A Game of Vows

by Maisey Yates

  But now, just now, she wouldn’t ruin it.

  “So have I,” she said softly.

  “You have what?” he asked.

  “Been true to our marriage vows. I haven’t … I haven’t been with anyone since our wedding.”

  “And you didn’t even know we were still married,” he said.

  “No. But I imagine both of us had reasons other than that for staying out of physical relationships.” A stupid thing to say, because she didn’t want to get into her reasons.

  “There’s never been time.” He paused. “Or desire. I haven’t truly wanted anyone since it happened. I’ve been too busy licking my wounds.”

  “And tonight you licked me,” she said, injecting some completely inappropriate levity, trying to draw the topic away from where it was.

  He laughed and rolled her beneath him, kissing her lips. “I have to go take care of things.”

  He got out of bed and she watched him walk to the bathroom. Watched the masculine, perfect shape of his backside. He was gorgeous, no question.

  He returned a moment later, his expression stormy. “We have a problem.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “WHAT?” Hannah tugged the covers up over her breasts and even with the current issue hammering away in his head, he felt a pang of regret.

  “The condom broke.” Something that had never happened to him before. He knew it was possible, but what the hell was the point of them if they were so fragile? “Are you on birth control?”

  She hesitated. “No?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Why did you say it like you don’t know?”

  “I … I do know. I’m not. I mean … I didn’t need to be. I mean … but things happen. These things do. The odds are so low. And I mean, a little leak will hardly …”

  “Release millions of sperm?”

  She cringed. “Well, okay, when you put it that way. But …”

  “But it’s enough to cause an accident.”

  Her expression turned dark. “I know how all that works, but thank you for educating me.”

  “I’m being realistic. We may have a situation.”

  “We won’t,” she bit out. “No one is that unlucky.”

  Anger boiled in his stomach. Of course it would be unlucky to be pregnant; it would be unlucky for both of them. But it struck a blow to his pride. All he could think was that she wouldn’t want to be shackled to a stupid man for the rest of her life.

  “Well,” he said, his tone soft, deadly, “if you are so unlucky as to be carrying my child, be sure to let me know.”

  “I’ll deliver the message by rock through your office window,” she spat.

  “Appreciated.” He turned toward his room, his broad back filling the door. She’d pushed him away again. But she had to. She really had to.

  It was the only way she could protect herself.

  “Don’t think you’re going to force an apology out of me this time,” she said.

  He froze, his shoulders rising slightly before he turned, his eyebrows drawn together. “Don’t play like I forced you, Hannah, when we both know you were begging.”

  She curled her fingers around the bedding. “Go away, Eduardo.”

  “Running again?” She opened her mouth and he cut her off. “Oh, yes, Hannah, you’re running, even if you are staying in your bed. You have to do it by making a bitchy comment or whatever you think it will take to push me, or anyone else in your life, away. You don’t fool me. You aren’t hiding your fear from me. I will leave, only because I have no desire to spend another moment in your company tonight. But understand, you’re not pushing me away if I don’t want to be pushed.”

  He turned and walked out, shutting the door firmly behind him.

  Hannah sat in the middle of the big bed, naked, physically and emotionally. She picked up one of the silken pink pillows and threw it in the direction of the closed door. It was safer to be angry than to cry again. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to think about the torn condom. What that might mean.

  She wasn’t going to think about how it had felt to have him inside of her. Connected with her.

  She really wasn’t going to think about how it had been the first time she’d felt close to someone in her entire life. And she wasn’t going to think about how much she wanted to do it again.

  When Hannah appeared at breakfast she didn’t look much like a corporate barracuda who spat venom at unwitting victims with little warning. She looked nervous. Her blond hair was tousled and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her skinny-cut black pants and fitted, black short-sleeved shirt enhanced the thinness of her frame, and the paleness of her skin.

  Eduardo leaned back in his chair and raised his coffee mug to his lips. His mother and sisters both nodded in greeting.

  “Morning,” Hannah said, not making eye contact with him as she took her seat at the table.

  “Good morning,” he said, setting his mug down on the table, taking no satisfaction in the shudder of her shoulders when his mug clattered against the glass tabletop. “Did you sleep well?”

  She forced a smile. “Not really. You hogged the covers all night.”

  “My apologies, querida.”

  “None needed. Some coffee might be nice, though.”

  His mother reached out and rang a bell that sat at the center of the table. Eduardo cringed. He hated that thing. He was far too modern-minded to ring for his servants. But Carmela Vega insisted. She was old money and old class. Although, perhaps that had little to do with it, because he could easily imagine Hannah ringing for servants.

  “Thank you,” Hannah said to his mother.

  “De nada.”

  Rafael came in and Hannah ordered her coffee to her specifications. She really did look exhausted. Pity he hadn’t been able to keep her up all night in the way he’d like to have kept her up all night. But the fact that he’d irritated the sleep out of her was a close second as far as his personal satisfaction went.

