How did I ever think he was the man of my dreams? she wondered, feeling queasy as he planted a hand on the tree trunk beside her head and leaned in closer.
Struggling not to breathe in the fumes, she countered acidly, ‘Well, you know, you can’t miss what you’ve never had.’
Having followed the spiky imprints of her heels across the wet grass, Kamel took only a few minutes to locate the couple in the tree. He didn’t pause. Unable to see them, he heard their voices as with a face like thunder he charged straight through a shrub.
This wasn’t a moment to stop and consider, not a moment for subtlety. He’d bent over backwards to be reasonable but she wasn’t a woman who responded to reasonable. Was she pushing boundaries, checking just how far she could push him? Or maybe she simply lacked any normal sense of propriety? This wasn’t about jealousy. It was one thing to have a pragmatic approach to marriage, but she had not just crossed the line, she had obliterated it!
The couple came into his line of vision about the same moment that he mentally processed the interchange he had just heard. It was astonishing enough to stop him in his tracks.
‘Well, he’s welcome to you!’
Hannah struggled and failed to swallow a caustic retort to this petulant response. ‘Well, the idea that I was your soul mate didn’t last long, did it?’
‘Bitch!’ Rob snarled. ‘You think you’ve landed on your feet now, but we all know what happens to people when they get in your husband’s way...’
Hannah was shaken by the malice and ugly jealousy in his face. Jealousy...! She shook her head in disbelief. Perhaps he’d been acting the injured party so long he actually believed it.
The full realisation of just how lucky she had been hit home. She could have been married to him.
Her stomach gave a fresh shudder of disgust as she pulled in a breath, trying to surreptitiously ease away from him. As nice as it would have been to drop the icy dignity that had got her through that awful day, this wasn’t the time and definitely not the place, she thought, to have the last word.
This could get ugly.
‘They have a habit of disappearing.’ He mimed a slashing action across his throat. ‘So watch yourself.’
The sinister comment drew a startled laugh from her. It was clearly not the reaction Rob had wanted, as his face darkened and he grabbed for her. Things happened with dizzying speed so that later when she thought about it Hannah couldn’t recall the exact sequence of events.
Kamel surged forward but Hannah was quicker. Unable to escape, she ducked and her attacker’s head hit the tree trunk with a dull thud.
Her attempt to slip under his arm was less successful, and by the time Kamel reached her the man, with blood streaming from a superficial head wound, had caught her arm and swung her back.
‘Bitch!’
Hannah hit out blindly with her free hand and then quite suddenly she was free. Off balance, she fell and landed on her bottom on the wet grass. When she looked up Rob was standing with one hand twisted behind his back with Kamel whispering what she doubted were sweet nothings into the older man’s ear, if the white-lipped fury stamped on his face was any indication.
Rob, who had blood seeping from a gash on his head, seemed to shrink before her eyes and started muttering excuses in full self-preservation mode.
‘If I ever see you in the same postcode as my wife...if you so much as look in her direction...’ Kamel leaned in closer, his nostrils flaring in distaste at the smell of booze and fear that enveloped the man like a cloud, and told him what would happen to him, sparing little detail.
Hannah struggled to her feet imagining the headlines. ‘Don’t hurt him!’
The plea caused Kamel’s attention to swivel from the man he held to Hannah.
‘Please?’
A muscle along his jaw clenched as he stared at her. Then, with a nod that caused two invisible figures to emerge from the trees, he stood aside and the trio walked away.
‘Sure you don’t want to go and hold his hand?’
‘I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting you.’ Why are you explaining yourself to him? she wondered. It’s not as if he’s going to believe you and it’s not like you care what he thinks.
A look of scowling incredulity spread across his face. ‘Me? You are protecting me?’ He had no idea why her caring about someone who was clearly an abusive loser bothered him so much, but it did.
Her eyes moved slowly up the long, lean length of his muscle-packed body. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like he needed looking after.
‘The press could dub you something worse than The Heartbreaker Prince.’ She paused and saw him absorb her comment. His anger still permeated the air around them but it simmered now where it had boiled before. ‘Rob likes to play the victim. I can just see the headlines now...’
‘I wasn’t going to hit him, but if I had he wouldn’t have been running to any scandal sheet,’ he retorted, managing to sound every bit as sinister as Rob had implied he was. While Hannah believed Rob’s comments were motivated by malice, there was no escaping the fact that she knew very little about the man she had married and what he was capable of.
Unwilling to release his image of her as a cold-hearted, unapproachable ice bitch, he asked, ‘What the hell were you thinking of meeting him out here?’
What the hell had she been thinking about getting involved with him to begin with? The man had been mentally filed in his head as a victim. Stupid, but a victim, and now he turned out to be a... His fists clenched as he found himself wishing he had not shown restraint.
Temper fizzed through her body, sparking wrathful blue flames in her eyes. ‘Are you implying that I arranged this? Rob followed me!’
‘And I followed him.’ It was an impulse that he had not checked even though it was a situation that had not required his personal intervention. In fact his abrupt departure had probably caused more speculation than Hannah’s.
‘Why? I thought you delegated all that sort of thing.’
‘There are some things that a husband cannot delegate.’ She might not be wife material but she was definitely mistress material. She might be the sort of woman he would normally cross the road to avoid, but there was no denying that physically she was perfect.
‘So you thought it was your duty to rescue me.’ She had about as much luck injecting amusement into her voice as she had escaping his dark, relentless stare. It was becoming harder to rationalise her response to his strong personal magnetism, or control the pulse-racing mixture of dread and excitement whenever he was close by.
‘Little did I know you had it all under control.’
Her clenched teeth ached at the sarcasm. ‘My hero riding to the rescue yet again.’
‘I thought I was rescuing your...’
‘Victim?’
He dragged his smouldering glance free of her cushiony soft lips and found himself staring at her heaving bosom. ‘The man is...’ He said a word that she didn’t understand but it was not hard to get the drift. ‘What is your ex doing at our wedding party?’
The accusation made her blink. ‘The word party suggests celebration. Tonight has felt more like a punishment. And yes, we all know this is my fault, though I have to tell you that line is getting a bit boring. I’m willing to take my medicine and make nice and pretend you’re almost as marvellous as you think you are, but if this marriage is going to last, and I’m talking beyond the next few seconds, it won’t be on a speak-when-you’re-spoken-to, walk-two-steps-behind-me way. I am not willing to be a doormat!’
She