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CHAPTER ONE
IT COULDN’T BE HER. It wasn’t possible.
Kane Wheeler stopped dead in the corridor of the large, city hospital that was Castleton University Teaching Hospital, and practically glowered through the glass doors to the ward. Something surged inside him. Sharp. Edgy. Altogether too dangerous.
Yet it wasn’t exactly impossible either.
Mathilda Brigham. Mattie. His first and—aside from his career in the army—his only love.
He’d known she was a doctor, of course. The last time they’d been together—or at least the last time that Mattie had been his—she’d been about to go off to university to begin her dream of becoming a doctor. But that had been fourteen years ago. A lifetime.
He’d seen her twice since then, neither an occasion he cared to dwell on, though she hadn’t seen him. How long had she been working here in Castleton? In a hospital that was hours away from the life she was supposed to living with her perfect earl—the man to whom she’d been married for the past four years.
That rough, unsteady thing moved through him at the thought of Mattie with...him, George Blakeney, but Kane fought it off. He’d learned long ago that emotions like anger—and guilt, and love, for that matter—served little purpose.
Besides, didn’t Mattie deserve happiness? And if her earl made her happy, then it was better than he himself could have managed.
George Blakeney, son of a duke and from one of the wealthiest families in the area. The perfect match for the independently successful daughter of a brigadier, so far removed from a kid from a bad family in the back streets who had so very nearly ended up in juvie for a momentary lapse in judgement.
There was no bitterness in that. It was merely a fact. The kid he’d been would never have been right for a girl like Mattie, however much she’d tried to claim otherwise. And as much as he’d made a success of his life since then, it still didn’t make him Earl Blakeney—a man who might as well have been handcrafted for a woman like Mathilda Brigham.
Which surely only made it all the more inconceivable that she was here, a good hundred or so miles from the vast Blakeney Estates. Not even close to Heathdale, where they’d both grown up. Mattie brought up by her loving family in the posher Lower Heathdale, and him barely dragged up, along with his two brothers, by his waster father in the lower-class town, Heathdale.
Then again... Kane gazed into the ward... Castleton was a big city with a large military population and a large RAF base down the road, from which he was due to fly out on arguably his biggest mission to date in a few days. Even though Mattie had left the army when she’d married, it would stand to reason that a teaching hospital like Castleton would value her experience and expertise and secure her for a few months. But he wouldn’t have thought she’d readily have left Blakeney. Or any children.
She might have kids with him!
Kane swayed slightly, as if drunk, although he hadn’t touched a drop in months. And when he did, he never over-indulged. He was always in control, anything less was unacceptable. One misjudged moment now and his career trajectory—the only thing that had mattered to him for the past fourteen years—could nosedive faster than jumping out of a plane with no parachute. But right now he felt light-headed. Dizzy. Out of control.
He leaned his hand on the doorjamb as he stared in. Not wanting to stay but unable to tear himself away. Mattie was engaged in an animated conversation with a patient. Even from a distance he could see that she was employing her own unique blend of humour, professionalism and charm to reassure and settle the patient and his wife. Indeed, the couple was looking less stressed and more bewitched as the conversation went on.
Something pulled at his mouth in spite of everything. It was so characteristically Mattie. He’d always known she’d be an amazing doctor, just as he’d kept up with her career as an amazing army officer—until she’d given up the latter for her marriage, that was. Being a doctor and a countess was one thing, apparently, but being a captain and a countess wasn’t as widely appreciated.
Kane allowed his eyes to roam over her, as much as he knew he probably shouldn’t. He didn’t know whether he was looking for proof that she’d changed or evidence that she was still the same, but either way there were clues to both.
She still carried herself with a bearing he’d always admired, though her long, blonde hair, which had once tumbled down her back and over her shoulders, was now a touch darker and scooped up into a tight bun, as he suspected she had become accustomed to doing during her decade of service.
He let his eyes drop lower to the top she wore. Feminine and pretty, yet practical and professional, it didn’t cling to the curves he knew lay beneath, but it was fitted, and it flattered her body perfectly. And then there were the tailored trousers that moulded themselves to the swell of her hips and reminded him of how it had felt when those long legs of hers had been wrapped around him, drawing him inside her.
Dammit.
Kane slammed his fist against the wall in disgust and swivelled on his heel to march up the mercifully deserted corridor. He had absolutely no right to think about her that way any more.
In fact, he was better not to think of her at all. The way he’d been avoiding doing so for the last fourteen years. No, that was a lie. But he thought he’d exorcised her, at least for the last four years. Certainly ever since he’d stood in the plush hotel that had hosted her wedding rehearsal dinner and watched her on that stage with her groom-to-be, both staring at each other with unmistakeable love in their eyes.
For one moment he had actually thought she’d spotted him. But then she’d turned back to her husband-to-be, reaching out to hold his arm as though he was the only man in room. The world. A simple, instinctive gesture that had left Kane feeling as though his very heart had been ripped out.
He’d felt mad and sad all at once, but had also felt a strangely bitter-sweet kind of emotion that at least Mattie was happy, even if it couldn’t be with him. Which was why he’d left without speaking to her and without even finding Hayden—Mattie’s older brother and at one time his best friend—to ask why his old friend had invited him to Mattie’s wedding rehearsal in the first place.
Whatever the reason, seeing Mattie’s obvious devotedness to her fiancé had made anything else irrelevant, and Kane had slipped out of the room before she’d even turned back to the crowd.
