Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection)

by Linda Lael Miller

  When they reached Kate’s room, she opened one suitcase, and then another, and then another, searching for her Australian money. She finally found some in her overnight case, which was sitting in the bathroom on the counter.

  A knock at the door brought her out, smiling and curious, her wallet in one hand. The room looked as though it had been ransacked, she thought, as she passed by the trail of open suitcases she’d left behind her.

  Sean was standing in the hallway when she opened the door, and she was so surprised that she just stood there for a moment, staring at him.

  “When I go to America,” Gil was saying cheerfully in the background, “I’m going to spend a whole month at Disneyland.”

  There was a slight change in Sean’s expression, but his words sounded normal enough. “Aren’t you going to kiss me, sheila?”

  Kate realized that he was really there, and not a product of her overworked imagination, and she hurled her arms around his neck. “You’re back early.”

  He removed her arms gently. “Surprised?” he asked, backing her into the room.

  “Dad!” Gil shouted, hurling himself at his father. “We went to the zoo and saw a movie and once we had supper at McDonald’s!”

  “Good,” Sean said quietly, ruffling Gil’s hair with one hand. He was smiling, but there was something odd in his face as he looked around the room at Kate’s suitcases.

  Kate felt uneasy without knowing why. “Lucky we came back to get some money,” she said to Sean. “If we hadn’t, we would have missed you.”

  Sean was still looking at the suitcases, and it seemed to Kate that he was a little pale beneath his suntan. “Is that so?” he asked.

  Kate wanted to shake him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, keeping her voice as even as she could.

  Sean wouldn’t look at her. Instead, he turned his gaze toward Gil, who still stood at his side, looking up. “So, you’re planning a trip to America, are you?” he asked.

  Dread went through Kate like a cold wind when she realized the conclusion Sean was drawing from the rifled suitcases and his son’s comment about Disneyland. “You don’t understand,” she said lamely.

  “I think I do,” Sean said, and his voice was like dry ice.

  Gil chose that moment to whip his passport out of his jacket pocket and present it. “I could go anytime I wanted,” he said proudly.

  “I want you to wait for me by the elevators,” Sean told his son, speaking in a voice that was all the more ominous for its quiet, measured tones.

  Disappointment flashed in Gil’s upturned face. “But we were going to have supper—”

  “Go,” Sean said flatly.

  After casting one baffled, injured look in Kate’s direction, Gil obediently walked out of the room and down the hallway. Kate would have gone after him, but Sean closed the door and barred her way.

  “Pretty damned clever,” he said.

  Kate let out a furious sigh. “I wasn’t planning to take your son away,” she told him, shoving one hand through her hair.

  Sean looked at her with contempt, but behind that she saw the pain of betrayal. “I was a fool to trust you. All of it—the talk, the lovemaking—you did it all to get into my good graces, so I’d leave you alone with Gil!”

  “That’s not true!” Kate cried. “You’re deliberately misunderstanding the situation. Gil and I went to the zoo and then to the movies, and I was out of money, so I came back here to get some—that’s why the suitcases look the way they do.”

  Sean didn’t seem to hear her. He was like a geyser about to spew dangerous steam, and Kate had a terrible feeling that nothing she could say or do would move him. “Why did he have his passport, then?” he hissed, moving to grab Kate and then stopping himself at the last second. “Why was he talking about going to Disneyland?”

  “I don’t know why he brought his passport,” Kate answered. “He got it out earlier to show it to me, and he probably just stuck it in his pocket.”

  “Why were you interested?” Sean demanded.

  It was no use, and Kate knew it. “We did talk about going to America,” she confessed. “But it was a someday kind of thing—not something immediate.”

  “You’re just like your father,” Sean accused. “You’ll do anything, step on anybody, to get what you want!”

  “No,” Kate argued, her eyes filling with tears as she shook her head.

  She might not have spoken at all for all Sean seemed to care. “You’re like her, too—why didn’t I see that you’re no better than she was?”

