Legally His Omnibus (12 page)

‘Kate!’

Sean cursed under his breath when she refused to listen. The mobile was still ringing. Impatiently he switched it off, then started to follow her.

* * *

As soon as she reached her room Kate opened the wardrobe and pulled out the suitcases Sean had bought for them. Opening one of them, she started to drag clothes off the rail and throw them into it.

‘What are you doing?’

The sound of Sean’s voice made her swing round. ‘What does it look like?’ she snapped. ‘I’m packing. Oliver and I are leaving! We should never have come here in the first place. I knew—’

‘You knew what?’ Sean stopped her.

He was looking at her with a glint in his eyes that made her heart thump and apprehension feather chillingly down her spine, but angrily Kate refused to bend.

‘I know that I just don’t want to be here with you, Sean,’ Kate answered angrily. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it,’ she threw at him when he didn’t answer her.

‘Less than five minutes ago you were in my arms and—’

‘I’ve just told you I don’t want to talk about it!’ Kate stormed. ‘That...what just happened...meant nothing. It was just...’

‘Just what?’ Sean challenged her with a softness that was far more dangerous than anger would have been.

He was trying to make her look at him, Kate recognised, but if she did she knew he would see in her eyes how vulnerable she was. Keeping her face averted from him, she insisted stubbornly, ‘Nothing!’

Something in his voice had warned her of what was to come. Panicking, Kate dropped the clothes she was holding and started to run, only realising when it was too late that—idiotically—she had run towards the bed instead of the door. Now she was backed up against it, with Sean standing in front her and no option but to turn round and try to scramble over it.

‘Nice move,’ she heard him say with soft amusement from behind her, and his fingers curled round her ankle as he kneeled on the bed looking down at her.

‘I always did think that you’ve got the sexiest backside I’ve ever seen: nicely curved and temptingly peachy. And I can remember...’

Kate did not want to hear what he could remember, and for a very good reason. She feared that listening to what Sean could remember might make her feel even more dangerously vulnerable.

Surely there was no good reason why she should feel almost the exact same mix of nervousness and excitement lying here on a bed now, with Sean leaning over her, as she had done that very first time they had been together like this? They had been lovers; they had been married and they had been divorced—his body was almost as familiar to her as her own.

But she did feel the same, and she did feel... Stubbornly Kate tried to deny her feelings, to ignore as well the sensual caress of the bracelet of Sean’s fingers round her ankle. She stiffened her body against it, just as she refused to look away from Sean when he turned his head to smile into her eyes.

‘Now, about this “nothing”,’ he murmured, almost affably. ‘Let’s go through it all again, shall we? Starting right here...’

Somehow he was down on the bed beside her, the upper half of his body pinning hers to the bed, and shamingly Kate knew that a part of her was already greedily soaking up the pleasure of having him so close.

One look at his eyes told her what was going to happen. He was looking directly and deliberately at her mouth, and somehow that look was making her part her lips and wet their nervousness with the tip of her tongue.

‘Nothing?’ His fingertip traced the curve of her jaw and then the shape of her lips, slowly and heart-stoppingly, whilst he continued to look down at her.

‘You know that I’m going to kiss you now don’t you?’ he whispered.

She tried to say no. She tried to mean no. But Sean was using unfair weapons against her. He knew how very vulnerable she had always been to that slow, sensual, oh-so-seductively-sweet way he had of kissing her, that made her insides melt and her lips cling to him, and the reason he knew was because she herself had told him so, over and over again, in their shared past. And maybe more recently in the heat of that fevered night? Right now all she seemed capable of doing was focusing on his mouth, whilst her heart-rate accelerated.

It had been a bad mistake to close her eyes, Kate acknowledged helplessly, a flurry of heartbeats later, because closing her eyes had somehow transformed her back into the girl she had been the first time Sean had kissed her like this.

Now, as then, her lips parted willingly and eagerly, her senses tensely aroused by the passionate intimacy of his tongue against her own, primed by the kisses they had already shared. Shockingly Kate recognised that her body was rebelliously impatient of any gentle preliminaries, that she was being consumed by a fierce, hungry surging need.

She lifted her hands to Sean’s shoulders and held onto them, needing the security of their strength as her own longing smashed down on her, carrying her bodily in its fast-paced flow.

Beneath Sean’s, her mouth clung and hungered, and her hands left his shoulders to press his body down harder into her own. She felt Sean tense and lift his mouth from hers to look down into her face.

