by Maisey Yates
It was what she’d signed on for, and now it seemed unbearable.
She didn’t know if she had the strength to walk away, even if she wanted to. But she didn’t know if she had the strength to stay, either. To stay and fulfill, in her husband’s mind, the same thing that Beacon Hill property did. Nothing more than status.
She slowly took her clothes off, hands shaking as she folded her top and slacks and set them on the bed. She picked up the red dress and held it in front of her naked body, looking at herself in the mirror.
She picked the dress up and pulled it on, contorting her arm so that she could pull the zipper into place. It was daring, sexy in an overt way.
She picked the wrap up and draped it around her shoulders. It went a long way toward making the dress more respectable. She flung it back on the bed. If he wanted a show, she’d give the people a show. And if he didn’t like it, that was too bad.
The gala was crowded with glittering men and women, the majority of them in black. Vanessa knew she stood out like a very vulgar sore thumb. For the first time in her life she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the gathering. It wasn’t a very good feeling.
But when she’d come out of the bedroom, Lazaro’s eyes had lit with hungry flames, his expression telling her just how much he approved—until she’d told him she was going without the handy cover he’d given her. Since they’d arrived at the party he’d had his hand on her, on her back, her waist, his manner possessive.
She sighed and took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. If his goal was to have them be the center of attention, his mission was well and truly accomplished. She was maybe being a little more obvious than he’d intended, but she hadn’t been about to just cater to his wishes. If she’d had another dress at her disposal at his penthouse, she would have simply gone with that.
She tried to let the stares slide off her, tried not to worry about them.
Of course, it might not have been her the other guests were staring at. The women could just as easily be staring at Lazaro and not at her at all. In his custom-made black suit he looked a cut above every other man present. His olive skin was complemented perfectly by his red tie, and the suit showed the shape of his fabulous physique. It certainly made her want to undo every button and see the man beneath. She was sure she wasn’t the only one with that thought.
Lazaro worked the room, his natural charisma on display tonight, charisma she had been pulled in by at the age of sixteen when he’d flashed her that killer smile of his for the first time.
She was so proud of him. Of all he had become. And she was merely his invitation to the event. She gripped the stem of her glass more tightly.
“Lazaro.” A man Vanessa recognized from some gatherings at the Pickett estate stepped forward to shake Lazaro’s hand. “I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you about some of the things going on at Garrison Limited.”
“Have you?” Lazaro asked.
“Yes, I … Well, times being what they are, I thought you might want to come and give me a consultation on what I can do to keep up with the changing market.”
“You can call my secretary and arrange an appointment.”
“I will, I will. But … would you like to come and meet my business partner?”
Vanessa could sense Lazaro tensing beside her, could feel the annoyance radiating from him like a physical force.
“Of course,” he said, ever the diplomat. “Hold this, please, Vanessa.” He placed his champagne flute in her hand and walked away with the other man.
Vanessa’s stomach sank into her toes as a similar scene flashed through her mind. The night at the art museum. Lazaro had been with a woman then. Vanessa had dubbed her a human cup-holder at the time.
She looked at her hand, at the full glass of champagne, the condensation running down the sides as the bubbles floated up to the surface. She set it down on the nearest table and leaned against the wall, dizzy with anger and hurt.
She wasn’t different. She was the same as every other woman he’d ever been with.
No, even worse, she was different. He was stuck with her if he wanted to make it to the top, because of her name, her connections, things that were beyond her control. Things that couldn’t be bought or negotiated for. If he could have done it any other way, he would have.
She was sure of that now.
It struck her now, just how foolish she was. That she’d imagined he could care for her when he carried so much anger toward her family, anger she couldn’t even blame him for.
But, as sorry as she was for the sins of her father, they weren’t her sins. They never had been. Her only crime had been loving him, wanting more from him than he could give. And she had committed it again twelve years on.
Because she loved him. And all she would ever be to him was status. A symbol of thoroughly meted-out vengeance. A trophy. He had never pretended otherwise. She was a fool.
He would never love her for who she was. Only for what she could do for him. And if she couldn’t do anything for him anymore he would discard her without a backward glance. There was no doubt in her mind.
Could she handle another lifetime of that? Her father had only ever used her. He had held Thomas’s memory, her love for her late brother, over her head to get her to do what she was told. He had played her like a master all of her life.
And Lazaro would have even more power. Because he had her heart.
“No,” she whispered the word.
She had always defined herself by her last name. By the family legacy. But she had found more to herself in Buenos Aires. In Lazaro’s arms. There was more to her than the preservation of a business. More to her than becoming a status symbol for her husband.
And she knew for a fact that she couldn’t stay with him and take the crumbs of his affection. She deserved more. She deserved what everyone else had. Freedom. Choices.
Her heart expanded, even as it cracked inside her. She had the freedom to make choices, to follow the path she wanted to go down. She always had had.
She was making a choice now. For herself.
She looked at Lazaro, engrossed in his conversation, and then at the glass of champagne she’d set on the table.
