Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan's fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon's most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan's characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women's fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mistress to Her Husband
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

‘KATE you’ll never guess what! John told us this morning, whilst you were at the dentist. The business has been taken over. And the new boss is coming in tomorrow to interview everyone!’

Kate Vincent digested her co-worker’s excited comments in silence. Dropping enviably thick, dark lashes reflectively over topaz eyes, she considered what she had been told. She had only been with the company for six months, as before that she’d only been able to manage a part-time job whilst she was completing her Master’s. With the qualification nicely enhancing her CV she had felt confident enough to apply for this post, which previously she would have considered out of her range.

‘So who’s taking us over?’ Kate questioned Laura, absently flipping the smooth length of her chestnut-brown hair over her shoulder as she did so. It had been hot outside in the street, and the coolness of the office’s air-conditioning was very welcome.

‘Well, John wouldn’t say,’ Laura responded, suppressing a small envious sigh as she studied Kate’s elegantly slender body, clad in a neat white T-shirt teamed with a chocolate-brown linen skirt.

Laura had been with her when Kate had bought the skirt, an end-of-line sale buy which she herself would have deemed dull. But on Kate it looked not just good, but also somehow discreetly expensive.

‘Apparently everything has to be kept hush-hush until tomorrow.’ She gave Kate a rueful look.

‘I suppose we should have seen it coming. After all, John has been hinting for ages that he’d like to take early retirement—but I never thought he was contemplating selling out. Mind you, he and Sheila don’t have any children, do they? So I don’t suppose there’s much point in hanging on when they could be spending their time in that condo of theirs in Miami.’

Kate listened intently to Laura as she booted up her computer. The business John Loames had set up to supply specialist facilities and equipment to the building trade had been very successful, but Kate had seen for herself since she had started to work for the small private company as its accounts executive that John was growing less and less inclined to seek out new contracts. Which was a pity, because she knew that the business had a great deal of potential, and she was not entirely surprised that someone had bought John out.

‘Everyone’s worried about what might happen,’ Laura confided to her. ‘None of us want to lose our jobs.’

‘Someone new taking over might not necessarily be a bad thing,’ Kate pointed out to her calmly. ‘There’s ample room for the business to be expanded, and then there would be more than enough work for all of us—provided, of course, the new owner doesn’t already own a similar business and just wants to amalgamate John’s with his own.’

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Laura begged worriedly, giving a small shudder. ‘Roy and I have only just increased our mortgage so that we can extend the house.’ Her face became slightly pink. ‘We’re trying for a family, and a baby will mean that we definitely need extra space. The last thing I need right now is to lose my job! Which reminds me—John told us that he wants us all here especially early tomorrow. Apparently the new owner has said specifically that he will be here at eight.’

‘Eight?’ Kate switched her attention from her e-mails to Laura, her forehead crinkling in a worried frown. ‘Are you telling me John wants us here at eight?’

‘Yes.’

Kate’s porcelain-clear skin paled slightly. It was impossible for her to make it to the office for eight o’clock in the morning. Pre-school didn’t start until eight, and she would have to leave Ollie at seven-thirty at the very latest if she was to make it here for eight. She could feel the tension cramping her stomach.

It was hard enough for any mother to work full time—a constant finely-judged balancing act—but when one added into that delicate balance the fact that the mother in question was a single parent, fighting desperately hard to give as much emotional security as two loving parents would, plus the fact that she had not told her employers that she had child, then that balancing act became dangerously unstable.

Just thinking about Ollie was enough to have her stomach twisting in knots of maternal protective anxiety.

‘What’s wrong?’ Laura asked curiously, sensing her tension.

‘Er…nothing.’

Kate hadn’t told anyone at work about Ollie. All too sensitive to the attitude of colleagues and employers to the difficulties that came hand in hand with a worker who was a mother—especially a single mother—Kate had made no mention of her son during her interview with John. It had only been after she had started to work for the company that she had learned that John had a somewhat old-fashioned attitude about employing women with very young children. By then she had realised how well suited she was to her job, and it to her, and although it had caused her some sleepless nights and many qualms, she had decided to keep Ollie’s existence a secret. Since she was fiercely honest by nature, this decision had pricked her conscience on more than one occasion, but she had told herself that it was a necessary omission if she was to succeed with her career plans.

She was well qualified now, and she was determined to provide her son with at least some of the material benefits he would have enjoyed had his father not abandoned her.

His father! Kate could feel the cold sickness and despair laced with anger spewing up inside her—it was a mixture as dangerous and toxic as arsenic, but she was the one it threatened to poison and destroy, not the man who had broken her heart and deserted her.

Now she considered that she and Oliver were better off without him—even though what she was earning only just covered the mortgage she was paying on the tiny cottage she had bought in a pretty village several miles away from the town and Oliver’s out-of-school childcare, leaving just enough for food and other essentials.

Childcare! Her lips, normally soft and sweetly curved, hardened and thinned. She was the best person to be providing her son with childcare, but she was not in a financial position to be able to do so.

Her current job was the first rung on the career ladder she was going to have to climb in order to support them both properly. The head of her department was due to retire in two years’ time, and Kate had secretly been hoping that if she did her job well enough John might promote her into the vacancy.

