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 beauty whose claim to fame beyond her wardrobe and her social connections was being the star of a reality show that had involved her pretending to have lost all her money—would she lose her friends?
As if anyone cared! The woman had all the sincerity of a fake tan, and the empathy of a reptile, without the charm!
And this was their day, while Mark was lying in a hospital bed, and, thanks to that hateful man, if she died tomorrow she’d be a virgin while they’d have the perfect day. Nothing would dare go wrong.
It was so unfair!
But then life was unfair, she reflected, reaching for the control as the picture on the screen cut to VIP guests in flowing Arab gowns getting out of helicopters. She dropped the control, her eyes flying wide open... What if something or someone spoilt their perfect day? Her laugh was a mixture of fear and exhilaration as she thought—and why not?
Why should everything go his way? Why should he walk through life immune to the stuff that everyone else had to deal with, cushioned by money and power? Both her and Mark’s lives had been touched, and not in a good way, by that man, and he had probably forgotten they existed—maybe it was time to remind him?
Suddenly no longer tired at all but filled with a sense of purpose, she went to the wardrobe and pulled out the blue dress and held it against herself as she looked critically at her mirror image. That man had humiliated her in public. Let’s see, she thought grimly, how he enjoys it when he’s the one on the receiving end.
* * *
‘I just have to ask.’
Mari started violently as the young woman touched her arm, stepping back onto the neatly trimmed grass verge as a cluster of well-dressed people, their laughter sounding like a flock of seagulls, went by.
Convinced
