His Wedding Day Revenge

Prologue

PROLOGUE

F EDERICO ALLOWED HIMSELF a small smile of professional satisfaction as he flicked through the unedited frames he and his team had taken so far.

Obviously he didn’t normally do weddings, but this was no ordinary event. The wedding of the decade was not that original, but neither was it an exaggeration considering the guest list and the news and social media coverage today had attracted.

Some cynics had suggested the timing had more to do with practicality than romance as many of the international high-profile guests had not had to travel far. Many had been in the UK for the previous night’s awards ceremony for young innovators in environmental sustainability sponsored by the groom, who had spent the last couple of months in London to smooth the transition of his latest UK-based high-tech acquisition.

Cynics aside, the event had captured the public imagination—everyone was talking about it.

Except the happy couple.

Draco Andreas was known to be a man of few words and all of them to the point. Though it was said that being on the receiving end of a glare from him was worth several thousand-page volumes of words!

As for the bride, well... Normally people speculated about the dress, but in this case the speculation was about the bride herself. There were only a couple of grainy out-of-focus snapshots circulating online of the prospective Mrs Andreas, which showed she was a redhead, or had been when they were taken, and she was petite.

The mystery had upped the feverish interest in the woman who had bagged the man whose name had become a global brand in the space of eight years. Conspiracy theories abounded on the Internet from the crazy to the crazier.

Federico was just as curious as everyone else and he didn’t have long to wait now, according to the schedule he’d been given. He glanced at his watch: two minutes.

He had no doubt that it would be two minutes. The entire event had been organised with nothing short of military precision. Nothing had been left to chance. Even the weather had defied the forecast, which he was happy about. He might be a genius but there was no harm having the weather on his side.

All he had to do now was make the bride look good. He assumed this would not be difficult as he’d never seen a woman who was less than knockout gorgeous on the arm of Draco Andreas, though up until now none had stayed attached very long!

There were jealous individuals who suggested that wealth was a well-known aphrodisiac but, if half the kiss-and-tell tabloid stories were true, even before Draco had been catapulted from relative anonymity to global fame and fortune he’d not exactly had trouble getting a date!

Given his profile today, it was hard to believe that only eight years ago Draco Andreas had inherited the ancestral name and the looks but no money. Most people had expected him to take the route of many land rich but impoverished old families in Italy and elsewhere and sell up, but Andreas had proved to be a man who didn’t take the obvious path, and where there wasn’t one he built his own.

And he built big!

The mobile app that had been the first thing produced by his tech start-up had revolutionised personal finances for millions globally. Draco was widely held to have been instrumental in changing the financial scene, fostering new technology, supporting innovation and creating a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.

Much of his seemingly limitless energy had gone into his Tuscan family estate, which now showcased creative, forward-thinking green technology, creating jobs and bringing young people back into the depopulated countryside areas.

He did not seek publicity but it sought him. Federico’s thoughts turned enviously to the lucky hiker who had captured the recent and already iconic image of the groom-to-be. Draco on horseback complete with sexy stubble, windblown hair and perfect profile looking moody and broody against a magnificent Tuscan sunset as he herded buffalo that apparently supplied the milk for the estate’s famous cheese. Well, it was famous now anyway.

Still, you couldn’t have everything, including, sadly, an Italian setting, he told himself philosophically. He adjusted a lens and squinted up through the canopy of chestnut trees that lined the driveway to the impressive ancient cathedral that might not have the radiant Tuscan light, but did have its own magical, if austere, aura. His fall-back plan, should the weather break, would not be needed—the sun was shining from a cerulean-blue sky and there was not a cloud in sight.

One of the suited-and-booted security team responded to a voice in his ear and gave the photographer the nod he had been waiting for and he stepped out of the dappled light into the direct sun. He gave a thumbs-up sign to his own team and waited as the crunch of tyres on gravel grew louder.

This was his first sight of the bride, as there had been no informal early glimpses. As accustomed as he was to having the most famous actresses and celebrities pose for him, Federico drew in a sharp breath as she emerged. The bride’s days of anonymity were at an end.

His critical professional eye took pleasure in her delicate features, the wide-spaced green eyes and the fact her skin had the pale crystal clarity of the oyster silk gown she wore.

As she completed her graceful exit and stood there, wand slim, the sun catching her burnished hair, he captured the moment. Seriously enjoying himself, he continued to snap. The bride’s delicate nose had just the suggestion of a tilt in profile as the solitary bridesmaid bent to straighten her heavy satin train encrusted along the hem with delicate hand-sewn seed pearls.

