Paper Marriage Proposition (Gage Brothers 1)

After handing over the black leather book, she followed Landon’s stealthy movements as he hauled a chair out from behind a desk and sat. He calmly paged through it.

“So why did you marry him?” he asked.

“I was young and pregnant.” Beth plopped down on the edge of the bed, suddenly uncomfortable in her skirt and jacket. “And all right, yes, stupid.”

He flipped to the second page and didn’t raise his head, his hard, aquiline profile unreadable.

“I used to wonder why he’d want to marry me,” she admitted with a shrug. “I felt so flattered. He would call every day and ask to see me. Then I guess he saw what a good daughter I was to my parents. He wanted an obedient, biddable wife—like all men desperate to feel powerful want someone meek.”

Landon looked up, and when his lips smiled and did that eat-your-heart-out thing again, she felt a strange elated sensation.

“You were biddable, Beth? What happened?”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, stop it.”

“Did you ever let him medicate you, Beth?”

She frowned at the question, at the hard edge in the word “medicate”. There had been times when Hector had diagnosed her “problems” she needed to grow up, and get serious, and act like his wife. Apparently, he hadn’t had any pills for Beth’s ailments. “Hector specializes in chronic pain—and nothing of mine ever ached except my pride.”

And now she’d grown up, hadn’t she? Now she’d put all her efforts into acting like someone’s wife—Landon’s.

His finger slid down a page, and he read a name out loud. “Joseph Kennar. He’s one of our reporters.”

“He’s bought.”

Landon appeared anything but surprised. “Everyone’s for sale unfortunately.” He continued reading, his eyes sharp as the point of a knife on the page. “Macy Jennings. Another one of our reporters.”

“Also bought.” Then she added, with a bit of disgust at herself because she could not, for the life of her, explain why she told him all this. “Hector would do anything to ensure he had the best reputation. He wanted to treat anyone that was rich and powerful, and keeping his name clean in the media guaranteed this. But I suspect Hector did more with Macy than just exchange money and favors.”

“And you let him?”

She let him? Had she? Just so he left her alone? “Well I…I guess I ignored him. I thought that…for David I would tolerate it.” God. Stupid stupid stupid. What would Landon think of her?

“But then?”

He seemed so inordinately interested in her that she was grateful his head was still bent over the book. Otherwise, his questions and his unyielding attention would be too much. Still, she felt so stupid over what she’d tolerated.

“But then I couldn’t do it even for my baby,” she admitted. There. All right, that wasn’t bad, that she had finally found her courage and left the sleaze. She’d sold David on the “new adventure” he and Mommy would take, and he’d been excited.

She seized the nearby pillow and clutched it to her chest, suddenly needing to hold on to something. Every time she thought of David her stomach lurched as if she’d been poisoned.

“I left Hector a year ago and took David with me, and I found a job at a flower shop. Hector made contact weeks later. He apologized, said he wanted me back, but all I wanted was to be free. Of him. I filed for divorce and when he found out, he ranted and threatened, said I wouldn’t see a dime. He was right, I didn’t. But I was still happy. Just me and David and Mom. But then he filed for custody.”

“He struck where it most hurt,” Landon said, slapping the book shut with a deafening sound.

He’d read only two pages. As she’d asked him to. And something about that, the respect for her wishes in that action, made the walls inside her crack a fraction.

Wow. An honorable man. Who’d have known she’d ever see one of those? “He did strike where it most hurt.” Beth closed her eyes briefly as the pain sliced her anew. “He tore me apart. I couldn’t even explain or say goodbye to my own son.”

And what is my baby doing now? Who hugs him instead of me? And when will I be able to hold him again?

“Hector will be furious when he learns we’ve married,” she admitted, struggling not to shiver.

Landon leaned back in his chair and canted his head, his lips thinning in distaste. “Let the man stew for a bit, Beth. Wonder what we’re concocting.”

But suddenly it struck her that more than angry, Hector would probably be annoyed. He treated patients with chronic pain and he’d always felt above them—like he would never feel the kind of pain his patients did. But Beth knew that he did. His wounds were internal; and they had festered.

His entire adult life, he’d seemed irked by the knowledge that there was someone better in this city, someone he couldn’t touch.