The Replacement Wife

by Caitlin Crews

  Now, she wished she’d worn something else. Something … different. Something that could grab this man’s attention, instead of putting that smirk on his frankly sensual mouth. Why would you want that? she asked herself, confused by the riot of emotion that surged through her. What was he doing to her? Reeling, she completed the circle, and met his hooded gaze.

  “Satisfied?” she asked, with a bravado she wished she felt deep inside of her.

  “With the raw materials,” he said in that cutting way of his, that somehow made her want to fight him even as, absurdly, it also made her want to please him. “If nothing else.”

  “I’ve read that many major CEOs and assorted other captains of industry are sociopaths,” she replied, almost conversationally. “I imagine you fit right in.”

  He really did smile then, and it was so unexpected, so shocking, that Becca actually stepped back. It was as if a fuse blew out inside of her, with a rattle and then a loud pop. His smile lit up that fascinating face of his, making him seem at once more beautiful and more lethal than any man should be.

  “Sit down,” he said. It was another order. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “Nothing good has ever followed those words,” she replied, sticking her shaking hands on her hips to hide their state. She did not sit down, despite how fluttery her knees felt beneath her. “It’s like checking out the strange noise in a horror movie. It can’t possibly end well.”

  “This is not a horror movie,” Theo replied silkily. “This is a simple, if unorthodox, business transaction. Do what I want, and you will receive all you ever wanted and more.”

  “Let’s cut through all this buildup.” She smiled at him, fake and hard. “What’s the catch? There’s always a catch.”

  For a moment he said nothing, only looked at her, and Becca had the craziest notion that he could see straight into her, that he could read her—that he knew both how determined she was to save her sister’s future and how baffled she was by her own reaction to his proximity.

  “There are a number of catches,” he said, his dark voice soft, his eyes bright. “You will probably dislike many of them, but I suspect you will persevere because you’ll be thinking, always, about the end result. About what you will do with all the money we will give you if you do this thing we will ask of you. So none of these catches will matter.” His dark brows quirked then. “Save one.”

  “And what is that?” She had some kind of premonition, perhaps. Or she already knew that this man could—would—devastate her. That he had only refrained from doing so already by sheer coincidence. That it would take so little to undo her. Another smile. Or, God help her, a touch.

  She felt the fire between them, and something dark and confining, that seemed to wrap around her like a chain. Like a promise.

  His amber-colored eyes seared into her, like molten gold, and she found she could not breathe.

  “You will have to obey me,” he told her, mercilessly, and not without a certain gleam of male satisfaction in his unholy eyes. “Completely.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “OBEY YOU?” BECCA repeated, her dismay more than evident on her expressive face. “You mean, like a trained animal?”

  “Exactly like a trained animal,” he replied. Her eyes were an interesting hazel color, somewhere between green and brown, and they darkened with her emotions. He found himself unduly intrigued. She would have to wear contacts to achieve Larissa’s emerald-green shade, he thought, ignoring the shaft of pain that speared through him. “Like a faithful dog at my heel, in fact.”

  “Clearly you did not rise to your exalted position through sales,” she said after a moment, only the faintest catch in her dry voice. “Because your pitch could use some work.”

  Theo could not decide which was more shocking—the girl’s likeness to Larissa, or his own surprising, raging attraction to her. He had never hardened and blazed with need merely looking at Larissa. He had wanted her, but not like this. Not with his whole body, in this shower of flame and desire he could not seem to control.

  That he should feel these things, while Larissa lay beyond reach, made him loathe himself.

  This Becca … did something to him. She infected him, called out to him, even now when his grief should have made him immune. He could not imagine how he would transform this feral little creature into any believable version of his ethereal, effortlessly chic Larissa. But he was Theo Markou Garcia, crafted from proud Cypriot and Cuban stock. He had done far more impossible things, with far fewer resources. The fact that he stood here at all was proof of that.

  And since he did not know how to lose, the only thing he could do was win what was left, as he’d planned.

  “What do you know about your cousin Larissa?” he asked quietly. He watched a shadow pass over Becca’s face, and her hands balled into fists before she shoved them in the pockets of her jeans.

  “What everyone knows,” she replied, with a shrug that Theo might have believed was casual had he not seen those telling fists. He felt a sudden surge of sympathy. He knew what those fists meant. He had once balled his own in exactly the same way—pride and anger and determination. He knew exactly what she felt, this stranger with Larissa’s face. He wished he did not have to ask her to do something he knew, without a doubt, would bruise the very pride that she clung to with such ferocity. But he had no choice. He had sold his soul long ago, and he could not give up now, not when he was so close. He could not.

  “That she is famous for no particular reason,” Becca was saying. “That she has too much money and has never had to work for any of it. That there are never any consequences for her bad behavior. And that the tabloids are obsessed with her for some reason, and love nothing more than to follow her from party to party, recording her exploits.”

