Читать книгу His for Revenge - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

ZARA ELLIOTT WAS halfway down the aisle of the white-steepled First Congregational Church she’d always thought was a touch too smug for its own good—taking up a whole block on the town green in the center of the sweetly manicured, white clapboard village that her family had lived in since the days of the first Connecticut Colony way back in the 1630s—before the sheer insanity of what she was doing really hit her.

She felt her knees wobble alarmingly beneath her, somewhere underneath all that billowing white fabric that was draped around her and made her look like a lumbering wedding cake, and she almost stopped right there. In front of the hundreds of witnesses her father had decided it was necessary to invite to this circus show.

“Don’t you dare stop now,” her father hissed at her, the genial smile he used in public never dimming in the slightest as his wiry body tensed beside her. “I’ll drag you up this aisle if I have to, Zara, but I won’t be pleased.”

This constituted about as much paternal love and support as she could expect from Amos Elliott, who collected money and power the way other fathers collected stamps, and Zara had never been any good at standing up to him anyway.

That had always been her sister Ariella’s department.

Which was how this was happening in the first place, Zara reminded herself as she dutifully kept moving. Then she had to order herself not to think about her older sister, because the dress might be a preposterous monstrosity of filmy white material, but it was also much—much—too tight. Ariella was at least three inches taller than Zara and had the breasts of a preteen boy, all the better to swan about in bikinis and gravity-defying garments as she pleased. And if Zara let herself get furious, as she would if she thought about any of this too hard, she would pop right out of this secondhand dress that didn’t fit her at all, right here in the middle of the church her ancestors had helped build centuries ago.

It would serve her father right, she thought grimly, but it wouldn’t be worth the price she’d have to pay. And anyway, she was doing this for her late grandmother, who had earnestly believed that Zara should give her father another chance and had made Zara promise to her on her deathbed last summer that Zara would—but had left Zara her cottage on Long Island Sound just in case that chance didn’t go well.

She concentrated on the infamous Chase Whitaker—her groom—instead, as he stood there at the front of the church with his back to her approach. He looked as if he was drawing out the romantic suspense when Zara knew he was much more likely to be concealing his own fury at this wedding he’d made perfectly clear he didn’t want. This wedding that her conniving father had pushed him into in the months since Chase’s own larger-than-life father had died unexpectedly, leaving Amos a distinct weakness in the power structure of Whitaker Industries that he, as chairman of its board of directors, could exploit.

This wedding that Chase would have been opposed to even if Zara had been who she was supposed to be: Ariella, who, in typical Ariella fashion, hadn’t bothered to turn up this morning.

Zara had always prided herself on her practicality, a vastly underused virtue in the Elliott family, but she had to admit that there was a part of her that took in the sight of her waiting groom’s broad, finely carved shoulders and that delicious height he wore so easily and wondered what it would be like if this was real. If she wasn’t a last-minute substitute for the beauty of the family, who had once been breathlessly described in Zara’s hearing as the jewel in the Elliott crown. If a man like Chase Whitaker—worshipped the world over for his dark blue eyes, that thick dark hair and that devastatingly athletic body of his that made women into red-faced, swooning idiots at the very sight of it, to say nothing of that crisp, delicious British accent he wielded with such charm—really was waiting for her at the end of a church aisle.

If, if, if, she scolded herself derisively. You’re an idiot yourself.

No one, it went without saying, had ever described Zara as a gemstone of any kind. Though her much-beloved grandmother had called her a brick once or twice before she’d died last summer, in that tone women of Grams’s exalted social status had only ever used to refer to the girls they considered handsome enough and even dependable instead of anything like pretty.

“You’re so dependable,” Ariella had said two days ago, the way she always did, with that little smile and that arch tone that Zara had been choosing to overlook for the better part of her twenty-six years. Ariella had been putting on her makeup for one of her prewedding events, an exercise which took her a rather remarkable amount of time in Zara’s opinion. Not that she’d shared it. “I don’t know how you can bear to do it all the time.”

