The Replacement Wife. CAITLIN CREWS
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met her, long before she’d fallen so far.
“Larissa collapsed outside a nightclub last Friday night,” Theo said coolly, deliberately, watching the way the color changed in Becca’s face, the flush of courage dimming. “She is currently in a coma. There is no hope that she will ever recover.”
Becca’s mouth firmed to a taut line, and Theo could see the way she swallowed, as if her throat was suddenly dry, but she did not look away. He found he could not help but admire that, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I did not mean to be cruel.” She shook her head slightly, looking uncertain for the first time since she’d met his gaze when he’d walked into the parlor. “I don’t understand why I’m here.”
“You happen to look enough like Larissa that you could, with some help, pass for her,” Theo said, matter-of-factly. “That’s why you’re here.”
Because there was no point wallowing in his grief—no need to dwell on the past. There was only the future and what must happen now. He had given Whitney Media everything he had, everything he was. It was time that he became an owner, not simply an employee. Gaining Larissa’s controlling interest would, with one stroke, make him the living embodiment of the American Dream. Rags to riches, just as he’d promised his mother before her death. Perhaps not exactly as he’d planned, but close enough. Even without Larissa.
“Pass for her?” Becca repeated, as if she could not make sense of the words.
“Larissa has a certain number of shares in Whitney Media,” Bradford said from his position on the couch, his voice completely devoid of emotion, as if he was not talking about his only child. Theo felt himself stiffen, and forced himself to let it go. None of that could matter now. “When she and Theo got engaged—”
At this, Becca’s eyes flew to his. Theo merely lifted a brow.
“I thought she was dating that actor,” Becca said stiffly. “The one who dates all the models and heiresses.”
“You should not believe everything you read,” Theo said with a careless shrug, and then wondered why he’d bothered. It was still so new, perhaps. He was still defending Larissa’s honor, when he knew perfectly well that if it was not that actor, it would have been another one. Or both. He still didn’t know what that made him. A fool, certainly. But he’d made that decision a long time ago, hadn’t he? If he wanted what she represented—and he had, he did—then he had to allow her to be who she was. He had to let her do as she pleased. And so he had. The end was more important than the means, he’d always thought.
“Larissa made Theo a gift of a significant amount of her shares,” Bradford was saying. “It would give him a controlling interest in the company. It was meant to be a wedding present.”
“I believe they call that a dowry,” Becca said, her disgust plain in her flashing eyes, the lift of her chin. “How quaint, in this day and age.”
“It was a gift,” Theo replied, his voice more clipped than it should have been. As if this stranger’s opinion mattered. “Not a dowry.” He had never apologized for going after what he wanted, using any means necessary. He would not start now.
“The terms were laid out explicitly in the prenuptial agreement,” Bradford continued. “The shares were to go to Theo upon their wedding day, or in the unfortunate event of her death. But we have reason to believe she altered her will.”
“Why would she alter her will?” Becca asked. She looked from Bradford to Theo and then back again, judgment plain on her face. Because of you, obviously, her expression read.
“My daughter has long been preyed upon by the unsavory,” Bradford said, in the first faux-fatherly tone Theo had heard from him since they’d received the call on Friday night. From anyone else, it might have been believable. “There’s a certain ne’er-do-well who would do anything to get his hands on Larissa’s shares. We think he succeeded.”
“That’s where you come in,” Theo said then, close enough to see the angry flash in Becca’s eyes when she looked at him. Close enough to feel his own shocking, searing reaction to it. Sex, he thought. This was about sex. He simply hadn’t expected it from this woman, under these circumstances. It was the surprise that was throwing him, he told himself. That was all. The odd similarities between her and the man he’d been once upon a time were simply coincidence, nothing more.
“I can’t imagine how,” she said, her voice cold. “What could I possibly have to do with a situation that already seems too complicated?”
“We cannot find a copy of the new version of her will.” Theo watched the muted emotions move over her face, and wished he could read them. Wished he could simply bend her to his will as he did most people. But that would come. “We think her lover has the only existing copy.”
“And you can’t ask him to show it to you, though the poor girl lies in a coma?” Becca sounded incredulous. And condemning, in equal measure. “Is this a soap opera?”
“I want you to pretend to be Larissa,” Theo said, because nothing could be gained by beating around the bush. There was too much at stake. All the long years of single-minded focus, determination. The bitter acceptance that once his usefulness as Larissa’s wrong side of the tracks lover had ended, their relationship had become purely business, cold and complicated. His searing, implacable focus on the end goal no matter what. “I want you to be so good at it that you fool her lover. And I want you to get me that will.”
There was a long, heavy silence, broken only by Helen’s delicate sniffles into her monogrammed handkerchief. Becca stared at him for a long, almost uncomfortable moment, as if her not-quite-green eyes could see into the parts of him he’d thought he’d buried long ago, and then she let out a sound that was a shade too hollow to be a laugh.
“No,” she said, simple and to the point.
Her refusal lay there for a moment, seeming to fill the elegant room, blocking out the late-afternoon light that poured in through the soaring windows.
“That’s it?” Theo asked softly, not sure he could believe what he’d heard. Not sure when someone had last said no to him, for that matter. Even Larissa had always said yes, no matter what she’d then gone on to do. “That’s all you have to say?”
“That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, all I have to say,” Becca threw back at him, her temper flaring in her that suddenly. It lit up her face, made it suddenly unlike Larissa’s—and yet remarkably, shockingly attractive. “But it is all I plan to say. You’re crazy.” She looked back at her aunt and uncle, her lips curling. “You’re all crazy. I’ve never been happier in my life that you people don’t claim me.”
And then she turned, her spine as straight as a queen’s, her head high, and walked through the door without looking back, more elegant in her ratty clothes than some debutantes looked in their opulent ball gowns. Looking just like Larissa at her haughtiest.
Bradford and Helen broke into a loud, angry noise, but Theo barely heard them.
She was magnificent, and, more to the point, she could be Larissa.
He was not about to let her get away.
Becca knew he would be the one to follow her, so she did not have to turn to identify the speaker when she heard the quiet command from behind her.
“Stop,” he said again.
Once more, she found herself obeying him without meaning to do so. She scowled at the marble floor beneath her feet, as if it was the fault of the stone she had an apparent weakness for this man.
“I do not have to follow your orders simply because you issue them,” she said, as if she had not already done so. “There is no agreement between us.”
“Your tender sensibilities do you credit, I’m sure,” Theo said. His voice was too dark, and wove far too many complicated patterns down the back of her neck, through