The Groom's Revenge

And that had definitely not been just a ploy to get her into his bed. There had been no need for that. Physically, there had been no holding back on either part. But then, with Aidan, holding back was something of which she had never been capable.

‘But perhaps if you try again you’ll have better luck with someone else.’

Disdainfully he tossed the flowers back towards her, deliberately throwing them short so that even if she had made the effort to try to catch them they would still have fallen on the floor at her feet. The impact crushed the delicate blooms against the stone floor, scattering satiny cream petals over the flags.

‘You said you wanted to marry a rich man, my darling. But I’m sorry, it isn’t going to be me—even if I was the first through that door.’

And then she knew. India gave a small, shaken moan of distress, realising exactly what he meant.

‘I’m sick and tired of genteel poverty!’ Her own foolish words came back to haunt her.

‘You just watch me! I’m going to find myself a wealthy husband, one who can keep me in a manner to which I have every intention of becoming accustomed...

‘And I don’t plan on waiting for him to come to me. In fact, the very next rich man who walks through that door will find himself on the receiving end of such a campaign of seduction and enticement that he won’t be able to resist me. I’ll bet you anything you like I’ll have his ring on my finger before he knows what’s hit him...!’

It had been only a joke.

She tried to say the words but they wouldn’t form in her mouth, the knowledge that they weren’t strictly true closing her throat against them. She had only been half joking when she had made her impetuous declaration at her friend’s party—she had been half-serious too.

But when Aidan had walked into the room a short time later anything that had gone before had been forgotten in an instant, driven from her mind by a rush of sensual awareness so overwhelming that she’d been incapable of thinking of anything else.

But how had Aidan heard her crazy bet? He hadn’t even been in the house then—had he?

‘Aidan...’ she tried, but her voice was too weak to carry to him and, looking into the stony, set lines of his face, she knew that even if it had he wouldn’t have listened. Her small hesitation had been taken as evidence against her, used as proof of her guilt.

‘So I’m sorry.’ The dark intonation made it plain that sorrow was the very last thing he was feeling. ‘You’ll have to make do with what you’ve got; I have nothing more to give you. But don’t give up, darling. There are plenty more fish in the sea.’

One strong, tanned hand swept through the air in a gesture that took in all the congregation—all watching wide-eyed, stunned into stillness and silence by the drama unfolding before them.

Her family, her friends, India realised miserably. She had known that Aidan had no family living, and he had claimed that the speed with which their marriage had been arranged meant that his friends couldn’t make it to the service. But now she was forced to wonder if in fact he had ever invited them at all. Just how long had he been planning the revenge of this very public rejection?

‘I’m sure someone else here would be only too willing to oblige. Just don’t expect me to stand around and watch.’

And as soon as he had finished speaking he turned on his heel and strode away from her, walking out of the church and out of her life without so much as a backward glance.

CHAPTER TWO

THE flowers were the first thing that India saw when she let herself into the house at the end of a long, emotionally draining day. Instinctively she knew that they meant trouble, and trouble was something she already had more than enough of on her plate.

The gold and cream beauty of the roses glowed in the late evening sun, their colour in powerful contrast to the deep oak of the dresser on which they lay. They were glorious—there was no other word for them. A sight that would normally lift anyone’s spirits.

But it wasn’t the present bouquet that registered in India’s thoughts. Instead, her mind was filled with the memory of another, identical set of flowers lying on the ground at her feet exactly one year before.

‘Just don’t expect me to stand around and watch’.

Aidan’s last words reverberated inside her head, making her shake it hard in a vain attempt to drive them away. It was as if the year since she had heard them had never happened.

Aidan wouldn’t come back. She’d known that to be the truth in the moment that she had looked into his face and seen the unyielding cold steel of rejection etched into every line, darkening his eyes to obsidian.

Aidan Wolfe was a proud, ruthless man. He was someone who lived life by his own rules and ignored the restrictions of a more conventional approach. He had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, coming from nothing to become the head of a multi-faceted corporation that he was now. He had a reputation for being as tough as they came, someone who didn’t suffer fools gladly and who gave no quarter at all in his business dealings. But she would have sworn that with her he could have been so very different.