“Do I have a choice?” Zara had asked, with only the faintest touch of asperity, because the way Ariella had said dependable was anything but complimentary, unlike the way Grams had said it back when. “Are you planning to step up and be dependable at some point?”

Ariella had met Zara’s gaze in the mirror, a bright red lipstick in one languid hand. She’d blinked as if amazed by the question.

“Why would I?” she’d asked after a moment, as light and breezy and dismissive as ever, though her expression had bordered on scornful. “You’re so much better at it.”

That had obviously been a statement of intent, Zara thought now, as she moved closer by the second to the man at the end of the aisle. Who wasn’t waiting for her. Who, given a choice, wouldn’t be there at all.

Zara was glad she was wearing the irksome, heavy veil that hid her away from view so that none of the assembled onlookers could see how foolish her imagination was, which would no doubt be written all over her face. The curse of a natural redhead, she thought balefully. Hair that she only wished was a mysterious shade of glamorous auburn instead of what it really was. Red. And the ridiculously sensitive skin to go along with it.

But then she stopped thinking about her skin and the things that might or might not be splashed across it in all those telling pinks and reds she couldn’t control, because they reached the altar at last.

Amos boomed out his part of the archaic ceremony, announcing to all that he gave away this woman with perhaps an insulting amount of paternal eagerness. Then she was summarily handed over to Chase Whitaker, who had turned to face her but managed to convey the impression that he was still facing in the other direction. As if he was deeply bored. Or so mentally and emotionally removed from this absurd little exercise that he thought he actually was somewhere else entirely.

And Zara remained veiled, as if she was participating in an actual medieval wedding, because—as her father had reminded her no less than seventy-five times in the church lobby already—Chase needed to be legally bound to the family before this little bait and switch was discovered.

“How charming,” Zara had said drily. “A fairy tale of a wedding, indeed.”

Amos had eyed her with that flat, ugly look of his that she went to great lengths to avoid under normal circumstances. Not that waking up to find oneself in the middle of a farcical comedy that involved playing Switch the Arranged Bride with her absentee sister’s unknowing and unwilling fiancé constituted anything like normal.

“You can save the smart remarks for your new husband, assuming you manage to pull this off,” Amos had said coldly. As was his way, especially when talking to the daughter he’d called a waste of Elliott genes when she’d been a particularly ungainly and unattractive thirteen-year-old. “I’m sure he’ll be more receptive to them than I am.”

His expression had suggested he doubted that, and Zara had decided that one smart remark was more than enough. She’d busied herself with practicing her polite, “just married to a complete stranger” smile and pretending she was perfectly fine with the fact Ariella’s dress didn’t fit her at all.

Because what girl didn’t dream of waddling up the aisle in a dress that had been cut down the back to allow her breasts to fit in it, then held together with a hastily sewn-up strip of lace she was afraid her stepmother had ripped off the bottom of the church’s curtains?

Her soon-to-be husband took her hands now, his own large and warm and remarkably strong as they curled around hers. It made her feel oddly light-headed. Zara frowned at the perky boutonniere he wore in his lapel and tried not to think too much about the fact that her father clearly believed that if Chase got wind of the fact that it was Zara he was marrying, he’d run for the hills.

The arranged marriage part was no impediment, was the implication. Just the fact that it was to the less lovely, less fawned over, much less desirable Elliott sister.

It wasn’t until she heard a strange sound that Zara realized she was grinding her teeth. She stopped before her father—glowering at her from the first pew—heard it and did something else to ensure this marriage happened according to his plans. Zara really didn’t want to think about what that something else might entail. Switching one daughter for the next should really be at the outer limits of deceitful behavior, but this was Amos Elliott. He had no outer limits.

