His Wedding Day Revenge

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

J ANE SLAMMED HER foot on the brake and closed her eyes, anticipating a thud.

When she opened them, Draco was standing there making her think of some sort of glowering gladiator, a bare inch between him and the bumper of her car. Typical of the man, she thought, still shaking with reaction that he had not even bothered to jump out of the way. Startled, she glanced at Mattie in his car seat, blowing bubbles, oblivious to the near miss.

Her heart contracted with love for him.

Draco strode around the side of the car, his face like thunder, wrenched the door open, and stood there, waiting.

She had seen Draco annoyed before, irritable, and even in a bad temper, but she had never seen him really, really mad. It was an awesome sight in the way a hurricane was awesome, but you still didn’t want to be in its path.

She could think of two ways to deal with this—well, three if you counted turning the car around and getting the hell out of there.

Jane didn’t count it.

So that left being placatory and apologetic, even if she didn’t know what she had to apologise for, or going on the offensive.

She hummed softly to herself, embracing the spirit of rebellion bubbling up inside her as she exited the car and stood there blinking up at him while easing the crick in her back.

Her stomach flipped. She accepted it as inevitable. Only Draco could look as gorgeous with his hair standing up in spikes where he had dragged his fingers through it. He looked very large, very angry and quite desperately beautiful, wearing a black shirt and trousers. His expression made grim look light-hearted.

‘I wasn’t expecting a reception committee,’ she tossed out audaciously and saw his eyes narrow. Weirdly, she got a bit of a kick out of winding him up. ‘You look...’ her lashes lowered momentarily ‘...not happy? Sorry—am I late?’ she wondered perkily.

‘Late?’ Her entire attitude was provocative, from the little smile on her pink full lips to the toss of her head.

His temper hit the red zone as he made one last attempt to contain it and then let rip.

Jane stood there and heard him out, waiting in the post-explosion silence before she responded, not in an effort to be provocative, just to get her breath. Nothing on her face showed the heart-thudding effect his diatribe had had on her—he really was awesome.

‘You finished?’ She watched his nostrils flare as he exhaled and opened his mouth. ‘Before you say anything else, it might be a good idea to switch to English. I have not the faintest clue what you just said to me...sorry, yelled at me.’

They had planned for her to take an immersive course in Italian after they had married. Draco had begun the lessons in the bedroom, introducing a vocabulary she doubted any language tutor would have offered.

The shameful pulsing throb between her legs made her voice sharp as she continued.

‘If you greet everyone this way I can’t imagine anyone coming back for a return visit. Your bullying might be acceptable for people who work for you, but I don’t!’

‘Bullying?’ he echoed in insulted disbelief.

She could imagine that women didn’t talk to him that way, or, for that matter, anyone, but tough, she decided, enjoying the feeling of rebellion.

‘I am not a bully!’

‘You yell at people who can’t yell back. Well, that is no longer me!’

‘I do not yell at anyone, and I never yelled at you!’ he countered, clearly outraged at the accusation.

‘You didn’t have to. I agreed with everything you said!’ she pointed out bitterly.

‘Because I make good sense, because I always had your best interests at heart.’

‘You believe that? Then you’re even more arrogant than I thought.’

A look of self-conscious unease drifted across his face before his jaw tightened. ‘My temper got the better of me.’ The concession appeared to be dragged out of him against his will. ‘But that is hardly surprising!’

He had spent the last hour plagued by images of smashed cars at the bottom of cliffs, broken bodies, the lick of flames. No wonder he had lost it, but at least she hadn’t understood what he had said.

‘If you thought I was going to run you over, I thought I was going to run you over, which was much worse.’

‘You think this is about you driving like a lunatic?’ He dismissed the idea with an expressive Latin gesture.

‘I do not drive like a lunatic. I happen to be a very good driver! If I wasn’t a very good driver I would have hit you. Also, I was driving at a snail’s pace. But I get,’ she conceded, ‘that it must have been scary for you.’

He looked at her in utter astonishment. ‘You really think I yelled at you because of that!’

