His Wedding Day Revenge

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I T WAS THE voice that always elicited a visceral reaction of distaste that brought home the fact he had walked, not towards the building, but away from it and towards the palazzo.

‘What are you doing here, Christina?’ Despite the surgery, or maybe because of it, the years had not been kind to her, or maybe that was the sheer malevolence that he saw behind the perfect features, more perfect now than when she had married his father.

The blonde’s over-pumped lips pouted. ‘You forgot my invite.’

‘The only invitation you’ll get from me is to go to hell,’ Draco informed her in a deceptively mild voice.

‘Oh, well, if you’re going to be like that...but I’ll make allowances, Draco. Someone said no to you, so you are bound to be feeling a bit—’

‘You were eavesdropping!’

‘Before you ask, I heard enough.’ The spiteful tinkle of laughter bounced off him. ‘Poor Draco knocked back. You know, you reminded me of your father for a moment there.’

She watched the colour drain out of his face and smiled a complacent cat-like smile that left her eyes hard as stone.

‘Grovelling comes easy to the Andreas men.’

Denial was his first response.

Fury was his second and then—after he searched his memory for proof she was wrong—relief.

‘Thank you,’ he said softly.

He was not his father. He was his own kind of fool.

An expression of incomprehension flashed across the blonde’s face.

‘What for?’ she said warily.

‘For making me realise that I am nothing like my father.’ His father had been many things, including deluded, but he had not been a coward, he thought in self-disgust. Whereas he had been a blind coward who had exiled himself from so many possibilities because he didn’t have the guts to admit what he wanted.

To admit what he felt.

Jane hadn’t walked away because he wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear, because he took pride in telling it the way it was...not sugar-coating it.

He had asked her to leave behind everything she knew and offered her nothing in return.

She had walked away because he was too much of a coward to say what she wanted to hear. He was too much of a coward to admit what he felt for her.

That he loved her.

He glanced at the spiteful face of the woman opposite, impatience, not anger, in his face now... He wanted this charade to be over. He saw his stepmother’s expression falter a little, but she rallied and was back a moment later, her malicious smirk in place.

‘She has quite a mouth on her, that girl. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her, but then you never can tell, can you? From those sweet and innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt appearances.’

He did not move, and he did not raise his voice when he said softly, ‘You will not speak of Jane. Is that understood?’

The older woman, shaken despite herself by the dark implacability in his eyes, took an involuntary step back.

Draco folded his arms across his chest. ‘What do you want?’

‘Oh, I’ll get around to that, darling, but first tell your little playmate that I have remembered where I saw her... I never forget a face.’

‘Leave Jane out of this. You will not go near her. I do not want to hear anything you have to say.’

‘Oh, you will want to hear this. She has a baby, I hear—’

‘Christina...’ he said, a warning in his voice, a nerve clenching and unclenching in his lean cheek.

‘Did I ever tell you about...? Well, probably not. But what was it—four years ago? I forget, but I had a little accident. I think Spiros was quite pleased to know he was still man enough, but thank God we were both on the same page.

‘I went to a clinic in London. Mind you, if I’d known they had started taking NHS patients,’ she said with a little moue of distaste, ‘I would have gone elsewhere, but, still, it was sorted.’

The dismissiveness of how she said ‘it’ made him feel sick, especially when he thought about how for many women this was a decision that they did not make lightly, that they wept over. ‘You had an abortion.’

‘That’s what I just said,’ she replied with a bored sigh. ‘I am a young woman, Draco.’

‘Why would you think this would interest me?’

‘Ah, yes, well, as I was being wheeled to the theatre I passed someone else on their way out...red hair, white face.’

His lean face froze, the skin pulled tight across his sharp cheekbones as her meaning hit home. ‘Liar!’

‘Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.’

‘I won’t, I don’t need to,’ he said, even though they both knew he would.

And when he did?

Having delivered her malice-laden bomb, his darling stepmother vanished, leaving just the stink of her choking perfume behind, where to and with whom he frankly didn’t give a damn!

Draco didn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that her poisonous darts had found fertile ground. He pulled it together and went back into the party or—as his inner voice said—did a Draco Andreas.

Next thing he knew he’d be referring to himself in the third person.

