A Game of Vows Read Free

it was life.”
    “You’re acting like I hurt you in some way, Hannah, but we both know that isn’t true. I gave you your own room. Your own wing of the penthouse. I never intruded on you, never once took advantage of you. I kept to our agreement and released you from our bargain after six months, and you left. With all the money I promised you,” he said. “You keep forgetting the money I gave you.”
    She clenched her teeth. “Because I didn’t spend it.” She hadn’t been able to. Leaving him, or more to the point, his family and the city that had started to feel like home, had felt too awful. And she’d felt, for the first time, every inch the dishonorable person she was. “If you want your ten thousand dollars, it’s in a bank account. And frankly, it’s pennies as far as I’m concerned at this point.”
    “Oh, yes, you are very successful now, aren’t you?”
    She didn’t feel it at the moment. “Yes. I am.”
    Eduardo advanced toward her. “You are good with finances, investments.”
    “Financial planning, strategies, picking stocks. You name it, I’m good at it.”
    “That’s what I want from you.”
    “What? Financial advice?”
    “Not exactly.” He looked out the window, his expression inscrutable. “My father died two years ago.”
    An image of the hard, formidable, amazing man that Eduardo had been blessed enough to call his father swam before her eyes. Miguel Vega had been demanding. A taskmaster. A leader. He had cared. About his business, about his children. About his oldest son, who wasn’t taking life seriously enough. Cared enough to back him into a corner andforce him to marry. It was a heavy-handed version of caring, but it was more than Hannah had ever gotten from her own father.
    Eventually, that man, his wife, Eduardo’s sister, had come to mean something to her. She’d loved them.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice muted now, a strange kind of grief filling her heart. Not that Miguel would have missed or cared about her. And she didn’t deserve it. She’d lied to him. And as far as he was concerned, she’d left his son.
    “As am I,” Eduardo said. “But he left me in charge of Vega Communications.”
    “And things aren’t going well?”
    “Not exactly.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “No, not exactly.”
    “Do you need me to look at your books? Because I can do that after I marry Zack.”
    He shook his head, his dark eyes blazing. “That can’t happen,
tesoro.
”
    “But it can,” she said, desperation filling her again. It was past bridal-march time. She could just picture the hotel, all decked out in pink ribbon and tulle. Her beautiful pink wedding cake. It was her dream wedding, the dream she’d had since she was a little girl. Not some traditional wedding in a cathedral, conducted entirely in Latin. A wedding that was a show for the groom’s family. A wedding that had nothing to do with her.
    It was a wedding with a groom who didn’t love her, but at least liked her. A groom who didn’t find the idea of taking vows with her to be a joke. He at least wanted her around. Being wanted on a personal level was new for her. She liked the way it felt.
    “Sorry, Hannah. I need you to come back to Spain with me.” He looked out the window. “It’s time I brought my wife back home.”
    “No is the same in both of our languages, so there shouldbe nothing lost in translation when I say no.” Hannah took a step back; her calf connected with the soft edge of the mattress, her dress rustling with the motion.
    “Sorry, but this isn’t a negotiation. Either you come with me now, or I march you down the aisle at the hotel myself, and you can explain, in front of your guests, and your groom, exactly why you can’t marry him today. How you were about to involve him in an illegal marriage.”
    “Not on purpose! I would never have done this to him if I would have known.”
    “Once the extent of your past history is revealed, he may not believe you. Or,