Paper Marriage Proposition (Gage Brothers 1)

Beth seized David’s hand and tried a smile that didn’t quite make it. “We’re ready.” God, that tiny hand inside of hers felt so right.

Ducking his head to meet David eye to eye, Landon bumped fists with her son, both of them smiling and doing it naturally this time. “You can sleep in Nathan’s room,” he told the child.

The generous offer only made Beth’s misery complete. For she, better than anyone, knew how zealously Landon had guarded that room. Before he’d known the truth about his baby.

Thomas opened the car door, and the three of them climbed inside, David excited, Landon quiet and Beth torn between excitement and despair, on their way to a make-believe home.

She and David hugged all the way.

Fourteen

The house was silent toni

ght.

Four months had passed, and every day of living with a fake family had been silent, wretched torture.

Landon stared out the window, not really seeing the manicured lawns outside. He was in his room, alone. Just him and the divorce papers. His bedroom had never felt so empty. The furniture couldn’t fill the space. Nothing could fill the vast feeling of loss and emptiness.

Mask and Brindle, who’d taken to sleeping with David now, were down the hall in the boy’s room.

And Beth…

He didn’t know where she was. What she was doing. They barely spoke a word to each other. He knew she worked long hours at the computer during the day, and that she waited by the window when David arrived from school. He knew she slept with the door halfway open to hear anything amiss in David’s room at night.

He knew that sometimes, when tired, she spoke in her dreams. And he knew that most of those times, she spoke his name. He’d also heard her cry once. Soft sniffles at midnight, coming from her room, making him toss in his empty bed wondering why she cried. He didn’t hold his breath thinking it was him she cried for.

They’d been with him for four months now, four months and twenty nine days. Living with them felt like living with a ticking time bomb.

It was impossible to explain to Garrett, who’d been asking questions, or to anyone, what he’d been feeling all this time, seeing Beth every day, seeing her son frolicking out in the gardens during the afternoon. Her son, who was the same age Nathan would’ve been.

Longing didn’t hold a candle to the emotions that bombarded him. Now his every muscle was taut with tension, tension which could find no relief, no kind of comfort. Because the tension that most gnawed at his gut stretched between Beth and him—and it was always home as long as she was.

He had to get rid of them, both of them.

He had known, from the moment he’d seen her in his hotel room, that she attracted him. He was a man accustomed to analyzing before acting, and he’d believed he’d somehow be able to remain immune to Beth’s effect on him.

He hadn’t.

Just as he hadn’t predicted how badly he wanted to make things right for her. Even in ways he hadn’t been able to make them right for himself.

No matter what she’d done to him, no matter that she’d lied and betrayed him, Landon had given her his word. She would have her son back at any cost, and Landon would have Halifax’s head.

It had been four months and twenty nine days. Why had he not celebrated his victory over Halifax yet?

Because she’s still here.

Landon wrenched off his tie, shoving it into his pants pocket. Halifax didn’t deserve to be walking on the same planet Beth and her son were. And therefore, he would not. He was answering to a hell of a lot more charges now and would probably spend the rest of his life behind bars. Not only had the insurance companies sued him for millions the man in all likelihood did not have, but the District Attorney had charged him with distribution of illegal substances, and criminally negligent manslaughter. His situation was bleak.

As bleak as…Landon’s bedroom.

“Damn it,” he cursed. Before he knew what he did, he removed his coat, rolled the cuffs of his shirt, yanked the door open, and scoured the house for his wife.

She’d tried talking to him several times, always uneasily, but the intense sting of betrayal he felt kept building inside of him, and it left no room for listening to Beth. No room for coddling her. No room for anything except waiting to recover whatever life he’d had before her, and forget he’d ever married her.

He found the door to her bedroom partway open. Something tightened inside him as he pushed it wider and gazed into the dimly lit room. “Beth? Can we talk?”

Beth sat at the vanity, brushing her hair as though the act calmed her, and stopped when she heard him. She spun around on the upholstered ottoman with wide unblinking eyes, her mouth slightly parted. The picture of Halifax leaning in unbearably close to those pretty pink lips came back to Landon, making him want to rip down the drapes and toss them out the window.