A Contract for His Runaway Bride by Melanie Milburne

Author:Melanie Milburne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-09-13T19:16:52+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELODIE WOKE FROM a deep, blissful sleep to find Lincoln had left the bed. She glanced at the bedside clock and frowned. It was three in the morning. She pushed back the covers and slipped on her wrap, tying the ties around her waist. There was no light on in the bathroom, but the doors leading out to the balcony were open, for she could see the billowing of the silk curtains as the night breeze stirred them. She pushed the curtains aside to find Lincoln standing against the balustrade with his back to her. He was wearing his underwear but the rest of him was naked.

‘Lincoln?’

He turned and smiled at her. ‘Sorry. Did I wake you?’

‘Not really.’ She went over to where he was standing and touched him on the arm. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

He picked up her hand from where it was resting on his arm and brought it up to his mouth, his eyes still holding hers. He kissed the ends of her fingers, one by one, his touch sending tremors of pleasure through her body.

‘I guess I’ve got used to spending the night alone.’

Elodie frowned. ‘Alone? I don’t understand... You mean you don’t spend the night with any of your...your lovers?’

Lincoln released her hand and turned back to look at the moonlit view. His hands gripped the balustrade and even in the low light she could see the straining of the tendons in the backs of his hands. ‘I prefer not to.’

Elodie stared at him for a long moment, trying to get her head around this latest revelation. He no longer spent the whole night with a lover. Then she recalled that he had said he hadn’t been with anyone for months after their breakup, in spite of the photo she had seen in the press the week after she’d jilted him. The photo that had cut at her like a flick knife, making her hate him for moving on so quickly.

She hadn’t realised until she saw the photo how much she had wanted him to come after her, to fight for her, to beg her to come back to him. To reassure her that he cared about her, that he wanted to be with her, that even, by some miracle, he loved her.

But he had done none of that.

And because of that damn photo she hadn’t made any effort to contact him other than the brief note of apology she had left on the hall table with the engagement ring—which, of course, he claimed he hadn’t got.

‘Lincoln...you said the other day you didn’t sleep with anyone for months after we broke up. Why was that?’

His expression was as screened as the moon was just then by a passing cloud. ‘Don’t go reading too much into it.’

‘But why did you actively encourage me—and the rest of the world when it comes to that—to believe you’d moved on to someone else the very next week?’

‘Why would that upset you? You were the one who jilted me. You made it clear we were over.

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