The Passionate Mistake

by Amelia Hart

  “Is it just you and your Dad? Or do you have other family members involved?”

  “My brother too – my twin. And our employees.”

  “You have a twin? That must have been interesting growing up.” She breathed an internal sigh of relief as the topic moved to ground that felt less dangerous.

  “Yeah. Damian’s a force to be reckoned with. He’s a lot like Dad. Once he’s made up his mind you just can’t shift him. There was always plenty of yelling in our house. The rest of us had to shout just to be heard.”

  “But a lot of love with it?”

  “For sure,” she said almost automatically. But his listening silence invited her to go on, and she found herself saying: “Until Mum died. It was harder after that.” His lips pressed together and he took up her hand that was lying on the table in his large, warm one and waited. “It was about eight years ago now. She was . . . lovely. Very gentle. Soft voice. Soft hands. She poured oil on the waters. Always reminded us we were family, and family comes first, and we shouldn’t argue. We should be kind to each other. Without her it didn’t work quite so well.”

  “That must have been very tough for you all.”

  “Worst for Janet and Luke. He was eight and she was ten when Mum died. They really needed her. It was sad.”

  “I’m sure you all needed her,” he said quietly, and she looked away as she felt the sting of unwelcome tears crowd her eyes. Damn, her emotions were close to the surface this week. In her head she heard Dad’s voice: ‘Sympathy is an enemy. It doesn’t fix a damn thing. It just encourages self pity. And self pity is a deadly trap. It can stop a person in their tracks.’

  So she fixed a bright, empty smile on her lips and said dismissively, “Probably. But that was years ago and we’re fine now. So what’s your family like? Lots of brothers and sisters?” She slid her hand out of his, pretending to adjust her hair as the reason for the withdrawal.

  She watched him weigh her question before answering, and she dreaded him poking further at the tender spot she had thoughtlessly revealed to him. But after a moment he let it pass, obviously respecting her desire to move the focus back to him.

  “One sister. Parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents. I’ve been lucky. Everyone’s still alive, and we’re close.”

  “That’s nice. And you said you worked with your Mum in your business for a while, so you know what that’s like. You don’t need me to tell you,” she said, remembering.

  “Ah yes, but I was pretty careful to keep her offsite. She was allowed to see the accounts. If I’d let her enter the building just once she would have taken it over and that would be the end of me managing my own company.”

  “So she’s bossy then?”

  “Capable, is the word I’d use. Commanding even. I don’t have the courage to be in the same city as her while I call her bossy,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes, the corners of them folding up into attractive creases.

  “Coward,” she taunted with a smile.

  “I prefer ‘wise.’” He assumed a dignified pose, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest.

  “So she’s commanding and you’re wise.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just making sure I’ve got that straight.”

  “Flawless. I think this is our platter.”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “Now why would I do that?”

  They talked and laughed their way through a beautiful meal. For Kate everything was heightened by the knowledge of transience. It would pass away so soon; she would snatch every moment and make the most of it. So perhaps she was warmer, quicker to enthuse, to reach across the table to hold Mike’s hand. It was like being drunk, without drinking more than two glasses of wine. She put her guardedness aside and relaxed into the moment.

  It felt good. It felt so good. And easy, and happy, and right. So she shut out that nagging, cautious part of herself that would urge her to be safe, to weigh her words and keep her feelings to herself. Let him see she liked him. Let him see she took pleasure in his company, a simple happiness that was beyond sex.

  Though when she thought about it that undertone was there too, permeating everything. When he took his jacket off she admired the breadth of his shoulders, saw them bare in her mind’s eye. She looked at his hair and could almost feel it between her fingers, wavy and thick. His hand stroking the stem of his wine glass made her quiver with the thought of that hand on the secret places of her body.

  She slipped in and out of a day-dreaming anticipation, the brief silences between them teeming with possibilities of what would come when they were alone. She caught him returning her sensual stare with a hot one of his own and it made the breath catch in her throat.

  “Dessert?” he asked softly.

  “I think I’ve had enough food,” she said, letting her lips curl into a smile of sultry significance.

  He caught her meaning immediately, but when he lifted her hand to his lips and folded a little kiss into her palm he introduced sweetness to it, a touch of romance. He was too good. She was falling too hard.

  But she wouldn’t think about it like that. She would just enjoy him, she reminded herself again. And when he held her hand as they walked back to his car she sighed and leaned into him a little. When had she ever held hands with anyone, man or boy, other than him? Never that she could remember. But from the first she had reached out to him like that, linked them together.

  Like a couple. Like a pair, a partnership.

  Stop thinking about it!

  She waylaid him, stepping back against the wall of the building they were passing, dragging him by the lapels of his coat, pulling him in close. His eyes widened in surprise, becoming lascivious delight in an instant as he met her willingly. His arms went around her, one hand sliding under her bottom to hitch her further up the thigh he thrust between her legs, so she straddled it, toes only just touching the ground, his other arm a bar in the small of her back.