  “What are your plans for the day, Mama?” he asked.

  “I thought Selena and I might go down to the shops.”

  Only his mother would leave Barcelona and shop in a small, seaside town. “That sounds like fun.”

  Selena turned her attention to Hannah. “You can join us, if you like, Hannah.”

  Hannah looked like a large-eyed woodland creature caught in the pull of headlights. “I … I …”

  “Hannah and I have work today.” He didn’t want to let her out of his sight for the day. She might run. “She’s helping me implement some new systems at Vega. Hannah is something of a financial genius.”

  “Is that right?” Carmela asked, eyebrows raised.

  “I’ve been busy the past five years,” Hannah said, her tone soft. She was so subdued. It was very unlike her and he found he didn’t care for it.

  “Yes, well, that is commendable,” his mother said. “We’ll leave you two.”

  “Adiós, Eduardo. Bye, Hannah,” Selena said, standing with her mother and exiting the room.

  “Your mother hates me,” Hannah said when the women disappeared.

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Rafael returned with a fresh cup of coffee and a half-filled French press. “Gracias,” Hannah said, taking a sip of her already-prepared coffee. Rafael left again and Hannah set her mug down. “I would rather if she didn’t hate me, but I suppose it doesn’t do any good for her to like me since I’m leaving again … whenever. As soon as we get these systems in place and you feel comfortable.”

  “I suppose not.” He found his body rebelled at the idea of her leaving. He felt possessive of her now. Stupid because before his accident he’d slept with any number of women and he’d never felt possessive of them. Quite the opposite, he’d felt ready to bolt out of bed, call them a cab and see they were safely delivered home so that he could sleep. Alone.

  He frowned. The memories pricked his conscience and he realized that he didn’t like the way he’d treated women then.
He wondered if that had to do with the accident, with the changes in him, or just being older.

  Interesting, since he normally envied the man he’d once been to a certain extent. But not in that area. He’d been a playboy, happily seeking release with any willing woman. Now the emptiness of that echoed in him.

  With Hannah it had been more. More than release. More than amusement. It had been something serious, something that made him feel different in the bright light of day. He was angry with her, for the way she’d acted after, and still, he felt a connection with her that hadn’t been there before.

  As if, when he’d parted from her last night, he’d left a piece of himself behind.

  “What is the work plan for the day?” she asked, her expression projecting extreme annoyance and boredom at the same time.

  “Bring your coffee up to my office.”

  She stood and waited for him, then followed him out of the room and up the curving staircase, down to the end of the hall. His home office faced the sea, large expansive windows letting in plenty of natural light. And all easily covered with blinds that dropped at the push of a button. Just in case he got hit with a particularly bad migraine.

  Fortunately, he felt fine. Which meant the only headache he would have to contend with was Hannah.

  “Did you have anything more to show me?” she asked.

  “No. I was hoping you would start presenting some solutions.”

  She shifted her weight to the balls of her feet. She looked like she was ready to sprint away if need be. “Actually, I do have some solutions. Well, thoughts mainly.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. You prefer to work here now?”

  “It’s noisy in the office. I don’t care for it.”

  “Right, which is why you have your floor essentially vacant,” she said slowly.

  “Yes. I can’t handle the noise of all the people talking all the time. Even without people working on the floor, the interruptions, the traffic, it can start to …”

  “It wears on you.”

  An understatement. The lowest moment in his memory was of throwing a mug at the wall in front of his secretary when she’d come in talking and he’d been in the throes of a migraine. It hadn’t been aimed at her, and it hadn’t come anywhere near her, but the blinding pain and anger … the fact he’d had no control over it in that moment. That he’d frightened her. It lived with him.

  She’d quit soon after and he couldn’t blame her.

  “I find things easier here,” he said, looking at his hands.

  Hannah frowned. “Did you have trouble working around people before?”

  “I just don’t like noise,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  He looked out at the sea, frowning. He’d been through some of this with a doctor years ago, and had since given up. He didn’t like talking about how nothing had changed. There was no point. “It makes my head hurt.”

  “Anything else?”

  “And I get irritable.”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” she said dryly. “What else?”

  “I can’t concentrate,” he bit out.

  “And numbers, finances, they give you the most trouble.”

  “I can’t … I can’t hang on to a thought about it for long enough to make decisions.”

  “And it’s high pressure,” she said, pushing.

  “Yes.”

  “I think it might have less to do with you having trouble understanding the financial side of things and more to do with you having a harder time focusing on things that stress you out.”

  An uncomfortable tightness invaded his stomach. “It does not stress me out. I just … The answers are there in my brain but I can’t seem to make a fast decision. I can’t find the answer in time. Or at all.” And the more he thought about it, the less able he was to reach out and grasp onto a thought firmly. It slipped away from him, hiding deep in the dark corners of his brain that seemed unknowable to him now.

