The Billionaire's Bride of Convenience(17)

By nine-thirty that evening, Kathryn was over two hundred dollars poorer, but at least Daryl would not be able to let himself in any time he wanted with the keys which she hadn’t thought to demand from him. Aside from a very real fear that her now ex-fiancé might try to hurt her, she wouldn’t put it past Daryl to return whilst she was at work tomorrow and clean the place out. The new deadlock would prevent that, along with the security bolts now fitted to all the windows.





It wasn’t till Kathryn finished taking the necessary steps to make herself physically secure that her fragile emotional state finally caught up with her.





She didn’t cry at first, but just sank down onto the floor where she happened to be standing, by the side of the bed. And there she sat for ages, her knees up, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs.





Alone again, came the blackly despairing thought. Alone in the world with no one to love her, no one to comfort her.





If this had happened a year ago, she would have left here and driven straight up to Val’s place at Pearl Beach, to the one person who definitely had loved her, and the one place where she’d always found peace. And there, she would have healed. And found the courage to go on, as she had in times past.





But there was no Val to run to any more.





Any depression Kathryn had initially felt over the passing of her old friend last year had been partially lifted by the knowledge that, come her thirtieth birthday next month, she would take possession of Val’s home. The thought that she could stay at this much-loved sanctuary whenever she wanted had soothed her worries over the future; had even given her the courage to accept Daryl’s proposal and start making concrete plans to create a family of her own, something she’d always craved but which she’d feared as well. For what did she know of making a good marriage, or of being a good mother?





It seemed inevitable that any marriage she entered would eventually fail.





Kathryn did not like to fail at anything she did.





‘Well, I’ve failed this time, haven’t I?’ she wailed aloud.





The thought of losing Daryl was not why her chin began to wobble. She’d already come to the conclusion he wasn’t worth tears. It was losing Val’s place which devastated Kathryn.





Never again would she walk up onto that sweet little verandah, or sit there watching the waves ripple gently onto the golden sand. Never again would she make tea in Val’s large, comfy kitchen, or enjoy the wonderfully dreamless sleeps she had when staying there.





‘Never again,’ she choked out, the irrevocable words reinforcing the enormity of her loss.





It was then that she started to weep, huge, noisy sobs which racked her body and shattered her mind. Eventually, when she could weep no more, she clawed her way up onto the bed and collapsed on the quilt. Sleep came through sheer exhaustion, Kathryn not waking till the dawn light crept through her bedroom window.





CHAPTER SIX





HUGH stared at Kathryn.





He’d spotted the nasty bruise on her cheek the moment he’d strode into the office—half an hour late. He’d listened to her struggle to explain how she’d acquired her injury, and he’d watched, shocked, when she’d finally burst into tears.





‘Oh, just go away,’ she sobbed as she snatched a handful of tissues from the box she kept on her desk.





Hugh wasn’t going anywhere. He would have liked to take her into his arms, but he knew that would be a fatal move. Instead, he stood patiently in front her desk and waited till her sobs subsided.





‘You can’t possibly marry that man now, Kathryn,’ he said at last.





‘I’ve got no intention of marrying him,’ she snapped with some of her usual spirit. ‘I threw him out.’





‘And he just went?’ It seemed unlikely to Hugh that a physically abusive fiancé would go meekly into the night.





‘He wasn’t going to. But I threatened him with the police. Then with one of your bodyguards.’





‘But I don’t have any bodyguards!’





‘He didn’t know that.’





‘Mmm. He might come back, you know.’





‘I did think of that, so I had the lock changed, straight away.’





‘Very sensible,’ Hugh said. ‘But I think it would be wise if you stayed somewhere else for a few nights.’





Meanwhile, he aimed to find that bastard and give him a taste of his own medicine. Hugh had taken martial arts lessons when he’d been growing up, one of the many athletic skills he’d acquired during school holidays when his father had been too busy to spend time with him, and his mother hadn’t known how else to cope with his endless energy.