“What’s wrong with my having ambitions?

“You do,” Kendal continued.

“That’s different,” Jarrad responded.

“Why? Because I was a wife and mother?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you still are!” His temper was clearly near boiling.

“And I suppose that means I should be in your kitchen! In your bed!”

“And what’s wrong with that? At least half the time, anyway!”

It was all she could do not to fling at him that she had been there—always. She’d been his for the taking, too crazily in love with him, even without the devastating ecstasies he had branded upon her body.

Always his, until Lauren had intruded….

ELIZABETH POWER was born in Bristol, England, where she lives with her husband in a three-hundred-year-old cottage. A keen reader, as a teenager she had already made up her mind to be a novelist, although it wasn’t until she was around thirty that she took up writing seriously. As an animal lover, with a strong leaning toward vegetarianism, her interests include organic vegetable gardening, regular exercise, listening to music, fashion and ministering to the demands of her adopted, generously proportioned cat!

The Disobedient Wife
Elizabeth Power

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘NOW let’s get this straight!’

Jarrad swung away from the window, the angry glitter in his cold blue eyes displacing the shock in the autocratic framework of his hard, handsome face, a face she had fallen so desperately in love with nearly three years ago. Only this wasn’t three years ago—it was now, Kendal reminded herself bitterly, the head she flung up revealing features that were both delicate and vulnerable—the red of her controlled, wild hair evincing an equally controlled yet fiery nature as she faced the man standing, glowering at her from behind the desk, bracing herself for the onslaught she had expected would follow.

‘You walk out of my life nearly a year ago. Disappear for six months so that I don’t know where the hell you are or what you’re doing, and then you calmly waltz in here and inform me that you’re going abroad—and taking my child with you! Well, I’m sorry, Kendal, but the answer’s no. A definite and categorical no!’

Tension gripped her insides as he turned again to glare out on the sunny June morning and the city traffic seven floors below.

London was going about its business, a silent world behind the effective double glazing, effective and efficient like the man who stood with his back turned squarely against her, every muscle taut with opposition from those wide shoulders down to that lean, hard waist beneath the fine tailoring of his shirt. The man who owned not just Third Millennium Systems International—one of the names in computer software—but the very building it stood in. And who, until a year ago, had thought he owned her, Kendal Mitchell… She tasted his name like some bitter elixir she had had no will to resist taking. Her, as well as their little son, Matthew.

‘You seem to forget something, Jarrad.’ Her voice was steady, concealing the nerves that racked her at just having to face him again. ‘Believe it or not, he’s our son.’

Those dark features, always somewhat uncompromising, were close to formidable as he turned back to her, that high forehead and straight, aristocratic nose harshened by the steely determination of that forceful jaw and that almost black hair that grew, thick and springy, to curl just below his immaculate white collar.

‘I’m glad you reminded me.’ That voice, deep and richly toned—that once had rendered her helpless with its powers of seduction—was now strung only with sarcasm. ‘I was of the opinion that you thought I had no right to even see Matthew—let alone have any say in his future. What have you been doing anyway for the past six months?’ He came round and positioned himself on the edge of the desk, just in front of her, exuding a raw energy from the disciplined fitness in the long, hard lines of his body. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

Hardly daring to breathe, in case the slightest movement should cause her to accidentally touch him, Kendal refused to shrink back against her seat as every instinct was warning her she should.

‘I needed the break. I had to get away.’ Darn it! Why are you letting him make you sound so defensive? she berated herself, hearing her own voice croak. ‘I went to Scotland.’

‘Working?’

‘No.’

One of those thick eyebrows lifted in almost mocking scepticism. ‘So the world of interior design has had to manage without you for a while?’

She didn’t respond. She knew only too well what he thought about her working. Wasn’t that what most of the rows had been about?

‘So why Scotland?’

Beneath the chic green suit she could feel herself growing clammy under his harsh interrogation, but with feigned nonchalance she lifted one elegantly padded shoulder. ‘Why not Scotland?’

‘Answer me!’

Kendal’s breath seemed to lock in her lungs. What could she say? Because when you knew where I was you wouldn’t leave me alone! Because you knew that if you kept on at me enough I’d come back, that I wouldn’t be able to resist you! It was the one reason she had jumped at the chance of this job in the States—to get away from him. From the fear of ever again succumbing to his lethal sexuality.

That impervious note in his voice compelled her to respond. ‘It was the farthest place I could think of from London where I could be on my own for a while. Where I could think.’

‘So now you’ve thought and you’ve decided you want to use your impeccable talents where the opportunities are and carve out a name for yourself in the New World—with Matthew in tow. Is that it, dearest?’ There was nothing but sheer, undiluted menace behind his smile.

‘No, I—’ He was making it sound so mercenary. As though money was the only thing that mattered.

‘Oh, don’t be modest, darling. If I recall, you used to have clients clamouring by the dozen. I seem to remember you being on the phone from morning till night!’

‘Hardly,’ she uttered in defence of herself, of the small business she had needed, and had been trying to build through the long, last traumatic weeks of her marriage. ‘And it isn’t only for money,’ she felt the need to tell him. ‘If I’d wanted money I could have come to you.’

‘Yes.’ His chest expanded beneath the pristine white shirt, and for a moment she almost imagined his sigh to be one of audible regret because, of course, he knew that that was the last thing in the world she would ever have done. ‘But it’s something else, isn’t it, Kendal? It’s the buzz you get out of that stubborn need to be independent—the climb to the top regardless.’

‘It isn’t regardless!’ A toss of her bright head revealed the long, slender line of her throat, the pulse beating angrily in its secret hollow. ‘And what’s wrong with my having ambitions anyway?’ Again she could feel the age-old arguments surfacing, refusing to be quelled. ‘You do.’ ‘That’s different.’

‘Why? Because I was a wife and mother?’

‘As far as I’m concerned you still are!’ His tone was angry, his temper near boiling.

‘And I suppose that means I should be in your kitchen? In your bed?’

‘And what’s wrong with that? At least half the time anyway!’

‘Ha ha!’ It was all she could do not to fling at him that she had been there—always. Had been his for the taking, her heart, mind and soul too crazily in love with him even without the devastating ecstasies he had branded upon her body. Always his, until Lauren had intruded…

For a moment she felt his eyes, like twin lasers, burning through the thin veneer of her composure. A tendril of hair had come loose from her carefully arranged French pleat, and she fastened the recalcitrant red strand behind her ear with surprisingly shaky fingers, sensing those shrewd eyes following her every movement, those proud nostrils distend as though seeking the familiar scent of her perfume.

The briefest smile caused his mouth to curve with devastating sensuality, and Kendal’s nerves seemed to stretch taut as she recalled how often that look had preceded nights of endless ecstasy in his arms.

‘You turn up here, looking like some model off a catwalk, in the colour I always told you suited you best, reeking to high heaven of Givenchy. What was all this intended to do, darling?’ The smile was gone now. ‘Soften me up? Remind me of what I’ve been missing all these months and get me to agree to your ludicrous, and, if I might say so, characteristically selfish request?’

So he wouldn’t allow Matthew to go.

Kendal’s spirits sank although her head came up in a bright flame of defiance as she breathed through glossed lips. ‘Did anybody ever have the power to soften you, Jarrad?’

He sank his hands into his pockets, which brought her gaze reluctantly to his hard abdomen and the taut fitness of his thighs beneath the expensive cut of dark suit trousers.

‘You should know,’ he rasped, and for a moment something murky and tumultuous clouded the usual vital glitter in his eyes. ‘Although “soft” is probably far from how I would describe my responses to you.’

Kendal’s heart struck up a crazy rhythm, and colour showed on the pale sheen of her cheeks.

‘You would say something like that, wouldn’t you?’ she accused him breathlessly, jumping up to put a safer distance between herself and that potent, powerful masculinity.

‘Why not?’ His mockery was harsh, relentless. ‘It was about the only thing that was any good between us.’

‘No, you’re wrong!’ She wanted to forget it, to deny, if only to herself, that she had ever derived pleasure from this man’s lovemaking, that he had taken her, sobbing, mindless, through the very gates of paradise. ‘There was only Matthew!’

