Page 48 of His Wedding Day Revenge

Jane saw the echo of the remembered pain and frustration in his grim, almost haunted expression and her heart squeezed for the boy and young man he had once been.

‘But now you can and you have,’ she said gently.

Their eyes met and she watched the steel barriers sliding into place, until his face was an unreadable blank.

Frustration built up inside her. Just as he’d seemed to be opening up he had shut her out again.

‘I should go back in, and get it over with,’ Draco said, glancing back towards the lights of the building behind them. ‘Christina isn’t here for no reason.’ It would be money. On the rare occasion she appeared it always had been, and if it wasn’t for the fact she would stalk Jamie he would have sent her away empty-handed.

‘And you are still protecting Jamie.’

‘You like it here?’

Thrown by the abrupt change of subject and the tension in the atmosphere, she nodded. ‘Obviously—what is not to like?’ she said, her heart drumming.

‘Does it actually need to end?’

Jane’s thoughts raced as she closed her eyes against the chaos in her head... She took a deep breath and met his too intent dark eyes.

‘What are you saying, Draco?’ Not what you think, said the voice in her heart, except she didn’t know what she thought. You couldn’t kill hope.

Perhaps he saw something in her face because he said straight away, ‘Obviously I am not proposing.’

The idea that he suspected her dreams was utterly humiliating.

‘Obviously,’ she said, enunciating each syllable with elaborate care while inside she felt like a total idiot.

‘I think we both know, you before me possibly, that we would never have worked as a couple, but if we put our history aside there is no doubt that we have...something...?’

‘Sex,’ she intervened bluntly.

‘Our personal relationship aside, your enthusiasm for this community, they would welcome you.’

‘I know you look at me as the cure for some temporary testosterone imbalance!’ she flung out wildly as she surged to her feet. ‘But I don’t see that as my life’s work. I already have a life, and I don’t want a temporary bit part in yours. My future doesn’t involve you, Draco. Do you really think I would uproot Mattie, move to a different country where I have no friends...?’ she exclaimed, breathless with indignation. ‘My God, you have to be the most selfish, arrogant man in the universe!’

He ground his teeth. ‘Why can’t we discuss this situation like two sensible adults?’

‘Because there is no situation and only one of us is a sensible adult. Thanks for the offer, Draco, but I’m already spoken for. My life is in England.’

The words thrown out conjured the image of Jane throwing open her cottage door, her bedroom door, to some faceless male figure. ‘I’m here.’

‘Your arrogance sometimes, Draco, is... You think you’re the big selling point?’ If that was what he thought it was hardly surprising, given that her feelings must have been obvious. ‘I really need to go. I need to get back to Mattie.’

‘You use him as an excuse. I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear to keep you here.’

The charge brought a hectic angry flush to her smooth cheeks. Presumably he thought she wanted to hear him say he loved her, and he was right, she realised, despising herself for holding onto a dream. ‘I don’t use anyone, Draco. I leave that to you! And you have no idea what I want to hear.’

She turned as the tears spilled, before he could see them overflow, before he could tell her that she had wanted to be used.

She had begged to be used.

Draco watched her stalk up the path, spine rigid, chin high. Even in the midst of his anger, justifiable anger, at her attitude, her delicious bottom under the silk, the sway of her hips were a major distraction.

As he watched she stumbled and fell off her spiky heels and the instinct to go to her assistance made him surge forward, only to ask himself what the hell he was doing when she regained her balance and a string of curses drifted his way on the soft still night.

Without turning back, she bent down, pulled off her shoes and, with them dangling from the fingers of one hand, continued to walk up the incline.

The party was still in full swing and he had several people, donors and supporters, that he had to talk to.

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