The Replacement Wife

by Caitlin Crews

  Even knowing the futility of her own feelings.

  “You should not be in here,” he said, as his hand came down on her shoulder, his thumb gently smoothing over her bare skin, soothing her that easily, despite everything.

  “It’s not as if she can complain, can she?” Becca asked, but she turned away from the bed and looked at him.

  She didn’t know what she expected to see. She felt as if she’d lived through a wholescale sea change, an earthquake of sorts, and surely such a thing should show on her face, shouldn’t it? Surely it should alter everything she came into contact with—but Theo was as he always was. Elemental. Electric. His dark, brooding eyes connected with hers, seeing far too deeply into her, and she felt that same, inevitable fire kindle anew inside of her, making her thighs clench, her nipples tighten into high, hard points.

  Loving this man was perhaps the most profoundly stupid thing she’d ever done. She knew this with a deep, abiding certainty. But looking at him, taking in his enigmatic expression and his breathtaking masculine beauty, shown to such advantage in the exquisite suit he wore so easily, she could not see how she could have done anything differently. How she could have saved herself.

  “What is it?” he asked softly, reaching out and tracing the line of her cheek with his fingers.

  “Nothing I have any intention of discussing,” she said, truthfully enough. It was astonishing how hard it was not to simply blurt out her feelings. And how, though she knew better, some desperate part of her wanted to cling to the possibility that he was the man she imagined him to be—the man who, she sometimes thought as he moved within her and she held him so close to her, felt more for her than perhaps even he knew.

  But she was not that colossal a fool.

  Not yet.

  “You handled Bradford well,” he said after a moment, his dark eyes searching hers.

  “I assumed that was the point of the exercise.” She smiled wryly. “Was it not?” She had never felt more vulnerable, and yet this practiced veneer had snapped into place, keeping her safe even when she knew she was not.

  “I wish I knew,” he muttered, but his voice was so low, only the barest thread of sound, Becca wondered if she’d imagined it. Just as she wondered at the flash of something far darker she saw move through his eyes—something she might have called regret.

  But this was one of the most powerful men in the world. This was not a man who felt regret—for anything. And certainly not for her.

  “Come,” he said after a strained moment, heavy with portents and signs she could not begin to decipher. “Let’s go home.”

  He held out his hand, and she took it. She did not question her own eagerness, her own acquiescence. Her time was limited here, she knew, and she was not about to pretend, simply out of spite, she did not want him in any way she could get him. What would be the point? She was the one who would suffer.

  And she had the very real fear that there would be suffering enough, when all of this was done.

  She did not look back at Larissa as he led her away.

  She did not need to. She knew somehow that Larissa would be with her, the true ghost, ever after.

  He woke before dawn. The room was gray and Becca was not in his bed where she belonged.

  He jackknifed up, and the panic that had seized him eased when he saw her, wrapped in the coverlet and curled up on the leather chaise that looked out over his private balcony, and his own stunning view of Manhattan, shining in the early-morning gloom.

  Yet his view right now put all of that to shame.

  He rose from the bed, unconcerned with his own nakedness, and moved across the room. At some point she heard him, and swiveled around, her mouth curving in welcome. But not before he’d seen the desolation written so plainly across her face, that she worked to conceal as she turned.

  He wanted to demand that she tell him what bothered her, so he could fix it at once—but he did not dare. There was the all too real possibility that what had chased her from his bed in the middle of the night was him. Or any one of the many parts of this situation that would not—could not—change.

  So he did not speak. Instead, he reached down and picked her up, holding her against him as he sat down in the chaise himself. He deposited her between his legs, settling her against him, her elegant back snug against his chest. He could smell the subtle fragrance of her hair, and wrapped his arms around her as if he could hold the world away from the both of them. As if he could keep everything else out.

  She sighed, her breath fanning across his arm, making his skin heat, making him hard and ready. He always wanted her. He could no longer remember what it was like to want anything or anyone else.

  “Emily was so smart, even as a little girl,” Becca said after a moment or two, her voice hushed in the early-morning quiet. “It’s always been clear that she was destined for better things than the rest of us.”

  Theo did not speak. He smoothed his hand through her hair, admiring the satiny texture, the enchanting hint of flowers that teased his senses.

  “My mother used to call her our little professor,” Becca said, and laughed. She shifted in his arms. “Mom wasn’t anything like them,” she said in a low voice. “She might not have made the best choices when it came to men, but she wasn’t like them at all. She was kind. Funny. I always remember her laughing, no matter how bad things were.” She dragged in a ragged-sounding breath. “She was never cruel.”

  Theo did not have to ask who they were.

  “Bradford and Helen have calcified in their own sense of consequence,” he said. “It’s a side effect of that kind of wealth.”

  “Excessive?” she asked dryly.

