“It would make you a bigamist, but I sense that is of no matter in this remarkably slanted portrayal of our relationship.”
“I’m not sure relationship is the word I’d choose to describe a distant engagement, a circus of a wedding during which you spoke only to your business associates, your death and resurrection, my unwise attempt to help you—”
“Susannah.” His lips felt thin enough to cut glass. “I am still an extremely busy man, as you must surely be aware. This harangue could have been put into letter form and sent by post, surely. Why did you fly some sixteen thousand kilometers to do it in person?”
She studied him for a moment, and there was still that fine trembling all over her. Her mouth. Her fingers. He could even see it in her legs. But she didn’t appear to notice.
“Everyone was deeply invested in my remarriage, Leonidas. I was bullied and manipulated, pushed and prodded. No one took me seriously. No one wanted to take me at all, unless it was to the altar. But I persisted.”
“Yes, and your persistence makes you a great hero, I am sure,” Leonidas said drily. “Given that it made you perhaps the most powerful woman in the world. My heart bleeds for your sacrifice.”
“I persisted because of you, you arrogant—” She cut herself off. He watched her pull in a breath, as if she needed it to steady herself, and then her blue eyes were hard on his again. “I persisted because of you. Because I had an idea of you in my head.”
“Based on tabloid nonsense and too many fairy tales, I have no doubt.”
“Because you danced with me at our wedding reception,” she corrected him, her voice as quiet as it was firm. “You held me in your arms and you looked at me as if I was...everything. A woman. Your wife. Just for one moment, I believed I could be. That it would all work out.”
Leonidas could say nothing then. He remembered that dance, and he didn’t know if it was memory or longing that moved in him now. The urge to hold her again, to sweep her into his arms without having to pretend it had anything to do with dancing or weddings or galas, swept over him. It was like an itch, pushing him to the limit.
But Susannah was still coming toward him, that wildness in her blue eyes.
“I carried this company for four years,” she told him matter-of-factly. “I made myself into an icon. The untouchable widow. A Betancur legend. And all the while, I looked for you.”
“No one asked you to do this,” he growled back at her. “You should have left me on that mountaintop. No one could possibly have blamed you. Hell, they would have celebrated in the streets.”
“I looked for you and then I found you,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him say a word. “I took you out of there. I even sweetened the deal with the virginity I’d been holding on to for all these years. But like everything else, you didn’t seem to realize that it was a gift.”
“I beg your pardon.” He stood as tall as he could without breaking something, and his voice was so scornful he was surprised it didn’t leave marks. And he couldn’t seem to stop it. “Have you come all this way to remind me that I owe you a thank-you note? I’ll instruct my secretary to type one up as soon as possible. Is that all?”
Susannah shook her head at him, as if he’d disappointed her. Again. “You know your cousins. You can imagine the lengths they were willing to go to get control of me, and by extension the company.”
The truth was, Leonidas did know. And he didn’t want to know.
“I refused to drink out of an open glass that wasn’t first tested by someone else for years,” she told him. “Because I didn’t want to wake up to find myself roofied and married to a random Betancur, then declared unfit and packed off to a mental institution before ten the next morning so I couldn’t object. Do you think that was fun?”
“So that’s a yes, then,” he said after a moment, feeling more and more certain that if she didn’t leave, and soon, he was going to do something he might truly regret. Like forget why he’d sent her away in the first place. “You do want a thank-you note.”
But this time, Susannah closed the distance between them. And then she was standing there before him, within touching distance. She was still trembling, and it slowly dawned on Leonidas that that faint little tremor that shook all over her wasn’t fear or emotion.
It was temper.
She was furious. At him.
“I wanted to leave when we brought you home from Idaho, but you begged me to stay,” she reminded him.
“Begged?” He laughed. Or made himself laugh, more like. “Perhaps your memory has as many gaps as mine.”
“The funny thing is that I knew better. I knew that nothing could come of it. That we would always end up in the same place.” That storm in her eyes seemed to get wilder. More treacherous. “Right here.”
He said nothing. He could only seem to stand there before her, undone in ways he refused to investigate because he didn’t think he could be fixed. He didn’t think he’d ever put himself back together—but he didn’t want to think about that, either.
Because it doesn’t matter, something in him asserted. Nothing matters once she’s gone.
He told himself that life—frozen and haunted and consumed with the company—was better. It was much, much better than this.
“I’m pregnant, Leonidas,” she said then, as if the very words hurt as she said them. “Don’t you understand what that means?”
“Of course I understand,” he bit out.
Then Susannah did something extraordinary. She punched him.
She balled up her hand into a fist and whacked it against his chest. Not enough to hurt, or move him backward even a little, but certainly enough to get his attention.
The way no one had ever dared do in all his life.
Leonidas stared down at her, at that fist she held there between them as if she planned to punch him again, and felt something roaring in him. Loud and long. Raw and demanding.
