Kitabı oku: «The Runaway Bride And The Billionaire»

CHAPTER ONE

A month later

‘HONEY, I’M HO—’ Immi stopped mid-word in the entrance hall of her flat.

There were shoes lying in the middle of the floor, clearly kicked off and abandoned without a thought—women’s shoes that weren’t hers.

A little further on was a skirt. Also not hers.

A top. Also not hers.

A black lacy push-up bra, just outside the door to her bedroom.

She dragged in a breath. There had to be good reason for a trail of another woman’s clothes leading to her bedroom. Stephen knew she wasn’t due back from her business trip until tomorrow. Maybe he’d lent the key to the flat to one of his friends.

Because the logical explanation made her sick to her stomach.

Her fiancé wouldn’t be cheating on her, in her own bed, a month before their wedding...would he?

But there were noises coming from the bedroom. Familiar noises. And the hope that she was making a fuss over nothing died as she heard a woman screaming, ‘Oh, Stephen!’

Oh, God...oh, God...oh, God...

This was eight years ago, all over again. When she hadn’t been feeling well at a party and had gone to get her coat from the bedroom, only to discover her boyfriend having sex under the pile of coats with another girl.

Except this time was so much worse. Because it wasn’t the teenage boy she’d given her virginity to, the boy who’d sneered from under the pile of coats that he’d only slept with her for a bet because nobody would have really wanted to sleep with Immi the Elephant.

This was the man she was meant to be marrying.

Cold seeped all the way through her. There had to be some mistake.

‘Oh, Stephen, yes!’

No mistake, then.

She dragged in a deep breath. She could back away, close the front door quietly, pretend she hadn’t seen anything and then go to a coffee shop. Then she could call Stephen to say that she’d managed to conclude her meeting early and would be home in an hour. It would give him enough time to get his girlfriend out of her flat and clean up all traces of the woman’s presence. Immi could simply forget what she’d seen and pretend that nothing had happened.

But did she really want to spend the rest of her life living a lie? Marry a man who clearly didn’t love her, despite his protestations—because why else would he be seeing another woman behind her back?

Immi the Elephant.

She shook herself. She wasn’t an insecure, unhappy teenager any more. And she wasn’t going to do what she’d done back then and try to starve herself into what she’d thought was an acceptable shape. She’d worked hard to become who she was now: Imogen Marlowe, a strong, successful businesswoman.

And she was going to deal with this exactly as a strong, successful businesswoman would.

Lifting her chin, she marched over to the bedroom door. She banged on it twice—judging that it would give Stephen’s girlfriend just about enough time to cover herself with bedding, because Immi definitely didn’t need to be faced with the total naked truth—and opened the door.

‘What the—?’ Stephen began.

‘Who the hell are you?’ the girl squeaked, holding the bedclothes tightly against herself. ‘Stevie? What’s going on?’

Immi stared at the girl. She looked young, easily impressed. No doubt Stephen had turned on the charm. Charm that Immi now knew was as designer as his clothes and just as easily shed. ‘I,’ she said quietly, ‘am the person who owns this flat. Stephen’s fiancée.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘Well, I was his fiancée up until about two minutes ago, when I walked in to find your clothes all over the floor in my hallway and you screaming his name in my bed.’

The girl at least had the grace to blush and fall silent.

‘Immi! Look, this isn’t what you—’ Stephen began.

‘On the contrary,’ Immi cut in. ‘It’s exactly what I think it is. And now I know what Jamie meant by keeping your nose clean until the wedding. Pity you didn’t listen to him. But I’m glad you didn’t—because if I’d come home early from business and caught you in my bed with a girlfriend after we were married, it would’ve been that much worse. At least now I don’t have the mess of a divorce to deal with.’ Just a big, glitzy wedding to unpick. A wedding that had already snowballed until it felt as if it had taken on a life of its own.

Stephen looked too shocked to say another word.

Good.

Because she was only just holding herself together as it was.

She took his engagement ring off her finger and dropped it on the floor. ‘I’m going out for an hour and a half,’ she said. ‘When I get back, I expect you, your girlfriend and all your stuff to be gone.’

