Legally His Omnibus (7 page)

Kate wanted to refuse to tell him anything—after all, he had just rejected Oliver—but her maternal anxiety overruled her pride, and apprehensively she began to repeat what she had been told. ‘He’s been sick, apparently. There’s a bug going round. He said this morning that his tummy was hurting him.’

‘You sent him to nursery, knowing that he wasn’t well?’

Kate could hear the criticism and disbelief in Sean’s voice.

‘Why didn’t you stay at home with him?’

Angrily Kate defended herself. ‘I have to work, remember? Anyway, I can’t just take time off like that.’

‘Of course you can,’ Sean contradicted her flatly. ‘You’re a mother. People would understand.’

‘No one at work knows about Oliver,’ Kate admitted abruptly, deliberately turning her head to face the window so that he couldn’t see her expression.

‘Ashamed of him?’

‘No!’ Kate denied furiously, and immediately turned to look at him. She realised too late that Sean had deliberately provoked her, knowing what her reaction would be.

‘Then why?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Sean, surely I don’t have to tell you the business facts of life?’ Kate answered wryly. ‘Not all firms will take on women who are mothers, especially if they are single mothers. I needed this job. I didn’t mention Oliver at my first interview, and then after I had been offered the job I discovered that John had an unwritten rule about not employing mothers of young children.’

‘A rule it would be unlawful for him to try to enforce,’ Sean pointed out. ‘And Oliver needs you! Hell, Kate, both you and I know what it’s like to grow up without a mother.’

‘Oliver has a mother.’

‘But not a mother who can be there for him when he needs her.’

Kate couldn’t maintain her barriers against the pain that swamped her. It invaded every nerve-ending and tore at her heart.

‘Since you refuse to accept that Oliver is your child, you hardly have the right to tell me how to bring him up, do you?’ she challenged him bitterly, only realising as she managed to blink away her angry tears that they had reached the village.

The moment Sean pulled up outside the nursery Kate was reaching for the car’s door handle, throwing a stiff, ‘Thank you for the lift,’ to him over her shoulder.

But to her consternation Sean was already out of the car and opening her door, announcing curtly, ‘I’m coming in with you.’

‘I don’t want you to,’ Kate protested.

‘Oliver might need to see a doctor,’ Sean told her flatly. ‘I can run you there.’

A doctor? Anxiously Kate hurried towards the nursery, her concern for her son far more important right now than arguing with Sean.

The moment Kate pushed open the door Oliver’s nursery teacher came hurrying towards her.

‘Where’s Oliver? How is he?’ Kate demanded frantically as she scanned the room anxiously, unable to see her son amongst the throng of children in the room.

‘He’s fine, but he’s asleep.’

‘Asleep? But—’ Kate began, only to be interrupted.

‘Has he seen a doctor?’ Sean demanded sharply.

It irritated Kate a little to see the immediacy with which the older woman responded to Sean’s calm authority.

‘I’m a trained nurse,’ she informed him, almost defensively. ‘I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong. Oliver felt poorly before lunch, and then he was sick afterwards, but he seems fine now—if rather tired.’

Turning to look at Kate, she added, slightly reprovingly, ‘He seems upset about something, and I do rather think that might be the cause of the problem. Young children often react with physical symptoms to emotional stress.’

Kate flushed sensitively, sure that she could hear a note of criticism in the other woman’s voice.

‘I’ll go through and get Ollie and take him home,’ Kate told her quietly, unaware of the way Sean was watching her reaction to the older woman’s remarks.

Oliver was asleep in one of the beds in a room off the playroom, and Kate felt the familiar pull on her emotions as she leaned over him. In so many ways he was Sean’s son, even if Sean himself refused to accept Ollie as his child. Tiredly she bent to pick him up.

‘I’ll take him.’

Kate turned round. She hadn’t realised that Sean had followed her into the small shadowy room.

‘There’s no need,’ she told him in a small clipped voice, focusing her gaze not on Sean’s face but on one dark-suited shoulder. A big mistake, she recognised achingly, when she had to suppress a longing to lean her head against its comforting strength and feel Sean’s arms come round her, hear Sean’s voice telling her that he believed her and that he loved her, that right now this very minute he was going to take both her and Oliver home with him.

