Paper Marriage Proposition (Gage Brothers 1)

When she at last spoke, the horrible words caused actual pain in her throat. “He took my son from me.”

Gage slammed his laptop shut and began to shove the files into his briefcase. “Aha.”

She focused on his hard profile and wondered if he’d known, suspected, that she would come to him. He seemed not in the least surprised by her visit. Then again, he looked like a man who’d seen it all.

“I need…I want him back. A six-year-old should be with his mother.”

He locked his briefcase with an efficient click.

Tamping down an anger that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her ex-husband, Beth attempted to level her voice. “We battled for him in a custody hearing. Hector’s lawyers provided photographs of me having an illicit affair. Several, actually. Of me…with different men.”

This time, when his eyes ventured the length of her body, she experienced the alarming sensation of having him mentally strip off her clothes. “I read the papers, Miss Lewis. You’ve got quite a reputation now.”

He reached for his wallet on the nightstand, slipped it into his back pocket and lifted a tailored black jacket from the back of a nearby chair.

“They paint me as a Jezebel. It’s a lie, Mr. Gage,” she said.

Gage unapologetically started across the suite and thrust his arms into the coat sleeves.

Beth briskly followed him out of the room and down the hall and to the elevator bank. Her heart tripped when he stopped. He slammed his finger into the down arrow, then leaned back on his heels and regarded her plainly. “And how is this my problem?”

“Look.” Her voice shook, and her heart was about to pop. “I have no resources to fight him or his lawyers. He made sure I received nothing. At first I thought there would be a young lawyer hungry enough to put his name out there and take a case like this with no money, but there isn’t. I paid twenty dollars to a service online just so I could see what my options were.”

She paused for oxygen.

“Apparently, if my circumstances change, I could petition for a custody change. I have already quit my job. Hector accused me of leaving David all day with my mother while I worked, and my mother…well, she’s a little deaf. But she loves David, she’s a great grandmother,” she quickly defended, “and I had to work, Mr. Gage. Hector left us without money.”

“I see.”

His steady regard caused a burning heat to crawl up her neck and cheeks.

No doubt in her mind that she was being judged all over again, and right now, it felt as humiliating as it had in court.

The elevator arrived with a ping, and she followed him inside, inhaling deeply for courage.

And to her dismay, all she could smell the moment the doors closed and they were enclosed in such a small space was him. Clean and musky, his scent unsettled her nerves. It felt as if she had pins in her veins.

God, the man was seriously, ludicrously sexy and he smelled really, really good.

Beth shouldn’t have noticed this, but she was having trouble organizing her thoughts.

Landon Gage crossed his big, strong arms and gazed with notable impatience at the blinking LED numbers, as though they couldn’t reach the ballroom floor soon enough.

“I do not care about the money, I want my child,” Bethany whispered, her voice soft and pleading.

No one had recognized the good, loving deeds she’d done right as a mother. No one had cared that she’d told David stories every night. No one had paid attention to how she’d been to every doctor visit, had mended every little scrape, had dried every tear. No one in court had seen her as a mother, only a whore. That is all they had wanted to see, and what they’d wanted to believe. Bethany, and men. Men she didn’t know, men she’d never even seen.

How easy it was for the wealthy and powerful to lie and for others to believe them. How much had it cost Hector to doctor that evidence? A pittance to him, she was sure, compared to what he took from her.

Lost in thought, she had not realized Landon had stopped gazing at the numbers and was, instead, scrutinizing her profile as she gnawed on her lower lip. “And I repeat. How is this my problem?”

She met his gaze head-on. “You are his enemy. He despises you. He means to destroy you.”

He smiled a fast, hard smile, as though he knew a secret the rest of the world didn’t. “I would like to see him try once more.”

“I have…” She waved the book. “This little black book. Which you could use to bring him down.”

“Little black book? Like we’re in high school?”