Bound As His Business-Deal Bride (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  ‘No.’ He wouldn’t stop looking at the papers on the floor, now running his hands through them, sorting, shifting. ‘I do not believe you had so little faith in us.’

  Eve didn’t know what to do. She trembled, fighting back the tears threatening to fall.

  ‘Stop.’

  Gage didn’t look up. He didn’t acknowledge her at all and then there it was. Safely pressed into a journal. The midwife working at the hospital had done it for her. Tiny footprints and handprints in blue, from a soul who had come too early and left too soon. Gage held them for a few seconds before they slipped from his fingers, the precious papers falling back to the carpet to join the rest. He scrabbled through what remained until he came to the printed official French document.

  Eve froze to the spot. She couldn’t do anything but kneel there and watch the past years of their lives unravel like a skein of wool.

  Because their son had breathed, he had a birth certificate. Louis Gage Chevalier. A name they’d always loved. Louis for a boy, Catherine for a girl. They’d dreamed every dream when they’d spun those fantasies with one another, when they’d been barely out of childhood themselves.

  ‘A...a baby?’ He scanned the page, looked at her, scanned it again. The paper shaking in his hands, ‘Our baby?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tears she’d promised she wouldn’t cry anymore began sliding down her cheeks.

  The heat of banked anger flared in Gage’s eyes. ‘How could you keep our son...my son...?’

  She bit her lip hard to try and quell the pain with something physical but the sharp bite did nothing to ease the hurt that had never quite healed, like a constant bruise. A lifetime was still too soon. But their child deserved to be finally known and acknowledged by someone other than her. And if Gage knew, maybe he’d stop asking questions that would lead to the most important secret of all she kept from him. A secret that was becoming harder to keep as time slid by.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was pregnant, not at first.’ The stress, the heartbreak. Not eating, not sleeping. They’d all taken a toll and she hadn’t put together what it meant when she’d missed her period. ‘And when I did... You can’t imagine.’

  Being in France made it easier but she’d been terrified that someone would find out. Her father would have lost his mind if he’d known, and she’d already hurt Gage too much. In the beginning it had been what had driven her to succeed, to study and put everything behind her because she’d needed to keep secret the child she carried. At least for a while till she could plan, because after what she’d said to Gage it would have killed her if he’d questioned who the father was or, even worse, denied their baby.

  ‘Where the hell is he?’

  She couldn’t say the words. Instead Eve gently sifted through the detritus of her life lying scattered on the floor. She found the document she was looking for and gave it to him. Whilst he might not be able to understand all that was written on the page, he’d recognize what it meant. Another official paper that had marked the end of all her dreams.

  ‘I finally saw a doctor and it was going okay. Then at twenty-three weeks, it didn’t.’ She couldn’t express the hope that had died then. It had felt like she had too, and a new Eve Chevalier had been carved from the winter of all that grief. Colder. Harder. The softness pared out of her. ‘He was born so small. They tried to save him and he fought so hard, but...’ She shook her head. In the days after that she’d become a zombie. The emotions too big to suffer alone and yet there was no alternative. Trying to hide what had happened because she’d been determined no one would ever find out.

  ‘You should have said. I would have...’ The look of anguish in his eyes as their worlds crumbled before them, all the things she’d hidden stitched tightly inside. Gage had that way of unpicking them one by one. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Were you ever going to?’

  ‘I was terrified.’ At least that was a small part of why she’d done what she’d done. ‘Scared of what my father would do.’ If he’d known, he would have told Gage the truth about his parentage. She remembered that time of fear. Carrying Gage’s child. Wanting to protect him, wanting to sort out the risks for them all in her heart before she announced to the world she was pregnant and the father was Gage.

  ‘That man.’ Gage surged from his knees towards her, a fire igniting in his eyes. ‘Did Hugo ever hurt you because of me?’

  His rage burned like molten metal, thick and scorching. Not at her, but for her. She shook her head.

