A Game of Vows Read Online Free PDF Page B

that.” She held the ring out and Eduardo opened his hand. She dropped it into his palm. “I have the address of the place we were meant to stay at.”
    “
Bien.
I’ll call a courier and have it rushed.” He closed his hand around the ring, the glittering gem disappearing. All she could think of was that he held her future in his hand. The future that might have been. The one that was not eclipsed by Eduardo.
    She looked up, their eyes clashing. Her throat tightened, halting her breath.
    “Good,” she said, barely able to force out the words. She turned to the desk and saw a pad and pen slotted into the wooden slats built into it for organization. It was where she’d kept them when she’d lived here. She bent and scribbled the address for the house she should be in now, with Zack.
    Her fingers felt stiff and cold around the pen. She straightened and handed him the note. “There. That should do it.”
    “I’m surprised you don’t want to keep the ring.”
    “Why? I didn’t keep the one you gave me, either.”
    “We had a prior agreement. I get the feeling you didn’t have an agreement like that with him.”
    “Separate beds, separate lives, unless a public appearance is needed? No. We were meant to be married for real.” She swallowed hard. “And all things considered, I don’t feel right keeping his ring. I was the one who wronged him.”
    “Careful, Hannah, I might start thinking you grew a conscience in our time apart.”
    “I’ve always had one,” she said. “It’s been inconvenient sometimes.”
    “Not too inconvenient.”
    “Oh, what would you know about a conscience, Eduardo?”
    “Very little. Only that it occasionally takes the form of a cricket.”
    A reluctant laugh escaped her lips. “That sounds aboutright. So … if you could mail my ring to him, that would be great.”
    “I’ll call now.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving her alone.
    She sat on the edge of the bed, her emotions a blank. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel. Why she suddenly felt more relieved than upset about leaving Zack behind. Marriage to him would have been good.
    And yet, when she thought of the honeymoon, when she thought of sharing his bed … she couldn’t make the man in her vision Zack.
    The man she saw was darker, more intense. The man she saw was Eduardo. His hands on her skin, his lips on her throat …
    She flopped backward and covered her face with her hands. “Stop it,” she admonished herself. She rolled onto her side and grabbed a pillow, hugging it tightly to her chest. She hadn’t done that since high school. Comforting then, even when the world was crumbling around her, and just as comforting now.
    Eduardo had always been handsome. He’d always appealed to her. That was nothing new. But she’d never once been tempted to act on any kind of attraction while they’d lived together. It hadn’t been part of her plan. And she didn’t deviate from her plans. Plans, control, being the one in charge of her life, that was everything. The most important thing.
    Not Eduardo’s handsome face and sexy physique.
    “Feeling all right?” Eduardo asked from the doorway.
    She snapped back into a sitting position, pillow still locked tightly against her breasts. “Fine.”
    Eduardo couldn’t hold back the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips. Hannah Weston, flopped on her bed like a teenage girl. A show of softness, a show of humanity, he hadn’t expected from an ice queen like her. Like her reactionwhen he mentioned her fiancé. Like when she’d given back the other man’s ring.
    It suited him to think of Hannah as being above human emotion. It always had. He needed her. He didn’t know all the reasons why, but he did. And that meant it was easier to believe that she would simply go with the option that benefited her most and feel no regret over leaving the inferior choice behind.
    But that wasn’t how she was behaving. And it gave him a strange twinge in his