His Wedding-Night Heir Read Online Free PDF

have told him goodbye without
    regrets.
    Besides, if Eastern Crest were interested enough in what he
    had to say to hold a site meeting, she couldn't jeopardise that
    by allowing him to annoy the chairman.
    And Nick had made his wishes coolly and brutally clear.
    They were going to talk.
    As he resumed his seal, she said in a small, brittle voice, 'I feel
    as if someone should read me ray rights."
    'I already know mine,' he said shortly. 'I've had plenty of time
    to consider them.' He signalled to the waiter to bring more
    coffee.
    'I don't want anything else,' she told him quickly.
    'Then you can sit and chat to me while I have some. Doesn't
    that paint a nice domestic picture?'
    'Nick,' she said, deciding to jump straight in, 'do we really
    have to do this? Can't we just accept that our marriage was a
    seriously bad idea and call it quits? I—I'd honestly like to go
    home.'
    'An excellent idea,' he said affably. 'Why don't we do just
    that? Unfortunately, at the moment home for me happens to
    be the Majestic Hotel—a flagrant misnomer, if ever there was
    one.' He gave her a small, cold smile. 'I wonder if I could get
    them under the Trades Description act? However,' he went on,
    'with uncanny prescience, they've given me the bridal suite, so
    perhaps I should forgive their delusions of grandeur.' He
    drank down his espresso. 'Shall we go?'
    She could suddenly feel the hectic drumming of her pulses.
    Hear the silent scream of No in her dry throat. She thought.
    He doesn't mean that. He can't...
    Aloud, she said shakily, 'I'm going nowhere with you. You
    seem lo have overlooked the fact that I've left you.'
    'Oh, no, darling,' he said with corrosive lightness. 'I remember
    that incredibly well. Our wedding day, right? In fact, the ink
    was barely dry on the register when you scarpered.'
    She said stiffly, 'I suppose you deserve some kind of
    explanation.'
    'Yes,' he said, and his voice seemed to remove a layer of her
    skin. ‘I bloody well do. And maybe an apology for making a
    fool of me quite so publicly. That would be a beginning.'
    She bit her lip. 'Yes, of course. I—I'm sorry about that.'
    'But nothing else?' Nick divined grimly.
    She thought. You were making a fool of me in private—or
    does that not count?
    She lifted her chin. 'It was something I had to do. I felt I had
    no choice.' She hesitated. 'What— what did you tell people?'
    'I couldn't manage the truth,' he said. 'Because I didn't know
    what it was. I had no farewell note— no "Dear John" blotched
    with penitent tears to point me in the right direction. So I
    simply let it be known that you'd had a change of heart,
    however late in the day, and that we'd agreed to separate.'
    He paused. 'You see, my sweet, at first I didn't realise what
    had happened. You'd taken the car, so originally I assumed
    there'd been an accident. I wasted a hell of a lot of time
    making increasingly frantic hospital calls, until the police
    called to say they'd picked up some kids joy-riding. They'd
    stolen your car from a station car park twenty miles away and
    written it off. The guy in the ticket office there recognised you
    from our engagement photograpls—now, there's an irony—
    and said you'd bought a ticket to London. One way.' His
    mouth twisted harshly. Cally looked down at the tablecloth,
    tracing meaningless patterns on the white linen with her
    forefinger. 'So you did—go looking for me?'
    'No,' he said. 'Not at first. Frankly, I was too bloody angry. So
    I thought, to hell with it and her.'
    'You should have left it like that.'
    'Ah,' he said softly. 'But I too underwent a change of heart.'
    There was a loaded silence then she said jerkily, 'How— how
    did you know where to find me?"
    'Except for those first weeks, I've always known where to find
    you.'
    A shiver chilled her spine, and she closed her eyes momen-
    tarily. 'And I thought I'd managed lo cover my tracks. That if I
    kept moving I'd drop out of sight."
    ‘Oh, finding you was the easy part,' he