Oh, my God.
She could see by those enlarged pupils he was visualizing this!
He curled a finger under her chin. “Are you interested? Beth?”
A shudder rippled through her. The eyes. So fierce and lonely and bright.
A needle of an image stabbed into her mind, this virile beauty, hot and hard and pushing into her, and she…oh, God, she’d die.
She’d felt the powerful, restrained force in his body when she’d kissed him; all of it, it seemed, directed at keeping from kissing her back. How would it feel to have Landon Gage unleash all that suppressed strength into her? She’d crack. She’d detonate.
She’d say no. She had to.
No was a small, hard word, and small people learned to say it the hard way. Beth had learned six years ago that the hard little word no would have meant the difference between happiness and despair, freedom and entrapment.
Now it had to be, couldn’t be anything other than no.
What if he insisted?
What if he didn’t?
“I think we should really stick to the original plan.”
But her quiet denial, although logical and truthful, planted a small, potent little ache inside her.
His nostrils flared. He stepped back with a curt nod, and Bethany realized that the brief, tight look that passed over his face was hunger. “Good to know.”
Within seconds he issued explicit orders to his chauffeur, and then he stormed back into the building—leaving Bethany clutching the little black book with one hand, and Landon Gage’s corporate credit card with the other.
Three
“I can now clearly see why you haven’t had a woman in ages, Lan. Maybe Julian here could teach you a thing or two about subtlety.”
Landon was hunched over the boardroom table the next morning with the newest copy of the San Antonio Daily spread out over the surface. Ignoring Garrett, he continued circling. He did this every day. He did it before they went to print. He did it afterward. Every single day.
“I don’t want a woman.” Landon flipped to the next section. His red pen streaked across the sports header. “Twenty-four mistakes, Garrett, and counting. I suggest you wipe that grin off your face.”
“So you just want her, then? Because this prenup—” Garrett waved the papers in the air “—is a bit out of the norm. Jules, if you may offer an opinion on our brother’s state of mind—what do you think of the prenup? It boggles the mind that a woman would sign that thing.”
In a characteristically lazy move, Julian snatched up the proffered document. He propped a shoulder against the wall and skimmed through the terms. He said, in his usual flat tones, “Twisted and somewhat distrustful. Good, Landon. Very you.”
“Thank you, Jules. This is a joining of two enemies after all.”
Garrett shook his head, then navigated to the chrome bar and refilled his coffee. “You’re setting yourself up for a divorce from the start, brother.”
Landon’s pen unerringly circled. A date wrong. A period missing. “Yes, well, this time both she and I will know it’s coming.”
“You forget I was there last night, Lan, and in case you didn’t notice, you had her pinned to the wall.”
Landon froze. He scowled down at the page, pen in midair.
An image of Beth pinned to the wall, vulnerable with her lips wet, her chest heaving against his, made Landon’s chest cramp. God, he hated weakness. He took advantage of it in others and loathed it in himself. He dropped the pen, raked a hand through his hair, and blew out a breath, glowering at his nosy brother. “You know what the scorpion told the turtle when it stung its ass dead?”
Garrett sipped his coffee. “Humor me.”
“It’s in my nature.” Landon glared. “That’s what it said.”
“And in English?”