His Wedding Day Revenge

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

D RACO GAVE NOTHING away in his expression as he turned back to her and asked casually, ‘Is the baby’s father in the picture...?’

How long has he been in your life?

Is he the reason you walked out on me?

He couldn’t voice those addendums without acknowledging how much he wanted to know and that was something he could not, would not do.

It came so out of the blue that Jane had no time to control her reaction. Her hand went to her quivering lips as she shook her head, seemingly unable for several moments to speak without breaking down.

Her discomfort, her stress was palpable. He’d be lying if he said he was displeased to sense some trouble in paradise.

Was the man married?

Had he cheated?

Or had he just not wanted the responsibility of fatherhood? Draco wondered, indulging in some speculation as he conjured up a man who was a total loser.

‘Is it a joint-parenting situation?’ How did that work? He never really had understood, but he supposed if people were willing to compromise for the sake of their offspring... Personally he’d never been big on compromise.

Jane shook her head, not appearing to register the faint mockery in his voice. ‘Mattie’s father was brought up in the village,’ she said quietly. ‘He moved away then...he was a stonemason, a craftsman, an artisan. His little company was about to...’ Her voice trailed away.

Draco felt his jaw tighten in response to her reverential tone then belatedly picked up on the tense.

‘Was?’ he queried.

‘He died,’ she said, her voice as dark as the bleakest dark winter night.

Her hand was covering her mouth again, the mouth that he had loved, the mouth that had driven him crazy as she’d explored every inch of his body. No sex had ever been like what he had experienced with Jane.

It was that sex and the mortal blow she had delivered to his pride, not loss, that had made the months after she ran away the toughest he had ever known.

He had got through it, and part of the joy of being rich was that he answered to no one. So if you holed up in a cabin in Alaska for two months, no one asked you why. Not even the guests at the wedding and definitely not the photographer with the images of the fleeing bride, photos that were now in Draco’s possession.

It had seemed a fair exchange to Draco, and when faced with the choice he had offered the photographer had agreed.

‘Publish and you will make money but I will ruin you.’ Draco had not elaborated before he’d given the favoured option. ‘Hand over all the copies, and I mean all, no insurance for your memoirs, and your career will go stratospheric.’

There had been rumours circulating, obviously, but no visual evidence and nobody willing to go on the record. He was known to be litigious, which came in handy. He doubted anyone had believed his ‘mutual change of heart’ press release, but no one had actually challenged it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he roughed out.

Her hand dropped, and her shimmering forest-green stare was disconcertingly direct, almost accusing, which, considering he was the injured party, was ironic.

‘Are you?’ His face was blank, which she had noticed when they were together was his way of dealing with emotional situations. She had always imagined that behind his mask were real feelings he could not articulate, but now she knew he hadn’t said he loved her for the simple reason he didn’t.

Draco said nothing.

What could he say? Moments before he’d welcomed the idea of her being unhappy. He felt a slug of guilt and thought, Be careful what you wish for Draco.

The pain in her eyes was... Unable to maintain eye contact, he turned his head sharply. Her vulnerability, her fragility shook loose feelings that were painful in their intensity, but he refused to name them.

‘Were you married?’

She ran a hand across her face and gave an odd little laugh. ‘No.’

‘So being a single parent must be...’

‘A learning curve,’ she admitted, cutting in quickly. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the complete truth.

The silence stretched as he seemed to search for words, which had to be a first for Draco, as he glanced once more towards the toys.

‘Do you have family close...?’

‘I was brought up in care, Draco.’

The reminder brought the faintest of flushes to the slashing angle of his high cheekbones. ‘I know that.’

‘It just slipped your mind.’ Because it hadn’t been important enough for him to remember, she thought bitterly.

‘I meant a support group... Your friend Carrie, was it?’

‘It’s a good community here,’ Jane said quickly, not meeting his eyes in case he saw the tears shimmering there and biting down hard on her lip when she heard the quiver in her voice. ‘The village is a good place to bring up a child. In a big town, a city, it must be harder. The villagers have been great. I think they suggested me for this course because they think I need a break, that, and the fact I brought the news crew here.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can see how it might seem personal but it wasn’t, though I think you’re owed an—’

‘An explanation?’ he suggested helpfully.

