Paper Marriage Proposition (Gage Brothers 1)

He caught her shoulders and she squeaked and flattened back against the door. “No, please no, no kissing!”

He let his arms drop at his sides and cursed low in his throat as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Fine.” He stepped away, jaw clenched taut. “Fine. If you change your mind, you let me know.”

“Landon, are you angry?”

He didn’t answer.

“Landon!”

“I’m not angry, Beth, just get out of my room.” He grabbed the cookbook and shoved it into her chest before he stalked away.

“Wait…” she called him, and he turned at the bathroom door. Their gazes locked.

He was dark and tall and looking very much a husband, while she stood there by the opposite door, with a new dress she’d bought on sale that he hadn’t even noticed, a huge knot in her stomach and a horrible sense of loss. She clutched the book to her chest. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

“No,” he said, tersely. “It’s him.”

He closed the bathroom door, and for a minute, Beth stood there frozen and confused. Then she charged into her room, tossed herself on the bed and buried her face under the pillow. She screamed into the down, a scream of total and wretched frustration.

What had he meant by that? If Landon thought this had anything to do with Hector, he was wrong.

It was David who worried her, David who kept her locked in her room at night, David and how he deserved a stable future, not living through another heartbreaking divorce.

She clenched her eyes shut and tried to shut down the images that tormented her.

Landon in the shower. Naked. Landon naked with all that thick muscle. Landon giving her a mere book and making her feel like he’d given her a piece of the moon.

She groaned. She went under, yanked the covers up to her head and tried not to think of his hot kisses, his surprising smiles, his penetrating stares.

Impossible. Vivid, mushy and sweaty thoughts of her husband made her hot, and squirmy, and it made her ashamed.

She couldn’t do this. Sure, she could do this—pretend marriage. But she couldn’t do the rest.

Her and Landon’s relationship was just a convenient business arrangement that would open beautiful possibilities for her future—her son, specifically.

But even as she reminded herself to keep Landon’s and her expectations in line, in her mind she pictured being coiled so tightly around Landon neither of them could breathe.

Beth! she chastised herself. Remember what happens when they want what you can’t give. What happens when you let yourself fall in love with a man who doesn’t really want or need you.

Sighing, she rolled to her side, and an ache settled around her chest as she thought of David. She closed her eyes and imagined him sleeping, always cherubic—like her very own angel. And she prayed he dreamt of gumdrops and licorice sticks, of puppies and kittens, of anything but the hell going on between his mother and father. “Good night, David. Sleep tight.”

Beth knew for sure that she would not.

Because just down the hall in his big room, in his big shower, bare-chested and most definitely alone, was Landon.

Ten

The weeks passed, each day loaded with a strange mix of companionship and charged pauses, growing friendship and stolen touches, talk of revenge and looks that were heated with longing.

This morning Beth had a strange hole inside her. She couldn’t take his kindness any longer—it made her feel weak and hopeful and besotted, when all she wanted was to feel angry and abused again and concentrate on what

most mattered to her.

“Where are we going?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from the scenery and meeting his sharp silver gaze.

Landon lounged in the backseat of the Navigator this Saturday morning, carefree and relaxed in tan slacks and a white polo, but his gaze shone with interesting secrets. One corner of his lips kicked up a notch. “I’ve arranged for you to see David.”

Beth’s every muscle jerked at that, and her heart went bonkers in her chest. “You have? How? When?”