Bound As His Business-Deal Bride

She walked up to him, a tentativeness about her as if she was approaching a wild animal. Maybe that’s exactly what he was. The feral desire to lash out and hurt those he loved bit down hard. He barely held it in check because he knew only too well that words, once spoken, couldn’t be unsaid.

‘You did need to know but it wasn’t my story to tell and it should never have been told to you in hatred. The story needed to be told to you in love, by your parents. I—I was going to talk to them. Ask them to speak to you, and then...’

She looked at all the papers and scrapbooks lying in a scattered mess across the floor, like their dreams. Nothing could ever be the same after today. His world had ended and he wasn’t sure how to start living again.

‘So I’m not a Caron.’ Gage turned his back on her. Walked away towards the window with fists clenched. Looked out at the view of a city he now loathed. ‘It’s too late now. This. Everything.’

He’d been a father, and hadn’t known it. He was a bastard, and hadn’t known that either. Nothing seemed stable anymore, like the ground had cracked beneath his feet. He dropped his head and looked at the floor to make sure it was solid because it felt like it would open up and swallow him whole. The hair on the back of his neck pricked, warning of someone close. Then there was a gentle press of a palm, which he supposed was meant to comfort, but instead it felt like a stab in the back. Just one more knife in the multitude that had struck there and stuck, leaving him permanently wounded.

‘So much that’s happened has been so wrong, but we can make it right. There’s a future and we can—’

Gage wheeled round, and Eve took a step back. What could she see on his face that made her want to give him space? Not even he could read the emotions now churning inside him bar one. An endless hatred, focussed laser bright on one man.

‘Your father deserves to be punished, and I will relish meting it out to him.’

Eve looked up at him, those blue eyes of hers so pale and sad. He wondered when he’d become inured to all the grief.

‘And what happens when you’re done with that? What then?’

He frowned. What did she mean? He’d triumph, that’s what would happen.

‘Then it’ll be over.’

‘Do you have any idea how to live a life where revenge isn’t part of it?’ She held out her hand and placed it on the centre of his chest, where his heart sho

uld be beating. He wasn’t sure it was anymore. ‘When will it ever be enough?’

The answer rang clear: it would never be enough, not for him. ‘How can you let this go? He stole everything from us.’

‘I don’t care about that man. I can’t control what he does, only what I feel. All I care about is you. Trust me, this will eat away at you like it’s done to him.’

The heat of her palm burned into him, a reminder of how cold he’d become.

‘I’m not your father.’

‘No. Not now. But one day, if you keep going, you will be. What if my father’s gone? I’m his daughter. Will you end up hating me too? This needs to stop.’

He moved away from Eve with her imploring eyes and gentle hands. Softer emotions had no place here, not in this room where all his hope had been smashed and broken. ‘It’ll stop when I say it does, or your father’s in the grave.’

Eve clenched her fists by her sides. ‘He could live another twenty years, and you want to carry on hating him for that long?’

He’d never stop. ‘I’ll loathe him till I’m in the grave myself.’

Her tears fell again, slipping down her cheeks, tracking down her pale skin. There’d been so many tears today they could have filled rivers with them. Eve wiped at her face, took a deep breath. Stood firm and proud.

‘I have loved you for almost my whole life. I will continue to love you all the days I have left,’ she said, taking the engagement ring from her finger and holding it out to him. For a moment he had trouble understanding what it all meant. ‘But I can’t do this anymore. I won’t allow hatred to rule my life or infect another day.’

He stared at the ring for a few moments, then looked back at her. There was no way she would walk away from him, not now, not after everything. Not with so much left unfinished.

‘We have a deal, and you’re breaking it? If you don’t carry this through to the end—’

‘Then you’ll what? Destroy me too?’ She didn’t look angry, she didn’t look sad, just worn down and tired. Like someone had carved out all the vibrant parts of her and left a pale husk behind. ‘I beg you, try your hardest because nothing could hurt me much more than I’m hurting now. I’ll keep to our deal. You want to wheel me out as your fake fiancée for Greta Bonitz or anyone else? Fine. But us? We’re done. Because your hatred for my father is stronger than your love for me, and I deserve more than that. I deserve everything.’

Her voice cracked and broke. She turned around, placed the ring on the side table and walked out the door, leaving all his dreams a tattered ruin in her wake.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GAGE DROVE HIS rental car through the iron gates of his parents’ home, roaring up the long drive past flowering hedges. He’d learned to ride a bicycle on this drive when he was five. His dad had taught him. Wobbling on training wheels with Gus always at his side, murmuring encouragement. The day those wheels had come off, he’d pedalled recklessly down to the end, the breeze whistling in his ears and his dad whooping and cheering after him.