Last Stop Marriage

Last Stop Marriage
Emma Darcy

Last stop marriage… first stop passion! Jayne thinks she wants stability more than she wants Dan's love. Dan knows that traveling the world from A to Z is more important than stability. Result: their marriage is over… or is it? When Jayne meets Dan again after they've been apart for a while, he seems to have changed his tune.For a man who hates domesticity, what is he doing with an adorable baby in tow? But, if Dan is finally ready to settle down, Jayne wants to be sure she's the last stop on his itinerary!"Emma Darcy pulls no punches with this emotionally stirring tale that readers will want to savor." - Romantic Times

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#uf8abf7f0-837e-54f5-b9d7-0c9d7d0a8c5f)

Excerpt (#u98ba14d5-b422-5a4a-a252-2685f3555630)

About the Author (#u0d4c305b-698c-59fc-8264-7543195e1e1d)

Title Page (#u5e788f98-0aec-5e17-876e-fb5f4ca7db37)

Dedication (#ucf483573-6324-5222-bea0-dd752ee91da7)

CHAPTER ONE (#u9de2b173-fad2-5ac0-a1dc-2f8110f651b2)

CHAPTER TWO (#uf539fdaa-e16f-56a3-9ddd-4bafeedb0bac)

CHAPTER THREE (#u856cf33e-812a-568a-850a-54f20e595ac0)

CHAPTER FOUR (#u55d76eb5-5ee1-58e1-9527-dcece447d3c3)

CHAPTER FIVE (#u4ee54a8a-ecc7-54e6-b6b4-cc18f3520403)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“Was the urge to hold the baby again irresistible?”

“I told you…”

“She’s so soft and warm and cuddly, so sweetly appealing. Makes your stomach curl, doesn’t it?”

“I…” Jayne floundered. It was true, yet it was true of all baby things—kittens and puppies and chickens. It didn’t mean she was broody for a baby. “It’s only natural to feel caring toward a child this young,” she said defiantly.

“Does your new career make up for the child we could have had, Jayne?” Dan asked, insidiously striking the raw feelings that had erupted through her last night. “The baby we could have shared.”

EMMA DARCY nearly became an actress until her fiancе declared he preferred to attend the theater with her. She became a wife and mother. Later she took up oil painting—unsuccessfully, she remarks. Then she tried architecture, designing the family home in New South Wales, Australia. Next came romance writing—“the hardest and most challenging of all the activities,” she confesses.

Last Stop Marriage

Emma Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To Guy Hallowes whose interest in China inspired our interest

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_06f26e37-1ead-54cd-acf9-d380f2b3dbc7)

‘GET Dan Drayton.’

Theplea…theinstruction…thecommand…thumped continuously through the shocked daze in Jayne Winter’s mind as she watched her stricken employer being wheeled away, an oxygen mask clamped over his mouth and nose.

He had told her not to worry about anything else nor to let any other consideration get in the way. Dan Drayton could do the job. Given the critical situation, he would certainly take over and do the job for Monty. All Jayne had to do was contact him, brief him on the problem, and give him whatever assistance he required when he arrived.

Simple.

Except it wasn’t simple.

Far from it.

Dan Drayton was the man she had married in blind passion and left when irreconcilable differences had formed an unbridgeable chasm between them. Monty Castle knew nothing about that part of her life. She had shut the door on it, asserting her independence by adopting her maiden name again before gaining employment as Monty’s personal assistant.

Her estranged husband was the last person in the world she wanted to call on for help. She would rather be dragged over hot coals than admit any need for him whatsoever. As for working with him, being at his beck and call, having to carry out his orders…Jayne quailed at the thought of how Dan might use that situation to bring all sorts of pressure to bear on her.

Perhaps he was tied up in a contract and couldn’t come. Perhaps he was somewhere inaccessible, impossible to reach. He had the soul of a Gypsy, his typically whimsical and eccentric ambition being to visit every country in the world in alphabetical order.

She had felt she was being swept away on a marvellous magic carpet when she had first married Dan. The magic had worn thin when she had found her life reduced to being a camp follower while he went out and blew up mountains or whatever else he was contracted to do as an explosives expert.

Iran had been the end for her, stuck in the American engineers’ ghetto, going quietly mad with frustration. If she moved out of it she had to be covered from head to toe in black, a faceless person, a nothing person. That was how she had felt. She only really existed for Dan as the woman he came home to bed.

He was probably up to L or M by now. He had done China a long time ago so he wouldn’t want to come here anyway. She hadn’t particularly wanted to come to China herself, having done enough travelling with Dan to last her the rest of her life. Yet she now felt that in taking this trip and its accompanying challenges in her stride, she had really come of age as a person who could handle anything.