Her Marriage Secret. Darcy Maguire

wants a life that doesn’t include you.’

      ‘How do you know that?’

      ‘Apart from being here when you weren’t?’ He shifted his weight and looked at the floor. ‘Because I love her.’

      ‘What?’ Jake stood up and reduced the distance between them in a heartbeat, his blood surging with fury.

      Danny quailed. ‘I didn’t tell Meg. Truly, I didn’t.’ He looked to the door. ‘I wish I had.’

      Pain branded Jake deep in the chest. ‘Get out!’

      The man who had been his best mate for as long as he could remember turned away from him like a stranger and melted into the shadows.

      Jake blindly stumbled to the mantelpiece, his breath coming harsh and hard. He reached out, touching the photos, tracing Meg’s smiling eyes, her soft lips, her silky blonde hair that used to drape over his chest as she slept.

      So he wasn’t what she wanted.

      Regrets assailed him. Yes. He’d done a lot wrong. Too fast. Too busy. Too blind. He looked to the door and it was all he could do not to go after her. But it wouldn’t change anything. He was still the man he was.

      Jake sat in lonely silence, his thoughts jagged, painful. A bitter battle raged between his own desires and the needs of the woman he loved with all his heart and soul.

      There was only one decision to make. He was going to become his own man, become more civilised, become the man that would win Meg’s heart. And then he’d find her, make her his…and never let her go.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘WOW, would you get a load of that one?’ Suzie gestured wildly. ‘He’s a 9.9 on the male Richter scale!’

      Megan James turned in her seat and smiled at her best friend’s enthusiasm. She scanned the busy Melbourne restaurant obligingly, perusing the suited men that crowded the place. Suzie sure knew how to pick restaurants for single women to have lunch in—there had to be at least ten men for every woman, and the added bonus of the very virile, handsome Italian waiters.

      ‘The tourist.’ Suzie pointed to the well-built man at the bar.

      His casual attire made him stick out among the businessmen. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and long-legged. A tailor’s delight. It would have been nice to design that shirt and trousers around his body.

      A warm tingle caressed her spine. He certainly radiated ‘wrap your arms around me’. Meg sighed. So he had a nice body, but nothing outstanding she could see that would elicit such a response from Suzie—except his taste in clothes. But then, she couldn’t see his face.

      Suzie nudged her. ‘Well?’

      Meg shrugged and pushed a strand of her short blonde hair back from her face. ‘I can’t even see him properly. He could have a face like—’

      He turned towards them as if on cue. His vivid green eyes scanned the room with a casual indifference.

      Meg’s stomach clenched tight. He was clean-shaven, his strong jawline giving his features a power that she’d forgotten. His dark hair was cut short now, but there was no mistaking him; his ruggedly handsome face was all too familiar.

      Meg grabbed the menu she’d left idle in front of her and slapped it to her face, her heart thudding fiercely.

      ‘What are you doing? Have you gone crazy, Meg?’

      ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she whispered shakily from behind the menu. Meg’s mind tumbled around in confusion. How could he have found her after all this time? It had to be coincidence.

      Desire pulsed hot through her veins, bringing a deep low ache to her body, enticing her mind into fantasies of what they’d shared once, long ago.

      Damn him. She was still as disturbed by him as she had been three years ago. And now he was here. She shook off her body’s traitorous response. She’d always told herself that if he came looking for her it would be out of obligation, but as the days, weeks and then months had gone by, and he hadn’t turned up, she’d concluded soberly that she hadn’t meant anything to him. She’d been a notch for his ego with a dose of obligation thrown in—nothing more.

      ‘Why?’ Suzie sounded bewildered. ‘Don’t you like him? You’d look great together, and he’s definitely loaded. He’s perfect for you.’

      ‘Believe me, he’s not.’ Meg lowered the menu slightly to see her over-zealous friend ogling the man she could only label as an ordeal personified. The man who had sent her whole life awry.

      ‘Come on, Meg. Gosh, you sound like some old prude. He looks like the perfect stranger to me.’

      He’s not a stranger—and he’s far from perfect! she wanted to yell. For years Meg had fostered a crush on him. Years of teenage fantasies about the boy next door falling in love with her. Time had dragged by until the day when he’d come back from overseas and had set to seducing her. It had been all her dreams come true and she’d been so keen to believe every word he’d uttered, every touch and every kiss.

      Blood pooled in her cheeks. He hadn’t needed to try very hard. She’d been a young, naive idiot to think there could’ve been anything between them—anything serious, anything that would stand the test of time.

      ‘Come on, Meg. You’re being silly.’ Suzie cast a long look in his direction.

      Meg could see the admiration in Suzie’s eyes. Almost a mirror of what she must have looked like years ago. She slapped Suzie on the arm. ‘With a look like that he’ll come over!’ If he did she’d just die. How could she look at him after all that had happened between them? Guilt assailed her. For the running, for the hiding, and for the secret that hung heavily in the base of her stomach.

      Suzie frowned. ‘That’s the point. You’ve got to get a guy in your life. There’s more to life than work. I could go over and get him to—’

      Meg’s hand flew out and grabbed Suzie’s wrist. ‘Don’t you dare!’ The look of shock on her friend’s face snapped her back to reality. ‘I’m sorry.’ She tried to slow her breathing. ‘I know him, okay, and it didn’t work out.’ That was an understatement!

      Suzie recovered quickly. ‘Can I go over, then, and have a go at him?’ She pulled her long auburn hair over her shoulders, arranging it over her chest to look as though she had just fallen out of a fashion magazine. ‘Could you introduce me? What’s his name?’

      ‘No, you can’t go over.’ A wave of unfamiliar emotion swept over her. She froze. She couldn’t still feel for him? After all the pain he’d caused her? After all this time?

      Meg gritted her teeth. She was annoyed at her idiocy. It was over, she proclaimed to herself—as she’d done many times before. So Suzie was welcome to him. As long as she didn’t bring him anywhere near her.

      ‘Jake.’ His name slipped from her lips. A name she’d scrawled over her textbooks, over her heart. Etched in, refusing to budge no matter how much she had tried to rid his memory from her life. ‘His name is Jacob.’

      Jacob. The young boy next door who had intruded constantly on her time with her father. Her father’s dust-covered four-wheel drive would pull up in the driveway and Jake would be over the fence and next to Dad in a flash. She’d hated him at first—stealing her father’s attention, listening to her dad’s exploits in New Guinea, in Saudi Arabia and in the Australian outback with more enthusiasm and gusto than she could manage. He would gasp about the monstrous earth-moving equipment Dad had worked around and brag how he would do the same when he grew up. Her dad had loved the attention.

      The gangly boy next door had hung around for years, idolising her father whenever he deemed to make an appearance in her life. And slowly her anger at this boy had turned to a puppy love that grew into a giant infatuation scored into her