Mistress Of The Groom

‘For Ava’s sake. I wasn’t going to compound her hurt and humiliation by broadcasting your vitriolic lies to an even greater audience, by exposing our intimate lives in open court. Ava hated being in the public eye—even the prospect of a big wedding was an ordeal for her. Exposing her to more ridicule and gossip wouldn’t have regained me her trust, or her parents’ respect.’

So he had known that Ava didn’t want an extravagant show on her wedding day but still hadn’t supported her against her mother. Given the choice of offending her parents or riding roughshod over the wishes of the woman he loved, he had chosen the latter. What did that say about his so-called love?

Jane summoned her most indifferent stare as he continued savagely, ‘You planned it very cunningly—I was damned whatever I did. A lie has no leg, but a scandal has wings, and no matter what penalty you were slapped with in court there would always be people who believed that there was foundation to the story. The only way to protect Ava was to remove myself from the scene. I was going to come back when the dust settled and quietly sort things out between us, but by then it was too late. Knowing how cautious she is, I certainly didn’t expect her to get married on the rebound...’

‘How very self-sacrificing of you,’ said Jane, crushing down a pang of sympathy. At some stage everyone involved in the sorry saga had modified their actions in order to protect Ava from cruel reality, when in actual fact the helpless little darling had been a clear-eyed pragmatist, operating on her own agenda!

‘A concept you wouldn’t understand...not with your heritage,’ he sliced back with razor-edged sharpness. ‘I wonder if old Mark is looking up from his seat in hell, cursing his only child for letting the worldly goods he sold his greedy soul for slip through her fingers...’

His insulting familiarity made Jane wary, prey to the ambivalent feelings that mention of her parentage always evoked. Mark Sherwood had been as crude as he was shrewd. Not many people had liked him. ‘You knew my father?’

He smiled unpleasantly. ‘By reputation only. Gone but not forgotten, you might say...’

His cryptic answer implied there was a great deal more, but as she tensed Jane bumped her sore hand against her thigh and a vicious jab of pain sent a fresh wash of nausea rolling over her, exacerbated by the motion of the car as it swayed around a corner.

She tried to localise the pain by consciously relaxing the rest of her body, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the top of the seat, unaware that her sudden p

hysical pliancy was viewed with cynical suspicion by the man opposite—especially as the slow rotation of her tense shoulders allowed the deep bodice of her gown to dip and tighten enticingly over her ripe breasts.

His big hands clenched at his sides, his blue eyes brooding over the gypsy-dark tumble of hair and the unmistakable signs of stress in the strong-boned face, the hollows shadowed by the thick fan of her lashes and the new prominence of her haughty cheekbones under the pale skin, translucent with tiredness. The lips, which were normally barely touched with discreet colour, were tonight a block of bright red gloss, now slightly smeared, that revealed a surprising fullness, the lush curve of her mouth a sensuous counterpoint to the straight, almost masculine slash of her thick ebony eyebrows. His eyes drifted back down to her breasts, to the long legs tilted away from his.

‘You have his looks.’

‘Whose? My father’s? I thought you said you didn’t know him,’ Jane said, without opening her eyes. She knew from his gravelly tone it wasn’t meant to be a compliment, even though her father had been considered extremely handsome in his heyday. A man who was attracted to Ava’s delicate, blonde, china-doll brand of femininity was bound to find Jane less than enchanting.

‘I know he was big. Dark. Chunky.’

She was in too much pain to take offence, as he clearly intended her to do. She was big-framed but she wasn’t fat, and in the last few stressful months she had actually dropped below optimum weight for her height.

‘So are you.’

She opened her eyes and found him contemplating the similarity with distaste, absently manipulating his bruised jaw with his blunt fingers.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked involuntarily, jerking upright as she realised the vulnerability of her position.

‘Yes,’ he growled.

‘Good.’ There was a small silence as they measured glances, blue on blue. ‘You’ve still got blood on your mouth,’ she felt driven to add. ‘In the corner, on the right’

He probed the place with his tongue. ‘Sure it’s not your lipstick?’ he jeered, taking the immaculately folded white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket.

His answer caught her by surprise, and because she wasn’t sure she flushed. She felt again the hard, crushing grind of his mouth, the fierce stab of his tongue impaling her senses, filling her with the angry taste of him.

He studied her hectic colour for a moment before wiping the stain from his lips with a taunting slowness. ‘Better?’ He held out the handkerchief. ‘Your turn.’

‘For what?’ she said suspiciously.

‘Your lipstick’s smudged. It’s obviously not kiss-proof... not that it would need to be. You usually just freeze off any man who gets within touching distance, don’t you Lady Sherwood?’

Normally the snooty nickname didn’t bother her, but this man gave it an extra bite that made her snap. ‘If he’s anything like you—yes!’

‘You haven’t dated the same man more than twice in the last two years...they can’t all be like me!’ he said drily.

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she replied icily, and immediately regretted it as his eyes narrowed in sly triumph.

‘Have I been working you too hard? Were you afraid that I might sneak in and snatch your business while you were otherwise engaged? Too bad, since it happened anyway. Maybe you shouldn’t have cold-shouldered all those likely prospects that Daddy tried to set you up with... Oh, yes, Ava told me all about them. But none of them could compete with your ambition, could they? All work and no play...no wonder Jane is such a dull, lonely girl—’

‘Go to hell!’ she flashed for the second time that night, aware that in her inarticulate rage she sounded more like a sulky teenager than a seasoned businesswoman renowned for her acid wit. She should be immune to his insults by now—but her sense of self-worth was badly damaged and she no longer seemed able to maintain the icy, unemotional façade that had been her vital strength during the last two years of ceaseless pressure from Spectrum Developments and its charismatic owner.