He sucked in a sharp breath. “Here?”
“Yes, here.”
The dark eyes narrowed, focusing on her damp hair and flushed cheeks. “Did you spend the night with him?”
She pressed her lips together. She’d wasted her entire life regretting the fact that she didn’t have a relationship with Luc and her elusive half-sister, Shelby. There were times, however, when her brother could be a bossy pain in the ass.
“Again, none of your business,” she said.
“That bastard.” Luc clenched his hands, taking a step toward the living room. “I’m going to break his fucking neck.”
Holly rushed forward, planting her hands flat on her brother’s chest.
“You certainly are not.”
His gaze scanned the living room. “Where is he?”
“Luc, what’s wrong with you?”
“What do you think is wrong?” His gaze moved back to take in her short shorts and T-shirt, lingering on the unmistakable Playhouse logo just over her left breast. “You’re standing here, half-dressed, in his penthouse.”
A blush touched her cheeks. Okay. He had the right to criticize her clothes.
They really were dreadful.
But not her choice to be with Liam.
“And?”
“He took advantage of you.”
“Are you kidding me?” She blinked. Even for Luc, who’d turned out to be an overly protective brother, this was a crazy talk. “We aren’t living in the dark ages and I’m not some shrinking virgin who can’t defend herself,” she snapped. “No one took advantage of me.”
He studied her for a long minute, his expression guarded. “Then he told you what he did?”
Holly dropped her hands, taking a step back. There was something in Luc’s tone that sent a chill down her spine.
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated before folding his arms over his chest. “I just had a most interesting chat with your ex-fiancé.”
Holly stiffened. Dammit. The last thing she wanted was Luc getting into a fight with Ted.
Her ex-fiancé might be a jackass, but he was still a partner in one of the most reputable investment banks in Nevada. Which meant that Luc often used them during the course of his business.
“Why were you meeting with Ted?”
He held her gaze. “Don’t ask foolish questions.”
“Did you hurt him?”
He shrugged. “Not as much as I wanted to.”
She rolled her eyes, pretending that she didn’t feel a tiny stab of satisfaction.
Hey, she was human enough to take pleasure in thinking of her ex-fiancé going to work with two black eyes and a broken nose.
“God save me from arrogant men,” she forced herself to mutter.
Luc was unrepentant. “The bastard jilted you.”
“I know what he did.” She grimaced. “I was there, remember?”
“I wanted a firsthand explanation why.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist. She didn’t want to discuss Ted. Or their aborted wedding.
Hell, she wanted to forget she’d ever been engaged.
“He did it because he’s a self-centered jackass,” she hissed.
“He is that,” Luc readily agreed. “But he claims that he was threatened not to attend the wedding.”
Threatened not to attend?
Had the idiot started making up conspiracy theories to keep Luc from beating the crap out of him?
“I…” She licked her dry lips. “I don’t understand.”
“He was warned that if he married you his business would be destroyed.”
“That’s ridiculous. Who would…” Her words trailed away as a horrid suspicion began to form in the back of her mind.
No.
It couldn’t be.
“Liam Conner,” Luc snarled, confirming her sudden fear.
“He’s lying,” a harsh male voice said from behind her.
She was on the point of turning when Luc surged forward.
“You bastard.”
“Luc, no,” she cried, pushed to the side as Luc launched himself at Liam.
Her brother managed to get in a punch to Liam’s jaw, knocking his head backward before Liam had his arms wrapped around the smaller man, slamming him against the wall.
“If you want to fight, we’ll fight,” Liam growled, his dark hair still damp from the shower and his tense body covered by a pair of khaki shorts and pale blue cotton shirt. “But we’ll do it later. Right now I need to speak with Holly.”
Luc released a curse, but catching sight of Holly’s pale face, he gave a slow nod.
“Later.”
Liam slowly stepped back, unconsciously rubbing his bruised jaw.
“Can we have some privacy?”
Luc shook his head. “No.”
“Christ.” Turning, Liam stepped toward Holly, his expression impossible to read. “Let me explain.”
Holly held up her hand, warning him not to come any closer.
She was desperately trying to think clearly. Having him close would make that impossible.
She waited for him to come to a grudging halt before speaking.
“You said that Ted was lying.”
Liam shoved his hands in the front pockets of his shorts, his expression composed, although there was no missing his clenched jaw and the rigidity of his body.
“I never threatened his business,” he said with a hint of disgust. “He has a hundred employees that depend on him for a paycheck.”
Perhaps naïvely, Holly believed him.
Liam had a genuine concern for people who struggled to make it from paycheck to paycheck.
She couldn’t imagine any scenario where he would deliberately put them out of work. Not in this economy.
“But…” She had to stop and clear her throat. “You did threaten him?”
He gave a small dip of his head. “Yes.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Luc growled from behind them.
Holly never allowed her gaze to stray from Liam’s lean face, inanely noting it looked ashen in the afternoon sunlight.