The priest droned on about fidelity and love, which verged on insulting under the circumstances. Zara lifted her frown to Chase Whitaker’s famously beautiful profile, so masculine and attractive that it had graced any number of magazine covers in its time, and reminded herself that while this situation might be extreme, it wasn’t anything new. Zara had always been the mousy sister, the dutiful sister. The sister who preferred books to parties and her grandmother’s company to the carousing of a hundred idiotic peers. The quiet sister whose academic aspirations were always swept aside or outright ignored so that Ariella’s various scandals and kaleidoscopic needs could be focused on instead. She’d always been the sister who could be relied upon to do all the unpleasant and responsible and often deadly boring things, so that Ariella could carry on with her “modeling” and her “acting” and whatever else it was she pretended to do that kept her flitting about the globe from one hot spot to the next, answerable to no one and spending their father’s money as she pleased.

Stop thinking about Ariella, Zara ordered herself sharply, when Chase slanted a dark look her way, and she realized she was squeezing his hands too tightly.

She loosened her grip. And she absolutely did not allow herself to think about how warm his hands were, how strong and interestingly callused and yet elegant, holding hers in a manner that suggested his gentleness was only a veneer stretched thinly over a great power he didn’t care to broadcast.

She definitely wasn’t thinking about that.

Then it was her turn to speak, in as even a voice as she could manage, expecting Chase to tear off her veil and denounce her in front of the entire church when the priest slipped in her name instead of Ariella’s, so quickly and quietly that she wasn’t sure anyone even heard it. But he was too busy concentrating on something just to the right of her gaze—and again, she got the sense that he was ruthlessly holding himself in check. That doing so took every ounce of the obvious and considerable strength she could feel in him as he slipped the necessary rings onto her finger.

That, or he was as drunk as the faint scent of whiskey suggested he was, and was trying not to topple over.

He recited his own vows in a low, curt tone, that accent of his making each word seem that much more precise and beautiful, and when it was done, when Zara had slid his own ring into place, she felt dizzy with relief and something else she couldn’t quite name. Was it really that simple? Had she really squeezed herself into an ill-fitting dress she couldn’t zip up and a blindingly opaque veil and pretended to be her sister? For the singular purpose of trapping this poor man in one of her father’s awful little plots, because this had seemed like the chance her adored Grams had advised her to give Amos before she wrote him off forever?

“You may kiss the bride,” the priest intoned.

So it appeared that yes, she had.

Chase sighed. Then he paused, and for a moment, Zara thought he was going to decline. Could he decline? In front of all these people? In any possible way that wouldn’t make her look unwanted and unattractive besides?

She didn’t know if she wanted him to kiss her or not, if she was honest. She didn’t know which would be worse: being kissed by someone who didn’t want to kiss her because he felt he had to do it, or not being kissed by him and thereby shamed in front of the entire congregation. But then he dealt with the situation by reaching over and flipping her veil back, exposing her face for the first time.

Zara held her breath, cringing slightly as she braced for an explosion of his temper. She could feel it, like the slap of an open fire much too close to her, and instinctively shut her eyes against it. She heard an echoing sort of gasp from the front of the church, where someone had finally noticed that glamorous Ariella Elliott was looking markedly shorter and rounder than usual today. But Chase Whitaker, her unwitting groom and now her husband, said nothing, despite the roar of all that fire.

So she braced herself, then opened her eyes and looked at him.

And for a moment everything disappeared.

Zara had seen a million pictures of this man. She’d seen him from across the relatively small rooms they’d both been in. But she’d never been this close to him. So nothing could possibly have prepared her for the wallop of those eyes of his. Dark blue, yes. But they were the color of twilight, moments before the stars appeared. The color of the sea, far out from a lonely shore. There was nothing safe or summery blue about them. There was a wildness about that color, a deep, aching thing that she felt in her like a restless wind.

And he was beautiful. Not merely handsome or attractive the way he appeared in photographs. Not ruggedly lovely in some stark, masculine way, like dangerous mountain peaks were pretty, though he was decidedly, inarguably male. He was simply beautiful. His cheekbones were a marvel. His hair was a rough black silk and his brows were a great, arched wickedness unto themselves. His wide mouth made her feel much too warm, even flat and expressionless as it was now. And those stunning, arresting eyes, the blue of lost things, of shattered dreams, tore through her.

It took her a moment to register that he was staring down at her, incredulous.

