Page 17 of His Wedding Day Revenge

Draco and neat and ordered were a contradiction in terms.

‘Oxymoron,’ she said out loud, then fielded his quizzical look with a shrug. ‘I’d be flattered if it weren’t for the fact that your version of for ever, according to what I have read, is about a month,’ she said, taking refuge from the ache inside her in the not very pretty truth.

If she hadn’t been such a besotted innocent she would have realised at the time that a highly sexed man like Draco, a man who had women throwing themselves at him, would never have been satisfied with one woman.

‘The wedding...it wasn’t planned. I never intended...’ she began before her voice trailed away. ‘Just think about all the money you saved on a divorce,’ she completed with a laugh that had a fake, hollow sound even to her own ears.

‘You signed a pretty tight prenup.’

‘Oh, God, so I did. I’d forgotten about that!’ It had not been important. She hadn’t even read it.

‘You think I would have cheated on you?’

Unbelievably he sounded angry. ‘Call it a wild guess,’ she shot back.

Her anger faded into something far more complex as she watched his eyes drift from her face to her heaving breasts, or actually maybe not so complex, in fact totally basic. She had not kissed another man, let alone had him touch her, since her aborted wedding day.

After the first few months of her existing in a limbo state between misery and more misery, a medical emergency had broken the cycle of despair.

Her endometriosis had flared up, and the acute attack, with pain on another level from the chronic discomfort she had grown accustomed to, had hospitalised her.

As luck would have it, the hospital had been making a push to lower its gynaecological waiting lists and paying private clinics to slash the queues.

Jane had found herself part of this scheme and transferred to a clinic where her keyhole laparoscopy had been performed the very next day. Just in time, the surgeon had said. High on painkillers at the time, she hadn’t asked, Just in time for what? And later she hadn’t wanted to know.

The procedure to remove the plaques that had been causing her so much pain had been a success, though she had been warned that this was not a cure and in the future a hysterectomy might be the only solution left to her.

Jane had decided not to think too far ahead. This was a reprieve and she had no intention of not taking advantage of it. Cure or not, without the chronic pain her life was changed and for the better. She felt as if she’d been given a second chance—if not to have her own children, then she could work with them.

Her job at the care home had been on a zero-hour contract but that had not been an issue and there were never zero hours in the understaffed sector. The flexibility had meant she could fit in her hours around her pre-nursing college course, the first step on her way to fulfil her new ambition to be a children’s nurse.

She’d had a purpose again.

But so much for plans—they were as fleeting as happy endings. Her life had changed again when there had been the knock on the door and the terrible news. She knew she would never be the mother that Carrie would have been, but she was damned sure she was going to try.

She was a mother now and there was no room in her life for the chaos that came with Draco, even had that particular door been open.

‘I think you should go. Shall I call someone for you?’ she asked, glancing at his head.

‘I’m fine.’

Mattie chose that moment to wake and his angry shout drifted down the stairs.

‘Your son?’

‘Matthew... Mattie...’

‘How old?’

‘He’s seven months. He was eight weeks when...’

He watched the look of loss spread across her face and it hit him. The eight weeks she spoke of, or couldn’t, was when the baby’s father had died.

‘If you’ll excuse me... I should go.’

He gave a quick tip of his dark head and without another word was gone. Jane leaned back against the door, her hand pressed to her lips. I kissed him!

The shame was mingled with an illicit thrill of excitement. Her body was still tingling from his touch, and just thinking about the hard imprint of his aroused body sent a pulse of heat through her pelvis.

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