Page 23 of His Wedding Day Revenge

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?

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