She shrugged. ‘I haven’t been here long enough to make you mad about anything else.’

‘You disregarded my instructions for your transfer.’

Instructions. Now that really grated. ‘Oh, my God, you really are a control freak. Your office sends out a memo and if it’s not followed to the letter you freak out!’

The provocative sound of her mocking laughter set his teeth on edge. ‘I presume you were trying to prove a point, though what point I can’t begin to imagine.’

‘I was not!’ She just resisted the impulse to stamp her foot because that would not help the mature and adult high ground she was determined to inhabit.

‘So you flouted my wishes, the arrangement I put in place for your and the baby’s comfort—’

‘You put it in place... Seriously, Draco, you expect me to believe that you even knew what arrangements had been put in place?’

He ignored the sarcastic intervention. To respond would have involved addressing the fact he had been personally involved in all the details of the arrangements for today.

‘It is three and a half hours since I received the information that you and the baby were not in the limo sent for your safe transfer,’ he said, emphasising the safe. ‘I was informed that you were driving yourself in a cut-price hire car!’

‘That’s just like you, to judge everything on its value.’

‘I’m judging it on its brakes, which does not seem unreasonable. Your actions seem at best childish. I have no experience of what travelling with an infant involves but I am pretty sure that it is not relaxing. Your behaviour would have been mildly irritating had this happened in England on roads you are familiar with, but this is very much not England. The more secure route here would have taken you three hours, the shortcut offered by your satnav two and a half.’

Her guilty expression said it all.

‘Have you any idea how many accidents have occurred on that road, how many foolish tourists have come to harm?’

She flinched but maintained a defiant attitude as he hammered the point home.

‘All right, it was not a good road.’

The concession didn’t cut any ice with Draco, who had spent the last two hours thinking of those blind corners and hairpin bends, his imagination going into overdrive.

He had been first at the scene of a crash the previous month when luckily no one had been seriously injured, and the guy at the wheel of the horsebox should have known better.

Draco knew every twist and turn, every blind corner like the back of his hand; he had cut his teeth and honed his driving skills in this terrain, but even he only used the shortcut in daylight hours, and then in a four-wheel drive.

‘You could have been caught out there in the dark.’ A fact that had lain heavy with him as he’d waited, feeling totally impotent, and as he’d watched the sun begin to sink, his anxiety had turned to cold fury.

He never second-guessed his decisions but he had regretted his decision not to drive out and intercept her. She could have taken the sensible longer road and there were several points on both routes where the driver had an option—the chances of him missing her were high. For all he knew she could have recently passed her driving test. He didn’t have a clue as he had never asked her.

What had he asked her?

You were never that interested in her life story, were you, Draco?

He pushed the tickle of guilt away. He had remembered that she was brought up in care, and he could recall thinking it meant that there would be no embarrassing relatives coming out of the woodwork.

His anger didn’t dissipate but it was now diluted by a guilty awareness he was reluctant to acknowledge.

‘I arranged for you to be brought here. Why did you not come as arranged?’

Her chin went up. ‘Arranged?’ She shook her head, making her curls bounce then settle into soft golden coils. ‘I did not ask you to make arrangements for me, and I was not included in those decisions. I am very sorry that you have been inconvenienced,’ she said with an insincere smile. ‘But I had made my own arrangements.’

She watched as a look that on anyone else she would have called bewilderment slid across his lean features. His stabbing gesture was all frustration, before he dragged a hand across his already ruffled dark hair.

‘You rented this...’ Lips curled in contempt, he launched a vicious kick at the car wheel. ‘I do not think much of your arrangements.’

‘Do you mind? I have to pay for any damage.’

‘I’d pay to get it towed away and crushed. You thought a child would be safe in this!’

The fact that Jane had thought the same thing numerous times during the journey made her respond to his comment even more indignantly.

‘How dare you?’ she snapped, her eyes flashing green fire. ‘My parenting skills are not your business, and at least I don’t assume throwing money at a problem is all it takes to solve it!’ she huffed contemptuously. ‘You can stick your limousines up—’ Her eyes widened as she came to a breath-hitching pause. ‘I just want to say...’