  “It does stress you out. Why haven’t you talked to a doctor about this? I’m sure …”

  “I don’t need to talk to a doctor,” he said, something exploding inside of him. “Not again. I don’t need to go and sit there, and outline the same problems and have some old man look at me with pity in his eyes as he tells me, again, that they may never go away. That I will never be the man I was. That I won’t have all the answers, or a witty joke on hand. That I will never be able to take the reins of Vega as I should have been able to, because I will never be able to make snap decisions, or keep meticulous records.”

  He planted his hands on his desk and leaned in so that his face was a breath from hers. “I can’t concentrate long enough to fill out a damn report. How am I supposed to keep track of intricate financial details? Do you know the answer?” He pushed off and straightened, running his hand through his hair. “Do you?” he asked again, his voice sounding rougher this time, desperate. He loathed it. Despised himself in that moment. He was shaking. With anger. Fear.

  “I … I just don’t know,” she said softly. “But we can figure it out.”

  He swallowed hard, his chest seizing up tight. “Or maybe I should just concede to the fact that I can’t.”

  She stood and slapped her palms down on his desk before rounding to the front, her blue eyes blazing. “No. That’s … that’s just wrong, Eduardo. You can do this. You aren’t stupid. What I said … that was wrong, too. And I’ll apologize for that willingly, with no … coercion.” Her face turned pink when she said that last part. “It’s just a matter of figuring out loopholes. Shortcuts.”

  Anger burned in him. At her. At the world. “I shouldn’t need them,” he growled.

  “But we all do sometimes,” she said, her tone rising with his.

  “Maybe you do, Hannah Weston, but I don’t. I am Eduardo Vega, son of one of the greatest business minds that ever lived, and I sure as hell should not need a shortcut.”

  “Then it’s your pride keeping you from succeeding. Not your injury. Keep that in mind if you start losing a handle on things again. I can’t help you if you won’t accept help.”

  “I am accepting help,” he shouted, well beyond his limits now. Beyond the point of sublimating his rage. “Why do you think I asked you here?”

  Hannah came closer, not cowed by his outburst. “You didn’t ask me here. You all but forced me and you know it. And you aren’t accepting help. Did you think I would come in, take a look at things, make some investments and leave you?”

  “Yes,” he said, realizing as he spoke the word that it was true.

  “Just leave you without solving the problem?”

  “Yes,” he said again. Because he hadn’t wanted to admit there was a real problem. A reset. He’d been after a reset. To get everything back to a golden point so he could move forward, steering the ship, on course again.

  That he would see Hannah, and remember who he was. Not just remember, but feel those same feelings. That amusement, that desire and ability to simply flip his middle finger at the world, enjoying his position of success, feeling invincible. Untouchable.

  Far from that, he felt like he was drowning, reaching blindly for a hand. Hannah’s hand. Praying she would be able to hold him above water.

  Such weakness. Such horrifying, unendurable weakness.

  “That can’t happen, Eduardo,” she said.

  “Why not?” he asked, drained now, the anger, the fight, leaving him in a rush. Leaving him defeated.

  He looked so bleak. Hannah had never seen that expression on his face before. Had never seen him look so tired. And in spite of the fact that she’d been determined to hang on to anger where he was concerned, she found in that moment she couldn’t.

  It had been easy to fight him, to rage at him while he was raging at her. But she saw beneath it now. Saw it for what it was.

  “Because things have changed. You’ve changed.” She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. But she wondered if she was the first person, other
than doctors, who’d been brave enough to tell the almighty Eduardo Vega the real and absolute truth he didn’t want to hear. “And all you can do is work with what you have. Not what you wish you had, not what you once had, but what you have, here and now.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to.” It didn’t sound petulant like it might have, it simply sounded dry. Resigned.

  “Eduardo, you were always fun in your way. A bit of an ass, I mean, enough of one that you blackmailed me into marrying you as a way to goad your father. But you were easygoing, outgoing. And you never would have taken the responsibility of running Vega seriously. You used to kill me with your smug smile and your dismissal of your duties. Everything was a game to you. And now … now it’s not. Now I believe you have it in you to do it. So yeah, maybe there are some other issues, but you can work around those. We can work around those.”

  He let out a slow, shaking breath. “So I am forced to confront the fact that I would never have chosen to live up to my full potential before, and now that I would … now that I would, my potential is greatly diminished.”

  “That’s not it at all.” Her stomach tightened, that fierce feeling of empathy, of connection, she’d felt with him that day his mother had arrived at the house intensified. Until that moment she hadn’t felt closer to him since they’d slept together. If anything, she’d felt like any connection they might have had had been severed. But now it was back, and it was stronger.

  He laughed. “It’s not? Enlighten me then, Hannah.”

  “It will only be that if you insist on beating your head against a brick wall you could walk around if you weren’t so stubborn. If you weren’t letting your pride have control.”

  He raised his head, dark eyes glittering. “Pride is the one thing I still have.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not. Trust me.”