The Married Mistress. Kate Walker

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      With Valentine’s Day, February is always a romantic month. And we’ve got some great books in store for you….

      The High-Society Wife by Helen Bianchin is the story of a marriage of convenience between two rich and powerful families…. But what this couple didn’t expect is for their marriage to become real! It’s also the first in our new miniseries RUTHLESS, where you’ll find commanding men, who stop at nothing to get what they want. Look out for more books coming soon! And if you love Italian men, don’t miss The Marchese’s Love-Child by Sara Craven, where our heroine is swept off her feet by a passionate tycoon.

      If you just want to get away from it all, let us whisk you off to the beautiful Greek Islands in Julia James’s hard-hitting story Baby of Shame. What will happen when a businessman discovers that his night of passion with a young Englishwoman five years ago resulted in a son? The Caribbean is the destination for our couple in Anne Mather’s intriguing tale The Virgin’s Seduction.

      Jane Porter has a dangerously sexy Sicilian for you in The Sicilian’s Defiant Mistress. This explosive reunion story promises to be dark and passionate! In Trish Morey’s Stolen by the Sheikh, the first in her new duet, THE ARRANGED BRIDES, a young woman is summoned to the palace of a demanding sheikh, who has plans for her future…. Don’t miss part two, coming in March.

      The Married Mistress

      Kate Walker

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      All about the author…

      Kate Walker

      KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, England, and was the middle child in a family of five girls. She grew up in a home where books were vitally important, and she read anything she could get her hands on. Even before she could write she was making up stories.

      But everyone told her that she would never make a living as a writer, so she decided that if she couldn’t write books, at least she could work with them by becoming a librarian.

      It was at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, that she met her husband, who was also studying there. They married and eventually moved to Lincolnshire, where she was a children’s librarian until her son was born.

      After three years of being a full-time housewife and mother she wanted a new challenge, and turned to her old love of writing. The first two novels she sent off to Harlequin were rejected, but the third attempt was successful. She can still remember the moment that a letter of acceptance arrived instead of the rejection slip she had been dreading. But the moment she really realized that she was a published writer was when copies of her first book, The Chalk Line, arrived just in time to be one of her best Christmas presents ever.

      Kate is often asked if she’s a romantic person because she writes romances. Her answer is that if being romantic means caring about other people enough to make that extra special effort for them, then, yes, she is.

      Kate loves to hear from her fans. You can contact her through her Web site at www.kate-walker.com or e-mail her at [email protected].

      To all my special friends in the Teahouse and Gonnabeez from the Queen Bee.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      SARAH stepped back from the partly open door as smoothly and as silently as she could.

      It wasn’t easy. The thought of disturbing the occupants of the room, of making them realise that she was here, and that she had seen them, made her heart race and her head swim.

      Beneath the bright red-gold hair, her face had lost colour, the brilliant emerald-green of her eyes standing out dramatically against the pallor of her cheeks.

      She felt sick—sick with anger and betrayal—and she needed a minute or two to pull herself together before she faced the inevitable. She had to get downstairs again. Had to get away from the scene that had met her shocked eyes as she had first opened the door, taking with it that little peace of mind that just lately she had thought she had finally reached.

      Peace of mind. Huh!

      That was a laugh! she told herself as she reached the top of the stairs. Peace was something she hadn’t known in a long, long time. Not true peace. Not the wonderful soul-rooted peace that came from knowing you were truly happy, deep, deep down. Truly happy and contented with your world. As she had been once, she’d thought, in a time that now seemed so long ago.

      No, she wouldn’t think of the past now. Couldn’t think of it. She had to concentrate on the here and now. The past was what would destroy her ability to handle this.

      ‘Sarah?’

      Jason’s voice: thick and rough with shock.

      Sounds of the bed creaking. Of the thud of heavy masculine feet on the carpeted floor. He had heard her and was coming after her.

      The man in the hallway heard the sounds too. Heard the voice—a very male voice that made his heart kick sharply and something like disgust twist painfully in his gut.

      She had a man. Here. In this house they had once shared. Clearly she hadn’t believed his threat to come back—and soon.

      But not soon enough, it seemed. His sweet Sarah had been busy during his absence. She had found herself another man. Found him, and lost him too, if the haste with which the slim auburn-haired figure in the smart pale green shirt and darker pencil skirt was coming down the curving staircase was anything to go by.

      Sarah was not happy. She was so unhappy that she didn’t see him standing well back, where his black hair and dark leather jacket blended with the deep shadow of the door. And, that being so, it told its own story of just what she had discovered up in that first-floor bedroom.

      The bedroom that had once been theirs.

      It was a thought of dark rage, one that brought a red mist rising before his eyes, cutting off his vision completely, and destroying his ability to think rationally. To think at all.

      ‘Sarah?’ Jason called again, his voice thick with echoes of things she didn’t even want to consider. ‘That you?’

      Jason sounded angry now, and before she could find a way to answer, or even make any sort of sound to indicate her presence, he had stumbled out onto the landing and was leaning over the banisters, staring down at her.

      His longish fair hair was still ruffled, his cheeks distinctly flushed. But at least he had taken the opportunity to pull on a pair of jeans, even if his chest was still bare, as were his feet.

      ‘So it is you? Didn’t you hear me calling? Why the hell didn’t you answer? What are you doing back this early?’

      It was a technique she recognised only too well. A way of firing questions at an opponent in rapid succession, and so disorientating them that they didn’t know which one to answer first. It meant he was rattled. Because he wasn’t sure just how long she’d been there or whether she’d only stayed downstairs.

      ‘I can come and go as I please, Jason. This is my