She looked at him fully. He was still everything he’d been five years ago. Tall, broad, arresting, a vision of perfect male beauty in his well-cut suit. His bronzed skin was highlighted perfectly by his white dress shirt; his dark hair reached the collar of his jacket.
He’d always made her feel like someone had put both hands on her shoulders and shaken her. He’d always had the power to disrupt the order of her life, to make her feel like she was dangerously close to losing the control she’d worked so hard to cultivate over the years.
It was the thing she’d always hated most about him. That he was so darned magnetic. That he always had the power to make her tremble when nothing else could.
It wasn’t just that he was good-looking. There were a lot of good-looking men in the world, and she was too much in control of herself to let that affect her. It was the fact that he exuded a kind of power that she could never hope to achieve. And that he had power over her.
She breezed past him, ignoring the scent of his cologne and skin, ignoring the way it made her stomach tighten. She strode into the hotel lobby, well aware that she was making a spectacle and not caring at all. She breathed in deep. She needed focus. She needed to find out what he wanted so she could leave, as quickly as possible.
“Mrs. Vega, Mr. Vega.” A woman that Hannah assumed was a manager, rounded the check-in desk with a wide, money-motivated grin on her face. “So lovely to have you here. Mr. Vega told me he would be bringing his bride when he came to stay this time. So romantic.”
She had to bite back a tart curse.
Eduardo closed the distance between them and curled his arm around her waist. Her breath rushed from her body. For a moment, just one crazy moment, she wanted to lean against him. To draw closer to his masculine strength. But only for a moment.
“Very,” he said.
“Is there liquor in the room?” she asked, wiggling away from him.
The manager, whose name tag identified her as Maria, frowned slightly. “There is champagne waiting for you.”
“We’ll need three,” she said.
Maria’s frown deepened. “I…”
“She’s kidding,” Eduardo said.
Hannah shook her head. “I’ve been hammered since I took my vows. I intend to spend the rest of the day that way.”
“We’ll just go upstairs.”
“Send champagne,” Hannah said as Eduardo attempted to drag her from the desk in what she imagined he thought was a loving, husbandly manner.
He ushered her into a gilded elevator, a smile pasted on his darkly handsome face until the door closed behind them.
“That was not cute, Hannah,” he said.
She put her hand on her hip and gave him her sassiest smile. She didn’t feel sassy, or in control, but she could fake it with the best of them. “Are you kidding me? I think I’m ready for my close-up. That was fine acting.”
He shot her a bland look. “Your entire life has been acting. Don’t expect accolades now.”
Her smile faltered for a moment. “Look, I am on edge here.”
“You aren’t crying. No gnashing of teeth over leaving your fiancé at the altar.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with Zack, so don’t pretend you do. I care about him. I don’t want to leave him at the altar. I want you to come to your senses and give me the keys to your ill-gotten limo so I can drive myself to the hotel and marry him.” The image of Zack, in that black, custom tux, standing in front of all of their friends and coworkers…it made her feel sick. She’d never, ever intended to put him through that kind of humiliation. The idea of it being reversed made her skin crawl.
“Whether I drive you there or not, your marriage won’t be legal. I explained that already.”
“They gave me a marriage license,” she said, her voice sounding distant, echoey. Her hands were starting to shake. Why was she reacting this way? Why was she being so weak? Was she in shock?
“And we were married, and attempted to divorce out of your home country. Things get missed.”
“How could something this important just get missed?” she said, exploding. “I don’t believe for one second you…forgot to file the papers.”
His smile turned dark. “Stranger things have happened, tesoro.”
For the first time she noticed that he wasn’t exactly the same. She’d thought his eyes the same, but she saw now they weren’t. He used to sparkle. His brown eyes glittering with mischief. He’d been so amused at finding out her secret, that she wasn’t who she’d claimed to be. He’d been even more amused at the thought of marrying an American girl to gall his father, when he’d mandated his son take a wife to gain leadership of their company. To prove he was a family man. It had been the best joke to him, to marry a college student with no money, no connections and no cooking skills.
The sparkle was gone now. Replaced with a kind of black glitter that seemed to suck the light from the room, that seemed to absorb any kind of brightness and kill it. It did something strange to her. Pulled at her like the sparkle never had.
“Like getting kidnapped on your wedding day?”
“Coerced away, perhaps. But don’t tell me you haven’t got pepper spray somewhere in your purse. You could have stopped me. You could have called the police. You could have called your Zack. You didn’t. And you still aren’t doing it. You could turn and walk out of this room right now and get a cab. I wouldn’t stop you. And you know that.”
“But you know. You know everything. And I…”
“And it would ruin your reputation with your clients. No one wants to hear their financial adviser is a high school dropout who committed fraud to get her college degree.”
“You’re right, that kind of information does make client meetings awkward,” she said, her voice flat, a sick feeling settling in her stomach.
“I imagine so. Just remember how awkward it made our meeting back when you were my intern.”
“I think the real awkwardness came when you blackmailed me into marrying you.”
“You keep using that word. Was it really blackmail?”
“According to Webster’s Dictionary? Yes.”
He shrugged. “Either way, had you not had something for me to hold over your head…it wouldn’t have worked.”
“You’re so smug about it,” she said, seething now. The clock on the nightstand read five minutes to her wedding and she was standing in an opulent hotel suite, in her wedding gown, with another man. “But you’ve had everything handed to you in your life, Eduardo. You work because your daddy gave you an office. I had to make my own destiny, and maybe…maybe the way I went about it was a little bit shady.”
“The United States government calls it fraud. But shady is fine.”
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said.
“No, you’re right. I can hardly speak around the silver spoon in my mouth. What would I know about hardship?” His lip curled, his expression hard, cynical. A new look for Eduardo.
“Your only hardship was that your father demanded you give up your life as a partying man whore and find a wife. So what did you do? You twisted my arm, because you thought a gringa wife, especially one who wasn’t Catholic and couldn’t cook, would be a funny way to follow your father’s orders without actually following them. And I went along with it, because it was better than losing my job. Better than getting