The Replacement Wife (13 page)

“But it doesn’t change a thing,” he said, sealing their doom. “It can’t.”

Becca had no memory of exiting the car, but she was on the sidewalk too quickly, shivering slightly. She told herself it was the cool night air, the wind that picked up when it slid through the urban canyons and teased at her skimpy dress. But she wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all herself.

“Becca,” Theo said, her name a command. And, as ever, she found herself heeding it—hating that she stopped walking. Hating that her body responded to him no matter what her head demanded. She despaired of herself.

“We can have nothing else to talk about,” she gritted out at him as he drew close. Part of her wanted to shake off the hand he put on her arm—but only a part. The rest of her wanted to purr like a cat, to bask in the heat of him, the strength. “I am all too aware of who Van Housen is and how I’m to approach him. I am apparently more cognizant of the potential dangers of the evening than you, but as I am the one who will suffer through it, I suppose that makes sense.”

“I don’t want you to do this,” he said in a gravelly voice, as if it was torn from him, as if he hardly knew what he would say before it was out there.

Hope warred with fatalism, and she only stared at him. Wishing. Hoping. Yet not believing this could end any other way but the way they’d planned. How could it?

“Then tell me not to do it.” She was whispering, but at least she was not begging. At least she was keeping her tears at bay. And the pleading she could feel swirling
around inside of her, so close to spilling out. At least she still had her pride—and she had the sickening feeling that it might be the only thing she’d leave here with.

“Becca …” he said again, his thumb stroking the bare skin of her arm, his body so big, so dangerously lean and powerful, blocking out the whole of Manhattan. “I wish I could change all of this.”

“You can.” She shook her head, more to fend off the coming tears than anything else. “You are the only one who can.”

His head dipped down, and he looked defeated. This strong, capable man. This man who had climbed to such unimaginable heights, all on the strength of his will. His desire. His ferocious and unwavering focus. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, and she let her fingers drift up to his lean jaw, holding him.

It was one thing to poke at him. But she could not bear to see him truly hurt, no matter what she’d thought.

For a moment they stood there, holding each other so gently, as if they were not on a city street at all—as if they could stand there forever, taking strength from each other’s touch, aching as one.

“I wish I could be a better man,” he said finally, quietly, his eyes tortured when they met hers. “But I don’t know how.”

Becca wavered slightly in her high, impossible shoes, and had to bite her lip to keep from sobbing outright. She had known this would hurt. She’d known it for what seemed like forever. But she hadn’t expected that it would hurt him, too. Or that it would hurt her quite this much. She couldn’t seem to breathe.

She stepped back from him, though everything in her screamed in protest. His hand dropped away, and
he was blurry through the unshed tears, and then she turned and started walking toward the club entrance.

She blinked back the tears, squared her shoulders and told herself to breathe.

She would do this. She would. Somehow, she would.

When he called her name again, she stiffened, but did not turn around. The velvet ropes and red carpets were only steps ahead of her, and she honestly didn’t know how much more of this she could live through. It had already left scars so deep they were better called wounds, and she doubted she would ever heal.

And she couldn’t take much more of it. She simply couldn’t.

“Becca,” he said again, and he was closer, too, and so this time she whipped around, her nerves fraying almost to the breaking point.

“No more!” she snapped at him, poking a finger toward his hard chest. “This is going to be hard enough without you making it a hundred times more difficult! You have to either let me go inside and handle this myself, or—”

“No,” Theo said. “Don’t go inside.”

But he did not look happy about that. He didn’t even look tortured, or grimly determined—or any kind of thing that might make sense. If anything, he looked dazed, and she followed his gaze to the phone he held in his hand.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

He rubbed his hand over his face, and then, at last, his amber gaze connected with hers—but he was miles away. As unreachable as he’d been way back at the beginning. Becca swallowed, hard.

“It’s Larissa,” Theo said, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying himself. As if he was testing the words, examining them. “She just woke up.”