‘Ah yes, Matthew…’ He straightened and moved away from the desk, his height topping hers by half a head. The lean athleticism of his body and that compelling presence that had never failed to take her breath away succeeded now, so that for a moment her defences were stripped and impetuously she blurted out, ‘You’ve got to let me go.’

‘Why?’

There was danger in his cool study, and a flash of panic showed beneath the unusual green of her eyes.

‘I’m not stopping you,’ he said, turning away.

‘You know what I mean.’ She could hear herself starting to beg. ‘I mean Matthew. You’ve got to let me take him—’

‘No!’ The sheer violence of his refusal made her visibly flinch as he swung back to face her. ‘I haven’t got to do anything,’ he reminded her with cruel, intimidating softness.

‘So I lose the chance of this contract? Just because you’re being so petty-minded?’

She watched him go back to his desk and sit down, as though he were merely discussing a matter of the day’s filing.

‘I don’t call it being petty-minded—wanting to keep my son where I can be directly involved with his upbringing.’ He took the top off his pen, the gold fountain pen he always used, the one that she had given him for his thirty-second birthday two years ago. ‘You can go without him.’

Kendal caught her breath. ‘You know I won’t do that,’ she said, moving back over to the desk.

‘I know.’

Unbelievably he had resumed writing, that dark head bent in concentration. Scribbling some trifling note to his secretary, probably! she thought, frustration overcoming her so that before she could control herself she was grabbing the note from under that long, tanned hand.

‘You bastard!’ The crumpled paper hit his cheek before dropping onto the thick carpet beside his chair.

‘Yes!’ She gasped as with lightning reflexes he caught her wrist, twisting her arm, forcing her over the desk towards him. ‘But then we already know that, don’t we? Which is probably the reason you married me!’

She laughed in spite of the turbulent sensations that were gushing through her from the contact of those hard, tenacious fingers, a contact that was designed merely to humiliate—to crush.

‘Oh, sure! Spitefulness and brutality appeals to me!’ she breathed, her green eyes dancing. ‘Aren’t you getting confused with the reason I left?’

She tried to wrest her hand from his, the struggle only succeeding in loosening the clasp in her hair, bringing a sea of red waves tumbling down across her shoulder.

‘Now, that’s how I like you.’ He grunted in cold approval. ‘Ruffled and undignified and stripped of all those falsely cultivated airs! And perhaps you’d mind telling me again just why you walked out on me, Kendal? And don’t try to convince yourself I was anything other than tender with you. Except, of course, when you wanted me to be otherwise…’

It took all her strength, but she managed to free herself as everything that was feminine in her throbbed with the recollection of just how tender this man knew how to be.

‘Wasn’t incarceration and infidelity enough? You wanted a dutiful little wife at home while you carried on your secret little liaison with Lauren Westgate! Only it wasn’t secret, was it, Jarrad? Ralph found out—which was the real reason he had to go! Why you fired him! You and Lauren!’

The big swivel chair squeaked beneath Jarrad’s weight as he leaned back, draping one white-sleeved arm over the padded leather.

‘My relationship with Lauren had nothing to do with why your brother-in-law had to leave the company,’ he said with a grim cast to his mouth.

‘Like hell!’ she spat back, her eyes dark and wounded. It had been like twisting a knife in an already open wound when he had had her sister’s accountant husband struck off his payroll. Quiet, gentle Ralph, who had reluctantly given in to her demands to tell her what he knew, had confirmed what she had already suspected was happening between Jarrad and his lovely sales director. That raw wound had split wide open, producing scars that had never healed, when she had been left to witness the turmoil into which Jarrad’s action had plunged her own’s sister’s marriage, causing Chrissie to lose the baby she had been expecting. Then there had been the financial problems. Ralph’s loss of self-esteem. The final break-up…

‘You wanted brains and breeding and you got it, didn’t you? Brains in the office and a dumb, unsuspecting redhead to breed with at home!’

‘And Kendal Mitchell’s made up her mind about that, and nothing I say could ever convince her otherwise, could it?’ Jarrad said roughly.

Try me! Give me some proof that there was never anything between you and Lauren! Foolishly, even now, her heart cried out to him, although he hadn’t tried to offer any proof of it then. Nor had he done so when he had hounded her for those first six months after she’d left, demanding that she return home, and only for his son’s sake, though he hadn’t said that in so many words. But of course she knew it was only because of Matthew.

‘You’re right! Nothing can—or ever will!’ she flung at him, and turned on her heel, wanting to get out of there before the tears of frustration and regret she could feel burning behind her eyes threatened to degrade her in front of him.

‘Kendal!’

She froze on the spot, his imperious tone forcing her to glance back over her shoulder.

‘I meant what I said. You take that job in the States and you go on your own.’

‘And if I don’t?’ she challenged.

‘Then I’ll sue for custody.’

Kendal’s teeth sank into the inner flesh of her bottom lip. ‘You wouldn’t be that callous,’ she whispered.

‘Try me.’

‘You’d never get it!’

‘Why not?’ That hard, cruel mouth pulled down on one side. ‘An incarcerating and unfaithful husband,’ he said, using her own description of him, ‘doesn’t necessarily make for a poor father in English law.’

He was right, of course, and he would use every shred of power and influence he possessed to see it turned out his way. She knew from experience that Jarrad Mitchell always got what he wanted.

‘Get lost!’ she breathed, turning away, battling against an inner surge of panic.

‘No, that’s been your prerogative, darling.’ She heard his voice coming mockingly from behind her. ‘But not any more. Aren’t you rather forgetting something?’

She stopped in her tracks and turned back to him, frowning.

‘The address of where you’re staying,’ he supplied emotionlessly. And then, when she hesitated, he said, ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer to give it to my solicitor.’

He meant it! Oh, dear heaven.

As he got to his feet she wanted to claw his arrogant face with her carefully lacquered nails, because, of course, he’d been right when he’d said she had hoped that seeing her would soften him into submission. But Jarrad Mitchell never submitted to anyone, she remembered bitingly. He only ever controlled.

Well, get this! she thought, leaning on her small green handbag and scrawling the address of her new flat in the notebook she always carried, which contained the names of useful contacts in the design world. I’m going to take up your challenge of a fight and just for once I’m going to win!

Nevertheless her spirit masked a very strong element of doubt and not a little fear as she tore the page out of her notebook and flung it in the direction of her husband’s daunting figure, unaware of his cool amusement as the page fluttered under his desk from the sudden draught caused as she swept out of his office.

‘So what did he say?’

There was eager anticipation in Chrissie Langdon’s question as she watched her sister sip the sweet, hot tea she had made her.

‘You wouldn’t believe it!’

Five years older than Chrissie, Kendal wasn’t usually one to pour out her troubles to her sister, especially since, during the past year or so, Chrissie had had enough problems of her own. Today, though, it was obvious to Chrissie that her sister was clearly in a state.

‘Oh, I would! Believe me, where Jarrad Mitchell’s concerned, I would!’ Chrissie breathed, rolling large brown eyes emphasised by her small face and her short, spiky brown hair. She darted a glance to eighteen-month-old Matthew, whom she had been looking after that morning, and who had just discovered that hurling a book across the carpet was far more exciting than turning its pages. ‘Go on. Fire away.’

Kendal put down her cup and saucer on the wicker table which formed part of the rustic, bohemian furnishings that Chrissie loved. In fact, when Chrissie had moved into the Victorian semi with Ralph three years ago—newly married and spending money like water—Kendal recalled how she had tried to help her economise, suggesting cost-cutting ways with the design.

Now, though, being in the same position as Kendal was, and between jobs as an office receptionist, Kendal knew that if it hadn’t been for the proceeds of their old home—half of which she had released to Chrissie on her last birthday, the other half of which she had put in trust for Matthew—her sister would have had difficulty keeping up payments on the house even when she was in full-time employment.

Now she sat back, took a deep breath and said, ‘He’s going to sue for custody.’

Chrissie whistled under her breath. ‘What? If you go abroad? Or in any case?’ she appended, suddenly looking aghast, and Kendal groaned. She hadn’t actually considered that he might do it regardless.

‘I think he meant if I take this job.’

