Vows They Can't Escape Read online

  ‘I’ve come all the way from London to get you to sign these newly issued papers, so we can fix this nightmare as fast as is humanly possible. So, no, I’m not kidding.’

  She flicked through the document until she got to the signature page, which she had already signed, frustrated because her fingers wouldn’t stop trembling. She could smell him—that scent that was uniquely his, clean and male, and far too enticing.

  She drew back. Too late. She’d already ingested a lungful, detecting expensive cedarwood soap instead of the supermarket brand he had once used.

  ‘Once you’ve signed here—’ she pointed to the signature line ‘—our problem will be solved and I can guarantee never to darken your door again.’

  She whipped a gold pen out of the briefcase, stabbed the button at the top and thrust it towards him like a dagger.

  He lifted his hands out of his pockets but didn’t pick up the gauntlet.

  ‘Like I’d be dumb enough to sign anything you put in front of me without checking it first...’

  She ruthlessly controlled the snap of temper at his statement. And the wave of panic.

  Stay calm. Be persuasive. Don’t freak out.

  She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, employing the technique she’d perfected during the last five years of handling Carmichael’s board. As long as Dane never found out about the original terms of her father’s will, nothing in the paperwork she’d handed him would clue him in to the real reason she’d come all this way. And why would he, when her father’s will hadn’t come into force until five years after Dane had abandoned her?

  Unfortunately the memory of that day in her father’s office, with her stomach cramping in shock and loss and disbelief as the executor recited the terms of the will, was not helping with her anxiety attack.

  ‘Your father had hoped you would marry one of the candidates he suggested. His first preference was to leave forty-five per cent of Carmichael’s stock to you and the controlling share to your spouse as the new CEO. As no such marriage was contracted at the time of his death, he has put the controlling share in trust, to be administered by the board until you complete a five-year probationary period as Carmichael’s executive owner. If, after that period, they deem you a credible CEO, they can vote to allocate a further six per cent of the shares to you. If not, they can elect another CEO and leave the shares in trust.’

  That deadline had passed a week ago. The board—no doubt against all her father’s expectations—had voted in her favour. And then Bill had discovered his bombshell—that she had still technically been married to Dane at the time of her father’s death and he could, therefore, sue for the controlling share in the company.

  It might almost have been funny—that her father’s lack of trust in her abilities might end up gifting 55 per cent of his company to a man he had despised—if it hadn’t been more evidence that her father had never trusted her with Carmichael’s.

  She pushed the dispiriting thought to one side, and the echo of grief that came with it, as Dane punched a number into his smartphone.

  Her father might have been old-fashioned and hopelessly traditional—an aristocratic Englishman who believed that no man who hadn’t gone to Eton and Oxford could ever be a suitable husband for her—but he had loved her and had wanted the best for her. Once she got Dane to sign on the dotted line, thus eliminating any possible threat this paperwork error could present to her father’s company—her company—she would finally have proved her commitment to Carmichael’s was absolute.

  ‘Jack? I’ve got something I want you to check out.’ Dane beckoned to someone behind Xanthe as he spoke into the phone. The superefficient PA popped back into the office as if by magic. ‘Mel is gonna send it over by messenger.’

  He handed the document to his PA, then scribbled something on a pad and passed that to her, too. The PA trotted out.

  ‘Make sure you check every line,’ he continued, still talking to whomever was on the other end of the phone. He gave a strained chuckle. ‘Not exactly—it’s supposed to be divorce papers.’

  The judgmental once-over he gave Xanthe had her temper rising up her torso.

  ‘I’ll explain the why and the how another time,’ he said. ‘Just make sure there are no surprises—like a hidden claim for ten years’ back-alimony.’

  He clicked off the phone and shoved it into his pocket.

  She was actually speechless. For about two seconds.

  ‘Are you finished?’ Indignation burned, the breathing technique history.