  “Hereditary,” he said, smiling against the back of her glossy head. “They did nothing to earn the fortune they so enjoy, so they are overzealous in their need to protect it at all costs. They care about nothing else. Not their spouses. Not their children. Not their own sister.”

  He felt her shiver, and then she was turning in his arms, swiveling around until she faced him. He helped her, holding her as she settled with one leg on either side of his, kneeling up over him, only the coverlet separating them.

  For a long, timeless moment, she only gazed down at him. Her eyes were big, her expression solemn, and Theo could do nothing but meet it. And hold her, even as the coverlet slid down her shoulder, exposing the swell of her breast, just inches from his mouth.

  “I want you,” she whispered, and her voice was too heavy, her gaze too troubled—but then she leaned down and kissed him, and he let it go. Because her mouth tasted sweet and warm, and he couldn’t get enough of it. Of her.

  And because he did not want to start digging into the things they kept hidden from each other here. He was too afraid of what they might find.

  She controlled the kiss, angling her head for a better fit, and he let her. He let her tease him. He let her play. And each time she deepened the kiss, he let himself taste her as he wanted to do, hot and wet and his.

  Her breath quickened, and she moaned slightly against his mouth. He reached between them and pulled the coverlet aside, pulling her close to him when she was finally, gloriously naked. Her skin soft and hot against his. Her breasts, tipped in pink and taut against his tongue. And the softest part of her, melting against him, driving him insane.

  “If you want me,” he whispered, his voice thick with desire, “then take me.”

  And she did.

  Becca took him deep inside of her, shivering in mindless ecstasy as she felt the hot, hard length of him filling her, making her want to cry out loud.

  She didn’t understand what had happened here, in the not-quite-dark, but she could feel the dampness on her cheeks, and she could see the tortured look in his gaze, and she rode him. She simply moved her hips in an ancient, feminine motion, and destroyed them both.

  He called out her name. She heard herself sigh. He pressed his mouth to her neck, then traveled all along her collarbone, his breath hot and his mouth too delic
ious to bear. And still she rode him, abandoned and powerful, slick and hot, rocking them both closer and closer to the edge.

  His hands stroked her back, traced patterns against her skin. He held on to her hips, and set his own pace for a while, making her whole body arch backward, offering herself up to this pleasure. To his touch. To him.

  Her first climax hit her, fast and wild, and it was not until the keening noise faded away that she realized she’d cried out in the first place. Theo laughed against her neck, a sensual, stirring sound. He pulled her closer to him, his hips moving fast now, thrusting harder and harder, giving her no chance to recover.

  Aftershocks still raced through her, but she met his thrusts, clenching her hands against his shoulders, her gaze heavy-lidded as she looked down at him. His face was severe in his own passion, his mouth set, his eyes glittering. And inside of her, he was so big, so hard. Hers. Here, now—hers.

  And still he moved. He bent and took a nipple into his mouth, as her hips moved even more urgently in time with his. The searing jolt of pleasure lit her up, from her taut nipple down into her core, and when he pressed his fingers against her sex, she shattered yet again.

  This time, he followed. This time, Becca sagged against him, and when he shifted her so she lay curled up against his chest, she could only smile sleepily, and then doze. Content. And more deeply in love than she dared admit, even to herself. Even then.

  When she woke again, the sun was blazing in through the windows, and Theo was seated at the foot of the chaise, fully dressed in his slick, off-putting corporate finery, watching her.

  The smile that came so automatically when she saw him faded as she took in the grimness of his expression, the set of his jaw. She sat up, pushing her hair away from her face, and pulling the discarded coverlet over her, suddenly chilled. She felt herself flush, deep and red, and wondered with no little despair how he could still reduce her to that, after everything they’d done. After last night.

  She only gazed at him, refusing to ask, and eventually he straightened his shoulders, his dark eyes never leaving hers.

  “The time has come,” he said, expressionless. But she no longer believed the mask he wore. She eyed him, seeing the temper and the anguish hidden in that demanding dark gaze. “Chip Van Housen’s birthday party. It’s an elaborate affair, but presents the perfect opportunity for you to lure him back to his apartment and find that will.”

  “Chip Van Housen,” she echoed, as if testing out the name. “Hasn’t he wondered why his lover has failed to reach out to him this whole time? Surely he would be able to find her no matter how private her facility is supposed to be?”

  “He wonders loudly and profanely,” Theo said matter-of-factly. “Often several times a day. He is more than happy to believe my jealous rage is what keeps her from contacting him.”

  “Fine,” she said. She cleared her throat, wondering why he was still looking at her like that, as if she’d already failed him. As if you’re already lost to him, some voice suggested. As if you always were. She ignored it. “Are you opposed to birthday parties?” she asked mildly, though it cost her to sound so nonchalant. “Is that why you’re sitting there like a—”

  “Tonight, Becca.” His voice was hard, and she told herself that was why it seemed as if everything around them shattered, as if they were only fragments themselves, all of it broken into a thousand pieces. And yet they still sat here, so politely. So quietly. Staring at each other while the world ended. He cleared his throat. “The party is tonight. You can be home in Boston in a matter of days.”