What do you want to say, Jane?

‘I am not your problem and,’ she added defiantly, ‘I really don’t think I’d take advice from someone whose idea of parenting is holding your girlfriend’s lap dog while she pouts for the camera.’

His expression moved from fury to blank astonishment before melting into a grin that made it hard to stay angry, actually hard to stay on her feet.

‘The thing bit me,’ he recalled. ‘I had to have a tetanus shot.’

As the tension dissolved Jane covered her mouth with her hand to smother an almost-laugh. She was only partially successful. ‘Good!’ she growled back.

‘I am discovering that size is not a measure of combativeness,’ he observed as he studied her face and wondered how it was possible he had never seen or even guessed at this fire in her personality. ‘I was concerned.’

‘Why?’

The question was so wilfully stupid that he had to wonder if she was going out of her way to provoke him, but he would rise above it, he decided. ‘The road I am assuming that you took is not for... Before you explode once more, even locals take the longer route.’

‘It wasn’t a nice journey,’ she admitted, allowing herself to be slightly mollified. ‘But if there was a car organised this end you should have discussed it, or,’ she corrected very quickly, because she didn’t want him to think she had expected personal treatment, though this did seem pretty personal, ‘have someone discuss it with me.’ All her communications thus far had come via the office of Draco Andreas. And once the image from a sixties spoof of someone gorgeous with endless legs and red lips sitting on his knee taking dictation had got into her head, it had been impossible to banish.

It was there now as she said coldly, ‘I require options, not ultimatums. I am quite capable of organising my own life and making my own decisions.’

‘So I am seeing,’ he observed, studying the obstinate set of her round chin.

‘Look, obviously—’ she sniffed contemptuously ‘—you think I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag. But I’m really not that helpless.’

Draco, his expression indecipherable, looked at the small finger being waved at him.

‘All right, I am sorry if I put you out, but...’ It suddenly occurred to her he had made special arrangements for her... And more troubling, if that was the case, why? Maybe he just thought she was hopeless and—

Pressing her hands together and closing her eyes briefly, she called a halt to the flow of disjointed question marks in her head and took a deep breath. ‘It’s been a long day and I understand there is an induction session early tomorrow, so if there is someone to show me to our room, Mattie—’

On cue the baby began to wail.

Draco watched as she ran around to the passenger door of the car. Something in her expression as she bent over the baby seat and spoke soothingly to the sobbing child before she picked him up in her arms made things tighten painfully in his chest.

The cries lessened to a dull roar as she walked back around the car towards him. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’

‘There has been a change in the schedule. Because not everyone was able to make it on time it was decided that tomorrow will be a free day.’

Jane tried to hide her relief behind a smile but she knew she failed. ‘Oh, that’s...good to know. Is it far to the—?’

She glanced towards the spread of buildings, their roofs at different levels hidden by the trees, able to make out lights in the gathering gloom.

‘Not far, but you are not in the annexe, though if you decide to attend the meet-and-greet supper there later tonight someone will be on hand to escort you.’

A meet-and-greet supper! Perfect to top off the journey from hell and a near-miss collision. Opting out sounded very good to her at that moment. ‘Not... I must have misunderstood. So where are we staying?’

‘The centre does not have adequate childcare facilities. We have allocated you rooms in the main house.’

Jane listened to the slick explanation in silence, her wide eyes swivelling to the palazzo. The sun had almost sunk and in the semi-darkness it was now lit by spotlights.

‘Is there room?’ she asked and laughed, even though she didn’t really feel like laughing. It was strange to know that once she had been destined to be mistress of the place. She would have arrived here as a bride, not a visitor... She took a deep breath. The point was it hadn’t happened.

‘Right, okay, where should I...?’ Her glance moved from the baby who was nuzzling her neck to the car. Mattie would kick up a hell of a fuss now if she tried to put him back in his car seat.

