Mistress To Her Husband

‘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.

CHAPTER THREE

‘NO!’ ANGRILY Kate sat up in bed. It was three o’clock on Monday morning and she needed to be asleep, not lying there thinking about Sean, remembering how it had felt when he—

‘No!’ she protested again, groaning in anguish as she rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. But it was no use; neither her memories nor her feelings were going to be ignored.

Well, if she couldn’t ignore them then at least she could use them to remind herself of how Sean had hurt her. To inoculate herself against him doing so again, because on Friday, when he had kissed her, she had nearly forgiven him…

She could feel the sharp quiver of sensation aching through her body. So her body remembered that Sean had been its lover, she acknowledged angrily—well, her heart had an equally good memory, if not an even better one, and what it remembered was the pain he had caused it.

But the love between them had been so…so wonderful. Sean had been a passionate and exciting lover who had taught her things about her own body, as well as his, and their mutual capacity for pleasure had been something she had never even dreamed could exist.

Why was she torturing herself like this? And if she was doing it then why didn’t she do it properly and remember just what it had felt like that first time he had made love to her?

After she had left her aunt and uncle’s house—she had never thought of it as home—she had moved into Sean’s small flat, but he had told her that he was not going to make love to her properly until they were married. Through the weeks and months when he had courted her he had steadfastly refused to take their passionately intense love-play to the conclusion she ached for, warning her thrillingly—for her—that he was afraid that if he did so she would become pregnant.

‘There’s no way my baby is going to be born a bastard like I was,’ he had said grimly.

He had been reluctant to talk to her about his childhood at first, but she had slowly coaxed the painful truth out of him, and they had shared with one another their dream of creating for their own children the idyllic, love-filled childhood neither of them had known.

‘But we could use some contraception,’ she had suggested, pink-cheeked.

‘We could, but we aren’t going to,’ Sean had replied with that dangerously exciting hunger in his voice. ‘Because when we make love, when you give yourself to me, Kathy, I want it to be skin to skin, not with a damn piece of rubber between us,’ he had told her earthily.

They had married in the small country town where her own long-dead mother had originally come from—a wonderfully romantic gesture on Sean’s part, so far as Kate had been concerned. And in order to marry there they had had to live in the town for three weeks prior to the wedding. The completion of some work project had given Sean enough money to rent a small house for them.

Three weeks was an eternity when you were as passionately in love and as hungry for one other as they had been then, Kate acknowledged. But Sean had made sure that they did wait. He had had that kind of discipline and determination even then.

They had spent their wedding night completely alone in the small rented house. And it had been so perfect that even thinking about it now she could feel her eyes filling with tears of emotion.

‘Mummy.’

The voice interrupted her wayward thoughts. Immediately Kate got out of her bed and hurried into Oliver’s room.

‘What is it, darling?’ she asked him lovingly.

‘My tummy hurts,’ he complained.

Kate tried not to sigh. Oliver was prone to upset tummies. Having checked that he was okay, she sat with him and soothed him, tensing when unexpectedly he asked her, ‘Mummy, when’s Sean going to come and see us again?’

This was the first time Oliver had mentioned Sean, and she had managed to convince herself that her son had completely forgotten about him.

‘I don’t know, Oliver.’ That was all she could find to say. She felt unable to tell Oliver that he would probably never see Sean again, even though she knew she ought to do so. She had always tried to answer his questions honestly, but this time she could not, and the reason for that was the look of shining anticipation in her little boy’s eyes.

By the time Oliver had gone back to sleep she was wide awake herself, her heart jumping uncomfortably inside her chest.

It couldn’t be possible for Oliver to somehow sense that Sean was his father, could it? Her little boy couldn’t have taken so uncharacteristically well to Sean because he felt some kind of special bond between them?

‘It’s a wise child that knows its own father,’ Kate muttered grimly to herself, clinging to the old saying to protect her from her own wild imaginings.

