The Replacement Wife (10 page)

“A pity Theo couldn’t have improved your manners,” Helen said. Her smile was razor sharp, and utterly fake. “Although perhaps this is as much as someone like you was capable of improving.”

Becca felt frozen and furious all at once—a terrible combination. She forced herself to move with all of Larissa’s boneless nonchalance toward the only piece of furniture that did not look as if it would like to judge its occupant—a splendid couch, all bright reds and whites. She sank into it, and schooled her features into blandness when she met Helen’s gaze once more.

“It can be so difficult to train up the peasants,” she said, pretending to commiserate, her voice heavy with irony. “They find it so hard to project the kind of snobbery that comes so naturally to their betters.”

“Whatever her faults,” Helen said then, raising her brows, and looking as if it was a heroic act to ignore Becca’s last words, “Larissa was at least capable of conducting herself like a Whitney when it mattered.”

Becca shook her head. “I know this must wound you as deeply as it does me,” she said, almost as if she pitied this woman. “But I am, in fact, a Whitney. That you turned your back on your only sister, the better to hoard your treasures in this morgue you call a house, only makes you sad. It doesn’t make me any less your niece.”

She expected Helen to gasp, clutch at her ubiquitous
pearls, perhaps even swoon. But the other woman was no longer the fluttering, gasping creature Becca recalled from their first meeting in this house. Helen surprised her. She actually smiled slightly, with a hint of something like nostalgia, which made her whole face change. Unexpectedly, it made her look … more like Becca’s mother than Becca would have thought possible. She had to swallow hard against the rush of emotion that threatened to swamp her.

“You look nothing like your mother,” Helen said after a long, strange little moment, maybe two. “She took after our father’s side, like the rest of us. But you sound just like her.” She blinked. “It’s extraordinary.”

This time, the quiet that took over was less tense, if no less fraught with the weight of the past. Becca dropped her gaze to her wine, peering at the golden liquid as if it could solve all of her problems, banish all her ghosts. This was, she thought, perhaps as close as she was likely to come to the happy family reunion she’d imagined so feverishly—and secretly—when she was a girl. There would be no clutching of the lost child to her aunt’s breast, clearly—but it was something. Something more than had been there before.

It shouldn’t have comforted her. It shouldn’t have felt like balm to an old wound.

“You truly do look remarkably like Larissa,” Helen said after a moment. She shifted in her chair. “Theo did a wonderful job, as he always does.”

“He’s a talented man,” Becca said dryly, and then regretted it when her aunt’s gaze caught hers. There was a certain recognition there—a certain knowledge—that set off alarms all over her body.

“Theo is the most driven, most ruthless man I know,”

Helen said. Purposefully. Deliberately. “He allows nothing to distract him from his goal. Nothing.”

Becca felt horribly exposed—as caught out as she’d been in the glare of all those paparazzi flashbulbs. How could Helen know what had transpired between them? Was it imprinted on her face somehow? But she knew it couldn’t be. She had worked too hard over the past weeks to make sure her face showed only what she wanted it to. In this case, the ghost of a girl who never got upset about anything, not where anyone could see.

“That sounds like an excellent quality to have in the family company’s CEO,” Becca said briskly. “Congratulations.”

“Nor is he the kind of man to settle for substitutions,” her aunt continued, in that same arch, superficially polite tone with the bite beneath. Any tenderness that might have connected them, however briefly, was gone as surely as if Becca had imagined it. Perhaps she had. “You’ve seen how he lives. Theo demands, and receives, the very best. Nothing else will do.”

Becca couldn’t help the little laugh that came out of her then. Was it amazement? Or just a kind of horror that this woman was articulating all the fears she had refused to put into words herself?

“I’m sorry,” she said. She made herself look Helen in the eye, made herself sit there calmly, her face blank. “Are you warning me about something? Is that what this is?”

“You’re out of your depth,” Helen said in a voice that was arguably meant to be kind, but sounded like nothing more than the worst kind of condescension to Becca’s ears. Helen shrugged delicately. “That’s not a judgment, merely a statement of fact. It would be easy to misunderstand things, I’d think. Easy to misinterpret.”
She took a sip of her wine, her narrowed gaze much too shrewd. “Far too easy to forget oneself.”