‘So what will you do?’ Chrissie sank down onto the low floral-patterned sofa opposite her older sister. ‘Not bother?’

Kendal gave her an exasperated look. ‘Chrissie! That would just be giving in to him. I’ll go—and with Matthew—and I’ll fight Jarrad every step of the way!’

‘You might live to regret that.’ Chrissie picked up the cup of herbal tea she had made for herself. ‘The man’s a fighter, Kendal. And the worst possible kind. He doesn’t take any prisoners. He’ll chew you up and spit you out and have you crawling back to him for mercy before it ever comes to court. Jarrad Mitchell can do anything!’

Kendal grimaced, and yet was unable to contain a fleeting smile as she glanced sideways and saw Matthew, sitting surrounded by the scattered pages of his little picture book, beaming up at her in wide-eyed innocence. ‘You make him sound like some sort of mythical demon,’ she uttered with an inexplicable little shudder as she reached for her cup and saucer. ‘And as though you almost admire him for it!’ she went on to chide disbelievingly, although she knew that wasn’t far from the truth.

From the moment Chrissie had met Jarrad at her own wedding three years ago she had looked up to him with the kind of hero-worship one would expect from a naive teenager—which of course she had been then—and, surprisingly she still displayed it to some degree, despite the brutal way in which he had treated her husband.

’It’s his determination I admire—that scary determination that ensures nobody and nothing gets in his way and makes everybody respect him,’ Chrissie stated almost contentiously. ‘I wish Ralph had had just a quarter of it. Perhaps if he had, we’d still be…’ She shrugged as though she’d learnt from the pains of over a year without the good-looking, quiet-voiced accountant that it was no use wishing.

‘And he’s not a demon—just a man,’ she went on in that same, near-contentious tone, although it took Kendal a second or two to realise that she was still referring to Jarrad. ‘But as I said he’s a very determined one. Determined, tough and a lot more capable of withstanding the sort of emotional pressure that a battle like this is going to put on you. You can’t take him on, Kendal. For heaven’s sake, compromise! Meet him halfway or something.’

Kendal looked at her sister obliquely. ‘You mean give up the chance of this job?’

For a moment something glittered in those dark eyes, and Kendal was struck by Chrissie’s likeness to her father. But then she had inherited his dark hair and complexion too, Kendal thought, remembering the father who had abandoned them without a care. He had left his wife and children for another woman, only to desert again after Jane Harringdale had taken him back—an act, Kendal reflected painfully now, that had proved too much for their mother’s poor health and had ultimately brought on that fatal collapse.

‘Apart from a few months while you were having Matthew, you’ve always been working.’ It was a reproof, and yet it sounded like a complaint, too, from Chrissie.

‘I’ve had to,’ Kendal stressed quietly. When their mother had died eight years ago Chrissie had been just thirteen, and Kendal herself only eighteen, and Robert Harringdale hadn’t wanted to know. It had been a struggle, therefore, bringing up her sister alone, doing office work during the day while studying for her qualifications as an interior designer at night—particularly as Chrissie hadn’t been an easy teenager, always critical of herself as well as others, often questioning her own worth. As one so-called expert had remarked at the time, she had blamed both her parents for leaving her.

Consequently, desperate for love, and despite Kendal’s attempts to be both mother and father to her, Chrissie had married the first man who had come along shortly before her eighteenth birthday. And, with Ralph being ten years older and therefore more mature, it might have worked out, Kendal thought—eventually. If it hadn’t been for that cold, calculated act of Jarrad’s…

‘So what if you win?’ Chrissie was leaning back against the cushions, playing with an overhanging leaf from one of the plants that grew in abundance around the room. ‘You’ll just be a single mum in a strange country. And, looking at it from a rather selfish point of view, when will I ever get to see you?’

Kendal gave her a dry smile. ‘You can come with me,’ she invited gently—tentatively—but Chrissie merely grimaced.

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she stated in a rather flat tone, and, sadly, Kendal realised that all her sister wanted—hoped for—was a reconciliation with Ralph.

‘You’ll be working flat out. You’ll have to—to keep yourself and Matthew, ’cos I know you’ll never accept a penny from Jarrad. You’ve said so often enough,’ Chrissie expressed. ‘Though I can’t think why! He’s rich enough to keep you, Matthew and half of London besides!’

And clever enough to know that if I take anything from him I’ll be surrendering my independence to him, Kendal thought, which is what he wants. But she didn’t say it.

‘I don’t mind working. I need it,’ she tagged on, unable to add, I need it to help me forget him. To stop driving myself mad with thinking about him. And if I’m abroad he can’t find me so easily. Can’t hurt me any more.

‘It’s not just Matthew. He wants you as well. You know that, don’t you?’ Chrissie interrupted her thoughts as if she had read them. ‘Oh, Kendal, you could have so much if you’d only swallow your pride and give him another chance.’

Her cup suspended in mid-air, Kendal stared at her sister aghast. ‘Go back to him, you mean? Take him back? Like Mum did with Dad!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Jarrad’s nothing like him!’ the younger girl stated adamantly. ‘You could do worse, you know. And it would be a proper family life for Matthew. I don’t suppose you can blame him for wanting that.’

Kendal looked down at her son, who was chewing the cover of his book and gurgling contentedly to himself. Wasn’t that what she wanted for her child? A stable home? She wanted it more than anything. Did her sister imagine that it had been easy these past twelve months? Because it hadn’t been. It had been hell…

‘And what about me? What are you suggesting, Chrissie? That I shouldn’t have left him? That I should have been content to be his housemaid and his dutiful little sex slave while he carried on with that patronising Lauren Westgate behind my back?’

‘Of course I’m not suggesting you should be that,’ Chrissie was quick to respond. ‘Although I don’t think you should pretend you didn’t enjoy the role, or that part of it at any rate—sleeping with him, I mean—because you were besotted with him. Everyone could see it. You worshipped the ground he walked on!’

A flame, which Kendal had thought successfully banked down until she’d faced Jarrad in his office today now leapt to sudden, vibrant life again, way down in her loins.

‘More fool me!’

‘And you were hardly his housemaid.’

No. There had been the long-standing Teeny Roberts to cook and clean. He hadn’t intended her to do all that—even if she had had the time. And perhaps that might have been the problem, in part…

‘As for Lauren, she did rather throw herself at him,’ Chrissie reminded her. ‘And a man with his looks is going to get that every day of the week! It would take a monk to resist that constant barrage from the opposite sex. And I’m not prepared to believe he was even having an affair with her. He’s never actually admitted it, has he?’

No, he hadn’t, Kendal thought. But she had found those receipts in his study from the hotel where they had stayed when he had told her simply that he was away working, had led her to believe he’d gone alone. Oh, they’d been under separate names—and in separate rooms—it was true. But then anything else wouldn’t have looked too good if those receipts had wound up in his accounts office for Ralph to find! Only they hadn’t needed to. Being caught together in Jarrad’s office, as they had been by her brother-in-law that night, was all the evidence that mattered!

‘He’s never actually denied it either.’ How could he? When such a denial would have been a blatant lie! ‘I don’t know how you can defend him, Chrissie! After what he did to Ralph!’

Chrissie lowered her gaze, looking so unhappy suddenly that Kendal wished she hadn’t said anything.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could utter, wishing she could wave a magic wand and make everything all right, for her sister at least.

‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m getting used to it now,’ Chrissie expressed resignedly, although Kendal knew she was just putting on a brave face. ‘Perhaps he did fire Ralph because he thought he was checking up on him. I don’t know,’ she went on to remark disconsolately. ‘But I think a lot of the blame for what happened has to rest with Ralph himself.’

She glanced away, picking distractedly at the edging of one of the plump multi-floral scatter cushions, looking decidedly uneasy. ‘I think it got to the stage where he couldn’t—couldn’t cope with—things…’

‘What sort of things?’ Kendal enquired, frowning. She knew her sister wasn’t the easiest of people to live with.

‘Oh…just things in general,’ Chrissie remarked evasively, continuing to pick at the blanket-stitched cushion with unusual agitation. But then Matthew ran up to her, waving one of his little striped socks, and laughingly she hauled him up onto her lap.

