Page 13 of His Wedding Day Revenge

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?’

---