Her twenty-fifth birthday wasn’t that far away, and neither was Ollie’s fifth. His fifth birthday and her fifth year of being alone, of being without—Swiftly Kate buried the potentially damaging thoughts. She didn’t need them, she didn’t want them, and she damn well wasn’t going to let them disturb her hard-won peace of mind.

It was her future she needed to focus on, and not her past! This takeover could destroy any chance she might have had of such a promotion, but it might also give her increased opportunities, she reflected, as she studied some comparison charts she had set up on her own initiative, to see which customers could be approached to increase their orders.

As she stood in the open doorway of the small village nursery and watched her son run towards her, his face lighting up as he saw her, Kate felt her heart contract with love. When she bent to scoop him up into her arms, and buried her face into the warm flesh of his neck to breathe in his delicious little-boy smell, she knew that no matter what sacrifices she had to make, or how hard she had to work, she would do it for Ollie’s sake.

A small frown pleated her forehead as she looked round the classroom, empty now of the other children. She had chosen to live in the village because she had wanted to provide Ollie with a sense of belonging and community, to provide him with the kind of childhood she herself had been denied. But living here meant she had to travel to the city to work, which in turn meant that Ollie had to wait for her long after the others had been collected.

She had never intended that her child should grow up like this—an only child with no family other than her. She had wanted things to be so different for her child, her children, than they had been for her.

Two loving parents, siblings, the sure knowledge of being loved and wanted. The sure knowledge of being loved and wanted!

Pain gripped her. It had been five years—surely only a woman with no sense of self-worth or self-respect would allow herself to think about a man who had betrayed her love and rejected her? A man who had sworn love for ever, who had sworn that he shared her dreams and goals, who had taught her to trust and love him, and who had whispered against her lips as he took her virginal body that he wanted to give her his child, that he wanted to surround that child with love and security.

A man who had lied to her and left her brokenhearted, disillusioned, and completely alone.

To be with him she had gone against the wishes of the aunt and uncle who had brought her up, and because of that they had disowned her.

Not that Kate would have wanted her aunt and uncle involved in the life of her precious son. They might have given her a home when she had been orphaned, but they had done so out of duty and not love. And she had craved love so badly, so very badly.

‘Ollie was beginning to worry.’

The faint hint of reproach in the nursery teacher’s voice made Kate wince inwardly.

‘I know I’m a bit late,’ she apologised. ‘There was an accident on the bypass.’

The nursery teacher was comfortably round and in late middle age. She had grandchildren herself, and her small charges loved and respected her. Kate had lost count of the number of time she had heard Ollie insisting, ‘But Mary says…’

Ten minutes later Kate was unlocking the door to their small cottage. It was right in the centre of the village, its front windows overlooking the green, with its duck pond, and at the back of the house a long narrow garden.

Ollie was a sturdily built child, with firm solid muscles and a head of thick black curls. An inheritance from his father, although Ollie himself did not know it.

So far as Kate was concerned the man who had fathered her son no longer existed, and she refused to allow him any place in their lives. Ollie’s placid nature meant that until recently he had accepted that he did not have a father, without asking Kate very many questions about him. However, the fact that his new best friend did have a father had led to Ollie starting to want to know more.

Kate frowned. So far Ollie had been content with her responses, but it made her heart ache to see the way he watched longingly whilst Tom Lawson played with his son.

Sean unfurled his long body from the seat of his Mercedes and stood still whilst he looked at the building in front of him.

His handmade Savile Row suit sat elegantly on his lean-limbed body, the jacket subtly masking the powerful breadth of his shoulders and the muscles he had built up in the years when he had earned his living hiring himself out to whichever builder would take him on.

His sweat had gone into the making of more than one motorway, as well as several housing estates, but even in those days as an ill-educated teenager he had promised himself that one day things would be different, that one day he would be the man giving the orders and not taking them.

As a young child he’d literally had to fight for his food until, aged five, he’d been abandoned by his hippie mother and been taken into care. In his twenties he had spent his days building extensions, and anything else he would get paid for, and his nights studying for a Business Studies degree. He had celebrated his thirty-first birthday by selling the building company he had built up from nothing for twenty million. Had he wanted to do so, he could have retired. But that was not his way. He had seen the potential of companies such as John’s and had seized the opportunities with both hands. He was now thirty-five.

He had big expansion plans for the business he had just acquired, but for his plans to succeed he needed the right kind of workforce. A dedicated, energetic, enthusiastic and ambitious workforce. This morning he was going to meet his new employees, and he was going to assess them in the same way he had assessed those who had worked for him when he had first set up in business—by meeting them face to face. Then—and only then—would he read their personnel files.

He was an arrestingly good-looking man, but the early-morning sunlight picked out the harsh lines that slashed from his nose to his mouth and revealed a man of gritty determination who rarely smiled. He wore his obvious sexuality with open cynicism, and it glittered in the dense Celtic blue of his eyes now, as a young woman stopped walking to give him an appreciative and appraising look.

In the years since he had made his millions he had been pursued by some extraordinarily beautiful women, but Sean knew that they would have turned away in disgust and contempt from the young man he had once been.

Something—part bitterness and part pain—took the warmth from his gaze and dulled its blueness.

He had come a long way from what he had once been. A long way—and yet still not far enough?

Locking his car, he started to stride towards the building.

Kate could feel perspiration beginning to dew her forehead as she willed the traffic lights to change. Her stomach was so tight with nervous anxiety that it hurt.

