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 kicked out of university. Everything was a game to you, but to me, it was life.”
“You’re acting like I hurt you in some way, Hannah, but we both know that isn’t true. I gave you your own room. Your own wing of the penthouse. I never intruded on you, never once took advantage of you. I kept to our agreement and released you from our bargain after six months, and you left. With all the money I promised you,” he said. “You keep forgetting the money I gave you.”
She clenched her teeth. “Because I didn’t spend it.” She hadn’t been able to. Leaving him, or more to the point, his family and the city that had started to feel like home, had felt too awful. And she’d felt, for the first time, every inch the dishonorable person she was. “If you want your ten thousand dollars, it’s in a bank account. And frankly, it’s pennies as far as I’m concerned at this point.”
“Oh, yes, you are very successful now, aren’t you?”
She didn’t feel it at the moment. “Yes. I am.”
Eduardo advanced toward her. “You are good with finances, investments.”
“Financial planning, strategies, picking stocks. You name it, I’m good at it.”
“That’s what I want from you.”
“What? Financial advice?”
“Not exactly.”
