When Marrying a Scoundrel by Kathryn Smith Page A

she’d gone. She hoped finding her missing had ripped the black heart right out of his chest.
    She hoped he had missed her half as much as she missed him. That he had wanted her even a quarter as much. What if he were to learn that he could have found her if only he’d looked in the least likely place?
    Thoughts of the past—the taste of old bitterness—gave her the courage to turn and face him. He stood before her, tall and broad in a camel frock coat and chocolate trousers with just a hint of rust pinstripe. He’d never been one for a fussy cravat or head gear and that hadn’t changed; the knot at his throat was simple and plain, as was the brown coachman hat on his head. Despiteall this, he was still a startlingly handsome figure of a man. Bastard.
    “What are you doing here, Mr. Friday?” She asked, intentionally using his alias.
    “My company owns this building.”
    “But that would make you—” Sadie’s hand went to her throat in horror. “No.” Fate wouldn’t be so cruel, would it?
    He didn’t appear any happier about the situation than she was, though slightly less horrified. “I assume that you are our new tenant?”
    She nodded, unable to wrap her tongue around the jumble of thoughts in her head. She’d known something would happen to ruin this. Damn him!
    Jack glanced around, aware of the people passing by on the busy street. People who didn’t bother to hide their curiosity as they walked by. He took a key from his coat pocket. “Let’s move this inside.”
    It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she’d rather run naked through a nest of vipers than enter the shop with him, but he was her landlord and this shop was something she’d wanted for a long time. Perhaps he would keep their personal history out of the transaction. Surely both of them could do that?
    He held the door open for her and she brushed past him to cross the threshold, catching the scent of cloves as she did. The smell brought back such a rush of memories and sensations that she almost stumbled on the threshold. Washing his hair in the bath while birds chirped outside their bedroom window; burying her face in the hollowbetween his neck and shoulder and breathing deep, their limbs entwining, clutching at each other as they made love. That smell had meant love and security to her once upon a time.
    She turned to face him as he closed the door behind them. God only knew the expression on her face, but if it was anything like the one on Jack’s, they were well matched. What did he remember of their marriage in that moment?
    If only he hadn’t left her. What would their lives be like if he had decided that she was more important than proving himself to an old man?
    He stared at her from beneath a fringe of thick lashes. Haunted. “You look good, Sadiemoon.”
    The regret in his tone was almost her undoing. Sadie closed her eyes against the tightness in her chest. He remembered. Of course he remembered. Sadiemoon, one of the pet names he had for her, because he said she was his moon and stars. Of course he’d been eighteen when he first said it, so perhaps she’d been foolish to think he meant it. Even more foolish to take it as her new surname.
    “Remember me now, do you?”
    Jack’s expression turned to wry exasperation. “I tried to forget, trust me.”
    It was meant as an insult, but Sadie couldn’t quite take it as such. It did her poor heart good to know that he hadn’t been able to put her entirely behind him—no more than she had been able to erase him from her own memory.
    “That’s a god-awful hat,” he commented when she said nothing. “I don’t remember you having rotten taste in head wear.”
    “Heaven forbid I change in your absence.” It came out sharper than she intended.
    Whatever humor he had vanished. “I came home and found you gone.”
    “You left first, Jack. Even you can’t have forgotten that.”
    Those furrows between his eyebrows were back. He practically vibrated with tension.