  Kate couldn’t bear any more. She grabbed Sean by the lapels of his windbreaker and shouted, “Listen to me, damn you. I’m not my father, and I’m not Abby—I’m just Kate! And I’d die before I’d betray you, Sean Harris, because I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything or anybody!”

  With a gentle kind of cruelty, Sean brushed Kate’s hands away, turned on his heel and walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

  Kate stepped into the hallway, her face wet with tears. “Sean, please…” she called after him, desperate.

  “Goodbye,” he said coldly without even turning around to look at her.

  Kate sagged against the doorframe, closing her eyes as she heard the sound of an elevator bell. When it chimed again moments later, she knew Sean and Gil were gone.

  She went back into her room, like something wounded, and, after closing and locking the door, she sprawled across the bed, too sickened to think or move. It was a long time before she gathered the strength to call the airport.

  There was a flight leaving for Los Angeles in two hours. Numb from the core of her soul out, Kate booked a reservation on that flight, refolded everything in her suitcases and called the desk for a bellhop. While she was waiting, she dialed Sean’s number.

  Fortunately Mrs. Manchester was the one to answer.

  “This is Kate,” the caller said brokenly. “May I please speak to Gil?”

  The housekeeper sounded bewildered and kindly. “He’s right here, Miss Blake,” she said.

  Gil came on the line a moment later. “Are you going, Aunt Kate?” he asked.

  New tears welled in Kate’s eyes. “I have to, sweetheart,” she said. “You understand, don’t you?”

  Gil was silent for a long time, then he answered, “I guess I won’t get to see Disneyland.”

  Kate dried her cheeks with the back of one hand. “Maybe another time,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “I want you to promise to email me, Gil, and tell me all about school and sports and Snidely. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he replied.

  “I love you, darling.”

  “And I love you, Aunt Kate,” the little boy responded bravely.

  Kate swallowed. “G-goodbye, Gil.”

  “Goodbye,” came the forlorn reply.

  Just as Kate was hanging up the telephone, a knock sounded at the door. The bellhop entered at her hoarse call of, “Come in!”

  The young man loaded Kate’s bags onto a luggage cart and started off toward the elevator. After a few moments spent struggling for composure, she followed.

  All the way down to the desk and all the way to the airport, Kate kept hoping that Sean would show up. She had the scenario all worked out in her mind. He would say he was sorry, that he knew she would never do anything to hurt or betray him, and then they’d kiss and everything would be all right again.

  Only it didn’t happen that way.

  There was no sign of Sean at the airport.

  Kate had her passport checked and boarded the plane. Her last fantasy died when the doors of the craft were slammed shut. Sean wasn’t going to come down the aisle and collect her and take her home.

  She didn’t have a home anymore.

  Kate curled up in her seat, a bundle of despair and confusion, and stared out the window, watching the city of Sydney recede. She was really leaving—the dream was over.

  After a while Kate slept. It was a fitful rest, and she awakened with a violent start when she fel
t someone’s hand on her shoulder. Sean. Somehow, someway, he’d come for her. Maybe he’d been in the cockpit of the airplane all the time….

  But it was only a blond flight attendant, smiling apologetically down at Kate. “I’m sorry, miss,” she said, “but we’re about to land in Auckland. You’ll have to fasten your seat belt.”

  Kate sat up grumpily and fixed the belt. Maybe she’d get off in New Zealand, take a couple of days to compose herself and then go back and talk to Sean again. By now he had to be sorry for what he’d thrown away so thoughtlessly.

  But even before the plane touched down, Kate had decided to go on to the States.

  She’d done enough compromising. If Sean Harris wanted to talk to her, he was going to have to make the next move.

  Chapter 11

  The child flung himself at Sean in a rage of pain and disbelief. “I hate you, I hate you!” he screamed, hammering at his father’s chest with knotted fists. “You made her go away!”

  Mrs. Manchester, who had inadvertently witnessed the scene, hurried off to another part of the house—but not before giving Sean a look that said her thoughts on the matter were similar to Gil’s.