  ‘No. But I thought if I told him about the baby, he might have done something.’

  ‘There is nothing he could have done to you because I would have come for you.’

  ‘You were another country away. He had all the power. And by the time I thought I could say something it was all over, so I kept it to myself because you didn’t need to suffer this pain.’

  Yet as much as the ache now always lived inside her, it felt good to share. To finally acknowledge with another person that their little boy had lived, if only for a short time.

  ‘I’m suffering it now,’ Gage said, his voice as cracked and broken as her heart. He flicked through more of the material till he found an old, faded photograph of her, holding their little boy all swaddled and hidden. The pain, raw on her face. Her midwife had said it would help, one day, to have this photo. That at some time in the future she’d want these memories.

  ‘You’ve carried this case around since then,’ he said.

  ‘I carry it everywhere. It’s always with me.’

  Gage hunched over the papers as if curling into himself. The photograph dropped from his fingers and fell to the floor. He buried his head in his hands as his shoulders shuddered. He uttered no sound, but she knew his pain. She’d carried it around with her for too long. Six birthdays, six Mother’s Days. Every milestone she should have been celebrating with their child, lost to her.

  She draped herself over Gage’s trembling body. Wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let the years of unshed tears fall. Finally, there was someone who knew. Another person who could mark the date as it passed. And as they clung on to each other a selfish, wicked thought grabbed hard at her like a kudzu vine and wouldn’t let go. What if she could have Gage after all these years? But wanting was a dangerous thing. She still had secrets to keep, though holding them back now felt like trying to stop sand running through an hourglass.

  It just ran through her fingers instead.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THIS PLACE HELD too many memories of his failures and regrets, and those regrets almost crushed Gage now. The pain in his chest wouldn’t go away, a tearing, cutting kind of agony. He wondered if it ever would. All the things he and Eve had missed together threatened to slice him to pieces. The child lost to them both. He didn’t know how Eve had dealt with it on her own, away from any support. How it didn’t crush her now.

  What if he’d ignored her cruel words seven years ago, had followed her across the world and fought for the woman he loved rather than giving up and wallowing in self-indulgence over her rejection? They could have been a family or, even if things had still turned out badly with their baby, they would have had each other to cling to. Instead, Eve had suffered in a foreign country. Alone.

  Her weight lifted from his back, where she’d held onto him and poured out her grief along with his. He couldn’t understand how she could forgive what he never would—the end of everything they’d hoped for. He took a deep breath against the sadness that threatened to overwhelm him. He’d never forget what had been done by Eve’s family. If he had to maintain the rage for both of them, then so be it. It was bright and hot enough to consume the grief of a thousand people and still have room to devour more.

  He straightened up to look at Eve, her beautiful face marred by tears, blotchy and red. He gritted his teeth. ‘Hugo will pay. For it all. If it’s the last thing I do with my last breath, he’ll know the meaning of suffering.
A lifetime of it isn’t enough for what he’s done. Where is he now? Because, God help him, a reckoning is coming.’

  Her eyes widened and she paled to the colour of parchment. The ruins of her mascara stood out as dark, wet tracks under her swollen eyes. She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Gage stood and began to pace. She was still defending him, after all that man had done?

  ‘If you go to see him, what will you do?’ Her voice trembled and choked as she stayed on her knees, as if begging him to stop what he never would. Ever. ‘What will it achieve?’

  He wheeled round. How could she not see? Her family, her father had destroyed their lives. Tainted the last seven years with his special brand of poison.

  ‘I want to show him that he’s lost, and I have it all. His company, and especially what he tried to keep from me. You.’

  Eve scrambled to her feet. ‘So I’m still being used as a weapon?’

  She was talking in riddles.

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a future that holds love, not this hatred.’ She clasped her hands in front of her. ‘My father will reap his reward. There’s nothing you can do to him that will make him unhappier than he is now, than he has been for most of his adult life.’

  He shook his head, unbelieving. How she could even acknowledge Hugo after all that had gone before was unfathomable. ‘You’re protecting him?’

