Paper Marriage Proposition

Fifteen

Fear had a strange beat. It slowed down everything—the time, the way Lisa’s mind processed things. It slowed down everything except her heartbeat. Lisa couldn’t let Thomas drive her to the restaurant, so she asked for the Navigator, saying she wanted to see her mother, hating to have to lie but too frightened not to.
    She made it there in seventeen minutes, but the fear, the gut-wrenching fear, made it seem like years.
    These were seventeen minutes of torture where she imagined the worst—Leo being shipped off somewhere, out of her reach, her touch, forever.
    Whatever you do, don’t fall apart, Lalisa.
    Outside the Italian restaurant, under the shadow of a green tent, Jungkook lit a cigarette, the tip glowing as he watched her shut the car door and come over.
    Heavy clouds gathered above, promising a heavy rain. A family of four exited the restaurant, their cheerful chatter contrasting with the silence with which Jungkook greeted her.
    Lisa waited for him to speak first, keenly aware of his potential for violence. But for endless minutes he merely smoked his cigarette and looked her slowly up and down as though he could see Frederic’s fingertips and brands on her body.
    It struck Lisa how in six years married to him, she’d never experienced an ounce of the happiness, the connection, she’d felt with Frederic in a matter of weeks. How sad that she hadn’t known this before, hadn’t known that things didn’t need to be stale, that things could be better than boring and actually be wonderful.
    “You’ve been talking to Frederic,” Jungkook drawled in a hard, insulting voice, putting out his cigarette with his boot. “He’s been poking around my business—what did you tell him, Lisa?”
    She loathed to discover the fear she’d once had of him was still present, crawling up her spine and ready to immobilize her. It was followed with animosity, and hate, so much hate she began to tremble.
    “Well, he is my husband. And we do talk, Jungkook.” It had been a long, long time since she’d spoken to him so firmly.
    His eyes became slits, as he gave her the most chilling, most frightening smile. “Your little game has gone on long enough. I say it’s time we put a stop to it, don’t you? Your mouth has been flapping open for weeks and Lisa?” He pitched his voice lower. “I don’t like it.”
    Bubbles of hysteria rose to her throat, and she had to swallow before speaking. “The game has only just begun,” she said, fighting to sound confident. “I’ve told him things, Jungkook. But I’ve still got to tell him how you medicated his wife until she couldn’t even think straight!”
    His eyes widened, and he took a threatening step forward. “You wouldn’t dare.”
    “Oh, I dare all right!” She took a step back—and Jungkook another step forward. “He’s on to you, Jungkook. He knows what you are!”
    He manacled her wrist in one hand, his tobacco breath blasting across her face. “One more word out of you and your little husband—”
    “You can’t hurt him!” she spat, anger and frustration sharpening her voice as she squirmed to free herself. She wanted to shrink from his gaze, his lashing words, his beastly touch. “You’ve tried for years and you can’t touch him!”
    His expression contorted into a terrifying sneer. His nails bit into her skin. “Oh, I can hurt him. I’ll tear Frederic apart if you take me to court, Lisa.”
    She laughed cynically. “Right. Like you can destroy a Arnault.”
    Smiling that Lucifer-like smile, he released her. Lisa rubbed her wrist as he lighted another cigarette, took a drag, then flicked it down on the ground, and stepped on it. “You’re a Manoban.” He blew the smoke into her face. “A little nobody. As easily crushed…as this. And Arnault…he’s scrupulous and it will get him killed. That’s no way to win a war, Lisa. You’ll never get Leo. Ever.”
    Her breath grew choppy. Fear and fury whirled and churned in her belly. How could you spend years and years of your life with a rat? How could you bear it?
    And Frederic. What would he do when she told him about this? He’d warned her not to see him, talk to Jungkook, but he didn’t understand this bastard had her child!
    “Why do you want him?” she screamed, gripping her purse tight to her chest to keep from flinging it at him. “You hardly paid attention to him. Why do you want him?”
    “Because you do.” His face was a mask of rage, and his words poison. “Oh, I may have eventually given him back to you, after you learned your lesson of what happens when you leave me. But not after Frederic, oh, no, never after Frederic. Unless…” Jungkook snagged her elbow and immediately the space between them disappeared as he stepped forward. “Unless you divorce him and come back to me.”
    Somewhere in the depths of her panic, she found her courage. She yanked her arm free, and said, “Go to hell.”
    But he moved fast and he seized her by the arm. This time he cut off her circulation. “Look behind you, Lisa. Do you see my blue Lexus parked by the oaks?”
    Woodenly, Lisa turned, his grip spreading a biting pain up her arm. She saw him. Leo. His little face pressed against the glass, tears streaming down his cheeks.
    Panic choked her.
    “Leo!” she cried, and started for him without thought. Jungkook yanked her back by both arms and wheeled her around to face him.
    He pressed his face inhumanly close, so that when he spoke, she could feel his loathsome lips moving against her own pursed ones. “The only way you can see him and touch him and kiss him is if you return to me. If you return to my bed.”
    Lisa didn’t know how she managed, only knew that she had to leave, now, before this became a public spectacle.
    She spat into his face, wrenched free, and ran, her breath soughing out of her chest like a hunted animal’s. She flung herself against the side of the Lexus and tried yanking open the door, but it didn’t budge. “Mommy!” she heard Leo wail from the inside, frightened, and her heart broke when she heard the muffled cry coming over and over like a litany.
    Tears flowed down her cheeks as she fought with the door. She was crying—crying for him, for her, for every mother.
    Helpless to get him out, she put her hand against the window and spread it wide and spoke as loudly as she could. “Leo, I’m going to be with you soon, I promise! I promise! ”
    And then, before she could notice that Leo had also spread his palm open on his side of the window, fitting the shape of his small hand into hers, Jungkook had revved up the engine and sped off with a screech of tires.
    Taking her son, her baby, with him once more.

