Kate assessed this man who had caused her family so much heartache and shook her head. He didn’t look the least bit remorseful to her.
“Thanks a whole heap,” she said.
*
The lights of Seattle glittered and danced in the rearview mirror of Sean’s car as he and Kate drove toward the Blake mansion. Even in the dim glow from the dashboard, she could see he was no longer amused. His jaw was set in a hard, ungiving line.
The confrontation between Sean and the senator would not be a pleasant experience for anyone.
Unexpectedly, Sean reached out and caught hold of Kate’s left hand. His thumb pressed against the large diamond in Brad’s engagement ring. “Who’s the lucky man?” he asked. His tone was gruff, as though he was trying to be congenial and finding it difficult.
Kate’s heart ached as she remembered the scene in the lobby at the opera house. She opened the lid of her antique purse, slid the ring off her finger and dropped it inside. “There isn’t one,” she said sadly.
She felt rather than saw Sean’s glance in her direction. “Funny. Abby always said you’d be the one to settle down and have a family.”
He couldn’t have known what pain that remark would foster—could he? Kate didn’t know Sean Harris very well; it had been ten years since he’d married her sister in the garden behind the Blakes’ house and five since Abby had driven her sports car off a cliff north of Sydney.
Kate’s mother still believed Abby had died deliberately, unable to live with the unhappiness Sean caused her. Kate didn’t know what to think.
She’d visited her sister in Australia several times, the last being when Gil was born seven years before. Although she’d watched Sean carefully, Kate hadn’t seen any evidence of the emotional cruelty Abby had written home about. Oh, Sean might have been a little distant where Abby was concerned, but he’d been crazy about his infant son. Anyone could have seen that.
“Kate?”
The prompt from Sean brought her back to the present with a start. She pointed one finger. “Turn right on this next street.”
Sean took a new hold on Kate’s hand. “I remember,” he said. “Katie, what happened?”
Kate lowered her eyes. “I thought I was in love,” she confessed. “Tonight I saw Brad do something terrible.”
He squeezed her hand. “You’re better off out of it if you have any doubts at all,” he said.
Kate had no doubt that was true, but she still wished she could go back in time and wave a wand and alter reality. In the new scenario Brad would only be making change for a twenty-dollar bill or giving someone his business card.
They had reached the foot of the Blakes’ long brick-paved driveway, and the gates opened immediately. Of course, the senator had been watching for their arrival from inside the house, the gate controls in his hands.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Sean muttered.
Kate sighed. “And my horoscope said I’d have a good day,” she said as they passed through the gates.
“You don’t believe in that rot, do you?” Sean asked, and he sounded short-tempered. He couldn’t be blamed for dreading what was ahead, Kate supposed. She wasn’t looking forward to it, either.
“Not anymore I don’t,” she answered.
Senator John Blake was standing on the front porch when they reached the house, his hands shoved into the pockets of his heavy terry cloth bathrobe. Even in slippers and pajamas, Kate marveled to herself, he looked imperious—every inch the powerful politician.
And he was powerful. Careers were made and broken on his say-so.
Sean shut off the headlights and the engine and got out of the car. He walked around to help Kate, but she’d pushed the door open before he reached her.
“Where is the boy?” the senator demanded. No hello. No “What brings you all the way to America?” It was clear enough that Sean wasn’t welcome in his own right.
“He’s in school in Sydney, where he belongs,” Sean answered. He’d never been the slightest bit intimidated by the senator, and Kate suspected that was one of the reasons her father disliked him so intensely.
Senator Blake doubled one hand into a fist and pounded it into his palm. “Blast it all, Harris, that child belongs with his family!”
“I’m his family,” Sean said quietly. Kate felt a certain admiration for his composure, even though she wanted her sister’s son to visit the United States on a regular basis as much as her parents did.
