Sweet Sinner

Suddenly aware that the household behind her was ominously quiet, she made her sore legs carry her up the steps at a run. And she had been right in guessing there was mischief afoot because both the tiny boys were practically upended in one of Hannah’s boxes, unpacking the contents with mountains of glee and little method.

‘No! Naughty!’ she admonished as sternly as she could, hooking an arm round each small body and hauling them out, rescuing a coat hanger from Rickie’s clinging fingers just as Hannah and Gary came slowly down the stairs, breathing hard, carrying the dressing-table from what had been Zoe’s room between them.

Halfway down they stopped for a breather and Hannah poked her rumpled head over the banisters.

‘Gary said you were looking after your sister’s kids this weekend so we thought we’d help move your stuff.’ She smiled shyly. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but…’ Her voice tailed off and Zoe took up,

‘But you want me out of the way, shut away in the basement so you two can play house,’ The smile in her voice robbed her words of any sting and the boys began to race round the hall on sturdy legs, chortling like wild things. The ‘bumping from stair to stair’ downward progress of the dressing-table had kept them quiet and enthralled but the journey had come to a standstill, and that was boring.

But the sudden eruption of Jenna into the hall, clad in what appeared to be a gauzy patterned throwover shirt and nothing else, closely followed by a tall, lanky guy who had to be the actress’s newest date, had them scampering for safety, clinging, shyly burying their flushed faces in Zoe’s skirt.

The sooner she changed into a pair of old jeans, the better, Zoe thought, absently patting two lint-blond heads, though how that would be accomplished when her possessions appeared to be in transit, with a goodly proportion wedged permanently on the stairs, she had no idea. She was beginning to get a headache.

She smiled tentatively at the lanky guy who smiled warily back. And Jenna crooned, ‘Zoe, my pet—meet Henry.’ She stroked the side of his lean face lingeringly. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous? I do believe I might marry him. At least,’ she batted fabulous lashes, ‘I shall move in with him to avoid having to share that meagre basement. No offence, Zoe, my pet—but really! Oi, you two,’ she hollered up the staircase. ‘Come down at once. I want your opinion.’

A distracted grunt was the only reply and Zoe wondered just what was going on behind that dressing-table, and Jenna patted Henry’s backside lovingly, ordering, ‘Do lend a hand, otherwise they’ll be there all day.’

It’s a madhouse, Zoe thought, subsiding on to the hall chair, feeling hot and bothered in her neat office gear as the midsummer sun poured in through the open hall door.

She dragged the twins up on her lap, out of the way, as Henry took one end of the recalcitrant piece of furniture and began to tug and Jenna shouted above the din.

‘My lovely room will look like a used furniture emporium! How much more do you think you’ll try to fit in?’ But the furniture removers ignored her and Zoe wondered whether to tell her not to worry because any time now she would be moving out herself, just as soon as she’d finished saving for a deposit on a place of her own. Now that Petra had a well paid job to go to, she would be able to afford it.

She closed her eyes briefly, picturing it—somewhere fairly central, peaceful, a place for everything and everything in its place, nothing pandemonic about it—and the moment had gone. No chance to tell Jenna anything as the dressing-table came to rest at the foot of the stairs and the actress clapped her hands and commanded, ‘Gather round folks, I want advice.’

Henry dusted off his hands and the upward drift of his wide bony shoulders seemed to say, She’s impossible, but cute. Then Hannah and Gary emerged, their hands twined together, and Hannah, despite the wildness of her curly dark hair, looked cool and lovely in brief lemon-yellow shorts which showed off her endless legs and a skimpy sleeveless top.