“I would suggest that you rethink whatever it is you think you’re doing,” he said. Very, very quietly. “And quickly.”
“I am your wife,” Susannah said, in very much the same tone. “And I’m the mother of your child. Whatever else happens, those two things remain.”
Her fist seemed to tighten, as if she was contemplating hitting him again.
“I take it you have never heard of the divorce you asked for,” he said, not exactly nicely. “Perhaps they didn’t teach that in your strict little convent where you dreamed of wedding dances and were met with only cruel disappointment.”
Susannah punched him again. Harder this time.
“You’re a coward,” she said, very distinctly.
And that roaring thing in him took over. It was as if everything rolled together and became the same searing bolt of light. Leonidas reached down and took her fist in his palm and then held it away from his chest as if it was a weapon. As if she could do him real harm, if he let her.
And he had no qualm whatsoever pulling her closer, reaching down to wrap one hand around her hip and haul her the extra distance toward him so he could keep her locked down.
“Say that again,” he invited her, getting into her face so his lips were a mere breath from hers. “I dare you. And see what happens if you punch me again when you do.”
But she had married him when she was a teenager and she’d stayed his widow for years when anyone else would have folded. Maybe it wasn’t surprising that she didn’t back down.
If anything, her blue eyes blazed hotter.
“You’re a coward,” she said again, and with more force this time. “It took me too long to recognize this for what it is. I was so certain that you would behave exactly the way my mother said you would behave. Like all the men she knows, my father among them. Faithless and unkind because they don’t think they’re required to be anything more than the con
tents of their bank accounts. I assumed you were the same.”
“I am all that and more,” he promised her.
“Those men are weak,” she threw at him, and if she was intimidated by the way he held her, pulled up against him as if he might kill her or kiss her at any moment, she gave no sign. Her blue eyes flashed and she forged on. “If any one of your cousins went down in a plane, they would have died. And not from the impact. But because they wouldn’t have it in them to fight. Every single scar on your body tells me a story about the real Leonidas Betancur. And every one of those stories is a tale of overcoming impossible odds. It isn’t accidental that you ruled that compound. They could have killed you when they found you, but they didn’t. They could have put you to work as a cook. A janitor. Instead, you became their god.”
“A god and a janitor are much the same thing in a place where there is no running water and winter lasts ten months,” he told her, his voice a harsh slap.
“I told you that you couldn’t have me, but I was only protecting myself,” she whispered.
“Something you would do good to think more about right now, Susannah.”
“But you never told me the truth,” she accused him. “That no one can have you, Leonidas. That it’s not about me at all.”
That struck at him, and he hated it. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You are so filled with self-loathing and this terrible darkness you carry around inside of you that you think you have nothing to give anyone. Leonidas. You do.”
And her words sat there like heavy stones on his chest. Her blue eyes burned into him, accusation and something else. Challenge, perhaps. Determination.
Not that it mattered.
Because she was right.
“I don’t,” he heard himself say, as if from far away. “I don’t have anything to give. I never have.”
Susannah made a sound, small and raw, and the look in her eyes changed. Still electric, though the storm seemed to deepen. Soften.
She stopped holding herself so tightly upright and apart from him, and melted against him. And it was only the fact that it might hurt her that kept Leonidas from hurling her away from him. Throwing her across the room, before that melting softness could tear him apart the way he knew it would.
He knew it.
“You do,” she told him, as if it was a self-evident truth, blazing like a fire in the corner of his office. “You have everything to give. You’re a good man, Leonidas.”
He let out a laugh, harsh and short. “Not only is that not true, but you wouldn’t know it if it was. You don’t know me, Susannah. I might as well be a stranger on the street.”
“I do know it,” she retorted, fiercely. “Because I walked into a room in a scary compound on the side of a mountain and met a stranger who had no reason at all to treat me kindly. You could have hurt me then. You didn’t.”
“I took your virginity.”
“I gave it to you and even then, you didn’t hurt me,” she said hotly. “You didn’t remember me and you weren’t abusive. And you could have been. Who could have stopped you?” She shook her head at him. “I want you to think about that, Leonidas. When you thought you were a god, you didn’t abuse your power. You tempered it.”
He felt his grip tighten on her and made himself loosen it. “None of this matters now.”
“Of course it matters.” She sounded something like frustrated. And raw with it. “You think that you’re the same as your parents. Leonidas. But you’re not. You think you’re just like your cousins, but there’s no comparison. You’re nothing like any of the people we know.”
“That is nothing but a mask,” he gritted out.
“The mask wasn’t the Count, who lived by his ideals and stayed true to his vows,” Susannah retorted. “The mask is this, here. The Betancurs. Not you.”
He let her go then, before he did something else he’d never be able to forgive or undo. Like pull her closer.