L
ARISSA’S ROOM WAS
buzzing with voices. Becca could see various medical personnel swarming around her bed, poking and prodding and asking questions, while in the small sitting room, Bradford and Helen sat, silent and watchful—and then openly horrified at the sight of Becca walking in with Theo.

“Good God!” Bradford cried, his face twisting. “Why on earth would you bring this creature
here?
And at such a time?”

That was when it hit Becca—forcefully—how ghoulish it was to be the person dressed up like the woman who’d been expected to die just as everyone was coming to terms with the fact she wasn’t going to die after all.

Because that hadn’t been what she’d been concentrating on during the car ride across town from the West Village. She and Theo had sat in a taut, simmering silence. She’d had no idea what he might have been thinking, and had been afraid to ask. Meanwhile, her head had spun around and around and around. What did this mean?
You know what it means,
her practical inner voice had shot back at her.
You just don’t want to believe it.

She’d been aware that she should be worried about what this meant for Emily’s future—if she would still
get that impossibly large sum of money now, since it wasn’t her fault she’d been unable to complete her part of the contract. But she couldn’t worry about that. Not then. Not when her whole being seemed to be stuck on a precipice, tottering in the wind, and all too aware that she was about to tumble—because all she wanted to know was what this meant for Theo. For Theo, and for Becca herself. For, God help her, the both of them.

If Larissa was awake, that meant Theo was still engaged to her. And that made everything that had happened between them sordid and wrong. She’d felt her stomach twist as the thoughts raced through her brain. It had been one thing when Larissa was for all intents and purposes already dead. But this.

Becca wasn’t the kind of woman who could merrily jump into bed with a committed man. The very thought made her stomach turn. And yet, sitting there in that car, she’d reached the inescapable conclusion that she’d become that kind of woman, despite her best intentions, along with everything else she’d become in this place. With these people. How could she consider them corrupt when she was clearly no better?

“I don’t understand what happened,” Theo said, his rough tone snapping Becca back to the present, where both Whitneys gaped at her as if she’d thrown something in their faces. “How is this possible?”

“It’s a miracle,” Helen said at once, piously, holding her hands in her lap as if she expected the queen to happen by and comment on her posture. “You can’t call it anything else.”

“I don’t care what you call it,” Bradford snapped. He eyed Becca with what she could only describe as loathing. It crawled over her skin, making goose bumps rise up even as her stomach twisted yet again. He waved a
hand at Becca. “It means that we can get rid of this mess, and handle things the proper way. The way they should have been handled from the start, without involving outsiders.”

“You’re good at getting rid of messes, aren’t you?” Becca asked him, not knowing she meant to speak—but not doing anything to curtail it, either. “Poor Larissa. She thought she was escaping, and instead she has to wake up and suffer through more of your brand of parenting. She’s the one mess you can’t get rid of, isn’t she?”

“You’re nothing but trash,” Bradford said softly, and his face took on that faux-kindly glow that made him so monstrous, so horrifying. “Trash with my daughter’s face.”

“Watch yourself,” Theo advised him, but Bradford did not so much as look at him, rising to his feet and moving closer to Becca, presumably so she could comprehend fully the whole of his contempt as he glared at her. She glared back, unmoved.

“If it had been up to me, you never would have darkened the door of this house again,” Bradford told her in that same quietly horrible voice. “Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to send you packing without a single cent of the Whitney fortune. Neither you nor your low-class sister deserve a penny of it. Just like your tramp of a mother before you.”

There was, Becca discovered in that moment, a certain liberty in having lost everything—even those things she hadn’t known she could lose in the first place, like her heart. It made her entirely immune to bullies like this man.

“I used to think my mother was the victim here,” she told Bradford, meeting his glare with her own, not in
the least bit afraid of him. “But I understand now that she was lucky to escape this place.”