She had swallowed her normal pride last night and asked Carol, Ollie’s best friend’s mother, if she could leave Ollie with her at seven-thirty for her to take him on to school with her son George. The pain in her stomach intensified. She hated treating her precious son as though he was a…a bundle of washing!

Why on earth had the new owner insisted on them arriving so early? Was he just unthinking, or uncaring? Whichever it was, it did not bode well for her future with the company, she decided fretfully.

As she reached the traffic lights she saw the broken-down car which had been the cause of the delay. It was already ten past eight, and it would take her at least another ten minutes to get to work.

Half past eight! Kate gritted her teeth as she hurried into the building. She was already walking fast, and she broke into an anxious run as she covered the last few yards. But the hope she had had that she might be able to slide discreetly into John’s office whilst the meeting was still in progress was destroyed as the door opened and her colleagues came out into the corridor.

‘You’re late!’ Laura whispered as she saw Kate. ‘What happened?’

It was difficult to talk with so many people in the corridor.

‘I’ll tell you later—’ she began, and then froze as two men came through the door.

One of them was John, and the other…the other…

The other was her ex-husband!

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me—now?’

How well she remembered that smooth chocolate voice, with its underlying ice.

People were staring at her, Kate realised, and she fought off her sick shock.

John was looking anguished and uncomfortable. ‘Sean, I think perhaps…I am sure that…’

Arrogantly ignoring John, Sean demanded, ‘In here!’ He was holding the door open, waiting for her to walk past him and into John’s office.

For a moment their gazes met and clashed, battled, topaz fighting dense blue for supremacy.

Her ex-husband was their new boss!

How could fate have dealt her such a low blow?

When Sean had walked out of her life to be with the woman he was leaving her for she had prayed that she would never, ever have to see him again. She had given him everything she had had to give—defying her aunt and uncle to be with him, helping and encouraging him, loving him—but that had not been enough for him. She had not been enough for him. The success she had helped him to achieve had meant that he no longer considered her good enough for him.

She was holding her breath and badly needed to exhale, but she was terrified that if she did she was going to start shaking—and there was so way she was going to allow Sean to witness that kind of vulnerability.

How well she remembered that challenging hard-edged blue gaze. He had looked at her like that the first time they had met, defying her to ignore him. No one would dare to ignore him now.

‘Kate is a very—’ She could hear John about to defend her.

‘Thank you, John. I shall deal with this myself,’ Sean announced curtly as she walked past him into the room, and he closed the door, excluding John from his own office.

‘Kate?’ he demanded grimly. ‘What happened to Kathy?’

Just hearing him say that name resurrected far too many painful memories. She had been Kathy when he had taunted her the first time they had met, for being too posh to dance with a man like him. And she had been Kathy too when he had taken her in his arms and shown her—Fiercely she pushed away the tormenting memories.

Tilting her chin, she said coldly, ‘Kathy?’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘She doesn’t exist any longer, Sean. You destroyed her when you destroyed our marriage.’

‘And your surname is?’ Sean wondered whether she could hear or understand the cause of the anger that was making his throat raw and his voice terse as he grappled with his own shock.

‘Kate Vincent,’ Kate answered him coldly.

‘Vincent?’ he questioned savagely.

‘Yes, Vincent. You didn’t think I would want to keep your name, did you? And I certainly didn’t want my aunt and uncle’s—after all, like you, they didn’t want me.’

‘So you remarried just to change your name?’

Anger darkened Kate’s eyes as she heard the contempt in his voice.

‘Why were you late?’ Sean demanded abruptly. ‘Didn’t he want to let you out of his bed?’

Furious colour scorched Kate’s face.

‘Just because you—’ she began, and then stopped, swallowing hard as out of nowhere the memories started to fill her head. Sean waking her up in the morning with the gentlest of kisses…that was until she was fully awake…and then…

She could feel the tension building up inside her body, a tension activated by memories crowding out the reality she was trying desperately hard to cling on to, to use as a bulwark.

A bulwark? Against what? The love she had once felt for Sean had been completely destroyed, and by Sean himself. Cruelly and deliberately. Her body stiffened with pride. She was glad that he thought she had found someone else. Married someone else.

Had he married the woman he had left her for?

Sean’s mobile rang, and he answered it, frowning briefly as he told Kate that she could go.

As she turned to leave Kate heard a female voice saying, quite clearly, ‘Sean, darling…’

Kate was halfway through clearing out her desk when Laura came in.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ she demanded.

‘Clearing my desk. What does it look like?’ Kate responded tersely.

‘You’re leaving?’

Kate could see how shocked and dismayed Laura was.

‘You mean he’s sacked you just for being late?’

Kate permitted herself a thin and slightly bitter smile. ‘No, he hasn’t sacked me, but let’s just say I’m leaving ahead of having him do so.’

‘Oh, Kate, no!’ Laura protested, obviously upset. ‘I can see that things have got off to bad start for you—!’ She stopped, biting her lip and looking uncomfortable.

Laura would never make a politician, Kate reflected wryly, witnessing her colleague’s discomfort.

‘Laura?’ she prodded firmly.

‘Well, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything—to be critical…or unkind. But I did hear Sean asking John where you were,’ Laura admitted reluctantly, adding quickly, ‘I’m sure he’ll be understanding, Kate. He seems such a sweetie, and so gorgeous.’

