The ride over to Van Housen’s exclusive party, thrown in what was sure to be a deliberately intimidating club in the West Village, was excruciating.
Becca felt hot, then cold. Feverish. She could not do this. She could not.
And yet she had no choice. Not simply because she’d signed that damned contract, but because she knew how terribly Theo wanted those shares. How he even believed he needed them, as if they would complete him—make up, somehow, for his childhood. And if she had it in her power to give them to him, how could she do anything but?
No matter what it cost her. No matter what it took.
But, God, how could she do this?
“You must make sure he takes you back to his apartment following the party,” Theo said as the car slowed in a sea of yellow taxicabs, all fighting their way up the avenue.
“I know,” she said, not looking at him. She sat there, tense and rigid, and tried to tell herself that everything would be okay despite all clear evidence to the contrary. That all of this would work out somehow—but she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Do you?” He turned then, trapping her, and she was thrown back to the day she’d first met him, when he’d looked at her just like this—so calculating, so cold. She wanted to squirm away from him, put distance between them, because she feared that what she truly wanted to do was throw herself into his arms and make him put a stop to this cold and nasty little nightmare.
But it was no nightmare—it was the situation Theo had created. Deliberately. This night had always been coming. This was always how this would all end. How had she let herself forget it?
“Of course,” she hissed, temper mixing with hopelessness and making her sound far braver than she felt. “I may have agreed to play dress up and prostitute myself on your orders, Theo, but that lapse in judgment does not affect my ability to understand what’s expected of me.”
His amber eyes gleamed, boring into her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away, to give even that much. Suddenly it seemed as if everything—the whole world, her heart, this terrible night—hinged on her ability to hold her own. To challenge him. To … not meekly accept tonight what she’d signed up for in such ignorance weeks before.
“I do not recall asking you to prostitute yourself,” he bit out. She tilted her head slightly to one side, considering him for a moment.
“What do you think will happen?” she asked lightly, though she could feel her own temper, her own fear, beneath. “When this man sees his lover walk into the room, after all these weeks, what do you think he will expect of her when he takes her home? A cozy chat?” She laughed, though it was a hollow sound. “That’s not very realistic, is it?”
“Let me make sure I fully comprehend you,” he said, seemingly from between his teeth. “Your expectation is that you will have to sleep with Van Housen to get the will?”
She shrugged with far more nonchalance than she felt, refusing to look away from him, no matter how grim his amber-colored gaze grew.
“How else could this play out?” she asked. “This is real life, Theo, not some game. Real people will presumably have real expectations. Are you pretending you haven’t considered the possibility?”
She should not have latched on to that flash of temper that he reined in so quickly, nor clung so tightly to the look of something very like anguish that shone briefly in his eyes. The truth was, this was Theo. He might very well feel any number of things. But he wanted that will more. He wanted those shares. She even understood why—he was a man who came from nothing, and had built this whole life for himself with nothing but his determination, his single-minded focus. What was she next to all of that? At best, she was one more sacrifice he’d have to make in service of his ambitions, no doubt one among a great many.
If her heart was broken, that was no one’s fault but her own.
“Van Housen is usually entirely too addled by whatever substance he happens to be using to threaten anyone’s virtue,” Theo said quietly. “The only thing I would worry about, if I were you, is the possibility of his getting sick. Perhaps all over you.”
“Please.” She leaned back against the seat, and scoffed at him. “He will be reuniting with his longtime lover, and you think he’ll simply swoon out of the way? How convenient your imagination is, Theo. But I think you’ll find real life is rarely so neat and orderly.”
A muscle moved in his jaw, and he reached over to pull a strand of her hair between his fingers, tugging on it gently. Why should so simple a gesture make her ache inside, make her hover too close to tears?
“You seem unduly eager to live up to your worst expectations of this evening,” he said, his voice a ribbon of sound, a low growl.
“I’m realistic,” she contradicted him. She met his gaze, challenge and plea. “Wasn’t this what you wanted, Theo? Isn’t this what all of this has been about? Creating the perfect honey trap?”
“No!” he gritted out, and she could see it cost him. She could see how he fought himself. She should not take a kind of pleasure in that. She should not let hope cling so hard to her heart, making it swell when it should know better. When she should know better.
“Then what?” She was taunting him, goading him. She couldn’t seem to help herself. He moved closer now, his hands taking her shoulders in a tight grip, hauling her to him, his hard mouth a scant, tortured breath from hers.
“I don’t want him touching you,” he whispered, so low she almost didn’t hear him at all, and then he kissed her.
He claimed her. Possessed her utterly. His mouth took and took, branding her. And she exulted in it, feeling fire surge into a wild blaze beneath his hands, wriggling closer to him on the seat, her whole being focused on this kiss, on his mouth, on Theo … .
