The Holiday Escapes Collection. Sandra Marton

couldn’t look up, her eyes still set on her phone. She curled her fingers more tightly around the heavy fabric of her wedding gown, as she took a breath and raised her gaze, locking with the dark, intense eyes in the rearview mirror.

      She knew those eyes, too. No one had eyes like him. They seemed to cut through you, possessing the ability to read your innermost secrets. Able to mock and flirt in a single glance. She still saw those eyes in her dreams. And sometimes her nightmares.

      Eduardo Vega. One of the many skeletons in her closet. Except, he wasn’t staying put.

      “And I’m going to get married,” she said tightly. She didn’t get intimidated. She did the intimidating. Back in NY she’d had more guts than any man on the trading room floor. She’d had Wall Street by the balls. And now, she was a force to be reckoned with in the world of finance. She didn’t do fear.

      “Oh, I don’t think so, Hannah. Not today. Unless you’re interested in getting arrested for bigamy.”

      She sucked in a sharp breath. “I am not a bigamist.”

      “You aren’t single.”

      “Yes, I am. The paperwork was…”

      “Never filed. If you don’t believe me, do some research on the matter.”

      Her stomach squeezed tight, the world tilting to the side. “What did you do, Eduardo?” His name tasted so strange on her tongue. But then, it had never been familiar. He was a stranger, essentially, her ex-husband. She had never known him, not really.

      They had lived together, sort of. She’d inhabited the spare room in his luxury penthouse for six months. They hadn’t shared meals, except on weekends when they’d gone to his parents’ home. They hadn’t shared a bed. Hadn’t shared more than the odd hello when they were in his massive home. It was only in public that he’d ever really talked to her. That he’d ever touched her.

      He had been quick, blessed with money, a strategic mind and a total lack of caring in regards to propriety. She’d never met a man like him. Before or since. Of course, she hadn’t been blackmailed into marriage before or since, either.

      “Me?” His eyes met hers in the mirror again, a smile curving his lips, a flash of white teeth against dark skin. “Nothing.”

      She laughed. “That’s funny. I don’t believe you. I signed the papers. I remember it very clearly.”

      “And you might have known they were never finalized if you had left a forwarding address for your mail. But that’s not the way you do things, is it? Tell me, are you still running, Hannah?”

      “What did you do?” she asked, refusing to let his last barb stick in its target. She didn’t have to answer to Eduardo. She didn’t have to answer to anyone. And she most definitely didn’t have to run.

      She met his eyes in the mirror and felt a sharp pang of emotion that mocked her previous thought. Why was this happening now? She was getting married in an hour. To Zack Parsons, the best man she’d ever known. He was respectful, and honorable. Distant. Able to help give her a career boost. He was everything she wanted, everything she needed.

      “It’s a complicated process,” he said, his accent as charming as ever, even as his words made her blood boil. “Something perhaps…went amiss?”

      “You bastard! You utter bastard!” She shut the web browser on her phone and pulled up the number pad, poised to dial.

      “What are you doing, Hannah?”

      “Calling…the police. The national guard.”

      “Your fiancé?”

      Her stomach tightened down on itself. “No. Zack doesn’t need to know….”

      “You mean you didn’t tell your lover about your husband? Not a great foundation for a marriage.”

      She couldn’t call Zack. She couldn’t let Eduardo anywhere near the wedding. It would topple everything she’d spent the past nine years building. She hated that he had the power to do that. Hated facing the truth that he’d had power over her from the moment she’d met him.

      She gritted her teeth. “Neither is blackmail.”

      “We traded, mi tesoro. And you know it. Blackmail makes it sound sordid.”

      “It was. It continues to be.”

      “And your past is so clean you can’t stand getting your hands dirty? We both know that’s not true.”

      A very rude word hovered on the edge of her lips. But freaking out at Eduardo wasn’t going to solve her problem. The very pressing problem that she needed to get to the hotel and take vows. “I’m going to ask you again, before I open the door and roll out into midday traffic and completely destroy this gown: What do you want? How do I give it to you? Will it make you go away?”

      He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’m taking you back to my hotel. And I’m not going away.”

      Her lip curled. “Have you got a thing for women in wedding dresses? Because you got me into one quickly last time we met, and now you seem interested in me again…and here I am in a wedding dress.”

      “It’s not the dress.”

      “Give me one good reason not to call the police and tell them I’ve been kidnapped.”

      “Hannah Mae Hackett.”

      Her real name sounded so unfamiliar now. Even more so coming from him instead of being spoken with a Southern twang. Even still, a lead weight settled in her stomach when he said it.

      “Don’t even say it,” she bit out.

      “You don’t like your name? Well, I imagine not. You did change it.”

      “Legally. I am legally not that name anymore. My name is Hannah Weston now.”

      “And you illegally gained scholarships, and entrance, to the university in Barcelona by falsifying your school records.”

      She clenched her teeth, her pulse pounding hard. She was so very screwed. And he knew it. “This sounds like a conversation we had five years ago. If you recall, I already married you to keep you from spreading it around.”

      “Unfinished business.”

      “The only thing unfinished, apparently, is our divorce.”

      “Oh, no, there is so much more than that.” He pulled the limo against a curb in front of one of the famous boutique hotels in San Francisco. Marble, gold trimming and sharply dressed valets signaled the luxury of the place to everyone in the area. It was the sort of thing that had drawn her from the time she was young. The sort of thing she’d really started hungering for when she realized she had the power to change her circumstances.

      Every time she checked into a hotel, as soon as the door was closed and she was isolated from the world, she would twirl in a circle and fall onto the bed, reveling in the softness. The cleanliness. The space and solitude. Even now that she had her own penthouse with thousand thread count sheets, she still did it.

      The hotel wasn’t evoking those kinds of feelings in her today. Not with Eduardo present.

      The valet took the keys and Eduardo came to Hannah’s door, opening it. “Wait…did you steal this?” she asked, looking at the limo.

      As Eduardo bent down, Hannah fought the urge to shrink back. “I bought it from the chauffeur. Told him to go buy one that was newer. Nicer.”

      “And he didn’t seem to care that he was supposed to pick me up?”

      “Not when I gave him enough money for two new limousines. No.”

      “He was going to leave a bride stranded on her wedding day?”

      Eduardo shrugged. “The world is filled with dishonest and self-serving people. You, my dear, should know