‘Anyway, what I’m saying is I don’t think you should blame him entirely for Ralph losing his job—even if you’d like to.’ She was bent in concentration over the gurgling Matthew, diligently pulling the sock over a tiny foot. ‘And what if he did have one fling? It isn’t the end of the world. And perhaps he did feel neglected. After all, the more he told you he didn’t like you working, the more contracts you seemed determined to take on just to show him—out of sheer defiance.’

Kendal bit her lip. Did Chrissie really think that?

‘I did it for my own sanity,’ was all she could say. Because the truth was that if she hadn’t resumed her profession after Matthew had been born—plunged herself wholeheartedly into her work—she would have gone mad, crazy with doubt and suspicion.

It had been bad enough that she hadn’t felt needed in the home, without Lauren constantly flaunting her success and her very enviable working relationship with Jarrad whenever Kendal, with silent reluctance, had had to preside over dinner parties that included the other woman. It had only just been bearable at first, when she had had her own job, her own career. But those years of domesticity and studying when she had been looking after her sister hadn’t prepared her for the condescending confidence of women like Lauren Westgate.

Consequently, when she’d surrendered her self-sufficiency to have Matthew, and had been insecure as a new mother, Lauren’s belittling remarks about women who were ‘stuck at home’, and Kendal being ‘just a housewife’—coupled with Jarrad suddenly spending more and more time away from home—had all helped drive her back into the safe, secure world of her beloved decor and design. She had wanted to prove herself, and not only to herself but to her husband and the world that she could be just as shining and successful in her own way as Lauren Westgate could. And not only that, but that she could be a success—needed—as a wife and mother as well. And all she had got for her trouble—her foolish, impetuous naivety—was the proverbial slap in the face when her efforts only succeeded in driving her husband right into the other woman’s arms!

‘Anyway,’ she attempted to say lightly. ‘I suppose it’s only natural you should defend him, knowing what you think of women with children working!’

Chrissie clung fervently to the belief that being a housewife and mother was a full-time job, and Kendal knew her sister had settled down enough to take on both roles with avid dedication, which made that last miscarriage and subsequent break-up of her own marriage such a tragedy.

With one shriek their attention was drawn to Matthew who, having pulled off the sock which had been painstakingly restored to his foot, now held it up triumphantly. He squealed a protest as Chrissie tried to clasp him to her, grizzling until she released him, so that he could run on unsteady little legs across the carpet, arms outstretched, to his mother.

‘You’re a scamp!’ Kendal breathed, hauling him up onto her lap. ‘First Chrissie. Now me. You don’t know who you want, do you?’

‘Kissie,’ he gurgled in his baby mimicry, then rewarded Kendal with a chop to the nose with his little flying fist, still tightly clenched around the sock.

Both girls laughed.

‘I don’t know where you get your energy from,’ Chrissie told him as he strained round to look at her, and stuck a determined little foot into Kendal’s groin in the process.

‘Oh, I do,’ Kendal exhaled, wincing, putting a hand under his bottom to transfer him gently to a less sensitive area of her body. He shrieked a protest at even that small amount of restraint. ‘Believe me, I certainly do!’

Because, whether she wanted to admit it to anyone else or not, she couldn’t help but admit to herself that he was very much Jarrad’s child. From that crop of brown hair—growing darker by the day—to the very feet of the long little body that determined that one day he would be tall, like his father, to that burgeoning self-sufficiency that was apparent even in his babyhood. She almost imagined she could already feel that restless determination and energy in him that was so characteristic of Jarrad Mitchell—so characteristic it scared her that she might never be free of the man’s memory.

The only part of her it seemed her son had inherited was those green-flecked, big, beguiling eyes—eyes that Jarrad had once jokingly announced could ‘smite a man at twenty paces’. And with that combination of physical assets and character Kendal could see that Matthew was already destined to break a few hearts.

‘Just like his dad,’ Chrissie supplied—reading her thoughts again, Kendal thought, startled, until she realised her sister was still referring to something they had been saying a moment ago.

‘No, not like his dad,’ she couldn’t help responding nevertheless, on the smallest note of panic, and she clutched her son tightly to her—ignoring his flailing fists now, his straining efforts to free himself—as though she would protect him from the world and anything that threatened to taint him with the same ability to hurt and wound as Jarrad Mitchell had hurt and wounded her. As, similarly, her own father had hurt and destroyed her mother.

‘I’ve got to take that job, Chrissie,’ she breathed over her son’s angry, lemon-clad little shoulder. I’ve got to get away from him. And more determinedly, aloud again, she uttered, ‘I’ve got to go.’

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER dropping Matthew off with her child minder later that afternoon, Kendal drove out to see some clients for whom she had agreed to do some freelance work, her first since coming back to London. The woman and her husband had approached her through her old firm, having been pleased with the work she had done for them in the past.

She hated leaving her son, particularly twice in one day, because every time she watched him toddle away from her it was like losing a part of herself. But she knew what the alternative would mean—being beholden to Jarrad. Oh, she didn’t mind that for Matthew’s sake, because she knew her husband wouldn’t stop short of providing more than a generous allowance for his son.

But she needed to keep herself too. The savings she had accumulated before leaving the matrimonial home a year ago were now nearly exhausted, and there was no way that she intended to take any money from a man who not only flaunted his mistress openly in her face but who could be so callous as to do what he had done to Ralph—because it had been callous, no matter what Chrissie said.

Forcing herself to forget Jarrad, she focused her thoughts on the job ahead. She had her sketchbook, notepad, colour charts…

She made a quick note in her mind of everything she would need, after negotiating one particularly busy junction, and by the time she pulled onto the drive of the large mock-Georgian house she was mentally as well as physically prepared.

Jill and Peter Arkwright were a middle-aged couple, with two golden Retrievers who sat obediently looking at Kendal from a hopeful distance as she nibbled the oversized slice of rich sponge cake that Jill had insisted Kendal have with her coffee. At the same time, diligently she sketched her plan for the ornamental mouldings and alcoves she had suggested for the lounge, to help take the squareness off the large room.

By the time she left she had a very clear picture of what they needed. An overall classic but country feel that would give the prestigious yet modern estate house some individuality.

Keen to get started, so that the job would be completed if Jarrad did back down and let her take Matthew away—which she very much doubted—she drove straight back home, deciding to pick the little boy up within the hour. In the meantime she had colours to decide on, fabrics to order, painting contractors and carpenters to organise.

Home was a furnished ground-floor flat in an Edwardian terraced house which she was renting on a month-to-month basis until she knew what her definite plans were, therefore the furnishings weren’t at all what she would have chosen herself. It was, however, situated in a quiet street, in a reasonably quiet suburb of the city.

As it was a pleasingly warm day she had the French windows open while she worked, and was enjoying the lucid song of a blackbird above the more distant sounds of afternoon traffic, above the sudden low drone of a car pulling up somewhere along the road.

She answered the phone breezily when it rang. ‘Kendal Mitchell.’

’How did you get on with the Arkwrights?’

The pleasant male voice brought an instant smile to her lips.

‘Tony! Hi!’

‘Was she still as generous with the cake rations?’

Kendal laughed. ‘You’d better believe it!’ She liked Tony Beeson. They were roughly the same age and had worked together at the same design firm until Kendal had married. In fact Tony still worked for them, and it was he who had told her about the job that was going in the States, after visiting his brother’s family in Philadelphia.

‘Made up your mind yet whether you’re going to be leaving us?’ He sounded tentative. In a way he had opened this opportunity for her, but, now that it looked as if it might materialise, Kendal knew he didn’t really want her to go.

‘Not yet,’ she parried, not wanting to go into detail. Tony knew she was separated, but that was all. She didn’t see any point in discussing the obstructions that Jarrad might throw in her way.

‘Have you ever thought about a partnership?’ Tony surprised her by suddenly asking.

Kendal frowned, hesitated. ‘A partnership?’

‘Yes, dumbo. A partnership. You and me. Just say the word and I’d come with you. We’d make a very good team, you know, with your creative flair and my cock-eyed business sense. What do you say? Just the two of us?’

Kendal laughed awkwardly. She had never actually dated Tony and wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not.

‘You mean you running the business side and me showing all those Yankees what an English home really should look like?’

