Paper Marriage Proposition (Gage Brothers 1)

His lips thinned into a white, grim line.

“Landon, are you enjoying yourself? Can I bring you anything, darling?”

Not even the fluttery woman’s voice, coming somewhere behind his broad shoulders, could tear those lethal silver eyes away from Beth’s. He seized her chin and tipped her head back. “Perhaps I do hate him,” he said silkily. “More than you will ever know.”

“Landon,” another voice said.

His thumb slid up from her chin to explore her trembling bottom lip. A jolt shot across her body. An avalanche of longing unlike anything she’d ever imagined crashed in her. She trembled, head to toe.

“Landon,” yet another voice said, this one male.

He ground his teeth, grabbed her elbow and began dragging her through the tumult of people toward a back hall, into a little room. Slamming the door, he closeted them in shadows. Only a faint flicker of city lights was visible through a small window.

“Bethany.” He seemed to struggle to grasp the last tatters of his patience. “You seem like a smart woman. I suggest you come up with another plan for yourself. I’m not interested.”

“But you’re still talking to me, aren’t you?”

“In two seconds, I won’t be.”

She caught his arm, noting his eyes were getting a little dark, a little wild. She couldn’t help but think that if she pushed a bit…if she pushed just a bit more…

“Please,” she implored, her voice praising. “The public loves you. The court will want to know my new husband to believe I am respectable. They will want to know how much you make and what you do…” Aware that she was squeezing his biceps—very hard, very strong biceps—and that he’d gone rigid as if he didn’t want her to, she let go. “You’re an enigma, Mr. Gage. You give to charities. You…you’re adored by the media.”

Adored because he had been on the deep end of a tragedy. Adored because he—powerful, handsome, rich—had been shattered once, like a human being.

“The media is twisted.” He leaned back on his heels and scoffed. “It is also mine. Of course it loves me.”

“They fear you, but they revere you.”

He glanced out the window, his brow creasing in thought. “What do you know of Hector’s dealings?”

“Names. People he’s bought in the press. Future plans.” At the thoughtful angle of his chin, she plunged on more boldly. “I will tell you everything. Everything I know—and I promise you I know enough.”

He silently weighed her words, considering. Yes! She could see that he was tempted, sorely tempted. Hope spread inside her like a winged shadow. Help me, Landon Gage, for Christ’s sake, help me.

Because she saw in this stranger’s eyes the same lost, caged fury he must see in hers. And sometimes a stranger is all you have in the world when your friends don’t hang around to watch the bloodshed. When they’d picked corners and they had not picked yours.

Landon Gage would understand. Someone, at last, would reach out a hand to her. Please.

He gave a toss of his head, emphatically denying her. “Find someone else.”

Stifling a rising bubble of hysteria, Beth slapped an arm across the door while fiercely clutching the book to her breastbone. “How can you do this?” she hissed through her teeth. “How can you let him get away with what he did to you? He destroyed your life. He still actively destroys it.”

She could hear the furious scowl he wore in his words. “Don’t pretend you know anything about my life.”

“Oh, I know all about it, I even watched while he did it. He did it to me, too!”

“Listen to me very carefully, Beth.” His voice dropped, low and husky but laced with the unyielding iron of his will as he bent over her, a looming shadow eating up her soul. “It has been six years. I have put the past behind me, where it belongs. I’m not consumed by rage anymore when for years all I thought of was murder. Do not provoke me, or I may just take it out on you.”

“This is your chance, don’t you see?” She was grasping at straws and she knew it. “I thought you would feel what I do. Don’t you just hate him?”

He pried her arm aside and reached for the doorknob, but she blocked the exit, experiencing a horrible sensation of watching her last chance slipping through her fingers.

“It will be over within a year, when I have David back. Please, what does a woman need to do to convince you!”

The book crashed to the floor as Beth grabbed his jacket, rose up on tiptoe, and slammed her lips to his, giving the kiss everything she had. Her lips wildly tried coaxing his, and her eyes flew open when he twisted her around in a dizzying spin. With enough force to yank the breath out of her, he pinned her back against the wall. “Are you out of your mind?”

She shivered, felt dazed and disoriented. Her lips burned from that kiss, a kiss he had not returned, one that had devastated her nonetheless. God, his chest was steel, his hands were steel, his annoying will was steel steel steel. “What will it take to make you help me?” she asked brokenly, sagging against the wall.