Loe raamatut: «A Game of Vows»

“Going to the chapel?”

Hannah froze, her blood turning to ice as the limo pulled away from the curb and mainstreamed into the San Francisco traffic. That voice. She knew that voice.

She couldn’t look up, her eyes still set on her phone. She curled her fingers more tightly around the heavy fabric of her wedding gown as she took a breath and raised her gaze, locking with dark, intense eyes in the rearview mirror.

She knew those eyes too. No one had eyes like him. They seemed to cut through you, possessing the ability to read your innermost secrets. Able to mock and flirt in a single glance. She still saw those eyes in her dreams. And sometimes in her nightmares.

Eduardo Vega. One of the many skeletons in her closet. Except he wasn’t staying put.

About the Author

MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon^® Modern^™ Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.

Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.

Recent titles by the same author:

A ROYAL WORLD APART

ONE NIGHT IN PARADISE

GIRL ON A DIAMOND PEDESTAL

HAJAR’S HIDDEN LEGACY

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Game of Vows

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

HANNAH WESTON swore as she tripped over the hem of her wedding dress, her focus diverted by the scrolling numbers on the screen of her smart phone. She’d said she wouldn’t work today. She’d lied.

The exchange was closed today, but she had a lead and she needed to chase it up before she made her vows. She had clients depending on her. And he would never know.

She dropped into the limo, her eyes still trained on her phone as she gathered her dress up into a satin ball and pulled it inside, slamming the door behind her.

“Going to the chapel?”

Hannah froze, her blood turning to ice as the limo pulled away from the curb and headed into the San Francisco traffic. That voice. She knew that voice.

She couldn’t look up, her eyes still set on her phone. She curled her fingers more tightly around the heavy fabric of her wedding gown, as she took a breath and raised her gaze, locking with the dark, intense eyes in the rearview mirror.

She knew those eyes, too. No one had eyes like him. They seemed to cut through you, possessing the ability to read your innermost secrets. Able to mock and flirt in a single glance. She still saw those eyes in her dreams. And sometimes her nightmares.

Eduardo Vega. One of the many skeletons in her closet. Except, he wasn’t staying put.

“And I’m going to get married,” she said tightly. She didn’t get intimidated. She did the intimidating. Back in NY she’d had more guts than any man on the trading room floor. She’d had Wall Street by the balls. And now, she was a force to be reckoned with in the world of finance. She didn’t do fear.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Hannah. Not today. Unless you’re interested in getting arrested for bigamy.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “I am not a bigamist.”

“You aren’t single.”

“Yes, I am. The paperwork was …”

“Never filed. If you don’t believe me, do some research on the matter.”

Her stomach squeezed tight, the world tilting to the side. “What did you do, Eduardo?” His name tasted so strange on her tongue. But then, it had never been familiar. He was a stranger, essentially, her ex-husband. She had never known him, not really.

They had lived together, sort of. She’d inhabited the spare room in his luxury penthouse for six months. They hadn’t shared meals, except on weekends when they’d gone to his parents’ home. They hadn’t shared a bed. Hadn’t shared more than the odd hello when they were in his massive home. It was only in public that he’d ever really talked to her. That he’d ever touched her.

He had been quick, blessed with money, a strategic mind and a total lack of caring in regards to propriety. She’d never met a man like him. Before or since. Of course, she hadn’t been blackmailed into marriage before or since, either.

“Me?” His eyes met hers in the mirror again, a smile curving his lips, a flash of white teeth against dark skin. “Nothing.”

She laughed. “That’s funny. I don’t believe you. I signed the papers. I remember it very clearly.”

“And you might have known they were never finalized if you had left a forwarding address for your mail. But that’s not the way you do things, is it? Tell me, are you still running, Hannah?”

“What did you do?” she asked, refusing to let his last barb stick in its target. She didn’t have to answer to Eduardo. She didn’t have to answer to anyone. And she most definitely didn’t have to run.

She met his eyes in the mirror and felt a sharp pang of emotion that mocked her previous thought. Why was this happening now? She was getting married in an hour. To Zack Parsons, the best man she’d ever known. He was respectful, and honorable. Distant. Able to help give her a career boost. He was everything she wanted, everything she needed.