“Why?” she breathed.
With jerky motions he moved toward a low, polished coffee table in front of the couch. Bending down he yanked open a narrow drawer and pulled out a manila folder. Then, pausing to draw in a deep breath, he straightened to return to Holly.
“Because of this,” he said, flipping open the folder and grabbing a glossy eight-by-ten picture.
He held it out, not insisting she take it and not trying to keep it from her.
The decision of whether she learned the truth was entirely up to her.
Her gut twisted with a sickening sense of premonition.
There was a painful silence as Holly wavered between gruesome curiosity and the absolute certainty that she didn’t want to see what was in the file.
Finally she reached to snatch the photo out of his hand, her brows drawing together as she studied the close-up of a pretty young woman with brown hair and pale blue eyes.
“Who is this?” she demanded in confusion.
“Your beloved fiancé’s mistress,” Liam said, his voice tight.
She jerked her head up to meet his steady gaze. “Mistress?”
“What the hell?” Luc growled, moving to stand at her side.
Holly ignored her brother, instead concentrating on the massive task of maintaining her composure.
“I didn’t expect him to be a virgin,” she managed to rasp. “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women in your past.”
Liam reached into the file folder of pain and pulled out another photo, handing it to Holly.
“This was taken three days ago.”
Holly impatiently glanced at the image of the brown-haired woman stepping out of a brick building with Ted at her side. Her former-fiancé had one arm around her shoulders and one hand on her stomach.
Her very large stomach.
Holly made a small sound of distress. �
��She’s pregnant.”
“It’s their second child,” Liam admitted, offering her yet another photo.
This one was of Ted in a small park as he pushed a young boy on a swing.
The photos fell from her fingers as Holly suddenly felt as if she was being smothered.
It wasn’t as if she’d ever thought that she and Ted shared some grand, epic love. Still…
How could he play the devoted fiancé while he was creating a family with another woman?
It was obscene.
“I don’t understand,” she at last managed to choke out. “If he loves this woman enough to have children with her, why would he marry me?”
Liam tossed the rest of the file on a chair behind him.
“Because she’s a waitress at the local diner and you’re Vigo Angeli’s daughter.”
***
Liam was furious.
With Theodore Wentworth Junior and his damned games.
With fate that had chosen to steal the happiness that had bubbled through him like the finest champagne until Luc had come barging into the apartment.
But most of all, with himself.
He was a gambler. He never bet against the odds.
Except when it came to this female.
And now his dreams were threatening to go bust.
Curling his hands into tight fists so he didn’t do something stupid like throw Holly over his shoulder and lock her in his bedroom, he waited for her to at last break the brittle silence.
“How long?” she husked.
He frowned. “What?”
Her cognac eyes glittered with tears she refused to shed. “How long have you known?”
He flinched. Christ. It felt as if someone was twisting a knife in his gut.
Or maybe he was just wishing he could be stabbed.
It would be less painful.
“Since the two of you became engaged.” He forced himself to admit the truth.
There would be no more lies.
She flinched, her hand pressed to her chest. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Would you have believed me?” he demanded. “Or would you have assumed I was just trying to cause trouble?”
Her jaw clenched, revealing she was in no mood to accept his perfectly reasonable explanation.
“So you let me make a fool of myself for months?”
Liam glanced toward the silent Luc.
“It was your family’s place to make sure your fiancé was worthy of you,” he said.
Luc grimaced. “He’s right. I failed you.”
“This has nothing to do with you.” Holly waved a silencing hand toward her brother, unconsciously looking as imperious as Vigo as she faced Liam with her chin high and her pale face hard with a stubborn expression. “How did you get the file?” she demanded of Liam.
He shrugged. “I hired a private investigator.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
She frowned, but she didn’t try to pretend as if she didn’t realize he’d been fiercely determined to lure her away from Ted from the beginning.
“You just said you didn’t use the file because you didn’t think that I would believe you.”
“I said I didn’t intend to show it to you,” he clarified, his hand lifting to touch her, only to be yanked back when she took a sharp step away. Shit. He flinched, regret slicing through him like a dagger. “But I’d hoped that the bastard would grow some balls and do the right thing. When he didn’t, I paid him a visit and warned him that if he didn’t confess the truth I was handing the file over to his father.”
Holly frowned. “Why would you send it to his father?”
Liam arched a startled brow. Hell, had Holly not realized why she’d been chosen as Ted’s bride?
He swallowed a curse. As if he needed to be the bearer of even more bad news.
“Theodore the Senior has been obnoxiously obsessed with his desire to climb the social ladder,” Liam grudgingly revealed. “His son is well aware he would be disinherited if he showed up for Sunday dinner with a woman who has nothing to offer the Wentworth clan beyond her obvious fertility.”
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, pain darkening her eyes as she abruptly turned to pace toward the glass wall.
“God.”
“Holly, please,” he husked, not sure what he was pleading for.