‘Why not?’ he suggested, sounding even more serious. ‘No strings attached. Unless, of course, you wanted there to be.’

She laughed again because she didn’t know what else to do.

‘I can’t wait to see that!’ she jested, ignoring that last bit about strings. But, no, she decided. Partnerships, of any kind, were out. Two healthy, attractive people of opposite genders couldn’t work closely together without sex getting in the way. Jarrad and Lauren were evidence of that. Besides, she had been wary of men before marrying Jarrad—and with good reason—and she intended being nothing but wary ever again.

‘Come with me by all means, but let’s just stick to the wildly passionate affair we’ve got now, shall we?’ she continued to jest, hoping she was letting him down lightly. ‘A working relationship will only taint it. I’ve seen it happen so many times.’

She heard Tony’s deep, expressive sigh. ‘Alas, so have I.’ She could almost picture him then, with his hand on his heart. ‘Well, after that very positive rebuff I’d better go, angel.’ So he was only half joking. ‘I’ll call you again—if my wounded pride will let me. Love you.’

Kendal beamed into the mouthpiece. ‘I love you too,’ she breathed out of sheer relief as she heard his end of the line go dead.

She replaced the receiver, a soft smile touching her lips as she glanced absently towards the patio doors. And then her smile faded, every nerve seeming to freeze, as she met the hard features of the broad-shouldered man standing there, framed by the aperture.

‘Jarrad!’

His shoes made no sound on the carpet as he came in, danger in every lean inch of his arrogant frame and in those determinedly slow strides.

’So that’s why you’re headed off halfway across the world. You’ve got yourself a boyfriend. Is that why you’re looking so shocked, darling?’ Mockery couldn’t soften those austerely beautiful features. ‘What were you hoping? That I wouldn’t find out?’

From behind the large old table that served as a makeshift desk, Kendal stared up at him, her pale skin drained of colour. ‘I—I didn’t expect you.’

A muscle pulled beside that strong jaw. ‘Didn’t you?’ he asked roughly, picking up a rubber and tossing it down on the table again. ‘I would have thought it was obvious even to you that I’d want to see my son.’

Well, of course it was. And she had known he would call. That was why she had been so reluctant to let him have her address that morning. She just hadn’t anticipated that it would be so soon, that was all.

’You—you can’t.’ The shock of seeing him made her voice falter, and something tightened her already clenched stomach muscles as she saw those dark masculine brows draw together.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Kendal swallowed. He seemed so dauntingly big, even in the fair-sized, high-ceilinged room, that she struggled to her feet so as not to feel at such a disadvantage.

‘I mean…he’s with Valerie—my child minder. I haven’t picked him up yet.’ And that was the worst thing she could have said, she realised, when she saw the thunderous look that crossed his harshly sculptured face.

‘Of course. Ever the dutiful mother.’ Distaste twisted those grim lips as he glanced down at the emulsion charts, swatches and sketches she had been labouring over. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t been working.’

’I needed—’ The money, she’d been about to say, but stopped herself in time. ‘I found I needed to,’ she corrected as calmly as she could, although she guessed he had realised why when she saw his critical appraisal of the room, with its rather world-weary-looking furniture and the plain and jaded decor.

‘You bring our child from our home into a run-down place like this!’ He swore rather savagely.

‘It’s clean and it’s paid for!’ Quickly Kendal hastened to defend her rather modest home. ‘Anyway, it isn’t going to be for very long.’

‘Ah, no, I’d forgotten. And are you imagining you can allow another man into your life to take on the role of looking after my son?’

He had obviously overheard and misinterpreted her conversation with Tony, but she was feeling too weary to put him straight. Anyway, he had had no qualms about his own affair with Lauren.

‘And what if I am?’ she threw back at him, coming round the table and then suddenly wishing she had kept it between them—as a barrier against his pulsing anger—when he took a step nearer and breathed, ‘Over my dead body.’

His voice was low and threatening, and she sent a glance up at him from under her lashes, somehow unable to visualise him lying prostrate and helpless. It was Jarrad Mitchell who controlled, while others fell around him in obedient submission.

‘I just thought you ought to know, Jarrad.’ She was level with him now, a willowy, delicate figure beside his hard, intimidating masculinity, though her face was uptilted to his in challenge. ‘I’m going to fight you for him.’ Her voice didn’t falter. Somehow she had managed to sound miraculously calm.

Something leapt in the glacial blue of his eyes. Anger, but something else too. Something remarkably like admiration, she realised, amazed—because of course a man like him respected a healthy rival. It whetted his appetite, stimulated his competitive energies, his need to win. But all he said was, ‘You stupid little fool.’

A shudder ran down her spine from remembering something Chrissie had said about crawling back to him for mercy. Nevertheless, she was determined not to let that daunting male confidence undermine her resolve.

‘No, not any more, Jarrad,’ she taunted softly, making to brush past him, and paid for it when he grabbed her, his clasp bruising on her upper arm as he forced her back to face him.

‘Have you slept with him yet?’ It was an angry, relentless demand.

‘That’s none of your business!’ All decorum deserted her as she struggled to free herself—to no avail—from his tenacious, determined hold.

He laughed without humour. ‘Well that’s where you’re very wrong, Kendal. It’s very much my business. Particularly as it seems I have to remind you that you’re still my wife!’

‘I am?’ She tilted her head to gaze up at him with scathing incredulity. ‘That didn’t seem to worry you too much when you were off having your adulterous fling with Lauren!’

‘That’s your interpretation of it,’ he said grimly.

‘And Ralph’s! Were we both wrong?’ Unconsciously a small, injured note had crept into her voice. ‘Or are you one of these men who thinks wives should be faithful while husbands sleep with as many lovers as they think fit?’

Now mockery curled that rather cruel mouth, though his eyes were concealed by the dark sweep of his lowered lashes.

‘Is that what you imagined you were, Kendal? Part of some sort of exotic harem?’ His cold amusement was derisive. ‘Just now there was only one!’

Only the clean, clear notes of the blackbird’s song filtering in through the open doors broke the moment’s silence as she glared at him, dumbfounded. ‘My God! Isn’t that enough?’

He caught both of her arms now, and was holding her there in front of him, the shadow that crossed his face making those dark features appear sombre, almost pained, though she knew it was only the late afternoon sun playing tricks as it fell across the lawn.

’And isn’t it enough that I spent every energy I possessed in trying to make you happy? In pleasuring you, Kendal? Whatever you thought I felt for Lauren I still wanted to lose myself in you. Again and again and again. And you, you always responded to me like some crazed animal. Never able to get enough…’

She shut her mind to the images that were swimming before her eyes—the ultimate ecstasy of being dominated by the driving power of this man, the joy of being in his arms, of those pinnacles of pleasure that had had her sobbing, swept away on a tide of desire far beyond the reaches of any earthly plane. But that was before she had had positive proof that he found Lauren’s company so much more stimulating, before he had sacked Ralph and she, herself, had realised the hard way that she had been wrong ever to believe anything a man said—any man…

‘Things change,’ was all she said, brittly, not trusting herself to utter anything else.

‘Like hell!’ he whispered, and then, with one hand to the base of her spine, pulled her lower body against the hard, lean angles of his.

She gasped at the startling contact, shutting her eyes tight against the sensations that ripped through her at the shocking evidence of his arousal. But a slow, insidious heat was building in her, permeating her tissues, her cells and her very blood to make her breathing quicken and her breasts strain against the white cotton of the sleeveless blouse she was wearing with the chic, straight skirt of her green suit.

‘You see?’ he murmured, with a soft laugh under his breath. But she couldn’t see anything—not reason or logic or sense.

Beneath her resisting hands the cool fabric of his jacket sent a raw sensuality shivering through her, the dizzying fragrance of his cologne, with that more personal male scent that was as familiar to her as his signature, playing havoc with her defences. Even as some saner part of her repelled it some masochistic streak yearned for that arm that was holding her loosely to ignore any protest she might make and crush her to him, before that deeply sensual voice went on, ‘We belong together, Kendal, whether you like it or not. And, if taking care and control of Matthew away from you means I keep you here, then I’ll do everything in my power to effect that end.’