Surely the hand lifted to his face, the fingers dragged sensuously against his jaw and then raised to trace the shape of his lips and run over and over his mouth could not be hers? Surely that liquid aching heat spreading through her body could be controlled if she really tried?

Surely this wasn’t her, lifting her head off the bed and cupping Sean’s face so that she could press impassioned kisses into his skin whilst she moaned her need softly into his mouth?

‘Touch me, Sean.’
Love me,
Kate whispered silently inside herself as she stroked a trembling finger over the mouth she had just kissed. ‘Make it like it used to be for us...’

Had she really said that?

‘Like it used to be?’ she heard Sean repeat softly. ‘You mean when we were so hungry for one another that not being together was a physical pain? Is that what you mean, Kate? That you want me like that? Like this?’

As he spoke his hands were shaping her body, and Kate could feel the small flames of desire inside her, feeding on his words and growing stronger. Soon there would be a conflagration which would threaten to destroy her, and yet somehow she no longer cared about her danger—all she cared about was this, and now, and Sean’s hands on her flesh, Sean’s mouth on her mouth, Sean’s body covering her body. The wild, untrammelled flood-force of her own dammed-up love and need crashed through the barricade, taking every single last bit of her resistance with it.

Willingly, eagerly and passionately she savoured the hot, urgent strength of Sean’s kiss, meeting it and matching it just as she had done when their love was new and her faith and trust in him whole and unbroken. With her eyes closed she could even almost smell the scent of their shared past—the hot dusty air in the small suburban street mingling erotically with the fresh male heat of Sean’s skin and her own excited arousal.

But the hand she lifted to curl round Sean’s neck, to hold him whilst she prolonged their kiss, was the hand of the woman she was today—and today she wanted Sean as the woman she was, Kate recognised emotionally. And how she wanted him! So much, so very, very much. Her body hungered for him like parched earth crying out in silent agony for the caress of rain.

Only her need wasn’t silent any more. It poured from her lips in a soft litany of longing, word on word, plea on plea, as she begged him, ‘Sean—my clothes... I don’t want them. I want you—your hands, your skin. You.’ Kate could feel herself shuddering with the intensity of her own feelings as she twined her arms around him and her body moved restlessly against his. ‘I want you, Sean,’ she told him. ‘The whole essence of you...all of you...’

It had always amazed her that those big, strong hands could be so delicately gentle and assured when removing her clothes, but now their unexpected impatience as Sean pulled and tugged at fabric and fastenings sent a fierce thrill of pleasure through her.

‘Kate. Kate. Oh, God, how I’ve missed you—and this—us...’

The words tumbled thickly from Sean’s tongue and were breathed against her skin as he kissed the flesh he was revealing. The sensual drift of his hands had become an urgent, compelling possession that demanded her body give itself over to him completely. The hard need of his mouth on hers spoke of a hunger so long denied that it might easily devour them both. But Kate only gloried in the realisation. How could she not when it so exactly mirrored her own feelings? The fierce thrust of Sean’s tongue against her own; the heavy weight of his hand cupping the curve of her hip so possessively; the grinding heat of his body against her own—she welcomed them all.

‘Take off your own clothes, Sean,’ she begged him huskily. ‘I need to feel you against me.’ As she spoke she shuddered slightly, remembering how it had felt to have the hot satin of his skin next to her own.

‘You do it,’ Sean answered.

When she hesitated, he took her hand and lifted it to his body.

‘Did I ever tell you how much it turned me on when you undressed me?’

When Kate just looked at him, in passion-soaked silence, he added thickly, ‘Do you want me to tell you how much you are turning me on now? Do you want me to show you how much you are turning me on now, Kate?’

She was trembling so violently that she couldn’t even unfasten the buttons on his shirt.

‘You do it like this,’ Sean said huskily, covering her hand with his own. ‘And then you do this—’ He guided her hand to push his shirt off his body. ‘And I do this...’

Kate’s whole body arched as he cupped her breast with his hand and then bent his head to cover her tight nipple with his mouth. Kate heard her own raw moan of fierce arousal as his tongue stroked the hard nub of flesh, teasing it, tormenting it. Sean seemed to know exactly when she reached the point where she couldn’t bear the torment any longer, because suddenly he took the hard, wanton ache of her nipple into his mouth and drew rhythmically on it, until Kate felt as though that same rhythm was pulsing throughout her whole body, gathering deep inside her, making her want to open her legs and wrap them tightly around him.

Fiercely she tugged at his clothes and Sean helped her.

‘Kate!’

The explosive denial Sean made as he virtually pushed her away made Kate stare uncomprehendingly at him.

