“I am already in perfectly fine shape,” she’d gritted out at him, when he’d decreed she should lift a heavier set of weights before running another set of intervals on his treadmill. Becca had come to loathe that treadmill.
“No one is debating that,” he’d said. The way his gaze had flicked over her then seemed to leave scorch marks, making her wish she’d had on a head-to-toe cloak instead of a skimpy tank top over running shorts—even as the body he seemed to view so dispassionately had reacted to him against her will. Her core had softened, her skin had begun tingling. “But we are not talking about the reality before us here, we are talking about the accepted aesthetic in the circles Larissa ran in.”
“You mean the kinds of circles that don’t eat food of any kind and have wildly expensive recreational drug hobbies?” she’d thrown back at him.
“Larissa used to model in her spare time, Rebecca,” he’d said in that cutting way, as if mocking her for thinking she had the right to her own opinion. “I don’t know if you’ve looked at the fashion magazines lately, but emaciated is, unfortunately, the preferred look. You are not nearly skeletal enough.”
“My name,” she had said, panting from a toxic combination of rage, running and his dazzling proximity in his gym shorts and a soft T-shirt that made love to his hard pectorals, “is Becca.”
“Run faster,” he’d advised her softly. “Talk less.”
He was a maddening, impossible man. That was the conclusion she’d reached in the long days of her first week in his relentless presence. The endless hours of Larissa Studies, followed by afternoons of clothes, makeup, and what Theo called finishing school with his usual sardonic inflection. That involved trying on pieces of Larissa’s wardrobe—all of it too small, too revealing, or too outlandish for Becca—and learning how to dress and act like Larissa had under his ever-critical eye.
“This dress looks ridiculous,” she’d muttered, plucking at the odd concoction that seemed to be all ruffle, no dress. “Where would anyone go in something like this?”
“That is a custom-made Valentino gown,” Theo had replied smoothly, his dark brows rising, as if shocked to the core that Becca hadn’t known that at a glance.
“I don’t care what it is,” Becca had replied, flushing with embarrassment at once again being proved so small, so provincial, and yet determined never to admit that. Never. She glared at him through the full-length mirror in the dressing room adjacent to her guest suite that was, she was sure, larger than the living room/dining room/kitchen area in her small apartment. “It’s ugly.”
“Your job here is not to choose garments that you might like to wear for a day in your life,” Theo had replied, in that inexorable way of his that made her want to obey him, please him, almost as much as she wanted to run screaming from him. He had moved closer to her, once again standing behind her in the mirror.
“Because a day in my life would, of course, be like a fate worse than death,” she’d said bitterly, pretending she hadn’t noticed the heat of him, so near to her. That she’d been unaware of the way her breasts had felt fuller, her thighs looser, her skin hotter. She’d hated herself for that weakness.
“The point is to observe a dress like this and try to understand the art of its creation,” he’d said softly, his gaze dark in the mirror, his head too close to hers, much too close. That glimmer in his eyes made her believe that he was not what he seemed, not just another Whitney family minion. “Larissa had an effortless sense of style. You will not have to dress yourself without help, of course, but understanding what drew her eye will help you understand her.”
“All I understand,” she’d said, her heart thumping too fast, her voice too thin, “is that rich people apparently have the time and the money to pick clothes to make statements rather than to serve a purpose. Like, for example, simply clothing themselves.”
“They pick whole lives just to make statements,” Theo had replied, his gaze clashing with hers, daring her to look away, yet snaring her in its amber grip. “Because they can.”
“And by they, you mean you,” she’d whispered, desperate to sound fierce yet fearing she sounded only pointlessly defiant.
A smile she’d have called painful were he someone else had crossed his dangerous mouth then, and his eyes had darkened. She’d thought she’d felt the faintest of touches on the back of her hair, as if he’d run his hand down the gleaming blond length of it. As if he was caressing a ghost.
“You are here to understand Larissa,” he said quietly. “Not me. You should not try. I doubt you’d like what you find.”
What did it mean that for a single moment, yearning and bittersweet, she had almost wanted to be Larissa for him?
She told herself that it was easier when he was off tending to his multitude of duties as CEO of Whitney Media, sequestered away in his home office that boasted its own elevator lobby and entrance, so that his endless succession of business meetings could take place without anyone any the wiser that a doppelganger sat right across the hall, learning how to be a bored, vapid socialite the world thought was locked away in a very private rehabilitation center, safe from prying eyes and tabloid articles.
Not that the lack of access to Larissa kept the tabloids from speculating about her very public collapse. They hired doctors who had never treated her to opine on her supposed course of treatment. They printed her greatest hits—a parade of embarrassing pictures under screaming headlines supposedly expressing concern—and made up sightings. Becca was almost tempted to feel some sort of sympathy for the poor girl. Almost.