“Yes,” Bradford sneered. “Lucky to live in poverty, passed from one inappropriate man to the next. Lucky to raise up two brats while working herself half to death. Yes, Caroline was
lucky.”
He laughed. “And you can look forward to being just as lucky, for the rest of your life.”

“Bradford.” Theo’s voice was all steel, all command. “Stop.” But still, the other man gave no sign of hearing him. Or perhaps he simply didn’t care. Neither did she.

“The truth is that I pity you,” Becca told him, leaning in just a little bit, looking him straight in the eye. “You have everything in the world—more than most people could possibly dream of having—and in the end you still have nothing.”

“Enough.” Becca hadn’t even heard Theo move, but then his hands came down on her shoulders and she could
feel
the way he looked at Bradford from behind her. “This is hardly the time for this kind of display,” he snapped.

“Get that creature out of my house,” Bradford hissed back, furious.

Theo moved so he was between Becca and Bradford, and Becca appreciated the implied chivalry of it even if she would have preferred to continue sniping at Bradford up close. It was much too satisfying—no doubt indicative of yet another character flaw. But it was far better to fight with a toad like Bradford than to think about everything she’d lost tonight. Far better to pretend she was bulletproof and everything just bounced right off her.

Theo moved again, nearer to Bradford, and it brought
her closer to Larissa’s door. She couldn’t help glancing over. The sea of doctors parted, and for a long moment, a heartbeat and then another, Becca locked eyes with the real Larissa. They stared at each other until the doctors closed in again, and Becca turned away.

It shook her to the bone.

These were real people, she reminded herself, not puppets in some ancient feud.
People
—and one of those people was that poor woman on the bed in there, who deserved more than this depressing little show just inches from where she’d become a medical miracle. It was time for Becca to remember who she’d been back when she was real. It was time to go.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she told Bradford. She even smiled. “I’m happy to be rid of you, once and for all.” She raised her brows at him, challenging him. Daring him to insult her further, to push her one more time. “And the next time you need a doppelgänger for one of your Byzantine little plots, I’m busy.”

Bradford began to speak, but some swift motion by Theo cut him off. Becca let her gaze sweep over Helen, who stared back at her, all haughty affront, and she told herself it was just as well. She knew how to handle rejection. She knew how to roll with the same old punches she’d been dodging her whole life. If she wished that Helen had been as across-the-board repulsive as Bradford had, well, that was only because she was still so weak somewhere deep inside, where she would always be that not-good-enough girl. Where she wondered sometimes if she would ever feel anything but illegitimate. Helen’s small moment of near kindness hurt far more than any of Bradford’s tirades.

But she would lock that away, too. With everything else she now had to forget.

She didn’t bother looking at Bradford again, and she didn’t dare to so much as glance at Theo. Not directly. If she did, she suspected she would never leave, and he was not hers. He had never been hers. She should never have let herself imagine that he could be.

So she simply walked out the door.

Theo caught up with her again where he had once long ago, in the great entryway. When Becca had been someone else. She hardly remembered who.

“Stop,” he said, his voice ringing out, ringing in her, making her stop in her tracks just as she had so long before. Just as she always would, she suspected. “Please,” he added, and she wondered that he even knew the word.

“There is no point in further, unpleasant conversations,” she said. She could feel him as he closed the space between them, coming up behind her. She could sense the heat of him, the height and the power. Her eyes drifted closed—but she snapped them back open. This was no time for dreams about what could have been. It was long past time for reality.

“Bradford is an ass,” Theo said darkly. He moved around to face her, and it hurt her to see the set of his jaw, the tense way he held himself. “Obviously, you’ll receive the money you would have collected had you met with Van Housen tonight, as planned. No one could have foreseen … this.”

“'Met’ with him,” she murmured, trying to sound arch, amused. Yet she could barely manage anything much beyond shell-shocked. “That sounds so. sanitized.”

“I don’t think I could have let you go through with it,” he said, his gaze searching hers, his tone urgent. “When
it came right down to it, I don’t think I could have borne it.”

