The Bride's Baby by Liz Fielding

Author:Liz Fielding [Fielding, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2008-12-01T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

MARK HILLIARD didn’t say a word when Tom joined him, but then they’d known one another for a long time. A look was enough.

‘I’m sorry about that. As you may have realised, there’s a bit of…tension.’

‘Sackcloth and ashes? If that’s tension, I wouldn’t like to be around when you declare open war.’ Mark’s smile was thoughtful. ‘To be honest, it sounded more like—’

‘Like what?’ he demanded, but the man just held up his hands and shook his head. But then, he didn’t have to say what he was thinking. It was written all over his face. ‘It was a business matter,’ he said abruptly. Which was true. ‘Nothing else.’ Which was not.

Sackcloth and ashes.

That wasn’t like any business dispute he’d ever been involved in. It was more like an exchange between two people who couldn’t make up their minds whether to throttle one another or tear each other’s clothes off.

Which pretty much covered it. At least from his viewpoint, except that he hadn’t wanted to feel that way about anyone. Out of control. Out of his mind. Racked with guilt…

She had clearly wasted no time in putting him out of her mind. But he could scarcely blame her for that. He’d walked away, hadn’t written, hadn’t called, then messed up by asking his secretary to send her a cheque for the full amount of her account. Paid in full. No wonder she’d sent the money back.

And then, when he’d been ready to fall at her feet, grovel, it had been too late.

But six months hadn’t changed a thing. Sylvie Smith still got to him in ways that he didn’t begin to understand.

And he was beginning to suspect, despite the fact that she was expecting a baby with her childhood sweetheart—and he tried not to think about how long that relationship had been in existence, whether it was an affair with her that had wrecked the new Earl’s marriage—it was the same for her.

The truth of the matter was that, even in sackcloth, she would have the ability to bring him to meltdown. Which was a bit like getting burned and then putting your hand straight back in the fire.

But as she’d stood there while that crazy female went on about the village church, about walking up the aisle, about someone standing at the altar—about him standing at the altar—he’d seen it all as plainly as if he’d been there. Even the light streaming through a stained glass window and dancing around her hair, staining it with a rainbow of colours.

He’d seen it and had wanted to be there in a way he’d never wanted that five-act opera of a wedding, unpaid advertising in the gossip magazines for Miss Sylvie Duchamp Smith that Candy had been planning.

A small country church with the sweet scent of violets that even out here seemed to cling to him instead of some phoney show-piece. A commitment that was real between two people who were marrying for all the right reasons.

So real, in fact, that he’d come within a heartbeat of reaching out a hand to her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.