Becca could have pretended she didn’t understand. But even if Helen didn’t know the particulars, it was the casual assumptions that made Becca’s blood heat, her temper rise. Because
of course
the poor relative, caught up in these high-stakes games, so wide-eyed and naive, would fall for a man like Theo and fail to see that he was using her as a substitute.
Of course
Helen thought she was that stupid. Helen thought anyone who did not come from her world was that stupid, by definition.

The fact that she was right was not something Becca intended to confront. Not now. Not while Helen looked on.

“You’re operating under the assumption that I want what you have,” Becca bit out. “What Larissa had. I don’t.” She laughed again, though it was slightly more wild this time, slightly more bitter. “I want nothing to do with this fake, glittering, poisonous little world of yours, I assure you.”

“If you say so,” Helen said, gliding to her feet, poised and cool. Her gaze was pitying. “But that does not change the facts of things, does it?”

I
T WAS TIME.

Theo sat at the long, formal dining room table and found himself brooding as he watched his perfect creation, his Becca, shine. She embodied Larissa, just as he’d taught her to do. He thought she was more than Larissa—she had more life in her, more sparkle, than her cousin had ever had. But no one would see her and think anything was amiss; they were far more likely, he reflected, to assume that rehabilitation had finally worked its magic on poor, lost Larissa.

Which meant that he had succeeded. He should have been jubilant. This mad plan that should never have worked seemed set to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. He had created his own little ghost, and now it was time to let her do what she’d been made to do. Haunt. Confuse. And win him back the shares that had been meant to be his in the first place.

It was too bad that he felt as if he was the one already haunted.

“I hope you read your contract carefully,” Bradford was saying to Becca, his attention on his elegant plate and the perfect duck that graced it. Other than a sweeping head-to-toe glance when she’d walked into the room, Theo didn’t think Bradford had looked at her directly.

“No, I prefer to sign intimidating-looking documents without so much as glancing at them,” Becca said mildly, lounging against the back of her chair, her narrowed gaze on Bradford. Her duck lay before her, untouched. “I find it’s so much more fun to be disappointed and taken by surprise down the road.”

Theo should not have found her as entertaining as he did.

Bradford sniffed. “You’re making a good show in the tabloids,” he said, in quelling tones. “But your flippant attitude hardly does you credit.”

“Funny,” Becca said with apparent unconcern, though Theo saw the tension she fought to hide, “but I
did
read the contract. I especially read all the parts that outlined what I had to do, and what I would receive in return for that.” Her brows rose in that challenging way that sent heat spiraling through Theo, even here, even now. “But at no point did it mention that I had to impress
you
with my attitude.”

Bradford very carefully placed his silverware against his plate, and meticulously touched his linen napkin to his lips. The room fell hushed—the only sound was Helen, drinking deep from her wineglass. Becca, of course, his Quixote, only gazed at Bradford expectantly. Finally, Bradford leveled his cold glare across the table at his niece, who must have seemed to him like his own daughter, brought back from the brink.

Or did Theo ascribe to the man qualities and feelings he did not possess? Theo studied his face, but was not surprised to see no hint at all of anything resembling emotion. Bradford was cold and calculating. He had been that way as long as Theo had known him—interested only in expanding his profit margin, his power base, his investment portfolio. He had hardly paid his
wife attention when she had still lived with him, and he had never so much as mentioned her name since she’d taken herself off to France. He had never, as far as Theo knew, given his daughter, his only child, the slightest hint of anything approaching fatherly affection. Theo doubted he was capable of such a thing.

And if
he
was any kind of man, Theo knew, he would stop this scene before it played out. Because he did not have to be a mind reader to know that Bradford would be cruel to Becca. He knew it was inevitable. But he also knew that any sign of protection on his part would only make Bradford worse. And the manipulative part of him—which was, perhaps, a far larger part of him than he was comfortable admitting these days—knew that in order to truly act like Larissa, Becca really ought to live through one of the defining experiences of Larissa’s life: dealing with her father.

He also knew that Becca was stronger than Larissa had ever been. Tougher. More fierce. Half Quixote, half warrior. She could handle herself.

So he said nothing at all. And hated himself all the more.

