Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) (11 page)

He opened his door and climbed out onto the wing, then jumped nimbly to the ground. Kate was still trembling in her seat when he came around, got up onto the wing on her side and opened the door.

His eyes full of mischief and promise, he kept his gaze fixed to Kate’s all the while he was unfastening her seat belt and turning her to face him. Her legs dangled outside the plane, on either side of his hips.

“Oh,” Kate whimpered as he began unbuttoning her shirt.

He soon had that laid aside and her undershirt up beneath her armpits. Her breasts were warm and swollen under his gaze, their peaks pouting for his attention.

She cried out in mingled relief and despair when his mouth closed over one of her nipples. “A—aren’t you even going to kiss me?” she asked.

He drew back long enough to answer, “I’m past that, thanks to your teasing. Now you’ll have to pay the piper.”

Sean took a long time at Kate’s breasts, enjoying first one and then the other. When he finally pressed her back across her own seat and his, she was almost out of her mind with need. She felt the snap open on her jeans, trembled as they slid, her panties with them, down over her hips.

Ever so lightly, Sean kissed the tangled silk that sheltered Kate’s femininity from all but him. She moaned and lifted her hips as an offering, but he only teased her with more kisses. At the same time, his hands were busy removing her boots, pulling her jeans and panties down and off.

When Kate was thrashing from side to side, frantic with need, he raised up. She felt all the familiar doubts and fears, all the old insecurities, but they weren’t enough to stop her. She held her breath as he opened his zipper and freed himself. When he entered her, she became a wild thing, clutching at him with her hands and wrapping her legs around his hips.

Although she urged him to hurry, Sean’s pace was slow and rhythmic. He meant to extract the last ounce of response from Kate before satisfying himself, and that knowledge only increased her frenzy.

When she was on the edge, he stopped to enjoy her breasts again at his leisure. Kate was woman at her most primitive; she pleaded, she threatened, she wheedled and bargained.

At last, with a low moan of his own, Sean gave in. He began to move more rapidly, and the friction made Kate cry out and stiffen as satisfaction overtook her. She was torn apart in those moments, and reassembled into a new, softer and gentler woman. She had been mastered, like a wild mare broken to ride, and the feeling was glorious.

Sean’s release was a violent one. He lunged deep inside Kate and hurled his head back, his teeth bared over a string of savage endearments.

Kate cupped his taut buttocks in her hands as his powerful body bucked several more times, and then he fell to her breasts, gasping for air. Within moments, he was rolling a taut nipple between his lips and then suckling hungrily even as his torso heaved with the effort to breathe.

Kate plunged her fingers into his hair. She would have been content to hold him like that all day but, when he’d had a long turn at both her breasts, he raised his head and pulled her undershirt down. While he fetched Kate’s panties and jeans from the wing, she hastily buttoned her shirt.

He bent and kissed both her knees before handing her the rest of her clothes. “You’re a bad girl, sheila,” he scolded. “Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”

Kate wished he would have said he loved her, but she’d long since learned that wishes were one thing and reality was very often another. “You’re a scoundrel,” she said, wrenching on her panties and jeans. “Where are my boots?”

Sean recovered them from the ground and handed them to her, rounding the plane as Kate shoved her feet into them.

He boarded the plane and reached across Kate to close her door, the back of his arm brushing her full breasts. “That’ll keep you satisfied until tonight I hope,” he said.

“Your arrogance is not to be believed!” Kate fussed.

Sean grinned broadly and quoted back some of the outrageous things she’d said to him during her climb to the heights.

“Bastard,” Kate said.

The plane engines whirred and the propellers began to spin.

“Have you ever taken off from a place with no runway before?” she asked worriedly, now having something else to think about besides the obnoxious man beside her.

“Only about fifty thousand times,” Sean answered, reaching for a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the instrument panel and putting them on with a flourish.

Kate was back to gripping the edges of the seat, although she was so relaxed that it was hard to hold on. She wanted nothing so much as to crawl into some warm, safe bed right there on the ground and sleep for twenty-four hours.

The plane jolted terribly as Sean increased its speed. Finally, with a rattling mechanical grunt, it flung itself into the air. Kate let go of her seat.

