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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.
Opening her eyes, she saw those strong features graven with wanting and desire and, above all, determination. Driven by fear—of herself more than of anything he might do—somehow she managed to utter in a voice that trembled, ‘Aren’t you forgetting that it isn’t just you, me and Matthew any more?’
If she had been struggling for her freedom then nothing else could have been more effective in securing it, because he pushed her roughly away from him. The expression on that hard face was oddly smug, however, as though he had gained some victory in a game that could only be won round by round.
‘In that case, darling, you’re obviously in danger of being as unfaithful to him as I have apparently been with Lauren. And if you’ve got any illusions about running off with him and taking Matthew, I’d advise you now not even to entertain the idea. You’re coming back to me, Kendal, sooner or later, so you’d better start getting used to the idea.
‘And the next time I call I want to see my son—here—’ he stabbed a hard finger towards the floor ‘—where he belongs, with his mother—for the time being—if it isn’t too much trouble! Not with some hired help who’s paid to step in whenever his mother decides she’s too busy to care for him herself!’
His words cut her to the quick so that she almost wanted to lash out at him. But despite her quickly roused temper—even after the way he had wronged her while she had still been living with him—she had never quite degraded herself by striking him.
‘How dare you?’ she breathed, choking on the thought that he might even consider that she was anything but a good mother to Matthew.
‘Yes, I dare,’ he uttered with soft intimidation. ‘It’s my legal right as your husband and—more significantly—as your child’s father. And talking of rights—I intend to claim them. And we’ll start with visiting rights—as of now! I’ll be away from tonight on a conference that’s going to take at least till the middle of next week. But I’ll be round again next Friday afternoon at two. Be here, and see that Matthew’s here as well. I intend to take him home with me for as long as I desire to have him. And you’re coming with him!’
‘No!’ Panic strung her voice at the mere thought of what he was suggesting. Of course he could see Matthew, but there was no way that she was going back to the matrimonial home that she had run from in such hopeless despair a year ago.
He took no heed of her startled objection, though, only added, ‘And if you don’t like it, then I’m afraid, my dearest, you can darn well lump it, because those are the conditions. And if he isn’t here, Kendal, there’ll be hell to pay!’
He stormed out then, leaving her standing, alone and shaken, listening to the angry growl of the Porsche she presumed he still drove. That determined thrust of power as he pulled away reflected his mood, breaking the stillness of the day, before he turned the corner and the growl became a roar and then faded away altogether.
After he had gone, Kendal found it impossible to concentrate, her earlier enthusiasm for the Arkwrights’ job having totally deserted her.
Why couldn’t he leave her alone?
The question screamed through her brain as it had done so many times during those first six months after she had taken Matthew and fled.
She had gone first to a hotel—because she hadn’t wanted to burden the newly separated and unhappy Chrissie—then to the comfortable, moderately priced accommodation she had rented to the mutual benefit of herself and an old school-friend who had taken a temporary job away from London. But Jarrad had persisted in pursuing her, which had eventually driven her to Scotland—but of course she knew why. There was no mystery to it. He wanted his son, to be with him, see him grow up.
She could understand that. Didn’t it hurt and distress her enough that she had had to deprive her child of a normal family life because of his father’s infidelity, just as she and Chrissie had been deprived because of their own father’s infidelity to their mother? But, whether she desired it or not, Jarrad also wanted her, Kendal, and she knew now that it wasn’t just so that she could be a mother to Matthew.
She flopped down onto a chair, dropping her head in her hands to try and banish the shaming memory of the sensations that had flared so dangerously to life in her again the instant he had touched her, sensations she had hoped crushed by time and the torturous reality of his affair with Lauren. But they hadn’t been, and she had to admit now that it wasn’t just a one-sided thing—that powerful sexual chemistry that governed everything he said and did. It was totally reciprocal, and always had been, right from the first day they had met.
