nothing but her insu
bstantial dress between her and the increasingly cold night.

  “What was this, Vanessa?” he bit out. “Were you trying to make a fool of me? Trying to use your body to talk me into investing more money in Pickett?”

  He wished she would say yes. That she would prove herself to be the woman he’d imagined her to be in the beginning. That she would do something to abolish the feelings he had for her.

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  “Why did you want to go out tonight?”

  “Because I … I wanted to dance with you.” She looked at him, her eyes glistening in the moonlight. “Because I missed you.”

  “I’ve been with you every day.”

  She shook her head, dark hair swirling around her shoulders. “No, you haven’t been. You’ve been gone. You’ve gone somewhere I can’t reach you, and I want you back.”

  “I’m not quite sure what you mean, Vanessa. I’ve complied with my part of the deal, and I haven’t made you unhappy. I’m paying for your photography courses.” He shrugged, trying to look casual even as his throat tightened. “I can only assume you’re upset about not having a chance to hit me up for more money for your company.”

  “You know what I mean. You aren’t stupid, Lazaro. Don’t pretend to be now.”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “Don’t pretend everything is fine when it isn’t,” she said.

  “Everything is fine, Vanessa. As long as things continue going as we agreed. Pickett Industries will keep improving, and the employees will keep their jobs. And I’ll have what I want.

  “Status and some kind of sick sense of justice?”

  His stomach churned and he had to force the next words out. “There was never anything else.”

  “Never?”

  “No,” he ground out, the lie acrid in his mouth.

  He would not humble himself before her, would not admit that she had breached his heart, as no one else had ever done. He wouldn’t confess his feelings to a woman who must hate him. A woman who had every right to.

  And he couldn’t be the man who held her captive anymore. He had forced her to marry him, and all his pretending it had been her choice was rubbish and he knew it. He knew her, he knew where her priorities lay, that she loved her employees. That she was too good, too loyal to let the company crumble if there was anything she could do to solve the problem.

  He had practically forced her hand to sign the marriage license. He hated himself for it now.

  You had to make sure that I had no other options open to get me to agree to marry you. I had no other choice. Don’t forget that.

  He hadn’t. Not for a moment. It had been there, in the back of his mind while he had fooled himself into thinking that she could grow to care for him.

  For the man who had forced her to the altar. Not likely.

  “I have what I want now, Vanessa,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “I’ve been invited to go to your father’s country club. I have potential business connections made with several people who had never considered dealing with me prior to our marriage.”

  He watched the color drain from her face. “And?”

  “And I think the marriage is unnecessary at this point in time.”

  She blinked rapidly. “Unnecessary?”

  “I have what I want,” he repeated, the lie bitter on his tongue. “I see no point in continuing with the charade. I think we should divorce.”

  She stumbled back, her hand on her stomach, her dark eyebrows locked together, her eyes shimmering. “You … you bastard. You dragged me to the altar, you forced me into this farce of a marriage and for what? So you could divorce me less than a month later? Are you going to use this as an excuse to destroy my father’s company too? Your last laugh against the Pickett family?”

  Her words, the anger, only reinforced the rightness of what he was doing. She was too loyal to Pickett Industries to initiate it herself, but the simple truth was that she was more put out by what he’d put her through than the actual dissolution of the marriage.

  And he couldn’t force her to stay with him anymore. He had been wrong to do it. Selfish beyond measure. A man he hated.

  “It would be poetic, no?”

  “No.” She shook head. “Lazaro, I love you.”

  He felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. She was offering him words of love, words he was so far from deserving. Words she could not mean. Words he knew she didn’t mean. She was trying to protect Pickett. Because hadn’t she already proved she would do anything to save her family’s legacy? Hadn’t she married him? Made love to him? Why not a little lie, three little words, words that might make him change his mind.

  They could not be true. He was beyond the point of being a man anyone could love. Least of all Vanessa.

  “Don’t, Vanessa,” he bit out.

  “I do.”

  “No,” he roared the words, not caring if they drew stares. “I do not want your love.” He denied the need even as his heart wept. The desire to believe her was so strong it was nearly overpowering. He shook with it.