He put the distance between them then that he should never have allowed her to close and straightened his suit as if he was making sure his costume still fit—but no. She was wrong. This was his life, not a mask. That was the trouble.
“I will support you and this child,” he said briskly, ignoring the thickness in his voice. “Neither one of you will ever want for anything. If you wish to remarry, nothing will change. If you wish to retain the Betancur name, you can do that as well with my blessing. It is entirely up to you, Susannah. All that I ask is that you do it far from here, where there is none of...this.” And his voice was too rough then. He knew it. But he couldn’t seem to stop it. “None of these lies, these games. Make the child a better class of Betancur.”
“Him,” Susannah said. Very distinctly.
When Leonidas only stared at her, as if everything in him had turned to ice where he stood, she aimed that heartbreaking smile of hers at him. Straight at him as if she knew, at last, what a weapon it was.
“It’s a boy, Leonidas. We’re having a little boy.” And she didn’t wait for him to process that. Instead, she twisted the knife and thrust it in deeper. “And you have a choice to make. Will you treat your own son the way your father treated you? Or will you prove that you’re the better man? Will you behave like your mother—so terrible that when her only son found out she’d arranged to have him killed he wasn’t all that surprised? Or will you make certain that your own child will never, ever believe that you could be capable of such a thing?”
“You’re making my point for me, Susannah. Look at where I come from.”
“I know exactly where you come from, because I come from the same place,” she said fiercely. “And I’ve been in love with you since the moment I learned that I was to be yours.”
And it wasn’t the first time in his life that Leonidas had shattered, but this time, he thought the damage might be permanent.
“That’s nothing but a schoolgirl’s fantasy,” he managed to say past the noise inside him.
“Maybe so. But it’s still here. And it’s only grown, you foolish man. I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
“You need to go,” he said, but his voice hardly sounded like his own.
“I’m going to do something radical, something our parents never did for either one of us, and love this baby. Our son.” Susannah’s gaze held him as if she was pinning him to a wall. “Will you?”
He staggered back as if she’d hauled off and hit him. Some part of him wished she would. He knew how to take a blow. He’d learned that young, at his own father’s hand—
And the thought of a son of his own taking the kind of beatings he’d weathered sickened him, down deep into his bones, until he felt something like arthritic with the force of his own disgust at the very idea.
“I told you before,” he threw at her. “I don’t know how to love. I don’t know what it is.”
But she kept coming. This woman who had saved him. This woman who never saw a monster in him. This woman who called him the worst of the Betancurs, an unparalleled monster, but made love to him as if he was only and ever a man.
“Neither do I,” she told him as she drew closer. “But I want to try. Try with me, Leonidas.”
He didn’t mean to move, but he found himself down on his knees, though he was a man who did not kneel. He was on his knees and she kept coming, and then he was wrapping her in his arms—or she was the one wrapping him in hers—and he kissed her belly where their future grew. Once, then again.
And when he looked up into her face again, tears were leaving tracks down her cheeks and her eyes were as blue as all the summers he wanted to show his son. As clear as a promise. As perfect as a vow.
“I will try, Susannah,” he whispered. “For you—for him—I will spend my whole life trying.”
“I will love you enough for both of
us, Leonidas,” she told him, her voice rough with emotion. “And this baby will love you even more than that.”
“And I will love the two of you with every part of me,” he replied, aware as he said it that she’d changed him. That he was a different man.
Not the invulnerable Leonidas Betancur who had gone down in that plane. Not the Count who’d believed himself a prophet at the very least, but more likely a god. But both of those men and more, the husband who had been loving this woman since he’d kissed her in a faraway compound and she’d brought him back to life.
Life. Love. With Susannah, they were the same thing.
“I will try until I get it right,” he told her. “No matter how long it takes. I give you my word.”
“As a Betancur?” she asked, but her mouth was curved as if she already knew the answer.
“As the man who needs you, and wants you, and never wants to be apart from you,” he replied, smoothing his hands up the line of her back as he knelt there before her. “As the husband who cannot imagine a world without you. As the fool who lost his memory and now sees nothing at all in the whole of this world but you.”
And he tugged her mouth down to his, his beautiful Susannah, and showed her what he meant.
Forever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ADONIS ESTEBAN BETANCUR came into the world with a roar.
He had a shock of dark hair and fists he seemed to think were mighty as he waved them all around him in a great fervor.
And Susannah had never seen anything more beautiful, heartbreaking and gorgeous at once, as the way one tiny baby boy with an outsized personality wrapped his ruthless, intimidating father around his perfect little fingers.
Though their life together came close.
Leonidas found he didn’t much care for running the Betancur Corporation alone, and especially not when he could have Susannah by his side to do it with him. Leonidas on his own had been a force to be reckoned with. The Widow Betancur had wielded her own inexorable power.
A Baby to Bind His Bride Page 16