As she stood there, staring fixatedly at his shoulder, Kate was suddenly overwhelmed by the searing knowledge of how alone and afraid she sometimes felt. Her throat ached and so did her head, shocked nausea was churning her stomach, and just the sight of Sean lifting his sleeping son into his arms was enough to make her feel as though her heart was breaking.

Get a grip, Kate advised herself sharply. This kind of emotion was a luxury she simply could not afford.

Once they were outside the nursery Kate stood in front of Sean and demanded, ‘Give him to me now. I can carry him home from here.’

‘You carry him? You look as though you can barely carry yourself,’ Sean told her bluntly.

‘I’ll carry him!’

They had just reached the cottage when Oliver woke up, stirring sleepily in Sean’s arms.

Opening the door, Kate stood just inside it and held out her arms for her son. But to her chagrin Oliver turned away from her, burrowing his head against Sean’s chest and going back to sleep.

A huge splinter of ice was piercing her heart. This was the first time Oliver had rejected her in favour of someone else—and not just anyone else, but Sean, his father.

‘You’d better give him to me,’ she told Sean sharply. ‘I’m sure the last thing you’ll want is him being sick on your suit.’

As he handed Oliver to her and she put him down gently on the shabby sofa that took up one wall of the kitchen she heard him say quietly, ‘No, actually the last thing I want is knowing that you went to another man’s bed so quickly after leaving mine!’

Immediately Kate stiffened. ‘You have no right to say that.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Sean retaliated savagely. ‘Don’t you think I know that I have thrown away all my rights where you are concerned!’

‘All your rights?’ Horrified, Kate wondered what reckless surge of self-destruction had prompted such dangerous words, and spoken in such a soft, sexually challenging voice. And, as though that was not folly enough, she discovered that she had a sudden compulsion to let her gaze slide helplessly to Sean’s mouth and then linger wantonly there, whilst her body reminded her hungrily of the pleasure he had once given it, how long it had been since...

‘Kate, for God’s sake, will you please stop looking at me like that?’ Sean warned her harshly.

Mortified, she defended herself immediately, fibbing, ‘I don’t know what you mean!’

Instantly Sean took a step towards her, a look smouldering in the depths of his eyes that made a fierce thrill of dangerous excitement race through her.

‘Liar! You know perfectly well what I mean.’ Sean checked her thickly. ‘You were looking at my mouth as though you couldn’t wait to feel it against your own.’

What the hell was he doing? Sean challenged himself inwardly. His sole reason for having anything at all to do with Kate was to give her some much needed financial help, and that was all. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.

And yet within seconds of telling himself that, Sean could hear himself asking softly, ‘Is that what you want, Kate? Because if it is...’

Just the sound of his voice was having a disturbingly erotic effect on her body—and on her senses. Defensively she closed her eyes, and then realised she had made a bad move as immediately she was swamped with mental images from the past.

Sean leaning over her in their bed, the morning sun on his bronzed skin, his eyes gleaming with sensual intent and knowledge between his narrowed eyelids. How quickly that cool look had grown hot and urgent when she had reached out to touch him, tugging teasingly on the fine hair covering his chest, before giving in to the erotic pleasure of sliding her fingers down the silky pathway which led over the hard flat plane of his belly to where the soft hair thickened.

Before she even realised what she was doing, never mind being able to stop herself, Kate felt her fingers stretching and curling, as though they could actually feel the strong, hard pulse of Sean’s erection within their grip.

As soon as she realised what she was doing—and what she was feeling—Kate thrust her hands behind her back, guilty heat scorching her skin.

Angry both with herself for feeling the way she had and with Sean for being responsible for that feeling, she told him fiercely, ‘No, it isn’t.’ She lied. ‘Why should I want someone who did what you did? Someone who broke his marriage vows and took someone else to his bed? How could I want you, Sean?’

‘Snap—that’s exactly how I feel about you!’ Sean stopped her passionately. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that I can throw the same accusations at you? How do you think it feels to discover that you didn’t even wait a full month before jumping into bed with someone else? Why did you do that, Kate? Was it loneliness, or just spite?’

‘I didn’t do any such thing,’ Kate denied shakily. His words had touched a wound in her heart that she had thought completely healed. But, as she had recently discovered, the scar tissue over it had been vulnerably fragile, and now the pain was agonisingly raw again.