“It’s a complicated process,” he said, his accent as charming as ever, even as his words made her blood boil. “Something perhaps … went amiss?”

“You bastard! You utter bastard!” She shut the web browser on her phone and pulled up the number pad, poised to dial.

“What are you doing, Hannah?”

“Calling … the police. The national guard.”

“Your fiancé?”

Her stomach tightened down on itself. “No. Zack doesn’t need to know ….”

“You mean you didn’t tell your lover about your husband? Not a great foundation for a marriage.”

She couldn’t call Zack. She couldn’t let Eduardo anywhere near the wedding. It would topple everything she’d spent the past nine years building. She hated that he had the power to do that. Hated facing the truth that he’d had power over her from the moment she’d met him.

She gritted her teeth. “Neither is blackmail.”

“We traded, mi tesoro. And you know it. Blackmail makes it sound sordid.”

“It was. It continues to be.”

“And your past is so clean you can’t stand getting your hands dirty? We both know that’s not true.”

A very rude word hovered on the edge of her lips. But freaking out at Eduardo wasn’t going to solve her problem. The very pressing problem that she needed to get to the hotel and take vows. “I’m going to ask you again, before I open the door and roll out into midday traffic and completely destroy this gown: What do you want? How do I give it to you? Will it make you go away?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’m taking you back to my hotel. And I’m not going away.”

Her lip curled. “Have you got a thing for women in wedding dresses? Because you got me into one quickly last time we met, and now you seem interested in me again … and here I am in a wedding dress.”

“It’s not the dress.”

“Give me one good reason not to call the police and tell them I’ve been kidnapped.”

“Hannah Mae Hackett.”

Her real name sounded so unfamiliar now. Even more so coming from him instead of being spoken with a Southern twang. Even still, a lead weight settled in her stomach when he said it.

“Don’t even say it,” she bit out.

“You don’t like your name? Well, I imagine not. You did change it.”

“Legally. I am legally not that name anymore. My name is Hannah Weston now.”

“And you illegally gained scholarships, and entrance, to the university in Barcelona by falsifying your school records.”

She clenched her teeth, her pulse pounding hard. She was so very screwed. And he knew it. “This sounds like a conversation we had five years ago. If you recall, I already married you to keep you from spreading it around.”

“Unfinished business.”

“The only thing unfinished, apparently, is our divorce.”

“Oh, no, there is so much more than that.” He pulled the limo against a curb in front of one of the famous boutique hotels in San Francisco. Marble, gold trimming and sharply dressed valets signaled the luxury of the place to everyone in the area. It was the sort of thing that had drawn her from the time she was young. The sort of thing she’d really started hungering for when she realized she had the power to change her circumstances.

Every time she checked into a hotel, as soon as the door was closed and she was isolated from the world, she would twirl in a circle and fall onto the bed, reveling in the softness. The cleanliness. The space and solitude. Even now that she had her own penthouse with thousand thread count sheets, she still did it.

The hotel wasn’t evoking those kinds of feelings in her today. Not with Eduardo present.

The valet took the keys and Eduardo came to Hannah’s door, opening it. “Wait … did you steal this?” she asked, looking at the limo.

As Eduardo bent down, Hannah fought the urge to shrink back. “I bought it from the chauffeur. Told him to go buy one that was newer. Nicer.”

“And he didn’t seem to care that he was supposed to pick me up?”

“Not when I gave him enough money for two new limousines. No.”

“He was going to leave a bride stranded on her wedding day?”

Eduardo shrugged. “The world is filled with dishonest and self-serving people. You, my dear, should know all about that.”

She snorted and rucked her dress up over her knees, climbing out of the car without touching Eduardo. She straightened and let her dress fall neatly into place. Then she tugged on her veil, fanning it over her shoulders. “Don’t say it like you aren’t one of the self-serving, my darling husband.”