  Feeling as though he were being torn in two, Sean grasped his son by the wrists to stop the attack. Then he knelt down on the floor of the entryway to look into his son’s eyes. “Listen to me,” he said hoarsely. “Please.”

  Gil still looked miserable, but he gave up the struggle. “Kate wasn’t going to take me away,” he insisted. “We were just going to have supper at a restaurant.”

  Sean gave a heavy sigh. “I know that now,” he confessed. “And I’m sorry.”

  Gil’s lower lip trembled and tears glistened in his eyes. “What good does being sorry do?” he challenged. “Aunt Kate’s gone, and she’ll probably never come back.”

  Kate was gone all right. While Sean had been agonizing over the fact that he’d been a fool not to trust her after all she’d been to him, she’d checked out of her hotel room, taken a cab to the airport and gotten on board a plane. By now she was probably halfway to New Zealand.

  Sean rose to his feet. He was hurt and he was remorseful, but he wasn’t really surprised. Kate had only done what he’d expected her to do all along—she had run back to Daddy when the first misunderstanding arose. Sean sighed, ruffled his son’s hair and walked away.

  “You could go and get her,” Gil called after him in hopeful despair. “You could tell her you’re sorry and bring her back.”

  Sean closed his eyes against his son’s pain and his own. In time the hollows and canyons Kate’s passing had left in their lives would fill in. All they needed was time.

  “It’s better this way,” he answered, and kept walking.

  *

  The first thing Kate did when she reached home was take a long, hot shower. When that was done, she slept for thirty-six hours.

  She opened her eyes to a world without Sean and Gil, and cried all the while she bathed and dressed and set out for the supermarket to buy food. She had no appetite at all, but her refrigerator was empty, and she knew she would eventually have to eat.

  She encountered Brad in the yuppie section, where the miniature corn cobs and pickled crab apples were sold. He smiled and introduced the woman beside him.

  “Allison, meet Kate Blake. Kate, my wife, Allison.” He said “my wife” with a spiteful little twist, as though he expected Kate to fling herself down at his feet in despair.

  “Allison,” Kate acknowledged, properly shaking the hand of Brad’s new bride. She was obviously a career woman—she wore a classic suit and there was a briefcase in the shopping cart, with the initials ABW engraved on the brass trim.

  The brown-eyed, attractive blonde nodded, reserve evident in every supple line of her body. “Kate,” she confirmed.

  Kate excused herself and went wheeling off toward the produce section, hoping Brad had given up the life of crime once and for all, for his own sake as well as Allison’s.

  When Kate arrived home, loaded down with shopping bags, the doorman helped her carry them into her apartment. She was just handing him a tip when the telephone rang.

  Until that morning Kate had kept it unplugged, and she wished now that she’d left it that way. She wasn’t ready for a round with the senator or her mother.

  The caller was Irene Blake. “Welcome back, darling.”

  Kate sighed. “Hello, Mother.”

  The doorman waved and slipped out, closing the door behind him.

  “I can’t tell you how glad your father and I are that you’ve finally come to your senses. I’m certainly disappointed, though, that you didn’t bring Gil back with you.”

  “Hold on a moment, please,” Kate said politely. Then she laid down the receiver, walked into the kitchen and took two aspirin from the bottle she kept in the cabinet by the stove. After washing them down with water, she went back to the telephone.

  “I guess I’m not surprised that Sean wouldn’t give an inch where the boy is concerned,” Irene went on, and Kate wondered if her mother had been talking the whole time she was in the kitchen. “Australian men are notoriously stubborn, you know.”

  “And American men aren’t?” Kate retorted, singularly annoyed.

  “Your father is going to be stunned when he learns you didn’t bring Gil home with you,” Irene continued. “It’s little enough to ask, I should think—”

  “Mother,” Kate interrupted with terse politeness. “I couldn’t just grab the child and carry him off. That would be a crime.”

  “I’ll tell you what is criminal, Katherine Blake—”

  “Please don’t,” Kate broke in.