But then he set her away from him, his face shuttered. Blank. He sat back and stared out the window, his expression brooding. Distant. And she knew. Before he opened his mouth, she knew.
“I must have that will,” he said, his voice hoarse. As if it hurt him, too.
“Of course you must,” she replied, not at all successful at keeping the bitterness from her voice, even as her lips still tasted of his kiss, even as her whole mouth felt deliciously swollen, even as she fought to keep herself from pulling him close and losing herself in him one more time.
“You say that as if I have deceived you in some way,” he said, still looking out at the city streets, the lights of the bodegas and the ebb and flow of people and cars, the famous pulse of Manhattan just outside the window. “As if this was not the plan from the start. The plan to which you agreed, and for which you will be handsomely compensated.”
She laughed then, because of course he was right, and hadn’t she been telling herself the very same thing? But hearing him say it cracked something inside of her, ripped it right open, and she couldn’t seem to help the feelings that swamped her then. Anger. Betrayal. Deep, deep hurt. The love for him that made her want to fix this, fix him, fix it somehow.
And beyond all that, her fatalistic understanding that, as usual, she would not be the one chosen here. She was the discarded child, the Whitney family bastard. Never the golden girl. Never the first choice—always the substitute. She would not win him. She would win nothing. She would leave with her motherís estate, Emily’s tuition money, a new hairstyle, memories that she would hoard for a lifetime, and the weary knowledge that she was a survivor. So she would survive this—him—too, little as she could imagine it now. She would. That was what she always did, didn’t she? One way or another.
It all added up to more than she’d had when she’d come here, she thought, and wanted nothing more than to give in to the heat that threatened to spill from her eyes. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t, not even here, when the wretched little truth of her feelings for him—and more to the point, the paleness of his for her—was so horribly, spectacularly clear to her.
None of it made her want to spare his feelings. Not when hers were in shreds all around her.
; “You decided what kind of man you wanted to be long before you met me, Theo,” she said then, sadly. His head snapped around, and she found her knee jumping again in agitation. She pressed it down with both hands, amazed to see that her fingers weren’t shaking.
“I beg your pardon?” His voice was icy. Or was that pain? How terrible that she wanted it to be. She wanted to hurt him, she acknowledged, because she wanted to know if it was possible for him to be hurt, especially by her. Because—she could admit—some part of her clung to the idea that it would mean something if he felt what she felt, or even some small part of it. It had to. Didn’t it have to?
“This is who you are,” she said, because she had nothing to lose. She had nothing at all. So why not speak the truth, at the very least? “This will is more important to you than anything else.”
“You don’t—” he began, his eyes so very grim, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“More important than me, to be sure,” she said, interrupting him.
“Becca …”
“Don’t!” she blurted out, that great well of despair crashing over her, threatening to drown her then and there. Somehow, she kept her head above the water. Somehow. “Don’t pretend that this is something that’s not.”
“Maybe it is,” he said, stealing her breath, but he was shaking his head, his eyes so intent on hers. It seemed as if centuries stretched between them, as if they hung suspended in time, and she hardly noticed when the car slid to a stop at the curb.
He reached over and took her hand, holding it in his, and she wanted to howl—to scream—to rage. To weep. But she only sat there, captured by him as securely as if he held her in his fist, and wanted what she couldn’t have. Again.
“But it doesn’t change a thing,” he said, sealing their doom. “It can’t.”
Becca had no memory of exiting the car, but she was on the sidewalk too quickly, shivering slightly. She told herself it was the cool night air, the wind that picked up when it slid through the urban canyons and teased at her skimpy dress. But she wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all herself.
“Becca,” Theo said, her name a command. And, as ever, she found herself heeding it—hating that she stopped walking. Hating that her body responded to him no matter what her head demanded. She despaired of herself.
“We can have nothing else to talk about,” she gritted out at him as he drew close. Part of her wanted to shake off the hand he put on her arm—but only a part. The rest of her wanted to purr like a cat, to bask in the heat of him, the strength. “I am all too aware of who Van Housen is and how I’m to approach him. I am apparently more cognizant of the potential dangers of the evening than you, but as I am the one who will suffer through it, I suppose that makes sense.”
“I don’t want you to do this,” he said in a gravelly voice, as if it was torn from him, as if he hardly knew what he would say before it was out there.
Hope warred with fatalism, and she only stared at him. Wishing. Hoping. Yet not believing this could end any other way but the way they’d planned. How could it?