‘If I let you touch me like that I’ll come too soon,’ he told her rawly. ‘And I don’t want to do that until I’ve given you more pleasure than you’ve ever known. Until I’ve given you that pleasure and watched you take it from me. Until I’m inside you, where I’ve ached to be every single night since I’ve been without you. Until I’ve done this...’

Long, long before the leisurely journey his hands and his mouth were making over her body had reached the small swell of her belly, Kate was trembling visibly with desire.

As she felt the brush of his mouth against the soft skin of her inner thigh she closed her eyes in aching mute anticipation. His hand covered her sex, making the demanding, hungry pulse deep inside her beat faster. When his fingers parted the arousal-swollen lips of her sex she cried out loud eagerly, almost unable to bear the searing pleasure of his touch.

Her body ached and pulsed, and just the touch of his fingers against her wetness made her rake her fingers against his skin. But the eager sensual movement of her body stilled when Sean exposed the swollen, secret nub of pleasure those lips had concealed to the hungry caress of his tongue.

Kate was helpless to stop the feeling that ran through, over her, filling her and taking her over, making her cry out and lift her body to Sean’s mouth as he brought her to that place she had not known for so very long.

And then, when Sean moved and positioned himself in between her legs, taking her in his arms, Kate welcomed him with fierce pleasure. This was what she ached for—this total possession of him and by him, this hard, purposeful thrusting of him within her, that fulfilled and completed her. This climbing together towards that shimmering, shining place where for a brief heartbeat of time they were almost immortal.

Kate reached it first, crying out, her body tensing round Sean to take him with her. And as she felt the familiar pulse of his satisfaction within her Kate’s eyes filled with tears.

That this act, so very, very intense and erotically a pleasure beyond all pleasures for those who loved one another, could also be the creation of life, had always given it an extra special intensity for her.

Once she had believed that Sean shared that feeling with her—he had even said that to her the first time she had shyly confided to him her deep, almost spiritual feelings about making love.

And yet now he was denying his own child!

Bitter self-loathing filled her. Where was her pride and her self-respect?

She could feel Sean withdrawing from her, not just physically but emotionally as well, and suddenly a black wave of misery and exhaustion swamped over her.

* * *

Sean looked down at the bed where Kate lay fast asleep. He had left her to go to the bathroom, and when he had come back she had been asleep. Anguish shadowed his eyes and hollowed his face as he watched her.

Whilst making love with her he had forgotten there had been another man in her life—someone man enough to give her a child. Bitterness carved his mouth into hard anger.

In his arms she had responded to him as though no other man had ever touched her, as though she had never wanted any other man to touch her... And God alone knew how much he ached and needed to believe that she hadn’t. The sweet taste of her still clung to his lips, and the scent of her filled the air around him.

He couldn’t endure to live without her any longer, Sean recognised bleakly. Even knowing all that he knew about her!

CHAPTER EIGHT

K
ATE
WOKE
UP
slowly and languorously, her mouth curling into a smile of remembered bliss. Still half asleep, she stretched her body. Its telltale ache made her smile deepen. There was nothing like waking up in the morning filled with feel-good hormones, she acknowledged happily, reaching out her hand to Sean.

Sean! The speed with which she was catapulted from her warm security to stark reality physically hurt.

She sat up in the bed, her mind an agitated jumble of anxious, angry thoughts. The clothes she had been intending to pack had gone, and so too had the suitcases! The realisation that it was nine o’clock in the morning increased her agitation. It had been late afternoon when she had come up here, and...

Frantically she reined in her speeding thoughts. She couldn’t believe she had slept so long and so deeply—although Sean had always teased her about it, claiming that he took it as a compliment that his lovemaking fulfilled her to such an extent.

The very words ‘Sean’ and ‘lovemaking’ linked together were making her heart thud erratically—with fury, she told herself crossly, not because of any other reason.

The sudden opening of her bedroom door brought an abrupt halt to her thoughts.

‘Mummy!’

Kate’s heart turned over as she looked at her son. He was wearing some of the new clothes Sean had insisted on buying for him: a pair of workman-like denim dungarees that made him look heartbreakingly grown up and yet endearingly little-boyish at the same time.

‘We’ve brought you your breakfast,’ he said excitedly.

Kate’s heart plummeted at his ‘we’, and she prayed it was the housekeeper he was referring to, not Sean. But the tension in her stomach told her that it was Sean even before he followed Oliver into her room, carrying a heavily laden tray.

‘You’ve been asleep for a very long time,’ Oliver reproached her, and then beamed from ear to ear. ‘Mummy, I made your toast—and my daddy helped me...’