She had tried to ignore it at first—this mutual and terrifying attraction—to ignore the feelings that had come to startling life within her from the first moment she had seen him at Chrissie and Ralph’s wedding. He had been Ralph’s boss after all. But even without knowing that she wouldn’t have failed to recognise those qualities that had made Jarrad Mitchell a leader—successful as well as immensely wealthy. The determined purpose, the daunting self-confidence and the compelling energy with that cool, unmistakable air of command.
These were qualities she had known and feared, had always been wary of, because hadn’t her father been as successful in his own field? And just as Chrissie had fallen for and married the first man who had come into her young life, Kendal herself, conversely, had always been the cautious one. Her distrust of men had kept her aloof, with the result that she had had no more than brief, uninvolved, and certainly non-intimate relationships with the opposite sex by the time she’d met Jarrad. Nor had any other man she’d met tugged so vibrantly at her senses.
Which was why, when he’d taken her hand during their introduction after the photo session, it had been like putting a match to blue touch paper! she thought drily now.
She had managed to treat him with only polite reserve at Chrissie’s wedding, to dodge his persistent attempts, during those weeks that had followed, to get her into his life. Because he’d made that intention clear, sometimes turning up at Chrissie’s, sometimes telephoning her when she’d been in the office, sometimes appearing at some social gathering where she’d happened to be, although he’d always seemed to have some practical reason for being there.
Yet, during all that time, though her physical impulses had been urging her to give in and go out with him—plunge in with both feet and embark on the most dangerous and exciting adventure of her life—her strong-willed determination—which she had often employed to control what she knew was a naturally impetuous nature, and which had kept her from getting hurt—had won. So that at last, it seemed, he had lost interest.
That was until nearly a year later, when she had been sent by her firm to use her design skills on the newly constructed, beautifully appointed home of a new client, only to find that it was him.
He had been so impeccably formal then, that she hadn’t dared to question his motives. And it was just as well, she had thought with an absurd and shocked dismay at the time, as almost immediately she had discovered why she had been hired.
He was thinking of getting married, he’d told her, and wanted the best possible taste for the house he’d had specially built for his bride-to-be. He’d seen some of Kendal’s artistic expertise at the home of a friend who had just happened to be one of Kendal’s clients—as well as having seen it at Chrissie’s—and he was giving her an entirely free hand with the decor.
She hadn’t wanted to do it. She had still been daunted by the formidable strength of her dangerous fascination for him. And, as well, she’d been stupidly hurt that he could have pursued her as he had and now expected her to decorate his home for the woman he’d chosen to be his bride when she’d shown—and only for her own self-protection—that she wasn’t interested. It had been like the ultimate put-down. Besides, she’d wondered what sort of woman he was marrying who would welcome having her entire furnishings chosen by someone else.
As she could give her boss no good reason for not going ahead with the job, however, she had had little choice but to accept it.
He had continued to treat her then only as he would have treated any business associate. In fact during those times when he had cause to contact her he had been almost exasperatingly aloof, which, she acknowledged with bitter irony now, had been the surest way—if he’d wanted to get her into his bed—to make her drop her guard. And he had known that, known how fragile her immunity to him was by the time he’d first invited her to lunch.
When he did, however, it was purely on a business basis, although over that first lengthy meal in that elaborate restaurant, she caught snatches of the humour that could twist his hard mouth into a devastating smile; saw glimpses of what she wanted to believe was the lonely man behind the forceful dynamo she’d originally feared. The orphaned boy come good who, despite all his riches, had no real family of his own. The youth who had made it through a tough secondary school and an even tougher neighbourhood to emerge a bright scholar with eventually a university degree, bringing all his knowledge of business systems management into a company that seemed both high-flying and secure.
When it collapsed, he was in a position to take it over, engaging Ralph as the company accountant and the efficient Lauren, who had been an up-and-coming manager, as his second-in-command. And the rest, as they say, was history…
All this Kendal learned not only from snippets he dropped in casually at that lunch but from other lunches that followed, and from Ralph. She had been keen to pump her brother-in-law dry, thirsty for every trickle of knowledge he could convey to her about his enigmatic employer. She warned herself that he was marrying someone else, that the only reason he was seeing her at all was because he needed her artistic skills, that she meant nothing to him beyond a simple means to an end—and that he meant nothing to her, either. But the warnings and the false convictions fell on deaf ears. She was already desperately in love with him.