Kate’s face went white, but before she could say anything Sean had turned on his heel and was heading for the door.

‘Don’t come in to work tomorrow, and if Oliver isn’t better by Monday let me know. And that’s an order,’ Sean instructed her grimly. ‘I’ll make arrangements to have your car brought here for you.’

CHAPTER SIX

‘
W
ELL
, O
LIVER
MIGHT
have escaped going down with the dreaded bug, but it doesn’t look as though you’ve been quite so lucky,’ Carol commented forthrightly as she studied Kate’s wan face.

‘I’ve had a bad night,’ Kate admitted reluctantly.

Kate had met her friend as she walked Oliver to school, and now the two boys were walking together, leaving Kate to fall into step with Carol.

‘My daddy can do anything,’ Kate heard George boasting.

‘Boys!’ Carol laughed, shaking her head and exchanging a rueful look with Kate.

‘Well, Sean can do everything in the whole world!’

Kate bit her lip as Oliver’s voice rang out, miserably aware of the comprehensive and sympathetic look Carol was giving her.

‘Sounds as though Sean is a big hit with Oliver,’ she commented lightly, but Kate could guess what she was thinking. The griping pain in her stomach bit harder and she winced, causing Carol to exclaim with concern, ‘You really aren’t well, Kate, are you? You should be in bed! Look, why don’t you go home and go back to bed? I’ll take Oliver to school and collect him for you.’

‘I can’t. I’ve got to go to work,’ Kate told her. ‘I didn’t go in on Friday because of Oliver. I can’t take more time off.’

‘Kate, you can’t possibly go to work. You look dreadful,’ Carol protested, adding worriedly, ‘Look at you! You’re shivering, and it’s nearly eighty degrees. This bug is really nasty if it gets a grip.’

‘Thanks!’ Kate said dryly, adding determinedly, ‘Anyway, I’m fine.’

But she could see from her friend’s face that Carol knew she was lying, and the truth was that she felt anything but fine.

Unlike Oliver, who had recovered from his upset tummy within a matter of hours, ever since she’d been sick the morning before she had steadily become more and more unwell. Her head felt as though it was being pounded with a sledgehammer, she had been sick on and off all night, and every bone in her body ached. She felt as if she was having flu and food poisoning all in one go.

Now the pain in her head increased, and when she closed her eyes against it a wave of nauseating dizziness hit her.

‘No way are you going to work!’ Carol’s firm voice broke into her misery. ‘How on earth are you planning to get there? You can’t possibly drive. Go home, and as soon as I’ve dropped the boys off I’ll call in and make sure you’re okay.’

Another surge of nausea reinforced the truth of what Carol was saying, and, handing Oliver over to her, Kate hurriedly made her way back home. She was unable to tell which felt worse—the agonising pain in her head, which made her want to crawl into a dark place and with any luck die there, or the knowledge that unless she got home soon she was all too likely to be sick in public.

Half an hour later Carol returned from dropping the boys off. Kate was barely aware of her knocking and then entering through the back door.

‘Thank goodness you’ve seen sense,’ her friend exclaimed in relief, finding Kate safely tucked up in bed and adding with concern, ‘I’d stay with you, but I promised I’d take my mother to hospital for her check-up today.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Kate assured her wanly. ‘I just need to sleep off this headache, that’s all.’

‘Well, if you’re sure...’

‘I’m sure,’ Kate insisted, only realising when Carol had gone that she ought to have asked her to telephone the office for her and explain what had happened.

Somehow just the thought of making the call herself was exhausting—and besides she needed to be sick again...

* * *

Sean frowned as his gaze flicked round Kate’s empty office. Why hadn’t she rung in? Was Oliver more seriously ill than anyone had realised?

It was the human resources department’s responsibility to check up on why Kate hadn’t reported in, not his, Sean reminded himself grimly. He was simply her employer now, and that was all.

A muscle twitched betrayingly in his jaw. Who the hell did he think he was deceiving?

He was supposed to be leaving here today, to return to headquarters for an important meeting, and he had not planned to come back until the following week.

If the woman in human resources was surprised that he should ask for Kate’s home telephone number she was professional enough not to show it, Sean acknowledged.

In the privacy of his office Sean dialled the number, his frown deepening as it rang out unanswered.