Apprehensively, Kate parked her car and walked across the car park. The last person she wanted to see was Sean. Why had fate been so unkind as to bring him back into her life? She hated knowing that she was going to be working for him, but, as Carol had pointed out to her when she had told her what had happened, she could not afford to risk him carrying out his threat of pursuing her through the courts.

She nibbled anxiously on her bottom lip as she hurried into her office. Oliver had assured her that his tummy was better when he had woken up this morning, but she had still warned the nursery school teacher that he hadn’t felt well during the night when she had dropped him off that morning.

‘Kate!’ Laura gave her a beaming smile as she came into the office and saw her. ‘You’ve changed your mind and you’re going to stay after all!’

‘You could say that! Our new boss made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,’ Kate answered lightly, and then realised what she had done when she saw the curiosity in Laura’s eyes.

‘He did?’ Laura sighed enviously. ‘Don’t you think he’s just the most gorgeously, dangerously sexy-looking man you have ever seen?’ she added dreamily.

‘No, I do not!’ Kate responded, fighting to ignore the sudden backflip performed by her heart.

‘Well, if that’s true you are the only female working here who doesn’t,’ Laura told her forthrightly. ‘And when you think that he’s single and unattached…’

Now her heart was turning somersaults. ‘Says who?’ she challenged her friend and colleague.

‘John,’ Laura informed her smugly. ‘Apparently Sean told him himself.

Kate wondered what Laura would say if she were to tell her that, contrary to what Sean had told John, he had one very substantial attachment in the form of her son!

Sean was frowning as he ended his telephone conversation with his accountant. But it wasn’t his business affairs that were causing him problems. He felt as though he was on an emotional see-saw—something more appropriate for a callow youth than a man of his own age. Moreover, a man who considered himself totally fireproof as far as his emotions and his control over them were concerned.

When he had ended his marriage to Kate he had closed himself off completely from everything that concerned or involved her. He had deliberately and clinically expunged everything about her from his life. From his life, maybe, but what about from his heart?

Nothing had changed, he reminded himself angrily. The same reasons why he had divorced her still existed today, and would continue to exist for ever. Sean knew that he could never alter them. Nor forget them!

Pushing back his chair with an unusually uncoordinated movement, he got up and strode to the office window.

Was that really true? And if it was then what the hell had he been doing this weekend? He did not normally spend his weekends in toy stores, did he? And he certainly did not spend them doing idiotic things like buying ridiculously expensive train sets.

Sean closed his eyes and pushed his hands into his pockets, balling his fists in angry tension.

Okay, so he hadn’t deliberately set out to buy the train set. And he had had every excuse to be in the large department store as he had gone there in order to replace some household items. It had been mere coincidence that the toy department was on the same floor as the television set he had been looking at. He didn’t really need to put himself through rigorous self-analysis just because he had bought a train set, did he? After all, he had only bought the damn thing because he had felt embarrassed not to do so when the sales assistant had mistakenly thought he was interested in it!

And then he had got rid of it at the first opportunity.

A gleam of reluctant amusement lit his eyes as he recalled the expression on the face of the young boy he had given his embarrassing purchase to. His tired-looking mother had protested at first, but Sean had insisted. He just hoped she didn’t think he had had any kind of ulterior motive for doing what he had done. Not that she wouldn’t have been right to be suspicious of his motives—they certainly would not withstand too much scrutiny! Dwelling on the past and buying toys just because…Just because what? Just because the warm weight of Kate’s son in his arms had reactivated memories from a time in his life that…

A time in his life that was over, Sean tried to remind himself. But the stark truth was already confronting him, even if he did not want to recognise or acknowledge it.

‘Fancy going to the pub for lunch?’

Kate shook her head without lifting her gaze from her computer screen. ‘Can’t, I’m afraid, Laura,’ she responded. ‘I want to get this finished, and anyway I’ve brought sandwiches.’