She looked at him fully. He was still everything he’d been five years ago. Tall, broad, arresting, a vision of perfect male beauty in his well-cut suit. His bronzed skin was highlighted perfectly by his white dress shirt; his dark hair reached the collar of his jacket.

He’d always made her feel like someone had put both hands on her shoulders and shaken her. He’d always had the power to disrupt the order of her life, to make her feel like she was dangerously close to losing the control she’d worked so hard to cultivate over the years.

It was the thing she’d always hated most about him. That he was so darned magnetic. That he always had the power to make her tremble when nothing else could.

It wasn’t just that he was good-looking. There were a lot of good-looking men in the world, and she was too much in control of herself to let that affect her. It was the fact that he exuded a kind of power that she could never hope to achieve. And that he had power over her.

She breezed past him, ignoring the scent of his cologne and skin, ignoring the way it made her stomach tighten. She strode into the hotel lobby, well aware that she was making a spectacle and not caring at all. She breathed in deep. She needed focus. She needed to find out what he wanted so she could leave, as quickly as possible.

“Mrs. Vega, Mr. Vega.” A woman that Hannah assumed was a manager, rounded the check-in desk with a wide, money-motivated grin on her face. “So lovely to have you here. Mr. Vega told me he would be bringing his bride when he came to stay this time. So romantic.”

She had to bite back a tart curse.

Eduardo closed the distance between them and curled his arm around her waist. Her breath rushed from her body. For a moment, just one crazy moment, she wanted to lean against him. To draw closer to his masculine strength. But only for a moment.

“Very,” he said.

“Is there liquor in the room?” she asked, wiggling away from him.

The manager, whose name tag identified her as Maria, frowned slightly. “There is champagne waiting for you.”

“We’ll need three,” she said.

Maria’s frown deepened. “I …”

“She’s kidding,” Eduardo said.

Hannah shook her head. “I’ve been hammered since I took my vows. I intend to spend the rest of the day that way.”

“We’ll just go upstairs.”

“Send champagne,” Hannah said as Eduardo attempted to drag her from the desk in what she imagined he thought was a loving, husbandly manner.

He ushered her into a gilded elevator, a smile pasted on his darkly handsome face until the door closed behind them.

“That was not cute, Hannah,” he said.

She put her hand on her hip and gave him her sassiest smile. She didn’t feel sassy, or in control, but she could fake it with the best of them. “Are you kidding me? I think I’m ready for my close-up. That was fine acting.”

He shot her a bland look. “Your entire life has been acting. Don’t expect accolades now.”

Her smile faltered for a moment. “Look, I am on edge here.”

“You aren’t crying. No gnashing of teeth over leaving your fiancé at the altar.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with Zack, so don’t pretend you do. I care about him. I don’t want to leave him at the altar. I want you to come to your senses and give me the keys to your ill-gotten limo so I can drive myself to the hotel and marry him.” The image of Zack, in that black, custom tux, standing in front of all of their friends and coworkers … it made her feel sick. She’d never, ever intended to put him through that kind of humiliation. The idea of it being reversed made her skin crawl.

“Whether I drive you there or not, your marriage won’t be legal. I explained that already.”

“They gave me a marriage license,” she said, her voice sounding distant, echoey. Her hands were starting to shake. Why was she reacting this way? Why was she being so weak? Was she in shock?

“And we were married, and attempted to divorce out of your home country. Things get missed.”

“How could something this important just get missed?” she said, exploding. “I don’t believe for one second you … forgot to file the papers.”

His smile turned dark. “Stranger things have happened, tesoro.”

For the first time she noticed that he wasn’t exactly the same. She’d thought his eyes the same, but she saw now they weren’t. He used to sparkle. His brown eyes glittering with mischief. He’d been so amused at finding out her secret, that she wasn’t who she’d claimed to be. He’d been even more amused at the thought of marrying an American girl to gall his father, when he’d mandated his son take a wife to gain leadership of their company. To prove he was a family man. It had been the best joke to him, to marry a college student with no money, no connections and no cooking skills.

The sparkle was gone now. Replaced with a kind of black glitter that seemed to suck the light from the room, that seemed to absorb any kind of brightness and kill it. It did something strange to her. Pulled at her like the sparkle never had.