Understanding. Forgiveness. A second chance.
“You let me get into my wedding dress and wait with two hundred guests for a groom who was never going to show up.” She slowly turned to reveal her accusing expression. “Do you know how embarrassing that was?”
Liam grimaced. “I truly thought he would call off the wedding, princess. I never dreamed he would be enough of a bastard to simply not show up.”
A sharp, humorless laugh was wrenched from her throat. “What is it with me?” she demanded, her voice thick with tears. “Is there any man who isn’t going to betray me?”
Liam recoiled, feeling as if he’d taken a physical blow. “I never betrayed you.”
The cognac eyes blazed with fury. “You let me be publically humiliated and then you swooped in like some knight in shining armor and convinced me you genuinely cared.”
Hell. When she put it like that…
“I do care,” he rasped. “I love you.”
She made a sound of disgust, heading toward the elevator. “If that’s your idea of love, you can keep it.”
“Holly.”
She stabbed the button that opened the steel doors. Entering the elevator, she turned to send him a warning glare.
“Just stay away from me.”
Liam was in instant pursuit. He understood her need to get away from him, but she was in no condition to be on her own.
Not when she was so upset.
But he’d barely managed more than two steps when his arm was being grabbed in a painful grip.
“Let her go,” Luc commanded.
Liam sent his companion a death glare. “Fuck that.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Luc warned, his fingers digging into Liam’s arm with enough force to leave bruises.
He hissed as the elevator doors closed, whisking Holly away from him.
“Damn you,” he snarled. “She needs me.”
“Right now she needs some time to cool down and think clearly,” Luc warned.
He was right.
Holly was too hurt to listen to his frantic justifications.
That didn’t, however, make it any easier to let her walk away.
“You just want to keep us apart,” he accused the man who was looking at him as if sizing him up for a coffin.
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t want to protect my sister?”
“I’m not the one you need to protect her from,” Liam pointed out in rough tones.
He was a long way from forgiving the Angeli clan for not bothering to stop the engagement.
“You hurt her,” Luc accused.
Liam jerked his arm free. “That was never my intention,” he muttered.
His companion wasn’t impressed. “Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?”
In hindsight it was the obvious solution.
At the time he’d been terrified of losing her.
“She already blamed me for stealing the company she thought was going to be hers,” he said, shoving his fingers through his damp hair.
Luc breathed a curse. “It was never going to be hers. I told her that Vigo was playing games with her.”
Liam grimaced, remembering Holly’s heartbreakingly fragile expression when she discussed her prick of a father.
“You know that, and I know that, but she’s spent her entire life feeling as if she was on the outside looking in. She wanted to believe that she’d finally earned a place in her family.”
Luc gave a sharp shake of his head, his face hard with disgust.
“Trust me, being on the outside is the perfect place to be when it comes to my dysfunctional family.�
�
“Holly only knows that she wasn’t considered good enough to live with her father in his big mansion, or to be asked over for Christmas dinner,” Liam said, unable to understand any father who would use his children as if they were pawns on a chessboard. His own dad might not have had a fortune to pass along to his kids, but he’d loved them with a fierce devotion that meant more than any amount of money. “So when she thought he was going to name her as his heir, it made her feel as if she’d finally won a place in his heart.”
“The bastard doesn’t have a heart,” Luc informed him.
“Yeah well, she blamed me for snatching away her chance at happiness.” His jaw clenched as he remembered her explosive fury when it was announced that Vigo had sold his company to none other than Liam Conner. Thank god she had never been a big fan of carrying concealed weapons. “Can you imagine how she would have reacted if I’d been the one to tell her that her perfect fiancé was screwing around with another woman?”
“Fine. I get it,” Luc grudgingly conceded. “But why didn’t you come to me?”
Liam turned to pace toward the kitchen, reaching into his fridge to pull out two beers.
It was early, but hell, if he ever needed alcohol it was now.
“Believe it or not, I fell in love with Holly the night I met her,” he admitted, returning to his companion to offer him one of the bottles.
They both took a minute to enjoy the crisp beer before Luc heaved a resigned sigh.
“Actually I do believe you.” He polished off the beer and set the bottle on a nearby table. “Did you tell Holly?”
“She knew.” Liam twisted his lips in a rueful smile. There was no one in the room the night they met that hadn’t been aware of his stunned fascination with the dark-haired beauty. “But I’m a gambler from a family that doesn’t have a drop of blue blood. She was convinced that princely Theodore was the husband that would impress Vigo.”
“The worthless son of a bitch,” Luc growled.
“She refused to admit that we were destined to be together. I wanted—” Liam bit off his words.
Luc narrowed his gaze. “What?”
Liam hesitated. He wasn’t pumped about the idea of revealing his most intimate thoughts to anyone, let alone a man who was virtually a stranger.
But wasn’t a fool.
Luc Angeli could be his biggest obstacle or his greatest ally when it came to winning Holly’s forgiveness.
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