at the time, as almost immediately she had discovered why she had been hired.
He was thinking of getting married, he’d told her, and wanted the best possible taste for the house he’d had specially built for his bride-to-be. He’d seen some of Kendal’s artistic expertise at the home of a friend who had just happened to be one of Kendal’s clients—as well as having seen it at Chrissie’s—and he was giving her an entirely free hand with the decor.
She hadn’t wanted to do it. She had still been daunted by the formidable strength of her dangerous fascination for him. And, as well, she’d been stupidly hurt that he could have pursued her as he had and now expected her to decorate his home for the woman he’d chosen to be his bride when she’d shown—and only for her own self-protection—that she wasn’t interested. It had been like the ultimate put-down. Besides, she’d wondered what sort of woman he was marrying who would welcome having her entire furnishings chosen by someone else.
As she could give her boss no good reason for not going ahead with the job, however, she had had little choice but to accept it.
He had continued to treat her then only as he would have treated any business associate. In fact during those times when he had cause to contact her he had been almost exasperatingly aloof, which, she acknowledged with bitter irony now, had been the surest way—if he’d wanted to get her into his bed—to make her drop her guard. And he had known that, known how fragile her immunity to him was by the time he’d first invited her to lunch.
When he did, however, it was purely on a business basis, although over that first lengthy meal in that elaborate restaurant, she caught snatches of the humour that could twist his hard mouth into a devastating smile; saw glimpses of what she wanted to believe was the lonely man behind the forceful dynamo she’d originally feared. The orphaned boy come good who, despite all his riches, had no real family of his own. The youth who had made it through a tough secondary school and an even tougher neighbourhood to emerge a bright scholar with eventually a university degree, bringing all his knowledge of business systems management into a company that seemed both high-flying and secure.
When it collapsed, he was in a position to take it over, engaging Ralph as the company accountant and the efficient Lauren, who had been an up-and-coming manager, as his second-in-command. And the rest, as they say, was history…
All this Kendal learned not only from snippets he dropped in casually at that lunch but from other lunches that followed, and from Ralph. She had been keen to pump her brother-in-law dry, thirsty for every trickle of knowledge he could convey to her about his enigmatic employer. She warned herself that he was marrying someone else, that the only reason he was seeing her at all was because he needed her artistic skills, that she meant nothing to him beyond a simple means to an end—and that he meant nothing to her, either. But the warnings and the false convictions fell on deaf ears. She was already desperately in love with him.
Both Chrissie and Ralph knew, of course, how crazy she was about him, although she didn’t say a word to them. She worked swiftly and diligently, praying for the day when the job would be finished so that she wouldn’t have to face him again—be reminded of what she had missed by snubbing him as she had originally—so that she could retreat from the folly of her hopeless emotions.
And then the lunches became the odd dinner, not in the formal hotel restaurants where he had taken her to discuss business but in cosier, more intimate little places, where they shared amusing anecdotes and exchanged confidences. And where, in spite of all that—the intimacy and the romance and the laughter—he would resort to talking about his forthcoming marriage as coldly as though none of it mattered.
And afterwards, walking her back to the car, he would resume that air of exasperating detachment until she wanted to scream with frustration, forget that he was someone else’s and throw herself into those cold, indifferent arms. Sometimes she thought, with hurt and embarrassed mortification, that he knew exactly how she felt, and that he’d only engaged her after he’d decided to marry because he knew how hard he could make her fall and wanted to punish her for rejecting him as she had. The male ego being what it was, she convinced herself of it.
Only on that last day, when she called to inspect the result of the work she had put in progress, had there been any change in his attitude towards her, and then only by chance, she thought at first. She could only laugh at herself for her stupid naivety now.
They were in the master suite—of all places!—having gone through every room together so that she could satisfy herself that everything had been done according to her original plans. While he was distantly complimentary that day, praising her taste and her professional abilities, she felt as though she was dying inside, thinking that it was over, that she would never see him again.
Then she came round the bed, after checking that everything was in place in the dressing room and the en suite bathroom, only to trip over a corner of the duvet, and somehow—she didn’t quite know how—she wound up in his arms.
He looked at her for a moment, as though seeking the mutual desire burning in her eyes that she couldn’t have kept from him even if she had wanted to, her mind and body not just willing, but silently begging for the kisses he had so cleverly denied them both. Because it had been calculated, that moment of surrender, right down to the nth degree—and by a man who only played to win!
But, as she had learned through experience—and to her cost, she reflected bitterly now—one kiss between them could never be enough, just as that first kiss proved not to be. Because it hadn’t been just a tender exchange of feeling between two people who might have been falling in love, but a blinding, explosive union of man and woman in a hungry meeting of mouths that had only imitated the true act, and that had had her pushing away from him in sudden realisation of the seriousness of what she was allowing to happen.
‘You’re getting married!’ she had protested, on a breathless sob.
‘Yes.’ He’d sounded cold, totally remorseless in comparison.
‘Then don’t you think you’re being a little unfair?’ she remembered saying, perplexed, hurting to think he could simply use her and then walk away.
‘Unfair?’ He looked as though he didn’t fully understand. ‘Unfair to whom?’ he queried.
‘Well, to me. Her…’ she uttered, shaken by his total lack of morals. But he merely shrugged.
‘Not if I haven’t asked her yet. And I haven’t,’ he surprised her by saying then. ‘I only said I was thinking about getting married. There is a difference. Whether I do or not depends on you.’
‘On me?’ She wasn’t able to follow, so taken aback was she by this sudden turnaround of events.
‘Wise up, darling.’ He laughed then, and told her the truth. Getting her to decorate his home had been the only way he knew to become part of her life without her running away from him, and he laughed again later, when she accused him of trapping her by deceit.
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I only wanted to show you what you were too afraid to realise you wanted.’ But this was only much later, among the soft, virgin folds of the duvet where he had made her his.
One week later, he slipped an engagement ring on her finger, and they were married within six more. Three months after that she was expecting Matthew, passionately happy and content…
Now she blinked angrily at the tears that stung her eyes, glancing down at her watch.
Blast Jarrad Mitchell! she thought. Matthew was all that mattered to her now! And, grabbing her keys, she darted out through the French doors to collect him, as though just the whisper of his father’s presence in her life again could have the power to spirit the little boy away from her.
Tony telephoned the next morning. He had tickets for the theatre that coming Saturday, he told her, given to him by a grateful client.
’I thought you might like to go,’ he suggested, and Kendal could imagine him sitting there behind his disorderly desk with his pleasant face hopeful—though not unduly concerned—beneath