And—as she’d already figured out from that blast of temper that she could still feel butting up against her like a living, breathing thing—he was very, very angry.

Zara went to pull away, not in the least bit interested in remaining this close to that much temper, but her new husband forestalled any attempt to escape with the hand he curled around her neck. She imagined it looked tender from a distance. But she was much closer, and she could feel it for what it was. Threat. Menace.

Fury.

No matter that a bright hot burst of flame danced from the place he touched her and then throughout the rest of her. No matter that a shiver rocked through her or that she felt as if her whole body woke up at the sensation of that hot, male palm against the nape of her neck. Her lungs felt tight and her throat ached. Her knees felt wobbly again, but for a very different reason than they had before.

And then Chase Whitaker, who had been quite clear that he’d never wanted to marry anyone and wouldn’t have chosen her if he had, bent his head and pressed his perfect lips to hers.

It should have been awkward, Zara thought wildly. Even violating.

But instead, it was like her entire body simply…sizzled. Her lips felt seared through, and she felt herself flush what she knew would be a revealing, horrifying red. She felt that simple press of his lips everywhere. In her throat. In that ache between her breasts. In her suddenly too-tight nipples. In that hard knot in her belly, and worse, in the sudden molten heat below it. Chase lifted his head, his remarkable eyes darker than before, and she knew he saw all of that betraying color.

And worse, that he knew what it meant.

There was something taut and electric between them then, something that sparked in the air and then moved inside of her, setting off alarms and making her feel that she really might collapse in the first faint of her life, after all. Like the archaic, bartered bride she was impersonating today. Maybe that would be a nice little vacation from all this, a small voice inside her suggested, while everything else she was or ever had been drowned in those dark blue eyes of his.

And then he looked away and everything sped up.

There was applause, then organ music, then the murmuring of several hundred scandalized guests who’d finally caught on to the fact that Chase Whitaker, president and CEO of Whitaker Industries and one of the world’s most beloved playboy heirs, had just wed the wrong Elliott daughter.

Zara found this as unbelievable as they did, she was certain, but she didn’t have time to reflect on it. Chase was holding her by the arm—in a manner that made her feel rather more like a prisoner than a bride, and yet, somehow, more cherished than when Amos had done the same thing—and they were starting off down the aisle again. She saw her father’s smug face as they strode past him. She saw her stepmother dabbing at her eyes, and thought that ditzy Melissa might in fact be the only person in the church who’d found the ceremony moving, bless her. She saw longtime neighbors and old family friends and the speculative expressions of a hundred strangers, but the only real thing was that hard arm that held her next to his impossibly lean and chiseled body.

And then there was silence. Chase marched them out of the church and down the steps into the searing, brutal cold of the December afternoon, then directly into the back of a waiting limousine.

“Home,” he grated at the driver. “Now.”

“The reception is actually here in the village, not wherever your home is,” Zara said, because she was incapable of keeping her mouth shut.

Chase had thrown himself into the cushy leather seat beside her and when he turned that furious, incredulous gaze of his on her again, it was like being burned alive. She felt charred.

He stared at her. Moments passed, or maybe years. The car drove off from the church. The world could have exploded outside the window, for all she knew. There was nothing but that wild dark blue and the leftover heat where his mouth and his palm had touched her skin, like he’d branded that contact into her flesh.

Then the car jolted to a stop at a light, Chase blinked and looked forward again, and Zara decided she’d imagined that awestruck, spellbound, on fire feeling. It was the oddness of the situation, that was all. It was Ariella’s ridiculous dress, cutting into her like a corset from hell, making it difficult to breathe. There was no reason at all to feel that despite everything, she’d never been more alive in her life than she was right now, in the back of a limousine headed God knew where with an angry, beautiful stranger.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, because they might as well make the best of it. It was what Grams would have done. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.” She smiled as politely as she could at this man, her brand-new husband, and stuck out her hand. “I’m Zara.”

* * *

He was trapped in a nightmare, Chase thought, staring at that outstretched hand in stunned, outraged amazement. There was no other explanation. For any of this.