‘But, Immi—’

‘And you needn’t bother returning your key or getting it back from however many women you’ve given it to,’ she cut in, not wanting to hear any excuses, ‘because I’m getting the locks changed.’

‘Immi, don’t do this. I love you.’

A month or so ago, she might have believed him. But not after her twin’s wedding. Not after seeing the emotion in the eyes of a man who really did love the woman walking down the aisle towards him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You love the idea of being married to the boss’s daughter. Getting the corner office.’ And how it hurt to admit it. She’d been Immi the Elephant, the means to win a bet, to Shaun. She’d been the means to an end for Stephen. She’d spent her teen years battling the feeling of inadequacy, and even now she had days when the doubts swamped her—but she still knew she deserved better than this. ‘I’m guessing Dad might not be too keen on that idea, now.’

He went white. ‘Immi—’

If he’d said that he was sorry, she might’ve considered listening to him. But instead he’d tried to pull the wool over her eyes. Tried to lie his way out of it. Tried to tell her that finding him completely naked with another woman in her own bed wasn’t what she thought it was.

Did he think she was that pathetic and needy, that she’d go ahead and marry a man who clearly had no respect for her?

‘No,’ she said, and turned on her heel and walked out.

A few minutes later, Immi was sitting in a quiet corner of a nearby coffee shop, without a clue how she’d managed to walk there or how she’d even ordered anything, but in front of her was an espresso and her phone.

The phone whose ringer she’d turned to silent, but every time Stephen’s name flashed up on the screen she hit the ‘ignore’ button.

She ignored his texts, too.

Well, she’d seen them on her screen. Each one was increasingly desperate—no doubt as he realised that the glittering prize of Marlowe Aviation was slipping out of his grasp.

Immi, please.

Forgive me.

I don’t know why I did it.

I love you.

No. He didn’t love her at all. And he knew exactly why he’d slept with that girl: because he wanted to.

She couldn’t forgive him for a betrayal like that.

Particularly as he still hadn’t said the little five-letter word that might’ve made her talk to him. So clearly he wasn’t sorry at all. Or maybe just sorry that he’d been caught.

She took a sip of the coffee. It didn’t taste of anything, but she forced herself to drink it. She was not going back to being the bad twin, the one everyone worried about because she’d gone off the rails and starved herself as a teen—not quite far enough to need hospitalisation, but enough to need counselling. The girl whose family looked at her collarbones before they looked at her face, and who made a point of hugging her just to check for themselves that she wasn’t any more slender than the last time they’d hugged her.

Though at the same time she couldn’t blame them. If Andie, Portia or Posy had been the one who’d had anorexia, she would’ve been worried sick and done exactly the same. She knew they all did it out of love.

OK. She’d do this Immi-style. Super-organised. She’d make a list, and tick each item off as she did it.

1: Book a locksmith for two hours’ time.

2: Tell her family that the wedding was off.

3: Work through the list of everything she’d arranged for the wedding so far and cancel the lot.

Oh, wait. First things first. She blocked Stephen from her phone. At least then she could make her call to the locksmith in peace.

That was the easy one.

Now for the tough one. How did you tell your family that your wedding was off? They’d all want to know why. It made her squirm in her seat. Not only was she the cliché, engaged to her father’s second-in-command, she was the one who’d been cheated on. It made her feel grubby. Stupid. She’d thought she’d made a safe choice of partner, a man her father approved of. She’d thought that Stephen would never treat her the way Shaun had. But she’d ended up hurt, just the same.

Maybe she’d wait for a couple of hours until she could think of the right words. The last thing she wanted was for everyone to rush back from their corners of the world: Andie from Kent, where she was settling in to married life and pregnancy with the man she loved more than anyone on earth and who loved her all the way back, Portia from LA, Posy from wherever she was dancing with the ballet corps—she was being even more elusive than usual—and her parents from their ‘gap year’ in India.

She could do this.

Though she still hadn’t found the right words by the time she got back to her flat. As she’d half feared, Stephen was still there.

‘Immi! Oh, thank God. I was so worried about you.’

Did he really expect her to believe that?

‘You didn’t answer any of my calls or my messages.’