A sweetie! Sean! Kate suppressed a bitter laugh.

Sean might be many things, but he had never been a sweetie—not even when she had first known him.

A tough, streetwise, untamed rogue male, who could make a girl go weak at the knees and hot in places she hadn’t previously known existed with just one taunting look, that was what he had been. And she…

Her face started to burn as she recognised where her unwanted thoughts were leading. She switched on her computer and started to type.

‘Oh, thank goodness you’ve changed your mind,’ Laura began, with relief, but Kate shook her head.

‘No, I haven’t. I’m just typing out my notice,’ Kate informed her crisply.

‘Your notice! Oh, Kate.’ Laura looked aghast, and immediately tried to dissuade her, but Kate refused to let herself be swayed.

Finishing her typing, she checked and then printed off her letter, placing it neatly in an envelope, which she put in the internal post tray.

Her task completed, she headed for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Laura demanded anxiously.

‘I’m leaving,’ Kate answered patiently. ‘I’ve written my resignation letter. As of now, I no longer work here!’

‘But, Kate, you can’t leave just like that—without telling anyone!’ Laura protested.

‘Watch me!’ Kate answered succinctly, walking calmly towards the door.

But inwardly she was feeling far from calm. Frantically she clamped down on her treacherous thoughts.

Kathy was working here! Sean paced the floor of his office, having terminated the call from the wife of his financial adviser. She had called to invite him to a dinner party she was planning, but Sean did not do dinner parties. His mouth twisted bitterly. Until he had met Kathy he hadn’t even known the correct cutlery to use. She had been the one who had gently taught him. Gently rubbed off his rough edges. And he…

He strode angrily over to the office window and stared out of it. He had deliberately not kept track of Kathy after their divorce. There hadn’t been any point. The marriage had been over and he had made her a generous financial settlement, even if she had returned it to his solicitor intact. Who had she married? When had she married him?

He went back to the desk and picked up the personnel files he had not yet read.

CHAPTER TWO

AS SHE climbed out of her car Kate acknowledged that really there was no way she should have been driving. She was shaking from head to foot, and she had no real idea of how she had driven home. The entire journey had been a pain-fuelled blur of fighting back unwanted memories whilst surge after surge of panic and anger had washed through her.

‘Kate!’

Kate tried to looked relaxed and smile as Carol, her friend and neighbour, came hurrying towards her.

‘What are you doing back so early?’ Carol asked, adding teasingly, ‘Did the interview go so well that the new boss gave you the rest of the day off?’

Kate opened her mouth to make a suitably lighthearted response, but to her chagrin she could feel her lips starting to tremble as emotions overwhelmed her.

‘I’ve handed in my notice,’ she told Carol shakily. ‘I…I had to…My…the new boss is my ex-husband!’ Tears filled her eyes. She was shaking so violently she could have been in shock, Kate recognised distantly.

‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ she heard Carol announcing in a motherly voice. ‘And then you can tell me all about it.’

Ten minutes later, after she had made them both a cup of coffee and chatted calmly about their sons, Carol turned to Kate and said gently, ‘I’m not going to pry, Kate, but if you want to get it off your chest I’m a good listener, and I promise it won’t go any further.’ When Kate made no response, but simply continued to sit huddled in her chair, her hands gripping her coffee mug, Carol added quietly, ‘Not even to Tom, if that’s what you want.’

Kate turned her head to look at her, her gaze blank and withdrawn, then forced herself to focus on her friend.

Taking a deep breath, she began to speak, slowly and painfully. ‘I met Sean when I was eighteen. He was building an extension for my aunt and uncle’s neighbours. We’d had a very hot summer, and he worked bare-chested in a pair of old tight-fitting jeans—’

‘Mmm, sexy. I can picture the scene.’ Carol smiled encouragingly, relieved to see just the merest twitch of humour lifting Kate’s mouth.

‘I used to walk the long way round just so that I could see him,’ Kate admitted. ‘I hadn’t thought he’d notice me, but then one night at a local club he was there and he asked me to dance. Fantasising over him when I walked past the building site was one thing. Being confronted with him there in front of me in the flesh was another! I felt intimidated by him.’ Kate gave small shrug and looked at Carol.

‘I was a naïve eighteen-year-old virgin, and all that fierce, potent hot male sexuality was a bit overwhelming. Unfortunately he thought I was rejecting him, and…’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know it then, but like me he’d had a very unhappy and lonely childhood, which had left him with a bit of a chip on his shoulder and a determination to succeed. I can see now that I was a bit of a challenge to him, because I was a girl from a different background. A trophy girlfriend, I suppose the press would call it nowadays, and for a while I was good enough for him as just that. Good enough to marry, in fact. But once he’d become very successful I think he began to realise that I wasn’t much of a trophy after all, and that with his money he could afford a much, much better one than me.’

Carol could hear the pain in Kate’s voice. ‘You obviously loved him,’ she said softly.

‘Loved him?’ Kate looked at her starkly, her emotions darkening her eyes. ‘Yes, I loved him—totally and completely, blindly and foolishly I realise now. Because I believed then that he felt the same way about me!’

‘Oh, Kate!’ Carol sympathised, her own eyes prickling with emotion as she covered Kate’s cold folded hands with her own.

