Page 2 of His Wedding Day Revenge

Without considering her words, she had blurted with feeling, ‘You are beautiful.’

She had spent the night in his hotel bedroom—they had not left it for the next two days and nights.

Having him want her, having him love her—being loved by the most beautiful man she had ever imagined existing—was all a dream, and she didn’t want to wake up.

‘Are you nervous?’

Was she? Carrie’s voice sounded as though it were coming from a long way away.

Jane gave her head a tiny shake. She didn’t want to think, she just wanted to be there in the moment. Nothing else mattered but the fact Draco loved her and she loved Draco, she told herself, repeating the words in her head like a mantra to drown out the other voice saying things she didn’t want to hear.

‘No, I’m not nervous,’ she denied, lifting a shaking hand to her mouth, the full contours delicately tinted a pink rose. ‘I want this more than anything,’ she added with a husky touch of defiance that faded as she confided breathily, ‘I just didn’t recognise myself when I looked in the mirror. Love, that’s what counts, isn’t it...?’

Carrie didn’t say anything, she just squeezed her friend’s cold hand. Jane took a deep breath that lifted her narrow shoulders as she gathered her skirts and took the first step up the flight of shallow stone steps, wondering how many brides had trod this route before her and how many had been happy, how many lived to regret it.

Halfway up, she paused and turned back to her friend.

‘Truth matters, doesn’t it, Carrie?’

The sudden question made her bridesmaid blink and give a tinkling laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you have a guilty secret, Janie, because I won’t believe you...’ Jane gave her a stricken look and the tall brunette’s smile faded. ‘Last-minute nerves,’ she soothed. ‘Just take a deep breath.’

Jane nodded and the deep breath took her several steps up the aisle, right up to the moment that Draco, tall and exclusive, her beautiful Italian lover, turned and looked at her. She saw his dark heavy-lidded eyes widen and felt the possessive pulse of heat that radiated from him reach across the space between them.

She wanted to walk, to run into his arms more than anything she had ever wanted, but shame rushed in, cooling the heat inside her and killing all her joy dead.

As their eyes locked she lost her tenuous grip on her denial, along with the flowers, which fell from her fingers, a splash of white on the ancient stone slabs.

Her silence was in itself a lie.

She’d kept the secret to herself for two days.

She’d had two days to tell him, to give him the opportunity to respond, and she hadn’t because in her heart she knew what that response would be. Draco wanted a child, an heir for the family acres he spoke of with such passion, and she’d been happy about that because all her life she’d wanted a family, she’d wanted to belong.

After her recent doctor’s appointment Jane knew the chances of her giving him that were slim to non-existent.

There would be no baby with Draco’s dark hair, she couldn’t give him what he wanted and one day he’d know too, and hate her. The ache in her chest became a physical pain that hurt more than the physical pain she’d suffered for so long, a pain that now had a name—endometriosis.

She couldn’t do this to him. She loved him too much.

With a small, lost cry, Jane picked up her heavy skirts, tears streaming down her face as she turned and ran.

The silence after the sound of her heels vanished was so deafening it bounced off the ancient rafters. All eyes were on the face of the man standing at the altar, a face that seemed carved from cold stone. The fire was in the flames of icy fury in his eyes.

CHAPTER ONE

THENARROWCOUNTRYlane snaked seemingly endlessly through the English countryside, bordered by unruly hedgerows brightened by hawthorn berries beneath canopies of ancient trees. Another occasion Draco might have enjoyed this corner of rural England he had never visited before.

As he lightly gripped the steering wheel of his sleek black car, the tap of his long, tapering brown fingers was the only outward indicator of the frustration that simmered beneath the surface. The overcast sky loomed, threatening rain that reflected his mood.

He could have done without this! The finger tapping against leather got louder. A visit to the site of a development that had become controversial overnight thanks to an overzealous, impatient site manager out to impress—wow, had that one backfired—was not his idea of a fun trip.

The guy had cut corners that didn’t need cutting and outraged vocal locals, who had tapped into several media outlets during a lull in the news cycle and hit a community nerve.

A shiny monster of a tractor lumbered into view, trundling along at a pace that seemed deliberate in its disregard for Draco’s timetable. His annoyance deepened—the driver was acting as though he were invisible.

This wasn’t how the CEO of Andreas Company should spend his morning. The corners of his sensually sculpted lips lifted in a half-smile. At least he had not yet lost the ability to laugh at himself...but who would tell him when he did?

The sad truth was, these days, nobody in his life would. It hadn’t always been that way, but he hadn’t always been a billionaire. People didn’t tell billionaires what to do.

---