by Penny Jordan
She should never have agreed to allowing Sean to do this, she berated herself inwardly, as she tried to keep awake and failed.
‘Mummy’s sleeping.’
Sean gave Oliver a reassuring glance as he pulled off the motorway. ‘She’s still not properly well.’ Inside, he was more anxious than he wanted Oliver to know—and not only because of his concern that the journey might have been too much for Kate.
Perhaps it was just as well that she was asleep, he acknowledged as he drove down the familiar lanes, slowing for the small villages they passed through until finally they came to the one that was their destination.
* * *
The slowing movement of the car woke Kate, and she stared out of the passenger window, blinking away her tiredness and then freezing as she recognised her surroundings.
Accusingly she turned towards Sean, but he was concentrating on his driving as they went through the pretty little village she had sighed so ecstatically over the first time they had come here. Nothing had changed, she acknowledged numbly. Everything was still the same, right down to the small river and the main street of huddled soft stone houses with their mullioned windows.
They had reached the end of the village now, and Sean had turned, as she knew he would, up past the ancient church and along a narrow lane. A high stone wall guarded the house from her sight, but already she could see it in her memory. She felt sick, shocked, betrayed as Sean turned in through the familiar gates and the car crunched over the gravel drive.
This was the house he had promised he would buy for her; the house she had fallen so deeply in love with; the house she had talked so excitedly to him about as being the home where they would bring up their children. The house she had never lived in because he had told her that their marriage was over before she had had the opportunity to do so.
The savagery of her pain gnawed at her stomach and anger boiled up inside her. If Oliver hadn’t been with them Kate knew that, however unwell she felt, she would have insisted that Sean turn the car round and take her back to her own home.
Instead she had to content herself with an acid whisper. ‘I can’t believe you would do something like this.’
Without replying Sean opened the car door and got out. The early-evening sun was already warming the soft cream stone of the house, and the scent of the lavender and roses filled Kate’s nostrils the moment Sean opened the passenger door for her.
‘I’ve told Mrs Hargreaves to prepare rooms for you and Oliver,’ he informed Kate distantly, as he moved to help her out of her seat.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Kate almost spat at him, hurt eyes glowing with the heat of her rage.
How could he do this to her? How could he bring her here, to the home she had thought they would be sharing? She had to swallow against the nausea in her throat.
Oliver got out of the car and danced up and down on the gravel, announcing excitedly, ‘Sean, I think a puppy would like it very much here.’
‘I’m sure it would,’ Sean agreed gravely, but Kate could see that he was grinning, and a wave of fury swept her, making her tremble from head to foot.
‘Don’t you dare—’ she began again, and then had to stop as the door to the house opened and a pin-neat middle-aged woman came hurrying towards them.
‘I’ve done everything you asked me to do, Sean,’ Annie Hargreaves told her employer, glancing discreetly at Kate and Oliver as she did so.
‘Thanks, Annie,’ Sean responded easily. ‘We won’t keep you any longer. I know that Bill will be waiting for his supper.’
‘I’ll get off, then, shall I?’ she answered, turning and starting to walk away from the house.
‘Annie and Bill Hargreaves look after the place for me,’ Sean told Kate quietly. ‘They don’t live in, though—they prefer the staff quarters above the garage. I’ll take you up to your room and get you settled, and then Oliver and I will bring everything in—right, Oliver?’ Sean asked the little boy.
‘Right!’ Oliver agreed, with a worshipping smile.
Numbly Kate let Sean take her arm and start to guide her towards the house. She wanted to cry very badly but she was not going to allow herself to do so. Not now. Not ever whilst Sean was around.
The large double doors opened up onto the pretty oval hallway she remembered, with its fairy-tale return stairway, but Kate almost faltered and missed a step as she stared around the room. She remembered it as being painted a depressing muddy beige. Now the walls glowed softly in warm butter-yellow—the same yellow she had excitedly told Sean she wanted to have it painted.