* * *

Slipping in and out of a feverish half-sleep, Kate was vaguely aware of the telephone ringing, but she felt far too ill to get up and answer it.

* * *

Sean waited until he heard Kate’s answering machine cut in before hanging up. Where on earth was she? Unwanted thoughts tormented his imagination. Kate sitting in a hospital waiting room whilst medical staff sped away with Oliver’s vulnerable little-boy body... His feeling of anguish and anxiety, combined with a need to be there, surged through him and caught him off guard.

He would feel the same concern for any young child, Sean assured himself grittily. Just as he had been himself, Oliver was a fatherless child. He knew all too well how that felt. How it hurt.

A brief telephone call to Head Office was enough to cancel his meeting. How could he chair a meeting when Oliver might be ill?

He stuck it out for as long as he could, punctuating his anxiety with several more unsuccessful telephone calls, but midway through the afternoon he threw down the papers he was supposed to be studying and reached for his jacket.

When Sean reached Kate’s house the open back door and the relief on two of the three anxious faces that turned towards him told its own story—or at least some of it.

‘Sean!’

‘Oh, thank goodness!’

As Oliver raced towards him Sean bent automatically to pick him up.

‘My mummy is very sick,’ Oliver said, causing Sean to grip Oliver tightly.

‘Kate isn’t at all well,’ Carol explained quickly. ‘In fact when I came round with Oliver after school I was so worried I sent for the doctor.’

Sean looked at the tired-looking middle-aged man who was the third member of the trio.

‘Kate appears to have contracted a particularly virulent strain of this current virus,’ he explained wearily. ‘She’s dehydrated and very weak, and in no way able to look after herself at the moment—never mind her child. She needs someone here to make sure she drinks plenty of fluids and generally look after her.’

He was looking meaningfully at Carol, who bit her lip and told him uncomfortably, ‘Normally I would have been only too happy to have Oliver to stay, but—’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Sean announced firmly, breaking into the conversation. ‘I’ll stay with Kate and look after her and Oliver. I’m her ex-husband,’ he explained tersely, when he saw the doctor beginning to frown.

‘I should warn you that she’s only semi-conscious,’ the doctor told him sharply, after Carol had left to go back to her own family. ‘And slightly delirious and confused in fact,’ he added. ‘But that will pass. She’s got a high fever, combined with stomach cramps. I have given her some medication which should start to make her feel better within the next twelve hours, although it will be considerably longer than that before she starts to recover properly and—’

‘Why the hell aren’t you admitting her to hospital?’ Sean demanded angrily.

‘For several reasons,’ the doctor answered. ‘One, I doubt very much that I could get her a bed. Two, she has a child, who will no doubt be distressed by such an action. And three, whilst she’s very unwell, her condition isn’t acute. I appreciate that looking after her isn’t going to be easy. If you’re having second thoughts then perhaps you could let me know now, because I shall have to organise some kind of temporary foster care for the child and a district nurse to call round when she can to check on my patient.’

‘Foster care! Oliver doesn’t need foster care and Kate doesn’t need the district nurse—they’ve got me,’ Sean announced protectively.

The doctor tried not to show his relief. This virus was stretching local medical resources beyond their limits.

‘Very well. Now, this is what you will have to do...’

Sean listened grimly as the doctor gave him his instructions.

Oliver was still nestled sleepily in his arms, and after the doctor had gone Oliver looked up into Sean’s face and demanded anxiously, ‘When is my mummy going to get better?’

‘Soon,’ Sean assured him calmly, but inwardly he was feeling very far from calm.

Ten minutes later, as he stood beside the bed looking down into Kate’s pale face whilst she lay frighteningly still, he felt even less so. Her left hand lay limply on top of the duvet, her fingers ringless and her nails free of polish. She had beautiful hands and fragile, delicate wrists, he reflected sombrely. They had been one the first things about her he had noticed. Now, if anything, her wrist looked even narrower than he remembered.

Suddenly she made a restless movement and turned her hand over. He could see the blueness of her veins through the fine skin. Beads of sweat burst out on her forehead and she moaned suddenly, shivering violently, her eyes opening and then widening in confusion and bewilderment as she saw him.

‘It’s all right, Kate,’ Sean reassured her as she looked vaguely up at him. But even as he was trying to reassure her Sean knew that he could not reassure himself. He could feel the heavy, agonised thud of his heartbeat.

