Everett Kincaid had done a lot of rotten things in his time, and he’d been clear in his intentions to disinherit Nadia if she went through with the wedding. He’d even refused to attend the small ceremony. But after the accident he’d acted as if that threat had never been voiced. She’d believed it was because in almost losing her he’d realized he loved her.
She should have known better. Her father never backed down or admitted he was wrong. He’d seen Lucas as a mistake and, like all her other mistakes, he’d “fixed” it in his own way. The wrong way. She shouldn’t be hurt or surprised her father had lied to Lucas and sabotaged her marriage. But she was.
What surprised her even more was that Lucas had let him. She’d thought Lucas was the one man strong enough to stand up to her father. “If you’d loved me, you would have come to see me anyway.”
The jaw muscle twitched faster. “I couldn’t.”
“Please. You were the most determined person I’d ever met. I don’t believe you couldn’t find your way to my hospital room. I was in intensive care hooked up to a billion machines. It’s not like I could run and hide.”
He broke eye contact for the first time and presented her with his back. His shoulders looked as rigid as a ship’s girder and definitely wider than when they’d last been together.
He clenched his fists by his side. “I was paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors told me the odds of me walking again were slim to none.”
Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t get her vocal cords to work. Her gaze traveled down his broad back. Lucas had been so virile and active. In fact, it had been his incredible body that had initially attracted her attention the summer he’d worked with the Kincaid Manor landscaping crew.
“You must have been terrified over the possibility of being unable to help support your mother and sisters.”
Lucas turned and she didn’t like the hard, uncompromising look on his face. “Your father said you couldn’t handle being saddled with a cripple.”
He’d ignored her comment, but she let it pass. She’d never met a man who liked to admit fear or weakness. “And you believed him? You didn’t trust that I meant it when I promised ‘for better or worse’?”
“You’d been a pampered princess all your life. Did I think you’d want to live in poverty and play nursemaid to a guy who couldn’t even piss by himself? No.”
She flinched at his crudity and his assessment. Then anger pulsed through her veins. Why did the men in her life always assume she was a useless screwup?
Okay, so maybe she’d made a few silly mistakes, but still…Her father and Lucas had no right to make a decision of this magnitude for her.
“You should have given me the chance to prove myself instead of presuming I’d fail.”
She looked him over, trying and failing to imagine him helpless. From what she could see he was even more muscular and fit than he’d been eleven years ago. And unless she missed her guess—which was unlikely because she knew her designers—his suit was Hermès and the shoes, Prada. Either Lucas wasn’t a struggling landscape worker anymore or he’d come into some serious money. “You’re not paralyzed now.”
“Thanks to a series of surgeries and months of rehab.”
“And you’re here.” She waved a hand to indicate the opulent penthouse level. “Why are you here?”
Did she imagine his hesitation or that he’d shifted his weight on his feet? “I own the building and I live across the hall.”
“You own a fifty-story piece of prime real estate in downtown Dallas?” Definitely serious money.
“Yes.” The pride and confidence in that single word were unmistakable. “Why are you here?”
“This is—was—my father’s place.”
His eyes narrowed to silvery-blue slits. “My attorney sold this apartment to an investment company CEO.”
“No, my father bought the property under a dummy corporation he sometimes uses.” Mitch had done a little digging after the reading of the will to discover that interesting tidbit. The question was, why had her father wanted to keep ownership of this place a secret from everyone including Mitch, his right-hand man?
Lucas snapped to attention and looked annoyed.
Then it hit her. The strength leeched from her legs. She leaned against the entry table. “My father engineered this.”
“Engineered what?”
“This meeting. Dad died. His will requires me to penthouse-sit for a year. He must have known I’d eventually run into you. Why would he do that?” She paced a circle in the foyer, sneaking peeks at Lucas every few steps. What had the attorney said? Something about her father realizing he’d made some mistakes that he’d hoped to right. And look how his meddling had brought both Rand and Mitch love.
Surprise stopped her in her tracks. “Unless he’s trying to get us back together.”
Lucas snorted an unamused sound of disgust. “Not a chance.”
“He must be. Daddy buying the apartment across the hall from yours in a building you own is too big to be a coincidence.”
“Nadia, your father paid me to get out of your life and never contact you again. And he threatened to ruin me and my family if I did. He wouldn’t try to hook us up.”
Her stomach sank like the Titanic and a chill enveloped her like icy water closing over her head. Déjà vu. Buying off people was her father’s favorite way to get rid of someone he found undesirable. He’d done it multiple times to both her and her brothers over the years.
“You took money to dump me?”