Kate swallowed and then continued. ‘My aunt and uncle were furious when it came out that I was seeing him—especially my aunt. There was a dreadful row, and it came out that she had never liked my mother, had been appalled when she had married her brother. She told me that if I didn’t agree to stop seeing Sean they would wash their hands of me and disown me. But I couldn’t give Sean up. I loved him too much. He had become my whole world! And when I told him what my aunt had said he told me that he wasn’t going to let me go back to them, to be hurt and bullied, that from now on he would look after me.’

Kate exhaled in a deep sigh.

‘We were married six weeks later. Sean had finished the extension by then, and was ready to move on to his next job.’

Carol could see the events of the day were beginning to catch up with Kate and, surveying her friend’s exhausted hollow-cheeked face, she stood up and told her firmly, ‘Look, you’re all in. Why don’t you have a rest? I’ll collect Oliver from nursery, if you like, and give him his tea.’

Kate was tempted to refuse. But while a part of her was longing desperately to have the warm, solid feel of Oliver’s sturdy body in her arms, so that she could hold him and take comfort from his presence, another part of her said that this was not fair to her son and that she must not get into the habit of leaning on him emotionally. And anyway, she had things to do, she reminded herself grimly. Like finding a new job for a start!

‘You’re very kind,’ she told Carol wanly.

‘Nonsense. I know you’d do the same for me.’

She would, of course, but it was hardly likely that she would ever be asked to do so, Kate acknowledged wearily after Carol had gone. Carol had a loving husband, and George had two sets of adoring grandparents only too willing to spend as much time as they could with their grandson.

And Oliver only had her. No grandparents. Just her. Just her? What about Sean? He was Oliver’s father, after all, Kate reminded herself angrily.

Sean!

Her whole body felt heavy with misery and despair. She had struggled so hard, and it seemed so unfair that she should have her precious financial security snatched from her because her ex-husband had taken over the company.

For the first time since Sean had announced that their marriage was over Kate felt angry with herself for not accepting the generous pay-off he had offered her. Two million pounds and she had turned it down! She had turned it down not knowing that she was already pregnant with Oliver. And then, when she had realised…Well, she had sworn that she would never ask for anything from the man who had cold-bloodedly told her that he had changed his mind about wanting to be a father and that he had no desire to tie himself to a wife he no longer loved.

The pain was just as sharp as she remembered it being, and she stiffened against it. It should not exist any more. It should have been destroyed, just like Sean had destroyed their marriage.

All those things he had said to her and she had believed in; like how he, too, longed for children. All those promises he had made her—that those children, their children, would have the parental love neither of them had ever known. They had all been lies.

Against her will Kate could feel herself being drawn back into the past and its painful memories.

There had been no warning of what was to come, or of how vulnerable her happiness was. In fact only the previous month Sean had taken her away on an idyllic and very romantic break to an exclusive country house hotel—to make up, he had told her lovingly, for the fact that the negotiations he had been involved in to secure a very valuable contract had gone on so long that they had not been able to have a summer holiday.

They had arrived late in the afternoon and had enjoyed a leisurely and very romantic walk through the grounds. And then they had gone back to their room and Sean had undressed her and made love to her.

They had been late for dinner, she remembered—very late. And during it Sean had handed her a large brown envelope, telling her to open it. When she had done so she had found inside the sale details of a pretty Georgian rectory she and Sean had driven past early in the year.

‘You said it was the kind of place you had always wanted to live in,’ he had reminded her simply. ‘It’s coming up for sale.’

She’d spent the rest of the evening in a daze, already excitedly planning how she would decorate the house, and insisting that Sean listen to her as she went through the house room by room.

They had made love again that night, and in the morning. And afterwards she had lain in Sean’s arms, her eyes closed, whilst she luxuriated in breathing in the sexually replete scent of him and wondered what on earth she had done to merit such happiness.

Less than a month later she had been wondering what on earth she had done to merit such intense pain.

One minute—or so she had thought—Sean had been negotiating for the purchase of the rectory; the next he had been telling her that he no longer loved her and that he intended to divorce her.

Kate closed her eyes and lay back in her chair. She felt both physically and emotionally exhausted. What she should be doing right now, she told herself grimly, was worrying about how she was going to get another job, instead of wallowing in self-pity about the past.

She would have to enrol with an employment agency, and then probably take on as much work as she could get until she found a permanent position. She had some savings—her rainy day money—but that would not last for very long.

Why, why, why had Sean had to come back into her life like this? Hadn’t he hurt her enough?

Tiredly Kate stopped trying to fight her exhaustion and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

The dream was one she had had before. She tried to pull herself awake and out of it, as she had taught herself to do, but it was too late. It was rushing down on her, swamping her, and she was already lost in it.

She was with Sean, in the sitting room of their house. It was mid-afternoon and he had come home early from work. She ran to greet him, but he pushed her away, his expression not that of the husband she knew but that of the angry, aggressive man he had been when she had first met him.

‘Sean, what’s wrong?’ she asked him, reaching out a hand to him and flinching as he ignored her loving gesture. He turned away from her and walked over to the window, blocking out its light. Uncomprehendingly she watched him, and the first tendrils of fear began to curl around her heart.

‘I want a divorce.’

