PENNY JORDAN - Mistress To Her Husband

‘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.’

Lunch at the pub with her co-workers would have been fun and relaxing, but as a single parent Kate was always conscious of having to watch her budget.

After Laura had gone, Kate got up and collected her sandwiches. The company provided a small restroom, equipped with tea-and coffee-making facilities and a microwave, for the workforce to use during their lunch and tea breaks. She had just reached the end of the corridor and had started to descend the narrow flight of stairs when suddenly Sean came out of one of the lower level offices and started to hurry up the stairs towards her.

To Kate’s dismay her reaction was immediate and intense, and unfortunately a relic from the days when they had been a couple. So much so, in fact, that she had taken the first of the few steps that would put her right in his path before she could stop herself.

Immediately she realised what she was doing and froze in pink-cheeked humiliation as a visual memory came vividly alive inside her head. A memory of Sean rushing up the stairs of their small house to grab her in his arms and swing her round in excitement before sliding her down the length of his body and beginning to kiss her with fierce sexual hunger.

Later they had gone on to celebrate the news he had brought her—that he had secured a new and lucrative contract—in bed, with the champagne he had brought home…

Red-faced, she pulled her thoughts back under control,

‘Kathy!’ Sean demanded grimly as he saw her shocked expression. ‘What the hell’s…? What’s wrong?’

Alarmed, Kate tried to move away, but Sean stopped her, curling his fingers round her bare arm.

‘It’s not Kathy any more,’ she reminded him sharply. ‘It’s Kate! And as for what’s wrong—do you really need to ask me that?’

She might be Kate now, but Kathy was still there inside her, Kate was forced to acknowledge. Because in direct contradiction of her angry words her body responded to Sean’s touch. Was it because no one had touched her since he had ended their marriage that her caress-starved flesh was quivering with such intense and voluptuous pleasure? Was it because it was Sean who was touching her? Or was it simply that when he had kissed her he had unleashed memories her body could not ignore? Kate wondered frantically.

Was it a past need her flesh was responding to, or was it a present one? She knew what she wanted the answer to be! But somehow she couldn’t stop herself from stepping closer to him, exhaling on an unsteady sigh of pleasure. Sean was looking at her and she was looking back at him, with the mesmeric intensity of his blue gaze dizzying her.

She could feel his thumb caressing the inner curve of her elbow, just where he knew how vulnerable and responsive her flesh was to his touch—so vulnerable and responsive that when he had used to kiss her there her whole body had melted with wanton longing.

It would be so easy, so natural, to walk into his arms now and feel them close protectively around her. To look into his eyes and wait for the familiar look of hot eagerness darken them, whilst his mouth curled into that special smile he had…

A door opened noisily, bringing her back to reality. Abruptly she stepped back from Sean, her face burning. Maybe years ago she had not needed to hide her feelings from him—her lover, her husband, her best friend—nor her longing and sexual excitement when he looked at her and touched her. But things were different now, Kate reminded herself as she pulled away from him.

‘What’s that?’ she heard him demanding as he released her and frowned at the box she was carrying.

‘My lunch.’

‘Lunch? In that?’ he derided grimly as he looked at the small plastic container. ‘I should have thought for your son’s sake you would want to make sure you ate properly.’

As she listened to his ill-informed and critical words, her passionate response to him a few minutes earlier was swamped by outrage and anger.

‘For your information—not that you have any right to question anything I choose to do any more, Sean—it just so happens that it is for Ollie’s sake that this is my lunch,’ she told him, waving the plastic container defiantly. ‘It costs money to bring up a child—not that you’d know or care anything about that, since you chose not to burden yourself with children,’ she added sarcastically. ‘And a packed lunch is a lot less expensive than going out to the pub. What’s wrong, Sean?’ she demanded when she saw his fixed expression. ‘Or can I guess? You might come across to everyone else here as a caring, sharing employer, but I know different. And I also know, before you remind me, that you are rich enough to eat in the world’s most expensive restaurants these days. But there was a time when even a sandwich was a luxury for you.’

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