Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) (3 page)

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

K
ate’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.

“Neither do I,” Kate replied wearily. She found her antique purse, opened it and took out the ring. “Here,” she said, extending it to Brad.

His eyes widened in his tanned face. “You’re not serious.”

“I can’t marry you,” Kate said. Tears filled her eyes as she mourned all her dreams—the suburban house, the children, the dog in the back of a minivan. All of it was gone. It wasn’t fair.

Brad refused to take the ring. “Kate,” he said reasonably as though speaking to a cranky child, “
everybody
does cocaine.”

Kate shook her head. Her cheeks were wet now, and she dried them hastily on the sleeve of her nightshirt. “No,” she argued. “That isn’t true and you know it. Brad, you need help. If you’ll check into a hospital—”

He held up both hands in a gesture so abrupt that it startled Kate into retreating another step. “Wait a second. A hospital? I haven’t got that kind of problem, Kate. And even if I did, I wouldn’t just walk away from the senator’s campaign.”

Kate swallowed. “You’ll have to resign as campaign manager, Brad. Right away.”

He was staring at her as though she’d just told him she’d had supper with a Martian. “Resign? Are you kidding? This is the most important job of my career and you damn well know it!”

Kate did know that Brad had political ambitions of his own. He had left a prestigious law firm to take the job on her father’s staff expressly to make contacts among the powerful. “Brad, if you don’t resign, my father will fire you.”

Brad paled beneath his tan. “Are you saying that you’re going to tell him about tonight?”

“I have to,” Kate said with miserable conviction. “It would be irresponsible not to.”

Brad stood close, his hands cupping Kate’s face. Although his touch was gentle, she sensed a certain restrained violence in him and she was afraid. “No. Listen to me. You can’t do this—I’ve worked too long and too hard...”

Kate twisted out of his grasp and put the couch between them, her hands gripping its back. “Go home,” she said quietly. “Think about this. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

“We’ll talk now!” Brad snapped. “If you tell your father about that cocaine, I’ll be ruined!”

“Please leave,” Kate said. She felt chilled from head to foot. She had almost married this man!

Brad didn’t move at all. He only glared at her and spit out, “You’re naive as hell, Kate. This kind of thing goes on every day in every level of government. Why don’t you stop being such a goody-goody and grow up?”

Kate could only gaze at him, feeling sick to her stomach. Dear God in heaven, how had he fooled her so completely?

After another long and frightening moment, Brad stormed out the door. Kate rushed to lock and bolt it behind him, leaning against it with her eyes closed while she waited for her heartbeat and her breathing to settle into normal patterns.

She’d been dating Brad Wilshire for a year. There must have been signs that he used and sold drugs, but she hadn’t seen them. That fact in itself was terrifying; Kate wondered if she could trust her own instincts. Was she one of those self-destructive women she’d read about in pop psychology books?

After a few deep breaths and fifteen minutes spent pacing the darkened living room, Kate was tired enough to sleep. She crawled back into bed, closed her eyes and dreamed that she lived in a fine colonial house in the suburbs. Sean was her husband and Gil was her son and there were twelve gleaming airliners parked in the backyard.

* * *

The jangle of the telephone awakened Kate before her alarm clock could. She grappled for the receiver and pressed it to her ear, muttering a hoarse, “Hello?”

The senator’s voice was like restrained thunder. “Brad has been arrested,” he said.

Kate was wide awake. “When?” she asked, sitting up in bed.