‘A divorce! No…What…? Sean, what are you saying?’ she demanded, panic, shock and disbelief gripping hold of her throat and giving her voice a hoarse, choked sound that seemed to echo round the room.

‘I’m saying that our marriage is over and I want a divorce.’

‘No! No! You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that!’ Was that piteous little voice really her own? ‘You love me.’

‘I thought I did,’ Sean agreed coldly. ‘But I’ve realised that I don’t. You and I want different things out of life, Kathy. You want children. I’m sick of having to listen to you boring on about it. I don’t want children!’

‘That’s not true. How can you say that, Sean?’ She stared at him in disbelief, unable to understand what he was saying. ‘You’ve always said how much you want children,’ she reminded him shakily. ‘We said we wanted a big family because our own childhoods—’

If he heard the pain in her voice and was affected by it he certainly didn’t show it.

‘For God’s sake,’ he ground out. ‘Grow up, will you, Kathy? When I said that I’d have said anything to get into your knickers.’

The contemptuous biting words flayed her sensitive emotions.

‘Look, I don’t intend to argue about this. Our marriage is over and that’s that. I’ve already spoken to my solicitor. You’ll be okay financially…’

‘Is there someone else?’

Silently they looked at one another whilst Kathy prayed that he would say no, but instead he taunted her. ‘What do you think?’

Her whole body was shaking, and even though she didn’t want to she started to cry, sobbing out Sean’s name in frantic pleading disbelief…

Why the hell was he doing this? Sean’s hands clenched on the wheel as he drove. What was the point in risking resurrecting the past? She was easily replaceable. But Sean knew that he was being unfair. She was, according to John and from what he had been able to recognise himself, an extremely intelligent and diligent employee—the kind of employee, in fact, that he wanted. No way was he going to allow her to walk out of her job without working her statutory notice period.

She was his ex-wife, damn it, Sean reminded himself grimly. But this was nothing to do with her being his ex-wife, and nothing to do either with the fact that he had discovered from her records, contrary to his assumptions, she was not married.

He was in the village now, and his mouth hardened slightly. Oh, yes, this was exactly the kind of environment she liked. Small, cosy, homely—everything that her life with her appalling aunt and uncle had not been.

He swung the car into a parking space he had spotted, stopped the engine and got out.

He hadn’t told anyone as yet about the fact that she had handed in her notice. Officially she was still in the company’s employ…in his employ.

He skirted the duck pond, his eyes bleak as he headed for Kate’s front door.

He was just about to knock when an elderly woman who had been watching him from her own front gate called out to him.

‘You’ll have to go round the back, young man.’

Young man! Sean grimaced. He didn’t think he had ever been young—he had never been allowed to be young! And as for being a man…Something dark and dangerous hardened his whole face as he obeyed the elderly woman’s instructions.

It took him several minutes to find the path which ran behind the back gardens of the cottages. The gate to Kate’s wouldn’t open at first, and then he realised that it was bolted on the inside and he had to reach over to unbolt it. Hardly a good anti-thief device, he reflected, giving it a frowning and derisory look as he unfastened it and walked up the path.

He frowned even more when he realised that the back door was slightly open. If Kate had had his upbringing she would have been a damn sight more safety conscious!

His hand was on the door when he heard her cry out his name.

He reacted immediately, thrusting open the door and striding into the kitchen, then coming to an abrupt halt when he saw her lying in the chair asleep. He felt as though all the air had been knocked out of his lungs, his chest tightening whilst he tried to draw in a ragged breath of air.

He had always loved watching her as she slept, absorbing the sight of her with a greedy secret pleasure—her long dark lashes, lying silkily against her delicate skin, her lips slightly parted, her face turned to one side so that the whole of one pretty ear was visible. The very fact that she was asleep made her so vulnerable, showed how much she trusted him, showed how much she was in need of his protection…

Without thinking Sean stepped forward, his hand lifting to push the heavy swathe of hair off her face, and then abruptly he realised that this was the present, not the past, and he stopped.

But it was too late. Somehow, as though she had sensed he was there, Kate cried out his name in great distress. For a second he hesitated, and then, taking a deep breath, he put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a small squeeze.

Immediately Kate woke up, and as she opened her eyes he demanded brusquely, ‘Sean, what?’

Kate stared up at him. Her dream was still fogging her brain, and it took her several valuable seconds to wake up fully, incomprehension clouding her eyes.

‘You were crying out my name,’ Sean prompted softly.

Kate felt a prickle of awareness run over her. And then the reality of what she had been dreaming hit her. Her face started to burn. All at once there was a dangerous tension in the small room.

‘I was dreaming, that’s all,’ she defended herself sharply.

‘Do you often dream about me?’

The danger was increasing by the heartbeat.

She could feel her skin tightening in reaction to his taunt. ‘It was more of a nightmare,’ she retaliated quickly.

‘You haven’t remarried.’ He said it flatly, like an accusation, in an abrupt change of tack.

Clumsily Kate got to her feet. Even standing up she was still a long way short of his height. She cursed the fact that she was not wearing her heels, and felt the old bitterness mobilising inside her

‘Remarry? Do you really think I would want to risk marrying again after what you did to me?’ she demanded hotly. ‘No, I haven’t remarried, and I never will.’

And there was also a very good reason why she wouldn’t, but she had no intention of telling him so. It was her son. Her precious Ollie was not going to be given a stepfather who might not love him. Kate had firsthand knowledge of what that felt like, and she was not going to subject her son to the same misery she had known whilst she was growing up.