All three of them froze, and above and beyond her own anguish Kate was seared by the look in Oliver’s eyes, his face scarlet as he ran to her and clambered onto the bed, burying his hot, embarrassed face against her body. Automatically she wrapped her arms protectively around him. Unlike Kate, he was too young to recognise why he had called Sean his daddy, but he was not too young to know that he should not have done.

Over Oliver’s downbent head Sean looked at Kate, and he put down the tray in silence before turning to leave.

* * *

It couldn’t be put off any longer, Kate told herself fiercely. Her heart had bled drops of pure concentrated emotion for her son, his betrayal of his feelings and his need, but Oliver’s innocent indication of the role he longed to have Sean play in his life had hardened her resolve to leave.

It filled her with a pain like no other she had ever known to recognise her son’s vulnerability. How much unintentional damage had she already done by letting him know Sean?

She was well aware of the old cynical saying that it was a wise child that knew its own father. But what if somehow, somewhere, unknown to modern scientists, there was a primitive, instinctive bond between father and child that had been activated by Sean’s appearance in Oliver’s life?

The feelings she had experienced at Oliver’s realisation of his
faux pas
in calling Sean his ‘daddy’ went way beyond tears. Of course she had pretended not to be aware of the cause of Oliver’s crimson face and discomfort, had coaxed him to share her toast and to tell her about the previous afternoon’s activities, when the housekeeper had let him play with the dog and then given him his tea.

But even that had been a mistake, Kate reflected unhappily. Because Oliver had gone on to tell her that Sean had collected him from the housekeeper’s quarters, brought him back, given him his bath and read his story to him.

‘D— Sean said that you were very tired and needed to sleep.’ Oliver’s innocent comment had torn at her heart as Kate had acknowledged just why she had ‘needed to sleep’.

But even worse than that had been the longingly hopeful look in Oliver’s eyes when he had looked up at her and told her, ‘I want to stay here for ever, with Nell... and with Sean...’

Kate’s heart had sunk when he had suddenly avoided looking at her.

‘Well, it has been very nice here,’ she had agreed, trying to sound calm. ‘But what about George? He’s your friend and—’

Oliver had stopped her stubbornly. ‘Sean is my friend, and so is Nell. A dog can be a friend, and Nell is mine!’ And had completely defeated her when he had added, ‘I wish that Sean was my daddy.’

Now, from the sitting room window, she could see Oliver industriously helping the gardener to ‘weed’. Helplessly she closed her eyes against her own pain.

When she opened them again she could see Sean’s reflection in the glass beside her own. Immediately she turned round.

‘We need to talk,’ Sean told her flatly.

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Kate stopped him bitterly. ‘I’ve almost finished packing, and—’ Unable to stop herself, she said quickly, ‘I know you must think that I primed Oliver to...to say what he said. But I didn’t. He sees George with Tom and... He...he’s had this bee in his bonnet for a while, about not having a father...’

Sean recognised that the new name she had chosen for herself suited her. She was Kate now, a woman. Not Kathy, a girl. And he knew that there was something about Kate that he responded to as a man. Kathy the girl had gone, and it grieved him to know that this maturing process had taken place without him being there to share in it. And if that grieved him how the hell was he going to feel if she spent the rest of her life apart from him?

‘I’ve got a proposition to put to you,’ he said curtly. ‘Or perhaps I should more properly say a proposal,’ he amended heavily into the silence that followed his initial words.

‘A proposal?’ Kate tasted the word cautiously, her stomach churning. What was he going to do? Offer her money to take Oliver away and deny that he was his father? ‘What kind of proposal?’ she challenged him suspiciously. The look he was giving her was decidedly ironic.

‘I thought you knew, Kate, that in my world there is only one kind of proposal a man makes to a woman the morning after they have spent the night together. Anything else
would
be a proposition.’ When she went rigid and simply stared at him, he elucidated tiredly, ‘I am asking you to marry me, Kate.’

The shock ran through her like lightning, a vivid flash of disbelief followed by an unbelievably intense and coruscating pain, out of which she could only demand sharply, ‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I want you back as my wife, and—’ Sean turned his head and looked out across the lawn, his face averted so that Kate could not see his expression as he added emotionlessly, ‘And because I want Oliver as my son.’

It was, Kate decided, almost as though she was hearing Sean speak from very far away, through an impenetrable glass wall.