  She grasped his head, bringing it down to her to kiss him ferociously, one hundred percent lust with no room for tenderness. He went her one better, sucking on her and drawing her in until she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, they were so tightly enmeshed. It was like the civilized dinner had never occurred, as if they were still stuck in that last kiss, where she had heard ‘I want to be inside you’ so clearly from him. She heard it again, and it made her knees weaken in compliance, in readiness to open to him, to bring him into her.

  He staggered the last few feet to his car, virtually carrying her, opening the back seat and bundling them both in. If anyone saw them she didn’t know it, didn’t care to know it. All she could see, could feel, could breathe was him.

  She straddled him, hands groping at the front of his trousers with frantic haste. But his fingers were already there, freeing himself. She took his hardness in her hand, placing the tip just so as she held the crotch of her panties to one side and lowered herself onto him.

  They groaned in simultaneous relief as he slid home in her. Her soft wetness enfolded him gladly, after the long hour of subtle arousal.

  He sat in the centre of the narrow back seat, no leg room, no clearance for their heads. But there was enough space, just enough, to squirm, rise and fall an inch or two, to grind and press into him until she felt the rise of sensation that signaled impending orgasm.

  She couldn’t help herself. She opened her eyes, unable to keep her distance. He was staring straight at her at close range, watching her drive herself mad riding him, driving him mad too, if the flare of his nostrils, his lips drawn back from his teeth was any indication. His hands were cupping the breasts he had freed from the top of her dress, her arms pinned to her sides by the straps he had pulled down to get at them.

  “This . . . is . . . insane,” he said in a guttural whisper.

  “I know. I know,” she muttered, and came, burying her face in the curve of his neck, boneless, weightless and trembling. A moment later s
he felt him give a convulsive heave and shudder, and he pulsed within her.

  “Insane,” he repeated a minute later, on a whisper of a laugh, his breathing slowed almost to normal. She nodded and made a small noise of agreement, her head resting on his shoulder. His arms had come round her, holding her in a gentle hug that was almost comforting in the aftermath of their reckless rush to join their bodies.

  “I’m not normally quite this crass. I have been thinking about you a lot this past two weeks.”

  “Crass? Who said anything about crass?” she responded lightly, avoiding the latter part of his statement. “Oh, you’re talking about this. Let me tell you, anything you do in the back of a car like this is claaassy.” She drew the last word out in imitation of an obnoxiously social-climbing character popular on prime time TV at the moment, and knew he had caught the reference when he snorted appreciatively.

  “That’s good to know. I hadn’t tried it before.”

  “Stick with me babe. It’s gravy all the way,” she continued, still in character, and he shifted her so he could grin into her face.

  She must have looked odd, for his smile faded and he asked: “What is it?” She had been thinking she could stay there forever, perfectly content with his arms around her, his laughter against her chest, his body and the essence of him deep within her.

  “Nothing, nothing,” she hastily assured him, turning her own smile up to full wattage, and starting to lever herself off him, sliding her fallen shoulder straps back into place. She checked the hem of her skirt was where it should be, then opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement, opening the front door and slipping inside in almost the same motion, leaving him alone in the back seat.

  She heard the quiet sound of his zipper. A moment later he joined her in the front, looking virtually the same as he had in the restaurant. One couldn’t tell he’d just been ravished in the back seat. She hoped she looked as well put together, and took a fleeting glance in the rearview mirror. No obvious damage.

  In the light of the streetlamps he wore a faint frown and there was a shadow in his eyes.

  “Back to my place?” he said with the hint of a question in his tone.

  She gazed at him for a long moment of silence, then smiled and said: “Yes.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  On Sunday morning she woke and stretched slowly, the smooth glide of luxurious cotton sheets contrasting with the subtle ache of overused muscles. She heard the faint clatter – already familiar – of Mike working some wizardry in the kitchen.

  Mike was a nurturer. He fed her body, then he lavished it with languorous lovemaking, then he fed her again. A woman could get used to this very quickly. They should probably go for a walk or do some sort of exercise.

  Well, some other sort of exercise. Surely a surfeit of sex didn’t really count for much when it came to calorie burning? Nothing that felt so wickedly good could also be virtuous. It stood to reason.

  She definitely should shower. Take the opportunity to escape from this wide bed for the few minutes that Mike’s attention was elsewhere. Perhaps he would come in and join her in the shower. He had done that yesterday, and his well-informed hand on the control of the water jets had been quite an education.

  Of course it had made it very difficult to stand upright. In the end he had to hold her up. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  In fact he didn’t seem to mind much of anything. She could hear him whistling in little snatches, then stopping, as if remembering the sleeping woman in the next room, then breaking out again as if he couldn’t help himself.

  She knew the feeling. Or at least on the inside of her skin it felt like bursting with happiness, with delight, with a rare, pure joy.

  Almost pure. Almost. But as dark clouds threatened to gather she reminded herself she wasn’t thinking about this stuff.