  She shook her head, eyes wide. ‘I’m protecting you. That’s why I won’t let you go.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’ He snatched his phone from his pocket, called for a car. ‘Tell me where he is, or I’ll find him on my own. He’ll know what he did!’

  His ride would be here in under ten minutes. So little time and too much, when he wanted to rush out and tear her father’s world apart, like he’d done to theirs. Gage paced the carpet, unable to stop because if he did, he feared he might fall and never get up. Eve didn’t move. How could she be so still? With her arms now wrapped tightly around her waist, biting into her lower lip. Then she reached out, grabbed his arm and he had no choice but to stand there, forcing himself to stay upright.

  ‘Gage, please.’ Eve’s grip was tight and strong for such slender fingers, her voice a bare tremor in the otherwise brutal silence of the room. ‘You can’t go... There are things you need to know... The truth of why I ended...us.’

  The answer to the questions he’d asked for seven years hung just out of reach. Now nothing would get him to move from the spot in which he stood. Yet Eve seemed frozen, her eyes wide and pupils mere pinpricks. A pulse thrashed wildly at the base of her throat, as if they were on the edge of something too big to be knowable.

  If anyone were to break the inertia, it would have to be him.

  ‘What?’

  The word jolted like a shock through Eve. She pulled her hand back as if he’d burned her. Now she was the one to pace, hands fluttering restlessly as she spoke.

  ‘You’ve got to understand. At the time he said things were bad with Caron and that if he told everyone what he knew, it might fold. You love your parents. I didn’t want you hurt like that.’

  And still she didn’t make sense. None of this did, her defence of Hugo. Nothing. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I can’t... I have to...’ She stopped. Her chest heaved as if every breath was an effort. Her eyes spilled over with tears. He almost moved to hold her up, because now it was as if she was the one who might fall. ‘You need to know. Your father... Gus...is not your father.’

  Everything froze, like the room had been hit by an ice storm.

  ‘Chevaliers are charlatans and cheats, never to be trusted.’

  His dad’s words screamed in his ears. Gage shook his head, pointed at her, punctuating the air with his finger.

  ‘No. You’re lying.’ Eve reared back like she’d been struck. ‘It’s not true. It’s—’

  ‘You need to talk to your mom and dad. Why would I lie?’ Her hands were stretched out, as if imploring him to believe her when what she said was unbelievable. ‘I’ve seen the evidence. My father said if I didn’t end things, he’d tell everyone you weren’t Gus’s son. Better you hated me than you lost everything. I had to do it. To protect you.’

  Gage shook his head. It couldn’t be true. He was a Caron. Gus was his dad.

  ‘Doesn’t wash, cher. How were you going to explain us to your daddy now? That promise you demanded he keep was worthless with us together.’

  Though only hours ago if Eve had told him she’d had a baby, he might not have believed that either...

  ‘I thought we’d be done by the time my father recovered, if he did... Then things changed...’ She tortured the sapphire ring on her finger, twisting it back and forth. Staring at the gleaming gems. It hit him so hard it felt like the breath had been almost knocked from his lungs. Those questions he’d asked of his parents when he’d been a child. How he didn’t really look like his dad. The dread of realisation frosted over him because in the end, here was the perfect explanation for Eve’s cruelty, the only one that made sense.

  He’d been going to confront her father, and Eve knew Hugo would tell him what she’d kept hidden all these years.

  Gus Caron was not his father.

  That knowledge now fired the burn inside, a blinding realisation of all the lies told and toxic secrets kept.

  ‘If your daddy had died you’d have kept this secret, wouldn’t you?’ he hissed. ‘When I deserved to know.’

  She walked up to him, a tentativeness about her as if she was approaching a wild animal. Maybe that’s exactly what he was. The feral desire to lash out and hurt those he loved bit down hard. He barely held it in check because he knew only too well that words, once spoken, couldn’t be unsaid.