  She’d come all this way, spent several sleepless nights preparing for this meeting while being constantly tormented by painful memories from that summer, not to mention having to deal with his scent and the inappropriate heat that would not die. And through it all she’d remained determined to keep this process dignified, despite the appalling way he had treated her. And he’d shot it all to hell in less than five minutes.

  The arrogant ass.

  ‘Don’t play the innocent with me,’ he continued, the self-righteous glare returning. ‘Because I know just what you’re capable—’

  ‘You son of a...’ She gasped for breath, outrage consuming her. ‘I’m not allowed to play the innocent? When you took my virginity, carried on seducing me all summer, got me pregnant, insisted I marry you and then dumped me three months later?’

  He’d never told her he loved her—never even tried to see her point of view during their one and only argument. But, worse than that, he hadn’t been there when she had needed him the most. Her stomach churned, the in-flight meal she’d picked at on the plane threatening to gag her as misery warred with fury, bringing the memories flooding back—memories which were too painful to forget even though she’d tried.

  The pungent smell of mould and cheap disinfectant in the motel bathroom, the hazy sight of the cracked linoleum through the blur of tears, the pain hacking her in two as she prayed for him to pick up his phone.

  Dane’s face went completely blank, before a red stain of fury lanced across the tanned cheekbones. ‘I dumped you? Are you nuts?’ he yelled at top volume.

  ‘You walked out and left me in that motel room and you didn’t answer my calls.’ She matched him decibel for decibel. She wasn’t that besotted girl any more, too timid and delusional to stand up and fight her corner. ‘What else would you call it?’

  ‘I was two hundred miles out at sea, crewing on a bluefin tuna boat—that’s what I’d call it. I didn’t get your calls because there isn’t a heck of a lot of network coverage in the middle of the North Atlantic. And when I got back a week later I found out you’d hightailed it back to daddy because of one damn disagreement.’

  The revelation of where he’d been while she’d been losing their baby gave her pause—but only for a moment. He could have rung her to tell her about the job before he’d boarded the boat, but in his typical don’t-ask-don’t-tell fashion he hadn’t. And what about the frantic message she’d left him while she’d waited for her father to arrive and take her to the emergency room? And later, when she’d come round from the fever dreams back in her bedroom on her father’s estate?

  She’d asked the staff to contact Dane, to tell him about the baby, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces, but he’d never even responded to the news. Except to send through the signed divorce papers weeks later.

  She could have forgiven him for not caring about her. Their marriage had been the definition of a shotgun wedding, the midnight elopement a crazy adventure hyped up on teenage hormones, testosterone-fuelled bravado and the mad panic caused by an unplanned pregnancy. But it was his failure to care about the three-month-old life which had died inside her, his failure to even be willing to mourn its passing, that she couldn’t forgive.

  It had tortured her for months. How many lies he’d told about being there for her, respecting her decision to have the baby. How he’d even gone through with their farce of a marriage, while all the time planning to dump her at the first opportunity.r />
  It had made no sense to her for so long—until she’d finally figured it out. Why he’d always deflected conversations about the future, about the baby. Why he’d never once returned her declarations of love even while stoking the sexual heat between them to fever pitch. Why he’d stormed out that morning after her innocent suggestion that she look for a job, too, because she knew he was struggling to pay their motel bill.

  He’d gotten bored with the marriage, with the responsibility. And sex had been the only thing binding them together. He’d never wanted her or the baby. His offer of marriage had been a knee-jerk reaction he’d soon regretted. And once she’d lost the baby he’d had the perfect excuse he’d been looking for to discard her.

  That truth had devastated her at the time. Brought her to her knees. How could she have been so wrong about him? About them? But it had been a turning point, too. Because she’d survived the loss, repaired her shattered heart, and made herself into the woman she was now—someone who didn’t rely on others to make herself whole.