  “She is a Whitney,” Bradford said in ringing tones from across the room, the pompous fool. “Whitneys have a certain standing—”

  “She’s a cautionary tale,” Becca retorted, cutting her uncle off. The look she threw at him, and then turned on Theo, was equal parts chilly contempt and a fierce kind of pride that stirred something inside of him. Old memories of another time, another life. His own fists at his sides, his own voice—laced with bravado. “Anytime I am tempted to wish my mother had stayed here and suffered so I might have had an easier life, I simply open the nearest tabloid magazine and remind myself that it is far better to be poor than to be a useless parasite like Larissa Whitney.”

  Theo winced. He heard Helen suck in a strangled, outraged breath, and a quick glance told him that Bradford’s face had turned an alarming shade of red. And yet Becca only gazed up at him, unafraid. Almost triumphant. Theo imagined she’d dreamed of delivering that speech for a long, long time. And why not? She had no doubt been treated shabbily by the mighty Whitneys, like so many others before her, Larissa included. Larissa especially.

  Not that it could matter. Not now. Not to Theo. Not to Larissa, who had been lost long before he’d met her, long before she’d fallen so far.

  “Larissa collapsed outside a nightclub last Friday night,” Theo said coolly, deliberately, watching the way the color changed in Becca’s face, the flush of courage dimming. “She is currently in a coma. There is no hope that she will ever recover.”

  Becca’s mouth firmed to a taut line, and Theo could see the way she swallowed, as if her throat was suddenly dry, but she did not look away. He found he could not help but admire that, too.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I did not mean to be cruel.” She shook her head slightly, looking uncertain for the first time since she’d met his gaze when he’d walked into the parlor. “I don’t understand why I’m here.”

  “You happen to look enough like Larissa that you could, with some help, pass for her,” Theo said, matter-of-factly. “That’s why you’re here.”

  Because there was no point wallowing in his grief—no need to dwell on the past. There was only the future and what must happen now. He had given Whitney Media everyt
hing he had, everything he was. It was time that he became an owner, not simply an employee. Gaining Larissa’s controlling interest would, with one stroke, make him the living embodiment of the American Dream. Rags to riches, just as he’d promised his mother before her death. Perhaps not exactly as he’d planned, but close enough. Even without Larissa.

  “Pass for her?” Becca repeated, as if she could not make sense of the words.

  “Larissa has a certain number of shares in Whitney Media,” Bradford said from his position on the couch, his voice completely devoid of emotion, as if he was not talking about his only child. Theo felt himself stiffen, and forced himself to let it go. None of that could matter now. “When she and Theo got engaged—”

  At this, Becca’s eyes flew to his. Theo merely lifted a brow.

  “I thought she was dating that actor,” Becca said stiffly. “The one who dates all the models and heiresses.”

  “You should not believe everything you read,” Theo said with a careless shrug, and then wondered why he’d bothered. It was still so new, perhaps. He was still defending Larissa’s honor, when he knew perfectly well that if it was not that actor, it would have been another one. Or both. He still didn’t know what that made him. A fool, certainly. But he’d made that decision a long time ago, hadn’t he? If he wanted what she represented—and he had, he did—then he had to allow her to be who she was. He had to let her do as she pleased. And so he had. The end was more important than the means, he’d always thought.

  “Larissa made Theo a gift of a significant amount of her shares,” Bradford was saying. “It would give him a controlling interest in the company. It was meant to be a wedding present.”

  “I believe they call that a dowry,” Becca said, her disgust plain in her flashing eyes, the lift of her chin. “How quaint, in this day and age.”

  “It was a gift,” Theo replied, his voice more clipped than it should have been. As if this stranger’s opinion mattered. “Not a dowry.” He had never apologized for going after what he wanted, using any means necessary. He would not start now.

  “The terms were laid out explicitly in the prenuptial agreement,” Bradford continued. “The shares were to go to Theo upon their wedding day, or in the unfortunate event of her death. But we have reason to believe she altered her will.”

  “Why would she alter her will?” Becca asked. She looked from Bradford to Theo and then back again, judgment plain on her face. Because of you, obviously, her expression read.

  “My daughter has long been preyed upon by the unsavory,” Bradford said, in the first faux-fatherly tone Theo had heard from him since they’d received the call on Friday night. From anyone else, it might have been believable. “There’s a certain ne’er-do-well who would do anything to get his hands on Larissa’s shares. We think he succeeded.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Theo said then, close enough to see the angry flash in Becca’s eyes when she looked at him. Close enough to feel his own shocking, searing reaction to it. Sex, he thought. This was about sex. He simply hadn’t expected it from this woman, under these circumstances. It was the surprise that was throwing him, he told himself. That was all. The odd similarities between her and the man he’d been once upon a time were simply coincidence, nothing more.

