CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I NOWPRONOUNCEYOU man and wife.’
The vicar’s voice echoed in Katie’s chest like the heavy clang of bells that had greeted her when she’d arrived at the historic chapel nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury ten minutes ago. She stared at her hand, weighed down by the gold band studded with diamonds Jack had eased onto her ring finger a few moments before.
Breathe, Katie, breathe.
She blinked and tried to release the air trapped in her lungs—which was starting to make her ribs ache under the bustier the stylist had insisted needed to be worn with the lavish cream silk designer wedding gown she had seen for the first time that morning.
You agreed to this, now you have to make it work. For the baby’s sake.
Not easy, when she hadn’t had a chance to draw a full breath since the moment she’d agreed to Jack Wolfe’s devil’s bargain just four weeks before.
The minute she’d said those fateful words, Jack had taken charge. At first she’d been too shocked at the speed he’d set things into motion to really object.
He’d been unhappy at her insistence she had to return to Wales that day. Despite her exhaustion, she’d managed to stand her ground, and had felt as if she’d achieved a major concession after she’d agreed to travel home in a chauffeur-driven SUV and return to London as soon as was feasibly possible.
After a sleepless night at Cariad—spent considering and reconsidering what she’d committed to—she’d discovered the next morning that the big concession in his office had been an entirely Pyrrhic victory. A battalion of people began to arrive at the cottage in a steady stream of all-terrain vehicles.
First had come world-renowned London obstetrician Dr Patel and her team who had explained that, with Katie’s permission, her pre-and ante-natal care was being transferred to the consultant’s exclusive clinic in Harley Street. After a thorough check-up, and a long chat with the highly professional and wonderfully reassuring doctor—together with an assurance that Jack Wolfe would be footing the clinic’s astronomical bill—Katie had swallowed her pride and agreed to switch to her care. Perhaps Jack’s high-handed decision to hire the obstetrician without Katie’s input didn’t have to be all bad. This was his baby too, after all. Maybe this was a small sign he was beginning to take that on board.
After Dr Patel had left, a PA called Jane Arkwright had arrived, hired to help Katie relocate her business over the next two weeks. Again, Katie had forced herself not to overreact. This was what she’d agreed to. She just hadn’t thought it would happen quite this quickly. Luckily Jane was efficient and personable, and had helped to prevent Katie’s anxiety hitting critical mass when she’d introduced her to a team of solicitors and accountants with a batch of documents for her to sign—including a pre-nup, a framework for what appeared to be extremely generous child support payments once the baby was born and a host of other legal and financial agreements about Wolfe Inc’s investment in Cariad Cakes Etc.
Eventually, though, even Jane’s capable presence couldn’t stop Katie from freaking out. Why did everything have to be done in such a rush? Couldn’t they postpone the wedding for a few more weeks at least?
Eventually, Katie had insisted on contacting Jack. But this time she had been unable to budge him even an inch—as his calm, measured voice had explained, everything was exactly as they had agreed. And the wedding was already booked for as soon as legally possible. Again, as they had agreed.
Yup, his decision to let her return to Cariad had been nothing more than a clever negotiating tactic to lure her into a false sense of security before the full force of his will bowled her over like a tsunami.
And so it was two weeks later, as the afternoon light fell on the forest glade, she had locked up Cariad for the next seven months and had been directed by Jane to the all-terrain chauffeur-driven SUV for the six-hour drive to London, with the moving vans following behind.
When she’d arrived in Mayfair at midnight, though, she hadn’t been driven to Jack’s penthouse but to a newly purchased and luxuriously furnished six-bedroomed townhouse on Grosvenor Square with a full staff—including a personal chef, a stylist and a housekeeper—ready to cater to her every whim over the following two weeks while she ‘settled into’ her short-lived life as Jack Wolfe’s fiancée.
Jack, though, was nowhere to be seen. Katie’s relief had quickly morphed into consternation, however. After all the panic on the drive down about whether or not she would be moving into Jack’s penthouse, she’d been deflated to discover her new fiancé had been en route to New York for a month-long trip when she’d called him two weeks ago—and that he would not be returning to London until the day of their wedding.
The days that followed had seemed to accelerate at speed through a packed schedule of visits, meetings, appointments and events all expertly curated by Jane. They’d involved everything from interviews to hire her new bakery team, to endless fittings at a designer couturier in Covent Garden to supply her with a lavish new wardrobe for the role she was about to play. She’d been too preoccupied and frankly numb to spend time dwelling on Jack’s absence. And too tired each evening to do anything but fall into a dreamless sleep.
In truth, the only thing she’d still felt she had any real control over when the day of the wedding had dawned was her pregnancy. Thanks to lots of helpful advice from Dr Patel, and her insistence Katie listen to her body clock and delegate where appropriate so she got all the sleep she needed, the nausea and fatigue had begun to subside. But everything else—her new home, her new business premises in Hammersmith and the team she had begun to build—had started to feel like a strange dream she might wake up from at any time.
Somehow, her life had been so comprehensively overpowered by Jack Wolfe’s organised assault on it over the past month, she’d even forgotten to stress about the prospect of her wedding until a few moments ago when she’d stepped into the chapel—to see him standing at the end of the aisle with his back to her.
As if the first sight of him again since she’d been ushered out of his office four weeks before—looking tall and indomitable in an expertly tailored wedding suit—hadn’t been shocking enough, the panic she’d kept so carefully at bay during the last few days began to cinch around her ribs along with the bustier as she made her way down the aisle on the arm of his COO, Terry Maxwell.
She’d been offered the chance to invite guests but, once she’d discovered Jack was only inviting a few of his key staff, she’d declined, simply inviting Jane, who Katie had discovered was a sturdy port in the storm of her new reality.
This wasn’t a real wedding. And it would have been beyond awkward to invite any of her friends, and especially Bea. After all, she could still hear her sister’s gasp down the other end of the phone line when she’d told her of the marriage and the pregnancy. Bea had been her usual sweet self after the shock had worn off, and had tried to sound positive and encouraging on Katie’s behalf, while Katie had been able to hear the barely disguised disbelief in her voice, wondering what had happened to her sensible sister.
Katie had channelled every acting skill she’d ever acquired to sound like a woman in love and hold back the desire to confide in her sister. Jack’s legal team had insisted she sign a non-disclosure agreement preventing her from revealing the truth about the arrangement to anyone but they need not have bothered. She’d made a promise. A promise she refused to renege on.
As the vicar’s words declaring the marriage complete floated up to the chapel’s elegantly carved vaulted ceiling, Katie forced herself to raise her gaze from the ring.
Fierce purpose flared in Jack’s eyes.
Maybe the marriage was fake, but it didn’t feel fake as his piercing gaze proceeded to roam over her face with a possessive hunger that stole her breath.
‘You may kiss the bride, Mr Wolfe,’ the vicar announced with an avuncular chuckle.
Katie clutched the bespoke bouquet of Welsh woodland wild flowers—ivy, daisies and enchanted nightshade. It had been handed to her by the florist what felt like several lifetimes ago. Her gaze darted to the smiling clergyman and then back to Jack.