It was a good two hours later when he finally left and made his way through the grounds to the palazzo.

Four years...four years...he tried not to connect the dots but by the time he entered the hallway they were a solid directional line.

He remembered the small scars on her smooth belly and the way she had dismissed them, not quite meeting his eyes when he mentioned them. Could they be connected to...?

An image of her holding the baby floated into his head. She was the perfect mother to another man’s child.

Had she aborted his child?

He prided himself on not being judgmental when it came to the choices women made about their own bodies, but this was not impersonal, this was as personal as it got—his child. Grief of something lost to him tightened like a fist in his belly. His hands clenched at his sides. This was not something he could consider with cool neutrality.

He had to know.

She owed him some sort of explanation.

Would she be waiting for him to climb into bed beside her? He pushed away the image that floated into his head of her warm and soft, sweet-smelling body as she smiled a sleepy smile and reached for him.

As he entered the nursery corridor he slowed slightly, a frown puckering his brow. His housekeeper, wearing a dressing gown, and a member of her team were standing there deep in conversation.

‘Livia... What is happening?’

Their expressions and the tears on the normally cool and collected face of the housekeeper made his stomach muscles clench in anticipation. It didn’t take a genius to see that he was not about to hear good news.

It wasn’t good news and, though he had to prompt the woman, he eventually got the story.

Mattie was ill, a doctor had been called but they didn’t know when he would be here, because some form filler on the other end of the line was asking so many questions before they would confirm his attendance.

Draco walked in, and took in the scene at a glance.

The baby was crying in his crib, young Val standing beside it, tears streaming down her face, while Jane, still wearing the blue silk dress, had the phone in her hand. White-faced, she looked haunted and was visibly shaking, but there was a firm determination in her voice as she spoke.

The anger that had kept up the walls of emotional isolation he had been sheltering behind dissolved. Everything inside him ached for her. He felt her fear and desperation.

‘No, not that I am aware of. No, I am not the baby’s biol—’

‘Give it to me.’

‘Draco!’ she cried, relief in her voice as he took the phone from her limp grasp.

She took a step away, her arms wrapped protectively around herself, aware on one level that his presence could not make everything right but, oh, it was such a comfort just not to be alone.

He was speaking Italian but, unlike her, she could tell that he was in control of the conversation.

He was not begging, he was demanding, and it seemed to make all the difference. He paused occasionally, covering the receiver as he relayed a question to her in English before giving her response in Italian.

Finally he put the receiver down.

‘Marco...’ he began, pausing when she shook her head. ‘He is the head of the paediatric intensive care unit. He will come with the air ambulance, which is already in the air, and in the meantime we are to cool Mattie down, open windows, strip off his sleep suit.’

‘Thank you...oh, thank you! That is...just thank you, Draco,’ she said, looking at him with shining eyes.

Draco nodded and walked across to the cot.

Trying to be as cool and calm as he appeared, Jane went to the crib. Mattie had stopped crying and the silence was somehow worse than that awful keening sound had been.

It was like undressing a rag doll and he was so hot.

‘He is still very hot and so, so floppy.’ Her voice broke as she turned away and laid her head against the warm solidity of Draco’s chest, which was right there when she needed it.

She allowed herself the indulgence of staying that way for a few moments before she pulled herself together and stepped back.

‘Val has gone to get a fan.’

At that moment the young woman arrived without a fan, but with welcome news. ‘The helicopter is here. Oh, I am so, so sorry...’

‘No, this is not your fault,’ Jane said firmly as she clasped the younger woman’s hand.

Draco watched her take the time even in the midst of her own fear to reassure the younger woman. A small snuffly cry made him glance down to the baby lying there, his sweaty face as pale as milk, and he felt things shift inside him. ‘He looks—’

The door opened and a young man about Draco’s age appeared.

Jane watched as they shook hands but did not waste time on pleasantries.

‘Mrs—’

‘Miss Smith, Jane,’ she said.

‘Well, let’s have a look at this young man, shall we? While you tell me what happened.’

The examination was gentle but thorough.

‘I suspect this was a febrile convulsion. We can confirm that when we have him at the hospital. For the present his temperature is high, and I will give him something for that before the transfer and also put a line in to give him some fluids.’

