A Game of Vows. Maisey Yates

before the other man left and Eduardo swept the curtain aside, holding it open for her. She looked at him, the smile still glued on her face. “Thank you.”

      Back when they’d been married, they might have gone to a place like this late on a Saturday night. And everyone inside would know Eduardo. Would clamor for his attention. And she would play her part, smiling and nodding while mentally trying to decide what appetizer to get.

      There was none of that tonight. If people had looked at them, it had been subtle. And no one spoke to Eduardo. No one stopped to ask about business. Or where the next big party was. Or which nightclub was opening soon.

      She looked behind them and saw that people were staring. Trying to be covert, but not doing a good job. Their expressions weren’t welcoming. They looked … They looked either afraid or like they were looking at a car crash and she couldn’t figure out why.

      “You play your part very well,” Eduardo said, not paying any attention to the other diners, “but then, you always did.”

      “I know,” she said. She played every part well. A girl from the Southern United States with bad grades, a thick-as-molasses accent and a total lack of sophistication had to work hard to fit in with the university crowd in Barcelona. But she’d done it.

      She’d dropped most of her accent, studied twice as hard as anyone else, and perfected an expression of boredom that carried her through posh events and busy cities without ever looking like the country mouse she was.

      It was only when she was alone that she gave herself freedom to luxuriate in comfortable sheets and room service, and all of the other things her new life had opened up to her.

      “And you’re never modest, which, I confess, I quite like,” he said. “Why should you be? You’ve achieved a great a deal. And you’ve done it on your own.”

      “Is this the part where you try and make friends with me?” she asked.

      He laughed, a sort of strained, forced sound, nothing like the laugh he’d once had. It had been joyous, easy. Now he sounded out of practice. “Don’t be silly, why would I do that?”

      “No reason, I suppose. You never did try to be my friend. Just my fake husband.”

      “Your real husband,” he corrected. “Ours just hasn’t been a traditional marriage.”

      “Uh, no. Starting with you calling me into your office one day and telling me you knew all my secrets and that, unless I wanted them spilled, I would do just as you asked me.”

      A waiter came by and Eduardo ordered a pre fixe meal. Hannah read the description in the gilded menu and her stomach cramped with hunger. She was thin—she always had been—but it had more to do with her metabolism than watching her diet. Food was very important to her.

      When the waiter had gone, she studied Eduardo’s face again. “Why did you do that? Why did you think it would be so … funny to marry me?”

      He shook his head. “Very hard to say at this point in time. Everything was a joke to me. And I felt manipulated. I resented my father’s heavy hand in my life and I thought I would play his game against him.”

      “And you used me.”

      He met her eyes, unflinching. “I did.”

      “Why?”

      He looked down, a strange expression on his face. “Because I could. Because I was Eduardo Vega. Everything, and everyone, in my life existed to please me. My father wanted to see me be a man. He wanted to see me assume control. Find a wife, a family to care for. To give of myself instead of just take. I thought him a foolish, backward old man.”

      “So you married someone you knew he would find unsuitable.”

      “I did.” He looked up at her. “I would not do so now.”

      She studied him more closely, the hardened lines on his face, the weariness in his eyes. “You seem different,” she said, finally voicing it.

      “How so?” he asked.

      “Older.”

      “I am older.”

      “But more than five years older,” she said, looking at the lines around his mouth. Mostly though, it was the endless darkness in his eyes.

      “You flatter me.”

      “You know I would never flatter you, Eduardo. I would never flatter anyone.”

      A strange expression crossed his face. “No, you wouldn’t. But I suppose, ironically, that proves you an honest person in your way.”

      “I suppose.” She looked down at the table. “Has your father’s death been hard on you?”

      “Of course. And for my mother it has been … nearly unendurable. She has loved him, only him, since she was a teenager. She’s heartbroken.”

      Hannah frowned, picturing Carmela Vega. She had been such a sweet, solid presence. She’d invited Eduardo and Hannah to dinner every Sunday night during their marriage. She’d forced Hannah to know them. To love them.

      More people that Hannah had hurt in order to protect herself.

      “I’m very sorry about that.”

      “As am I.” He hesitated a moment. “I am doing my best to take care of things. To take care of her. There is something you should know. Something you will know if you’re going to spend any amount of time around me.”

      Anticipation, trepidation, crept over her. He sounded grave, intense, two things Eduardo had never been when she’d known him. “And that is?” she asked, trying to keep her tone casual.

      Eduardo wished the waiter had poured them wine. He would have a word with the manager about the server after their meal.

      Before he could answer Hannah’s question, their waiter appeared, with wine and mussels in clarified butter. He set them on the table and Eduardo picked up the glass, taking a long drink.

      When the waiter left again, he set it on the table, his focus back on Hannah, his resolve strengthened.

      “I was involved in an accident, very soon after you left.”

      “An accident?”

      “At my family’s stables. I was jumping my horse in a course I had ridden hundreds of times. The horse came to a jump he’d done before, but he balked. I was thrown.” That much, he had been told by others later. It was strange how vividly he remembered the moments leading up to the accident. The smell of the dirt, grass and the sweat of the horses. He could remember mounting his horse and coaxing him into a trot, then a canter. He could remember nothing after that. Nothing for days and days after. They were gone. “I wasn’t wearing a helmet. My head hit the edge of the jump, then the ground.” The regret of that burned in him still. It had been a simple thing, a commonplace activity, and it had changed his life forever. “It’s funny, because you see, I did forget to file the divorce papers.”

      Hannah looked pale, her cheeks the color of wax, her lips holding barely a blush of rose. For the first time since he’d known her, she looked truly shaken. “It doesn’t sound funny.”

      “You can laugh at it, querida. I don’t mind.”

      “I do. I mind, Eduardo. How badly were you hurt?”

      He shook his head. “Badly enough. There has been … damage.” He hated to speak of it. Hated to voice the lasting problems the accident had caused. It made them seem real. Final. He didn’t want them. Five years later and he couldn’t believe he was trapped with a mind that betrayed him as his did.

      “I have issues with my memory,” he said. “My attention span. Frequent migraines. And I have had some changes in my personality. At least I’ve been told so. It’s hard for me to truly … remember or understand the man I was before.”

      He looked at