“Let’s not forget who stands to lose the most,” he said, his voice hard.
She examined his face, the hard lines etched into it. Brackets around his mouth, creases in his forehead. Lines that had appeared sometime in the past five years, for they hadn’t been there back when she’d first met him. “I have a feeling you might have a bit more to lose than you’re letting on.”
“What about you? At the least you stand to lose clients, your reputation. At the most?”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. It was possible she could lose…so much. Everything. That she could face criminal charges. That she could find herself with her degree revoked. That she could find herself back in Arkansas in a single-wide mobile home that had a lawn with more pink plastic flamingos than it had grass.
She couldn’t go back to that. To that endless, blank hell that had no end. No beginning. No defining moments. Just an eternity of uncomfortable monotony that most people she’d lived around had tried to dull with the haze of alcohol or the high of drugs.
No. She wasn’t taking any chances on returning to that life. Not ever.
“Your point is taken,” she said. “Anyway…I can’t go and marry Zack now, no matter what, can I?”
“Not unless you want to extend your list of criminal activity.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone, Eduardo,” she said stiffly.
Eduardo surveyed the slim, cool blonde standing in front of him, arms crossed over the ornate bodice of her wedding dress. His wife. Hannah. One of the images in his mind that had remained bright and clear, no matter how thick the fog was surrounding other details, other memories.
His vision of her as a skinny college student with a sharp mind and more guts than any person he’d ever met, had stayed with him. And when he’d realized just how much of a struggle things were becoming with Vega Communications, it had been her image he’d seen in his mind. And he’d known that he had to get his wife back.
His wife. The wife who had never truly been his wife beyond her signature on the marriage certificate. But she was a link. To his past. To the man he’d been. To those images that were splintered now, like gazing into a shattered mirror. He had wondered if seeing her could magically put him back there. If she could make the mirror whole. Reverse things, somehow.
Foolish, perhaps. But he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and there had to be a reason. Had to be a reason she was so clear, when other things simply weren’t.
Thankfully, he’d managed to get his timing just right. And in his new world, one of migraines and half-remembered conversations, good timing was a rarity he savored.
“Does that make falsifying school records all right, then?” he said, watching her gray-blue eyes turn a bit more gray. A bit more stormy, as she narrowed them in his direction.
He personally didn’t care what she’d done to get into university. Back then, he’d selected her to be his intern based on her impeccable performance in college, and not on anything else. Clearly she’d been up to the task, and in his mind, that was all that mattered.
But he’d use every bit of leverage he had now, and he wouldn’t let his conscience prick him over it. Hannah knew all about doing what had to be done. And that’s what he was doing now.
“I don’t suppose it does,” she said tightly. “But I don’t dwell on that. I gave myself a do-over in life, and I’ve never once regretted it. I’ve never once looked back. I messed up when I was too young to understand what that might mean to my future, and when I did realize it…when it was too late…”
“You acted. Disregarding the traditional ideas of right and wrong, disregarding who it might hurt. And that’s what I’m doing now. So I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said, aware that no sincerity was evident in his voice. He felt none.
She was testing him, needling him, trying to make him angry. It had worked, but it wouldn’t divert his focus. She was his focus.
“So you think that makes it okay?” Her full lips turned down.
“I’m not overly concerned with questions of morality at the moment. I need to drag Vega back up to where it belongs.”
“How is it you’ve managed to let it get so bad?” she said, again, not hesitating to throw her own barbs out.
There was no way in hell he was talking about his shortcomings. Not now. Maybe not ever. It wasn’t her concern.
“We all have strengths,” he said tightly. “It’s the budget I’m having an issue with. Investments. Taxes. I am not an expert.”
“Hire someone.”
“I did. He didn’t do his job.”
“Basically, you didn’t notice that he was screwing up?”
The thought of it, of trying to keep track of that, plus the day-to-day running of Vega, made his head swim, made his temples pound. His breath shortened, became harder to take in. Panic was a metallic taste on his tongue.
Would he ever feel normal? Or was this normal now? Such a disturbing thought. One he didn’t have time to dwell on.
“I didn’t have time,” he gritted.
“Too busy sleeping around?” she asked.
“Different heiress every night,” he said, almost laughing out loud at his own lie.
“Better than toying with the domestic staff, I suppose. Or blackmailing interns into marriage.”
“Ours was a special case,” he said.
“Oh, yes, indeed. I suppose that’s why I feel suffused with a warm glow of specialness.”
He chuckled, gratified when Hannah looked stymied by the reaction. She wanted to make him angry. He wouldn’t allow it. One of the gifts of his head injury, one of the few. It had cooled his passions, and while that had been inconvenient in some ways, in others, it had proven valuable. He was no longer hotheaded. Usually. No longer impulsive. According to some, he was no longer fun. But he didn’t know how to fix that. He found he didn’t care anymore. Another gift.
“Well, it is your big day. Shouldn’t a bride feel special?”
She uttered a truly foul word and sat on the edge of the bed, the white skirt of her dress billowing out around her. Like an angry, fallen, snow angel. “Low.”
“Do you love this man? The one you were meant to marry today?” He found that did trouble his conscience, even if it was only a bit of trouble.
She shook her head slowly. “No.”
He shook his head. “Using someone else?”
“Hardly using him. Zack doesn’t love me, either. Neither of us have time for some all-consuming passionate affair. But we like each other. I like him. I don’t like the idea of him being stood up. I don’t like the idea of humiliating him.”
“More humiliating, I think, if he finds out his almost-wife has been lying to him. About so many things.”
She looked down at her fingernails. “Zack has his secrets. He doesn’t think anyone realizes it…but he has them. I can tell. And I know better than to ask about them.”
“And that means…”
“He would have accepted that I had mine. We didn’t share everything.”
“I doubt he intended to share you with another husband.”
“Well, it’s not going to happen now.” A brief expression of vulnerability, sadness, crossed Hannah’s features. And as quickly