‘Thank you,’ Jane said, half scared to voice the question that was uppermost in her mind. ‘Will he be all right?’

‘I know it looks scary but little ones are very much more resilient than people think. I suspect there is an underlying infection.’

‘You will run all the tests necessary.’

‘ Sì , Draco,’ he said, turning to Jane. ‘Try not to worry. He is in the best of hands.’ His calm confidence worked its magic.

‘Ah, here is Nurse now.’

A young man appeared, carrying a medical bag under each arm.

‘We will get him ready for the transfer. You will be coming with us, I assume.’

Jane nodded as the two men bent over the cot, blocking her view of Mattie.

‘Thank you,’ she said in a quiet, sincere aside to Draco. ‘You made that happen... I am so grateful. I will keep you in touch...’

‘I am coming with you.’

‘I should say, no, it’s fine, but I’m not going to,’ Jane admitted, feeling tears prick her eyes. ‘I was so horrible to you.’ She quivered, blinking away the salty tears of emotion trembling on the tips of her eyelashes.

‘That is not important now.’

Her throat full and icy fear still gripping her belly, she nodded. ‘I promised I would take care of him.’

Promised who? The dead father, he assumed. ‘And you have, you are, you are an incredible mother.’

Her head bent, she sniffed, missing the look of pain that slid across his taut, lean features.

The helicopter journey was relatively short, the staff were really comforting, which Jane appreciated, and Draco’s presence meant she didn’t have to worry about following the conversations when they slid into Italian. The transfer into the hospital was performed with no issues and the medic’s obvious competence was reassuring.

She had moved out of the way while the medical team gathered around Mattie, but she didn’t take the seat offered. She couldn’t sit still.

‘He is in the very best hands,’ Draco said, watching her.

She nodded. ‘I know, it’s just...’

The medical team moved away from the cot leaving one nurse at the bedside. The senior doctor walked across to them, smiling.

‘Well, it is just as I thought, there is a viral infection, simple upper respiratory. He had a febrile convulsion, frightening, but not indicative of anything else. Now that his temperature is down and he is having his fluids replaced he will be back to normal very quickly. We will keep him in overnight for observation and, all being well, which I am sure it will be, he can go home tomorrow.’

Jane closed her eyes and gave a deep shuddering sigh before opening them and clasping the medic’s hand in both of hers. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you so much.’ Before she released his hand with a self-conscious, ‘Sorry.’

‘Delivering good news is one of the best parts of my job.’

She watched Draco walk with him towards the door, her smile fading as she thought about the bad news he had to deliver too often, but not today and not to them.

‘They will put a bed up in here if you wish to stay, though I have an apartment here where I will be staying.’

‘No...no, I’ll stay here, thank you.’ She looked at him, noticing for the first time the lines of strain etched around his mouth. ‘I am so sorry. I’m sure this is the last thing you wanted after—’

‘Now is not the time.’

She set her lips in a straight line to stop the stupid quiver. He was allowed to sound brusque at the very least.

‘You have my private number?’

‘I don’t have my phone.’ She realised that she didn’t actually have anything.

He seemed to read her mind. ‘I’ll organise some things for you and have them sent over.’

‘It’s half one in the morning, Draco.’

He looked at her with the hauteur and arrogance that often infuriated her and other times made her smile. At the moment it just made her feel safe.

‘How is that relevant?’

‘Silly me,’ she said with a wobbly smile.

A small bag of essentials—toiletries, nightclothes and a change of underclothes—arrived an hour after he’d left, also a phone with a note attached saying, ‘I’ve put my number in it’ in Draco’s bold, sloping hand.

Jane didn’t anticipate getting any sleep, but, although the nurses were in and out all night to check on Mattie, she did manage two long stretches of rest, and after a wash and fresh clothes she felt almost human.

She was on her second cup of coffee when the doctor and Draco appeared.

Her eyes skated across Draco, noting the tension emanating from him, and the dark shadows under his incredible eyes, but then not everyone liked hospitals. Well, nobody liked hospitals, but for some people, often the sort of people who never had a day’s illness in their lives, the medical environment, the reminder of human frailty, was tough to take.

‘Good morning,’ she said to the doctor, who returned the greeting before he walked across to the cot and consulted his tablet.

