Paper Marriage Proposition

by Red Garnier

  Eleven

  He wanted to see her.

  One night, one long board meeting, three phone calls, one conference call and two coffees later, Landon Gage wanted to see his wife in the middle of the morning.

  Holy God, he’d never felt like this. Superhuman, all powerful, complete.

  In the six years before her he’d needed nothing but himself. Now it was early morning, and he stood in his office by the sunlit window, remembering how he’d woken up with a warm, snuggly Beth less than four hours ago. His body hungered still, an animal awakened and demanding to take every need and craving not appeased for years. He wanted her again—right now.

  But he would not be satisfied with just her body. He wanted something else.

  The family he’d been robbed of.

  Her trust, her respect, hell, her love.

  He wanted it.

  He’d watched her hair, thick and lustrous, tumble past her shoulders as she lay asleep, and he’d memorized her lips, wet and plump and desirable, and his face had tightened with pent-up need as he stood in his Boss suit, dressed for work and unwilling to leave.

  She’d stirred in bed like a sleepy kitten and stretched out her arms above her head, her breasts peeping out from under the covers. He’d never seen anything so beautiful. He wanted to bend over and gently take the pink peaks of her nipples and suckle her, but instead he sat next to her and placed a hand on her hips, caressing her.

  “Rough night?” he asked, huskily. He caught her scent in the sheets, mingled with his, and he felt light-headed.

  Beth made a sultry sound and rolled to her side to face him. Her smile was endless, her cheeks flushed. “I still think I dreamed it. You?” Her voice was throaty with sleep—he liked it.

  The urge to taste her again rippled in his insides. He bent, smelling her, inhaling her, a sensation he recognized as anticipation heating his blood and groin as he kissed her lips. “I’ve got to go.”

  She pulled him to her. A prickle of excitement tightened every inch of his body as their mouths tangled, so he kissed her harder. But his thoughts intruded, tormenting his insides. Halifax must be taken care of….

  He set himself free. “I’ve got to go,” he repeated, more sternly.

  She sat up with a frown, glancing at the clock. “What time is it?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  He watched her tie the ribbon of her wrinkled gown, and his body screamed for him to rip off his tie and jump back in bed with her.

  He forced himself to take several steps to the door. “I pride myself in being the first at the office. I’m late as it is.”

  Her eyes twinkled with laughter. “So everyone will know you spent last night in bed with me, then.”

  Only I’ll know, he thought. And I’ll know it all day.

  Lust vibrated inside him at the thought, tightening his legs, his groin, as he watched her walk over on those amazing bare legs. “You’re my wife,” he said, gutturally. “From this moment on, you sleep in my bed.”

  Instead of protesting, she nodded slowly, which only served to heighten his desire to alarming levels. They’d trusted each other completely, no walls, no deceit. She’d told him things, about how she’d wanted him, and he’d told her things, too.

  “Maybe you should stay awhile,” she said in a wispy voice, fingering his collar. “And I’ll make you breakfast, Landon.”

  Court hearing, he thought as he gazed fixedly at her soft, delicious mouth. Need to schedule the court hearing. Then Beth leaves and I go back to the way I was before. No! I won’t allow it. She’s mine—she’s staying with me. Me.

  God, but she was caring and warm and giving. He could stay with her all morning.

  But he didn’t. He hadn’t.

  He’d exerted every ounce of willpower, told her to go buy something for court and had made it to the office on time before his brothers. On time to his meetings, to give Beth what she wanted. Her son.

  He’d never been so determined to nail Halifax before—as though that one action would make his every unknown dream come true.

  From 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., Landon had closeted himself with his lawyers and brothers to review the evidence they had on Halifax so far. Mason, the attorney at family law, assured him that with the taped confession Julian had wheedled out of Hector’s head nurse, the odds were on their side. Not to mention, the staggering evidence of health fraud stacking up on Hector’s back. The man was embezzling pharmaceuticals with the help of a wanted Mexican smuggler. He was robbing health insurance companies by duplicating claims, and prescribing expensive, dangerous medications the patients didn’t really need.