Kate’s mother, Irene, appeared in the massive double doorway behind the senator. “Let’s not stand outside, making a public spectacle of ourselves,” she scolded. “There may be reporters from those awful tabloids lurking in the shrubbery.”
Despite everything, Kate had to smile at that. The tabloids didn’t pick on dull men like her father. They fed on scandal.
Then her smile faded as she stepped into the light and warmth of her parents’ house. Once word of Brad’s profitable little sideline got out, there would be scandal aplenty.
“What are you doing here?” the senator demanded of Sean the moment they were all inside his study with the doors closed. He sounded for all the world as though he thought Sean should have had his permission before entering the country.
“I’ve been in Seattle for a week, if it’s any of your business,” Sean answered evenly. “My company is thinking of placing an order with Simmons Aircraft.”
Kate saw the sudden interest in her father’s face. Simmons Aircraft was one of the largest employers in the state, and the company was a pet concern of the senator’s. “You’re still with the airline, then?”
“You could say that,” Sean replied. A forest of crystal decanters stood on the bar, and he helped himself to a snifter of brandy, lifting it once to the senator before raising it to his lips. “But you didn’t have your daughter drag me up here so we could talk about Austra-Air, did you?”
Kate felt a flash of resentment. Sean made it sound as though her father orchestrated her every move.
“No,” Senator Blake responded. “It’s about my grandson.”
Sean set the snifter aside, then brought a thin leather wallet from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket, opening it and extending it to his former father-in-law. Kate caught a glimpse of a handsome blond boy smiling up from a photograph.
It was no secret that Gil resembled his late mother, but surprise moved in the senator’s aging face all the same—surprise and pain. “He’s a fine-looking lad,” the old man said in a strange, small voice. “Does he do well in school?”
“Mostly,” Sean answered quietly. “He’s got a weak spot when it comes to spelling and the like.”
Mrs. Blake hovered close behind the senator’s shoulder, peering hungrily at her grandson’s picture. “Abby was the same way,” she said.
The air in that large, gracious room suddenly seemed to be in short supply. Kate went to the window behind her father’s desk and opened one side a little way.
“The boy has a right to know his mother’s family,” said the senator.
“A few years ago I might have agreed with that,” Sean replied, pulling the photograph out from behind the plastic window in his wallet and extending it to Mrs. Blake.
“What changed your mind?” the senator wanted to know. It seemed to Kate that he was having trouble meeting Sean’s gaze, but she was wrong, of course. Her father was virtually fearless.
“When a man’s son is nearly kidnapped,” Sean answered, “it tends to change his mind about a lot of things.” He tucked his wallet back into his pocket and glanced at Kate once before telling his late wife’s parents, “You’re welcome to visit Gil anytime you want to, but I won’t send him here. Not until he’s old enough to take care of himself.”
Kate was staring at Sean, hardly able to believe what she’d heard. Gil had nearly been kidnapped? That in itself was news to her, but it had actually seemed, for a moment there, as though Sean thought the senator might have been behind the attempt.
When Sean walked out
of the study, Kate followed, partly because she didn’t want to listen to another of her father’s tirades and partly because she had to confront Sean. He couldn’t go around accusing good people of a crime and then just turn and walk away!
Kate said a hasty goodbye to her mother and father and followed Sean outside.
“I assume you want a ride home,” Sean said as he opened the car door on the driver’s side. It was the first indication he’d given that he was aware of her presence.
Kate answered by getting into the car. “What the hell do you mean by implying that my father would abduct a child?” she demanded the moment Sean was behind the wheel.
He ground the key into the ignition, and the engine started with an angry roar. “He wouldn’t try it personally, of course,” he snapped. “He paid someone to steal my son off the playground.”
“That’s a lie!”
Sean stopped the car without warning and glared at Kate. “Is it?” he rasped. “The man the police picked up admitted everything—he said he was working for a powerful American politician, and I guessed the rest.”