“I know who you are,” he grated, and when he didn’t take her hand she merely dropped it back in her lap, looking wholly unperturbed. Exactly as she’d looked in the church, when he’d been glaring at her fiercely enough to burn holes through her.

Except for when you kissed her.

But Chase shoved that thought away, along with the image of her flushing that intriguing shade of scarlet in the wake of that kiss he still didn’t know why he’d given her, and scowled at his bride instead.

The truth was, while he’d recognized who she must have been because she’d been ushered up the aisle by his nemesis, he couldn’t remember if they’d ever met before. He wasn’t sure he’d have known her name even if they had, just as he wasn’t sure why that made him feel something like ashamed. He had a vague memory of her in a black dress that had fit her much better than the gown she wore today, and a flash of red hair from across a table. That was it.

Every other interaction he’d had with her family had involved her pain-in-the-ass father and blonde, brittle Ariella, who was apparently even more useless than he’d already imagined she was. And his imagination had been rather detailed in its low opinion of her.

“You tricked me,” he said then, trying to gather his wits, as he’d been noticeably unable to do for some time now. Since Big Bart Whitaker had died six months ago, leaving him neck deep in this mess that got bigger and deeper and swampier every bloody day. Since he’d had to give up his life in London and come back to the States to take his place as president and CEO of Whitaker Industries, where he’d done nothing but clash with Amos Elliott—the driving opposing force on his board of directors and the bane of his existence. And now his father-in-law, for his sins. “I could have you up on fraud charges, to start.”

Zara Elliott did not look alarmed by this possibility. She was awash in masses and masses of a frothy, unflattering white fabric, like a foaming and possibly furious marshmallow had exploded from every side of her while her quietly aristocratic face remained serene. But her eyes—her eyes were a bright, warm gold. The color of late afternoons, of the sun dripping low on the winter horizon.

Where the hell had that come from? He must have had more whiskey for his breakfast than he’d thought.

“I’m three inches shorter than Ariella and at least two sizes larger,” she said. “At a conservative estimate.”

Her voice was smooth and warm, like honey. She sounded, if not happy, something like content. Chase didn’t know how he recognized that note in her voice, given he’d never felt such a thing in his life.

So that was why it took him a moment to process what she’d said. “I don’t follow.”

“Was I tricking you or were you not paying very much attention, if you couldn’t tell the difference the moment I set foot in that church?” She only smiled when he scowled at her. “It’s a reasonable question. One we can ignore, if you like, but which a judge may dwell on in any hypothetical fraud trial.”

“This hypothetical judge might well find himself more interested in the marriage license,” Chase replied. “Which did not have your name on it when I grudgingly signed it.”

Her smile only deepened. “My father imagined that might cause you some concern. He suggested I remind you that the license was obtained right here in this very county, where he’s reigned supreme for decades now, like his father, uncles, grandfather and so on before him. He wanted me to put your mind at ease. That license will read the way it should before the end of the day, he’s quite certain.”

Chase muttered something filthy under his breath, which had no discernible effect on her composure. He leaned forward and rummaged around until he found the half-drunk bottle of whiskey in the bar cabinet and then he took a long swig of it, not bothering to use a glass. That sweet, obliterating fire rolled through him, but it was better than the numbness inside of him, so he ignored the scraping flames and took another hefty swig instead.

After a moment, he offered her the bottle. It only seemed polite, under the circumstances.

“No, thank you.” Also polite. Scrupulously so.

“Do you drink?” He didn’t know why he cared. He didn’t care.

“I like wine, sometimes,” she said, as if she was considering the matter in some depth as she spoke. “Red more than white. I’ll admit that beer is a mystery to me. I think it tastes like old socks.”

“This is whiskey. It doesn’t taste of socks. It tastes of peat and fire and the scalding anticipation of regret.”

“Tempting.” Her soft mouth twitched slightly in the corners, and he decided the whiskey was going to his head, because he found that far more fascinating than he should have. He couldn’t recall the last time a woman’s naked mouth had seemed so riveting. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d noticed a woman’s mouth at all, save what it could do in the dark. “How much whiskey did you have before the ceremony?”