Then she turned and walked out of the ballroom. Out of the building.
She called her driver. “I need to be picked up.”
“Vanessa?” The voice on the other side of her door was frantic. Familiar.
She opened it and her heart jumped when she saw Lazaro, still dressed in his suit, his tie untied and draped over his shoulders, his jacket open, the top few buttons of his shirt undone.
“Where did you go?” he asked, his voice soft.
“I left.”
“So I gathered, when I searched every last room in the building and didn’t find you. I thought that something had happened to you.”
The bleakness in his eyes, in his tone, spoke the truth of it.
Lazaro looked at her standing there, arms folded beneath her breasts, her dress, the dress she’d gone out of her way to tantalize him with, long discarded, and not by him as he’d fantasized. She was wearing blue pajama pants and a gray long-sleeved top, her makeup scrubbed off, leaving her face pink.
When he looked closer, he could tell it was not pink from being scrubbed. Her eyes were rimmed in red and there were shimmering tracks on her cheeks.
“Did something happen?” he asked, stepping into her home, not bothering to wait for an invitation. “Did someone hurt you?” He swore then and there that whoever it was would wish that Lazaro had been merciful and simply killed him. Because he would ruin the man. No one would ever harm Vanessa. Ever. She would want for nothing, not while she was his woman. His wife.
When he’d realized she wasn’t at the gala, that she was gone … he’d imagined every horrible scenario possible, all of it flashing through his mind’s eye at a rapid pace as panic flooded his body.
He’d stared into his future, one without her, black and empty, stretching before hi
m. Blank nothing. The terror of it had been beyond anything he’d ever imagined.
But she was home in her pajamas. Safe.
“No. Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I realized something.”
“What was that?” he asked, his heart thundering, his body still high from the rush of adrenaline that had been propelling him since he’d realized she was gone.
Her brows locked together, her expression fierce and sad and completely stunning. “I can’t marry you. More than that, I don’t want to marry you.”
The meaning of her words became clear slowly, and along with the meaning, a searing, tearing pain started deep in his chest, growing as her words resonated in him until it was a blinding, overwhelming ache that overtook him, immobilized his limbs, made his heart feel as if it had been removed and discarded.
“We have a deal.” He managed to force the words out.
“We can work something else out. I don’t want to do this,” she said.
“Why is that, Vanessa? Because you didn’t like the stares you were getting tonight, being with me? The man from the gutter? Or was it that the damn dress wasn’t good enough for you? Do you need a bigger ring, is that it?”
“Lazaro …”
“Enough,” he cut her off, unable to bear hearing her reasoning. Unable to be told how much he was wanting in her eyes. How beneath her he was. Dios, it choked him, made him feel as though his chest was caving in.
Desperation clawed at him, a black hole that threatened to take him down. He couldn’t lose her. Not again. “You will marry me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to be in charge of Pickett anymore. I don’t care about my father’s legacy.”
“And what about the employees? Their jobs?” If there was a problem, he would solve it. He always left himself the means to do so. If Vanessa thought otherwise, then she’d thoroughly underestimated him.
“Of course I care, but they’ll still have jobs even if you replace me as CEO.”
“Not if there is no more company.”
She took a step back, her hands on her chest. “What are you saying?”
“I’ve bought more shares.”
He’d never stopped acquiring them. When the opportunity presented, he had taken advantage. Leverage was valuable, and he had gone after all the leverage he could get himself. He was glad he had now. Because she was intent on backing out, and he couldn’t allow it.
Her eyes widened, her lip curling into a snarl. “When?”
“I never stopped buying them. The company was going down, and there were people eager to get out and get what they could. I’m now the majority shareholder by a very large margin, and I’m sure that, given that the recovery of Pickett is still in its fledgling stage and not one-hundred-percent viable, the board would be open to the idea of liquidating and distributing assets.”
“But all those people … some of them have been with Pickett for more than twenty years and there is no comparable place for them to work, not for all of them, or even half of them, not here.”
“It’s your choice, Vanessa. It’s on your head if they lose their jobs.” Lazaro turned and walked back out into the frigid night, his body wracked with pain, guilt spreading through him like a sickness.
He couldn’t lose her. He needed time to think.
He needed her.
Vanessa moved to the door, her heart in her throat. Before, he might not have loved her, but now it looked as if he hated her. She put a hand to her stomach and tried to ease the nausea, tried to ease the pain that was flowing freely through her body.
She had thought, for a few fleeting moments, that she would sell her house and go somewhere else. Cut ties from her family. Be Vanessa, just Vanessa and not The Pickett Family with all of the expectations and baggage.
She could study photography, as she’d dreamed of doing when she was younger.
But the bottom had fallen out of that fantasy when she’d realized that when she pictured starting over, Lazaro was in the background, his warmth and encouragement spurring her on.
And then even that little fantasy had been crushed by the force of his anger when he’d shown up at her door tonight.
