‘This isn’t what it looks like.’ The cheating husband took another step to distance himself from the girl who was standing there, quite beautiful, quite still; she could have passed for a statue.
The music had stopped and everyone around them, sensing the drama, busily pretended not to be listening while hanging on every word. The girl moved towards her lover, who held out a hand as though to fend her off. She froze in response to the rejection, her big eyes radiating hurt and confusion. Seb thought of hard-working Alice, all the Alices out there, and cast out the seed of pity before it took root in his head.
‘Is Alice... You know, your wife... Is she working, or is she looking after the kids? How does that woman cope?’ He shook his head in wondering admiration and drawled, ‘A busy medical practice, a mother of two and a husband who cheats on her?’
Mari waited for Adrian to say something, willed him to say something, to tell this terrible man who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere like some sort of sleek and dark avenging angel—in a world where angels wore very expensive tailoring—that this was all a mistake.
They’d laugh about it later in bed when they were sharing the bottle of champagne that he had ordered.
But the only sound was the shocked mutters from the other guests. Mari didn’t turn her head, but she could feel the hostility and disapproval of their stares like daggers in her slender back.
‘I couldn’t help myself. She... I love my wife but... Well, just look at her!’
Her last hope vanished.
Every word that man had said was true.
She was the other woman. She hadn’t known, but that didn’t lessen Mari’s sense of crushing guilt and shame. Her sense of total isolation was complete; she had never felt more alone in her life. Pressing a hand to her stomach, she breathed her way through a wave of intense nausea. When was Adrian going to tell her? After, stupid.
Seb, tuning out the rest of the other man’s words, followed the line of his accusing finger. The woman standing there represented everything he despised in a female, yet he had no control over the hot hunger that slammed afresh through his body.
While his mind rejected and despised her, his body wanted her. You had to recognise a weakness to control it, and Seb valued control.
Control or not, it was still salt in a raw wound to acknowledge that she stood there looking like a piece of porcelain about to shatter, and there was a part of him that wanted to comfort her.
She could have had any man she wanted, and she had decided she wanted a married loser? When she could have... Who, Seb? You?
He ignored the mocking words in his head and launched a fresh invective, this time directed at the woman. ‘Do you care that he’s got a wife and children waiting for him at home?’
Mari cringed under the man’s interrogative stare, literally paralysed by misery and guilt.
Her silence whipped his anger to a fresh high as he turned his inner rage on her and snarled contemptuously, ‘Is it just a bit of fun?’ He shook his dark head, a harsh sound of disgust escaping his clamped lips as he suggested with withering distaste, ‘Or just because you can?’
She swayed and Seb heard the catch of her breath above the wind and the litany of excuses that were free falling from Adrian’s lips, telling everyone who would listen how this was not his fault, he was a victim.
With an exasperated growl Seb turned his head and dealt the cheating husband an arctic glare. The other man gulped and whined.
‘You won’t tell Alice, will you? It’ll only hurt her, and this will never happen again.’
‘Wow, you really are a prize, aren’t you?’ Seb’s attentions swivelled back to the girl. ‘Did you think he would marry you, or is this real love?’ he mocked. ‘So that makes it all right?’
‘I’m sorry.’
The whisper made Seb’s tenuous grip on his self-control slip another fatal notch.
‘Sorry...?’ he blasted back, six feet five of towering contempt moving in a step closer. ‘You think that makes it somehow better, that it makes the people whose lives you trashed happy again? Love or not, sweetheart, what you’ve done makes you the worst sort of slut... Oh, and just for the record, men take sluts to their beds, but rarely in my experience marry them.’
Every word the man was saying was true; every word was making something shrivel and die inside her.
With a final horrified stare from the swimming blue eyes, she gave a choked sob and turned and ran, her fiery hair streaming out behind her.
‘You big bully!’ An elderly grey-haired woman voiced what seemed to be, if the glares were any indication, the general consensus.
The hell of it was Seb, who kept seeing those blue eyes, half agreed with them.
MARI HADN’T EXPECTED it to be this easy, but so far no one questioned her presence in the cordoned-off street where she blended in pretty well with the other women negotiating the ancient cobbles in high heels, worried that any slip or inelegant stumble would be recorded for posterity by the photographers lined up along the other side of the barrier.
She had more things than falling off her heels to worry about!
Relax, Mari. A ghost of a smile touched her lips—she was, after all, only following doctor’s orders. Admittedly it was doubtful if the well-meaning medic had had this in mind when he had noticed her shaking hand was unable to hold a teacup and banned her from the hospital for twenty-four hours.
‘We’ll let you know if there is any change. Go home,’ he had encouraged. ‘Have a meal, get some rest. You need a change of scene and something to take your mind off things. I know it’s hard, but you’re in this for the long haul and you’ll be no good to your brother if you collapse from exhaustion, believe me. I’ve seen it happen.’
If she’d had the energy Mari might have laughed at the thought of anything taking her mind off her brother’s situation. But common sense had made her recognise the grain of truth in his words, so she’d not protested when he’d called her a taxi, not that she’d had any intention of being away from Mark’s bedside for longer than it took her to shower and get a change of clothes.
After the shower she had sat looking at a sandwich she had no appetite for with the television playing in the background to drown out her thoughts... If only? Her brain wouldn’t switch off; it just kept going around in dizzying circles. She managed a bite, chewing and swallowing without tasting before her eyes began to close, her chin sank to her chest and she was on the point of drifting off when she was jolted awake by a name. Hate pushed away fatigue as, her expression set in lines of loathing, she reached for the volume on the TV control.
The news presenter on the scene was giving the viewers the life story of the bride and groom in what was being grandly called ‘the wedding of the year’.
God, was that today...?
Mari sat there, her hate an aching solid presence on her chest, her thoughts buzzing as she tuned out the woman who droned on while images of the bride looking beautiful somewhere fashionable and the groom—even more beautiful—looking down his aristocratic nose at someone or something flashed across the screen.
She knew all she needed to about Seb Rey-Defoe and his bride-to-be, and as far as she was concerned they deserved one another! When she had seen the announcement of their forthcoming wedding she had laughed.
The bride, Elise Hall-Prentice, was an upper-crust