“If you put a hand on David,” she warned with renewed courage, her nails biting into her hands as she clenched her fists.
“I don’t need to put a hand on him to hurt him and you know it. I’ll just tell him the truth about his mother and see how he likes it.”
“Lies, all lies!” Nearly bursting with rage, Beth edged back
ward, wanting to flee.
“I’m not alone now, Hector,” she said, sucking in a calming breath. His eyes flared slightly and Beth remembered Hector saying how much he’d relish destroying the Gages. Well, she wouldn’t let him! “Landon is much more powerful than you are,” she informed him proudly. “And he won’t rest until David’s back where he belongs.”
She didn’t know if Hector believed her, but in her panic-ridden thoughts, she prayed he did and put a cork on his threats already. This didn’t have to get so bloody. For David’s sake, in fact, she wished she could come to a satisfying arrangement in the most quiet way possible—but she knew her new husband deserved better. He deserved his revenge.
And she was so starved for Hector’s blood, she wanted him to get it.
“You’re mine, Beth.” Hector hissed out the poisonous words. “I’m here, right here.” He knocked his head with his knuckles, hard. “You’re weak, and I’ve got you, I control you, and I will have you again, you will come crawling back to me, mark my words.”
With that, Hector spun around and walked away. Her eyes burned as she watched his retreating back until everything in her line of vision became a blur. The encounter left her limp. She fell in a pool of her own skirts, and sat back against the wall of the building.
“God,” she shakily gasped, suddenly covering her face in her hands. How could a person you hated so much have given you the thing you most loved in the world?
“Say, Gordon, where did my daughter run off to?”
“Landon,” he said to his new mother-in-law, a chirpy, sunny woman with a confused, tremulous smile. “And I’ll find her, Mrs. Lewis, give me a moment.”
The woman appeared bemused as to what he’d said and nodded twice. She really was deaf.
Depositing her with Beth’s father, who currently got acquainted with Julian John, Landon scoured the gardens and opted to check the least trafficked entry to the lobby. The press was getting restless. They wanted their money shot and the success of their plan depended on Landon to deliver.
He found her lying on the ground by the side of the long building. He spotted the midnight blue skirts of her dress first pooled all around her, her hair covering her profile as she mumbled angrily to herself.
He halted in his tracks. “Bethany?”
Her head snapped back. “Landon.” The breath whooshed out of her.
He felt a sliver of dread at the sight of her pale face, as pale as the moonlight, her eyes as round as the moon but dark and terrified.
“What are you doing?” he asked uneasily, stalking forward and dropping on his haunches.
Bethany craned her neck back to meet his gaze. Her smile lacked conviction. “Hey,” she said in a quavery voice, then she sighed and rubbed her face with unsteady hands. “I was feeling miserable all by myself.”
Landon was at a loss. He knew how to deal with his mother—a blunt, forthright woman who’d borne three sons and had survived a husband who’d put any alpha to shame. But Beth…she was so rigid and so wound up, fighting so hard to stand when her life had crumpled around her, he just didn’t know what to say to her. He couldn’t explain how easily he understood this, understood that she was looking for herself, for her strength, while at the same time searching desperately for a light at the end of the tunnel.
He reached out and covered one milky white hand with his, awkwardly at first, shocked by his body’s instant reaction to such a simple touch. “You okay?”
Hell, it had been too long since he touched anyone. Too long since he’d wanted to make this sort of contact, this contact he enjoyed making with Beth. Her shoulders sagged as she gripped his fingers, and a jolt of her scent made his nostrils flare. Lemons. God, she smelled so good he found himself leaning closer for another whiff.
“Hector was just here,” she said, squeezing his hand.
His hackles raised, every muscle in his body clenching. “Where?”
Beth sighed drearily while thoughts of Halifax slammed into Landon’s mind, one after the other. Halifax being seen by the press…Halifax meeting in secret with Beth, swiftly and efficiently ruining the new, respectable image Landon planned for his fiancée.
His grip tightened so hard Beth winced. “Beth, where?”
“He’s gone, I think.”
He released her. But a swift, overwhelming anger surged inside him like a tidal wave, and his mind clamored for him to do some serious damage to that weasel. Halifax could spoil everything. He could ruin their pretend engagement, make the press believe she was still a treacherous Jezebel and that now she’d found a new target: Landon.
It was a hard sell, but not impossible.