Bound As His Business-Deal Bride

‘There’s no hurry.’ He didn’t want her getting out of the bed and leaving, not yet, when so many questions needed answering. ‘Why, Eve?’

Her mouth firmed to a tight line. ‘I don’t know what—’

‘Yes, you do. Why has there been no one else? Seven years is a long time.’

Her closing down to him began right then, the shuttering behind her eyes clear, like she’d pulled down a blind and excluded him from the room.

‘I was studying and then thrown into managing the business here.’

The lie was written all over her face. The way her eyes avoided his. The way her throat convulsed as she swallowed. Her words sounded genuine but the look of her screamed volumes. If he’d been able to see her face to face in their final conversation, would he have seen the truth? Because all he’d heard had been the words, and he suspected now that those words had been blatant lies too.

‘You’re a beautiful, passionate woman. Men would have flocked to you.’ They would have wanted her. He’d taunted himself for enough years with thoughts of her and any man other than him, till he’d hardened his heart to granite. Nothing and no one had been let in since.

She shrugged. Wriggled away. She still wouldn’t look at him and all he saw was embarrassment and a spark of something else, hot and angry, in the flare of her pale blue eyes.

‘Men did, but I had focus. Something to achieve. I’d been given a job to do here, and I excelled at it. I didn’t need the attentions of a random man to make me feel good about myself.’

She rolled over and almost threw herself from the bed in her haste to escape. Glorious. Naked. He wanted to drag her back like some caveman, spend hours buried in her till they had to leave for their flight. Although it was tempting to skip it altogether and stay, continue the fantasy that they could remain cocooned from the outside world.

‘Come back to bed. I won’t ask any more questions. Let me make love to you instead.’

Her eyes softened for a moment. He drew back the sheet and patted the mattress beside him. There’d be no mistaking how badly he wanted her, and if Eve didn’t want questions asked for now, he could do that.

Eve’s gaze raked his body like her nails had scored his skin. Flares of heat ignited where it lingered. His face, chest, lower and then her pupils flared wide and dark. He smiled because he had her, and she knew it. They could resist many things, but not each other. He held out his hand to her. ‘C’mon. You’re not scared, are you?’

‘Nothing scares me anymore,’ she said in a husky whisper.

He reached out and she placed her hand in his. He tugged and she tumbled onto the bed and into his arms. Their truth screamed loudly in every touch and caress when they were in bed, tangled together. Here there were no lies between them, only raw honesty. If this was all Eve had to give for now, that would be enough.

Eve slept through most of the flight. The long, passionate night when they’d made love over and over, taking its delectable toll. It was as though they were trying to exorcise the demons of the past, as though when buried in each other they could regain something they’d lost.

She allowed it, the fantasy that this could last, because she’d come to the blinding realisation that she’d never stopped loving Gage. She now knew it was why she rarely returned to the US, to the place where they’d begun. She’d stayed in France and video-called the family. Had attended obligatory holidays when her presence had been unavoidable—Christmas, Thanksgiving—and only when internet alerts had told her that Gage was somewhere else so there’d been no chance of ever bumping into one another.

Now, in a car on the soil of the place she’d once believed was home, her anxiety ratcheted higher. Eve took some slow, steady breaths. Checked her phone. Still no real word about her father, just some bland-sounding messages from her mom and sister about him improving and coming out of ICU.

‘I thought you’d have an apartment here,’ she said as they pulled up outside an anonymous boutique hotel where a doorman waited for them.

Gage shook his head, gazing out the window, his mouth narrowed to a tight, hard line. ‘I’m not here often enough for somewhere permanent. On the rare occasions I stay, it’s at the guesthouse at Mom and Dad’s. I didn’t think you’d want to go there.’

He was right, but for reasons Gage would never know. That place carried too many memories of the night they’d been foolish and had lacked caution just before they’d run. The night she’d fallen pregnant.

She shoved that thought down into the recesses of her memory where it silently taunted her, and exited into the cool, rarefied air. She held her breath as their bags were taken from the car. Even though the bellhop was careful with their luggage, her small, battered yellow suitcase wasn’t treated with as much reverence as it deserved.

Usually she didn’t allow anyone else to touch it. It didn’t feel right. That one small case held all the wounds of her past. She flexed her fingers. Itched to go retrieve it. Ignored the sensation. Gage had looked at her oddly when she’d demanded she carry it onto the plane herself. There had been too many questions on his face. She didn’t want them asked of her.

In the lift to their room Gage grabbed her. Pressed her up against the cool, mirrored wall. Dropped his lips to hers hard, in a kiss that took and conquered. Desperate, as if being here would tear them apart again if they didn’t reconnect immediately. She gave in to it, wiping away the memories of being back here. The place that had seen the beginning and the end of them.

They entered the suite, all warm neutrals that said nothing. Their bags would be up soon. She walked through, put down her tote on the plump couch and stared out the window at a city that now seemed foreign to her.

‘I should see my family.’ She hadn’t wanted to mention it because she knew the hatred that ran deep, but she couldn’t avoid the inevitable. Her father would know by now, if he was well enough, about Gage. About Knight. But if the man was conscious, she needed to see him, to reset the boundaries of their agreement. Ensure that the secrets he’d promised would be kept dead for ever.

‘I know. Has there been any more news on your father?’

She turned away from the view she had no real interest in to look at Gage. His face gave away little. Not anger, or hatred. Nothing but acceptance.

‘Not as much as I’d like...’ She’d asked to speak to Hugo and the only message she’d received back had been from her mom: ‘Reap what you sow...’ ‘I suppose you’ll want to see your mom and dad too?’

‘They’re away right now.’ He hesitated for a moment, enough for her to notice. ‘We can visit when they get back.’