Caitlin Crews - The Replacement Wife

T HE HOUSE HAD not improved since shed seen it last. It loomed over New York Citys tony Fifth Avenue like a displeased society matron, all disapproving elegance and a style that dated to the excesses of the Gilded Age. Becca Whitney sat in the vast and chilly parlor, stuffed with priceless paintings and fussy, disturbingly detailed statuary, and tried to pretend she couldnt feel the way her two so-called relatives were glaring at her. As if her presence there, as the illegitimate daughter of their disinherited and long-disparaged late sister, polluted the very air.

Maybe it did, Becca thought. Maybe that was one reason the great hulking mansion felt like a soulless crypt.

The strained silencethat Becca refused to break, since shed been called here this time and was thankfully no longer the supplicantwas broken suddenly, by the slight creaking sound of the ornate parlor door.

Thank God, Becca thought. She had to keep her hands tightly laced together in her lap, her teeth clenched in her jaw, to keep the bitter words shed like to say from spilling out. Whatever this interruption was, it was a relief.

Until she looked up and saw the man who stepped inside the room. Something like warning, like anticipation, seemed to crackle over her skin, making it hum in reaction. Making her sit straighter in her chair.

Is this the girl? he asked, his voice a low, dark rumble, his tone brisk. Demanding.

Everythingpower, focus, the strained air itselfshifted immediately. Away from the horrible aunt and uncle shed never planned to see again and toward the man, dark and big and goose bump-raising, who moved as if he expected the world to shuffle and rearrange itself around himand with the kind of confidence that suggested it usually did exactly that.

Becca felt her lips part slightly as their eyes met, across centuries of artifacts and the frowns of these terrible people who had tossed her mother out like so much trash twenty-six years ago. His were a rich, arresting color, an electric amber, and seared into her, making her blink. Making her wonder if shed been scarred by the contact.

Who was he?

He was not particularly tall, not much over six feet, but he was there. A force to be reckoned with, as if a live wire burned in him, and from him. He wore the same kind of clothes they all wore in this hermetically sealed world of wealth and privilegeexpensive. Yet unlike her fussy relatives, in their suits and scarves and ostentatious accessories, everything about this man was stripped down. Lean. Powerful. Impressive. A charcoal-gray sweater that clung to his perfectly shaped torso, and dark trousers that outlined the strength of his thighs and his narrow hips. He looked elegant and elemental all at once.

He gazed at her, his head cocking slightly to one side as he considered her, and Becca knew two things with every cell in her body. The first was that he was dangerous in a way she could not quite graspthough she could see the fierce intelligence in him, coupled with a certain ruthless intensity. And the second was that she had to get away from him. Now. Her stomach cramped and her heart pounded. Something about him just spooked her.

You see it, then, Beccas pompous uncle Bradford said in the same patronizing tone hed used when hed thrown Becca out of this very same house six months ago. In the very same tone hed used to tell her that she and her sister Emily were mistakes. Embarrassments. Certainly not Whitneys. The resemblance.

It is uncanny. The mans remarkable, disconcerting eyes narrowed, focused entirely on Becca even as he spoke to her uncle. I thought you exaggerated.

Becca stared back at him. Something was alive, hot, in the air between them. She felt her mouth dry, her palms twitch. Panic, she thought. It was only panic, and perfectly reasonable! She wanted to leap to her feet and run out into the streets, far away from this overwrought place and the scene unfolding around her that she no longer wanted to understandbut she couldnt seem to move. It was the way he looked at her. The command in it, perhaps. The heat. It kept her still. Obedient.

I still dont know why Im here, Becca said, forcing herself to speak. To do something other than mutely obey. She turned and looked at Bradford, and her mothers pursed-mouthed sister, the censorious Helen. After the way you threw me out the last time

This has nothing to do with that, her unclea technical title at best, in Beccas opinionsniffed impatiently. This is important.

So is my sisters education, Becca replied, a snap in her voice. She was too aware of the other man, like a dark shadow in her peripheral vision. She could feel the way his eyes ate her up, consumed her. It made her lungs feel tight in her chest. It made her body ache.

For Gods sake, Bradford, Helen murmured to her brother, twisting the elegant rings on her fingers. What can you be thinking? Look at this creature. Listen to her! Who would ever believe that she was one of us?

She has about as much interest in being one of you as she does in walking back home to Boston naked, over a sea of broken glass, Becca retorted, but then reminded herself to focus on the reason shed come back here, the reason shed subjected herself to this. All I want from you people is what Ive always wanted from you. Help with my sisters education. I still dont see how thats too much to ask.

She waved a hand at the immense and obvious wealth all around them, from the thick, soft rugs beneath their feet to the paintings all over the walls, to the graceful ceilings above them, bursting with exquisite chandeliers. To say nothing of the fact that this was a family-owned mansion that took up a full city block in the middle of New York City. Becca did not have to know anything about Manhattan real estate to understand that the family who didnt want to claim her could certainly afford to do so, if they wished, without noticing the difference.

Not that it was Becca who needed them to claim her. It was her seventeen-year-old sister, Emily. Bright, smart, destined-for-great-things Emily, who deserved more than the kind of life Becca could fashion for her on a paralegals salary. Only Emilys need could ever have inspired Becca to seek out these people and prostate herself before them in the first place. Only Emilys best interests could ever have compelled her to respond to this latest summons after Bradford had called her mother a whore and had Becca removed from these very premises half a year ago. Just as it was only thoughts of the tuition money Emily still desperately needed, now that Beccas savings were depleted, that kept her from making a rude gesture at Bradford as he scowled at her now.