  And that was that. That was the end, right there. And he’d said it so unemotionally, as if all that had ever mattered to him was this deception she would perform, and all the rest had simply been filling time. Waiting.

  Just as Helen had warned her. Just as she’d suspected herself, in her more lucid moments. Just as he’d promised from the start, by promising nothing at all.

  It took everything she had to pull in a breath, to meet his gaze evenly, to conjure up some hint of a smile.

  It didn’t matter that her heart felt broken in her chest, jagged and dangerous, likely to puncture her lung and kill her where she sat. It didn’t matter. Because she had signed a contract, and everything else had been a daydream, and she knew her place. She always had, hadn’t she?

  So she smiled, damn him, with everything she had.

  “Tonight,” she echoed, fighting to keep the dullness from her voice, the ache from her eyes. “At last.”

  And if she wanted to break down, curl into a ball and cry, she kept that to herself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BECCA HAD NEVER LOOKED more beautiful than she did tonight, Theo thought as a kind of bitterness and a pounding, clawing feeling he suspected must be jealousy, real jealousy—though he had never felt such a thing before—surged through him. Theo lounged in the armchair in her dressing room, eyeing her as she put the finishing touches on her outfit. It was not that she looked so much like Larissa—though she did. It was that she was so clearly, adamantly not Larissa to his eyes. He could see her strength, her courage. Her intelligence and wit. It lit her up from within in a way Larissa never could have matched.

  He wanted her in ways he had never wanted Larissa. In ways he had never imagined before he met her.

  He did not want her to do this. Every cell in his body protested the very idea—though he was well aware he was the one who had asked her to do it. Who needed her to do it.

  He could not understand himself.

  Her final outfit was vintage Larissa, yet with a fresh twist. The dress was bold, seeming to bare all while cleverly managing to show very little. It alternately clung and draped, making her seem ethereal. Untouchable. She’d gone for a smoky look around her eyes, and had left her hair wild around her shoulders. Her long, perfectly toned legs went on for several lifetimes before they ended up in scandalously impractical shoes.

  She looked edible, and he wanted a taste. A feast.

  How was he possibly going to hand her over to a lowlife like Van Housen? Even if it was only for a little while, and for a specific purpose? She was his. He had never been more sure of anything. And it still didn’t matter.

  Because he had to have those shares. He had to have the control he’d never had as a child. He had never given up, not at any point along the way. He couldn’t start now. He didn’t know how.

  But what he could not seem to understand was why that should seem to him, tonight, like a deep character flaw instead of his greatest strength.

  “Tell me again,” she said in a low voice, inspecting her mascara in the mirror. “I can’t wrap my head around how, exactly, you think I’ll be able to fool this man into thinking I’m a woman he knows. Biblically.”

  “You understand how,” Theo said, mildly enough. “You simply don’t want to believe what I’ve already told you, several times.”

  “Because it’s absurd,” she said. She took one last, hard look at her reflection, then pivoted to look at him. “He’ll know something’s wrong. Off.”

  “Possibly.” Theo shrugged. “But you are underestimating the power of suggestion, Becca. When you arrive, everyone, including Van Housen, will assume you are exactly who you appear to be. No one will look at you and think, that’s not quite Larissa—I wonder if it could be her cousin instead, made up to look like her?”

  “You really believe that I can simply walk up to this man and convince him that I’m someone he’s known his entire life?” Her voice was skeptical. And the look in her eyes made him feel restless. Guilty. “And that he won’t suspect a thing?”

  “That has been the point of this entire exercise, has it not?” His voice was colder than he meant it to be. Harsher. Her lips pressed together, and something dark moved through her bright emerald eyes.

  “Indeed, it has.” She smiled, though it seemed brittle.

  “You could be her twin,” he said, and there was a great pressure in him suddenly, some terrible danger lurking near th
at he could sense but could not avoid. He could do nothing but look at her, losing her with more and more certainty, with every word he spoke. “I could mistake you for her myself.”

  He saw how stricken she looked for one single split second—before she hid it away, her smooth, tough exterior slamming back into place.

  He hated himself. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to stop all of this right here, right now, when the only people they’d hurt were themselves. While there was still time.

  But he was not a man who knew how to lose. How to walk away. How to do anything but win, by any means necessary. Even this.

  Even if winning this long battle for Whitney Media meant losing Becca. He did not know how he would live without either—and he’d wanted that damned company first.

  “All right, then,” she said, dropping her gaze as if what she’d seen in his was too much, too upsetting. “We might as well get going, then.”