  In fact, she was getting better at not thinking about it. She could feel her mind travel in that uncomfortable direction, and she could stop it; Like slamming a door it its face. Door shut. Think about something else. Think about that shower.

  So she washed, and dressed in his robe, put on her protective barrier of make up and went to find him. They ate together – French toast and the grapefruit juice that she was coming to like – and talked about random things like the books on his shelves and whether French toast was better sweet, savory or a mix of the two, and if the people in the sailboats on the water could possibly be having such a pleasant weekend as they were.

  She felt she was doing a good job of steering their conversations away from herself. Not that there was really anything that was a secret for Kate. It was Cathy who had all the secrets. If he brought up work she could refer to working in the family business and although she had twice caught herself just before she made a comment that would have revealed familiarity with the way he ran his company, she had covered that possibility – rather cleverly she thought – by asking all manner of questions about his work so now a slip of the tongue that revealed her knowledge could have come from his words rather than from her own personal experience.

  “. . . but that’s no part of my goals for the company.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked, having missed a couple of crucial sentences of what he was saying, and hoping he’d fill the gaps without realizing her inattention.

  “About profit sharing?”

  “Yes. What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “Only that in our society now, and most particularly in our industry, the average person controls the means of production. The computers. We all have them, and they are the most versatile, powerful tool humanity has ever created. For business to survive in a meaningful way, it has to share more with employees. Otherwise they’ll opt out.”

  “Opt out?”

  “Opt out of being employed. Work for themselves. Why not? They have the tool, sitting on a desk at home. They have the means of production. And everyone has an idea, somewhere inside them. Sometimes not so deeply buried. Success now is not a matter of ‘can you produce the goods?’ It is ‘can you get the goods noticed?’ I think the next big learning curve will be marketing and self-promotion. That’s the basis of all the social media hoohaa, and such a small proportion of those who are trying it are getting it right. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes, that’s true. And all the self-taught ‘social media gurus’ are a bit of a joke. But I still don’t get what you mean by profit sharing.” She was smiling, taking such delight from his fine mind, the ease with which he discussed ideas both practical and philosophical.

  “I believe businesses with employees have to get buy-in from those people, or they’ll lose them. Why work for someone else when you can do the same thing at home with so many more freedoms, and keep all the profit?” He leaned back in his chair, head tilted back contemplatively, one large hand resting on the table. “Sure, once upon a time running a business meant taking your hands off the work you loved while you tried to be salesperson, accountant, market researcher and every other role your growing business needed. But now software packages can do so much of those roles, the internet provides instant information and contacts, and social media – if you use it right – builds sales and marketing right into the activities you’d do recreationally.”

  “You mean businesses have to give away some of the ownership of the business to keep their staff? Or everyone will take off and build their own start-up?”

  “Exactly. If people have the sense their efforts are growing something they themselves own, they’re not only much more motivated to work hard, they are more likely to stay.”

  “So turning your whole building into a playground isn’t enough, you have to give stuff away too?” she asked in a teasing tone.

  “Oh, the playground is more about creativity than work satisfaction. The two are linked of course, but not exactly the same.”

  “You really do tie your employees to the business with chains of steel, don’t you?”

  “It’s my job. Making sure
together we all get where we want to go.”

  “It’s so different.”

  “What is?”

  “Listening to how you talk about the business. I mean, Dad and Damian treat our business like it’s a money making machine, and the only question is how much is coming out of it. Dad talks about it like it’s broken and gets all angry and frustrated at it. Then you talk about it like it’s a . . . I don’t know . . . a living organism or something. Something to take care of. And you don’t . . .”

  He waited patiently while she sorted through images, trying to put her finger on the exact thing she meant. She saw Dad, pointing a finger and laying the blame elsewhere. Always on some other person or thing. She saw Damian trying to ape their father’s bluster as he laid down the law to a man a decade his senior – the only way he’d ever seen an employee directed. The man’s face had closed and he’d listened quietly, then turned away when Damian had finished speaking. Another ‘flake’ who had quickly left the company.

  She saw an office full of people at their desks with heads down, shoulders hunched as Damian and Dad went at it hammer and tongs over why exactly a major client had bailed. And how they couldn’t possibly survive if another big account like that walked.

  The company was a broken machine. Non-functioning. Dead. And she had been half-dead within it, going through the motions. Sticking it out because that was what a person was supposed to do: stick by family.

  But the company wasn’t her family. It was just a big, dead encumbrance. They should just abandon it completely and get real jobs. Get a real life. Like she was doing.

  When she didn’t pick up the thread of her thought again, he said, “I can’t believe I’m talking about work to you again! You must be bored out of your mind.”

  She was feeling galvanized by epiphany. Like she should rush out now and do something to make a change. She forced herself to focus on him, to hear what he was saying. Though of course as soon as she really looked at him and his dark blue, meltingly warm eyes she was hooked back into her loop of gooey infatuation. Really, she was fighting a losing battle trying to keep it all together.