Kate Walker - The Groom's Revenge

His feet were planted firmly on the stone flags that lay before the heavy wooden main door, his hands resting loosely on lean hips, his head slightly to one side. His whole stance was one of mocking challenge as his dark eyes, eyes that were just pools of black in the shadowed planes of his face, met her stunned green ones in open provocation.

‘What are you doing here?’

Aidan stepped forward into the light of the lamp that illuminated the courtyard. His smile was just a hateful, cruel curl of his lips that made her blood run cold.

‘Would you believe I’ve come to wish you a happy birthday?’

‘No.’

It was a clipped, curt rejection of his teasing question, and she made no attempt to respond to that mockery of a smile.

‘And you know that I know that has to be the furthest thing from your thoughts.’

‘Well, there you’d be wrong, you know,’ Aidan put in with deceptive mildness, that smile growing wider. ‘I do wish you a very happy—what? Twenty-fourth birthday? And a wonderful year to follow.’

He almost sounded as if he meant it, India told herself. But almost immediately she clamped down hard on that weak train of thought. Even to allow the possibility to slide into her mind was foolish in the extreme. Foolish and very dangerous.

‘It can hardly be much worse than last year.’

She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, fearing that they gave away far too much. She didn’t want this man to know of all the long, lonely nights she had spent lying awake in an agony of frustration, the dreary, empty days she had dragged herself through since he had abandoned her so brutally. Immediately she tried to cover her tracks.

‘Though really I should thank you for what you did. You saved me from making what could quite possibly have been the worst mistake of my life.’

The way his head went back slightly, showing that her attack had hit home, made her give a small smile of satisfaction.

‘But I’m sure you didn’t come here to chat over old times.’ Deliberately she laced the words with acid. ‘So perhaps you’ll tell me the real reason for your sudden materialisation.’

‘Materialisation,’ Aidan echoed in dark amusement. ‘You make me sound like some alien being, or a ghost.’

Ghost indeed. The ghost of happier times, a reminder of the way she had once felt. India flinched away from the stab of anguish that pushed her into unconsidered speech.

‘A werewolf or a vampire is more like it!’ she flung at him.

‘Now you’re being fanciful.’

‘Am I? Am I really?’

How she wished she could bring her voice down a note on two. It was too high, too shrill, too bitterly revealing. It infuriated her even more to remember that she had always promised herself that if she ever met this man again then she would be so cool, would freeze him out completely. She could never bear it if he knew just how badly he had hurt her.

‘Well, let me tell you something, Mr Wolfe. In my mind, a vampire is just what you are! An emotional vampire, someone who preys on people’s feelings, taking them and sucking them dry, then casting them aside without a second thought when you’ve tired of them.’

‘Oh, come on.’ The smooth voice mocked her outburst. ‘You surely aren’t claiming that I broke your heart? After all, it wasn’t me you wanted but my money.’

His tone had sharpened noticeably on the last words, and now he took a couple of swift steps towards her, coming very close for the first time.

It took all India’s self-control not to recoil in panic. She had forgotten just how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were under the immaculately white T-shirt and the loose linen jacket.

She had never seen Aidan quite so casually dressed before, she realised. In all the time that they had been dating he had stuck rigidly to the formal suits he wore for work as well as leisure. So now it was painfully disconcerting to feel her mouth dry in an instinctively sensual response to the way that the soft cotton clung to the honed lines of his chest, the denim jeans he wore with it emphasising the powerful length of his legs.

Oh, God, how could he still do this to her after all that had happened? She couldn’t be so weak that he had only to appear and she fell straight back under his spell, could she?

‘You broke my heart? Now who’s being fanciful? We never had that sort of a relationship, and you know it You wanted me and I wanted you.’

‘And what I brought with me,’ Aidan inserted brutally. ‘So, tell me, how is it with your new lover?’

‘Lover?’ For a few seconds she couldn’t focus her mind enough to think. ‘Oh, Jim!’

‘Yes, Jim.’

The twist to Aidan’s mouth, the roughness of his voice, turned the name into an obscenity.

‘“You’ve been so good to me” Jim. “I don’t know how to thank you” Jim. What does he do for you, my lovely India? Does he give you more than I ever could? Was he the next wealthy man to walk through the door after I walked out of it?’

‘Precisely! You walked out!’ India pounced on the opening he had given her. ‘You walked out on me, remember. So don’t come the jilted fiancé—’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Aidan responded coolly, stopping her dead. ‘Believe me, he’s welcome to you.’

Those dark eyes noted the way India clamped her mouth shut against any weak protest at the callousness, and his smile surfaced once more. The curl of his lips was even more predatory than before.

‘But I wonder if he knows just how much it’s going to cost him.’

‘If you must know,’ India declared, unable to endure his taunts any longer, ‘Jim is just a very junior cog in the firm of Jenkins and Curran, my father’s—’

‘Your father’s solicitors,’ Aidan inserted dismissively. ‘I know who they are only too well.’