Her eyelashes flickered against her cheek as her brain froze. She ought to have a practised response, but she didn’t. ‘No, I meant—’ She paused, thinking, What did I mean? ‘I meant you can blame me for your bad press but that doesn’t mean I regret it, because I don’t!’

‘No, I don’t blame you for the bad press. I blame the incompetent site manager who decided to cut corners. He is the reason I have had to make a detour to the back of beyond, but he won’t be troubling you any longer,’ he told her and watched her eyes widen. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I haven’t put out a hit on him,’ he said, sounding amused.

‘I didn’t think—’ She broke off, a guilty unease settling over her. ‘You sacked him?’

Jane had been vocal in her denunciation of the man. She had called him all the names under the sun when she had confronted him in the quagmire that had once been beautiful and tranquil, but despite that she took no pleasure from the idea of his ruin. What did she know? He might have children, a mortgage... She felt a stab of guilt at her part in the imaginary downfall building in her head.

Draco shook his head in seeming disbelief, watching the expressions drift across her face. ‘I can’t believe you feel sorry for the guy.’

‘Not sorry, precisely,’ she countered, lifting a hand to remove an annoying recalcitrant curl from her face.

Draco’s eyes followed the action, focusing in on the fine-boned delicacy of her wrist, a delicacy that hid the supple strength of her body, lovely toned legs that could wrap tight around him, arms that could—

He tried to halt the memories but it was too late. Heat he had zero control over was spreading through his body, flaring inside him as memories surged.

He remembered hearing the harsh rasp of her breath as he kissed his way down her spine, the little groans as her face dug into the pillow as he slid his hand between her legs, the fierce focus on her face when he entered her and—

One moment she was breathing, the next the air around them had become thick and heavy, making each breath an effort as their eyes locked, green on obsidian. Jane shivered as an illicit thrill of excitement spread though her body. Her entire world had narrowed to his dark stare. She felt as though the protective layers were being peeled away from her skin, leaving her exposed, but she couldn’t break the contact.

‘Draco...?’

It wasn’t the slurred-sounding, bewildered warning in her voice that dragged him clear of the erotic spiral of memories. It was a sudden extraordinary, impossible thought as he recalled the excuses his incompetent employee had reeled out when he was trying to pass the buck. The woman he’d spoken of who had violently attacked him.

Jane realised she had been holding her breath. There was a gentle whoosh as she let it out and smoothed her hair back from her face. The dangerous thrum in the air had receded, leaving an awkwardness—at least on her part.

She rubbed her arms where the fine hairs were still standing on end as if she had just walked through an electrical storm, and silently called herself a fool. She’d been a foolish, starry-eyed virgin who had fancied herself in love the first time around. The second time... She caught herself up short, her eyes widening in horror at the dangerous direction of her thoughts—there would be no second time!

Five minutes in his company and she was already thinking in terms of inevitable, but nothing was inevitable except the fact there was no going back.

The sexual hum in the air had gone but Draco’s stare remained unnervingly intense.

‘What?’ she snapped out, wondering if that breathless moment had been a figment of her imagination, the result of her hormones coming out of hibernation.

She dashed a hand across her small nose. ‘Have I got something on my nose or something?’

Her comment drew his eyes to the light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her tip-tilted nose. ‘Freckles,’ he said, seeming lost in thought. ‘Were you—?’ he said abruptly before shaking his head and laughing. ‘No...?’

‘Was I what?’ She stopped, gripped by a chill of horror. If he knew how close she had come to making a pass at him. Pass. It sounded so innocent when what she’d felt had not been innocent.

‘Franco...the guy whose career you were so worried about.’

Her lips twisted in annoyance. ‘Could you sound more patronising if you tried?’ Maybe he was trying. ‘And,’ she finished crossly, ‘I was not worried. I am not about to lose any sleep over him!’

‘It might make you feel better,’ he continued, ignoring her intervention completely, ‘if I tell you he tried to blame everyone else but himself.’

This had been a red line for Draco. The first quality required for good leadership was the recognition that the buck really did stop with you.

‘Actually, one specific person who apparently was a foul-mouthed ranting witch who he suspected was not all there.’ He tapped his own forehead to illustrate his meaning. ‘She also physically threatened him...?’ He paused. ‘You...?’