    Frederic jotted down notes on the legal pad on his desk, then typed the data into his computer. His intercom buzzed, and Donna’s voice burst through the speaker.
    “Mr. Arnault, Detective Harris here to see you.”
    “Show him in.”
    His office doors swung open. Harris was a little man with an unremarkable face and a keen eye—the perfect spy. He sat and pulled out a sheaf of papers, matching Frederic’s brisk manner. “Your wife was out and about today,” he said.
    Frederic’s answering smile was brief, cool, as he lifted another file to skim through. “I know. I was with her this morning.”
    “Well, she seemed to be in a rush to make an appointment this afternoon.”
    Frederic’s movements halted. She’d gone out?
    When the man remained silent, Frederic shot him an impatient look over the top of the report he’d been reading. “And she went where?” Frederic set the report aside, and the little man shifted when he gave him his undivided attention.
    “To meet Jeon Jungkook.”
    Harris dropped the pictures on his desk and Frederic’s chest muscles froze until he couldn’t breathe. He smiled thinly, but inside he experienced something he hadn’t felt before. Not in six years. Not ever. He thought he was going to get sick. “She went to see Jungkook?”
    “Indeed.”
    An instinct to protect her, grab her close to him and never let anyone, much less a rat like Jungkook hurt her, warred with the need to grab her little neck and shake some common freaking sense into her.
    Why? Why, Lalisa, damn it, why?
    He gritted his molars in anger. “You must be mistaken,” he said.
    But Harris rarely was, and signaled at the photographs. “I’m sorry, Mr. Arnault. But the pictures speak for themselves.”
    Frederic glared down at them at first, still stunned by the fact that Lisa had met Jungkook today…
    Today, of all days, when they’d at last been granted a hearing date. What she’d done was both reckless and stupid, and finding out this way only poked at the ghosts of a dark, bleak past Frederic had long ago tucked away.
    Forcing his hand to keep steady, he inspected the pictures on his desk, one by one. This was the second time the man across his desk had brought him this kind of news. The first time, it had enraged him. And now…
    His heart stopped at the sight of her in the photographs—the sight of her betraying him.
    They were touching… Jungkook was touching her… Lisa was letting him. His lips were… My God, they were against hers. What was this? What in the hell was this?
    “Did you witness this yourself?” he demanded.
    “I had some blind spots, sir, as I lingered inside the restaurant. But the times they were together, they were close. As you can see.”
    Frederic saw.
    Outside, life continued. The office noise. The ringing phones. He set the last picture down and bent his head, his voice rough as tree bark. “What time?”
    “This afternoon. 4:30 p.m.”
    He squeezed his eyes shut against the emotions that assailed him. The thought of the bastard touching her, of Lisa standing there while he held her delicate arms, Lisa meekly waiting for the kiss to deepen, made Frederic want to tear open a wall.
    There had been signals, warning bells. Telling him not to trust, not to want her. Frederic had ignored them, every last one of them. Her meeting Jungkook during their engagement party—her resistance to sleeping with Frederic.
    He hadn’t understood why, but he’d forged ahead, first out of revenge perhaps, then out of sheer blind need, pretending he could build something with Lisa, something that lasted, something that through the hate and anger and revenge shone special.
    Could he have imagined whatever had been growing between them? Could he be that blind? That stupid?
    Or had Lisa simply thought to sweet-talk Jungkook into relinquishing custody?
    But Jungkook would use this evidence against her.
    Growling in frustration, Frederic scraped a rough hand down his face, then he and the detective exchanged a glance that spoke volumes. “Did my wife leave with him?” Frederic asked.
    “No. When I exited the restaurant, she was getting into her own car.”
    But not before they’d kissed!
    Rage stiffened his muscles, gripped his throat, made it hard to speak. Lisa’s pretty profile in the photo blurred as his vision went red. Jungkook. Once again, the bastard thought he could take his wife away from him.
    And Lisa had gone to him. Despite Frederic’s warnings, despite how delicate the situation was.
    She’d run to the enemy and cast Frederic into a role he’d sworn never to be cast in ever again: the fool.