“I’m getting hungry,” she said.

“I don’t wonder,” Sean answered, “considering the energy you’ve burned up in the past few minutes.”

Kate hit him in the shoulder, but she was grinning. She felt too damn good to be angry.

After another hour in the air, an enormous flock of sheep came into view, shepherded by a man and three dogs. In the distance, Kate could make out a sizable house and a number of rustic outbuildings.

“Is that your friend?”

Sean rocked the plane from side to side, and the man below waved a hand. “Yes,” he answered. “That’s Blue. He’s the best mate I ever had.”

Kate continued to stare at the ground as Sean banked the plane into a wide sweep around the house and buildings and began a descent toward a dirt landing strip below. She could see another plane on the ground, as well as gasoline pumps and a pickup truck with rusty fenders.

“Does he live here all by himself?” Kate asked, thinking how lonely that would be. This part of Australia was so vast and empty, except for the occasional gum tree and the ever-present brown grass.

Sean shook his head as the plane nosed downward. “He’s got a wife and kids.”

“Kids?” Kate echoed. “Out here? Where do they go to school?”

Sean was busy landing the airplane, so he didn’t look at Kate as they landed. “They don’t. Ellen teaches them herself.”

Any answer Kate might have made was prevented by the jostling impact of touching down. She breathed a silent prayer of gratitude for a safe landing and unfastened her seat belt.

Sean stopped Kate before she could open the door and jump out of the plane. “Don’t be trying to put any fancy ideas in Ellen’s head,” he warned. “She likes her life the way it is.”

While Kate was still thinking what an odd remark that was, Sean shut off the engines and got out himself. He came around to lift Kate to the ground as a slender blond woman came running from the direction of the house, her face alight.

“Sean!” she cried as she reached him and flung herself into his arms.

He gave her a hug and a sound kiss on the forehead and set her down. “Ellen,” he said, “meet Kate.”

Kate greeted the woman with a smile and an outstretched hand, even though she was wondering why Sean hadn’t mentioned that she was Abby’s sister. “Hi,” she said.

Turquoise eyes sparkled in a suntanned complexion. “Hello, Kate,” Ellen said, accepting Kate’s hand with a strong grip. Momentarily she turned back to Sean. “Did you bring me books and chocolate bars?” she demanded.

Sean laughed and gestured toward the plane where the gear was stowed. “Enough to last you six months,” he answered.

Kate heard dogs barking in the distance and the bleating of sheep. Soon, Sean’s friend Blue would reach them.

She looked nervously at Sean. She wondered if Blue and Ellen had been Abby’s friends, too.

Sean glanced at her, and once again she had the strange sensation that he could read her thoughts. He put one arm around her waist and pulled her close, his lips moving softly against her temple.

“Tonight,” he whispered.

Chapter 7

W
hen Sean had taken a large grocery box from the back of the airplane, he and Kate and Ellen started off toward the house.

It was a sturdy, practical-looking place, built mostly of natural stone. Smoke curled from two different chimneys, reminding Kate that the day was cool. She’d forgotten in the heat of Sean’s lovemaking and its glowing aftermath that it was winter in Australia.

As they neared the house, three children, two girls and a boy, appeared at one end of a long, verandalike porch. “It
is
you!” one of the little girls cried, bounding down the steps to attach herself to Sean’s right leg.

Sean laughed and shifted the box in his arms so that he could ruffle the child’s flaxen hair. “Hello, Sarah,” he said.

Now that Sarah had broken the ice, the other two children came running, too. They were introduced to Kate as John and Margaret.

“We were doing lessons,” John confided. “I’m glad you’re here, Uncle Sean, because it was a dead bore.”

“John!” Ellen scolded, but there was a smile in her beautiful blue-green eyes.

The bleating of the sheep and barking of the dogs had grown much louder. Sean set the box down on the step and turned toward the mingled sounds, a broad grin stretching across his face. After a moment’s pause, he strode off to meet his friend.

Kate started to follow and then stopped herself. Ellen was shooing the children back to their lessons.

“Come in,” she said to Kate with a sunny smile. “Blue and Sean will be a while.”

