Ryan's Revenge by Lee Wilkinson

Author:Lee Wilkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2002-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

SHIVERING, feeling all the despair and desolation she had felt at that moment, Virginia came back to the present.

After a moment, his fair face still showing his concern, Charles asked, ‘So what did you do then?’

‘I sat in the airport until morning, then I managed to get a seat on an early flight to Heathrow. By the time I should have been getting married, I was more than halfway back to England.

‘When I got to London I booked in at a cheap hotel, and on Monday morning I started looking for a job… The rest you know.’

Frowning, Charles remarked, ‘You haven’t mentioned leaving a note or anything.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You mean you left without a word to anyone?’

‘Yes… I suppose I was in a state of shock. I certainly wasn’t in any condition to think straight. And what could I have said? What possible reason could I have given for not going through with the wedding? The truth would have torn the family apart, and Beth had a weak heart…’

‘You didn’t consider tackling Falconer?’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t bear the humiliation. I never wanted to see him again.’

‘I take it you continued to feel that way?’

‘Yes. That was why I didn’t want my parents to know where I was. They might have told him.’

‘I see. So you were virtually in hiding, and that’s why you’d dropped the Adams, and were calling yourself Virginia Ashley?’

‘Yes.’ Despairingly, she added, ‘I was just beginning to feel safe. It was an awful shock to see him in the gallery.’

Charles squeezed her sympathetically. ‘I could tell his presence affected you deeply. In fact I wondered at the time if you were in love with him?’

‘I just don’t know,’ she said, and tried to tell herself it was the truth.

‘Taking everything into consideration,’ Charles remarked seriously, ‘it’s just as well Falconer didn’t see you.’

She bit her lip. ‘I’m afraid he did.’

‘How do you know?’ he asked sharply.

‘I walked home through the park. He’d been waiting in the mews, and he followed me.’

Charles’s mouth tightened. ‘Did he speak to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘He didn’t touch you, did he? I’ll break his damn neck if he did.’

That kind of wild threat was so unlike Charles’s usual pragmatic approach that, scared of what might happen if he took on Ryan, she stammered, ‘N-no…not really. I mean, he just put his hands over my eyes and said, “Guess who?”’

‘But he scared you?’

‘Yes, he scared me. He said…’ Her voice shook so much she had to stop and take a steadying breath before she could go on. ‘He said he wants me back.’

Charles stiffened. ‘Wants you back? After the shabby way he treated you! Why does he want you back?’

‘He was furious at the way I’d left him and spoilt all his plans. He said there was a score to settle.’

She folded her arms over her chest, rubbing them as if she were cold. ‘I told him I had absolutely no intention of ever going back to him.’

‘Falconer doesn’t look to me like the kind of man who would take no for an answer.

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