‘Why did you change your name?’

So he still had that same skill at slipping in those dangerous questions like a knife between the ribs. She wanted to shiver, but she folded her arms instead, not wanting him to see her body’s betrayal of her anxiety.

‘Why shouldn’t I? I certainly didn’t want your name, and I didn’t want my aunt and uncle’s either, so I changed my name by deed poll to my mother’s maiden name. What are you doing here anyway?’ she demanded angrily. ‘You have no right—’

‘I’ve come round here because of this,’ Sean said curtly, stopping her protests as he removed her letter of resignation from his jacket pocket, and with it another fat white envelope.

‘This is your contract of employment,’ he announced. ‘It binds you to working a statutory notice period of four weeks. You can’t just walk out on your job, Kate.’

Kate’s mouth had gone dry, and she knew that her eyes were betraying her shock and her chagrin.

‘You…you can’t hold me to that,’ she began valiantly. ‘You—’

‘Oh, yes, I can.’ Sean stopped her swiftly. ‘And I fully intend to do so.’

‘But why?’ Kate demanded wildly, stiffening as she heard in her own voice how close she was to the edge of her self-control. ‘I should have thought you’d want me gone as much as I want to go, given the speed with which you ended our marriage! You can’t want me working for you. Your ex-wife, the woman you rejected? The woman you—’

‘Rules are rules—you are legally obliged to work your notice and I want you back at your desk so that you can hand over your responsibilities to your replacement.’

‘You can’t make me!’ Kate protested. Her voice might sound strong and determined, but inside she was panicking, she recognised. She did, after all, have a legal obligation to work her notice period, and if she didn’t it could cause other employers to think twice about taking her on. With Oliver to bring up she just could not afford to be out of work.

‘Yes, I can,’ Sean corrected her. ‘You may have walked out on our marriage, but no way are you walking out of your job!’

Kate’s shock deepened with every word he threw at her.

‘I left because you were having an affair—you know that. You were the one who ended our marriage, Sean.’

‘I’m not interested in discussing the past, only the present.’

His response left her floundering and vulnerable. It had been a mistake to refer to their marriage, and even more of a mistake to mention his affair. The last thing she wanted was to have him taunt her with still suffering because of it.

‘I like value for my money, Kate. Surely you can remember that?’

His comment gave her a much needed opportunity to hit back at him, and she took it.

‘I don’t allow myself to remember anything about you.’ The angry, contemptuous words were out before she could stop herself from saying them. She could feel the tightening of the tension between them, and with it came dangerous memories of a very different kind of tension they had once shared.

‘Anything?’ Sean challenged her rawly, as though he had somehow read her thoughts. ‘Not even this?’

The feel of his hands on her arms, dragging her against his body, the heat of his flesh, the feel of his body itself against her own, was so shockingly and immediately familiar and welcome that she couldn’t move.

Somehow, of its own volition, her body angled itself into Sean’s. Somehow her hands were sliding beneath his jacket and up over his back. Somehow her head was tilting back and her eyes were opening wide, so that she could look into the familiar hot, passionate blue of his.

Shockingly, it was as though a part of her had been waiting for this, for him, and not just waiting but wanting, longing, needing.

The steady tick of the kitchen clock was drowned out by the sound of their mingled breathing: Sean’s harsh and heavy; her own much lighter, shallow and unsteady.

The touch of his hand on the nape of her neck as his thumb slowly caressed her skin sent a signal to her body which it immediately answered.

Now she had to close her eyes, in case Sean could read in them what she could feel—the small, telling lift of her breasts as they surged in longing for his touch, the tight ache of her nipples as they hungered for his mouth, the swift clench of her belly and, lower than that, the softening swelling moistness of her sex.

She felt the hard warmth of his mouth and her own clung to it, her lips obediently parting to the fierce thrust of his tongue—a feeling she remembered so well.

Her fingers clenched into his shoulders beneath his suit jacket as the familiar possessive pressure of his kiss silenced the moan of pleasure bubbling in her throat.

When his hands dropped to her hips, and his fingers curled round the slenderness of her bones, Kate went weak with longing. Soon he would be touching her breasts, tugging fiercely at her clothes in his hunger to touch her intimately. And she wanted him to. She wanted him to so much.

Fine shudders of eager longing were already surging rhythmically through her. If she slid her hand down from his back she could touch the hard readiness of him, stroke her fingers along it, tormenting him, tormenting them both until he picked her up and—

‘Mummy…?’

The sound of Oliver’s voice from the other side of the back door jolted her back to reality.

Immediately Kate pulled back from Sean, and equally immediately he released her, so that when the door opened and Oliver came in, followed by Carol, they were standing three feet apart, ignoring one another.

‘Ollie wanted to come home, so—’ Carol came to a halt as she saw Sean, and looked uncertainly at Kate.

‘Thanks, Carol.’ Kate bent down to receive the full weight of Oliver’s compact sturdy little-boy body as he ran towards her, only too glad of an excuse to conceal her face. Picking up Oliver, she avoided looking at both her neighbour and Sean.

‘Er…I’ll be off, then,’ she heard Carol saying hurriedly as she backed out of the door.

