The Disobedient Wife

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.