“Like getting kidnapped on your wedding day?”

“Coerced away, perhaps. But don’t tell me you haven’t got pepper spray somewhere in your purse. You could have stopped me. You could have called the police. You could have called your Zack. You didn’t. And you still aren’t doing it. You could turn and walk out of this room right now and get a cab. I wouldn’t stop you. And you know that.”

“But you know. You know everything. And I …”

“And it would ruin your reputation with your clients. No one wants to hear their financial adviser is a high school dropout who committed fraud to get her college degree.”

“You’re right, that kind of information does make client meetings awkward,” she said, her voice flat, a sick feeling settling in her stomach.

“I imagine so. Just remember how awkward it made our meeting back when you were my intern.”

“I think the real awkwardness came when you blackmailed me into marrying you.”

“You keep using that word. Was it really blackmail?”

“According to Webster’s Dictionary? Yes.”

He shrugged. “Either way, had you not had something for me to hold over your head … it wouldn’t have worked.”

“You’re so smug about it,” she said, seething now. The clock on the nightstand read five minutes to her wedding and she was standing in an opulent hotel suite, in her wedding gown, with another man. “But you’ve had everything handed to you in your life, Eduardo. You work because your daddy gave you an office. I had to make my own destiny, and maybe … maybe the way I went about it was a little bit shady.”

“The United States government calls it fraud. But shady is fine.”

“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said.

“No, you’re right. I can hardly speak around the silver spoon in my mouth. What would I know about hardship?” His lip curled, his expression hard, cynical. A new look for Eduardo.

“Your only hardship was that your father demanded you give up your life as a partying man whore and find a wife. So what did you do? You twisted my arm, because you thought a gringa wife, especially one who wasn’t Catholic and couldn’t cook, would be a funny way to follow your father’s orders without actually following them. And I went along with it, because it was better than losing my job. Better than getting kicked out of university. Everything was a game to you, but to me, it was life.”

“You’re acting like I hurt you in some way, Hannah, but we both know that isn’t true. I gave you your own room. Your own wing of the penthouse. I never intruded on you, never once took advantage of you. I kept to our agreement and released you from our bargain after six months, and you left. With all the money I promised you,” he said. “You keep forgetting the money I gave you.”

She clenched her teeth. “Because I didn’t spend it.” She hadn’t been able to. Leaving him, or more to the point, his family and the city that had started to feel like home, had felt too awful. And she’d felt, for the first time, every inch the dishonorable person she was. “If you want your ten thousand dollars, it’s in a bank account. And frankly, it’s pennies as far as I’m concerned at this point.”

“Oh, yes, you are very successful now, aren’t you?”

She didn’t feel it at the moment. “Yes. I am.”

Eduardo advanced toward her. “You are good with finances, investments.”

“Financial planning, strategies, picking stocks. You name it, I’m good at it.”

“That’s what I want from you.”

“What? Financial advice?”

“Not exactly.” He looked out the window, his expression inscrutable. “My father died two years ago.”

An image of the hard, formidable, amazing man that Eduardo had been blessed enough to call his father swam before her eyes. Miguel Vega had been demanding. A taskmaster. A leader. He had cared. About his business, about his children. About his oldest son, who wasn’t taking life seriously enough. Cared enough to back him into a corner and force him to marry. It was a heavy-handed version of caring, but it was more than Hannah had ever gotten from her own father.

Eventually, that man, his wife, Eduardo’s sister, had come to mean something to her. She’d loved them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice muted now, a strange kind of grief filling her heart. Not that Miguel would have missed or cared about her. And she didn’t deserve it. She’d lied to him. And as far as he was concerned, she’d left his son.

“As am I,” Eduardo said. “But he left me in charge of Vega Communications.”

“And things aren’t going well?”

“Not exactly.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “No, not exactly.”

“Do you need me to look at your books? Because I can do that after I marry Zack.”

He shook his head, his dark eyes blazing. “That can’t happen, tesoro.”