‘Well, all the results are clear, no underlying issues. He is good to go.’

Jane bit her lip. ‘He seems a bit cranky this morning?’

‘He’s got a cold so that’s to be expected. You know the drill if his temperature goes up?’

She nodded. ‘Are there any things he can’t do?’

‘Well, flying should be avoided for a little while. The upper respiratory infection would put a lot of painful pressure on his little eardrums, and it is hard to tell a baby how to release the pressure.’ He turned to Draco. ‘How are you thinking of getting back to the palazzo?’

‘Would he be better staying in town for a day or so?’

‘That would be the ideal solution for this young man.’

‘Couldn’t I drive?’

‘It would be preferable to flying,’ the doctor agreed. ‘But the drive is... What, Draco?’

‘Not an option,’ Draco said flatly.

Jane clamped her lips over a retort that would no doubt have sounded churlish and ungrateful. She’d been happy for him to step in and smooth the way in an emergency situation, but now that had passed she really didn’t want him to think he could carry on.

At some point she would have to make that clear.

‘I could book into a hotel?’

Draco slid her an impatient look. ‘Do not be ridiculous. You will be quite comfortable in the apartment. You will drop in and see the patient, Marco.’

‘I will.’

Jane was pretty sure that doctors in his position did not do house calls, but she wasn’t going to object.

‘I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘Then stop talking rubbish,’ Draco advised tersely.

She had the impression that had the doctor not been there he would have said more.

It was the doctor’s presence that similarly stopped her protesting beyond an ‘I’m not the sick one’ when someone brought a wheelchair for her to sit in while she carried Mattie.

The surgeon wheeled the chair himself, which drew a few startled looks as they made their way to the main foyer of the ultra-modern building.

‘Am I allowed to walk now?’

Draco, after a pause, moved to take Mattie from her arms.

Being held by Draco, the baby looked so tiny and the big-man-small-baby image, especially when the man was Draco, made Jane’s throat tighten with emotion. But then, after the last twenty-four hours all her emotions were incredibly close to the surface, and her control, even given the traumatic events, seemed extremely fragile. Scratch the surface and she might start crying or laughing or shouting—most of the time she didn’t know which direction her emotions would take her!

Free of the baby, she was able to get to her feet and shake hands with the doctor, who responded with a smile and added, ‘Oh, I got the notes through from your family doctor and there was nothing significant in the medical history to be of any concern now or in the future.’

Jane nodded, relieved.

She had felt a moment of panic the previous night when asked if there was any medical history in the family he should be aware of. She had been forced to explain that she was not Mattie’s biological mother. She had passed on Grace’s name, pretty sure that, as their family doctor, the GP, who was also Mattie’s godmother, would know the medical history.

‘I should know about these things. It just didn’t occur to me...’ she admitted with a flash of lip-biting self-reproach.

The handsome medic shook his head and placed a comforting hand on her arm. ‘Parenting is a balancing act. The most important thing is to enjoy the experience—they grow up very quickly. You’re doing a great job,’ he added warmly before he left them.

Jane flushed with pleasure at the compliment.

Standing too far away to hear what was being said, Draco could see the warmth of the exchange and the pretty flush that brightened her heart-shaped face.

Jane secured Mattie in the car seat fixed in the not-child-friendly back of the low-slung powerful car that she suspected had never seen such a piece of equipment before. Now, if you were talking a fur stole or an item of feminine underwear...?’

Torturing herself with the visions that came with those items, she belted herself in beside him, her smile widening as he gave a gummy grin.

‘Sit up front. There’s no room back there.’

‘There is for me,’ she said stubbornly. Her knees pressing into the driver’s seat was infinitely preferable to sitting beside Draco.

‘What was that about?’ Draco asked, looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

She looked bewildered.

‘Marco is married with children.’

Jane blinked. ‘You think I was flirting with Mattie’s doctor!’ The ludicrousness of the suggestion drew a gurgle of laughter from her, and beside her the baby joined in.

In no position to see the flash of shock in his eyes, all Jane heard was the silence from the front that was interrupted by the sound of a car horn.

Draco growled out something that sounded not polite in his native tongue and pulled out of the parking space. The memory of his claim that he was never jealous came back to mock him as he drove out onto the highway.