Oh, dear heaven…

Without realising it, she was aware now that she had walked into his trap, baited by his cruel reminder of the slave she had been to her own physical desire for him during their brief marriage.

Opening her eyes, she saw those strong features graven with wanting and desire and, above all, determination. Driven by fear—of herself more than of anything he might do—somehow she managed to utter in a voice that trembled, ‘Aren’t you forgetting that it isn’t just you, me and Matthew any more?’

If she had been struggling for her freedom then nothing else could have been more effective in securing it, because he pushed her roughly away from him. The expression on that hard face was oddly smug, however, as though he had gained some victory in a game that could only be won round by round.

‘In that case, darling, you’re obviously in danger of being as unfaithful to him as I have apparently been with Lauren. And if you’ve got any illusions about running off with him and taking Matthew, I’d advise you now not even to entertain the idea. You’re coming back to me, Kendal, sooner or later, so you’d better start getting used to the idea.

‘And the next time I call I want to see my son—here—’ he stabbed a hard finger towards the floor ‘—where he belongs, with his mother—for the time being—if it isn’t too much trouble! Not with some hired help who’s paid to step in whenever his mother decides she’s too busy to care for him herself!’

His words cut her to the quick so that she almost wanted to lash out at him. But despite her quickly roused temper—even after the way he had wronged her while she had still been living with him—she had never quite degraded herself by striking him.

‘How dare you?’ she breathed, choking on the thought that he might even consider that she was anything but a good mother to Matthew.

‘Yes, I dare,’ he uttered with soft intimidation. ‘It’s my legal right as your husband and—more significantly—as your child’s father. And talking of rights—I intend to claim them. And we’ll start with visiting rights—as of now! I’ll be away from tonight on a conference that’s going to take at least till the middle of next week. But I’ll be round again next Friday afternoon at two. Be here, and see that Matthew’s here as well. I intend to take him home with me for as long as I desire to have him. And you’re coming with him!’

‘No!’ Panic strung her voice at the mere thought of what he was suggesting. Of course he could see Matthew, but there was no way that she was going back to the matrimonial home that she had run from in such hopeless despair a year ago.

He took no heed of her startled objection, though, only added, ‘And if you don’t like it, then I’m afraid, my dearest, you can darn well lump it, because those are the conditions. And if he isn’t here, Kendal, there’ll be hell to pay!’

He stormed out then, leaving her standing, alone and shaken, listening to the angry growl of the Porsche she presumed he still drove. That determined thrust of power as he pulled away reflected his mood, breaking the stillness of the day, before he turned the corner and the growl became a roar and then faded away altogether.

After he had gone, Kendal found it impossible to concentrate, her earlier enthusiasm for the Arkwrights’ job having totally deserted her.

Why couldn’t he leave her alone?

The question screamed through her brain as it had done so many times during those first six months after she had taken Matthew and fled.

She had gone first to a hotel—because she hadn’t wanted to burden the newly separated and unhappy Chrissie—then to the comfortable, moderately priced accommodation she had rented to the mutual benefit of herself and an old school-friend who had taken a temporary job away from London. But Jarrad had persisted in pursuing her, which had eventually driven her to Scotland—but of course she knew why. There was no mystery to it. He wanted his son, to be with him, see him grow up.

She could understand that. Didn’t it hurt and distress her enough that she had had to deprive her child of a normal family life because of his father’s infidelity, just as she and Chrissie had been deprived because of their own father’s infidelity to their mother? But, whether she desired it or not, Jarrad also wanted her, Kendal, and she knew now that it wasn’t just so that she could be a mother to Matthew.

She flopped down onto a chair, dropping her head in her hands to try and banish the shaming memory of the sensations that had flared so dangerously to life in her again the instant he had touched her, sensations she had hoped crushed by time and the torturous reality of his affair with Lauren. But they hadn’t been, and she had to admit now that it wasn’t just a one-sided thing—that powerful sexual chemistry that governed everything he said and did. It was totally reciprocal, and always had been, right from the first day they had met.

She had tried to ignore it at first—this mutual and terrifying attraction—to ignore the feelings that had come to startling life within her from the first moment she had seen him at Chrissie and Ralph’s wedding. He had been Ralph’s boss after all. But even without knowing that she wouldn’t have failed to recognise those qualities that had made Jarrad Mitchell a leader—successful as well as immensely wealthy. The determined purpose, the daunting self-confidence and the compelling energy with that cool, unmistakable air of command.

These were qualities she had known and feared, had always been wary of, because hadn’t her father been as successful in his own field? And just as Chrissie had fallen for and married the first man who had come into her young life, Kendal herself, conversely, had always been the cautious one. Her distrust of men had kept her aloof, with the result that she had had no more than brief, uninvolved, and certainly non-intimate relationships with the opposite sex by the time she’d met Jarrad. Nor had any other man she’d met tugged so vibrantly at her senses.

Which was why, when he’d taken her hand during their introduction after the photo session, it had been like putting a match to blue touch paper! she thought drily now.

She had managed to treat him with only polite reserve at Chrissie’s wedding, to dodge his persistent attempts, during those weeks that had followed, to get her into his life. Because he’d made that intention clear, sometimes turning up at Chrissie’s, sometimes telephoning her when she’d been in the office, sometimes appearing at some social gathering where she’d happened to be, although he’d always seemed to have some practical reason for being there.

Yet, during all that time, though her physical impulses had been urging her to give in and go out with him—plunge in with both feet and embark on the most dangerous and exciting adventure of her life—her strong-willed determination—which she had often employed to control what she knew was a naturally impetuous nature, and which had kept her from getting hurt—had won. So that at last, it seemed, he had lost interest.

That was until nearly a year later, when she had been sent by her firm to use her design skills on the newly constructed, beautifully appointed home of a new client, only to find that it was him.

He had been so impeccably formal then, that she hadn’t dared to question his motives. And it was just as well, she had thought with an absurd and shocked dismay at the time, as almost immediately she had discovered why she had been hired.

He was thinking of getting married, he’d told her, and wanted the best possible taste for the house he’d had specially built for his bride-to-be. He’d seen some of Kendal’s artistic expertise at the home of a friend who had just happened to be one of Kendal’s clients—as well as having seen it at Chrissie’s—and he was giving her an entirely free hand with the decor.

She hadn’t wanted to do it. She had still been daunted by the formidable strength of her dangerous fascination for him. And, as well, she’d been stupidly hurt that he could have pursued her as he had and now expected her to decorate his home for the woman he’d chosen to be his bride when she’d shown—and only for her own self-protection—that she wasn’t interested. It had been like the ultimate put-down. Besides, she’d wondered what sort of woman he was marrying who would welcome having her entire furnishings chosen by someone else.

As she could give her boss no good reason for not going ahead with the job, however, she had had little choice but to accept it.

He had continued to treat her then only as he would have treated any business associate. In fact during those times when he had cause to contact her he had been almost exasperatingly aloof, which, she acknowledged with bitter irony now, had been the surest way—if he’d wanted to get her into his bed—to make her drop her guard. And he had known that, known how fragile her immunity to him was by the time he’d first invited her to lunch.

When he did, however, it was purely on a business basis, although over that first lengthy meal in that elaborate restaurant, she caught snatches of the humour that could twist his hard mouth into a devastating smile; saw glimpses of what she wanted to believe was the lonely man behind the forceful dynamo she’d originally feared. The orphaned boy come good who, despite all his riches, had no real family of his own. The youth who had made it through a tough secondary school and an even tougher neighbourhood to emerge a bright scholar with eventually a university degree, bringing all his knowledge of business systems management into a company that seemed both high-flying and secure.

When it collapsed, he was in a position to take it over, engaging Ralph as the company accountant and the efficient Lauren, who had been an up-and-coming manager, as his second-in-command. And the rest, as they say, was history…

All this Kendal learned not only from snippets he dropped in casually at that lunch but from other lunches that followed, and from Ralph. She had been keen to pump her brother-in-law dry, thirsty for every trickle of knowledge he could convey to her about his enigmatic employer. She warned herself that he was marrying someone else, that the only reason he was seeing her at all was because he needed her artistic skills, that she meant nothing to him beyond a simple means to an end—and that he meant nothing to her, either. But the warnings and the false convictions fell on deaf ears. She was already desperately in love with him.

