Read Online Echoes of the Heart by Alyssa J. Montgomery - Free Book Online

passion he’d felt when making love to Amanda hadn’t been reciprocated was a savage blow to his confidence and to his ego.
    ‘At the cemetery when I demanded an explanation, she sounded bitter when she mentioned your name. She claimed she thought I was involved with you when I was with her. I wanted to believe she left me because of some stupid misunderstanding. I lost sight of the fact that Amanda is a woman from a background of poverty whose primary goal was to snare a wealthy husband.’
    ‘Don’t forget she was the one who left you,’ Sophie said. ‘You would never have proposed marriage to me if she hadn’t.’
    ‘And you would never have accepted if you hadn’t been such an emotional mess at the time.’ He gave Sophie a quick hug and peck on the cheek. ‘You’re one in a million, Sophie. God knows I wish things could have been different between us.’
    ‘Me too,’ she told him lightly, pulling a face.
    ‘I’ve got to go.’
    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Go do what you have to do so you can move forward with your life. Just don’t lose your heart again in the process.’
    With a purposeful stride, Jake left the conference room, made his way to the elevator and jabbed impatiently at a button. The doors parted immediately. As the lift moved upward his heart felt too big to be contained in his chest. It seemed to swell and hammer against his ribcage as he pictured Amanda in his mind—not as the widow he’d seen dressed in black, but as the young woman he’d fallen in love with.
    Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to remember the first time he’d seen her. Her long blonde hair had been braided and his hands itched to release it. Her slender frame was sheer perfection, and he knew her shapely, tanned legs would look even better wrapped around his hips. She moved like a ballerina, and her smile filled the room like sunshine on a wintry morning.
    Her vivid blue eyes had locked with his. Her full lips had parted slightly in disbelief and he knew the same bolt of lightning had hit her. The same immediate, mutual attraction.
    There had been only one course of action for him from that point. He had been determined to make her his.
    Now he cautioned himself. Keep your eyes wide open . Don’t let her make a fool of you again.
    Like a knight donning a suit of armour, he summoned the hurt she’d inflicted after she turned her back on their relationship. He didn’t have to dig far to find it. The pain and anger still simmered just below the surface of the controlled façade he presented to the world.
    He’d been planning to propose to Amanda.
    He had thought he’d fallen in love with her but he’d merely loved the image she’d projected. All too late, he’d realised that the image was a role she played to hide the shallow vindictiveness of her nature.
    Jake would’ve gone against his father’s advice and married her—given her the world. He could easily have been a willing slave for her desires and ended up the laughing stock of Sydney.
    What a bloody idiot!
    It was only his father’s sudden heart attack during their argument about Amanda that stopped Jake proposing to her. Gasping for each breath as the stretcher was lifted into the ambulance, his father choked out his words, making Jake promise to wait and think things through. Sick with fear for his father’s life, and riddled with guilt that their argument had triggered the cardiac arrest, Jake had agreed. He’d gone looking for Amanda to drive her home before he joined his mother at the hospital at his father’s bedside, but she’d already left.
    The next forty-eight hours had been critical for his father’s life. Amanda had phoned him once and offered to be by his side, but Jake had declined, knowing it would upset his father more and that stress may well push him over the edge.
    Although he’d intended to pursue Amanda once his father was out of intensive care, his father’s medical tests indicated immediate surgery was necessary. Medical