She told herself that the long hours she was left to her own devices—expected to keep reading up on Larissa’s highly pedigreed history so she could spout it off by rote, left to roam around Theo’s stunning home like the ghost she sometimes wondered if she was becoming—were better. That being around him irritated her and infuriated her. And perhaps that was true, but she couldn’t deny that her heart leaped when he returned to her. That she looked forward to it—and to the nights spent learning table manners fit for dining with royalty, nights filled with his endless corrections. How to stand, how to sit, how to laugh, how to appear politely indifferent. She found she looked forward to fencing words with him far, far more than she should. More than she was willing to admit, even to herself.
There was something in the darkness he carried within him and brandished like both shield and sword that called to her, much as she wanted to deny it. Something that agitated her, that stirred her blood and kept her awake late into the night, tossing and turning on a wide, luxurious bed that she could not seem to get comfortable in, ever. Something that seemed to call out to her, to sing in her, too, like a perfect harmony she’d been waiting to sing her whole life.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself now, snapped back into the present morning on the terrace, with the faint sounds of angry rush hour horns and the inevitable sirens rising from the New York City streets far below. The man is in love with his comatose fiancée. And you are showing worrying signs of Stockholm Syndrome.
“So you do,” she heard herself say, her mouth doing as it liked with no thought to the consequences. As if she would not have to pay the price for her foolishness.
“I do what?” He did not even look at her. Tap tap tap on the keyboard, nations his to command at will. His voice was completely dismissive, letting her know exactly where he ranked her in his estimation.
She had the passing thought that he seemed to go out of his way to do so, when she had only ever seen him treat his actual servants with a warmth and a respect that suggested he did not consider himself quite so lofty … but why should he treat her any differently? But she was still talking, apparently—still belaboring the point.
“Love her.” She studied the side of his beautiful face, the elegant line of his jaw that was somehow wholly masculine, the rich black of his thick hair. “You love Larissa.”
She told herself she did not shiver when his amber gaze, dark and measuring, met hers, a fi
re she could not understand building in those mesmerizing depths.
“She was my fiancée,” he said in that clipped tone that she knew by now meant she should stop talking, that he was losing his temper. But she couldn’t seem to do it. There was something swelling inside of her, rolling through her, that she couldn’t understand. It made her want to poke at him, to prod at him, and she didn’t even know why. Because she did not— could not—want this man, not like that. Not the way he clearly wanted his perfect princess, his lost Larissa.
“She had a lover, too,” she said—suicidally. “What do you think he feels for her?”
Theo closed his laptop with a careful, gentle movement that was somehow more unnerving than if he’d slammed the screen shut. Becca swallowed, and let her grapefruit spoon clatter to her plate. What was the matter with her? Why was she determined to get under his skin? Was she that desperate to compete with a woman she’d never met, but who she saw more of in the mirror every day?
A cold sort of awareness swept over her, through her, then—making the hair on the back of her neck and along her arms stand on end.
“You’ll have to ask him what he feels,” Theo said in that mild way of his that sent every alarm in her body off in a wild cacophony of sound and panic. She felt herself straightening against her chair again, in unconscious defense, and couldn’t bring herself to stop it even as she felt it happen. “But in my experience, Chip Van Housen has never loved anything, not even himself.”
“You know him.” It was a breath of sound, hardly speech at all.
Theo almost shrugged—a movement dismissive even of itself. “I’ve known him for years. He grew up in the same social circle with Larissa and has been a noted bad influence on her whenever possible.” He did not sound the way Becca thought a man who’d been cheated on should sound. He was too calm. Too measured.
“How modern and forward-thinking of you to be so at ease with their relationship,” she said, sniffing slightly, and then froze when he turned the full force of his gaze on her—his eyes so dark they were hardly amber at all. His mouth twisted, his body tensed, and she knew, suddenly, like a searing bolt of lightning through her heart, that this was the real Theo Markou Garcia. This was who he kept wrapped up beneath the polished exterior and the dizzying displays of wealth. This man—elemental and electric, raw and dangerous.
She should have been afraid. Terrified. But instead she felt … alive. Exhilarated. What did that make her? What did it mean? But she was afraid she knew.
“I am not the least bit modern,” he bit out. His eyes flashed. “But I learned long ago how to pick my battles. You should do the same.”
“This is ridiculous!” she cried several nights later, abruptly pushing away from the gleaming length of the dining room table.
Theo watched her as she rose, noticing the thrum of energy in her body, the roll of her hips—so suggestive, so impertinent—so very different from Larissa’s boneless, bored-looking saunter. He could practically see frustration shimmer from Becca’s skin, and could not help his own immediate reaction to her—she was like a live wire. He shifted in his chair.
“I have told you repeatedly—” he began, but she whirled back around to face him, magnificent in a floor-length gown in a deep, lush shade of chocolate. It made her skin seem to glow, highlighting the delicate lines of her face and her rich, full lips.
“You do nothing but tell me,” she interrupted fiercely. “How to walk, how to stand. How to breathe. And I am having a delightful time playing Eliza Doolittle to your Henry Higgins, but this is too much.”