  The guy was a con man, a liar and a fraud with an M.D.

  Once they’d finished their discussion and wrapped up their plans, Landon attempted to delve back into work, but kept thinking about the tousled siren he’d left this morning in bed.

  He wanted to feel confident about the hearing, but too much rode on that one day, one decision, to find any ease for the stiff muscles in his back. He felt tense, primed like a prized fighting bull—and damned hot at the thought of being with his wife again.

  He wanted to see her. Smack in the middle of the day, he wanted to see his wife.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the house, but when Martha mentioned Bethany had gone out with Thomas to the mall, he rang for his assistant.

  “Donna, I’m taking an early lunch with my wife. Reroute all my calls.”

  In the midst of a shopping frenzy, Beth opened the dressing-room door. “Miss, would you happen to have this in—”

  Landon’s Hermès tie stood an inch from her nose and Beth squeaked and covered herself as if she were naked. She stumbled back. “What are you doing here? Get out!”

  “Relax.” He stepped inside, shut the door and leaned back on his heels, forehead furrowed as he regarded the skirt and jacket she’d tried on. “Drop your hands, let me see.”

  Beth dropped her hands, wanting to pull a bag over her face, she felt so red. She forced herself to remain still as his eyes traveled her, lingering in indecent places. The suit was about as secretarial as they came, but she could’ve been stark naked for the way his eyes regarded her. “Good.” He met her gaze with a sarcastic tilt of his lips. “For a woman twice your age, perhaps.”

  “I need to look respectable for court,” she reminded him.

  “You can look both young and respectable.” Suddenly, he was deeper into the room, prying through the choices that hung to the side. With the bright overhead lights, his face was perfectly clear. Bronze, chiseled, he was a Greek god.

  “Can I help you with any sizes?” The saleslady peeped through the shuttered door.

  He straightened as though the woman had been speaking to him. He flung the door open and Beth heard a startled gasp. “Yes. Bring my wife something elegant, expensive and unique. Not too showy, well-cut…” He turned his attention to Beth. “Your size?”

  “Six.”

  “Six it is. Anything else, sir?”

  He studied the lingerie piled on the corner chair—white—which she had discreetly brought over to try on.

  “And lingerie,” he added, watching Beth’s reaction as he lifted a plain cotton panty up to his line of vision. “Something feminine and smaller than this.”

  Bethany could find no place to hide, with all the mirrors in the room. She saw four Landons—his back—his profile—his front. All of the sights were quite mesmerizing. His fingers touching the panty was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen.

  Landon plopped down on the sole chair and folded his arms behind his head as the woman came in with an assortment of clothes. Beth dared not look at the prices, but the fabrics were exquisite, the cuts sublime.

  All it took was a man in Hugo Boss to say, “Bring something nice,” and suddenly, voilà, Chanel was on the rack.

  “Akris,” the saleslady said of a cream dress with a boat-cut shoulder. “You won’t want to take it off. Like second skin, very flattering on.” She turned to Land
on. “And—” She pulled out bra after bra, panty after panty, of the most decadent lace imaginable. “For your wife.”

  “Leave them here.”

  She did, and then asked if Beth needed help with the Akris dress. “It’s difficult to button in the back,” she explained. “Rows and rows of buttons.”

  Landon had opened a magazine among a stack on a small table and pretended to be riveted. The saleslady proceeded to help Beth out of the jacket and skirt so she could get into the dress. “I’m used to the men hardly even looking. They’ve seen everything,” she muttered into Beth’s ear.

  “Yes, but mine is—”

  “Gorgeous, darling, oh, goodness, the ladies outside are just waiting to have an eyeful.”

  Beth frowned. Oh, were they? She pretended nonchalance as the woman slipped the Akris dress on and began to work button after button, and when Beth turned, Landon’s hot, appreciative gaze hit her like a blast.