“But it can,” she said, desperation filling her again. It was past bridal-march time. She could just picture the hotel, all decked out in pink ribbon and tulle. Her beautiful pink wedding cake. It was her dream wedding, the dream she’d had since she was a little girl. Not some traditional wedding in a cathedral, conducted entirely in Latin. A wedding that was a show for the groom’s family. A wedding that had nothing to do with her.

It was a wedding with a groom who didn’t love her, but at least liked her. A groom who didn’t find the idea of taking vows with her to be a joke. He at least wanted her around. Being wanted on a personal level was new for her. She liked the way it felt.

“Sorry, Hannah. I need you to come back to Spain with me.” He looked out the window. “It’s time I brought my wife back home.”

“No is the same in both of our languages, so there should be nothing lost in translation when I say no.” Hannah took a step back; her calf connected with the soft edge of the mattress, her dress rustling with the motion.

“Sorry, but this isn’t a negotiation. Either you come with me now, or I march you down the aisle at the hotel myself, and you can explain, in front of your guests, and your groom, exactly why you can’t marry him today. How you were about to involve him in an illegal marriage.”

“Not on purpose! I would never have done this to him if I would have known.”

“Once the extent of your past history is revealed, he may not believe you. Or, even if he did, he may not want you.” His lips curved up into a smile, his eyes absent of any humor. And that was when she had the very stark, frightening impression that she was looking at a stranger.

He was nothing like the Eduardo she’d once known. She didn’t know how she’d missed it. How it hadn’t been obvious from the moment she’d seen his eyes in the rearview mirror. Yes, he had the same perfectly curved lips, the same sharply angled jaw. The same bullheaded stubbornness. But he no longer had that carefree air he’d always conducted himself with. There were lines by his eyes, bracketing his mouth. A mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to smile.

Maybe the death of his father had taken a serious toll on him. But she didn’t care. She couldn’t afford to care. She had to look out for herself, just as she’d been doing all of her life. No one else would. No one else ever had.

“Bastard,” she spat.

“You’re getting repetitive,” he said dryly.

“So what? You expect me to come back to Spain and just … be your wife?”

“Not exactly. I expect you to come back and continue to act as my wife in name only while you help me fix the issues I’m having with Vega Communications.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need anyone to know there are issues. Not my competitors, I don’t need them smelling blood in the water. Not my mother, she has no need to worry. My sister … I don’t want to worry her, either. No one can know.” There was an edge to his voice, evidence of fraying control. She could work with that. She could definitely work with that.

The pieces started falling into place in her mind. “So you think it can look like a reconciliation five years in the making. Your wife is suddenly back in Barcelona and hanging on your arm. Rather than letting anyone in on the fact that you needed to bring in outside consultation to help straighten up your finances?”

“That’s the sum of it,” he ground out.

It made sense now. All fine and good for him to sweep in like a marauder and demand her cooperation. But all that sweeping was hiding very real problems.

And those problems meant she had a lot more power than she’d thought she’d possessed thirty seconds earlier.

Her lips curved into a smile, the heated adrenaline she always felt when presented with a battle spreading through her chest, her limbs. “You need me. Say it.”

“Hannah …”

“No. If I’m going to even consider doing this, you admit it. To me, and to yourself. You never would back then, but now … now I’m not a scared college student trying to hold on to my position at school.” She met his eyes without flinching. “Admit that you need me.”

“You were never a scared college student,” he bit out. “You were an angry one. Angry you’d been caught out and desperate to do anything to keep it secret.”

“Well, now you’re sounding a little desperate.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and cocked her hip to the side. “So, at least say please.”

His lip curled into a sneer, a muscle in his jaw ticking. He was weighing his options. “Please.”

She tilted her chin up and smiled, the sort of smile she knew would make his blood boil. “Good boy.”

The feral light in his eyes let her know that she’d just about gone too far. She didn’t care. He couldn’t screw up her day any more than he already had.

He didn’t move for a beat. She could see him, calculating, making decisions. For a moment she thought he might reach out and grab her. Take her in his arms and … strike her? Certainly not. No matter what Eduardo was, he wasn’t a monster. Kiss her?