“Dinner?” he asked dryly, eyeing her over the expanse of silver platters, all of them displaying food he knew was cooked to delectable perfection. She was breathing too hard, he thought. She was far too agitated. He wished that awareness of her did not move through him like a caress. “I will notify the chef of your displeasure.”
“The food is perfect,” she said with a sigh. “It always is. I’m sure you insist upon nothing less.”
He did, of course, but he did not much care for the way she said that—as if that was yet one more flaw she had discovered in him. He did not know why it should matter to him if she’d found a thousand flaws. Why should anything she said or did affect him in the least? And yet it did. She did. More and more with every day, when he should view her as nothing but one more employee. He leaned back in his chair.
“We were having a conversation about local events and the theater,” he said, making sure to sound as bored as he ought to feel, yet did not. “Hardly worth all this carrying on. You could simply have changed the subject if you’d become tired of it.”
Some shadow seemed to move over her face, and when she looked at him, she seemed something very close to sad.
“What’s the point of all this?” she asked. Her voice was softer, but there was still that great darkness in her eyes, belied by the sparkle of the sapphires at her throat, the glorious sweep of her bright hair against the dark windows behind her. “Why are you trying to turn me into a proper Victorian maiden? I think we both know that’s not at all who Larissa was.”
“Do we?” He found her spellbinding, and could not account for it. It was not that she looked so much like Larissa—though she did, and more with every moment—it was that the more she resembled her cousin, the more he could only seem to focus on the things that made her uniquely her.
She moved toward the table again, as if pulled by a force beyond her control. He felt the same way when he looked at her, but could not allow himself to act on it. She did not deserve to be dragged down in this madness, just as Larissa deserved more from him than this casual defection, this unexpected yearning for another woman when he had promised to be better than that. Better, by far, than she had ever been.
“You’re acting as if Larissa was prim and proper,” she said, her gaze flicking over his face as if looking for clues. “Is that what you think? Because she didn’t collapse outside of that club by accident, Theo. And she’s famous for her wild nights of partying, not her intimate, elegant dinner parties for eighteen.”
He was distracted by the sound of his name in her mouth. Had she used it before? He wanted her to taste far more of him. And he hated himself for it.
“You don’t know her,” he said, his voice curt.
“Do you?” she asked, and it was worse that her tone was so even, so quiet. So thoughtful. “Or are you making me into your fantasy of who you think she should have been? Who you wanted her to be?”
That should not have surprised him as much as it did. It should not have cut into him, deep and fierce. She was too incisive, this ghost of his own creation; too intuitive. She saw too much. It was as if the formal dining room around them contracted, and there was only the way she looked at him, as if she knew all of his secrets—and it hurt her.
It made him want her all the more, despite everything.
“Does it matter?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice even. “As long as you get what you want, why should you care what version of her I need you to play?”
She shook her head as if she fought back some harsh emotion, but he could not see why she should—she was the stranger here. She was the only one who would escape unscathed when all of this was over, while Theo would preside over the great bonfire of the hollow victory that would be his. All his, but without the greatest prize of all. But then, he knew better—he knew that even if Larissa had lived, even if she’d married him as she’d promised, she would never truly have been his. They’d ruined that possibility long ago.
“Isn’t being a CEO enough?” she asked, as if she could not make sense of him. As if she wanted to. “Must you own the company, too?”
Theo was on his feet without knowing he meant to move, restlessly closing the space between them, his attention focused on her wary gaze, her resolute expression. Why did he want to touch her when he should want only to put her in her place? Why was he having so much trouble remembering what that place was?
“You hav
e me all figured out, don’t you?” He could not seem to stay an appropriate distance from her, as he knew he should. He felt drawn to her, by the shimmer of emotion in the air, by the shrewd intelligence in her hazel eyes. By the ache of all the things he could never have, not with this woman nor the one she so resembled. The things he’d sacrificed in service to his drive, his ambition. “You’ve judged me and delivered your sentence.”
“Why can’t you just leave the poor girl alone?” she asked, sounding very nearly desperate, but there was a huskiness to her voice that he knew was because he was near. He felt it, too—the surge of electricity, the dance of heat, that arced between them. He was much too close to forgetting why he should continue to ignore it. Betraying himself, betraying Larissa, betraying the promises he’d made and meant, he reached over and captured her slim, toned bicep in his hand. He felt the way she jumped at his touch, felt the way she shivered against his hand.
As if she saw him as a man. A real man. Not a convenient excuse or a bargaining chip in a never-ending battle against an overbearing father.
“Larissa is not who you think she is,” he said softly, urgently, as if it was important for her to understand. As if it mattered. All the things he needed threatened to overwhelm him, to crack his control to pieces, and then what? She would still be a ghost. The reflection of the woman he’d never quite had, and wholly someone else, someone new, all at once.
The Replacement Wife Page 5
