As if he hadn’t suffered enough humiliation lately, Ben Bassey was forced to endure a pity-offer of a job.

The suggestion he take control of the American arm of a European corporation, with a focus on developing new markets for specialized metals, smelled heavily of familial interference served with a side of love and obligation on both sides.

“Did Rosy put you up to this?” Ben asked his new cousin-in-law, Victor Rohan. He tracked his gaze to the man’s bride, Rosy, glowing as she chatted to their grandmamma. “You realize I’ve been fined twice my net worth by the securities commission for fraud?” He had narrowly avoided jail time.

“I’m aware.” Victor gave a circumspect nod. “But Rosy believes in your innocence. That’s enough for me.”

“It’s still a terrible business decision. I’ve researched you enough to know you don’t make terrible decisions.” Ben tilted a meaningful stare at the man, letting him know he might be bruised by recent events, but he wasn’t beaten. He looked out for his family, especially his favorite cousins when they suddenly decided to marry tycoons from afar.

At least Gisella was only going to San Francisco with Kaine Michaels. Victor was stealing Rosy to Budapest. Their grandparents had been born there, but the rest of them were American and tightly knit enough that Rosy’s absence would be deeply felt.

“I would view it as a personal favor if you would consider it.” Victor glanced toward his new wife. His stark features grew surprisingly tender. “I’m embarrassed I wasn’t more supportive when Rosy first learned of your troubles. Her pregnancy hasn’t been easy. I should have done what I could to ease her mind.” His gaze came back, clear of sentiment, all business. “You’re not an idiot. I’ve researched you enough to know that. This will work in the long run.”

Ben would become an idiot if he refused. He was broke and had nearly ruined his entire family. He couldn’t afford pride. Gift was marrying the man who had nearly been destroyed by Ben’s misplaced trust. That man,

Kaine, had magnanimously bailed out Bassey on Fifth, saving the jewelry store that Ben’s grandparents had founded. Now Victor was extending a hand that could pull Ben back onto solid footing.

“I’ll think about it,” Ben conceded, hoping his grandmother’s wise words to him when all of this started, “This too shall pass,” would prove true.

For the moment, Esther Bassey looked happy, surrounded by her extensive family. He hated himself for disappointing her. For jeopardizing all she’d sacrificed and worked to build. He silently vowed he wouldn’t cause her another moment of concern.

Which was when his gaze was caught by a new arrival.

Something ajar within him settled back into place as he took in her auburn hair shifting in loose waves around her sweetheart face. Big, innocent brown eyes searched the wedding reception. Perfect white teeth caught at her plump bottom lip. Her coral cocktail dress hugged her breasts, even more lush than he recalled, and draped to midway down the tops of her smooth thighs, teasing him with memories of having those long legs locked around his waist, both of them lost to indescribable pleasure.

“Who is that?” he heard Victor ask at a distance.

The instrument of my downfall.

“An uninvited guest,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “Excuse me while I evict her.”

Henriqua Lopez was still nursing sore ribs and terror that she would miscarry her unexpected, but no less wanted, baby. She might not be in a great position, given the circumstances—penniless, likely to be arrested and having made an enemy of the baby’s father wasn’t a great environment in which to raise a child—but she couldn’t bring herself to regret her pregnancy.

Adrenaline urged her to run. Again. It wasn’t the best coping strategy, but it worked in the short term. There was no running from the baby growing inside her, though. And she was out of places to run to. This was her last resort. A terrible gamble, but one she would take so her baby didn’t wind up as powerless as she was.

As she scanned the hotel’s elegant reception room filled with fifty-odd guests in their Sunday best, her gaze crashed into the one pair of dark brown eyes she’d hoped to avoid.

Damn this eye-catching dress. Her tall frame meant she’d only just begun to show despite entering her fifth month of pregnancy. The empire waist disguised her small bump very well, but the color was a neon sign.

She told herself not to let his notice distract her from her mission, but she was held motionless as they stared at one another. Despite the distance across the room, his glower went into her like a hot knife. It twisted, bringing a flex of agony into her throat while the rest of her swelled with yearning at the sight of him. She drank in his height and dark hair, his wide, clean-shaven jaw and searingly handsome features. Each detail was memorized and pocketed greedily to be recalled and cherished later.