That he might do. The thought made her stomach tighten, made her heart beat faster.

She saw him visibly relax. “A lot of confidence and attitude coming from a woman who could face criminal charges if the right words were spoken into the wrong ears.”

She put her hands on her hips. “But you showed your hand, darling,” she said, turning his use of endearments back at him. “I may be over a barrel, but you’re tied to me. If I go over the cliff, you’re coming, too. I might be stuck, but you’re just as stuck. So, let’s be civil, you and I, huh?”

“Let’s not forget who stands to lose the most,” he said, his voice hard.

She examined his face, the hard lines etched into it. Brackets around his mouth, creases in his forehead. Lines that had appeared sometime in the past five years, for they hadn’t been there back when she’d first met him. “I have a feeling you might have a bit more to lose than you’re letting on.”

“What about you? At the least you stand to lose clients, your reputation. At the most?”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. It was possible she could lose … so much. Everything. That she could face criminal charges. That she could find herself with her degree revoked. That she could find herself back in Arkansas in a single-wide mobile home that had a lawn with more pink plastic flamingos than it had grass.

She couldn’t go back to that. To that endless, blank hell that had no end. No beginning. No defining moments. Just an eternity of uncomfortable monotony that most people she’d lived around had tried to dull with the haze of alcohol or the high of drugs.

No. She wasn’t taking any chances on returning to that life. Not ever.

“Your point is taken,” she said. “Anyway … I can’t go and marry Zack now, no matter what, can I?”

“Not unless you want to extend your list of criminal activity.”

“I didn’t hurt anyone, Eduardo,” she said stiffly.

Eduardo surveyed the slim, cool blonde standing in front of him, arms crossed over the ornate bodice of her wedding dress. His wife. Hannah. One of the images in his mind that had remained bright and clear, no matter how thick the fog was surrounding other details, other memories.

His vision of her as a skinny college student with a sharp mind and more guts than any person he’d ever met, had stayed with him. And when he’d realized just how much of a struggle things were becoming with Vega Communications, it had been her image he’d seen in his mind. And he’d known that he had to get his wife back.

His wife. The wife who had never truly been his wife beyond her signature on the marriage certificate. But she was a link. To his past. To the man he’d been. To those images that were splintered now, like gazing into a shattered mirror. He had wondered if seeing her could magically put him back there. If she could make the mirror whole. Reverse things, somehow.

Foolish, perhaps. But he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and there had to be a reason. Had to be a reason she was so clear, when other things simply weren’t.

Thankfully, he’d managed to get his timing just right. And in his new world, one of migraines and half-remembered conversations, good timing was a rarity he savored.

“Does that make falsifying school records all right, then?” he said, watching her gray-blue eyes turn a bit more gray. A bit more stormy, as she narrowed them in his direction.

He personally didn’t care what she’d done to get into university. Back then, he’d selected her to be his intern based on her impeccable performance in college, and not on anything else. Clearly she’d been up to the task, and in his mind, that was all that mattered.

But he’d use every bit of leverage he had now, and he wouldn’t let his conscience prick him over it. Hannah knew all about doing what had to be done. And that’s what he was doing now.

“I don’t suppose it does,” she said tightly. “But I don’t dwell on that. I gave myself a do-over in life, and I’ve never once regretted it. I’ve never once looked back. I messed up when I was too young to understand what that might mean to my future, and when I did realize it … when it was too late …”

“You acted. Disregarding the traditional ideas of right and wrong, disregarding who it might hurt. And that’s what I’m doing now. So I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said, aware that no sincerity was evident in his voice. He felt none.

She was testing him, needling him, trying to make him angry. It had worked, but it wouldn’t divert his focus. She was his focus.

“So you think that makes it okay?” Her full lips turned down.

“I’m not overly concerned with questions of morality at the moment. I need to drag Vega back up to where it belongs.”

“How is it you’ve managed to let it get so bad?” she said, again, not hesitating to throw her own barbs out.

There was no way in hell he was talking about his shortcomings. Not now. Maybe not ever. It wasn’t her concern.