Both Chrissie and Ralph knew, of course, how crazy she was about him, although she didn’t say a word to them. She worked swiftly and diligently, praying for the day when the job would be finished so that she wouldn’t have to face him again—be reminded of what she had missed by snubbing him as she had originally—so that she could retreat from the folly of her hopeless emotions.
And then the lunches became the odd dinner, not in the formal hotel restaurants where he had taken her to discuss business but in cosier, more intimate little places, where they shared amusing anecdotes and exchanged confidences. And where, in spite of all that—the intimacy and the romance and the laughter—he would resort to talking about his forthcoming marriage as coldly as though none of it mattered.
And afterwards, walking her back to the car, he would resume that air of exasperating detachment until she wanted to scream with frustration, forget that he was someone else’s and throw herself into those cold, indifferent arms. Sometimes she thought, with hurt and embarrassed mortification, that he knew exactly how she felt, and that he’d only engaged her after he’d decided to marry because he knew how hard he could make her fall and wanted to punish her for rejecting him as she had. The male ego being what it was, she convinced herself of it.
Only on that last day, when she called to inspect the result of the work she had put in progress, had there been any change in his attitude towards her, and then only by chance, she thought at first. She could only laugh at herself for her stupid naivety now.
They were in the master suite—of all places!—having gone through every room together so that she could satisfy herself that everything had been done according to her original plans. While he was distantly complimentary that day, praising her taste and her professional abilities, she felt as though she was dying inside, thinking that it was over, that she would never see him again.
Then she came round the bed, after checking that everything was in place in the dressing room and the en suite bathroom, only to trip over a corner of the duvet, and somehow—she didn’t quite know how—she wound up in his arms.
He looked at her for a moment, as though seeking the mutual desire burning in her eyes that she couldn’t have kept from him even if she had wanted to, her mind and body not just willing, but silently begging for the kisses he had so cleverly denied them both. Because it had been calculated, that moment of surrender, right down to the nth degree—and by a man who only played to win!
But, as she had learned through experience—and to her cost, she reflected bitterly now—one kiss between them could never be enough, just as that first kiss proved not to be. Because it hadn’t been just a tender exchange of feeling between two people who might have been falling in love, but a blinding, explosive union of man and woman in a hungry meeting of mouths that had only imitated the true act, and that had had her pushing away from him in sudden realisation of the seriousness of what she was allowing to happen.
‘You’re getting married!’ she had protested, on a breathless sob.
‘Yes.’ He’d sounded cold, totally remorseless in comparison.
‘Then don’t you think you’re being a little unfair?’ she remembered saying, perplexed, hurting to think he could simply use her and then walk away.
‘Unfair?’ He looked as though he didn’t fully understand. ‘Unfair to whom?’ he queried.
‘Well, to me. Her…’ she uttered, shaken by his total lack of morals. But he merely shrugged.
‘Not if I haven’t asked her yet. And I haven’t,’ he surprised her by saying then. ‘I only said I was thinking about getting married. There is a difference. Whether I do or not depends on you.’
‘On me?’ She wasn’t able to follow, so taken aback was she by this sudden turnaround of events.
‘Wise up, darling.’ He laughed then, and told her the truth. Getting her to decorate his home had been the only way he knew to become part of her life without her running away from him, and he laughed again later, when she accused him of trapping her by deceit.
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I only wanted to show you what you were too afraid to realise you wanted.’ But this was only much later, among the soft, virgin folds of the duvet where he had made her his.
One week later, he slipped an engagement ring on her finger, and they were married within six more. Three months after that she was expecting Matthew, passionately happy and content…
Now she blinked angrily at the tears that stung her eyes, glancing down at her watch.
Blast Jarrad Mitchell! she thought. Matthew was all that mattered to her now! And, grabbing her keys, she darted out through the French doors to collect him, as though just the whisper of his father’s presence in her life again could have the power to spirit the little boy away from her.