Kate felt the color drain from her face. “No,” she whispered, stunned. Her father would never do a thing like that. He was honorable and good, the kind of man who belonged in a Norman Rockwell painting. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like, love,” Sean sighed. “I don’t really give a damn.”
Kate stiffened in her seat. “If my father was guilty,” she challenged, “why didn’t you take your case to the press? That would have ruined his career.”
Sean didn’t look at her. He appeared to be concentrating on the road, and his strong hands were tense where they gripped the steering wheel. “I couldn’t,” he answered in a low voice. “I once loved a daughter of his, you see.”
Kate sat back. This had been one hell of a day. “So now you’re just going to fly back home and forget that Gil has a family here in the States?”
They had reached the bottom of the driveway. “Yes,” he replied. “If you want to see him, you’ll have to pay a visit to the land of Oz.”
Kate remembered the nickname Australians had given their country from her sister’s early emails. The later ones had been filled with anger and fear and a wild, keening kind of despair. “I might just do that,” she said. It would be good to get away from what Brad had done, away from her father’s campaign.
Sean gave her a quicksilver glance, one she nearly missed. “Really?”
“I’d need to get a visa,” Kate told him. “But, with my father’s connections, that shouldn’t take long.”
Kate couldn’t tell whether Sean was pleased at the prospect of a visit from his former sister-in-law or not, since the car was too dark and he revealed nothing by his tone or his words. “Where do you live?”
She gave him the address of her building, and he nodded in recognition. It was near his hotel, he said.
“How long are you staying?” she asked as the expensive car slipped through the dark city streets.
He moved his powerful shoulders in a casual shrug. “Another few days, I suppose. I want to take the plane up at least once more before I make my recommendation.”
Kate knew he was testing the airliner his company was considering buying from Simmons Aircraft. “Just how many planes are we talking about here?” she asked.
Sean favored her with a grin that might have been slightly contemptuous. She couldn’t quite tell. “You’re definitely your father’s daughter,” he said, and Kate felt as though she’d been roundly insulted. Her cheeks were throbbing with heat when Sean finally answered her question. “Roughly a dozen, give or take a plane. We’re phasing out our old fleet.”
A dozen airliners. A contract like that would mean prosperity for a good many of her father’s constituents.
“What do you do, anyway?” Sean asked.
Again Kate felt vaguely indignant. “I work for the senator.”
“I gathered that much,” Sean retorted, bringing the car to a sleek stop in front of Kate’s building. “Do you actually work, or do you just stand around agreeing with everything the old man says?”
Kate’s color rose in anger, and she reached for the door handle, but Sean caught her hand in a swift grasp and held it prisoner. She trembled as he stroked the tender flesh on the inside of her wrist with the pad of his thumb.
“Cold?” he asked, knowing perfectly well she was practically boiling.
She gave a little cry when he tilted his head and melded his mouth to hers, but she made no move to resist him. The old attraction had returned to shame her.
Chapter 2
Kate’s telephone was ringing when she let herself into the elegant condominium. She made no effort to lift the receiver, knowing the answering machine would pick up the call.
She listened to her own voice giving a recorded greeting as she carefully folded her silk shawl and set it aside, along with her grandmother’s purse. There was a little dent, she noticed with a frown, where the solid brass bag had struck the mugger’s head.
Brad’s voice filled the room. At least there was one good thing about this whole incident, and that was the fact that Brad’s job would be hers now. She was qualified, and she had more seniority than anyone else on the staff. “Kate, I’m at home. Call me immediately!”
“Go to hell,” Kate muttered, her arms folded across her chest. Even though the living room was warm, she suddenly felt chilled. She turned down the volume on the machine and, if Brad said anything more, she didn’t hear him.
Her mind and senses were full of Sean. Her heart was still beating a little faster than usual, and her nipples felt taut beneath the thin fabric of her evening gown. She kept her arms folded over her breasts in an effort to hide her involuntary response, even though there was no one around to see.