  “Well,” the lady said, patting her back, “what do you think?”

  Beth caught her reflection; she looked good, the dress fitting beautifully and making her seem even curvier than she actually was—which in her case was a good thing.

  But the opinion both women waited for did not come.

  For the longest time, Landon said nothing. Then gruffly, “Leave us, please.”

  He set the magazine down, and Beth’s heart began to thump wildly as the saleslady departed. The dress detailed everything—the soft mounds of her breasts, the peaked nipples, her hips.

  “Do you like it, Landon?”

  She needed to hear his opinion now, because his gaze made her mind pull this way and that, and her stomach kept fluttering.

  He reached out to her waist, inspecting the texture, his features hard with concentration as he considered. He fondled a breast, pushed the mound high in his hand and rubbed gently. “Why did you marry him?”

  His touch and all that it caused inside her made it difficult to speak. “I told you. I was young. And pregnant. And stupid—” As she spoke, he looped his fingers through the gold belt around her waist and drew her toward him. As their hips met, their lips met, and she felt him respond, growing harder against her, groaning as he kissed her.

  When he stopped, he let out a breath of frustration, and released her. But he did not step back, continued caging her in with his body. He reached around her and plucked open a button, then another. “Why him?”

  She reached behind her and tried closing the opening, but his hand was already there, stroking downward. She watched his face contort in hunger. Felt his jealousy, how it was eating at him, burned in his eyes. “He…he did something nice for me. I thought that meant he was a nice person, and I was too young to know better.”

  He undid a couple more buttons. His big hands trapped her buttocks in each. He kneaded the flesh. “Me buying you clothes is nice. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, you—you buy me nice clothes, thank you.”

  “And yet I’m still the bastard who will help you sink him.” His erection scraped against her pelvis and he held her there, his prisoner, and bent his head to let the tip of his tongue dip into her cleavage.

  The hot wet heat of his tongue made a sound rise to her throat, a sound of agony. “Yes.”

  He gripped her bottom tighter and hoisted her up in the air, forcing her legs around him, forcing her to cling as he braced her back against the wall. He caught her earlobe between his teeth, making her toes start to tingle as he nibbled.

  She flushed all over. “Landon, don’t.”

  His mouth teased her, approaching hers, retreating then coming closer once again. She shuddered as he pressed into her. Her nails dug into his shoulders.

  “Do you see that bit of red over there?” He jerked his head toward the hangers that held all the wicked lingerie.

  “Yes.”

  He touched her cheek with three fingers, stroking downward so sensually she could burst. “I want to know it’s under this dress.”

  “Landon, I don’t…”

  “Say, ‘Yes, Landon’—that’s all I want you to say. No one will know. Only me and you. Our own personal little revenge over Halifax.” When he moved her arms up high over her head and lowered his head he added, “Let’s go out tonight, you and me, Beth.”

  “You’re asking me on a date,” she panted, breathless and yet struggling to get free. “Won’t our mamas love that.”

  “I don’t care about our mamas. What do you say?”

  A laugh escaped her and he broke into a grin, chuckling with her. Her husband. Her wonderful, strong, thirty-three year old husband. On a date.

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her lightly on the forehead before he released her. “You better be ready for me.”

  But he’d worked Beth so well she thought perhaps her husband should be the one who should be ready for her.

  He sent her home with an Akris dress and one very sexy red lingerie set and a mind that whirled and whirled with memories of what they’d almost done in a Neiman Marcus dressing room.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she delved into the new “Share Your Recipe” section of the catering website. When the phone rang, she didn’t think twice about answering. She lifted it from the desk with a happy “Yes?”

  “Outside Maggiano’s restaurant at the RIM shopping center. Meet me there in twenty minutes—or you can forget about David.”

  Halifax hung up.

  Twelve

  Fear had a strange beat. It slowed down everything—the time, the way Beth’s mind processed things. It slowed down everything except her heartbeat. Beth couldn’t let Thomas drive her to the restaurant, so she asked for the Navigator, saying she wanted to see her mother, hating to have to lie but too frightened not to.