The linoleum floor had been replaced with black and white tiles, and an oval pedestal table stood in the middle of the room. As she looked round the hallway Kate started to tremble. Everything in it was just as she had told Sean she wanted to decorate it, but instead of giving her pleasure the realisation that he had opted for her choice of decor made her feel acutely sick.
As Sean studied Kate’s colourless face and blank eyes, she started to sway. Cursing under his breath, he swept her up into his arms. She had always been delicate and slender, but now she felt frightening frail, he acknowledged as he ignored her husky rejection of his help and carried her up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The rooms he had asked Annie to prepare for her and Oliver connected with one another. Kate herself had told him laughingly when they had first viewed the house that the larger of the two would make an ideal master bedroom, with the smaller one perfect for a nursery.
‘The nurseries are upstairs,’ Sean had told her, tongue in cheek.
Immediately she had turned her face up towards his, and, laughing, told him, ‘You can’t fool me, Sean. You’re going to want to have our babies close to us.’
‘Our babies,’ he had murmured huskily. ‘You know, just hearing you say that makes me want to start making them right here and now...’
‘We haven’t bought the house yet—and anyway there isn’t a bed,’ Kate had reproved him, mock primly.
‘Since when have we needed a bed?’ Sean had asked.
Even so she had refused to make love in the house, saying firmly that it wasn’t proper since it didn’t belong to them.
‘I suppose that’s another of those “good manners” rules, is it?’ he had teased her. But in reality he had been very grateful for the tactful and loving way she had helped him acquire some necessary social polish.
When they had got home, though, it had been a different story. He had wrapped his arms around her the moment they were inside their front door, and the only sound she had made had been one of eager approval...
‘Put me down—I can walk!’
Kate’s fiercely independent demand told Sean that she was certainly not sharing the bitter sweetness of his sensual memories.
‘Maybe you can walk,’ he countered grimly. ‘But on the evidence of what just happened I doubt that you could have made it all the way up these stairs unaided.’
Kate wanted to argue with him, but she was too conscious of the frantic beat of her heart. She could still remember how she had teased Sean when they had first started dating about the way he loved picking her up, accusing him of wanting to show off his superior male muscle power. But secretly inside a part of her had been thrilled by such evidence of his strength.
Now, though, it was resentment that was responsible for the rapid flip-flopping of her heartbeat, she told herself firmly, determinedly ignoring the small, conscientious inner voice that cautioned her that her resentment was desperately self-defensive.
Why should she need to feel self-defensive, after all? she asked herself in silent bitterness. There might be a very small rebellious and unheeding part of her that was still physically responsive to Sean, but that was all. How could she, a loving and responsible mother, ever forget Sean’s refusal to accept that Oliver was his son?
> It was just the realisation that he had brought her here to this house—the house she had fallen in love with, had believed she would bring their family up in—that was making her feel so vulnerable, making her long to pillow her head against his shoulder and let her body relax into the comfort and security of his.
‘Here we are.’
Sean used his foot to nudge open the heavy door and Kate swivelled her head to look into the room beyond it.
Sunlight warmed the soft cream walls, and wonderfully heavy curtains made of terracotta and cream toile de Jouy fabric hung from the windows, draped the antique half-tester bed. A cream carpet covered the floor, and the whole colour scheme set off the pretty late-Georgian mahogany furniture.
When Sean placed her on the bed Kate had to struggle not to give way to her emotions. The room was exactly as she had excitedly planned to decorate it, right down to the elegant cream blind at the window.
‘I’ve had a bed put in the nursery for Oliver,’ Sean was telling her practically, clearly oblivious to the emotional impact the room had on her. Had Sean converted the room next to the nursery into a bathroom, as she had wanted?
She didn’t feel she could trust herself to ask, and was glad that she hadn’t when Oliver came rushing in, his face alight with excitement.