‘Not violence,’ she protested. ‘I was angry,’ she admitted defiantly.

‘It really was you. That is...?’ He dragged a hand across his dark hair, making contact with a ceiling beam, and dropped it. Even after the confirmation it seemed barely credible to Draco, who couldn’t equate the description with the meek, compliant woman he had once been engaged to.

‘What a...’

He blinked as a word he had never thought to hear on her lips slipped out and she seemed oblivious to the fact.

‘I ask you seriously—who wouldn’t be angry? The heavy machinery had come in the night when we were all asleep. By the time I arrived the other men were drinking tea. It was a done deal. And he, that man, he had the cheek to tell me I was trespassing, which I wasn’t. It was a public right of way. As for physically threatening him, I was holding the stick, I didn’t use it.’

‘You need a weapon for self-defence? I had no idea this was such a rough area.’

Her eyes narrowed in dislike. ‘Bruce likes sticks. Bruce is a dog,’ she clarified quickly. ‘And he belongs to my neighbour. He’d slipped his leash and I was chasing him as I’m faster, and Grace took the pushchair for me. If that man is telling lies about me...’

‘Relax, he won’t be and he’s been given a sabbatical...a long sabbatical.’

Draco blamed himself for the situation, hence his personal intervention. He despised the idea of neo babies being given a leg up the ladder, but he had personally signed off on this appointment, not because on paper the guy had the qualifications, which he did, but because Franco’s father had promised apprenticeships to a dozen kids in his laboratory.

‘Why didn’t you think I was capable of it?’ Jane demanded, finding relief from the maze of conflicting churning emotions in indignation. ‘I’m capable of a lot more than you ever thought.’

‘Yes, that was brought home to me the day you did your runaway bride stunt! If we’d been filming that would have gone viral because you come across really well on camera.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your interview earlier made the evening news bulletin.’

‘Oh, God!’ she said, horrified. ‘You watched the coverage?’

‘It was brought to my attention.’

‘I thought billionaires didn’t bother with the little stuff. They floated around on private jets and went to film premieres.’ She stopped, thinking of his companions at the last glittering event he’d been pictured at.

‘You wishing you’d stayed around to enjoy the lifestyle?’ he mocked.

This first direct reference made her stiffen. ‘I think we both know I’d have been a terrible wife for a billionaire. You still haven’t said,’ she added, ‘what brings you here.’

‘The eco-management course.’

‘Oh, if it’s oversubscribed, no problem at all.’

‘It is not oversubscribed,’ he retorted, framing the words with invisible quotation marks. ‘I am led to believe you have...’ He paused, his dark eyes glittering as they captured and held hers. ‘Conditions?’ He folded his hands across his chest, looking amused. ‘I am here to hear them.’

Jane blinked in confusion. ‘What?’ Comprehension dawned. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean—!’ Her shocked expression morphed into a frown. ‘The vicar didn’t say that, or mean that, and you,’ she accused, ‘knew it! I needed clarification of the childcare facilities. I’m not leaving Mattie with a stranger for hours on end. He needs continuity after...’

He arched a brow. ‘After?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are there health issues?’

She shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. He is very young.’

‘I have no experience of babies, but I hear they are very adaptable, but to ease your mind there will be several workshop situations that you can bring him along to,’ he said glibly, hoping this was true and realising if it wasn’t it ought to be. And not just because he had decided that having Jane within grabbing distance might be... Not that he would grab, he mentally corrected.

Why not? asked the voice in his head.

There was no denying there would be a sort of poetic justice in a role reversal. This time he would be the one to walk away...without an explanation.

No matter how many mental gymnastics he performed it was hard not to hear the word revenge. He was no saint, but he liked to think that taking advantage of a mother who had lost her partner was beneath him.

But it would be interesting to observe her reaction to what she had passed up on.

He wanted to see her regret...he wanted to know why.

He closed down that line of thought, not needing to admit what else he wanted and had wanted from the moment he had recognised her.

It was a weakness.

She was a weakness.

‘I will send the prospectus and timetable of events. No one is expected to attend them all, so there is time to spend with your son...there is flexibility.’

She felt a scratch of guilt. When she had seen him she’d assumed he had come here to...well, not be nice and certainly not show consideration. Clearly he had moved on, as, she reminded herself, had she, though not necessarily in the direction Draco thought.

