Innocent Mistress

Innocent Mistress
Margaret Way

When lawyer Jude Conroy tells Cate that she's just inherited a fortune from a wealthy man, everyone - including Jude - presumes she must have been the man's mistress….Cate insists she doesn't even know the man who left her the money. But Jude has learned to be cynical about women who play the innocent - and part of him doesn't believe her. But another part wants to go to any lengths to prove she's telling the truth….Because if she's going to be anyone's mistress - or anyone's wife, for that matter - she's going to be his!

“Put your arms around me?” Cate asked.

“You know where this could lead,” Jude said into her hair. “You’re far too beautiful for me to resist.”

“I want to forget everything for a little while.”

“Is that the only reason?” He turned her to look at him.

“Sex can be very liberating.” There was more than a hint of bravado in her tone.

“I asked if that was the only reason.”

Her expression changed. “You know it isn’t.”

Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves haunting galleries and auctions and is completely given over to French champagne “for every possible joyous occasion.” She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

Innocent Mistress

Margaret Way

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

AFTER the well-heeled, well-endowed Poppy Gooding left his office in a swirl of silken perfume, Jude carefully wiped any lingering trace of lipstick from his mouth, then straightened his tie.

“Play it cool, Jude,” he advised himself.

It didn’t help. He knew he’d had about as many of Poppy’s come-ons as he could comfortably deal with. He’d never met a girl so oversexed. He suddenly recalled a movie about sexual harassment in the workplace in which the man was the victim. Poppy’s behaviour wasn’t as dastardly as that woman’s had been but her methods of seduction were at the very least questionable. Poppy completely lacked the degree of reserve one saw in properly brought up young ladies—although maybe that thought belonged in the Dark Ages… She most certainly wasn’t a virgin, but then virginity wasn’t as valuable as it used to be, either. The key point was that Jude had to stop her before she removed her clothes. Or his. He was the guy who’d always considered mixing business and pleasure high risk. In this instance it could see him right out of a high paid job.

After months of trying to fend her off he’d come to the conclusion Poppy had big plans for him. He was even tempted to get it over with and prove a big disappointment. Two of the guys in the firm, fellow associates, had given service beyond the call of duty. Maybe it was a required course of action? At present he was the guy holding out, resulting in a lot of ribbing from his colleagues.

The big problem was that it would be a bad, bad move to offend her. Her father just happened to be his boss, Leonard Gooding, senior partner in the prestigious firm of Gooding, Carter and Legge, corporate lawyers. Being invited into this firm usually didn’t happen for years, if ever, but he’d earned a lot of kudos along the way. He’d graduated top of his law class with first class honours. He was a good athlete, track and field which didn’t hurt, either—even couch potatoes like Leonard Gooding were sports mad. He could only be thankful Poppy had spent the previous six months overseas, no doubt spending a goodly portion of her father’s money. It was Poppy, the collector, who’d made the running almost from the day she laid eyes on him.

Women smiled on Jude. He’d be a fool not to have noticed, though it took them a little time to realize how keen he was on his bachelor status. He was twenty-eight years old. There was a lot of exasperating talk about his “blue, blue eyes” among the girls in the office. Blue eyes apparently scored well. The articled clerk, Vanessa, had even told him she wanted to pass his blue eyes on to her children. Even so Vanessa didn’t put him on the defensive like Poppy.

City life had enforced his entrenched view of women. Every last one of them was after a husband—preferably a rich one—they’d been brought up that way. It was intimidating for guys. Some of them thought Jude, as a husband, would do nicely.

The only thing was, he wasn’t in the running. Not yet. Most guys were happy to start considering marriage when they got to thirty or so but he wasn’t sure he would. Not that he played unobtainable—he’d had lots of nice girl-friends—but there were huge problems after The Knot had been tied. Marriage after the marvellous heady flush of the Big Day was a big letdown. Women seemed to live for the day alone as if they were no ever-after to occupy their time. The fabulous wedding dress—it needed to be white, the veil, the masses and masses of flowers, the picturesque church, the reception, just family and friends that turned into a crowd of four hundred. In his opinion, and on the evidence, they’d been planning it since they changed booties for shoes. The trouble was the excitement didn’t last and lots of times neither did the attraction.

Statistics proved too many marriages didn’t work out. Some of his clients had been married two and three times and they sure as hell didn’t give the appearance of being happy. In fact most of them had a henpecked look. Jude didn’t want his marriage—if he ever stopped flinching away from the hazards—to be a dismal failure. He didn’t want to see another kid, like himself, suffer. If the saddest thing in the world was a mother losing her child, it was just as sad to be a child losing its mother.

These days he got by playing fancy-free man-about-town. A month ago he’d made it into a list of the Ten Sexiest Men in the city, though he’d never returned the call of the woman journalist who had started the whole nonsense. In any event she turned up a glossy photo of him at a function and used that under the heading Local Heartthrob. There was no point in being outraged. Vanessa had made a bumper sticker of it and somehow managed to fix it to the back of his car. All the beeps and the cheeky little waves finally aroused his suspicions and he had stopped in a loading zone and ripped it off. No one seemed to take it seriously anyway, so he’d shrugged off the ribbing. It was a crazy world. Sometimes it didn’t seem worthwhile a quiet, country boy like himself trying to hold the line.