Lucas swiped his jaw with his hand. A dull flush covered his face. “He claimed that’s what you wanted.”
“How much?”
“Nadia—”
Her eyes and throat burned. A tremor worked its way outward from the frozen pit of her stomach. “How much did it take to make you forget me, Lucas?”
“I never forgot you. Or our baby.”
“How much?” she repeated through clenched teeth.
His jaw shifted. “He covered the cost of my surgeries and rehab, and he offered tuition for my sisters and me to go to the colleges of our choice.”
“Give me a number. I want to know exactly how much my love was worth to you.”
He expelled a harsh breath. “Roughly, two million.”
She closed her eyes as a fresh wave of pain, disappointment and betrayal deluged her. Her father hadn’t intended this meeting to be a joyful reunion. He’d wanted to make sure she knew that the one man she’d worshipped, the one she’d kept on a pedestal for more than a decade as an icon of perfect love, was no better than the rest of the greedy schmucks who’d leeched off her or taken Everett’s payoffs over the years.
Feeling sick, she wrapped her arms around her middle and turned away. Did no one love her more than money?
She’d thought Lucas had.
Wrong.
She’d believed him to be different from the hangers-on of her social circle who were only interested in what being with a Kincaid could get them.
Wrong again.
The knowledge made her feel small, insignificant and unwanted. And it hurt. God, it hurt. She’d loved Lucas enough to leave everything familiar and dear to her to be his wife.
And he’d betrayed her. He’d sold out.
Her father was right. Lucas had been her biggest mistake. And loving him and losing him had almost destroyed her.
“I wish you’d stayed dead.” She pressed her fingers to the throb in her left temple and frowned at him. “No, I don’t mean that. I just wish I’d never met you again. But let me tell you something, Lucas Stone. Choosing the money over me doesn’t make you special or unique. It just makes you one of many and someone I don’t want to know.”
She had to get rid of him. Her legs shook so badly she barely made it to the front door without collapsing. “Get out.”
“Nadia—”
“Get out. Before I call security.”
“They work for me. They’re not going to throw me out.” He closed the distance between them and stood toe to toe with her, looming over her. “Don’t blame me for your father’s machinations.”
“This has nothing to do with my father who is—was—without question an arrogant, manipulative, interfering ass, and I hope he’s roasting in hell at this moment. This is about you. You betrayed me. You chose money over me and you left me alone to grieve for you and our child. Do you know how close I came—”
She clamped down on the words. No, she would never give him that much power over her.
“You’re a selfish, sadistic prick, Lucas Stone. And I don’t ever want to see you again. Leave.”
He stared at her so long she thought she’d have to make good on her threat and call for help. Although who she’d call if building security wouldn’t help was uncertain. Maybe her brothers. No. She had to learn to deal with her own issues.
Finally Lucas brushed past her, shattering her heart all over again.
Because losing him to death hadn’t hurt nearly as much as knowing he’d willingly left her…
As if she didn’t matter.
Two
L ucas Stone wanted to kill the devious SOB who’d stolen his wife from him. But with Everett Kincaid already dead vengeance was beyond reach.
Or was it?
Kincaid, the bastard, may have been the ax man, but his sons, Rand and Mitch, had been equally convinced that Lucas wasn’t good enough for their baby sister. They’d come to the wedding, but they’d made damned sure Lucas knew they were there to support Nadia and not because they approved of him.
Why give up an eleven-year vendetta when he could still have the satisfaction of proving the Kincaids had been wrong to write him off?
The clunk of the turning dead bolt lock jarred him clear down to his marrow. He stared at the door Nadia had slammed in his face. If anything, Nadia the woman was even more beautiful than the girl she’d been. Her hair was still a thick mass of shiny dark waves and her eyes were the same mesmerizing green, but her youthful softness had melted away to reveal exquisite bone structure. The kind of beauty that would never fade. Or so his mother had claimed after meeting her. His family had adored her—right up until she’d allegedly dumped him.
He didn’t doubt Nadia’s story. The shock and pain in her eyes had been too genuine. And it wasn’t as if Kincaid hadn’t tried to get rid of Lucas more than once before the wedding. Each time Lucas had been strong enough to resist.
But not that last time. Then he’d been weak. And he’d been afraid he’d become a burden to his already overtaxed mother, and he’d been pissed—seriously pissed—at Nadia and hurt by her apparent betrayal. He’d wanted to strike back in any way he could, and taking Kincaid’s money had seemed like the only way available.
What Lucas didn’t believe was Nadia’s fairy-tale garbage about Kincaid’s altruistic motives. If her father had arranged this meeting, it was to rub Lucas’s face in what he’d lost not to reunite them.