She shook her head at him. There were so many things she could have said, that she wanted to say, but she couldn’t allow herself such luxuries. She would only regret them later.

“We’ll never know,” she said, with a shrug. His mouth tightened, and his eyes grew hard. He looked away—as if he fought for control—and when he met her gaze again he was cold, in control.

She hated it.

“You executed your part of the contract flawlessly,” he said, every inch the dispassionate CEO. “Of course you will receive what you were promised, no matter what tantrums Bradford throws.”

“I don’t care!” she threw at him, slashing her hand in the air—but he reached out and caught it in his. The sudden contact startled her into silence. It was too much. Too hot. Too right. Too … all the things it was not, all the things it could not ever be.

“You will.” His voice was so low. Too low. It made her … wish for things she couldn’t let herself want. “Perhaps not now. But you will.”

She pulled her hand from his, feeling a strange heat move through her, knowing she flushed bright with it but not able to stop it. Just as she was unable to push past him and walk away, as she knew she should.

The moment seemed to grow, to echo, to consume them both. There was nothing in the world but his fierce, beloved face, and those arresting, impossibly amber eyes. There was nothing but the things they could not say, spinning between them, louder and louder with each breath.

“I know I should not ask this.” he began, as if the words hurt him.

“Then do not ask it,” she replied, firmly, desperately, though there was more of her than she wanted to admit that wanted him to ask it anyway. Whatever it was. Because if he asked, how could she resist? How would she be able to tear herself away? It was killing her already and she hadn’t even gone yet.

He whispered her name, and her heart—so broken already, so battered—crumbled into dust.

But she could see herself in the great mirror that graced the near wall, and she did not even look like herself. She looked like Larissa, and the real Larissa was awake—which meant that Becca had no idea, anymore, who she was. How could she? She’d gotten lost in this maze of a life, all mirrors and reflections and charades, for far too long. She had started to believe she belonged here. She had even started to
want
to belong here.

And because she loved this man, she had been prepared to walk into that club and perform whatever act was necessary to make him happy. She would have to live with that truth, with what that said about her and about what parts of herself she was willing to sacrifice for no very good reason. But she didn’t have to compound the error.

She’d been settling for less her whole life, and calling it a victory. She couldn’t do that any longer. She wouldn’t. Not when she’d let herself imagine how it would be if she wasn’t the secondhand girl, the throw-away girl. Not when she’d felt what it might be like to be the one finally chosen. It might have been an illusion, but it had changed her. For good.

And much as she wanted to be close to him, no matter
what, she couldn’t go back from that. She couldn’t un-know it. Which meant that for once in her life, she couldn’t allow herself to settle. Not even if that meant keeping him somehow.

“I deserve more than the scraps from the Whitney family’s table,” she said, surprised to hear that her voice was clear. Even proud. No matter how much she shook inside. “I deserve more than to wonder who you really see when you look at me—or who you want to see.” She heard his muttered oath, but continued. “I deserve more than the little you have to give, the little that isn’t focused on what you really love.”

“I don’t love her.” His voice was stark. Sure.

“I was going to say power.” She could not let herself react to what he’d said. She could not let it matter. “Money. Wealth. All those things you dreamed of back in Miami.” She searched his face. “I understand it, but I deserve more, Theo. I deserve better.”

“Becca.” He looked so lost that it made her waver for a moment.

One last time, she forced herself to be strong—stronger than she should ever have had to be. She leaned in close, letting his scent tease at her, and she pressed a single kiss to his lean, hard jaw. And then, somehow, she pulled away.

“Please,” he whispered fiercely, his hands in fists at his side, his big body rigid and almost quivering with tension.

“Goodbye, Theo,” she whispered back, her throat tight with the tears she fought to keep at bay.

And then she walked away from him, from the only man she’d ever loved, toward whatever future awaited her without him. But at least, this once, she hadn’t settled
for what she could get. It had to be better to hold out for what she really wanted—for what she deserved.