The angry and rejecting words,
But Oliver
is
your son
rolled like thunder through her heart, but somehow she managed to hold them back. And she held them back because inside her head she had a painfully clear image of a small boy who desperately wanted a father. If she knew anything about Sean she knew that he was a man who committed himself totally and completely to everything he decided to do—almost single-mindedly so at times.

She had seen for herself the rapport he was developing with Oliver, and she knew that to pretend such a bond was simply not in Sean’s nature. But she could not and would not take risks with her son’s emotional future!

‘Your son?’ she questioned coldly ‘But, Sean, you have already refused to accept that Oliver is your son. You have told me that you believe another man fathered him, and, believing that—’

‘That isn’t a road I’m prepared to go down.’ Sean stopped her sharply. When he saw her face he demanded savagely, ‘Don’t you realise how it feels for me to know that there’s been another man in your life? In your bed? Didn’t last night tell you anything about how much I still want you? The only way I can deal with this is to draw a line under it, Kate, to box it up and bury it somewhere so deep that it can never be disinterred.’

‘Do you think it’s any different for me? You were unfaithful to me, Sean.’

‘You can forget all about her, Kate. She never really—’

‘Meant anything to you?’ Kate stopped him bitingly.

Sean looked away from her. He had almost fallen into the trap of saying that the other woman had never really existed!

What would Kate think if she knew the pitiful, pathetic truth about him? How would she react? Would she pity him? Reject him? Would knowing the truth enable her to understand how deeply and completely he loved Oliver and wanted to be a father to him?

A part of him yearned to share his knowledge and his pain with her, but his pride held him back.

‘Oliver needs a father,’ he said heavily instead. ‘And I—’

‘You want to take pity on us?’ Kate suggested angrily, reluctant to admit even to herself just how strongly his impassioned words had touched her emotions.

‘No,’ Sean denied, the glimmer of ironic self-mockery glinting in his eyes, concealing his pain. ‘I want you and Oliver to take pity on me.’

It was as close as he could bring himself to telling her the truth.

When she didn’t answer he told her bleakly, ‘Both of us know how it feels to grow up without the love of a parent. Oliver wants a father.’

Kate couldn’t stand any more. The words
Oliver has a father
burned on her lips, but in the garden she could see her son, and already she knew how much it would mean to him if she agreed to what Sean was suggesting. ‘I—I...’ As she tried to squeeze out her denial all she could hear was Oliver calling Sean his daddy.

She might be able to resist all the emotional pressure that Sean could possibly put on her, but no way could she resist that special sound she had heard in her son’s voice.

She took a deep breath. ‘Very well. I accept. But if you ever,
ever
do anything to hurt Oliver I shall leave you there and then,’ she warned him passionately.

She had already turned away from him when she heard him coming after her. As she stopped moving he took hold of her, imprisoning her in his arms whilst he kissed her with fierce passion.

Helplessly Kate felt her mouth softening beneath his, and her traitorous body, still flooded with sensual memories of his lovemaking, simply softened into his until she was moulded against him so closely that she might have been a part of him. He might have started the kiss, but she was the one who prolonged it, Kate recognised hazily as her mouth clung to his, and she gave in to her need to trace the shape of his mouth with her tongue-tip and to slide her fingers into the thick darkness of his hair.

Against her body she could feel the hard pulse of his erection. Mindlessly she pressed closer to it, waiting for Sean to cup her breast with his hand and discover the hard eagerness of her nipple. But instead he pushed her way from him, breaking the kiss.

Humiliated, she was about to walk away from him when she heard him saying in quiet explanation and warning, ‘Oliver!’

It shocked her to realise that Sean had been more aware of their son’s approach than her, but her hope that Oliver had not witnessed their intimacy foundered as he stepped through the open French window and immediately demanded, ‘Why were you kissing Sean, Mummy?’

Before Kate could think of anything to say, Sean answered for her, telling him calmly, ‘We were kissing because we are going to get married, and that’s what married people do.’

As he finished speaking Sean kneeled down and held out his arms to Oliver. ‘I’ve asked your mummy to marry me, Oliver. And now there’s something I want to ask you.’ Kate couldn’t help it; emotion welled up inside her. But it was nothing to what she felt when Sean continued, ‘Will you let me be your daddy, Oliver?’

The look on Oliver’s face as it lit up with delight was all the answer he needed to give—that and the fact that he threw himself bodily into Sean’s arms!

As Sean stood up, hoisting Oliver onto his shoulder, the little boy was chanting, ‘Daddy—Daddy. I can call you Daddy now, can’t I, Sean?’

As Sean nodded his head Kate was sure she could see the glint of moisture in his eyes.