  Worse than never hearing the words at all was having them used against him.

  “And you don’t want me,” she said, her tone flat. “Was this your plan all along? To cast me aside and destroy my company? After you talked me into stepping down as CEO, of course.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not out to destroy Pickett, and I don’t need you to try and manipulate me to get me to change my mind. You kept your end. I will keep mine,” he said. “I will continue to be active in Pickett, in its improvement. But I do not see the marriage as a necessity at this point.”

  “So—” she swallowed and he saw the tendons in her throat working, as though it were hard for her to do “—you want a divorce?”

  “I think we should,” he said. But he didn’t want a divorce. He wanted to cling to her forever, force her to stay with him. Make her want him. Failing that, he wanted things to go back to the way they were. He wanted the walls back up around his heart. He wanted anything but to be standing on the sidewalk in downtown Boston offering Vanessa her freedom while his heart was torn to pieces with each and every syllable out of his mouth.

  He wanted to cling to her last, desperate lie. Her greatest attempt at saving Pickett. He wanted to claim it as truth and hold it inside him. He wanted to take her love and let it heal the raw wounds in him.

  But those words weren’t about feeling. And there was no way for him to be certain of the truth of them. Not as long as he held the fate of her beloved company over her head.

  He wanted anything but a divorce. Anything but this moment. But he couldn’t force her to be with him anymore. It was emptier than being without her.

  “Okay,” she said softly.

  He had to grit his teeth to fight against the anguish that was tearing at him. “I knew you would be grateful for the out.”

  She nodded. “I’m going home.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  She shook her head. “My home. My town house.”

  His stomach tightened, tense with the strength it took to keep from crumbling under the agony that was overtaking every inch of his body. It was like death, worse than being beaten in an alley.

  “I will have your things sent over in the morning.”

  “I won’t be there.”

  He nodded curtly. “It’s for the best.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Goodbye, Lazaro.”

  He couldn’t force a goodbye from his lips. He simply turned and walked away, wishing he could dull the pain by being angry with her, by making this her fault.

  He couldn’t. And the absence of anger only left him with a raw, searing pain that threatened to destroy him from the inside out.

  Lazaro’s penthouse was empty when he returned. As he had expected. Had he truly fantasized that Vanessa would have come back to him? He had destroyed any chance of that. He had made it swift and final.

  He had been truthful thoug
h about one thing. He was guaranteed an in at her father’s club, entry into that last exclusive grouping of people. Access to new clients. A kind of forced respect. It was all likely due to the fancy bit of threatening Vanessa had done on his behalf.

  He poured himself three fingers of Scotch and walked out onto the balcony, letting the cool night air numb some of his pain, hoping the alcohol would take care of the rest.

  The view he had was worth millions. It represented a physical manifestation of all of the work he’d done over the past decade. He was at the top now. He was the richest man in Boston, a world-famous consultant. There was nowhere else for him to go. Every door was open, everything he’d ever been barred from available to him now. The world was at his feet.

  Suddenly, the emptiness of it all threatened to consume him.

  There was no sense of triumph. No feeling of accomplishment. He had chased this moment for the entirety of his adult life—the moment when he would overlook the city, a man apart. The man at the top. The man no one could ever hold any power over, ever again. The man who had won.

  He was there now, finally, after all the years of pushing for it. And there was nothing. Only a dark, blank void. The sweetness of victory turned to ash in his mouth.

  In that moment, he would give it all away to be the boy who mowed the lawn, the boy who had earned a genuine smile from the one girl who held his heart. To grow into a man who deserved a woman like Vanessa.

  But there was no going back. He had gained the entire world and lost the only thing that had ever had any meaning.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TRUE to his word, Lazaro had had all of her things delivered the day after he asked for the divorce. Vanessa left them packed, stepping over them when she came home from her photography class, digging through them when she needed something.

  He had only ever wanted her for what she could give him, and then he’d gotten it, and he’d had no use for her. And she had done exactly what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do. She’d fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with him.