‘Right!’ Jenna flashed her wide white smile when she had their undivided attention. ‘You know about my part in this TV drama, and I guess I have to concede it’s only walk on, walk off and half a dozen tiny words. But I aim to make a big impression, folks! So I’ve got to look re-all-y——’ she spun the word out ‘—sexy, with a capital S. I appear at a poolside, right? I think I look sexier with this cover-up——’ she tweaked the edges of the diaphanous shirt ‘—sort of alluring—some mystery, you know.’ Briefly, she paraded up and down the cluttered limits of the hall. ‘But Henry here says it’s better without——’ She stopped, shrugging out of the filmy shirt, holding her arms dramatically wide, revealing ripely voluptuous curves in a bikini so small it was barely there. ‘So——?’ she questioned breathlessly. ‘What do you guys think?’

Catcalls and whistles, someone—probably Gary—was stamping his feet, and Zoe closed her eyes and wished she could close her ears, too, to shut out the din, and wished she had never been born when that unmistakable voice said with the cool precision she was beginning to dread, ‘I have no wish to sound offensive, but don’t you think your activities should be conducted more discreetly?’

The sudden strained silence made Zoe’s heart pound. She went hot all over, perspiration soaking the neat white blouse she wore beneath her suit jacket. It took a lot of courage to turn her head. Slowly.

James Cade was standing in the open hall doorway, impeccably suited against the background of the dusty street. Cool, collected and in control. Utterly. Dominating his audience.

The austerely beautiful features betrayed nothing, not a thing, not even disdain, and the cold grey eyes took in every single thing, labelling it, filing it away inside that clever brain. Everything. Jenna, posing, unashamedly near-naked; Gary and Hannah clinging together, one of Gary’s hands, shocked by the disruptive advent of the stranger to complete immobility, curving around Hannah’s pert breast; the clutter, the unbelievable clutter—boxes and bags, the abandoned dressing-table leaning drunkenly against one wall.

‘Want something?’ Gary was the first to recover. His hand slid down to Hannah’s waist and his jaw was belligerent. ‘You’re on private property.’

‘As your antics are clearly visible from the street I imagined privacy was the last thing you bothered about.’ James Cade was visibly unimpressed by Gary’s pugnacious stance. His hands were thrust negligently into the trouser pockets of the superbly tailored lightweight suit he wore and, with the sunlight behind him, his features were more darkly dangerous than even Zoe remembered them.

Her arms tightened around the twins and she shivered. And the shiver turned into a shudder that went souldeep as the voice that was insolent in its coolness imparted, ‘I want a private word with Miss Kilgerran.’

Unaware of the questioning look Gary shot in her direction, Zoe gulped. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She shook her head, hoping he’d disappear. But he didn’t. He had tracked her down and there could be only one reason for that.

He recognised her from the night before. She hadn’t really believed it possible.

One of the twins was pulling the pins out of her hair and it fell down around her face like a shiny blonde cloud and she gasped out the first thing that came into her head.

‘How did you know where I lived?’

A silly thing to say, she realised belatedly. She, who had never said a silly thing in her life, had spoken as if she had something to hide.

‘The usual channels,’ he answered with cool menace, advancing further into the cluttered hall, picking his way round a pile of toys that had spilled from one of the carriers.

Whatever that meant, Zoe thought and closed her eyes in complete despair as Gary, as if satisfied that she and James Cade knew each other, draped an arm round Hannah’s waist and said leeringly, ‘Right, folks—bed now. Everyone upstairs on the double! Let’s get at it!’

I’ll strangle him! I will, I will! Zoe thought, horribly close to a state of hysteria for the first time in her life. She didn’t know about Henry, but the others all took life and sex so lightheartedly, making a joke out of nearly everything, batting sexual innuendoes around like tennis balls in the Wimbledon finals. They were going to shift her bed down to the basement. She knew that. James Cade wouldn’t. He would think the whole household was set for an orgy!

Both the little boys were squirming around on her lap, babbling about biscuits which meant it was way past their lunchtime, and Zoe couldn’t have got to her feet if she’d wanted to because even if her legs hadn’t turned to water the twins were pinning her down. And James Cade clipped derisively, ‘Does Taylor know about the double life you lead? Is he a dupe, or do you give him a few favours on the side to keep him quiet? I hear his marriage is shaky and now I understand why.’