Kate returned the smile and went inside with Ellen, finding herself in a kitchen that ran the length of the house. Burnished copper pans and kettles hung on the walls on either side of an enormous brick fireplace. School books, pencils and papers were strewn over a long trestle table, and a rocking chair sat in a sunny alcove.

“Tea?” Ellen asked, going over to an old-fashioned electric stove and lifting a steaming kettle.

Kate was developing a taste for tea. “Yes, please,” she said.

“You can sit here with us, Miss,” little Sarah put in. She looked to be about ten years old.

Kate sat down at the end of one of the benches aligned with the trestle table. “Thank you,” she said. She tried to look at the work the children were doing without being too obvious.

Ellen had gone back outside to fetch the box Sean had brought while the tea brewed in a blue delft pot. When she returned, she set the box on the end of the table, opposite Kate, and pulled back the flaps.

Kate watched as she lifted out boxes of chocolate bars and stacks of books. “Bless that man,” she said as John, Sarah and Margaret looked at the candy with round eyes.

“Just one between you,” Ellen told the children, smiling as she handed them a chocolate bar. “Mind that you break it up evenly now.”

While the kids were dividing the candy, Ellen turned her attention back to Kate. “Would you like one?” she asked.

Kate shook her head. “No, thank you,” she answered. She was more interested in the books.

Ellen laughed as she handed one to Kate. It was a romance novel showing a sweet young thing being swept up into the arms of a dashing buccaneer. “They’re better than candy,” she said. “I can’t get enough of one or the other.”

Kate smiled as she looked through the other books. The covers were all quite similar, depicting almost every period in history as well as the present day. At the thought of Sean shopping for these books, her smile widened.

Ellen brought the teapot to the table, along with lovely china cups, too fragile for a station in the outback. “Do you think they’re silly, those books?” she asked in a lilting voice, her expression worried.

“No,” Kate said quickly. “As a matter of fact, this one with the sheikh on the cover looks pretty interesting to me.”

Ellen’s eyes sparkled. “Doesn’t it, though?” she agreed, pouring the tea.

Before Kate could make further comment, a tall man with auburn hair and brown eyes entered the kitchen, followed closely by Sean.

“And who’s this?” Blue demanded good-naturedly.

When Sean answered, there was a note in his voice that Kate had never heard before. “Katie-did, meet my best mate—Blue McAllister.”

Kate nodded, feeling oddly moved. “Hello.”

Blue hung up his hat and lightweight leather coat before progressing to the table. “Hello,” he said, helping himself to one of Ellen’s cherished chocolate bars. “I suppose you have a last name, as well?” he asked. “Or is it a well-guarded secret?”

“Blake,” Sean said before Kate could answer, and this time he sounded angry.

Kate wondered why.

A look passed between Sean and Blue that wasn’t entirely friendly. “You were related to Abby?” Blue asked in gentle tones.

Kate nodded. “She was my sister.”

An uncomfortable silence descended, and Kate found herself wondering again why she’d given in to her passions when it was so clear that she and Sean could never have any kind of lasting relationship.

It was Ellen who smoothed things over. She laid a hand on Kate’s shoulder and said, “Welcome. It isn’t often I get a chance to talk with another woman. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thank you,” Kate answered, but her eyes had strayed to Sean’s face, and she knew they mirrored all the questions she wanted to ask.

He turned away, ostensibly to gaze out the window. Blue suggested having a look at the starboard engine of his airplane, since it had been sputtering, and the two men left the house without a backward glance, John tagging after them when his mother nodded her permission to leave his schoolwork.

“Don’t mind the men,” Ellen said in her delightful accent after sending Margaret and Sarah off to play with their dolls. “I never met one yet that had half the tact he needed.”

Kate wanted to cry, but she didn’t. She couldn’t quite manage a smile, however. “Were you and Abby friends?”

Ellen hesitated for a long moment. “Not really,” she answered reluctantly. “The only time she ever came out here with Sean, she spent the whole of the weekend trying to convince me to leave Blue. Imagine it—me without Blue.”

There
had
been a special spark between the McAllisters when Blue came into the kitchen, now that Kate thought of it. “Why on earth did Abby want you to leave your husband?”