Sean stared at the child in Kate’s arms in shocked disbelief. She had a child—it was her child; he knew that. She had a child, which meant…Which meant that some other man must have…

Oliver was wriggling in her arms and demanding to be put down. Reluctantly Kate gave in and did so. The moment his feet touched the floor he turned to look at Sean, and Kate felt as though her heart was being clenched in a hard, hurting fist when he demanded, ‘Who are you?’

‘Ollie, it’s bedtime,’ she told him firmly, and without looking at Sean she added, ‘I would like you to leave.’

‘I meant what I said about working for me, Kathy,’ Sean responded grimly.

‘Don’t call me Kathy!’

Too late Kate realised that Oliver was reacting to the anger in her voice. His eyes rounded and he put his hand in hers and stared at Sean. But her distress at upsetting him was nothing compared to the rage she felt when Sean told her curtly, ‘You’re upsetting the boy!’

To her shock, and before she could voice her fury, Sean bent down and picked Ollie up in his arms.

Kate waited for her son to struggle, as he always did when anyone unfamiliar touched him, but to her chagrin, instead of pulling away from Sean he leaned into him, looking at him gravely in silence before heaving a huge sigh and then saying determinedly, ‘Story, please, man!’

Kate felt as though her heart was going to break. Her ex-husband was holding their son, and Oliver was looking at his father as though he were all of his heroes rolled into one. The pain knifing into her was unbearable. She wanted to snatch Oliver out of Sean’s arms and hold him protectively in her own. Her poor baby didn’t know that his father had rejected the very idea of him even before he was born!

‘Oliver’s friend’s father reads him a story when he comes home from work,’ she told Sean in a stilted voice, in explanation of her son’s demand.

Oliver! She had even called the child by the name he had…And yet as he looked into the little boy’s solemn eyes Sean found it impossible to resent or hate him.

‘Story?’ he enquired, smiling at him and ignoring Kate.

Oliver nodded his head enthusiastically. ‘Mummy—book,’ he commanded imperiously, turning his head to look at Kate.

‘Please use proper sentences, Oliver,’ Kate reminded him automatically.

‘Mummy, give me book for man to read, please.’ Oliver smiled winningly and Kate could feel her whole body melting with love.

‘Sean has to go,’ she informed Oliver, automatically using Sean’s name without thinking. ‘I will read you a story later.’

‘No. Sean read Oliver story!’

The frowning pout he was giving reinforced Kate’s awareness that her son was overtired, and all too likely to have one of his rare tantrums if he was thwarted—the very last thing she wanted him to do in front of Sean, who would no doubt enjoy seeing her in such an embarrassing situation.

‘Why don’t you just give me the book?’

The quiet voice and its soft tone made Kate turn her head and stare at Sean in surprise. Oliver was already lying against Sean’s shoulder.

‘It isn’t really his bedtime yet,’ she said.

‘Is there a law which says he can only have a story at bedtime?’

Mutely Kate shook her head, too caught up in the heart-wrenching sight of her son in his father’s arms to protest any further as she went to get Oliver’s favourite story book.

Half an hour later Sean nestled Oliver deeper into his arms and told Kate, ‘By the looks of him he needs to be in bed.’

‘Yes. I’ll take him up.’

Automatically she moved to take Oliver from him, but Sean shook his head.

‘I’ll take him up. Just tell me which room.’

Weakly, she did so.

As he laid Oliver down on his small bed Sean felt the ache of an old and powerful emotion he had thought safely destroyed. Kathy’s child. He could feel his eyes starting to blur and he blinked fiercely.

As he left the room he hesitated outside the other bedroom door, and then quickly opened it.

‘Where are you going? That’s my bedroom!’

He hadn’t heard Kate come up the stairs, and they confronted one another on the small landing.

‘And you sleep there alone?’ He couldn’t stop himself from asking the question he knew he had no right to ask.

‘No. I don’t!’ Kate turned her head, not wanting him to see the expression in her eyes and therefore missing the one in his. ‘Sometimes Oliver comes in and gets into bed with me,’ she continued.

He had no valid reason to feel the way he did right now, Sean acknowledged, and no valid right either!

‘How do you manage on your own? I know you work full-time.’ He was frowning, looking as though he was genuinely concerned, and Kate turned away from him quickly and hurried towards the stairs. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again—thinking that Sean had real feelings.

‘I manage because I have to, for Oliver’s sake. I’m all he’s got—’

‘You mean his father abandoned you?’ His voice was harsh and almost condemning. ‘He left you?’

Kate could hardly believe the censure she could hear in his voice. ‘Yes, he did,’ she agreed as calmly as she could, once they were both back downstairs. ‘But personally I think that Ollie and I are better off without him.’

She walked purposefully to the front door and unlocked it, pulling it open and making it clear that she wanted Sean to leave.

‘I want you back at your desk tomorrow morning,’ Sean warned her curtly.

‘Well, I’m afraid I’m not going to be there,’ Kate responded, equally curtly.

‘I warned you, Kate—’ Sean began.

‘Tomorrow is Saturday, Sean,’ she reminded him dryly. ‘We don’t work weekends.’

There was a small, telling pause, during which Kate wondered what the woman who now shared his life thought about the fact that he obviously worked seven days a week, and then he said, ‘Very well. Monday morning, then, Kate. Be there, or face the consequences.’ He walked past her and out of the door.

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