But, when it came down to it, how well had she known him? How well could you know anyone you had met barely six weeks before your wedding day? Even as Julia faced the truth of that question, Jane’s words on the night of the fateful party came back to haunt her.

‘Oh, God, Indy, no!’ her friend had said, all the light and laughter dying from her face as she’d looked across the room in response to India’s stunned declaration that the man of her dreams had just walked through the door. ‘Not the Lone Wolfe himself! No one tangles with him and lives to tell the tale.’

‘Why’s that?’ India had asked, her mind only half on the question, her eyes devouring the dark, saturnine features and tall, powerful body of the man who had caught her attention. ‘Is he some sort of a heart-breaker?’

‘Soul-breaker’s more like it.’ Her friend had shivered dramatically. ‘Business negotiations or women, he treats them both the same. He takes what he wants and discards the rest without his heart even missing a beat. In fact, it’s been rumoured that he actually doesn’t even possess the organ in question, let alone the feelings supposed to go with it. So, you have been warned.’

But she hadn’t cared, India admitted to herself. She hadn’t cared who or what he was, or whether he was rich or poor, a success or failure. She had never believed in love at first sight before, but now she knew that she had been knocked completely off balance, her sense of reality rocked in a way that she had never experienced in her life.

And so she had made her way over to where Aidan stood, dark and devastating in black shirt and trousers topped by a loose black linen jacket, and, with uncharacteristic forwardness, had introduced herself to him.

‘You may not know this,’ she had said, her voice sliding up and down in a mixture of excitement and near-hysteria, ‘but I’m the girl you’ve been waiting for all your life.’

‘Are you, indeed?’ Aidan had drawled, one dark eyebrow drifting upwards in intrigued speculation as he’d subjected her to a slow, deliberate scrutiny. Those deep brown eyes had scanned every inch of her from the top of her head, over the home-made dress and down to her slender feet, before he’d added, ‘Do you know, you could be right?’

He had offered her a drink, and the rest was history. History that had turned so terribly sour in the end, leading as it had done to the farce of her wedding day. If only she had known...

But the truth was that she had never really known Aidan Wolfe—except perhaps in one way.

A tiny touch of colour crept into India’s cheeks at the memory of the very physical, passionate nature of their relationship. Then faded again at the thought of the way that that very sensuality had been her undoing. It had rushed her into Aidan’s bed and into that precipitous marriage, handing him the perfect weapon to turn against her. -

Almost in the same moment that she had realised the depth of her love for him, that same love had been transformed into an equally powerful, deeply burning hatred.

That hatred had sustained her through the dark days that had followed. It had forced her out of bed on the mornings when all she’d wanted to do was to pull the covers over her head and hide away. It had given her the strength to ignore the speculative looks and whispered comments that had greeted her appearance in the village. If she gave in to the hurt, then Aidan had won. He would have succeeded in his cruel plan to humiliate her, and she would rather die than let that happen.

And so she had forced herself to get on with her life, meeting those curious glances with what she’d hoped was a confident smile, and holding her head high. The act had worked, seeming to convince people that she didn’t care, and in the end she had almost come to believe it Until today.

‘When did these arrive?’ she asked her brother, the catch in her voice revealing feelings that went deeper than the careless gesture towards the flowers indicated.

‘Coogan’s delivered them at two this afternoon.’

Gary was clearly unaware of her struggle to impose some control over her emotions. But then, like most fourteen-year-olds, he lived in his own private world. He probably didn’t even realise what day it was, the events of the previous year having faded from his mind at least.

‘Did they say who they were from?’

And why two o’clock so precisely, unless they were from someone who knew the significance of that time? If the choice of flowers had already set her teeth on edge, now an uncomfortable suspicion ran like pins and needles along every nerve.

‘Dunno. But there’s a card somewhere if you want to look.’

She didn’t; didn’t want confirmation of her fears. But she just had to.

‘Who’s “A”?’ Gary looked over her shoulder in curiosity. ‘Some secret admirer?’

‘Nothing like that.’

Did he really not know? Was it possible that he couldn’t even guess? Or was it only in her own thoughts that the single, forceful initial could only ever mean one name?