  ‘You did need to know but it wasn’t my story to tell and it should never have been told to you in hatred. The story needed to be told to you in love, by your parents. I—I was going to talk to them. Ask them to speak to you, and then...’

  She looked at all the papers and scrapbooks lying in a scattered mess across the floor, like their dreams. Nothing could ever be the same after today. His world had ended and he wasn’t sure how to start living again.

  ‘So I’m not a Caron.’ Gage turned his back on her. Walked away towards the window with fists clenched. Looked out at the view of a city he now loathed. ‘It’s too late now. This. Everything.’

  He’d been a father, and hadn’t known it. He was a bastard, and hadn’t known that either. Nothing seemed stable anymore, like the ground had cracked beneath his feet. He dropped his head and looked at the floor to make sure it was solid because it felt like it would open up and swallow him whole. The hair on the back of his neck pricked, warning of someone close. Then there was a gentle press of a palm, which he supposed was meant to comfort, but instead it felt like a stab in the back. Just one more knife in the multitude that had struck there and stuck, leaving him permanently wounded.

  ‘So much that’s happened has been so wrong, but we can make it right. There’s a future and we can—’

  Gage wheeled round, and Eve took a step back. What could she see on his face that made her want to give him space? Not even he could read the emotions now churning inside him bar one. An endless hatred, focussed laser bright on one man.

  ‘Your father deserves to be punished, and I will relish meting it out to him.’

  Eve looked up at him, those blue eyes of hers so pale and sad. He wondered when he’d become inured to all the grief.

  ‘And what happens when you’re done with that? What then?’

  He frowned. What did she mean? He’d triumph, that’s what would happen.

  ‘Then it’ll be over.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how to live a life where revenge isn’t part of it?’ She held out her hand and placed it on the centre of his chest, where his heart sho
uld be beating. He wasn’t sure it was anymore. ‘When will it ever be enough?’

  The answer rang clear: it would never be enough, not for him. ‘How can you let this go? He stole everything from us.’

  ‘I don’t care about that man. I can’t control what he does, only what I feel. All I care about is you. Trust me, this will eat away at you like it’s done to him.’

  The heat of her palm burned into him, a reminder of how cold he’d become.

  ‘I’m not your father.’

  ‘No. Not now. But one day, if you keep going, you will be. What if my father’s gone? I’m his daughter. Will you end up hating me too? This needs to stop.’

  He moved away from Eve with her imploring eyes and gentle hands. Softer emotions had no place here, not in this room where all his hope had been smashed and broken. ‘It’ll stop when I say it does, or your father’s in the grave.’

  Eve clenched her fists by her sides. ‘He could live another twenty years, and you want to carry on hating him for that long?’

  He’d never stop. ‘I’ll loathe him till I’m in the grave myself.’

  Her tears fell again, slipping down her cheeks, tracking down her pale skin. There’d been so many tears today they could have filled rivers with them. Eve wiped at her face, took a deep breath. Stood firm and proud.

  ‘I have loved you for almost my whole life. I will continue to love you all the days I have left,’ she said, taking the engagement ring from her finger and holding it out to him. For a moment he had trouble understanding what it all meant. ‘But I can’t do this anymore. I won’t allow hatred to rule my life or infect another day.’

  He stared at the ring for a few moments, then looked back at her. There was no way she would walk away from him, not now, not after everything. Not with so much left unfinished.

  ‘We have a deal, and you’re breaking it? If you don’t carry this through to the end—’

  ‘Then you’ll what? Destroy me too?’ She didn’t look angry, she didn’t look sad, just worn down and tired. Like someone had carved out all the vibrant parts of her and left a pale husk behind. ‘I beg you, try your hardest because nothing could hurt me much more than I’m hurting now. I’ll keep to our deal. You want to wheel me out as your fake fiancée for Greta Bonitz or anyone else? Fine. But us? We’re done. Because your hatred for my father is stronger than your love for me, and I deserve more than that. I deserve everything.’