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‘Just because you—’ she began, and then stopped, swallowing hard as out of nowhere the memories started to fill her head. Sean waking her up in the morning with the gentlest of kisses…that was until she was fully awake…and then…
She could feel the tension building up inside her body, a tension activated by memories crowding out the reality she was trying desperately hard to cling on to, to use as a bulwark.
A bulwark? Against what? The love she had once felt for Sean had been completely destroyed, and by Sean himself. Cruelly and deliberately. Her body stiffened with pride. She was glad that he thought she had found someone else. Married someone else.
Had he married the woman he had left her for?
Sean’s mobile rang, and he answered it, frowning briefly as he told Kate that she could go.
As she turned to leave Kate heard a female voice saying, quite clearly, ‘Sean, darling…’
Kate was halfway through clearing out her desk when Laura came in.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘Clearing my desk. What does it look like?’ Kate responded tersely.
‘You’re leaving?’
Kate could see how shocked and dismayed Laura was.
‘You mean he’s sacked you just for being late?’
Kate permitted herself a thin and slightly bitter smile. ‘No, he hasn’t sacked me, but let’s just say I’m leaving ahead of having him do so.’
‘Oh, Kate, no!’ Laura protested, obviously upset. ‘I can see that things have got off to bad start for you—!’ She stopped, biting her lip and looking uncomfortable.
Laura would never make a politician, Kate reflected wryly, witnessing her colleague’s discomfort.
‘Laura?’ she prodded firmly.
‘Well, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything—to be critical…or unkind. But I did hear Sean asking John where you were,’ Laura admitted reluctantly, adding quickly, ‘I’m sure he’ll be understanding, Kate. He seems such a sweetie, and so gorgeous.’
A sweetie! Sean! Kate suppressed a bitter laugh.
Sean might be many things, but he had never been a sweetie—not even when she had first known him.
A tough, streetwise, untamed rogue male, who could make a girl go weak at the knees and hot in places she hadn’t previously known existed with just one taunting look, that was what he had been. And she…
Her face started to burn as she recognised where her unwanted thoughts were leading. She switched on her computer and started to type.
‘Oh, thank goodness you’ve changed your mind,’ Laura began, with relief, but Kate shook her head.
‘No, I haven’t. I’m just typing out my notice,’ Kate informed her crisply.
‘Your notice! Oh, Kate.’ Laura looked aghast, and immediately tried to dissuade her, but Kate refused to let herself be swayed.
Finishing her typing, she checked and then printed off her letter, placing it neatly in an envelope, which she put in the internal post tray.
Her task completed, she headed for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Laura demanded anxiously.
‘I’m leaving,’ Kate answered patiently. ‘I’ve written my resignation letter. As of now, I no longer work here!’
‘But, Kate, you can’t leave just like that—without telling anyone!’ Laura protested.
‘Watch me!’ Kate answered succinctly, walking calmly towards the door.
But inwardly she was feeling far from calm. Frantically she clamped down on her treacherous thoughts.
Kathy was working here! Sean paced the floor of his office, having terminated the call from the wife of his financial adviser. She had called to invite him to a dinner party she was planning, but Sean did not do dinner parties. His mouth twisted bitterly. Until he had met Kathy he hadn’t even known the correct cutlery to use. She had been the one who had gently taught him. Gently rubbed off his rough edges. And he…
He strode angrily over to the office window and stared out of it. He had deliberately not kept track of Kathy after their divorce. There hadn’t been any point. The marriage had been over and he had made her a generous financial settlement, even if she had returned it to his solicitor intact. Who had she married? When had she married him?
He went back to the desk and picked up the personnel files he had not yet read.
CHAPTER TWO
AS SHE climbed out of her car Kate acknowledged that really there was no way she should have been driving. She was shaking from head to foot, and she had no real idea of how she had driven home. The entire journey had been a pain-fuelled blur of fighting back unwanted memories whilst surge after surge of panic and anger had washed through her.
‘Kate!’
Kate tried to looked relaxed and smile as Carol, her friend and neighbour, came hurrying towards her.
‘What are you doing back so early?’ Carol asked, adding teasingly, ‘Did the interview go so well that the new boss gave you the rest of the day off?’
Kate opened her mouth to make a suitably lighthearted response, but to her chagrin she could feel her lips starting to tremble as emotions overwhelmed her.
‘I’ve handed in my notice,’ she told Carol shakily. ‘I…I had to…My…the new boss is my ex-husband!’ Tears filled her eyes. She was shaking so violently she could have been in shock, Kate recognised distantly.
‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ she heard Carol announcing in a motherly voice. ‘And then you can tell me all about it.’
Ten minutes later, after she had made them both a cup of coffee and chatted calmly about their sons, Carol turned to Kate and said gently, ‘I’m not going to pry, Kate, but if you want to get it off your chest I’m a good listener, and I promise it won’t go any further.’ When Kate made no response, but simply continued to sit huddled in her chair, her hands gripping her coffee mug, Carol added quietly, ‘Not even to Tom, if that’s what you want.’