Unlike her parents, Kate didn’t keep pictures of Abby out in plain view, but she went to the shelf behind her couch and took down a thin leather-bound album. The names “Abby and Sean” were embossed on the cover in gold lettering, and Kate felt a lump thicken in her throat as she opened it to the first photograph.
It showed Abby sitting at her vanity table in her frilly room, her wedding gown a tumble of satin and lace and pearls. Kate saw herself, ten years younger and wearing a pink bridesmaid’s dress. In the photograph she appeared to be pinning Abby’s veil carefully into place, though in reality that task had fallen to a hairdresser.
With the tip of an index finger, Kate touched her sister’s glowing, flawless face, her golden hair and wide brown eyes. Abby. The senator had called her his Christmas-tree angel.
Tears brimmed in Kate’s eyes, and she closed the album and put it carefully back among the others. She couldn’t think about Abby, not with Sean’s kiss still burning on her mouth.
Kate kicked off her shoes and felt her feet sink deep into the plush pearl-gray carpet on the floor. With a sigh, she wandered into her bedroom and slipped out of the dress, her panty hose and underthings. A long, hot shower soothed her a little, though the pounding massage of the water made her more aware of her body than she wanted to be.
Clad in a striped silk nightshirt, her shoulder-length brown hair blown dry, Kate climbed into the brass bed that had once graced one of her grandmother’s guest rooms and pulled the covers up to her chin.
She wouldn’t think about Sean. It was that simple. She had a good mind; she could direct it to other matters.
However, it would not be directed. Against Kate’s will, she remembered the first time she’d seen Sean Harris.
She’d been nineteen at the time, and he’d come to the house with Abby. Attracted by his good looks, his sense of humor and his lilting accent, Kate had fallen in love. Although he had never said or done anything to encourage her, Sean had always been kind, and Kate had gone on adoring him long after he’d become her brother-in-law.
Then those emails had started arriving from Abby. Sean was a chauvinist, she’d claimed. He hated her, delighted in humiliating her.
“Why didn’t you leave him?” Kate asked in the darkness of her room. She squeezed her eyes shut as memories of the funeral invaded her mind, unwanted and painful.
Sean had brought Abby home to be buried in the family plot, though Gil, only two years old then, had remained behind in Australia. Sean’s grief had loomed over him, like the dark shadow of something monstrous.
Even then she had loved him, though she wouldn’t have admitted that to herself. The guilt, coupled with her bereavement, would have broken her.
For the past five years Kate had concentrated on putting Sean out of her mind. Until tonight she’d thought those treacherous, tearing emotions were behind her forever.
Now she just didn’t know.
*
A furious pounding at the front door awakened Kate with a start. She squinted at the clock on her bedside table and saw that it was two-thirty in the morning.
Full of frightened bafflement, Kate scrambled out of bed and found her robe. Reaching the front door, she peered through the peephole and saw Brad.
“Let me in, damn it,” he snapped, somehow knowing she was there.
Kate hesitated, then opened the door. Brad was capable of making a scene, and there was no sense in letting him awaken all the neighbors.
The tall blond man pushed past Kate. He’d exchanged his formal evening clothes for a pair of jeans, a lightweight blue sweater and the formidably expensive leather jacket Kate had given him for Christmas.
“Why the devil did you run off like that?” he rasped, his eyes snapping with barely suppressed fury.
Kate bit her lower lip and brushed her sleep-tangled hair back from her face. He was referring to her hasty exit from the opera, of course. “I saw you take money for cocaine,” she said slowly and carefully. Even now she could hardly believe it.
She hoped for a raging denial, but Brad only stared at her in hostile puzzlement. “So?” he asked.
Kate felt fury flow through her like venom. “What do you mean, ‘So?’” she cried, struggling to keep her voice down. “We’re talking about a crime here—a felony!”
Brad shook his handsome head in apparent amazement. “I don’t believe this,” he said.
Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) Page 2