Obviously. And he hadn’t taken the hint—or her explicit request that he should leave before she got back.

‘I asked you to leave,’ she reminded him.

‘I couldn’t—not until we’d talked. Immi, it was a mistake.’

She took a step back before he could sweep her into his arms. She didn’t want him to hold her and try to make her feel better. He was the reason she felt bad in the first place. And he’d made the choice. Even if the other woman had come on to him, he could’ve said no. Could’ve stayed faithful. Could’ve told her that he was flattered but he was getting married next month and wouldn’t cheat on his fiancée.

He’d chosen to do the opposite.

‘It doesn’t have to be over,’ Stephen said, his eyes beseeching.

How easy it would be for her to agree. Then she wouldn’t have to unpick the wedding. Wouldn’t have to feel as if she’d let everyone down. Wouldn’t have to face her family knowing what a naive, stupid fool she’d been, thinking that the man she loved felt exactly the same way about her.

But Immi looked at Stephen now and realised that, actually, she didn’t love him any more. She’d thought maybe she was having an attack of cold feet at Andie’s wedding: but it had been more like a wake-up call. If she married this man now, she knew she’d spend the rest of her life wondering if he was making another ‘mistake’ he expected her to forgive. Every time either of them went away on business, every time she visited her sisters on her own because he was ‘too busy’ to make it, would there be another woman keeping her place warm in his bed?

‘Was she the first?’ Immi asked.

Stephen looked shocked. ‘How do you mean?’

Was he really going to be evasive, even now? ‘I need you to be honest with me,’ she said evenly. ‘Was that girl the first time you’d cheated on me?’

He looked away, and she knew the truth. ‘So that’s what Jamie meant about keeping your nose clean.’

He blinked. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘I overheard.’

He frowned. ‘You didn’t say anything.’

‘Because I thought I was overreacting. That I was tired. That I was letting the stress of the wedding get to me.’ She paused. ‘Were you with her when I was at Andie’s wedding?’

‘No.’

She didn’t think he was lying. But she needed to know the whole truth, not just part of it. ‘Were you with someone else?’

‘It was a—’

‘—mistake,’ she finished for him, feeling sick. So that was at least two women he’d cheated with. How many others had there been? ‘I don’t want a marriage based on a mistake.’

‘Immi, we’re good together.’

She took another step backwards when he reached for her. ‘No, we’re not. If I was enough for you, you wouldn’t be looking elsewhere.’

His skin turned a dull red. ‘I guess.’

He’d been honest with her. Maybe she should be honest with him—and herself. ‘And you’re not enough for me.’

He stared at her. ‘You what? Are you telling me there’s been someone else for you, too?’

‘No. Because I’ve never cheated on you.’ That almost-kiss at Andie’s wedding hadn’t been cheating, because Immi hadn’t actually done it. She’d thought about it, though, which was almost as bad in her view and it made her feel guilty.

‘It’s over, Stephen,’ she said. ‘I can’t trust you, and I don’t want a marriage that’s full of suspicion and lies.’

‘But—’ He stared at her, looking horrified. ‘We’re getting married in a month.’

‘Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you brought that girl home. To my bed.’ Immi dug her nails into her palms. ‘I can’t marry you. But I’ll deal with cancelling the wedding.’ Because then at least she would know everything had been done properly. Stephen had completely undermined her trust in him. Maybe she was being a control freak, but she’d rather know that things had been cancelled instead of skipped over.

‘What are you going to tell your parents?’

Good question. She still wasn’t sure. ‘I’ll tell them the wedding’s off.’

‘So I’ve lost my job.’

Why did she feel that that upset him more than losing his wife-to-be? ‘I don’t know if Dad will sack you.’ Paul Marlowe would probably want to sack Stephen—but whether he could actually do it in legal terms, Immi didn’t know. Besides, surely any decent person would offer to resign? She didn’t think her respect for Stephen could’ve withered any more, but apparently it just had. ‘Dad isn’t here.’ And Stephen, as his temporary second-in-command, would hardly sack himself. ‘I’ll be speaking to Priya in HR, but I guess it’s going to be awkward in the office tomorrow.’ She paused. ‘Unless you maybe call in sick.’