“Blood will tell,” Bradford said. His lip curled as he looked at Becca. “And there can be no doubt that yours is certainly a stain upon the Whitney name.”

Theo wanted to wring his neck. But instead, he did nothing. This was her battle, however little she might have wished to fight it. He merely sat and watched.

“My blood
is
Whitney blood,” Becca replied, with that underlying sting in her voice. She smiled. “Or do you lack a basic understanding of genetics?”

“You are the bastard child of my sister, the whore,” Bradford said, in his calm, polite, vicious way.

Theo saw Becca stiffen, saw the faint color that
appeared on her cheeks, but she made no other outward sign that those nasty words had hurt her. Just as he knew he gave no hint that he wanted to put his fist through Bradford’s pompous face for speaking to her that way. What a great hero he was, he taunted himself with a wealth of derision. What a man he’d become. And was he any different from Bradford, in the end? Did they not want the same things? It made him sick to consider it in those terms.

“And I want to make sure that you don’t have any ideas above your station.” Bradford’s voice droned on, patronizing and dismissive all at once. “The contracts are ironclad. You will receive your money, and then you will disappear. You will never return. You will never ask for more. You cannot approach the media to sell your story years down the line, when you are desperate yet again.” He looked almost kindly as he looked at her. Almost the way an uncle should. “You will sink back into the hole you crawled out of, and stay there.”

Helen eyed Theo across the table, her gaze uncomfortably shrewd.

“Surely you don’t plan to sit idly by while Bradford eviscerates your … protégé,” she said in her insinuating way, the perfect arches of her plucked brows high on her elegant forehead.

Theo didn’t much care for the way she looked at him then, nor for the malicious gleam in her eyes.

“Becca can take care of herself,” he murmured, as if bored, and did not permit himself to look at Becca directly, no matter how much he wanted to.

And Becca, being Becca, did not cower. She did not cry, as Larissa might have, nor scream out her frustrations. Just as he knew she would not. Instead, she reached out and tapped a finger against the stem of her
wineglass, looking as unruffled as if she’d just had a spa treatment. Theo had seen hardened businessmen quail before Bradford’s brand of cruelty, before his deliberate and pointed disinterest, but not this woman.

Not his Becca.

“Am I missing something?” she asked after a moment. Her voice was calm. Relaxed, even. Quite as if she was, too—though Theo knew her now, and knew better. “Is there some reason that you think I would
want
to come rushing back to this horrible place? To you?” She laughed slightly. “To the bosom of my family, such as it is? You’ll understand, I think, that I would rather be fed alive to a pit of snakes.”

“That is easy to say now, and harder to remember when your filthy, depressing little life becomes too much to bear,” Bradford replied, his voice smooth. And so certain that he knew how Becca would behave once she left here—so certain that she would come back, hands outstretched. Theo rather thought she would sooner cut them off than give Bradford the satisfaction.

“You speak from what position of authority, exactly?” Becca asked. “Your fevered fantasies about what the lives of those you look down on must be like? Because it certainly can’t be experience.”

How had he lived so long without her? Theo wondered. And how on earth could he do so again, knowing, now, that she existed?

“The Whitney name has always attracted a bad element,” Bradford replied. He indicated Becca with a flick of a finger. “Your father, for example.”

Becca did not so much as flinch. Theo winced for her, while she only smirked at Bradford and looked something akin to amused.

“Whereas you, my dear uncle, are such a model for
us all,” Becca said, strong until the end, though Theo could hear her temper in her voice, the way it made it that much huskier, that much lower.

She cut her eyes to him then, skewering him with that brilliant, unexpected green, nearly emerald with the contact lenses. He preferred the hazel. The hint of forests. Their gazes clashed across the table, igniting memories, catching fire, hers demanding. Condemning, he thought. Because he was not helping her. He was not defending her. He was simply sitting there, watching, doing nothing at all, while Bradford savaged her.

This was who he was. This shadow of a man. Worthy of nothing and no one, no matter how much wealth he accumulated and power he attained.

Yet even thinking that, knowing it, Theo remained silent. He raised his brows at her, encouraging her to carry on, because he knew she could. She was more than capable. She did not even need him.
Fight,
he thought.
Win.
Her eyes darkened as she read his expression, and her mouth flattened into a hard line. But he knew she’d understood him when she swallowed, nodded slightly and turned away “You,” Bradford said quietly, in that deadly way of his that meant he would raze anything in his path, “would have been better off never born at all. You ruined my sister’s life.”