‘Annie says that I can go and see her dog if you say yes, Mummy,’ he announced importantly.
‘Annie?’ Kate checked him swiftly. Sean might refer to his housekeeper and her husband by their Christian names, but Kate wasn’t going to have Oliver copy his father unless he had been given permission to do so.
‘Annie prefers to be addressed by her first name.’ Sean stepped in immediately, reading her mind so easily and so quickly that for a moment Kate couldn’t reply. ‘And Oliver will be perfectly safe with her dog,’ Sean continued. ‘I’ll take him down to meet her myself.’
Ignoring Kate, Oliver threw his arms around Sean’s legs and hugged him tightly, looking up at him with an expression of beatific adoration.
Looking on, Kate could feel her heart turning over slowly and painfully inside her chest, its cavity tight with pain and love and fear.
‘Can we go now?’ Oliver was pleading, but Sean shook his head.
‘No, not now. We’ll go tomorrow morning.’
Kate held her breath warily, half anticipating that Oliver might refuse to accept what Sean had told him. Certainly he scowled, and looked as though he was about to object, but, as if he had prepared himself for Oliver’s reaction, Sean simply ignored his behaviour.
‘Come and have a look at your bedroom, Ollie,’ Sean said instead. ‘It’s right here, next to Mummy’s.’
Sean’s use of that familiar sweet ‘Ollie’ made Kate clench her hands into small fists—as did the automatic way in which Sean put his hand down so that Oliver could put his much smaller one into it. Hand in hand, father and son went to inspect the room, leaving her to stare anxiously after their departing backs.
From inside the room she heard Oliver saying, ‘There’s plenty of room on the floor in here for your sleeping bag, Sean. You’ll be able to sleep in my room, and not Mummy’s.’
‘Well, I’d like to do that, Oliver,’ Kate could hear Sean responding seriously. ‘But, you see, I have my own bedroom here—like you do at your house.’
‘But I want you to sleep here with me and my mummy,’ Oliver was insisting, and somehow, without knowing how she knew, Kate sensed that Sean had bent down and picked Oliver up.
‘Well, when we were at your house your mummy wasn’t very well, was she? And I had to be there in case she needed me. But she’s much better now.’
‘Well, you could sleep in the same bed, like George’s mummy and daddy do,’ Oliver offered, with almost-five-year-old logic that made Kate’s eyes burn with dry pain.
In the room where a small child’s bed had been set up for Oliver, Sean turned towards the window, the boy still in his arms. He could still feel the gut-wrenching kick of longing that Oliver’s innocent suggestion had prompted.
Kate—the Kate who was no longer his gentle, loving Kathy—would never willingly welcome him into her bed. Sean knew that. Yes, on one fever-racked night when she had not known the difference between their past and their present she might have been his Kathy once again, but not in reality.
It was growing dusk and Oliver was leaning heavily against him. Reluctantly Sean remembered the emotions that had struck him when he had seen Tom go to Oliver’s rescue, when he had felt irrationally that the other man was usurping his rightful role. His arms tightened around Oliver. Was the emotional bond he was beginning to develop with Oliver caused by the fact that Oliver was Kate’s child? Or was it because somehow he had begun to love Oliver for himself, to feel a fatherly love towards him?
‘Why don’t I put a video on for you, Ollie?’ he suggested gently now. ‘And then you can sit and watch it for a while before bed.’
‘And then will we read Mummy a story?’
Sean ruffled the thick hair ruefully. Determined not to be accused by Kate of using the television as a baby-minder for her son, Sean had instituted a bedtime ritual, aided by Oliver, of them reading a story together. Quite why he had decided that this should be done in Kate’s bedroom he had no real idea, other than that he’d known how important it would be to her that she shared in her son’s life in every way she could.
A small sound by the door made him turn round, and the tightening of his mouth concealed his anguished concern as he saw Kate standing there, holding onto the door itself for support.
‘You’re supposed to be resting,’ he said curtly.