‘Oh, Janie, you look so beautiful, like a dream.’

Jane blinked like someone waking up. Up to this point the entire day had felt like a dream that she had floated through. Floated in the dress that Draco had chosen when she had been unable to make up her mind from all the designer offerings. He’d chosen the flowers too and they were, she decided, making a conscious effort to loosen her death grip on the stems of the hand-tied orchids, beautiful but, sadly, from her point of view, unscented.

She glanced at her small hand as the blood returned to her fingers, the glitter of her ring catching the sun. Draco had said when he slid it on her finger that it matched her eyes, which was why she hadn’t liked to say she would have preferred something a little less ostentatious than the heavy square-cut emerald surrounded by diamonds.

It just wasn’t her, not as a student holding down three part-time jobs to make ends meet and enjoying the thrill of being in love for the first time... Of having her first lover and her last—which was just as well. Draco would have spoilt her for any other man.

Draco thought the ring was her, and she was trying very hard to be the person he thought she was.

It wasn’t just today that felt like a dream. She felt as if she’d been sleepwalking for the past two months, from the first moment she’d seen Draco and their fingers had brushed when she’d dropped to her knees to pick up the by then empty coffee cup she had knocked out of his hands. By the time she’d got to her feet she had been deeply and desperately in lust for the first time in her life.

His first words had been, ‘You are perfect.’

Without considering her words, she had blurted with feeling, ‘You are beautiful.’

She had spent the night in his hotel bedroom—they had not left it for the next two days and nights.

Having him want her, having him love her—being loved by the most beautiful man she had ever imagined existing—was all a dream, and she didn’t want to wake up.

‘Are you nervous?’

Was she? Carrie’s voice sounded as though it were coming from a long way away.

Jane gave her head a tiny shake. She didn’t want to think, she just wanted to be there in the moment. Nothing else mattered but the fact Draco loved her and she loved Draco, she told herself, repeating the words in her head like a mantra to drown out the other voice saying things she didn’t want to hear.

‘No, I’m not nervous,’ she denied, lifting a shaking hand to her mouth, the full contours delicately tinted a pink rose. ‘I want this more than anything,’ she added with a husky touch of defiance that faded as she confided breathily, ‘I just didn’t recognise myself when I looked in the mirror. Love, that’s what counts, isn’t it...?’

Carrie didn’t say anything, she just squeezed her friend’s cold hand. Jane took a deep breath that lifted her narrow shoulders as she gathered her skirts and took the first step up the flight of shallow stone steps, wondering how many brides had trod this route before her and how many had been happy, how many lived to regret it.

Halfway up, she paused and turned back to her friend.

‘Truth matters, doesn’t it, Carrie?’

The sudden question made her bridesmaid blink and give a tinkling laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you have a guilty secret, Janie, because I won’t believe you...’ Jane gave her a stricken look and the tall brunette’s smile faded. ‘Last-minute nerves,’ she soothed. ‘Just take a deep breath.’

Jane nodded and the deep breath took her several steps up the aisle, right up to the moment that Draco, tall and exclusive, her beautiful Italian lover, turned and looked at her. She saw his dark heavy-lidded eyes widen and felt the possessive pulse of heat that radiated from him reach across the space between them.

She wanted to walk, to run into his arms more than anything she had ever wanted, but shame rushed in, cooling the heat inside her and killing all her joy dead.

As their eyes locked she lost her tenuous grip on her denial, along with the flowers, which fell from her fingers, a splash of white on the ancient stone slabs.

Her silence was in itself a lie.

She’d kept the secret to herself for two days.

She’d had two days to tell him, to give him the opportunity to respond, and she hadn’t because in her heart she knew what that response would be. Draco wanted a child, an heir for the family acres he spoke of with such passion, and she’d been happy about that because all her life she’d wanted a family, she’d wanted to belong.

After her recent doctor’s appointment Jane knew the chances of her giving him that were slim to non-existent.

There would be no baby with Draco’s dark hair, she couldn’t give him what he wanted and one day he’d know too, and hate her. The ache in her chest became a physical pain that hurt more than the physical pain she’d suffered for so long, a pain that now had a name—endometriosis.

She couldn’t do this to him. She loved him too much.

With a small, lost cry, Jane picked up her heavy skirts, tears streaming down her face as she turned and ran.

The silence after the sound of her heels vanished was so deafening it bounced off the ancient rafters. All eyes were on the face of the man standing at the altar, a face that seemed carved from cold stone. The fire was in the flames of icy fury in his eyes.