Both Chrissie and Ralph knew, of course, how crazy she was about him, although she didn’t say a word to them. She worked swiftly and diligently, praying for the day when the job would be finished so that she wouldn’t have to face him again—be reminded of what she had missed by snubbing him as she had originally—so that she could retreat from the folly of her hopeless emotions.

And then the lunches became the odd dinner, not in the formal hotel restaurants where he had taken her to discuss business but in cosier, more intimate little places, where they shared amusing anecdotes and exchanged confidences. And where, in spite of all that—the intimacy and the romance and the laughter—he would resort to talking about his forthcoming marriage as coldly as though none of it mattered.

And afterwards, walking her back to the car, he would resume that air of exasperating detachment until she wanted to scream with frustration, forget that he was someone else’s and throw herself into those cold, indifferent arms. Sometimes she thought, with hurt and embarrassed mortification, that he knew exactly how she felt, and that he’d only engaged her after he’d decided to marry because he knew how hard he could make her fall and wanted to punish her for rejecting him as she had. The male ego being what it was, she convinced herself of it.

Only on that last day, when she called to inspect the result of the work she had put in progress, had there been any change in his attitude towards her, and then only by chance, she thought at first. She could only laugh at herself for her stupid naivety now.

They were in the master suite—of all places!—having gone through every room together so that she could satisfy herself that everything had been done according to her original plans. While he was distantly complimentary that day, praising her taste and her professional abilities, she felt as though she was dying inside, thinking that it was over, that she would never see him again.

Then she came round the bed, after checking that everything was in place in the dressing room and the en suite bathroom, only to trip over a corner of the duvet, and somehow—she didn’t quite know how—she wound up in his arms.

He looked at her for a moment, as though seeking the mutual desire burning in her eyes that she couldn’t have kept from him even if she had wanted to, her mind and body not just willing, but silently begging for the kisses he had so cleverly denied them both. Because it had been calculated, that moment of surrender, right down to the nth degree—and by a man who only played to win!

But, as she had learned through experience—and to her cost, she reflected bitterly now—one kiss between them could never be enough, just as that first kiss proved not to be. Because it hadn’t been just a tender exchange of feeling between two people who might have been falling in love, but a blinding, explosive union of man and woman in a hungry meeting of mouths that had only imitated the true act, and that had had her pushing away from him in sudden realisation of the seriousness of what she was allowing to happen.

‘You’re getting married!’ she had protested, on a breathless sob.

‘Yes.’ He’d sounded cold, totally remorseless in comparison.

‘Then don’t you think you’re being a little unfair?’ she remembered saying, perplexed, hurting to think he could simply use her and then walk away.

‘Unfair?’ He looked as though he didn’t fully understand. ‘Unfair to whom?’ he queried.

‘Well, to me. Her…’ she uttered, shaken by his total lack of morals. But he merely shrugged.

‘Not if I haven’t asked her yet. And I haven’t,’ he surprised her by saying then. ‘I only said I was thinking about getting married. There is a difference. Whether I do or not depends on you.’

‘On me?’ She wasn’t able to follow, so taken aback was she by this sudden turnaround of events.

‘Wise up, darling.’ He laughed then, and told her the truth. Getting her to decorate his home had been the only way he knew to become part of her life without her running away from him, and he laughed again later, when she accused him of trapping her by deceit.

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I only wanted to show you what you were too afraid to realise you wanted.’ But this was only much later, among the soft, virgin folds of the duvet where he had made her his.

One week later, he slipped an engagement ring on her finger, and they were married within six more. Three months after that she was expecting Matthew, passionately happy and content…

Now she blinked angrily at the tears that stung her eyes, glancing down at her watch.

Blast Jarrad Mitchell! she thought. Matthew was all that mattered to her now! And, grabbing her keys, she darted out through the French doors to collect him, as though just the whisper of his father’s presence in her life again could have the power to spirit the little boy away from her.

Tony telephoned the next morning. He had tickets for the theatre that coming Saturday, he told her, given to him by a grateful client.

’I thought you might like to go,’ he suggested, and Kendal could imagine him sitting there behind his disorderly desk with his pleasant face hopeful—though not unduly concerned—beneath his wiry and equally disorderly brown hair.

She tottered on the brink of accepting when he told her the name of the show, but only for a moment. She didn’t want an involvement with Tony—or with anyone else for that matter—to which a date like that might inevitably lead. But, more importantly, and the main reason she resisted his offer—which was the reason she gave—was because she had left Matthew once too often during the past week—and this coming weekend she was determined that nothing was going to come between them.

The sight of him tugged at her heartstrings as she watched him put the last of three bricks on top of the others in a precarious little tower on the worn, though serviceable carpet, then clap his hands with a delighted squeal.

She was going to spend every second alone with her son. And if she did take this job in the States, she ruminated—found herself a nice place to live—she might eventually be able to work from home and employ a part-time nanny for Matthew so that they would never really need to be parted. Until then, though, she was forced to leave him as she had this week. And next week wasn’t looking much better…

It wasn’t so much that that put an uneasy look in her eyes as she replaced the receiver after speaking to Tony. It was the thought of Friday week. Next Friday, when Jarrad would be round to fetch Matthew for the afternoon, his insistence that she go with him…

The phone, when it shrilled again, startled her so much that she almost spilled the warm milk she had been pouring into Matthew’s beaker.

‘Kendal?’

Relief and something else swept over her. What was it? Disappointment? Surely not! she thought, amazed, silently berating herself for the way her voice shook when she answered her sister’s call.

‘Are you all right?’ Chrissie sounded baffled. ‘You sound…well…out of breath.’

Kendal forced a laugh. ‘Probably because I rushed to answer the phone,’ she bluffed, hoping Chrissie wouldn’t guess how much she was letting Jarrad get to her after all these months!

‘I’m going away for a few weeks! That’s what I’m ringing to tell you! I’m going to tour Europe! Isn’t it exciting? And I’m leaving in the morning!’

‘What? How? Who with?’ Kendal pressed, almost equally infected by her sister’s tangible excitement.

There was a brief pause. And then Chrissie surprised her by responding with, ‘Ralph. He telephoned yesterday—late last night! You know he’s been working for that firm abroad? Well, he’s coming back—but he’s taking a few weeks’ holiday first. And, oh, Kendal! He’s asked me to go with him! For us to get back together! He said he regrets all that’s happened and wants us to try and sort things out!’

‘That’s great!’ Kendal could almost have wept with the emotion that welled up inside her. Chrissie deserved happiness. She only hoped that this time things would work out for her and Ralph.

‘I’m sorry to be going. At a time like this when… Well, you know…when you might be getting so much hassle from Jarrad…’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Kendal was quick to reassure her. Whatever Jarrad cared to throw at her, she could handle it! she assured herself, though with more rebellion than conviction.

‘And you won’t hold it against Ralph if he does come back?’ That excited voice of Chrissie’s couldn’t hide the smallest suspicion that her older sister might harbour some grudge towards Ralph for running out on Chrissie as he had. But why should she? Kendal reflected. It was only the strain of the situation into which Jarrad’s insensitivity had plunged them that had split them up. Ralph hadn’t been premeditative or ruthless. Nor had there been another woman…

‘Of course not,’ she exhaled, the memory of Jarrad’s betrayal making it difficult to keep her voice steady. And, wishing fervently suddenly that she could protect her little sister from the weight of anything like the misery of her own heartache, she uttered, ‘Oh, Chrissie, be careful!’ She couldn’t bear the thought of her sister getting hurt a second time.

‘Don’t worry,’ Chrissie chided emphatically, but Kendal always did—and not without good cause. Chrissie’s volatile nature meant that she didn’t always deal with situations in the positive way she should, and Kendal hadn’t forgotten how desperate her sister had been when Ralph had left her last year—nor the attempted overdose that, mercifully, had failed.

They spent a few moments chatting then, with Kendal offering to take time off to drive her sister to the airport, but Chrissie wouldn’t hear of it. After she had hung up, Kendal felt remarkably depressed.

