Paper Marriage Proposition(53)
She made a distressed sound and flung her hands up in the air. “He threatened me! He grabbed me! I yanked away when I could. What was I supposed to do!”
“I’m going to goddamned kill him.”
Stunned by the words, Beth blinked.
Landon cursed and approached, the concern and anger etched across his face making her hope soar. “Did he hurt you?” he demanded.
Beth held her breath as his hands briskly sailed down the front buttons of her shirt, unbuttoning and parting the material, then she gasped when he shoved the material down her shoulders and arms until it dangled from one of her wrists.
Dying with lust, she stood meek as Landon frowned and studied her, skimmed his fingers along her throat, the tops of her arms, her elbows. The skin was unmarked. He expelled a relieved breath and met her gaze, a look of male awareness settling in his eyes.
When he cursed low in his throat and left her standing there, struggling to rearrange her clothes, she’d never felt so cold, so abandoned and rejected.
“I had a child once,” he began, his ragged words gaining force as he turned around, “and if you cared for yours as much as you say you do, you’d have played it safe and stayed away from Hector Halifax, Bethany.”
“He wasn’t even your son, Landon!” she screamed, out of her wits with fury over his accusations, his blindness. Didn’t he know, damn him? Couldn’t he see she was achingly, painfully in love with him? She hadn’t kissed Hector. All she wanted, needed, was Landon’s support tonight, not his accusations.
The tomb-like silence that followed her cry shattered when Landon spoke.
His timbre was dangerously, warningly soft. “What did you just say?”
Beth lowered her voice. “He was Hector’s son. He wasn’t yours.”
His hands balled and his arms trembled and then, then he made a low, terrible sound that tore through her like a knife cut.
That’s when it struck her. When the horrible words she’d said dawned on her. What she’d said, how she’d said it, angrily, meant to hurt him.
“Landon, I’m sorry, I—” When she reached out for him, he cursed and stepped aside, giving her his back. “Landon, I didn’t mean it like this. It’s just that Hector demanded a DNA test before he and Chrystine ran away. I saw the results. He’s the father. They fooled around for years, he and Chrystine. They loved making each other jealous. They married us to spite each other off, Landon. Chrystine loved to rub it in Hector’s nose how she was able to snag you when you were the best catch—”
His smile grew chillier, and he began to laugh, holding up a hand to stop her. “Don’t. Say anymore.”
Stopped by that cynical sound, Beth helplessly stood a few feet away, and the ground under her feet had never felt so perilous. What had she done?
Her throat was so clogged she barely heard her own voice, which sounded strangled when she spoke. “I realize I should’ve told you before, about your son.”
“You knew, all this time. You knew about my son and you let me think…you let me talk to you about him…you—”
“It makes no difference!” she cried.
He roared and slammed his chest with one fist. “It makes a difference to me!”
He’d still been holding his drink in his other hand, and a slosh of whiskey splashed onto the carpet. Cursing, Landon drained what was left and set the empty glass on the desk, then he stared into its depths.
She considered how she’d take it if someone came up to her and told her David wasn’t her son. How she’d feel if Landon, a man whose respect she wanted, had told her this news in the same way Beth had told him.
She shrunk inside her skin, feeling so small.
“I’m sorry, Landon,” she said, her voice small, too.
Her eyes welled up for the second time today. She was afraid the tears wouldn’t stop until morning.
She didn’t know where she found the courage to speak. “Where d-do we stand now? With us? With…David?”
He wouldn’t tear his gaze off that empty glass. “I said I’d get you your son back. And I will.”
And us?
She couldn’t ask it again—somewhere deep down, she knew. Could hear the word “divorce” as clearly as she heard the thunder.
They’d become each other’s enemies.
Thirteen
“Pretend you love me well and hard or by God this will blow up in our faces!”
Landon hissed the words into her ear, and a hot shiver raced down Beth’s spine. Her nerves were stretched taut in a combination of anticipation and fear.
This was the day she’d been waiting for.
Her heart pounded a nervous beat as she gazed around the space they’d been appointed. The courtroom was exactly the one in her earlier trial: impersonal and cold.