Maids Under The Mistletoe Collection - Christy McKellen Mills & Boon e-Book Collections

Скачать книгу

him again, after all these years apart, made her heart heavy with a sorrowful nostalgia for the past. She’d grieved for Jack the same way she’d mourned her father at the time, only it had been a different kind of pain—with a sharp edge that constantly sliced into her well-being, reminding her that it had been her decision to end things with him and that there could be no going back from it. The damage had been done.

      It had left a residual raw ache deep inside her that she’d never been able to shake.

      Too tired now to even get undressed, she crawled beneath the sheets and let her mind run over the events of the evening. Her heart beat forcefully in her chest as she finally accepted that Jack was back in her life, although for how long she had no idea. He was obviously keen to get their ‘situation’ resolved so he could cut her completely out of his life and become available to marry someone more fitting of his position when the need arose.

      She lay there with her thoughts spinning, suddenly wide awake.

      In the first year after they’d parted she’d regularly tossed and turned in her bed like this, feeling so painfully alone that she’d given in to the tears, physically aching for Jack to be there with her, to hold her and whisper that everything would be okay, that she was doing a good job of dealing with the fallout from her father’s death and that he was proud of her.

      That he was there for her.

      But he hadn’t been.

      Because she hadn’t let him be.

      A while after they’d split she’d considered moving on from him, finding someone new to love, but what with her intense working schedule and the mental rigor of taking care of her emotionally delicate mother there hadn’t been room for anyone else in her life.

      So she’d been on her own since Jack left for the States, and perhaps that had been for the best. She hadn’t wanted to rely on someone else for emotional support after her father had let her down so badly, because that would have left her exposed and vulnerable again, something she’d been careful to put up walls against over the last few years.

      At least on her own she felt some semblance of control. She was the one who would make things better.

      She turned over in bed and snuggled down further into the covers, hoping that fatigue would pull her under soon.

      She’d find a way to deal with having Jack back in her life again. It would all be okay.

      * * *

      Or so she thought.

      Waking early the next morning, her head fuzzy from a night of broken sleep and disturbingly intense dreams, Emma heaved herself groggily out of bed, wrinkling her nose at the smell of old booze on her crumpled clothes, and went to the window to see what sort of weather they had in store for them today, hoping for a bit of late autumn sunshine to give her the boost of optimism she needed before facing Jack again.

      But it seemed that bad weather was to be the least of her problems.

      Peering down at the street below her window, Emma realised with a sickening lurch that the pavement in front of Jack’s house was swarming with people, some of whom were gazing up at the window she was looking out of as if waiting to see something. When they spotted her, almost as one, they raised a bank of long-lens cameras to point right at her. Even from this distance she could see the press of their fingers on the shutter buttons and practically hear the ominous clicking of hundreds of pictures being taken of her standing at Jack’s window looking as if she’d just climbed out of his bed.

      Leaping away from the window, she hastily yanked the curtains together again.

      Someone at the party must have blabbed about what they saw and heard last night.

      The press had found out about them.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      JACK HAD WOKEN EARLY, feeling uneasy about what he’d said to Emma the night before. He was annoyed with himself for losing his temper as he had, but hearing her practically accusing him of cheating on her had caused something to snap inside him.

      He’d waited for months after moving to the States for word from her to let him know she was finally going to join him there, months of loneliness and uncertainty, only to finally be told, in the most painful conversation of his life, that she wasn’t coming after all.

      She’d given up on their marriage before it had even started.

      He’d understood in theory that he’d been asking too much of her, expecting her to walk away from her life in England at such a difficult time, but he’d also been left with a niggling feeing that she’d chosen her mother over him and that she hadn’t loved him enough to put him first.

      After taking a quick shower and pulling on some clothes he strode down to the kitchen to set the coffee maker up, waiting impatiently for the liquid to filter through.

      He was determined to stay in control today. There was no point in rehashing the past. It was time to move on.

      Lifting a mug out of the cupboard, he banged it down on the counter. What was he thinking? He had moved on. Years ago.

      But seeing Emma again had apparently brought back those feelings of frustration and inadequacy that had haunted him after he’d finally accepted she wasn’t interested in being married to him any longer.

      Sighing, he rubbed a hand over his face. He needed to get a grip on himself if he was going to get through this unscathed. The last thing he needed right now was Emma’s reappearance in his life messing with his carefully constructed plan for the future.

      He’d just sat down at the kitchen table with a mug of very strong coffee when she came hurrying into the kitchen, her eyes wide with worry and her hair dishevelled.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, standing up on instinct, his heart racing in response to the sense of panic she brought in with her.

      ‘The press—they must have found out about you being married because they’re swarming around outside like a pack of locusts trying to get pictures.’ She frowned and shook her head vigorously, as if trying to shake out the words she needed. ‘They just got one of me peering out of my bedroom window at them—make that your bedroom window. I don’t know whether they’ll be able to tell exactly who I am, but their lenses were about a foot long, so they’ll probably be pretty sharp images.’

      He watched her start to pace the floor, adrenaline humming through his veins as he took in her distress.

      Damn it! This was his fault for announcing their marriage to the whole of Fitzherbert’s party last night. He’d been a fool to think they might get away with hiding from it. There was always going to be someone in a crowd like that that could be trusted to go to the papers for a bit of a backhander or the promise of future positive exposure for themselves.

      ‘Okay. Don’t panic, it might not be as bad as we think,’ he said, reaching for his laptop, which he’d left on the table. Opening it up, he typed a web address into the browser and brought up the biggest of the English gossip sites.

      He stared at the headline two down from the top of the list, feeling his spirits plummet.

      The Earl of Redminster’s Secret Waitress Wife! the link shouted back at him from the page.

      He scanned the article, but there was no mention of Emma’s name. ‘Well, it can’t have been Fitzherbert who tipped them off because they don’t seem to know who you are. I guess he’s kept his mouth shut out of embarrassment about the way he acted last night. Despite his drunken bluster, he won’t want to get on the wrong side of the Westwood family in the cold light of day.’

      He shut the laptop with a decisive click. ‘Still, it looks like neither of us are going anywhere today. We can’t risk going out there and having more photos taken of us until we’ve spoken to our parents and briefed them about what to say if any reporters

Скачать книгу