The Rejected Wife: Chapter 1

“Hold it!” I shout, sprinting down the platform of the train station like my life depends on it. The warning beeps blare—too close. The doors begin to slide shut. My ballet flats slam against concrete. I leap.

Almost make it.

Almost.

Something jerks me back mid-stride.

“What the—?” My voice catches as I twist around. No. No, no, no. My handbag is stuck. Wedged between the train’s closing doors, clamped in place like a bear trap.

I tug once. Twice. The strap slips from my shoulders. I grab at it; hold onto it. “Come on!” I whisper-shout, yanking at it with both hands.

The train is going to move. I can feel it, the low hum under my feet, the tightening tension in the air.

The sensors are meant to stop this sort of thing, right? I mean you’re supposed to trust the system, trust the process, like the online productivity gurus would have you believe.

Yeah. No.

There’s no emergency release. No hidden button. No divine intervention.

There’s no way to pry the doors open unless my affirmations have magically turned into biceps. Spoiler alert: They haven’t.

If this train moves, my purse—along with my phone, my wallet, my ID, my entire existence—is gone. Vaporized into the dark, grimy void of the London Underground.

I give the strap another desperate pull.

Nothing.

Around me, no one seems to notice.

A man scrolls mindlessly on his phone. A woman’s nose is buried in a Kindle. A teenager bops her head to music, eyes shut, lost in a world far kinder than mine right now.

I’m invisible. A heartbeat passes. Panic bubbles up, hot and bitter. Come on. Come on.

“You are not stuck. You are being rerouted to something better.” A line from the last self-help book I read flashes through my brain. Cute. Not helpful.

I plant my feet. Grit my teeth. Try again.

Still nothing.

Then—

“Allow me.”

The voice comes from above and behind me. Husky. Commanding. Velvet wrapped around gravel. I freeze. The hair on the back of my neck lifts.

Then I turn. And Sweet. Holy Sweet Law of Attraction.

The man towering behind me is the kind I’ve never seen before in real life. He seems to have stepped off a movie screen. Like something out of a fever dream. Tall. Broad. Built like he bench presses Aston Martins for fun. His face? Sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, lips made for bad decisions.

But it’s the eyes that stop me cold—one an icy blue, the other a deep forest green. The look in them piercing. Confident. Like he was born with assurance coded into his DNA.

Without a word, he steps closer. He inserts himself sideways between me and the closed doors—and grabs their edges with his fingertips. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing muscular forearms dusted with dark hair and lined with veins. The kind of arms that promise safety… Or sin.

The fabric of his shirt stretches across his back, tight over muscles that should come with a warning label. He braces one leg forward and pushes. Grunts. His thigh flexes beneath tailored pants so well-cut they must be custom. Probably Italian. Probably cost more than my rent.

With a groan of protest, the doors inch apart.

I yank my bag free just as the train lurches forward. The momentum causes me to stumble backwards⁠—

He catches me.

His hand wraps around my arm, steadying me like I weigh nothing. His touch? Electric. Hot. Alarmingly comforting.

“You okay?” he asks, voice like midnight whiskey and bad intentions.

I look up. Mistake. Because now, I can’t breathe. Literally.

This man could end empires with that bone structure. And the way he’s looking at me—direct, unreadable, like I’m a puzzle he’s already halfway solved—sends heat crawling up my neck.

I try to pull away, but he doesn’t let go.

“Just making sure you don’t fall.” He guides me to an empty seat.

I drop into it like my knees might betray me. He folds himself onto the seat beside me. Casual. Calm. Powerful. The jacket he left on the seat earlier is now draped over one solid thigh. His presence fills the space between us, thick and magnetic.

My gaze once more travels to his spectacular forearms, those veins which stand out against his skin, the sculpted muscles which seem like they’re carved out of marble. The skin at the back of my neck prickles. I raise my eyes, to meet his. Flush, when I realize he caught me staring. This man has MMC energy. He rivals the fictional book boyfriends I swoon over. This man can’t be friend zoned. My ovaries send up a clamor. I tell them to shut up.

I clutch my bag to my chest like a shield. My heart’s still racing. My mouth is dry. My brain is a loop of What just happened? and Who is this man?

His presence is big and strong and solid and seems to suck out all of the oxygen in the carriage. He renders everyone else in the space diminutive by comparison. I take a look around and find no one has moved. Everyone’s lost in their personal worlds. No one noticed how this stranger saved my purse from being lost to the black of the tube tunnel. I prop my handbag in my lap. Noticing the paperback that’s slipped out, I slide it in, then lock my fingers over my bag. Then I remember my manners. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he rumbles.

I sneak another peek at those corded forearms currently at rest on those powerful thighs. Noticing him watching me, I flush and look away quickly.

And then, because the silence is too heavy, and I’m absolutely not thinking about how that forearm would look pinning me to a wall, I say the dumbest thing ever. “I didn’t know train doors could do that. I thought they, uh, bounced back if something was in the way.”

Smooth.

His lips twitch. Not quite a smile, but close. “Apparently, not.”

I nod, gripping my bag tighter. “Well, that’s one new thing I’ve learned today. And I try to learn one new thing every day. It helps… You know… With self-confidence. Growth. That sort of thing.”

Why. Am. I. Still. Talking?

His head tilts, eyes gleaming now. “You read a lot of self-help books?”

“Too many,” I mutter. “And also…romance novels.”

His brows arch. The amusement is still there—soft, curious, curling at the corners of his mouth. “That so?” His stunning mismatched gaze scans my face like he’s trying to read between the lines.

Another shiver rolls down my spine. He shouldn’t affect me in this way. So, what if his eyelashes could rival a woman’s. And his pants are clearly tailor-made; his shoes scream that they were handmade in Italy.

I recognize class when I see it, considering I, too, was born into one of the richest families in the country. Only, I turned my back on them. My fingers slip on the rough material of my bag. I bought it at the charity shop and take pride in the fact that my entire outfit came off the discount store rack.

My job as a nanny means I don’t have the money to afford to cut my hair in a salon, so I’ve learned to trim off the edges myself. Hopefully, it doesn’t look too uneven. At least I have a steady income. No more donating blood, or my eggs—which I’d had to resort to—to pay my bills. I tuck a strand behind my ear.

He continues to watch me. Not in a creepy way. In a…thorough way. Like he’s trying to decide something.

And then, just as the train begins to slow for the next stop, he dips his chin. “Have coffee with me.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“Coffee.” That almost-smile is back. Dangerous and heart-stopping. “Just one. You owe me.”