Nevertheless he’d changed a lot since his university days. Now he had to dress in sharp suits, shirts and ties, even his socks had been labelled cool by that journalist. He could kill her. Cool socks? That was a brain wave. His unruly blond hair—always had too much curl in it—was cut just right according to Bobbi his secretary who from the beginning had taken pity on him and told him the in places to shop, even where to have his hair cut. He no longer had short back and sides and as a result it skimmed his collar. He couldn’t stop it flicking up all over the place. He’d long ceased trying. The guy at the unisex salon who’d cut it told Jude with a roll of his eyes he was a dead ringer for some famous actor. For an eye-popping minute there Jude had thought the man with the scissors was going to kiss him, but no, he settled for a friendly squeeze on the shoulder.

The fact was he’d taken years to get himself together. He’d always liked to be comfortable, even sloppy. T-shirt, jeans, sneekers. He liked going to the gym, working out, as he was still an athlete at heart—he’d even won a bridge-to-city run. For public display he’d had to change in a hurry; he had to look like what he was, a young lawyer on the fast track, cited to get to the top. At the beginning he hadn’t minded Poppy’s advances all that much—he was as open to temptation as the next guy—if only she could have kept it low-key.

He’d never expected it would please Leonard Gooding who had the kind of granite face you wouldn’t wish on anyone—what if it came out in Poppy’s children?—if Jude became involved in a meaningful relationship with his only child. The possibilities for Leonard Gooding’s future son-in-law were limitless. Hints were already being thrown around about a full partnership by thirty, access to the top clients. There would be fresh territory to roam, an introduction to the charmed world of the hyperrich. Jude would have to laugh at all their jokes and let them beat him at golf.

Born and bred in the middle of nowhere, a small North Queensland sugar town, Jude sometimes thought he might be able to get used to that kind of life. He hadn’t studied as hard as he had to be a loser. His much loved Dad had been so proud of him. But then he had to confront a formidable truth. He saw no real possibility of ever selling his soul no matter the rewards.

The only way out for him was if Poppy got interested in someone else and the sooner the better. He realised however hard he worked, however smart he was supposed to be, it wasn’t beyond Gooding to turn on him at a moment’s notice and engineer his dismissal from the firm. Leonard Gooding was a shark.

Jude walked restlessly to the panoramic plate-glass window that overlooked the broad sweep of the River City. At this time of the afternoon the impressive steel and glass commercial towers were turned to columns of gold by the slanting rays of the sun. Any self-respecting shrink could diagnose his deeply ingrained resistance to matrimony as the by-product of his childhood. His mother had abandoned the best and kindest man in the world, his father. She’d abandoned him, her only child. That single event had influenced his entire mode of thinking.

“My gorgeous boy!”

That was the way she’d used to greet him. What a joke! It depressed him to even think about it. She’d never meant it at all. She was only acknowledging that physically he’d taken after her. He’d been a bright kid going on twelve, thinking all was right with his world, when she took off for the beckoning horizons. He only found out years later when his father finally told him the whole pathetic story, that his mother had gone away with a rich American tourist who had been holidaying at the luxury hotel where she was receptionist. His mother in those days was a knock-out. She was probably still able to turn heads with her golden blond hair, big melting blue eyes and luscious figure. According to his all-forgiving father no man could be blamed for falling in love with Jude’s mother, Sally. Sally was perfect.

It took Jude years to come to the realisation that when it came to his mother, his father had been one gullible fool. Even as a kid he’d been edgily aware that his mother who the gang he hung around with described as “hot” was a habitual flirt. She gave off allure like a body scent. Probably the rich Texan hadn’t been her first affair. At the time his father told him his mother needed a more exciting life. The town was a rural backwater.

“Sally wants a real taste of life. She’s so beautiful! She deserves more than I can give her.”

Did that excuse being unfaithful? Jude didn’t think so. His father had let himself be seen as dull and boring when the fact was he had been a clever, industrious, respected town lawyer. He loved books, revered literature. He loved music, too, classical, jazz, opera and he adored big game fishing. He had such a great sense of humour. Much as Jude’s father had grieved, extraordinarily he’d never held a grudge against his wife.

Jude did. Unlike his father he’d never wished his mother all the best. He and his father had been betrayed and Jude had learned the lesson that women weren’t to be trusted. They cheated on their husbands. If they didn’t get what they wanted, they moved on. If his father continued to love his mother until the day he died, Jude took the opposite stand. He might be thought hard and judgmental, but he hated her for sucking all the life out of his father who died soon after Jude made it into the firm. His father had flown to Brisbane so they could have a celebratory dinner together. He’d been so proud, telling Jude before he left, his dearest wish was that Jude would have a much better life than he had.

“Find the right girl. Marry her. Give me grandchildren. You’re the one who always kept me going, Jude. I’ve lived for you, son. You’ve done me proud.”

Trying to make his father proud was what had given him the edge, driven him to succeed. Then his father up and died on him. At least he’d been doing what he loved—big game fishing. He and a couple of his life-long pals were out on Calypso when a freak electrical storm hit. The waves, reportedly, had been huge. His father and one of his friends had been washed overboard. Both perished in the Coral Sea. Despite a wide search their bodies had never been found.

How I miss him! Jude thought, grief locked deep inside him. The town had given him all the sympathy in the world when he flew home for the memorial service. He and his dad had always been popular. He was the local boy made good. Now that he had a real chance of making it up to his dad for all his sacrifices his dad wasn’t around. Successful as he’d become the loss of his father shadowed Jude’s life. There’s no end to love in the human heart; no end to grief when love is lost.