  Irene took a sharp breath. “What’s happened to you?” she demanded. “You’re different.”

  “I’m older and wiser,” Kate replied with a sigh.

  “When are you joining your father in Washington?” Her mother pressed on.

  “I’m not. He disinherited me, remember?”

  “The senator didn’t mean a thing by that, and you know it.”

  “He could have fooled me,” Kate said.

  “You’re deliberately being difficult!”

  Kate bit her lower lip. “I don’t mean to be, Mother.” She let out her breath in a rush. “Maybe we should talk later. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

  “All right,” Irene agreed stiffly, “but I wish you were the kind of daughter we could depend on.”

  And I wish you were the kind of mother I could call “Mom,” Kate thought. I wish I could cry on your shoulder and tell you how much I’m hurting right now. “Goodbye, Mother,” she said.

  The following Monday morning Kate returned to college. Although she had a degree, she wanted to teach in elementary school, and that required a few credits she didn’t have.

  Soon, her life became a lonely round of going to class, studying, sleeping and eating. When she was at home, she invariably wore her bathrobe.

  “You know,” her friend Maddie Phillips remarked one night as she sat filing her nails and watching Kate watch a rerun, “you’re going to seed. Look at you—you’ve got all the personality of a doorstop.”

  Kate gave the glamorous redhead a look meant to be quelling. “Gee, thanks, Maddie. I admire you, too.”

  Maddie shook her nail file at Kate. She owned a small travel agency and lived one floor down in a two-bedroom with a terrace. “And,” she rushed on, as though her friend hadn’t spoken, “you’re getting fat in the bargain.”

  Kate picked up the remote control for the TV set and pushed the volume button until Maddie’s voice was drowned out completely. Never one to be ignored, Maddie scrambled out of her chair and plopped down beside Kate on the couch. She wrenched the control from her hands and turned off the TV.

  “The trouble with you, Kate Blake, is that you’re in denial.”

  Kate glared at her. “You’ve been reading too much pop psychology,” she said. “I’m not denying anything.”

  “Oh, no? I’ll bet you’ve put on te
n pounds in the past month—true?”

  Kate sighed. “True,” she admitted.

  “And you’re not sleeping very well, either,” Maddie went on.

  There were shadows under Kate’s eyes, and she knew it. “Can’t deny that,” she said.

  Impulsively, for Maddie was nothing if not impulsive, she took Kate’s hand in hers. “What happened down there in Australia?” she asked. “It’s time you told somebody.”

  Kate felt tears pressing behind her eyes. She’d been back for six weeks, and there hadn’t been a word from Sean—not a letter or a telephone call. Apparently he still believed Kate had planned to kidnap his son.

  “I fell in love,” she said, and then the whole story spilled out of her. She told Maddie everything, except for the intimate details.

  “That’s so romantic,” Maddie murmured when the tale ended.

  “Romantic? I love that man and he hates me, Maddie. What’s romantic about that?”

  Maddie ignored the question. “You’ve got to go back there. Or contact him.”

  Kate folded her arms. “Not on your life,” she said stubbornly. “Sean’s the one who’s in the wrong, not me.”

  “Hell of a comfort that will be when the baby comes,” Maddie said shrewdly.

  Kate’s gaze shot to her friend’s face. She hadn’t consciously considered the possibility that she might be pregnant, but now she was forced to. And she knew all the signs were there; she’d just been ignoring them.

  Maddie folded her arms and nodded sagely. “Denial,” she said.

  “Oh, God,” Kate replied, and she began to cry.

  Maddie slipped an arm around Kate’s shoulders. “Sean has a right to know,” she said softly.

  Kate shook her head. If Sean knew about the baby, there would be all sorts of problems. Hadn’t he said he wouldn’t have his children living on separate continents? No, it was better if he never learned he’d fathered another child.

  “You’re not being fair,” Maddie insisted.

  “Was it fair of Sean to accuse me of trying to steal his son?” Kate paused to sniffle. “He claimed to love me, Maddie, and yet he wouldn’t even let me explain.”