‘Only when I need to, and right now I don’t need to,’ Kate answered evenly, refusing to look at him and holding out her arms to Oliver instead.
‘Why don’t I read you a story tonight, Ollie?’ she suggested. ‘I’m sure that Sean has lots to do.’
To Kate’s shock, instead of wriggling to be set free by Sean, Oliver leaned even further into him as Sean set him on his feet.
* * *
Kate looked out through the French windows of the pretty sitting room to where Oliver was playing excitedly on the lawn with the Hargreaveses’ good-natured collie dog. Child and dog were indulging in what was obviously a mutually blissful game of chase, and when Oliver stumbled and fell on the lawn the dog was immediately all canine concern, standing anxiously over him as the little boy got to his feet undamaged.
They had been living in Sean’s house for just over two weeks, and Kate was convinced that she was now fully recovered. Which meant...which meant that it was time for her and Oliver to return to their own home and their own lives.
Kate couldn’t deceive herself that Oliver would want to leave. He adored Sean. Kate tensed as she saw Sean strolling across the lawn towards their son. He had left the house shortly after breakfast to attend a business meeting. The moment Oliver saw him he ran towards him, laughing happily when Sean picked him up and swung him round.
As she watched them, inside her head Kate could see another picture. In this one she was standing at Sean’s side as Oliver ran towards them both, and Sean’s arm was holding her close to his side whilst her head rested on his shoulder.
Her legs felt weak and her whole body was trembling—but not because she had been ill. No, she had to face up to the truth that was responsible for her physical malaise.
It seemed that nothing, not even his rejection of his son, could totally destroy her love for Sean. It was too deeply embedded within her.
Panic, anger and fear fought frantically inside her. She had to tell Sean that she wanted to leave and she had to tell him now!
Taking a deep breath, Kate went out to join them.
As he saw her approaching Sean put Oliver down.
‘I’m going to take Nell home for her tea now,’ Oliver announced importantly to Kat
e, manfully taking a firm hold of the obliging dog’s collar.
At any other time Kate knew she would have been tenderly amused, ruefully suspecting that it was the dog who was in charge of her son rather than the other away around as the two of them headed to where the housekeeper was waiting for them. But as she watched them Kate was acutely conscious of Sean coming to stand by her side. Immediately she moved slightly away from him. Letting him get too close to her was dangerous!
Bending his head, he told her quietly, ‘I’ve been thinking there’s no real reason why Oliver shouldn’t have a dog of his own. In fact I called in to see a litter of Labrador pups on my way back this afternoon. They aren’t quite old enough to leave their mother yet, but if you feel up to it we could drive over there tomorrow and Ollie could choose his own—’
‘No! Oliver is not having a dog!’ Kate stopped him sharply and Sean started to frown.
‘Kate, he’s desperate for one.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Kate challenged. ‘You might have been “thinking”, Sean, but you obviously haven’t thought enough,’ she told him passionately. ‘Surely you must realise how impossible it would be for him to have a dog at home? You know that I have to work.’ Angrily she turned away from him.
‘Kate—’ Sean protested, putting his hand on her arm.
Immediately Kate tried to snatch her arm away, demanding furiously, ‘Let go of me. I hate you touching me.’
‘What?’
When she saw the expression darkening Sean’s eyes Kate knew that she had gone too far. But it was too late to retract her reckless words, because he was pulling her into his hold, his arms pinioning her to his body as he looked down into her face.
‘No!’ Kate protested, but her denial was already being crushed beneath the pressure of Sean’s angry kiss. His lips ground down on hers and his fingers tightened into the soft flesh of her arms.
Anger boiled through her veins, making her return the savage intensity of Sean’s kiss. But it was an anger bred from longing and need, Kate recognised helplessly, as her own body turned traitor against her and she heard herself moaning softly with liquid pleasure beneath the demanding pressure of Sean’s mouth.