Kate turned her head to look at her, her gaze blank and withdrawn, then forced herself to focus on her friend.
Taking a deep breath, she began to speak, slowly and painfully. ‘I met Sean when I was eighteen. He was building an extension for my aunt and uncle’s neighbours. We’d had a very hot summer, and he worked bare-chested in a pair of old tight-fitting jeans—’
‘Mmm, sexy. I can picture the scene.’ Carol smiled encouragingly, relieved to see just the merest twitch of humour lifting Kate’s mouth.
‘I used to walk the long way round just so that I could see him,’ Kate admitted. ‘I hadn’t thought he’d notice me, but then one night at a local club he was there and he asked me to dance. Fantasising over him when I walked past the building site was one thing. Being confronted with him there in front of me in the flesh was another! I felt intimidated by him.’ Kate gave small shrug and looked at Carol.
‘I was a na?ve eighteen-year-old virgin, and all that fierce, potent hot male sexuality was a bit overwhelming. Unfortunately he thought I was rejecting him, and…’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know it then, but like me he’d had a very unhappy and lonely childhood, which had left him with a bit of a chip on his shoulder and a determination to succeed. I can see now that I was a bit of a challenge to him, because I was a girl from a different background. A trophy girlfriend, I suppose the press would call it nowadays, and for a while I was good enough for him as just that. Good enough to marry, in fact. But once he’d become very successful I think he began to realise that I wasn’t much of a trophy after all, and that with his money he could afford a much, much better one than me.’
Carol could hear the pain in Kate’s voice. ‘You obviously loved him,’ she said softly.
‘Loved him?’ Kate looked at her starkly, her emotions darkening her eyes. ‘Yes, I loved him—totally and completely, blindly and foolishly I realise now. Because I believed then that he felt the same way about me!’
‘Oh, Kate!’ Carol sympathised, her own eyes prickling with emotion as she covered Kate’s cold folded hands with her own.
Kate swallowed and then continued. ‘My aunt and uncle were furious when it came out that I was seeing him—especially my aunt. There was a dreadful row, and it came out that she had never liked my mother, had been appalled when she had married her brother. She told me that if I didn’t agree to stop seeing Sean they would wash their hands of me and disown me. But I couldn’t give Sean up. I loved him too much. He had become my whole world! And when I told him what my aunt had said he told me that he wasn’t going to let me go back to them, to be hurt and bullied, that from now on he would look after me.’
Kate exhaled in a deep sigh.
‘We were married six weeks later. Sean had finished the extension by then, and was ready to move on to his next job.’
Carol could see the events of the day were beginning to catch up with Kate and, surveying her friend’s exhausted hollow-cheeked face, she stood up and told her firmly, ‘Look, you’re all in. Why don’t you have a rest? I’ll collect Oliver from nursery, if you like, and give him his tea.’
Kate was tempted to refuse. But while a part of her was longing desperately to have the warm, solid feel of Oliver’s sturdy body in her arms, so that she could hold him and take comfort from his presence, another part of her said that this was not fair to her son and that she must not get into the habit of leaning on him emotionally. And anyway, she had things to do, she reminded herself grimly. Like finding a new job for a start!
‘You’re very kind,’ she told Carol wanly.
‘Nonsense. I know you’d do the same for me.’
She would, of course, but it was hardly likely that she would ever be asked to do so, Kate acknowledged wearily after Carol had gone. Carol had a loving husband, and George had two sets of adoring grandparents only too willing to spend as much time as they could with their grandson.
And Oliver only had her. No grandparents. Just her. Just her? What about Sean? He was Oliver’s father, after all, Kate reminded herself angrily.
Sean!
Her whole body felt heavy with misery and despair. She had struggled so hard, and it seemed so unfair that she should have her precious financial security snatched from her because her ex-husband had taken over the company.
For the first time since Sean had announced that their marriage was over Kate felt angry with herself for not accepting the generous pay-off he had offered her. Two million pounds and she had turned it down! She had turned it down not knowing that she was already pregnant with Oliver. And then, when she had realised…Well, she had sworn that she would never ask for anything from the man who had cold-bloodedly told her that he had changed his mind about wanting to be a father and that he had no desire to tie himself to a wife he no longer loved.
The pain was just as sharp as she remembered it being, and she stiffened against it. It should not exist any more. It should have been destroyed, just like Sean had destroyed their marriage.
All those things he had said to her and she had believed in; like how he, too, longed for children. All those promises he had made her—that those children, their children, would have the parental love neither of them had ever known. They had all been lies.
Against her will Kate could feel herself being drawn back into the past and its painful memories.