‘I could drive...’ Draco looked at the car, imagined the discomfort of fitting his legs into the front seat and decided. ‘We will walk,’ he announced, showing what she considered an uncharacteristically sensitive appreciation of her dilemma. Or maybe he just fancied a stroll.

‘Someone will bring the...car,’ he announced, with the confidence of someone who knew there were always people to do his bidding. ‘And your luggage. I will show you the way.’

Half down the incline, Draco paused. ‘He looks heavy.’

‘He’s a big boy,’ Jane agreed. ‘Oh, my goodness, the gardens...’ She stared in wonder at the vision stretched out before her. Strategically placed spotlights revealed a series of terraces descending down the steep incline overlooking the sea to one side and the green plain on the other. The terraces appeared to be connected by gates and stairways, and the water from an ornate fountain spilled down the interconnecting levels, ending in a pool in the main terrace outside the palazzo.

‘It is quite nice,’ Draco agreed, then, with a grin, added, ‘English understatement. It rubbed off in school.’

He had never said, but Jane had always had the impression that Draco’s English school experience had not been a good one. He had always said that he would not send their children away to school.

The children they never could have had.

‘Was his father tall?’ Draco kept his voice carefully neutral. A dead man would be a difficult rival for someone who wanted to take his place.

Luckily Draco did not, but he wanted to know, he thought he deserved to know, if this man was the reason that she had walked away from the altar. Had they already met? Had she realised that she needed to be with this man...that nothing else mattered?

‘No, but...’ Jane stopped. Carrie had been tall and athletically broad-shouldered, her sparkling eyes and way of looking at the world projecting confidence and hiding her vulnerability. An image of her friend the day she had told Jane she was pregnant drifted into Jane’s head, the snatch of conversation playing.

‘I don’t know how a real family works,’ Carrie had confided in a panicked whisper.

Jane, who had been given up for adoption at birth, was equally ignorant of the dynamics. She had never found her for ever home. She’d been on the brink of adoption twice. The first time the mother in the family had become pregnant and they had decided they didn’t want Jane. The second time she had felt for a short time as if she was part of a family, but before the adoption had been signed off the husband had been diagnosed with a chronic muscle-wasting disease. There had been tears on both sides when Jane had been sent back to the children’s home, but she knew she had been loved and that was something no one could take away from her.

‘A real family works on love and you and Rob have enough to spare, don’t you think?’

Sometimes you said the wrong thing and others the right thing and this had definitely been one of the latter. She remembered her friend’s expression clearing.

‘We do, don’t we? And he or she will have you for an aunty so that’s lucky too.’

Jane’s arms tightened around the baby as she hid her face in his soft wispy curls of baby-soft hair for a moment.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ The gruff self-recrimination in his voice made her pause mid-step.

Jane raised her eyes to his face as she took the opportunity to hitch the baby into a slightly more secure position on her shoulder and wished she had not packed away the baby sling, which would have left her hands free.

‘You didn’t.’

Her swimming eyes said otherwise.

Draco’s glance shifted from her face to the baby she held, but the unfamiliar and unwelcome feelings sliding through him did not ease. ‘I should take him.’

The abrupt announcement drew a startled round-eyed stare from Jane. ‘You?’

She looked almost as shocked to hear him make the offer as he had been himself. The idea of holding something so small and breakable filled him with more horror than a market crash!

He nodded and shrugged. ‘Why not?’

How hard could it be?

‘But—’

Her reluctance served to harden his resolve. ‘There are a lot of steps and it is dark; you can’t see your own feet carrying the baby.’

He watched her little grimace of acknowledgment as she pulled the baby in closer, her chin resting on his head.

‘I should have driven you down...’ But this was one of the best views of the palazzo and he had wanted to see her reaction. He winced at the insight.

He had wanted to see her regret when she saw what she had walked away from. In the end, though, she had walked away from him, and his ego wouldn’t allow him to admit that this inescapable fact still hurt.