“Then tell me not to do it.” She was whispering, but at least she was not begging. At least she was keeping her tears at bay. And the pleading she could feel swirling around inside of her, so close to spilling out. At least she still had her pride—and she had the sickening feeling that it might be the only thing she’d leave here with.
“Becca …” he said again, his thumb stroking the bare skin of her arm, his body so big, so dangerously lean and powerful, blocking out the whole of Manhattan. “I wish I could change all of this.”
“You can.” She shook her head, more to fend off the coming tears than anything else. “You are the only one who can.”
His head dipped down, and he looked defeated. This strong, capable man. This man who had climbed to such unimaginable heights, all on the strength of his will. His desire. His ferocious and unwavering focus. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, and she let her fingers drift up to his lean jaw, holding him.
It was one thing to poke at him. But she could not bear to see him truly hurt, no matter what she’d thought.
For a moment they stood there, holding each other so gently, as if they were not on a city street at all—as if they could stand there forever, taking strength from each other’s touch, aching as one.
“I wish I could be a better man,” he said finally, quietly, his eyes tortured when they met hers. “But I don’t know how.”
Becca wavered slightly in her high, impossible shoes, and had to bite her lip to keep from sobbing outright. She had known this would hurt. She’d known it for what seemed like forever. But she hadn’t expected that it would hurt him, too. Or that it would hurt her quite this much. She couldn’t seem to breathe.
She stepped back from him, though everything in her screamed in protest. His hand dropped away, and he was blurry through the unshed tears, and then she turned and started walking toward the club entrance.
She blinked back the tears, squared her shoulders and told herself to breathe.
She would do this. She would. Somehow, she would.
When he called her name again, she stiffened, but did not turn around. The velvet ropes and red carpets were only steps ahead of her, and she honestly didn’t know how much more of this she could live through. It had already left scars so deep they were better called wounds, and she doubted she would ever heal.
And she couldn’t take much more of it. She simply couldn’t.
“Becca,” he said again, and he was closer, too, and so this time she whipped around, her nerves fraying almost to the breaking point.
“No more!” she snapped at him, poking a finger toward his hard chest. “This is going to be hard enough without you making it a hundred times more difficult! You have to either let me go inside and handle this myself, or—”
“No,” Theo said. “Don’t go inside.”
But he did not look happy about that. He didn’t even look tortured, or grimly determined—or any kind of thing that might make sense. If anything, he looked dazed, and she followed his gaze to the phone he held in his hand.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
He rubbed his hand over his face, and then, at last, his amber gaze connected with hers—but he was miles away. As unreachable as he’d been way back at the beginning. Becca swallowed, hard.
“It’s Larissa,” Theo said, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying himself. As if he was testing the words, examining them. “She just woke up.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LARISSA’S ROOM WAS buzzing with voices. Becca could see various medical personnel swarming around her bed, poking and prodding and asking questions, while in the small sitting room, Bradford and Helen sat, silent and watchful—and then openly horrified at the sight of Becca walking in with Theo.
“Good God!” Bradford cried, his face twisting. “Why on earth would you bring this creature here? And at such a time?”
That was when it hit Becca—forcefully—how ghoulish it was to be the person dressed up like the woman who’d been expected to die just as everyone was coming to terms with the fact she wasn’t going to die after all.
Because that hadn’t been what she’d been concentrating on during the car ride across town from the West Village. She and Theo had sat in a taut, simmering silence. She’d had no idea what he might have been thinking, and had been afraid to ask. Meanwhile, her head had spun around and around and around. What did this mean? You know what it means, her practical inner voice had shot back at her. You just don’t want to believe it.
She’d been aware that she should be worried about what this meant for Emily’s future—if she would still get that impossibly large sum of money now, since it wasn’t her fault she’d been unable to complete her part of the contract. But she couldn’t worry about that. Not then. Not when her whole being seemed to be stuck on a precipice, tottering in the wind, and all too aware that she was about to tumble—because all sh
e wanted to know was what this meant for Theo. For Theo, and for Becca herself. For, God help her, the both of them.
If Larissa was awake, that meant Theo was still engaged to her. And that made everything that had happened between them sordid and wrong. She’d felt her stomach twist as the thoughts raced through her brain. It had been one thing when Larissa was for all intents and purposes already dead. But this.
Becca wasn’t the kind of woman who could merrily jump into bed with a committed man. The very thought made her stomach turn. And yet, sitting there in that car, she’d reached the inescapable conclusion that she’d become that kind of woman, despite her best intentions, along with everything else she’d become in this place. With these people. How could she consider them corrupt when she was clearly no better?
“I don’t understand what happened,” Theo said, his rough tone snapping Becca back to the present, where both Whitneys gaped at her as if she’d thrown something in their faces. “How is this possible?”
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