‘But how?’

‘We’ve had dealings,’ was the enigmatic response. ‘Which reminds me. Where is your dear papa?’

The edge in his voice was worrying, an undertone of threat seeming to lurk in his words like jagged rocks underneath the still surface of a calm sea. Hearing it, India felt an intuitive shiver run down her spine, setting her protective instincts on red alert.

‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked warily.

‘It was your father I came to see. Let’s just say I have some important business to discuss with him.’

If she had felt apprehensive before, that cryptic remark made matters ten times worse. Even before her wedding day Aidan and her father had been at daggers drawn, and she very much doubted that time had done anything to ease the situation.

‘I don’t think he’d want anything to do with you!’ The memory of the state in which she had just left her father sharpened her voice, giving it extra emphasis.

‘Oh, he’ll see me, darling. I promise you, he’ll want to talk to me very much, and if he’s wise he’ll arrange a meeting very soon. So when will he be back?’

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ India ignored the question, concentrating instead on the implications behind that ‘if he’s wise’.

‘Just what it says,’ Aidan returned indifferently. ‘I want to see your father, and it would be better for him if I saw him soon. So when do you expect him home?’

‘I don’t know.’

Which at least was nothing more than the truth. No matter when her father came out of hospital, it would be a long time before he would be well enough to talk to anyone, let alone the predatory Lone Wolfe. But what possible business could connect two such disparate men?

‘I could give him a message if you like,’ she managed, her attempt at cool confidence sadly marred by the sudden realisation that Aidan was between her and the door.

If she wanted to get inside she would have to go past him, she told herself. The idea made her uneasy, uncomfortably aware of the heavy shadows cast by the trees, the silence of the night and the recollection of the fact that Gary’s room was at the back of the house, well out of earshot.

‘If you just tell me what you want to say.’

For a long moment Aidan considered. ‘No.’ He shook his dark head decisively. ‘It’s between the two of us. ‘I’ll find him later. Tell him I was looking for him.’

‘Is that it?’ India questioned, receiving another of those slanted, mocking glances that aggravated the already edgy way she was feeling.

‘Were you looking for something more?’

‘Not on your life!’

She was disconcerted to realise just how close he had come to her, suddenly only inches away from her.

‘A pity.’ It was a low, seductive murmur, one that drew her attention against her will. Drew it and held it as if she were hypnotised. ‘Because I was just thinking that I couldn’t let you go without a kiss for old times’ sake.’

‘For—!’ India spluttered, a sense of panic gripping her round the throat, choking off her words as his head came even nearer, lowering to blot out the light of the moon.

He was so near that she could hear the sound of his breathing, catch the tang of some exclusive cologne. Her heart lurched into a wild, uneven rhythm that made her blood pound in her ears, and she was sure he must hear the accelerated beat of her heart.

‘Don’t you dare!’

Her voice was high and sharp, and it stilled that ominous movement, his head coming to a sudden halt.

‘Don’t you dare...’

It was less successful this time. A betraying quiver that she couldn’t quite suppress deprived her words of the force she had aimed for.

A wicked smile curved his lips, revealing perfect white teeth.

‘Oh, I dare,’ he drawled softly. ‘The question is, do you? You see, I wouldn’t be content with just a peck on the cheek and a breathless thank-you such as you gave your so-kind Jim.’

‘But you...’

‘I what?’ Aidan murmured when she struggled to find words to fling at him.

The trouble was that with that dark head so very close, with his lips curved into that deceptive softness, all she could think of was how it had once been. She could recall so vividly how it had felt to run her hands through the dark silk of his hair, to have that beautiful mouth against her own...

To her horror she found that she had actually raised her head, tilting it slightly, her lips parting as if to receive his kiss.

‘I what, sweetheart?’ Aidan repeated on a very different note, one so smokily sensual that it seemed to have the power to draw her soul from her body and straight into his ruthless hands. ‘I rejected you, cast you off—is that it?’

She couldn’t find any response. Her tongue seemed frozen and stiff inside her mouth.

‘Ah, but you’re forgetting one thing, my darling India. I may have walked away from the thought of tying myself down, but I could never refuse the invitation offered by that glorious body of yours. I was always unable to resist the temptation you offered, and, after twelve months, the hunger you arouse is stronger than ever.’

‘Invitation!’ India exploded, her head coming up sharply, green eyes blazing in rejection of his blunt declaration. ‘Offer! I’m not inviting anything! And, believe me, I have nothing whatsoever to offer you ever again! If you think otherwise, then you have most definitely totally misread the signals.’

‘Perhaps.’ His tone implied that he very much doubted it. ‘But, India, sweetheart—’

‘And I am not your sweetheart, or anything else! How you can possibly even begin to imagine that after the way you treated me I would want anything at all to do with you, I just don’t know. But...’