She thought of all the people who would lose their jobs. Hundreds of them. Family men and women, some of them with no other job experience.
Boiling anger churned in her stomach, anger that he would do this to so many people. That he could keep doing this to her. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she whispered.
It would be so much simpler if he would. If she could excise him, her feelings for him, from her life. And yet, it seemed impossible. Twelve years apart hadn’t managed to accomplish it.
She couldn’t let him do it. Couldn’t let him destroy the lives of her workers. The legacy that belonged to her family, her future children.
“Lazaro.” She stepped outside, arms crossed over her chest as she jogged after him. “Lazaro.”
He turned, his expression unreadable in the dim light provided by the street lamps. “I’ll marry you,” she said.
Lazaro studied her expression, the hard glitter in her dark eyes, the deep sadness peering out beneath her rage. He felt no triumph in that moment, no sense of victory. Only the need to hold her in his arms and the knowledge that, at the moment, she would not allow it.
“I’m going to get in touch with a wedding coordinator tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll have the wedding as soon as possible.”
She nodded slowly. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”
He had her. She was his. She had agreed to marry him.
And he felt as if he had truly lost her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“As soon as possible” turned out to be two weeks. And they had gone by in a blur of motion and anguish and tiny bouts of happiness that had given way to stark slaps from reality.
Vanessa sort of hated reality. She liked the cocoon of her fantasies. The ones that seemed to have been left behind in Buenos Aires.
The wedding day seemed too bright. The sun shone a little bit too much, the sound of birds and traffic was too loud. It was too clear. And she couldn’t hide from it.
Vanessa shifted her bouquet from one hand to the other. Orchids. And they were gorgeous. So was her dress, a flowing, fitted white gown that skimmed her curves and flattered her figure. It was elegant, sophisticated and without an ounce of princess, which suited her perfectly.
It was all romantic and dreamy, at odds with the prenuptial agreement she’d signed earlier in the week that kept her assets and her future husband’s firmly separated and had custody agreements for hypothetical children and punishments for infidelities. That had been one of the week’s low points.
One of the high points was booking St. John’s on short notice, a lovely, historic cathedral with stained glass and high arched ceilings. Everything was just how she would have wanted it if she’d had years to plan.
Well, had she had her choice her groom would have seen her as a person and not a commodity. He would have loved her. As she loved him. Still. In spite of the ugliness that had passed between them. Lazaro Marino had a piece of her. He always had had.
It was because she saw the man beneath the trappings. She saw the boy he used to be. The boy with the easy smile. The boy who had had a straight nose before her father had sent his henchman to break him and to steal that perfection. To steal his smile.
If Lazaro was hard, full of anger, so much of it was on her father’s shoulders.
That was just one of the many reasons she was walking down the aisle alone today. She already felt like a thing, an asset. She wasn’t about to let her father “give her away” to Lazaro.
She sucked in a deep breath and walked through the double doors and into the sanctuary, her heart pounding hard in her chest.
She looked up at Lazaro’s face, and, for a moment, everything, everyone receded. The clarity was gone, and things were fuzzy around the edges again. For a moment, she thought she saw somethi
ng soften in him, thought she saw a return of the heat in his eyes—not just the heat, but something tender, an emotion she’d never seen on his face before. An emotion she would only ever see there in dreams.
And then it was gone, replaced with that hardened resolve, that flat, unreadable mask that Lazaro wore to keep her, and everyone else, out.
His voice was measured, controlled as he spoke vows she knew he didn’t mean. Her voice cracked, wavered, because she meant every word. And she wished that she didn’t.
The priest pronounced them man and wife, and gave them the invitation to kiss. She hadn’t touched Lazaro in over two weeks, not any kind of contact. Her heart fluttered as she looked at him, and this time she knew, the heat wasn’t imagined.
He swept her hair over her shoulder and cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing her skin gently as he studied her face.
And she realized he was waiting for her. It was her move. Her decision.
She angled her head and leaned into him, touching her lips to his tentatively. His hold on her tightened and he wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her to him. She clutched his shoulders tightly, kissing him with every ounce of passion pent up inside of her, and all of the anger and the love and the sadness. Because if he was marrying her, he was getting all of it.
She wasn’t just a passive thing to add to his collection. She was a woman. A person. She was Vanessa. He might be able to force her into marriage, but he couldn’t change who she was.
He kissed her back, matching her emotion, her passion, making her dizzy with it.
When they parted, they were both breathing heavily. Vanessa felt her cheeks heat, because during that kiss, the crowd of people witnessing their sacred vows had very much faded away, and now they were in crystal clear focus.
Lazaro leaned in to the priest and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’m a very lucky man.”
That broke some of the tension and brought laughter from even their stuffiest witnesses. It made Vanessa’s cheeks heat further. Made her body ache with the longing to have more of him. To do more. To make love with him.
Tonight was their wedding night, and it seemed as though that was what should happen. It was the only thing that felt right. They were back on civil footing, but after the way things had happened … she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about anything.
