Jilted by Rachael Johns Read Free Book Online Page A

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    ‘Feeling better this morning, Flynn?’
    He couldn’t exactly give her the truth. That her face was the last thing he wanted to see first thing in the morning.
    ‘Last night was something else,’ she went on, crawling her nails up his chest and bringing the pads of her fingers to rest on his lips. He tried not to flinch. ‘But next time, let’s make sure we finish it off, hey?’
    His heart skipped a hopeful beat at her words. Could it be possible they hadn’t actually had sex? He had to know.
    ‘I’m … really sorry, Lauren, but my memory’s pretty hazy about last night. Did we …?’
    ‘I should probably be offended that you can’t remember it.’ She giggled and began toying with the flesh at his ear. He summoned all his self-control not to tap her hand away, raise his voice and demand she tell him the truth. Instead, he smiled the smile he’d been told, on many occasions, was a danger to womankind.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘You passed out before we got that far,’ she laughed, then added something else. But Flynn didn’t take in these last words. He was too busy thanking the Lord for small mercies, promising he’d never touch another drop as long as he lived. But the reprieve didn’t last long. Lauren dipped her head and touched her hot, wet lips to his parched ones. A quick worker, she slid her tongue inside his mouth barely before he’d registered her kiss. Where, in other circumstances, his first thoughts might be of his morning breath, in this instance his only concern was how to escape her clutches. Hell, he’d be happy if he had bad breath and it scared her off.
    He placed his hands on her bare shoulders and pushed her upwards, looking away when her perky breasts thrust themselves into his line of vision.
    ‘Sorry Lauren, with the ram sale not far away, I really can’t afford to have a Sunday off. Work to be done, sheep to check on.’
    ‘Damn sheep.’ Her lower lip practically touched her chest, but she rolled over and scrounged around on the floor for her discarded clothes. If there was one thing a country girl understood, it was that nothing, no one, came before the farm.
    Seizing the opportunity, Flynn scrabbled off the couch, located his shirt and boots and yanked them both on in record time. He knew he should stop and apologise to Lauren. He should explain he hadn’t meant to lead her on, that he hadn’t been thinking straight. But whatever way he put it, she’d be offended and upset. And the honest truth was that he just didn’t have the mental energy to deal with this right now. Not on top of everything else.
    So without so much as a kiss on the cheek, he thanked Lauren for letting him stay, and fled.
    After crying herself to sleep, Ellie slept more soundly than she had in a long time. Maybe it was the emotion of the day before, maybe it was the jet lag, maybe it was the quiet of the country, but in the morning, it was only the sound of the kettle whistling that roused her. It was a noise she hadn’t heard in as long as she could remember. In her other life no one bothered with the time it took to boil a kettle. It was either Starbucks or the staff-room machine, which percolated good, strong coffee twenty-four hours a day. It took a second for her to recognise the sound, and then she realised it meant Mat was already up and trying to fend for herself.
    Ellie sprang into action. Her hand was on the door handle when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. That was no fancy nightie she saw, it was a wedding dress. Her wedding dress. A shiver ran over her skin and a despondent feeling returned to her chest. With what felt like a brick weighing her down, it was an effort to walk even the few steps back to the bed. She sat and stretched behind her to the row of miniscule buttons. If she kept on like this, she was in danger of returning to that dark place she’d gone to when she first left Flynn and gave up everything that mattered to her. A place so gloomy it had taken all her