LITMIR.BIZ

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matter how much you wish otherwise?” He glanced at her, eyes so icy she could see nothing except her own reflection.

      “Yes. No matter how much I wish otherwise,” she admitted, in spite of her humiliation. “He never loved me, not like he loves Kayla.”

      “Doesn’t much seem like it. The boy’s running around with anything in possession of a pair of breasts.”

      The blunt words brought heat to her cheeks. “He’s hardly a boy. He’s the same age as me.” And twenty-six was plenty old enough to grow up and grow up hard.

      “He’s acting like a child right now.” Gabe ignored her statement. At thirty-five, he was nine years older and the gap was never more apparent than at times such as this.

      “How did it happen?” she asked, white noise crashing through her mind. “And why didn’t you tell me before?”

      He gave her an odd look. “Didn’t Damon?”

      “What?” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “No, we haven’t talked since I left.”

      “Never?”

      “No,” she lied, trying not to think of that single phone call Damon had made from a bar four months ago. He’d been drunk, but he’d said things no married man should have said…things she shouldn’t have listened to. “Is it looking bad?”

      “Rumor is they’re heading for divorce.”

      “Poor Kayla.”

      “Hypocrisy, Jess? I didn’t expect that from you.”

      Her cheeks blazed anew. “No matter what you think, I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on any woman. Unless…did she ask for the separation?”

      “Not from the way she’s looking.”

      “I can’t believe Damon would walk out on his marriage.”

      “Maybe he finally realized what he’d given up.” There was no mistaking the challenge in Gabe’s voice. “What are you going to do?”

      “Do?” She was still reeling from the implications of his first sentence.

      “We’re getting married tomorrow and I plan on us staying that way. So if you’re intending on chasing off after Damon, you sure as hell better tell me now.”

      Jess took a shuddering breath and let it out again. “How am I supposed to make any kind of decision right this second?”

      “The same way you decided to marry me and use my money to go to L.A.”

      “Don’t you throw that in my face! You agreed to me leaving the area for a year.”

      Tanned skin pulled tight over the ruthless angle of his jaw. “Answer the damn question. Do you want to get married or not?”

      In truth, she didn’t really have a choice. If she backed out, she’d lose her last fragile grip on the land that had once been Randall Station. “How much to buy back Randall?” Gabe had never particularly wanted it. The only reason he’d stepped in during the foreclosure was because she’d gone to him begging. But that didn’t change the fact that he now owned it. Owned her.

      He snorted. “You didn’t have that kind of money then and you don’t have it now. Neither does Damon.”

      Both undeniable facts. She also owed Gabe for the year in L.A.—a year she’d so desperately needed to grow up. And growing up was exactly what she’d done. She might love Damon, but she’d made a promise to her father on his deathbed and she would keep it. A Randall would always remain on Randall land. “I’ll marry you.”

      “You’ll be signing a pre-nup.”

      She heard the unsaid statement loud and clear. “I won’t be trying to get the land back in a divorce. You bought it free and clear.” And in doing so, he’d saved it from the developers who would have destroyed it completely.

      Paying the price he’d demanded—marriage—hadn’t seemed like such a sacrifice then. Especially since she’d believed that the marriage would ask nothing from her in terms of emotional commitment, allowing her to keep body and soul safe. Protected. It had never crossed her mind that Gabe might not permit her that distance.

      Until he’d kissed her.

      “My lawyer will bring over the papers tomorrow morning.”

      “Fine.” Gabriel’s money itself had never been the thing she was after. It was losing the right to step foot on the very land she’d been entrusted to hold that she couldn’t bear.

      Silence filled the cockpit. Dropping her head against the seat, she tried to think past the painful knot in her throat. Damon was separated. A small, selfish part of her, the part that had loved Damon forever, wanted to tell Gabe to call off the wedding. But she’d stopped lying to herself a long time ago. Even if Damon was acting like a single man again, he’d never once seen her as anything other than his best friend.

      To counter that logic her mind insisted on remembering Damon’s unexpected phone call, the things he’d said. Swallowing, she fought back with the knowledge that he’d been drinking. He hadn’t meant it. Any of it. She couldn’t afford to think otherwise.

      “What’s with the weight loss?” Gabe’s sharp question cut through the air like a knife.

      “It just happened.” A combination of grief, shock and the stress of those first few months in a strange city. “I thought you’d be pleased.” Because his women had always been long-limbed, slender beauties. Even now she was short and not quite skinny.

      “I’m not marrying you for your body.”

      She bit her lower lip. “No.” Despite that devastating kiss, she knew too well that rich, successful and extremely attractive Gabriel Dumont wasn’t marrying her for her body. Nor was he marrying her for her wit or her confirmed knowledge of station life. No, Gabriel was marrying her for one simple, practical reason: unlike every other woman who’d ever crossed his path, she had no romantic illusions about him.

      She didn’t want or expect him to love her, not now, not ever. And that made her imminently suitable to marry a man who had no ability to love, and didn’t want to be bothered with a wife who’d disrupt his life with dreams of romance. “I got a dress in L.A. For the wedding,” she said, in an effort to fill the emptiness between them.

      Gabriel wasn’t buying Jess’s apparent calm. “Not the least bit hesitant?”

      “You gave me a year. I’m ready now.”

      I need to find out who I am before I become Mrs. Dumont for the rest of my life…I never learned to stand up for myself and I know I’ll have that with you. If I don’t, you’ll destroy me without meaning to.

      Her desperate plea the night they’d made the decision to marry slammed into his mind. The sheltered only daughter of late-in-life parents, she’d still been floundering three months after the loss of her single remaining parent—her father. Yet she’d had the courage to say to Gabe’s face what many never would—that he was quite capable of destroying a softer, less powerful personality with the unforgiving pragmatism of his own.

      The woman beside him sounded nothing like the broken girl of twelve months ago…except for that underlying thread of courage. “Good,” he said, not certain he liked that quiet hint of steel. He’d chosen Jess because he’d known she’d ask less than nothing from him. All she cared about was keeping the former Randall Station in her family.

      “You,” she said, stopped, then restarted. “You didn’t find another woman?”

      “I want you to be my wife, Jess. I want you to live on Angel Station, take my name and bear my children.” He made sure she heard the determination in his voice—he’d made his choice and he’d stick with it.

      The fact she felt nothing for him didn’t faze him in the least.

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