‘Well, thank you, but the gardens are lovely. I can’t wait to see them in daylight.’ The light had almost faded completely now, though the path was well lit, and she got a sense of the garden. ‘It smells gorgeous. Thank you...’ she husked again as Draco bent forward, arms outreached to take the baby from her. She held her breath but still felt her senses thrum when the warm scent of his skin tickled her nose.

‘Yep, perfect,’ she praised.

Jane lowered her gaze, for some reason she didn’t delve too deeply into, the sight of him standing there with Mattie in his arms. The contrast of big man and tiny baby, made her throat tighten with emotion.

‘My mother replanted this area many years ago.’ Her startled gaze lifted in time to catch the softening around his mouth, the warmth in his eyes, which a moment later vanished as the iron hardness reappeared as if a switch had been flicked and he provided unemotional additional information. ‘I tried to reinstate the planting exactly as it was as a memorial to her.’

‘That’s a nice thing to do.’ It suddenly struck her how strange this was, to be standing here talking this way.

When they had been together Draco had never discussed his family much, and when he had it was mostly information about his younger half-brother’s achievements. His late father he’d never spoken of at all, she didn’t have any idea when he had died, and the only time he had mentioned his mother it had been bare, bleak, bone-dry facts.

His parents had divorced and she’d died a year later.

When Jane had offered sympathy he had closed the conversation down, leaving her in no doubt that the subject was a no-go area—there had been a lot of those.

Jane had wanted to probe but never asked questions back then, had told herself that he would confide in her when he needed to. Now, of course, she knew he never would have.

Their relationship, certainly from his side, had never been about talking or sharing; it had been about sex. Maybe they were talking because they were no longer a couple. They were no longer having mind-numbing, incredible sex... Even then, when she had been so invested in being with him, she had sometimes wondered what, beyond the sex, was keeping them together.

She shook away the thoughts in her head, annoyed with herself for reading anything significant into a casual comment, for making it something more than it was.

Ah, well, the ‘keep out’ signs no longer applied to her. She wasn’t the fiancée trying to say the right thing. Now she could say the normal thing. If he didn’t like it, it no longer mattered, she told herself, wanting to distance herself as far as she could from the woman she had been.

‘Did you go with her, your mother, when your parents split up?’ She half expected him to tell her it was none of her business but, rather to her surprise, after a pause he responded.

‘He wouldn’t let her take me. And once Jamie was born, I couldn’t have left him anyway.’

Jane felt a stab of frustration when he stopped talking. She remembered that feeling of being kept on the outside all too well. His expression was hidden from her by his long, luxuriant lashes, but she’d already seen the regret in the dark depths, presumably that he had told her even this much.

She felt a wave of self-disgust, hardly able to believe that she had meekly accepted his lack of communication as the norm when they were meant to be in a relationship.

‘I remember Jamie,’ she said, thinking of the stick-thin shy thirteen-year-old she had been introduced to the night before the wedding.

‘You made a big impression on him,’ Draco said drily, remembering his brother’s accusing eyes when he had demanded to know what Draco had done to make her run away.

‘How old were you when your parents divorced?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘So that would have made Jamie...?’

‘He was born a month after they married. Watch your step. There’s a...’ With the hand that wasn’t supporting the baby, he caught her elbow as she stepped off into space, or at least six unexpected inches, and landed with a jolt.

‘Thanks...sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

No, she’d been looking at him. There was no doubt he was well worth looking at, no point denying the glaringly obvious, and the stubble that was now darkening his cheeks and jawline added an extra earthy... Do not think earthy, Jane, she told herself firmly. She could not allow this to drift towards the obsession she had once felt. No, he was just a good-looking man—okay, a gorgeous man—she had once had a relationship with.

If only he’d let go of her elbow!

How many erogenous zones could there possibly be in an elbow, for God’s sake?

‘He must be getting heavy. Shall I take him back?’ Extending her arms enabled her to escape the skin-peeling contact of his hand and shake off his grip on her elbow without it looking too obvious.

Draco slung her an amused sardonic look. ‘Thanks for the offer but I think I’ll manage.’ The baby was not his issue. His inability to stop staring at her lips was.