Page 49 of His Wedding Day Revenge

He needed a few moments to compose himself before he could do his duty. Where was your devotion to duty a few minutes ago, Draco? he asked himself. He held himself to strict self-imposed rules, rules that meant he would never see his own father when he looked in the mirror.

Do you want rules or the woman you...? His clenched fist turned white as he fought the word before it formed in his head, words he didn’t want to say, emotions he didn’t want to feel.

He didn’t need Jane. He didn’t need any woman.

But he wanted her, how he wanted her.

‘Going to follow her?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ITWASTHEvoice that always elicited a visceral reaction of distaste that brought home the fact he had walked, not towards the building, but away from it and towards the palazzo.

‘What are you doing here, Christina?’ Despite the surgery, or maybe because of it, the years had not been kind to her, or maybe that was the sheer malevolence that he saw behind the perfect features, more perfect now than when she had married his father.

The blonde’s over-pumped lips pouted. ‘You forgot my invite.’

‘The only invitation you’ll get from me is to go to hell,’ Draco informed her in a deceptively mild voice.

‘Oh, well, if you’re going to be like that...but I’ll make allowances, Draco. Someone said no to you, so you are bound to be feeling a bit—’

‘You were eavesdropping!’

‘Before you ask, I heard enough.’ The spiteful tinkle of laughter bounced off him. ‘Poor Draco knocked back. You know, you reminded me of your father for a moment there.’

She watched the colour drain out of his face and smiled a complacent cat-like smile that left her eyes hard as stone.

‘Grovelling comes easy to the Andreas men.’

Denial was his first response.

Fury was his second and then—after he searched his memory for proof she was wrong—relief.

‘Thank you,’ he said softly.

He was not his father. He was his own kind of fool.

An expression of incomprehension flashed across the blonde’s face.

‘What for?’ she said warily.

‘For making me realise that I am nothing like my father.’ His father had been many things, including deluded, but he had not been a coward, he thought in self-disgust. Whereas he had been a blind coward who had exiled himself from so many possibilities because he didn’t have the guts to admit what he wanted.

To admit what he felt.

Jane hadn’t walked away because he wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear, because he took pride in telling it the way it was...not sugar-coating it.

He had asked her to leave behind everything she knew and offered her nothing in return.

She had walked away because he was too much of a coward to say what she wanted to hear. He was too much of a coward to admit what he felt for her.

That he loved her.

He glanced at the spiteful face of the woman opposite, impatience, not anger, in his face now... He wanted this charade to be over. He saw his stepmother’s expression falter a little, but she rallied and was back a moment later, her malicious smirk in place.

‘She has quite a mouth on her, that girl. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her, but then you never can tell, can you? From those sweet and innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt appearances.’

He did not move, and he did not raise his voice when he said softly, ‘You will not speak of Jane. Is that understood?’

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