Because a clock was ticking in her head.

She dragged her gaze across the room again. Zeroed in on the elderly woman holding court on a sofa. She was a picture of old-world elegance. A woman, Ben had told her with affection, who loved unconditionally. She had an unfailing sense of duty to her children and grandchildren. By the accounts of Ben’s downfall online, she even stood by her blood no matter what terrible crime they appeared to have committed.

Did she know Ben hadn’t salted those mineral samples himself? That his lover had played an unknowing part?

Henriqua should have walked away the first day of their dig in Bogotá, when Ben had mentioned Vincent. Her stepfather tainted everything he touched. He had turned her mother against her, leaving her to die without reconciling with her daughter. Henriqua had worked unfailingly to earn top marks at school, yet Vincent, a professor at her university, had left an impression with her fellow students that her top grades were favoritism on his part. He’d even taken credit for her budding geological career.

She had never imagined he could stoop to felony, though, and setting up others to take the blame. What a nightmare.

Henriqua started toward Esther Bassey, as anxious to clear Ben’s name in the old woman’s eyes as she was to beg for help.

A firm hand grasped her arm right where Vincent had wrenched it as he threw her to the floor a few days ago.

The bruises sang with pain, but Henriqua didn’t flinch as she turned. “Don’t touch me,” she said, shaking off Ben’s touch. It hurt. The bruises hurt and so did rebuffing him. His touch still thrilled her despite the scathing way he wiped his hand against his trousers, as though she was something dirty.

She turned away, determined to reach Esther.

“Henriqua.” His tone, so glacial and implacable, paralyzed her feet and caused a tremor of acute emotion to shiver through her. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”

“I need to speak to your grandmother.” Henriqua glanced warily at the phone he held.

The sheer audacity of this woman shouldn’t be able to astonish him, not after she seduced him, set him up for the type of swindle that had men thrown from helicopters, then escaped to South America. If she possessed a single ounce of sense, she would have stayed there.

“That will never happen,” he assured her, not yet dialing and not sure why. “Approach her and I will remove you myself.” He was dying for an excuse to get his hands on her, palm still hot from the brief contact with her upper arm.

He pulled up his lawyer’s number. Not the police. Not the investigators who had put him through the wringer for weeks. Not even a signal for hotel security. Why? His lawyer would tell him to report to the investigators that she was in the country.

“It’s important, Ben.” The slight tremble in her lashes and the faint quaver in her voice fanned some deeply buried part of him, a place he had allowed her to breach once. He wasn’t stupid enough to let her do it again.

“It is,” he agreed, using the tone he reserved for off-grid thugs who thought they could threaten an American because he was away from the comforts of home. “This is my family. You’ve caused enough damage.”

He caught his cousin Gift looking over with a frown. She knew every socialite in New York, especially the ones who would have the nerve to crash a wedding.

“Do you hate me?” Henriqua asked, braced, yet there was a glimmer of desperate hope in her deceptively appealing eyes.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation, even though the word had barbs that caught in his throat.

“You’ll never forgive me,” she said, voice fading now while her gaze remained fixed on him.

“I will not.” His stomach felt full of wet cement.

A shadow of anguish passed over her expression. She nodded understanding. “I’m prepared to testify on your behalf.”

“What I need is a confession, darling. You’re a day late and several million dollars short. I’d say the thought counts, but it really doesn’t.”

“There are mitigating factors.” She reached as though to adjust her glasses even though she wasn’t wearing them. She turned it into a skim of her hair that was equally awkward since her hair wasn’t twisted into its usual knot. It was loose. The way it was when they made love. “Things your grandmother should hear.”

Rosy, the bride, was rising from the sofa and speaking to Victor, both of them looking this way.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, could come out of your mouth that would make me think you have any right to speak to me, let alone a cherished member of my family.”

She gave him a look that seemed to turn the floor to water beneath his feet. Her voice hit his ears from a distance.

“I’m pregnant.”