The Pregnant Bride. Catherine Spencer

disturbed! Risking a call from his wife while he was in bed with another woman would have seriously hampered his performance!

      Jenna thought she was going to be sick, right there on the floor in full view of whoever happened to be passing by.

      The clerk seemed to think so, too. “Are you feeling unwell, ma’am? Shall I send for a doctor…?”

      “No,” she said, somehow managing to articulate a response even though her insides were shaking. “Thank you for your concern but I’m perfectly fine.”

      Dazed with shock, she reeled toward the front door and the cool fresh air outside.

      I come with too much excess baggage, he’d said, the night before, but she’d never for a moment supposed he was talking about a wife. He’d seemed too straightforward for such arcane half-truths.

      And she…she had only herself to blame for the guilt and regret now hemming her in on all sides. It was one thing to accept the end of a relationship, and quite another to imagine that flinging herself headlong into the start of another was any solution. New hopes weren’t built on the ashes of broken dreams. A person had to heal before she was ready to begin again with someone new.

      Furious to find tears brimming yet again, Jenna drew in a shaking breath and squared her shoulders. So, okay! She’d made a mistake. But the damage was done and no amount of weeping and wailing was going to change it. At the very least, she could stop compounding her problems, instead of adding to them.

      Her life, her future, lay elsewhere and this place…oh, it had provided the refuge she’d needed during those first long, dreadful hours after she’d received Mark’s letter, but at best it was a temporary reprieve only. Sooner or later, she had to go back and face the people and situation she’d left behind.

      As for Edmund Delaney, in all fairness, her anger toward him should be tempered by gratitude. Unquestionably, he’d deceived her, but he’d also made her feel desirable again. And for that, she owed him a debt he could never begin to imagine.

      “You know,” Valerie Sinclair said, regarding Jenna through narrowed eyes, “I don’t think it’s necessarily over with Mark. If you hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth so suddenly the way you did, I truly believe you’d be married to him by now. He’s phoned here, you know. Several times. Says he’s tried phoning you as well, but you never return his calls. From what I can gather, he got cold feet at the last minute but he came to his senses soon after.”

      During the month since her return to Vancouver, Jenna had fielded an endless outpouring of sympathy and numerous offers to hook her up with a new man. She’d refused every one, not because she didn’t appreciate the concern of her friends but because she was actually enjoying being free to do and wear and eat what she pleased. Not until he was out of her life had she realized how completely Mark had tried to control it—or how close he’d come to succeeding.