There had been no warning of what was to come, or of how vulnerable her happiness was. In fact only the previous month Sean had taken her away on an idyllic and very romantic break to an exclusive country house hotel—to make up, he had told her lovingly, for the fact that the negotiations he had been involved in to secure a very valuable contract had gone on so long that they had not been able to have a summer holiday.
They had arrived late in the afternoon and had enjoyed a leisurely and very romantic walk through the grounds. And then they had gone back to their room and Sean had undressed her and made love to her.
They had been late for dinner, she remembered—very late. And during it Sean had handed her a large brown envelope, telling her to open it. When she had done so she had found inside the sale details of a pretty Georgian rectory she and Sean had driven past early in the year.
‘You said it was the kind of place you had always wanted to live in,’ he had reminded her simply. ‘It’s coming up for sale.’
She’d spent the rest of the evening in a daze, already excitedly planning how she would decorate the house, and insisting that Sean listen to her as she went through the house room by room.
They had made love again that night, and in the morning. And afterwards she had lain in Sean’s arms, her eyes closed, whilst she luxuriated in breathing in the sexually replete scent of him and wondered what on earth she had done to merit such happiness.
Less than a month later she had been wondering what on earth she had done to merit such intense pain.
One minute—or so she had thought—Sean had been negotiating for the purchase of the rectory; the next he had been telling her that he no longer loved her and that he intended to divorce her.
Kate closed her eyes and lay back in her chair. She felt both physically and emotionally exhausted. What she should be doing right now, she told herself grimly, was worrying about how she was going to get another job, instead of wallowing in self-pity about the past.
She would have to enrol with an employment agency, and then probably take on as much work as she could get until she found a permanent position. She had some savings—her rainy day money—but that would not last for very long.
Why, why, why had Sean had to come back into her life like this? Hadn’t he hurt her enough?
Tiredly Kate stopped trying to fight her exhaustion and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
The dream was one she had had before. She tried to pull herself awake and out of it, as she had taught herself to do, but it was too late. It was rushing down on her, swamping her, and she was already lost in it.
She was with Sean, in the sitting room of their house. It was mid-afternoon and he had come home early from work. She ran to greet him, but he pushed her away, his expression not that of the husband she knew but that of the angry, aggressive man he had been when she had first met him.
‘Sean, what’s wrong?’ she asked him, reaching out a hand to him and flinching as he ignored her loving gesture. He turned away from her and walked over to the window, blocking out its light. Uncomprehendingly she watched him, and the first tendrils of fear began to curl around her heart.
‘I want a divorce.’
‘A divorce! No…What…? Sean, what are you saying?’ she demanded, panic, shock and disbelief gripping hold of her throat and giving her voice a hoarse, choked sound that seemed to echo round the room.
‘I’m saying that our marriage is over and I want a divorce.’
‘No! No! You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that!’ Was that piteous little voice really her own? ‘You love me.’
‘I thought I did,’ Sean agreed coldly. ‘But I’ve realised that I don’t. You and I want different things out of life, Kathy. You want children. I’m sick of having to listen to you boring on about it. I don’t want children!’
‘That’s not true. How can you say that, Sean?’ She stared at him in disbelief, unable to understand what he was saying. ‘You’ve always said how much you want children,’ she reminded him shakily. ‘We said we wanted a big family because our own childhoods—’
If he heard the pain in her voice and was affected by it he certainly didn’t show it.
‘For God’s sake,’ he ground out. ‘Grow up, will you, Kathy? When I said that I’d have said anything to get into your knickers.’
The contemptuous biting words flayed her sensitive emotions.
‘Look, I don’t intend to argue about this. Our marriage is over and that’s that. I’ve already spoken to my solicitor. You’ll be okay financially…’
‘Is there someone else?’
Silently they looked at one another whilst Kathy prayed that he would say no, but instead he taunted her. ‘What do you think?’
Her whole body was shaking, and even though she didn’t want to she started to cry, sobbing out Sean’s name in frantic pleading disbelief…
Why the hell was he doing this? Sean’s hands clenched on the wheel as he drove. What was the point in risking resurrecting the past? She was easily replaceable. But Sean knew that he was being unfair. She was, according to John and from what he had been able to recognise himself, an extremely intelligent and diligent employee—the kind of employee, in fact, that he wanted. No way was he going to allow her to walk out of her job without working her statutory notice period.
She was his ex-wife, damn it, Sean reminded himself grimly. But this was nothing to do with her being his ex-wife, and nothing to do either with the fact that he had discovered from her records, contrary to his assumptions, she was not married.
He was in the village now, and his mouth hardened slightly. Oh, yes, this was exactly the kind of environment she liked. Small, cosy, homely—everything that her life with her appalling aunt and uncle had not been.
He swung the car into a parking space he had spotted, stopped the engine and got out.
He hadn’t told anyone as yet about the fact that she had handed in her notice. Officially she was still in the company’s employ…in his employ.
He skirted the duck pond, his eyes bleak as he headed for Kate’s front door.
