No one objected.
“I’ll allow it,” the judge conceded, sighing. “Answer the question.”
Frantic, her eyes searched a pair of familiar gray ones across the room. The instant her gaze locked with Landon’s, her chest exploded with emotion. “I love him,” she said, lowering her face as the words, so true and so audible, trickled into her own ears.
“Mrs. Gage, please speak up, we couldn’t—”
“I love him. I love Landon.”
Landon stiffened as though the truth had been a lie, the confession a slap.
Peering at him through her lashes, Beth’s hopes of forgiveness were pulverized. His jaw hardened, and his eyes flashed with accusation. The look in his eyes destroyed her confidence. Pretend you love me well and hard or by God this’ll blow up in our faces, he’d said.
He thought she was pretending!
“You say you love your husband, and yet my client mentions you’ve been speaking of a reconciliation?”
Her stomach felt so cramped she thought she’d vomit. “There’s no reconciliation.”
“Mrs. Gage…” Hector’s lawyer lifted a shiny flat object in her hand. She lengthened the moment until the curiosity to discover what she held up for inspection ate at Beth on the inside—like the attorney surely intended it to. “When was this picture taken? Contrary to your attorney’s claims on the former pictures, this one is fully authentic, is it not?”
Her entire world, her entire perfect world which consisted of her enjoying a lifetime of full and complete custody of David, seemed to crumple as she gazed down at the photograph. Somehow, these people had managed to produce a new set of photographs from the meeting at Maggiano’s. God! How many of these vulgar folks had been watching them? How many cowards had stood there, snapping pictures while her life fell apart, and done nothing to help her?
Outraged, Beth scrutinized the close-up of Hector’s lips a breath away from hers. Landon had known this would occur. He’d warned her. He’d told her not to go, and one morning over coffee, she’d agreed.
Then she’d gone to meet that stinking rat Halifax anyway.
And guess what? Landon had been right, and Beth had been utterly wrong.
Flustered and blushing a disturbing shade of red, Beth met the woman’s hard stare head-on. “Hector called and said I wouldn’t be able to see my son if I didn’t meet him. You can check the phone records.”
“As a matter of fact, I have. Wasn’t that you calling from Mr. Gage’s home the afternoon of your engagement party?”
“I was calling my son!” Beth burst out, then quickly caught herself and pursed her lips.
Calm. She had to stay calm.
The questioning continued; and each lashing sentence pounded her like a sledgehammer. Had she committed infidelities as well? Did she have proof of this supposed infidelity her first husband had committed? Had she written this love note? A love note! A lie, a prefabricated piece of evidence, like those Hector loved to produce.
Beth, upon a silent glare from Mason, limited her answers now to yes and no. Most were no. No, no infidelities, no love note, no reconciliation, until the lawyer tired and allowed Mason to call his next witness.
Landon took the stand.
It seemed that even time stood still in a show of appreciation for his lithe, powerful walk. Beth observed him as she resumed her place at the table, inwardly wanting to sigh. Every sharp plane of his face fascinated her; the arrogant slant of his nose, the raw power in his jaw and the dark shadow across it. She would not look at his thick, fat, plump, delicious mouth, or she would never be able to concentrate.
Mason kept his i
nterrogation brief, but Beth perked up in interest when Hector’s lawyer approached to question Landon. If someone could put that hateful woman in her place, it might as well be him.
“Mr. Gage, do you have children?”
His hard, sinewy muscles rippled as he folded his long arms over his chest. He leaned back with such a look of calm that could make even Hector’s glares look less chilling. “No.”
“Have you ever had children?”
Beth’s chest muscles tightened at the knife-edged question. Landon, expressionless, allowed the attorney to wait for a moment before he answered her. “I had a son.”
“And where is your son now, Mr. Gage?”