But then she glanced down at her costume. Okay, it had become a bit dishevelled during their dream clinch. She hooked the corset at the top, which she’d loosened before taking a quick nap in what she’d thought was a guest bedroom after getting Bea’s text telling her she was off the hook and Jack wouldn’t be coming home until tomorrow afternoon.
Wrong again, Bea.
There were no personal items in this room, not even any toiletries on the bathroom vanity... Who lived like that? she thought indignantly as she yanked up the cotton chemise under the corset so it more adequately covered her ample cleavage.
It seemed her quick nap had turned into a deep, drugging sleep before he had so rudely awakened her with his hot, firm touch and his voracious...
Seriously, Katie, focus, already.
She struggled to control the burn of humiliation. And arousal. Not a great combination at the best of times. She had to leave ASAP, now she’d finally gathered enough of her shattered wits to think coherently. But she still had a message to deliver.
‘I’m here on behalf of your fiancée, Bea Medford,’ she said, even though he was still glaring at her as if she’d ruined his night instead of the other way round.
‘How do you know Beatrice?’ he demanded, the frown on his forehead becoming catastrophic.
She opened her mouth to tell him, then snapped it shut again as her common sense caught up with her panic. The less this man knew about her identity, the better. He might have her sued or arrested. Even if he’d kissed her first, she was the one who had been in his bed, sound asleep at stupid o’clock in the morning. ‘Bea wanted me to tell you,’ she continued, ignoring his question. ‘She’s breaking off the engagement.’
The words dropped into silence and a dart of anguish pierced her ribcage. She hated to be the bearer of bad tidings, even to overbearing, staggeringly hot and arrogant billionaires.
But the pang dissipated when she noted his reaction. He looked mildly surprised, supremely irritated but not remotely devastated. And his glare—which was still directed squarely at her, as if she’d been the one who had just dumped him by proxy—hadn’t dimmed in the slightest.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘And she didn’t come and tell me this herself why exactly?’
I know, right?
Katie quashed the disloyal thought. She was on her sister’s side—always.
But it was impossible not to feel at least a little pissed off with Bea when she had to blurt out, ‘She doesn’t love you, and she didn’t want to hurt your feelings.’ She left out the bit about Bea’s fear of succumbing to Jack Wolfe’s all-powerful seduction techniques, because she had no desire to stroke his already over-inflated ego. Again.
Forget thirty paces. The man had almost given her an orgasm in less than thirty seconds while she’d been sound asleep.
Wolfe’s glare intensified. ‘Duly noted.’ He growled without so much as a flicker of emotion.
So Bea had been right—Jack Wolfe certainly did not have feelings for her, at least not feelings that could be hurt. Katie’s heartbeat took a giddy leap. She squashed it like a bug. Why should she be pleased by evidence that he was a heartless, manipulative bastard?
This man had proposed marriage to her sister without giving a hoot about her. When Bea was the sweetest, kindest, most beautiful woman on the planet...give or take the odd episode of unnecessary drama and the fact she was too much of a coward to do her own dirty work.
‘Although that still does not explain why you were hiding out in my bed in the middle of the night, disguised as Little Red Riding Hooker,’ Jack added, snapping Katie out of her revelry.
Little Red Riding...?
She stiffened at the insult, ready to fire something equally insulting back at him, but the scathing retort got caught in her throat when his glowering gaze raked over her outfit again. And what she saw in it triggered a new wave of heat.
‘Tough,’ she managed, her throat as raw as the rest of her. ‘That’s all the explanation you’re going to get.’
So saying, she turned and grabbed the boots she’d left by the bed.
Time to stop bickering and run.
She heard his shouted demands—something about staying put and giving him a proper answer to his questions—as she sprinted out through the bedroom door.
She wasn’t particularly athletic but, now her flight instinct had finally kicked in big time, she raced through the living area faster than a championship sprinter, grabbing her red velvet cape and raincoat en route. The lift doors were open, the lift waiting for her—thank God—and she made it inside and stabbed the button before she heard the crash of footfalls. The doors slid closed on the sight of two hundred and twenty pounds of enraged, spectacularly fit male sprinting towards her, wearing nothing more than a pair of hastily donned boxer shorts and an enraged expression.
She tugged on her boots as the lift dropped to the basement, then raced out of the building’s garage. It was only once she jumped aboard a passing night bus heading towards North London that the adrenaline high caused by her narrow escape diluted enough for her to breath properly.
She was retiring as a children’s entertainer as of tonight and finally moving out of London. She had enough money saved now, just about, to move the fledging bakery business she’d launched a year ago to the next level.
Her Welsh grandmother had left Katie a cottage in Snowdonia in her will—because she had always been proud of Katie for breaking free of her father’s control. Angharad Evans had always despised Henry Medford after the way he had treated her daughter, Carys—Katie and Bea’s mother. The mother Katie barely remembered.
The old cottage in the heart of the forest needed some work after being empty for years, but the beautiful forest glade where the smallholding was situated was like something out of a fairy tale, and satisfyingly remote. And the online business Katie had been building for over a year would be even better there, reducing her overheads once she’d invested in a new kitchen.
It was way past time she started making a life for herself that she loved. Instead of one where she was just squeaking by—and humiliating herself on a regular basis. And, if moving out of London and going into hiding in rural Wales also meant avoiding Jack Wolfe’s prodigious temper, his hot body and any fallout from tonight, so be it.