  Thanks to Dane’s carelessness, his neglect, she’d shut off her stupid, fragile, easily duped heart and found a new purpose—devoting herself to the company that was her legacy. She’d begged her father for a lowly internship position that autumn, when they’d returned to London, and begun working her backside off to learn everything she needed to know about Europe’s top maritime logistics brand.

  At first it had been a distraction, a means of avoiding the great big empty space inside her. But eventually she’d stopped simply going through the motions and actually found something to care about again. She’d aced her MBA, learnt French and Spanish while working in Carmichael’s subsidiary offices in Calais and Cadiz, and even managed to persuade her father to give her a job at the company’s head office in Whitehall before he’d died—all the while fending off his attempts to find her a ‘suitable’ husband.

  She’d earned the position she had now through hard work and dedication and toughened up enough to take charge of her life. So there was no way on earth she was going to back down from this fight and let Dane Redmond lay some ludicrous guilt trip on her when he was the one who had crushed her and every one of her hopes and dreams. Maybe they had been foolish hopes and stupid pipe dreams, but the callous way he’d done it had been unnecessarily cruel.

  ‘You promised to be there for me,’ she shot back, her fury going some way to mask the hollow pain in her stomach. The same pain she’d sworn never to feel again. ‘You swore you would protect me and support me. But when I needed you the most you weren’t there.’

  ‘What the hell did you need me there for?’ he spat the words out, the brittle light in the icy blue eyes shocking her into silence.

  The fight slammed out of her lungs on a gasp of breath.

  Because in that moment all she could see was his rage.

  The hollow pain became sharp and jagged, tearing through the last of her resistance until all that was left was the horrifying uncertainty that had crippled her as a teenager.

  Why was he so angry with her? When all she’d ever done was try to love him?

  ‘I wanted you to be there for me when I lost our baby,’ she whispered, her voice sounding as if it were coming from another dimension.

  ‘You wanted me to hold your hand while you aborted my kid?’

  ‘What?’ His sarcasm, the sneered disbelief sliced through her, and the jagged pain exploded into something huge.

  ‘You think I don’t know you got rid of it?’

  The accusation in his voice, the contempt, suddenly made a terrible kind of sense.

  ‘But I—’ She tried to squeeze the words past the asteroid in her throat.

  He cut her off. ‘I hitched a ride straight to the Vineyard once I got back on shore. We’d had that fight and you’d left some garbled message on my cell. When I got to your old man’s place he told me there was no baby any more, showed me the divorce papers you’d signed and then had me kicked out. And that’s when I figured out the truth. Daddy’s little princess had decided that my kid was an inconvenience she didn’t need.’

  She didn’t see hatred any more, just a seething resentment, but she couldn’t process any of it. His words buzzed round in her brain like mutant bees which refused to land. Had she signed the divorce papers first? She couldn’t remember doing that. All she could remember was begging to see Dane, and her father showing her Dane’s signature on the documents. And how the sight of his name scrawled in black ink had killed the last tiny remnant of hope still lurking inside her.

  ‘I know the pregnancy was a mistake. Hell, the whole damn marriage was insane,’ Dane continued, his tone caustic with disgust. ‘And if you’d told me that’s what you’d decided to do I would have tried to understand. But you didn’t have the guts to own it, did you? You didn’t even have the guts to tell me that’s what you’d done? So don’t turn up here and pretend you were some innocent kid, seduced by the big bad wolf. Because we both know that’s garbage. There was only one innocent party in the whole screwed-up mess of our marriage and it wasn’t either one of us.’

  She could barely hear him, those mutant killer bees had become a swarm. Her legs began to shake, and the jagged pain in her stomach joined the thudding cacophony in her skull. She locked her knees, wrapped her arms around her midriff and swallowed convulsively, trying to prevent the silent screams from vomiting out of her mouth.

  How could you not know how much our baby meant to me?

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Dane demanded, the contempt turning to reluctant concern.

  She tried to force her shattered thoughts into some semblance of order. But the machete embedded in her head was about to split her skull in two. And she couldn’t form the words.

