How had she been so blind? How had she fallen for his lies to the point where she’d agreed to marry him?
It wasn’t often she lost her temper or acted irrationally, but he’d pushed all her buttons. Nobody messed with her kids and their emotions. Or played her for a fool.
She was done talking. It was time for action. She spun around, and half ran out of the room, heading for the stairs. She was dimly aware of being followed and within seconds she was at the front door of the grand Victorian mansion.
‘Thads, you’re in a short, very revealing dressing gown,’ Dodi shouted from somewhere behind her. ‘And you’re not wearing any shoes! Where are you going?’
She wrenched the door front door open and stepped onto the portico, facing the press who’d gathered at the gate at the end of the long driveway. From this distance, the long-range cameras would get some good photographs of her, but that wasn’t enough.
She had an ex-fiancé she needed to throw under the bus.
In his Canary Wharf penthouse office on Monday afternoon, Angus Docherty kicked up his feet and rested his size thirteens on the corner of his desk, his eyes on the screen of his tablet in his lap. He’d recently returned from Pakistan, having completed an off-the-grid mission, and he had mountains of work to do.
The world didn’t stop because he’d been unavailable for the past few weeks. Despite owning and operating an international, multibillion-pound company focusing on securingpeople, assets, and premises, he also carried out sensitive missions for western governments...missions that were dangerous, off the books and top secret.
Once a soldier, always a soldier.
It was still a source of amusement that owning and operating a business had never been on his radar growing up. No, like his father and grandfather, and great-grandfather, he’d been destined for military service, expected to match his father’s and grandfather’s illustrious achievements. His great-grandfather retired as a colonel, his grandfather died a few days after being promoted to major general.
Of all his army-serving ancestors, it was his father who’d attained the highest rank, the youngest general in fifty years. General Colm Docherty answered only to God. And, sometimes,to the Prime Minister. He was a legend in military circles, respected and revered. He had a tireless work ethic and was disciplined and focused. The General was a hard man to work for, he demanded his pound of flesh.
From his son, he demanded that pound of flesh, his spine, and his internal organs too.
If The General was difficult to deal with at work, he was ten times worse at home, pedantic and unemotional, relentlessly demanding. His only child was held to a higher standard than everyone else. Angus had to run faster, work harder, achieve more, and be better. Be the best. Acceptance by his father meant he had to be perfect. Failure was not tolerated. Ever.
Catching a bullet in his thigh, which narrowly missed his femoral artery but shattered his femur, was his biggest failure of all. Being shot not only derailed his father’s plans for him to be the second general bearing the Docherty name but fundamentally changed his relationship with his parents. The pins in his thigh were enough for him to be discharged from the military, a blow he still felt today. He’d had no wish to be promoted to a desk job, but leaving his unit was a wound he’d yet to recover from...
And his leaving the military was, to The General, the worst of failures. Dochertys were soldiers, and if you no longer served under the Queen’s command, you werenothing.Up to that point, Angus had believed his parents, on some level, loved him.
He rubbed his hand over his face, thinking he was more tired than he realised if he was walking down memory lane, thinking about his estranged parents. He yawned and stretched, pushing his hands through his thick hair, overly long from spending weeks on the road.
A rap on his door had him looking up and he waved his second in command to come in. They’d served together in theunit, and Heath was the first person Angus employed when he’d established Docherty Security.
Heath, his tablet in his hand, dropped into the visitor’s chair. Angus caught the smile on Heath’s normally taciturn face and wondered what was making his dour friend smile. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
Heath shook his head, his mouth twitching in amusement. ‘I’m watching a video of a South African client. She got dumped shortly before her wedding and her impromptu press conference has gone viral.’
Angus dropped his legs and took the tablet, tapping his finger against the play button. The woman wore a silky dressing gown, edged by six inches of white lace at the cuffs at the wrists and hem, revealing most of her thighs and long, gorgeous legs. The top of her dressing gown gaped open and he, and the rest of the world, caught a glimpse of a luscious breast, covered by a strapless, lacy, pale blue bra.
He moved on to her face, and he stilled, every nerve in his body frozen. Thadie...
Angus felt his heart rate increasing—something that rarely happened—and he drummed his fingers on his thigh. He never lost his cool but one look at her lovely face and tall, sexy, curvy body had his core temperature increasing.
He’d been in firefights, had bombs explode around him, fought for his life in hand-to-hand combat, beenshotand he never lost his cool. One look into her extraordinary eyes and he was a basket case.
Angus lifted his finger to trace her cut-glass cheekbones, her pointy chin and lush mouth. Her eyes were almond-shaped and as dark as sin, and her skin reminded him of a topaz pendant his grandmother wore, rich and a golden brown. There were freckles on her nose and dotting her cheeks and he recalled trying to kiss every one he found on her body. Not, in any way, ahardship. In the video she wore thin, long, bright blonde braids—they suited her—but he remembered her having springy coils touching her shoulders.
Angus pushed play and her rich voice rolled over him.
‘I came here to tell you my fiancé, ex-fiancé,’ she corrected, holding up a finger, ‘has not only dumped me but has just admitted to sabotaging the plans we made for our wedding. He did that in the hope the stress of multiple wedding disasters would cause me to call it off because he didn’t have the guts to do it himself.’
Her chest rose up and fury caused her cheeks to glow with a pink undertone. She was hopping mad and, man, she was stunning. Then Thadie placed the balls of her hands into her eye sockets and pushed down. After a few seconds, she lowered her hands, but he caught no sign of tears.
‘He told me he intended to blame me in the court of public opinion for the break-up so I’m out here, telling you I’d planned on getting married today, that I waspreparedto become his wife.’
Prepared? That was an unusual turn of phrase and one that didn’t imply she was wildly in love with the groom. Angus watched, fascinated, as two tall men approached her—alike enough for him to think they were twins—dressed in designer suits and, judging by the roses in their lapels, part of the wedding party. They also exuded a proprietary and protective air.
One of the men draped his jacket around her shoulders, hiding her body from the cameras. Then he wrapped his arm around her and led her back to the house. The other stood in front of the press corps, who were lapping up the drama.