The hospital appeared to be situated on the outskirts of the city but every now and then Jane caught a glimpse of the spires and golden buildings of Florence.

It was beautiful but, strangely, she felt a sudden longing for home and all things familiar, and with the longing came an image, not of her cottage, but the palazzo, backlit by the warm afternoon sun.

The instinct shocked her. It could not be a good thing to become so attached to a place over such a relatively short period of time. Or maybe not the place, but the people—the person who lived there.

Well, you’d better become unattached very quickly, she told herself sternly as she stared at the back of Draco’s neck, where even though he kept his dark hair short, it was beginning to curl.

She was quite glad there was zero conversation during the journey to Draco’s apartment. Jane had been trying to name the different landmarks she glimpsed and wishing she had a guide book when tall wrought-iron gates ahead of them opened and he drove into a courtyard. The sound of traffic was muffled by the trees and the rows of fountains and lush greenery bordering the cobbled area.

‘This is beautiful!’ she said, craning her neck to see the wrought-iron balconies on the top floor of the three-storey building.

‘Just the one apartment. We have offices on the ground floor, so no commute when I am here.’

‘Offices?’ she exclaimed, thinking, Not as we know it. ‘Where are the cars?’

‘It’s a public holiday here this weekend and the main entrance to the office is around the other side of the building. There are not so many staff. It’s just a small hub specialising in...’ He paused and spared her the techno speak before adding simply, ‘Mostly it is IT-based here, and my office. The pool and gym in the basement are open to the staff, but feel free.’

‘I really don’t think I’ll have the time.’ Or the inclination. She took a deep breath. ‘I doubt I will be here long enough. As soon as Mattie is able, we will—’ Then, because he might think that she was including him in the ‘we’, she added quickly, ‘Me and Mattie?’ Hearing the question mark in her voice, she flushed and, seeing his perceptive appraisal, wished the words unsaid.

It wasn’t that she would ever give his proposal of staying serious consideration, which was just as well because, from his expression, he wasn’t going to make the offer again.

Probably thinking he’d had a lucky escape. Last night must have brought home that she and Mattie were a package deal and, as great as he was with Mattie, the baby was not his responsibility.

One day he’d have his own children.

‘Me and Mattie. I think we might go directly home from here. I’ll have already missed some of the course and it seems pointless—’

His strong jaw quivered as his dark glance slid from the baby to her. ‘We will discuss things later.’ The situation had necessitated a delay in confronting Jane, but there had been no lessening of his need to demand answers. He had spent a sleepless night with his stepmother’s spiteful words pounding inside his skull like a jackhammer.

The careful placement of his words, the undercurrent in his voice, brought her head around to face him. She blinked, confused by the explosive tension pouring off him in waves, and turned back to the task in hand.

‘Let me do that,’ he interrupted, watching her struggle with the anchoring straps on the unfamiliar baby chair. Mattie, who had dozed off, carried on sleeping.

Jane eased herself out, taking care not to hit her head in the car built for looks and speed rather than its family-friendly qualities.

Draco did not hit his head and the car seat came away in two deft clicks and snaps.

Walking into the building’s spacious entrance hall, he ignored a wide marble staircase and led her straight to a lift that whooshed upwards.

Inside the apartment was the same mix of ancient and modern, eclectic contemporary pieces set against old stone and wooden panelling.

‘I thought you’d like Mattie to sleep with you tonight.’

Jane wanted to ask if he would be sharing her room, but she didn’t. The tension she had sensed earlier was even stronger in him now.

Draco couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I know.’

She blinked, met his hard dark eyes that glimmered like obsidian pools and it hit. He had overheard her conversation with Marco when she had told the doctor that she couldn’t have children.

‘Oh, I know I should have told you but I knew how you’d react.’

He just couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘So you knew how I’d react.’

‘I suppose that some men might not mind, but I knew how badly you wanted a family, Draco, and at the wedding I knew I just couldn’t do that to you.’

As a shaft of anger pierced him like a blade the faint white line around his sensually sculpted lips grew more defined. The idea that she had been carrying his child and known it, concealed it from him... It was almost as if he were standing outside his outrage. To embrace it would mean a loss of control, acknowledging a pain that he might never move beyond.