  ‘Damn it, Red, you look as if you’re about to pass out.’

  Firm hands clamped on her upper arms and became the only thing keeping her upright as her knees buckled.

  The old nickname and the shock of his touch had a blast of memory assaulting her senses—hurtling her back in time to those stolen days on the water in Buzzards Bay: the hot sea air, the shrieks of the cormorants, the scent of salt mixed with the funky aroma of sweat and sex, the devastating joy as his calloused fingers brought her body to vibrant life.

  I didn’t have an abortion.

  She tried to force the denial free from the stranglehold in her throat, but nothing came out.

  I had a miscarriage.

  She heard him curse, felt firm fingers digging into her biceps as the cacophony in her head became deafening. And she stepped over the edge to let herself fall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHAT THE—?

  Dane leapt forward as Xanthe’s eyes rolled back, scooping her dead weight into his arms before she could crash to earth.

  ‘Is Ms Sanders sick?’ Mel appeared, her face blank with shock.

  ‘Her name’s Carmichael.’

  Or, technically speaking, Redmond.

  He barged past his PA, cradling Xanthe against his chest. ‘Call Dr Epstein and tell him to meet me in the penthouse.’

  ‘What—what shall I say happened?’ Mel stammered, nowhere near as steady as usual.

  He knew how she felt. His palms were sweating, his pulse racing fast enough to win the Kentucky Derby.

  Xanthe let out a low moan. He tightened his grip, something hot and fluid hitting him as his fingertips brushed her breast.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he replied. ‘Just tell Epstein to get up there.’

  He threw the words over his shoulder as he strode through the office, past his sponsorship and marketing team, every one of whom was staring at him as if he’d just told them the company had declared bankruptcy.

  Had they heard him shouting at Red like a madman? Letting the fury he’d buried years ago spew out of his mouth?

  Where had that come from?

  He’d lost it—and he never lost it. Not since the day on her father’s estate when he’d gone berserk, determined to see Xanthe no matter what her
father said.

  Of course he hadn’t told her that part of the story. The part where he’d made an ass of himself.

  The pulse already pounding in his temple began to throb like a wound. He’d been dog-tired and frantic with worry when he’d arrived at Carmichael’s vacation home, his pride in tatters, his gut clenching at the thought Xanthe had run out on him.

  All that had made him easy prey for the man who hadn’t considered him fit to kiss the hem of his precious daughter’s bathrobe, let alone marry her. He could still see Charles Carmichael’s smug expression, hear that superior I’m-better-than-you tone as the guy told him their baby was gone and that his daughter had made the sensible decision to cut all ties with the piece of trailer trash she should never have married.

  The injustice of it all, the sense of loss, the futile anger had opened up a great big black hole inside him that had been waiting to drag him under ever since he was a little boy. So he’d exploded with rage—and got his butt thoroughly kicked by Carmichael’s goons for his trouble.

  Obviously some of that rage was still lurking in his subconscious. Or he wouldn’t have freaked out again. Over something that meant nothing now.

  He’d been captivated by Xanthe that summer. By her cute accent, the sexy, subtle curves rocking the bikini-shorts-and-T-shirt combos she’d lived in, her quick, curious mind and most of all the artless flirting that had grown hotter and hotter until they’d made short work of those bikini shorts.

  The obvious crush she’d had on him had flattered him, had made him feel like somebody when everyone else treated him like a nobody. But their connection had never been about anything other than hot sex—souped up to fever pitch by teenage lust. He knew he’d been nuts to think it could ever be more, especially once she’d run back to Daddy when she’d discovered what it was really like to live on a waterman’s pay.

  Xanthe stirred, her fragrant hair brushing his chin.

  ‘Settle down. I’ve got you.’ A wave of protectiveness washed over him. He didn’t plan to examine it too closely. She’d been his responsibility once. She wasn’t his responsibility any more. Whatever the paperwork said.