‘My head hurts,’ Kate told him plaintively.

‘Why don’t you sit up and drink some of this water, take these tablets the doctor has left for you?’ Sean suggested gently. ‘They should bring your temperature down and help you to feel better.’

Obediently she tried to do as he suggested, but Sean could see that even the small effort of trying to sit up was too much for her.

Without giving her the chance to protest, he sat down on the bed and put his arm round her, supporting her as he plumped up the pillows.

She was wearing some kind of cotton nightshirt, which was soaked with sweat and damp, and as he supported her she started to shiver so violently that her teeth chattered together.

It made Sean’s own throat hurt to see the difficulty she had swallowing even a few sips of water.

‘My throat hurts so much,’ she whispered to him as she pushed the glass away. ‘Everything hurts.’

Automatically Sean placed his hand against her forehead.

‘That feels good,’ she told him quietly. ‘Cool.’

Sean had to swallow back the feelings both her words and the burning hot feel of her skin had aroused.

‘I feel so hot,’ she complained fretfully.

‘You’ve got a bad virus,’ Sean told her.

‘I don’t want to keep you away from work, Sean. Not with the Anderson contract to get finished.’

Her eyes were closing as he lowered her back against the pillows, and Sean watched her with a frown. The Anderson contract she had referred to was one he had worked on in the early days of their marriage.

‘Slightly delirious.’ The doctor had warned him. And she was wringing wet, burning up and shivering at the same time.

She had been his wife, his lover, and her body held no secrets from him. How could it when she had given herself so freely to him, when he had been the one to help her to explore and discover the power of its female sexuality? Even so he could feel his muscles clenching as he worked to remove her fever-sodden nightshirt, blessing the fact that it fastened down the front with buttons. Or was it a blessing? Instead of removing it quickly he was having to fight against the savage stab of arousal he felt when he exposed the pale curves of her breasts, to force himself to ignore the sensuality of her naked body and to focus on her illness instead.

Reluctant to search through her drawers for a clean nightshirt, after he had sponged down her fever-soaked body he wrapped her in a towel instead, answering the disjointed questions she asked when she woke up briefly.

By the time he was satisfied that she was both dry and warm, and was finally able to cover her with the duvet, his hands were shaking.

‘Sean?’

He froze as he realised she had woken up again. ‘Yes?’ he replied.

‘I love you so much,’ she told him simply, smiling sweetly at him before she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.

There was, Sean discovered, a dangerous pain inside his chest, and the backs of his eyes were burning, as though they had been soaked with limewash.

* * *

It was two o’clock in the morning and Sean was exhausted. Kate’s temperature seemed to have dropped a little, much to his relief. And Oliver was fast asleep in his own bed, unaware of the sharp pangs of emotion Sean had felt when Oliver had solemnly explained to him his bedtime routine.

Suppressing a yawn, Sean pushed his hand through his hair. Kate was asleep but he was reluctant to leave her.

He went into the bathroom and had a shower. It had been a long day. His eyes felt gritty and tired. He looked at the empty half of the bed. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone if he just lay down and snatched a few minutes’ sleep, was it?

* * *

Kate could feel the pain of her anguished despair. A bleak, searing sense of loss engulfed her, lacerated by panic and agonising disbelief. In her jumbled fever-induced dream she ran on leaden legs from room to room of a shadowed empty house, frantically searching for Sean whilst the icy-cold tentacles of her fear took hold of her heart.

Sean had left her and she couldn’t bear the pain of losing him. She couldn’t endure the thought of living without him. She felt bereft, abandoned, and totally alone.

The pain of her dream was unbearable, and she fought to escape from it, dragging herself frantically through the layers of sleep, crying out Sean’s name as she did so.

* * *

The moment he heard Kate cry out, Sean was awake.

‘Sean?’

He could hear the panic in her voice as she repeated his name, and even in the semi-darkness he could see how her body was shaking.

‘Kate, it’s all right,’ he tried to reassure her, and he placed his hand on her arm and leaned over her.

Kate could feel herself shaking with the intensity of the emotions flooding through her, piercing her muddled confusion. When she managed to force her eyes open she exhaled in relief. She could see Sean’s familiar outline in the bed! Sean was here. He had not left her! She had just been having a bad dream!