The Girl behind the Throne (Editing)

Chapter 10

'I really do not see what we have to talk about Liam. You slept around, you flirted, you made me feel like a pickpocket from Oliver Twist, and now to top it all off, you're with a girl who made every attempt to make me feel like boiled shit. You and I are never going to happen again.' I leaned down on the saddle, hanging my head so that it was perilously close to Liam's blushing face.

'It's that Jamie guy isn't it? The one you were always talking about. God, I should have known.' Liam shouted, leaning up on his toes in an attempt to make himself taller.

You could trust Liam's ego to have caused such a reaction. He literally could not fathom the idea of rejection, choosing to blame it on someone other than himself.

I blushed, despite my anger, and Liam having known me for long enough to know that my burning face was my giveaway, pointed triumphantly.

'I knew it. I knew you loved him.' He said a smug and snooty tone in his voice. 'You're the one who cheated; you were in love with another man while going out with me. You have no morals.'

Letting out a disgusted sound, I leaned down and snatched the reins from his slack hands, having utilised his anger to my own advantage, and turned Garfield around and set him at a canter in the opposite direction from Liam and his ego.

'Don't forget Tess, I had you first.' He shouted at my departing back, and I shuddered in disgust, knowing exactly which way he meant.

I leaned over my shoulder, looking back at the pathetic figure standing in the field. 'Did you, I barely remember.' I called back in a breezy tone, and finished with a laugh.

I heard Liam shout in anger at my slights at his manhood, and the next time I looked around, he was storming back towards his house.

It took me ten minutes of riding the trail to find Jamie, eventually I stumbled across him near a small stream at the edge of the woodland, still running. He had taken off his shirt and was jogging along, the muscular planes or his toned back gleaming in the sunlight. I guided the horse into a short canter, pulling him into a spot when we turned up beside him.

'Run, Forrest, run.' I said with an easy grin, but Jamie kept running, outpacing the slowly ambling horse. Again, I kicked Garfield into a brief canter, catching up. 'What's up with you?'

Jamie just shook his head, the strands around the front of his face damp with sweat. 'Who was that?'

I almost laughed; it had been one of the first things Liam had asked me too.

'This whole business, and the house, is owned by the Blackwood family, the youngest of which, goes by the name Liam.'

Jamie stopped running and looked at me and this time I had to pull Garfield's reins to stop him from carrying on.

'Your Liam?' He asked, panting slightly and pushing his hair out of his eyes with his forearm.

Turned towards me, as he was, I could see the hard planes of his abdomen, the jutting ridges which only come with dedicated work, tapering to an admirable Adonis belt under his hips, which I had always been a sucker for. My eyes traced his naked torso, and I had to pull my eyes back up to his face.

'He's hardly my Liam. he cheated on me and left me for a bully.' I said with a wry laugh. We were hardly contenders for the 'Romance of The Year' trophy.

Jamie's jaw clenched and I remembered that I hadn't told him about Liam's extracurricular activities, instead, I said it was the distance which broke us up, and that we had mutually decided that it was over.

Jamie looked murderous, his brown brows pulled down low over his eyes as he scowled. 'You never told me that.'

I swallowed, Jamie looked like he was going to throttle Liam Blackwood, and given the plethora of muscle he had been hiding under his t-shirts, he would win.