Helen gasped from her place down the table. Becca stared at him for a moment, only the faintest whitening of her cheeks any sign that she’d heard Bradford at all, that she’d absorbed that deliberate body blow. Theo saw the pain in her gaze, the betrayal, and a certain flash of resignation that hurt him most of all.

His hands became fists beneath the table.

But this was still her battle.

“You understand this is not my opinion,” Bradford said, almost softly. “It is a fact.”

Becca pushed back from the table and stood, tossing her napkin onto the glossy surface, every inch of her a study in elegance. Theo understood in that moment that she was not only the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, but the most precious to him. And, further, that he would lose her. That perhaps he already had.

“I always thought my mother was exaggerating,” Becca said after a moment, her voice somehow even, her gaze steady on Bradford as if his cold glare did not bother her at all. “But, in fact, you are even more disgusting than she was willing to admit. I used to look at pictures of Larissa in magazines and wonder how anyone who had so much handed to her could do so little with it—could, in fact, fail so spectacularly.” Her lips pursed. “But now I can only wonder how she made it as long as she did. She really never did have a chance, did she?”

“You know nothing about my daughter,” Bradford said dismissively. “How could you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Becca replied, “I imagine I know more about your daughter than anyone in this room. And one thing is absolutely certain—she deserved more than you. Much more.”

She turned and started toward the door, and Theo could not decide if he should applaud her strength or mourn the necessity of her having to display it here, against such cruelty.

“This temper tantrum doesn’t matter,” Bradford called after her. “You still have to complete your assignment here, or the contract is void.”

“Why do you care so much?” Becca asked, looking back over her shoulder, her eyes dark. “You think
so little of Larissa—that much is clear.” And her gaze lasered through the room, condemning them all anew. Perhaps even Theo. “So why does she have so much power?”

“Power!” Bradford laughed. “She has about as much power as you do.”

“And yet you are willing to go to these lengths to fix what you think she broke,” Becca said derisively. Incisively, Theo thought. “Maybe this was the only way she knew to hit you where it might actually hurt. If she could wake up, I’d congratulate her—she clearly succeeded.”

Her mouth twisted, and her gaze swept over all of them: Bradford with his shark’s glare directed straight back at her, Helen sitting so straight and silent, and Theo. Who felt things he could not allow himself to feel and still had not protected her from this. Or even from himself.

“Becca,” he said, and though her eyes were Larissa-green, he saw her there, her pride and her determination, her scrappy strength, looking back at him. He would know her anywhere, he thought, no matter who she looked like. And she knew him, too. He could see the recognition, no matter how battered, fill her face for the scant instant before she hid it. When she looked back at her relatives, she had hidden herself away again. She was unassailable. Impermeable. Perfectly Becca.

“I’m tempted to walk right out of here and let her win,” Becca said softly. Her chin lifted, and she very nearly smiled. “I still might.”

And Theo found it was difficult to do anything but admire her, yearn for her and wonder once more how he could survive losing her, as she pivoted back around and walked from the room.

Becca was so upset that she could hardly see—something that she only noticed when her breath began to slow again and she realized that rather than walk toward the grand front entrance as she’d intended, she’d managed to completely lose herself in the great mansion.

She came to a stop, pressing her palm into her chest as if that could stop the way her heart pounded, and forced herself to take deep breaths. She looked around, taking in the elegant grandfather clock before her, and a collection of intricately painted blue-and-white vases on a series of narrow tables. She’d never been in this particular hallway before. That in itself was hardly surprising. This place was so big she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover whole other cities shut away inside of it. Whole other lives. None of them hers.

The riot of confusion and betrayal inside of her threatened to take her out at the knees again, and she had to close her eyes for a moment.

The person she was really angry at, she acknowledged, was herself.

What had she expected? She had told herself that she wanted one thing and one thing only: money to help Emily. And she had believed that, too. Theo had been an unforeseen complication, but she’d honestly imagined that she could handle that, handle him. She’d believed that no matter what might have happened, she was still focused on her goal.