She was happy for her sister, of course she was. But the thought of a few weeks without her wasn’t a prospect she was looking forward to very much. She was glad, though, that she had managed not to let her own anxieties about Jarrad trickle through, because she didn’t want to worry Chrissie, and she was relieved that she had managed to send her sister off with almost as much enthusiasm as Chrissie herself.

Chrissie rang Kendal briefly from the airport the following afternoon. Then every day for most of the following week Kendal kept herself occupied with Matthew and her work for the Arkwrights, popping round once or twice to water Chrissie’s multitude of plants.

As the week progressed, though, she found herself growing more and more agitated, and by Thursday she was uncustomarily snappy. She knew it all centred around the fact that the following day was Friday, when Jarrad would be calling round.

Dropping Matthew off with the dependable, indispensable Valerie, she spent the morning in a turmoil, wondering what excuse she could give to Jarrad about not accompanying him back to the house with Matthew.

She couldn’t face going there. Perhaps, she eventually decided by way of a compromise, she might suggest they went out somewhere—the three of them. Somewhere where there were people, where she wouldn’t have to be alone with Jarrad. The power of his physical attraction—and after all he had done—still terrified her, and she realised that she was still much too vulnerable to go anywhere with him alone.

He arrived grossly and unexpectedly early, just as she came off the phone from making a succession of futile calls about some wall covering she was trying to get hold of for the Arkwrights, at the end of a morning that had seemed to race by. It still wasn’t time, though, for Valerie to bring Matthew back, as it had been arranged that she would do so at two o’clock, and Kendal started as Jarrad strode in without knocking, just like the last time, through the open patio doors.

‘You’re early,’ Kendal accused, the telephone clattering back onto its rest evidence of the aggravating morning she had endured.

‘I wouldn’t dream of incurring your wrath by even daring to presume to be, darling,’ he murmured, the very sight of him taking her breath away.

He had obviously come straight from the office, the immaculate silver-grey suit and white shirt enhancing the tan that gave a vitality to those already healthy features. She wondered if he had been on holiday somewhere with Lauren, then told herself she didn’t care.

‘Well? Are you both ready?’

So he expected her to drop everything, did he? Just like that!

A toss of loose red waves signified her agitation. ‘Do I look it?’ she asked crisply, and felt his gaze tug over her uncombed hair and flushed features, then move disconcertingly to the rather gaping V of her cotton shirt.

‘You’ll do,’ was all he said drily, and then, with a glance towards the lounge door, ‘Where’s Matthew?’

Kendal caught her breath. Of all the nerve…!

‘He isn’t back yet. I—’

‘Back from where?’ he interrupted, his tone inexorable. ‘The minder’s again? Or have you palmed him off on your little sister this time?’

‘I don’t palm him off on anybody!’ she threw back, furious. She loved Matthew. More than anything. Anyone! ‘And, if you must know, Chrissie’s gone away with Ralph! They’re back together! So you see, Jarrad, you didn’t quite succeed in destroying them completely—even though you tried! And, yes, Matthew’s with Valerie,’ she finished more calmly, in spite of the daunting menace in his face that told her he didn’t like being reminded of what his cruel actions had done to her sister’s marriage.

With those black brows drawing together, all he simply said was, ‘What—still?’

‘Yes, still,’ she said pointedly, looking up at him with challenging defiance. It was her business how she ran her life! ‘I told you. You’re early. I asked her to have him back here by two.’

‘Then where is he?’ He frowned down at the thin gold watch gleaming against the dark hair of his tanned wrist. ‘I make it nearly twenty-five to three.’

Puzzled, Kendal glanced down at her own watch. ‘I make it twenty past one…’

‘Then one of us obviously needs a new timepiece,’ he remarked, with both hands coming to rest on the table.

Kendal’s frown deepened and, jumping up, she ran into the lounge, sending an anxious glance towards the video clock.

Fourteen thirty-three? Jarrad was right! So where in the world was Matthew? Valerie? She was already over half an hour late!

Kendal felt the tension building with the fear inside her. Had she had an accident? The woman was a mother herself—highly recommended by another young mum Kendal had worked with—and was nothing if not reliable. ‘She’s never, never been late…!’

‘Never except today.’ She hadn’t realised she had spoken aloud until she heard that harsh, sceptical drawl from the doorway, and she swung round, green eyes ablaze.

‘I suppose you think I arranged this deliberately just to antagonise you?’ Anxiety made her snap as she brushed past him, heading straight for the phone on the table.

‘To antagonise me, perhaps not,’ he accepted. ‘To stop me seeing my son, I wouldn’t, however, put anything past you.’

She ignored his remark, tapping out the number of her child minder’s home just as the front doorbell rang.

‘So she’s condescended to bring him back!’ Jarrad’s mood was black as he strode out of the room, taking it on himself to answer the door.

‘Mr Mitchell?’ It was a man’s voice, cold, very official, drifting along the hallway, and Kendal dropped the phone, feeling the grip of icy fingers around her heart.

‘Yes.’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Already she was at the door beside Jarrad, facing the young policeman—and the policewoman—standing there, looking serious, on the doorstep. ‘There’s been an accident!’ Oh, God…!’

‘No, Mrs Mitchell.’ The man looked at her gravely. ‘It is Mrs Mitchell, isn’t it?’

Numbly, she could only nod.

‘For heaven’s sake, get on with it, man!’ Jarrad prompted impatiently, looking grim yet in command too, still in control, even in this situation.

The policeman visibly tensed, obviously recognising the authority in the older man, though his training wouldn’t allow him to be browbeaten. ‘Do you think we could come in, sir?’ he said, with the sort of deference everyone paid to Jarrad Mitchell.

And then, somehow—Kendal wasn’t sure how—they were sitting in the lounge, and all she was aware of was Jarrad standing there beside her, his hard, clipped voice demanding, ‘Well? Are you going to tell me what’s happened to my son?’

CHAPTER THREE

SNATCHED!

Kendal stared at the small circular brown stain on the worn carpet that seemed to be swimming in front of her eyes. There had been endless questions, and more police, the second lot more interrogative than the first.

But they had all gone now, leaving her to cope with the numbing realisation of what had happened.

Matthew kidnapped. Abducted. Her little baby snatched away while he was supposed to have been in Valerie’s care, when she had thought he was safe, secure…

‘Here.’

She stared sightlessly at that familiar masculine hand holding the thick glass tumbler in front of her, at the dark hair feathering the tanned wrist.

‘Drink it,’ he ordered. ‘It will make you feel better. Or at least put some life back into you.’

Because she had nearly fainted, she remembered—almost collapsing from the shock when the policewoman had told her, and she had recovered herself to feel Jarrad’s arm supporting her, his voice murmuring soft assurances. Empty assurances, she thought, because, of course, what could he do?

She took the glass he thrust at her now and drank, coughing at the burn of brandy on her throat.

Mrs Humphries, the police had said—referring to her child minder—was still in shock, distraught, unable to comprehend how it could have happened. Matthew had been playing in the front garden, with the gate locked, she had told them. Her back had only been turned for a moment, but when she had looked round again he was gone.

But how could he be gone? Kendal agonised. Her baby stolen? Taken away. Just like that. True, it was only a low gate, but Matthew was shy of strangers, and if someone had tried to lift him over he would have screamed…

‘That’s better,’ she heard Jarrad say as she took another sip of the burning spirit. ‘That’s my girl.’ And as he took the glass from her she thought how soft his voice was, surprisingly gentle. She hadn’t heard him speak to her like that in over a year.

‘What are we going to do?’ A ton of granite seemed to be pressing on her chest, and the eyes she turned to his were sore and puffy, their dark anxiety almost an entreaty to him, as though he had powers that she didn’t, as though he could make everything all right.

‘We’ll have to wait and see what the police come up with.’

He turned away from her, dumping her glass down on the narrow bay windowsill, and stood, staring out at the ash tree in the colourless communal front garden, its branches swaying today in a keen breeze.

‘Wait and see!’ Propelled by a new surge of adrenalin, Kendal sprang to her feet, coming halfway across the room. ‘I can’t just sit here and wait while someone’s out there doing heaven knows what with my son!’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.