  She made it there in seventeen minutes, but the fear, the gut-wrenching fear, made it seem like years.

  These were seventeen minutes of torture where she imagined the worst—David being shipped off somewhere, out of her reach, her touch, forever.

  Whatever you do, don’t fall apart, Bethany.

  Outside the Italian restaurant, under the shadow of a green tent, Hector lit a cigarette, the tip glowing as he watched her shut the car door and come over.

  Heavy clouds gathered above, promising a heavy rain. A family of four exited the restaurant, their cheerful chatter contrasting with the silence with which Hector greeted her.

  Beth waited for him to speak first, keenly aware of his potential for violence. But for endless minutes he merely smoked his cigarette and looked her slowly up and down as though he could see Landon’s fingertips and brands on her body.

  It struck Beth how in six years married to him, she’d never experienced an ounce of the happiness, the connection, she’d felt with Landon in a matter of weeks. How sad that she hadn’t known this before, hadn’t known that things didn’t need to be stale, that things could be better than boring and actually be wonderful.

  “You’ve been talking to Gage,” Hector drawled in a hard, insulting voice, putting out his cigarette with his boot. “He’s been poking around my business—what did you tell him, Beth?”

  She loathed to discover the fear she’d once had of him was still present, crawling up her spine and ready to immobilize her. It was followed with animosity, and hate, so much hate she began to tremble.

  “Well, he is my husband. And we do talk, Hector.” It had been a long, long time since she’d spoken to him so firmly.

  His eyes became slits, as he gave her the most chilling, most frightening smile. “Your little game has gone on long enough. I say it’s time we put a stop to it, don’t you? Your mouth has been flapping open for weeks and Beth?” He pitched his voice lower. “I don’t like it.”

  Bubbles of hysteria rose to her throat, and she had to swallow before speaking. “The game has only just begun,” she said, fighting to sound confident. “I’ve told him things, Hector. But I’ve still got to tell him how you medicated his wife until she couldn’t even think straight!”
r />   His eyes widened, and he took a threatening step forward. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh, I dare all right!” She took a step back—and Hector another step forward. “He’s on to you, Hector. He knows what you are!”

  He manacled her wrist in one hand, his tobacco breath blasting across her face. “One more word out of you and your little husband—”

  “You can’t hurt him!” she spat, anger and frustration sharpening her voice as she squirmed to free herself. She wanted to shrink from his gaze, his lashing words, his beastly touch. “You’ve tried for years and you can’t touch him!”

  His expression contorted into a terrifying sneer. His nails bit into her skin. “Oh, I can hurt him. I’ll tear Gage apart if you take me to court, Beth.”

  She laughed cynically. “Right. Like you can destroy a Gage.”

  Smiling that Lucifer-like smile, he released her. Beth rubbed her wrist as he lighted another cigarette, took a drag, then flicked it down on the ground, and stepped on it. “You’re a Lewis.” He blew the smoke into her face. “A little nobody. As easily crushed…as this. And Gage…he’s scrupulous and it will get him killed. That’s no way to win a war, Beth. You’ll never get David. Ever.”

  Her breath grew choppy. Fear and fury whirled and churned in her belly. How could you spend years and years of your life with a rat? How could you bear it?

  And Landon. What would he do when she told him about this? He’d warned her not to see him, talk to Hector, but he didn’t understand this bastard had her child!

  “Why do you want him?” she screamed, gripping her purse tight to her chest to keep from flinging it at him. “You hardly paid attention to him. Why do you want him?”

  “Because you do.” His face was a mask of rage, and his words poison. “Oh, I may have eventually given him back to you, after you learned your lesson of what happens when you leave me. But not after Gage, oh, no, never after Gage. Unless…” Hector snagged her elbow and immediately the space between them disappeared as he stepped forward. “Unless you divorce him and come back to me.”