  “I can’t imagine how,” she said, her voice cold. “What could I possibly have to do with a situation that already seems too complicated?”

  “We cannot find a copy of the new version of her will.” Theo watched the muted emotions move over her face, and wished he could read them. Wished he could simply bend her to his will as he did most people. But that would come. “We think her lover has the only existing copy.”

  “And you can’t ask him to show it to you, though the poor girl lies in a coma?” Becca sounded incredulous. And condemning, in equal measure. “Is this a soap opera?”

  “I want you to pretend to be Larissa,” Theo said, because nothing could be gained by beating around the bush. There was too much at stake. All the long years of single-minded focus, determination. The bitter acceptance that once his usefulness as Larissa’s wrong side of the tracks lover had ended, their relationship had become purely business, cold and complicated. His searing, implacable focus on the end goal no matter what. “I want you to be so good at it that you fool her lover. And I want you to get me that will.”

  There was a long, heavy silence, broken only by Helen’s delicate sniffles into her monogrammed handkerchief. Becca stared at him for a long, almost uncomfortable moment, as if her not-quite-green eyes could see into the parts of him he’d thought he’d buried long ago, and then she let out a sound that was a shade too hollow to be a laugh.

  “No,” she said, simple and to the point.

  Her refusal lay there for a moment, seeming to fill the elegant room, blocking out the late-afternoon light that poured in through the soaring windows.

  “That’s it?” Theo asked softly, not sure he could believe what he’d heard. Not sure when someone had last said no to him, for that matter. Even Larissa had always said yes, no matter what she’d then gone on to do. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, all I have to say,” Becca threw back at him, her temper flaring in her that suddenly. It lit up her face, made it suddenly unlike Larissa’s—and yet remarkably, shockingly attractive. “But it is all I plan to say. You’re crazy.” She looked back at her aunt and uncle, her lips curling. “You’re all crazy. I’ve never been happier in my life that you people don’t claim me.”

  And then she turned, her spine as straight as a queen’s, her head high, and walked through the door without looking back, more elegant in her ratty clothes than some debutantes looked in their opulent ball gowns. Looking just like Larissa at her haughtiest.

  Bradford and Helen broke into a loud, angry noise, but Theo barely heard them.

  She was magnificent, and, more to the point, she could be Larissa.

  He was not about to let her get away.

  Becca knew he would be the one to follow her, so she did not have to turn to identify the speaker when she heard the quiet command from behind her.

  “Stop,” he said again.

  Once more, she found herself obeying him without meaning to do so. She scowled at the marble floor beneath her feet, as if it was the fault of the stone she had an apparent weakness for this man.

  “I do not have to follow your orders simply because you issue them,” she said, as if she had not already done so. “There is no agreement between us.”

  “Your tender sensibilities do you credit, I’m sure,” Theo said. His voice was too dark, and wove far too many complicated patterns down the back of her neck, through her stomach, and even down to the soles of her feet. She knew that keeping her back to him was a mistake, that she begged for her own destruction that way.

  But when she turned, he was right there in front of her, so dark and impossibly bright-eyed in the vast entry hall, so hopelessly compelling, and she was not sure that there was any way at all to be safe around this man. No matter what her treacherous mind whispered, as if it could discern something in him that was otherwise hidden—as if it wanted her to lay down her defenses then and there, on faith. But she had none. Not while she stood in the Whitney mansion, surrounded by enemies.

  “I doubt that you really mean to compliment me,” she said, searching the angles and planes of his fascinating, addictive face for clues. “I suspect you only do so when you are preparing to throw your weight around.”

  “The difference between me and whoever it is you think I am,” Theo said in that low, disturbingly sensual voice, his mouth crooking slightly, “is that I don’t have to throw my weight around to achieve my ends. My will is usually sufficient.”

  “I’m so sorry to ruin your winning streak,” she murmured with cloying insincerity. “But I prefer my will to yours.”

  He shrugged slightly, as if he could not bother to worry about the force of her will, so puny was it
next to his own. “I’m depending on your practicality,” he said quietly. “I suspect it will win out before you make the great mistake of walking out that door.”

  She didn’t know why she stood there so tensely, braced for attack, when he stood a few feet away and looked very nearly idle. In the way that great predators allowed themselves to appear idle moments before they pounced.

  “Is this more of your sales pitch?” she asked. “I’m not interested. You and those people are nothing more than ghouls, waiting for that poor girl to die—”

  “You know nothing about her,” he interrupted her, the rebuke in his voice not at all lessened by the smoothness of the delivery. “Nor about anything else that goes on in this family, or this company.”