Nine Month Countdown. Leah Ashton
winked.
* * *
Angus Barlow always knew what he was doing. He was measured, methodical, structured. Calm. Not easily distracted, or swayed by others.
So he’d known what he’d been doing when his gaze had first collided with Ivy as she’d walked down that aisle. He’d been having a damn good look at a beautiful woman.
Her long black hair was looped and twisted up to leave her neck exposed above her bare shoulders. Her skin had glowed in the sunlight, and was still managing to do so now, even in the candlelit marquee without the help of the rapidly setting sun.
She had a great profile. A long, thin nose and a strong chin.
The sea breeze had done fabulous things to the pale purple dress she wore, plastering it hard against her curves as she’d walked. And if he’d continued to watch her rear view, rather than turning to observe the bride’s arrival—well, Angus didn’t really think anyone could blame him.
And now, hours later, he’d found himself again compelled to look at Ivy.
Angus supposed it could be argued that Ivy wasn’t the most beautiful woman at the wedding. In fact, Angus had heard that many considered her unlucky she didn’t inherit more of her father’s movie-star looks, the way her two younger sisters had. Although Angus couldn’t agree. It was true she did take more after her unusual mother—in both looks and personality, given the way she was following exactly in her mother’s business footsteps. But he liked the angles to Ivy’s face: the sharpness of her cheekbones, the slant to her brows.
Plus he’d really liked the contrasting plump of her lips. He’d never noticed before tonight, never really even looked at the many photos of her that could be found in the paper, or the footage of her on TV. But right now it seemed impossible he hadn’t.
So yes, he did know what he was doing.
Right on cue, he felt a twinge in his bandaged right wrist, as if to remind him at least partly why he was doing this.
Not why he was looking at Ivy Molyneux. But why he was here, at this wedding, at all.
He wasn’t supposed to be here, of course. He’d declined the original invitation, only to break his wrist during a training exercise in Darwin a month or so later.
So rather than where he should be, deployed with his squadron in Afghanistan, he was at Evan’s wedding. Surrounded by people who were part of a world he’d exited so abruptly more than fifteen years earlier, and that he’d truly not missed at all.
This was not his thing: an opulent, diamond-drenched evening jammed full of the superficial and the vacuous.
He was on a singles table of sorts. His fellow guests were a mixture of the different flavours of wealth he remembered from high school: old money, new money, and used-to-have money. Then there were the people aware of their luck and good fortune—and then those that were painfully, frustratingly oblivious. In his experience, most of the wealthy fell into the second category. But even then, they generally weren’t bad people. Just not his type of people.
Ivy Molyneux was certainly not his type of people either. A billionaire heiress born into obscene wealth, how could she be anything but extraordinarily ignorant of what it was like to actually exist in the real world?
And yet that was the thing. Amongst the hundreds of faces here at this wedding, amongst all this glitz and glitter, when she’d met his gaze it had felt...
Real.
That he certainly hadn’t expected.
That was why he hadn’t looked away, and why his interest in her had become much more than a simple visual appreciation of a beautiful woman.
That was why he’d winked.
And Ivy’s jaw had dropped open, then almost immediately snapped shut.
Then her eyes had narrowed, just before a near imperceptible shake of her head—and she’d turned her attention to the groomsman beside her, as if Angus no longer existed.
But somehow he knew, knew deep within his bones, that this wasn’t even close to over.
* * *
It had taken considerable effort, but Ivy managed to avoid looking at Angus throughout her entire maid of honour speech. Thanks to years of practising public speaking, Ivy knew how to ensure the entire crowd felt she was talking directly to them. Unfortunately tonight the block of about five tables immediately surrounding Angus’s might have felt rather ignored.
But, it couldn’t be helped.
Not that the not looking helped a lot. Because he’d definitely just kept on looking at her.
She knew it, because her whole body felt his concentrated attention. It had only been sheer will that had prevented the stupid racing of her heart or the odd, inexplicable nerves that churned through her belly from impacting her voice. Honestly, she felt as though, if she let herself, she’d come over all soft and breathy and...pathetic.
But of course she hadn’t, and April had given her the tightest of hugs after her speech, so that was a relief. That was all that mattered tonight, that April was happy.
Even her mother—on the parents’ table in prime position near the cake—had lifted her chin in the subtlest of actions. Ivy had learnt long ago that that was about as effusive as Irene Molyneux ever got, so she’d take it.
With her formal duties out of the way, Ivy should now be able to relax for the remainder of the speeches. But of course she couldn’t.
By the time dessert was served, and Evan had delivered his—hilarious by the reaction of the guests, even if Ivy registered barely a word—speech, Ivy was about to crawl out of her skin in frustration.
Finally the dancing began—and Ivy made her escape.
With the straps of her heels tangled in her fingers, the lawn outside the marquee was cool beneath her bare feet. She had to walk some distance before she could hear the ocean above the exuberant cacophony of music and voices of the reception.
The hotel gardens stretched along the beach from either side of the main hotel building. Lights dotted pathways that led to bungalows and villas, but they were all empty, with every guest at the hotel also a guest at the wedding.
And it felt empty, which Ivy appreciated. She’d flown in from London only...yesterday? No, the day before.
Ivy smiled—it was recently enough, anyway, that jet lag still had her confusing her days.
But after a series of intense business meetings, a thirty-six-hour journey from London after delays in Dubai, the madness that was the last-minute planning for the wedding, and then that disconcerting attention from Angus Whoever—Ivy was seriously happy to finally be alone.
She took a long, measured breath and waited for her muscles to relax as she exhaled.
But they didn’t.
‘Ivy.’
She spun around to confront the reason for the tension throughout her body. Angus wore a cream linen shirt, untucked, and dark knee-length tailored shorts—a variation of what the majority of male guests were wearing. Unlike the majority of male guests, he still managed what should be impossible—to look as if he was attending a wedding, rather than a barbeque. Maybe it was his posture? The extreme straightness of how he stood, combined with the way his clothing hung so perfectly from his muscular frame? Whatever it was, Ivy suspected he looked equally gorgeous taking out his garbage.
‘You followed me,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘You knew I would.’
Ivy’s mouth dropped open. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
While his shirt was clearly visible in the limited light, the rest of him blurred into the darkness behind him, his face all angles and shadows. Even so, Ivy knew, knew, he was looking at her in disbelief.
‘Look,’