He eyed her for a moment, then eyed the bottle. “Half.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “I thought you might be drunk.”

“Why aren’t you?” he asked, not caring that the dark rasp in his voice gave away far too many of the things he needed to keep hidden.

“Sadly, that wasn’t on the list of options I was given when I woke up this morning and was informed Ariella had flown the coop.” Her impossibly golden eyes gleamed with something almost painful Chase didn’t want to understand, but her voice was still perfectly cheerful. It didn’t make any sense. “I had to fight for a single cup of coffee in all the panic and blame. Asking for something alcoholic would have started a war.”

He felt something very much like ashamed again, and he didn’t like it. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might find this marriage as unlikely and unpleasant a prospect as he did, and he didn’t know why something in him wanted to argue the point. Like it made any difference who wanted what. They were both stuck now, weren’t they? Just as her father had intended.

And it didn’t matter to him which Elliott sister was stuck with him in Amos’s handiwork. It made no difference to his plans. No matter what Zara’s mouth did to his peace of mind.

Chase decided he didn’t particularly care for any of these thoughts and took another long pull from the whiskey bottle instead. Oblivion was the only place he truly enjoyed these days. He’d considered permanently relocating there, in fact. How hard would it be to lose himself entirely in this or that bottle?

But he never did it, no matter how many nights he’d tried. Because the fact remained: the only thing he had left of his father, of his parents and his family legacy, was Whitaker Industries. He couldn’t let it fall entirely into Amos Elliott’s greedy hands. He’d already compromised and merged companies with the man his father had considered a better son to him than Chase had ever been. He couldn’t sell it now. He couldn’t step aside.

He couldn’t do anything but this.

Chase took another drink from the bottle, long and hard.

“Where is your sister?” he asked, with what he thought was remarkable calm, under the circumstances.

Those golden eyes cooled considerably. “That’s an excellent question.”

“But you don’t know?” He let his gaze track over that face of hers, her pale skin blending into the white veil that billowed around her, reminding him of a bird’s plumage. He found he was fascinated by the fact her voice remained the same, so unassailably polite, no matter what her gaze told him. Her mouth bothered him, he decided. It was too full. Too soft and tempting. Especially when she smiled. “That’s your position?”

“Chase,” she said, then hesitated. “Can I call you that? Or do you require that your arranged brides address you in a different way?”

He let out a short laugh, which shocked the hell out him. “Chase is fine.”

“Chase,” she said again, more firmly, and he had the strangest sensation then. Like this was a different time and there truly was an intimacy to the use of proper names. Or maybe it was just the way she said it; the way it sounded in that mouth of hers. “If I knew where Ariella was, I wouldn’t have shoehorned myself into this dress and married you in front of three hundred of my father’s closest friends, neighbors and business associates.” She smiled at him, though those impossible eyes were shot through with temper then, and he understood that was where the truth of this woman was. Not in her practiced smiles or her remarkably cheery voice, but in her eyes. Gold like the sunset and as honest. “If I knew where she was I would have gone and found her and dragged her to the church myself. She is, after all, the Elliott sister who agreed to marry you. Not me.”

He watched her mildly enough over his whiskey bottle, and noted the precise moment she realized she’d devolved into something like a rant. That telltale color stole over her cheeks, and he watched it sweep over the rest of her, down her neck and to parts hidden in all that explosive white. He found he was fascinated anew.

“No offense taken,” he said, forestalling the apology he could see forming on her lips. “I didn’t want to marry either one of you. Your father demanded it.”

“As a condition of his agreement to back you and your new COO, yes,” she said. “Your new brother-in-law, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Nicodemus Stathis and I have merged our companies,” Chase said, as thinly and emotionlessly as he could. “And our families, as seems to be going around this season. My sister tells me she’s blissfully happy.” He wondered if Zara could see what a lie that was, if that was what the slight tilt to her head meant. If she knew, somehow, how little he and his younger sister Mattie had talked at all in the long years since they’d lost their mother, much less lately. He shoved on. “Your father is the only remaining thorn in my side. You—this—is nothing more than a thorn-removal procedure.”