There was no expression on his hard features and that, somehow, was worse than a sneer. How could he imply she and Luke…? How could he believe she was—what he thought she was?

Violent denials exploded in her brain, denials she was unable to put into coherent words. Not that he gave her the opportunity because he just stood there, feet planted apart, telling her exactly what she didn’t want to hear.

‘When you walked in this morning I knew I’d seen you before. When I noticed the fresh grazes on your legs the penny dropped. But I didn’t fully believe it until I walked in on this sordid set-up.’ A nerve jumped at the side of his tense jawline and then cold grey eyes swept over the restless twins. The family likeness was unmissable. ‘Yours. Why, I wonder, do I find myself so unamazed?’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘Do you know who the father is?’

Grey eyes impaled her, as if drilling deep inside her brain and, her mind an impossible jumble of repudiations and denials, she squeakily told the truth.

‘No.’

Petra had adamantly refused to tell anyone the identity of the man who had used her and dropped her, doing a vanishing act the moment he’d learned she was pregnant. And Zoe had told the truth because her mind was direct. She didn’t stall or bend the facts to suit the circumstances and had blown her chance to explain that the twins weren’t hers, because he turned smartly on his heels and walked straight out.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_4cbc9782-e9c6-562c-8d68-3183d853d4a4)

‘THE restaurant’s in Fallow Street—can you find your own way there? Or shall I send a car?’ The dark voice was even more curt this morning, but Zoe was too relieved to hear it to care.

‘Twelve-thirty, Mr Cade; I’ll be there. And of course I can make my own way.’ She was practically burbling.

‘I’ve no doubt you can,’ he came back drily, and before she could work out what that tone was supposed to mean the line went dead.

Replacing the receiver, she glanced at her watch. Lunch with James Cade in exactly one hour. She grinned. Exhilaration got her bouncing to her feet, far too unsettled now to continue with the particularly knotty set of profit and loss sheets she’d been working on.

The weekend had been far from relaxing. What with having to move into the basement rooms with a miffed Jenna who kept muttering darkly about going to live in sin with Henry, caring for two energetic small boys who obviously thought that aunts were people who had nothing else to do but play with them and allow them to eat chocolate bars instead of lunch, and agonising over James Cade’s totally unexpected and incomprehensible arrival—and abrupt departure, on such a deeply embarrassing note, too—she had entered Monday morning feeling frayed to the point of disintegration.

And hadn’t been able to concentrate properly on her work, either, because her mind had kept sliding off at a tangent, grappling with the problem of how on earth she could approach James Cade and put him right.

What he privately thought of her morals was neither here nor there; she accepted that. After all, her company would be working for his company and that was as far as their relationship would go. And the only time that they ever need meet would be for a short session before she tackled his personal tax returns and his no doubt massive portfolio of investments.

But the knowledge that he thought she was some sort of Jekyll and Hyde character, doing a bit of hookering in her spare time, sharing a house with what he had probably decided were pimps and their prospects and already having two small sons—and no idea who their father was—was too awful to live with!

So his unexpected invitation to lunch was the answer to her prayers, and then some! And Zoe felt completely cheerful and nicely in control again for the first time since that awful fancy dress party on Friday night.

She poked her head into the adjoining office, checked that Simon, her PA, had set up the initial formal meeting with Wright and Grantham and had the final audit for Future Computers well in hand, told her secretary that she would be out of the office for a couple of hours, then retreated into her own office, collected her washbag from her desk and tripped light-heartedly to the ladies’ room.

Hanging her suit jacket and crisp white blouse on the hooks on the inside of the door, she uncapped the gel she preferred to wash with and vigorously sluiced her face with warm water.

Cade had almost certainly set up this meeting to fill her in on his personal tax details—handling all the director’s returns would come within her brief—because he wasn’t a fool. While she and her team would do all the hard graft, Luke, as the senior partner, would pick up the credit. James Cade would know that and would want, initially anyway, to liaise with her directly. And she would take the heaven-sent opportunity to explain that his warped opinion of her was completely and utterly incorrect.