Why hadn’t she told him the truth about Mattie’s parentage? she asked herself guiltily. His assumption would lead him to think she had moved on, which of course she had, but allowing the assumption to stand meant she didn’t have to prove anything.

The guilt remained and she felt uneasy about the subterfuge. She hadn’t planned this route; it had just opened up. She had actually assumed he already knew when he’d asked.

‘Actually M...’ The breath died in her throat when she looked up, the expression on his lean patrician features making her start to babble nervously

‘Well, that is very...it sounds good,’ she finished, her relief intense when he took the hint and began to move towards the door. ‘Oh, w—’

Her warning was cut off as his head hit the low beam where Carrie had inserted the downlighters, the thump made by the collision of his skull with wood sending her stomach into a lurching dive.

Stunned, but not as stunned as he was, she watched with horror as he sank to his knees, his head on his chest. The slow trickle of blood brought her to her senses.

People said she was good in an emergency situation, but actually she just reacted.

She took a step towards him and fell to her knees beside him. ‘Oh, my God, I should have warned you... I am...’ Fewer words, Jane, said the practical voice in her head, and more action.

‘I’m fine,’ he muttered irritably.

‘Don’t be stupid. You are not fine.’

He looked at her through his fingers, which were already red. Luckily she wasn’t squeamish. She was guessing it had been a long time since anyone had called him stupid.

‘Sit down,’ she coaxed, relieved when he managed to plonk himself down on the sagging sofa. She took hold of the hand he had clamped to his forehead. His healthy golden glow had an unhealthy pallid tinge and there were beads of sweat along his upper lip. ‘Please don’t go all macho and ridiculous... Let me see...’

She thought he was going to push her away, but he allowed her to thread her fingers into his thick dark hair, gently separating the strands to access the source of the trickle of blood that was dripping down his face.

‘Here... No, that’s the old scar...’ she realised, exposing a long white ridge of scar tissue she had traced with her fingertips in the past. She had imagined him earning it doing something action-man and dangerous on the ski slopes.

And didn’t that say everything there was to say about their relationship? She had never asked and he had never volunteered the information.

‘Here it is...quite deep. You might need stitches.’

‘I won’t need stitches.’

She glanced at his face. His colour was a lot better. ‘If you say so...but unless you want to look like some gory advert for a horror film, you’ll let me help. It’s self-interest,’ she added. ‘I don’t want to be known as the woman who attacked a billionaire.’

His dark eyes swivelled her way. ‘Just the woman who left him standing at the altar.’

Jane froze.

She had half anticipated that the label would follow her for the rest of her life, but it hadn’t. Miraculously there had been no photos on social media, maybe because phones had been banned at the wedding, something she had thought a bit over the top at the time.

Her eyes slid from his and the challenge in them—this was not the time or the place for explanations and she doubted there ever would be a right time. If he knew her reasons, he’d be relieved, which she could cope with, but his pity... No, she really couldn’t take that.

‘I will get something to...’ She made a vague gesture and got to her feet.

When she returned carrying a bowl of water and the contents of her first-aid box, Draco was still sitting on her sofa, looking more normal apart from the blood.

‘Send me any bills for the furniture.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘There is no blood on the furniture.’ Plenty on his shirt and a few blobs on the polished wooden floor. ‘Lucky I’m not squeamish,’ she observed prosaically as she laid the bowl on the restored carpenter’s chest that served as a coffee table. ‘This might hurt,’ she added, trying to sound chattily indifferent when she really wasn’t while dipping a cotton swab into the water where antiseptic swirled.

Objectivity was really hard to fake when she was this close to his hard, lean male body, when a thousand memories, tactile and visual, were flitting through her head, and her stomach was performing somersaults as a hunger she only allowed to surface in her dreams dug in, painfully real.

‘It’s not actually as deep as I thought,’ she admitted, her frowning regard on the clean wound where the copious flow of blood had reduced to a steady seep. ‘You might not need stitches,’ she conceded, taking a deep breath. If nothing else, the act of asking would prove she had moved on. ‘But this other scar, that must have been...’

‘A skull fracture, which, as I’m sure you’re thinking, explains a lot.’

Jane wasn’t laughing. He could feel the empathy coming off her in waves.