That was perhaps a bit too harsh, the part of him that wasn’t deep in a fire of whiskey reflected.

“No offense taken,” she said, her voice as merry as his had been cool, though Chase wasn’t certain he’d have apologized, if she’d given him the chance. Or that she wasn’t offended, come to that. “I’m delighted to be of service.”

“I know why Ariella was doing this—or why she said she was all right with it,” Chase said then, bluntly. “She quite likes a hefty bank account and no commentary on how she empties it. Is that a family trait? Are you in this for the money?”

Did he only imagine that she stiffened? “I have my own money, thank you.”

“You mean you have your father’s.” He toasted her with his bottle. “Don’t we all.”

“The only family money I have came from my grandmother, as a matter of fact, though I try not to touch it,” she replied, still smiling, though that warm gold gaze of hers had iced over again, and Chase knew he should hate the fact he noticed. “My father felt that if I wouldn’t follow his wishes to the letter, which involved significantly less school and a lot more friendly games of things like tennis to attract his friends’ sons as potential boyfriends-slash-merger options, I shouldn’t have access to any of his money.”

“Your sister makes defying your father her chief form of entertainment,” Chase said, focusing on that part of what she’d said instead of the rest, because the rest reminded him of the many steps he’d taken to make sure that, while his father might have employed him, Big Bart had never supported him. Not since the day he’d turned eighteen. And he didn’t want that kind of common ground with this woman. “She told me so herself.”

“Yes,” Zara said calmly, her gaze steady on his. “But Ariella is beautiful. Her defiance lands her on the covers of magazines and the arms of wealthy men. My father may find her antics embarrassing, but he views those things as a certain kind of currency. In that respect, I’m broke.”

Chase blinked. “I’m very wealthy,” he pointed out. “In all forms of currency.”

“I didn’t marry you for your money,” she said gently. “I married you because this way, I can always remind my father that I sacrificed myself for him on command. To a wealthy man he wanted to control. Talk about the kind of currency Amos Elliott appreciates.” Her mouth shifted into that smile of hers that did things to him he didn’t like or understand. “He isn’t a very nice man. It’s better to have leverage.”

Chase felt caught in the endless gold of her eyes then, or perhaps it was the near-winter afternoon outside the window that seemed to be some kind of extension of them, the sun brilliant through the stark trees and already too close to the edge of night.

“Are you looking for a nice man, then?” he asked quietly. From somewhere inside himself he hardly recognized.

“It would be difficult for you to be a worse one than my father,” Zara replied in the same tone. “Unless it was your singular purpose in life and even the briefest Google search online makes it clear that you’ve had other things to do.”

Was she being kind to him? Chase couldn’t fathom it. It made something great and gaping hinge open inside of him, too near to all that darkness he knew better than to let out into the light. He knew better than to let anyone see it. He knew what they’d call him if they did. He called himself that and worse every day.

Monster. Murderer.

He had blood on his hands that he could never wash clean, and this woman with eyes like liquid gold and the softest mouth he’d ever touched was being kind to him. On the very day her vicious father had lashed them together in unholy matrimony.

“I sold my own sister into her marriage because it benefited the company. I sold myself today.” His voice was colder than the December weather outside. Colder than what he kept locked inside. And all those things he hid away swelled up in him then. Those memories. Those terrible choices. The day he’d lost his mother on that South African road where he’d made the choice that defined him, the choice that he still couldn’t live with all these years later. To say nothing of the truth about his relationship with the father he felt he still had to prove himself to, even now, when Big Bart Whitaker would never know the difference. “You’ll want to be careful, Zara. I’ll ruin you, too, if you let me.”

She studied him for a moment, and then she smiled, and he didn’t know how he knew that this one was real. Even if it felt like it drew blood.

“No need to worry about that,” she said quietly. “I won’t.”