Page 38 of Hidden Heir, Italian Wife

Bree tried to let go of her unease, telling herself she had imagined the stranger’s nasty look. Even if it was real, what did she care? People had strong feelings about all sorts of things, including children born out of wedlock. She couldn’t let it get to her.

An hour later, Melissa collected Sofia. Bree and Jax stepped out to hug Sofia good night, promising to see her in the morning.

As they came back into the ballroom, Bree caught that same woman giving her a sneering look.

She didn’t say anything to Jax, but the whole time they were mingling their way around the room, Bree felt the small arrows of denigration and disgust hitting her. She knew she wasn’t imagining it. She’d been raised with these sorts of undercurrents of being seen only because she wasnotwanted to be seen.

Jax felt it, too. Any degree of warmth in him had drained away. His voice became terse. His hand in her back was hard, no longer warm and caressing the way it had been earlier in the evening.

The final straw was when Bree stood in the stall of the ladies’ room and heard a woman’s voice over the drifting noise of the party and the handful of voices at the mirrors.

“ThankGodPaloma broke her engagement to him. That man is either stupid enough to get himself trapped by a gold digger, or he’s the kind who knocks up a woman and tries to wriggle out of it. Either way, that little nobody is welcome to him. Do you think that little bastard is even his?”

Bree yanked the door open with a bang. The middle-aged woman who’d been casting ugly looks her way all night stood at the mirror. The other women in the room stilled, and one said, “Odelia,” in a tone between shock and caution.

“What?” The older woman lifted her chin, unrepentant. “We’re all thinking it.” She dismissed Bree with a flick of her self-satisfied glance.

No, Bree thought as her heart trembled in her chest.I am not doing this again.

Since it was Eve and Dom’s party, she didn’t grab that woman by the hair and wash her mouth out for the things she’d said about Sofia, but she would not marry a man who would put her in this position of being belittled and disparaged.

When she came out of the powder room, she saw Jax hovering nearby. He hadn’t been farther than arm’s reach all night, she realized. He looked sharply at her as she emerged.

“Is everything all right?”

“No. I’d like to go home.Home.And I won’t marry you,” she added shakily.

She started to remove the ring, but Jax caught her hand before she could. He dragged her close, wrapping his other arm around her. It was almost as though they were waltzing again, but she was trapped in a cage—one she refused to accept.

She pushed at him and flung her head back to glare with outrage.

“Wait,” he commanded, keeping his arm tight around her.

He wasn’t even looking at her! He was staring over her head toward the end of the hallway.

“I’m serious, Jax. I don’t want to make a scene, but I will if I have to.”

“I didn’t want to believe she would go after you,” he bit out. “Not here. But the way she was watching you and followed you the second you left my side…” He clenched his jaw.

She’d never seen anyone so quietly, dangerously incensed. His body was a twisted metal cage wrapped around her. The set of his expression was murderous.

Her own anger bled off in the face of his. “Who is she?”

The angle of his head grew more alert. He narrowed his eyes.

Bree sensed the woman approaching. Instinctually, she leaned into Jax, chin tucked, seeking his protection while bracing for a physical attack.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the woman come even with them. She wore a smirk of dark satisfaction.

“You could have left it alone, but you didn’t,” Jax said with contempt.

A hate-filled light exploded in the woman’s eyes. “Youcould have left it alone, but you didn’t.”

Bree didn’t know what was happening, only knew the stakes of the evening. She knew what Eve meant to Jax and splayed her hands on his rib cage.

“Not here, Jax. It’s Eve’s night.”

He was like a pit bull, all straining muscle on the end of a leash, ready to attack and tear apart. She didn’t have the strength to contain him if he chose to.

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