Mistress To Her Husband. PENNY JORDAN

children, their children, would have the parental love neither of them had ever known. They had all been lies.

      Against her will Kate could feel herself being drawn back into the past and its painful memories.

      There had been no warning of what was to come, or of how vulnerable her happiness was. In fact only the previous month Sean had taken her away on an idyllic and very romantic break to an exclusive country house hotel—to make up, he had told her lovingly, for the fact that the negotiations he had been involved in to secure a very valuable contract had gone on so long that they had not been able to have a summer holiday.

      They had arrived late in the afternoon and had enjoyed a leisurely and very romantic walk through the grounds. And then they had gone back to their room and Sean had undressed her and made love to her.

      They had been late for dinner, she remembered—very late. And during it Sean had handed her a large brown envelope, telling her to open it. When she had done so she had found inside the sale details of a pretty Georgian rectory she and Sean had driven past early in the year.

      ‘You said it was the kind of place you had always wanted to live in,’ he had reminded her simply. ‘It’s coming up for sale.’

      She’d spent the rest of the evening in a daze, already excitedly planning how she would decorate the house, and insisting that Sean listen to her as she went through the house room by room.

      They had made love again that night, and in the morning. And afterwards she had lain in Sean’s arms, her eyes closed, whilst she luxuriated in breathing in the sexually replete scent of him and wondered what on earth she had done to merit such happiness.

      Less than a month later she had been wondering what on earth she had done to merit such intense pain.

      One minute—or so she had thought—Sean had been negotiating for the purchase of the rectory; the next he had been telling her that he no longer loved her and that he intended to divorce her.

      Kate closed her eyes and lay back in her chair. She felt both physically and emotionally exhausted. What she should be doing right now, she told herself grimly, was worrying about how she was going to get another job, instead of wallowing in self-pity about the past.

      She would have to enrol with an employment agency, and then probably take on as much work as she could get until she found a permanent position. She had some savings—her rainy day money—but that would not last for very long.

      Why, why, why had Sean had to come back into her life like this? Hadn’t he hurt her enough?

      Tiredly Kate stopped trying to fight her exhaustion and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

      

      The dream was one she had had before. She tried to pull herself awake and out of it, as she had taught herself to do, but it was too late. It was rushing down on her, swamping her, and she was already lost in it.

      She was with Sean, in the sitting room of their house. It was mid-afternoon and he had come home early from work. She ran to greet him, but he pushed her away, his expression not that of the husband she knew but that of the angry, aggressive man he had been when she had first met him.

      ‘Sean, what’s wrong?’ she asked him, reaching out a hand to him and flinching as he ignored her loving gesture. He turned away from her and walked over to the window, blocking out its light. Uncomprehendingly she watched him, and the first tendrils of fear began to curl around her heart.

      ‘I want a divorce.’

      ‘A divorce! No…What…? Sean, what are you saying?’ she demanded, panic, shock and disbelief gripping hold of her throat and giving her voice a hoarse, choked sound that seemed to echo round the room.

      ‘I’m saying that our marriage is over and I want a divorce.’

      ‘No! No! You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that!’ Was that piteous little voice really her own? ‘You love me.’

      ‘I thought I did,’ Sean agreed coldly. ‘But I’ve realised that I don’t. You and I want different things out of life, Kathy. You want children. I’m sick of having to listen to you boring on about it. I don’t want children!’

      ‘That’s not true. How can you say that, Sean?’ She stared at him in disbelief, unable to understand what he was saying. ‘You’ve always said how much you want children,’ she reminded him shakily. ‘We said we wanted a big family because our own childhoods—’

      If he heard the pain in her voice and was affected by it he certainly didn’t show it.

      ‘For God’s sake,’ he ground out. ‘Grow up, will you, Kathy? When I said that I’d have said anything to get into your knickers.’

      The contemptuous biting words flayed her sensitive emotions.

      ‘Look, I don’t intend to argue about this. Our marriage is over and that’s that. I’ve already spoken to my solicitor. You’ll be okay financially…’

      ‘Is there someone else?’

      Silently they looked at one another whilst Kathy prayed that he would say no, but instead he taunted her. ‘What do you think?’

      Her whole body was shaking, and even though she didn’t want to she started to cry, sobbing out Sean’s name in frantic pleading disbelief…

      

      Why the hell was he doing this? Sean’s hands clenched on the wheel as he drove. What was the point in risking resurrecting the past? She was easily replaceable. But Sean knew that he was being unfair. She was, according to John and from what he had been able to recognise himself, an extremely intelligent and diligent employee—the kind of employee, in fact, that he wanted. No way was he going to allow her to walk out of her job without working her statutory notice period.

      She was his ex-wife, damn it, Sean reminded himself grimly. But this was nothing to do with her being his ex-wife, and nothing to do either with the fact that he had discovered from her records, contrary to his assumptions, she was not married.

      He was in the village now, and his mouth hardened slightly. Oh, yes, this was exactly the kind of environment she liked. Small, cosy, homely—everything that her life with her appalling aunt and uncle had not been.

      He swung the car into a parking space he had spotted, stopped the engine and got out.

      He hadn’t told anyone as yet about the fact that she had handed in her notice. Officially she was still in the company’s employ…in his employ.

      He skirted the duck pond, his eyes bleak as he headed for Kate’s front door.

      He was just about to knock when an elderly woman who had been watching him from her own front gate called out to him.

      ‘You’ll have to go round the back, young man.’

      Young man! Sean grimaced. He didn’t think he had ever been young—he had never been allowed to be young! And as for being a man…Something dark and dangerous hardened his whole face as he obeyed the elderly woman’s instructions.

      It took him several minutes to find the path which ran behind the back gardens of the cottages. The gate to Kate’s wouldn’t open at first, and then he realised that it was bolted on the inside and he had to reach over to unbolt it. Hardly a good anti-thief device, he reflected, giving it a frowning and derisory look as he unfastened it and walked up the path.

      He frowned even more when he realised that the back door was slightly open. If Kate had had his upbringing she would have been a damn sight more safety conscious!

      His hand was on the door when he heard her cry out his name.

      He reacted immediately, thrusting open the door and striding into the kitchen, then coming to an abrupt halt when he saw her lying in the chair asleep. He felt as though all the air had been knocked out of his lungs, his chest tightening whilst he tried to draw in a ragged breath of air.

      He