Templar’s shoulders, his moist pink tongue flicking deep wet kisses all over the man’s startled face.
Looking more exasperated than angry, the man frowned and stepped back. “Okay, okay, you can get down now!”
he rapped, a command that had no effect whatsoever on Scoots.
Mardi, on a wicked impulse, didn’t immediately come to the man’s rescue. “You don’t like dogs?” she asked sweetly, wondering if he was like her husband, Darrell, who’d only tolerated Scoots for Nicky’s sake.
“Well-behaved dogs,” he growled, trying to dodge Scoot’s flashing tongue. “Well-trained dogs. You’ve never thought of taking this undisciplined pooch to a training school?”
Mardi’s chin rose, her eyes glinting at the criticism. “I trained Scoots myself. He’ll settle down in a minute. He’s just checking you out.” She paused, adding in some surprise, “He must like you. He doesn’t jump up on everybody. He’d be growling if he didn’t like you.”
Cain Templar looked as if he’d prefer to be growled at than jumped on with dirty paws and a slobbering tongue.
Taking pity on him, Mardi belatedly pulled Scoots back away from him with a mildly scolding, “Down, Scoots, that’s enough! Nicky, take him round the back, will you, before he wrecks the gentleman’s fine suit.” She was careful not to mention her visitor’s name. “And shut the side gate after you.”
She felt a certain wicked satisfaction at the thought of Cain Templar’s suit being ruined. Maybe because it reminded her of Darrell’s expensive designer suits and his other wild extravagances. Extravagances that had left his widow and young son penniless and in crushing debt.
“I’m sure it will survive,” Cain Templar said dryly, brushing himself off.
And I’m sure you could afford to buy another one if it didn’t, Mardi reflected, and paused to wonder if he actually could afford to buy his fine Italian suits, or if he was another Darrell, living well beyond his means.
Of course he wasn’t. He was Cain Templar, the genuinely wealthy, highly successful merchant banker, whose glamorous wife, Sylvia, had been having an affair with her husband. And the Templars’ home, which Darrell, her insatiably ambitious, social-climbing lawyer husband, had visited often and gone into raptures about, but which she had never seen or been invited to, was a magnificent harborside mansion in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs.
She turned away, watching Nicky and Scoots until they disappeared round the side of the house. How insensitive of this man to come here. His wife had ruined her life—ruined her son’s life!
Mardi glowered. If only she hadn’t fallen sick with the flu last September! Darrell had first met Sylvia Templar on the very morning he’d driven Nicky to kindergarten for the first time. Sylvia’s husband, she recalled Darrell mentioning at the time, had just left on a two-month overseas business trip. How convenient that had turned out to be!
From the moment he met her, Darrell had openly raved about “Benjamin’s beautiful mother,” and how she was the perfect corporate wife…an asset to her husband and a real help to his career as a merchant banker. “She’s an example to other wives,” he’d enthused in his typically insensitive fashion. “Always impeccably groomed, beautifully dressed, the perfect hostess, at ease in any company…And she knows everybody—everybody who matters, that is. You could learn a lot from her.”
Yeah…like how to play around with other women’s husbands.
Darrell had relentlessly encouraged his son’s friendship with Sylvia’s five-year-old son, Ben, inviting Benjamin to their home at weekends and allowing Nicky to visit their home in return.
Mardi had tried, for her son’s sake, to be friendly with Sylvia on the few occasions they’d met, either when Benjamin came to play, or on the rare evenings Darrell invited Sylvia to their home for a dinner party, along with Darrell’s successful, influential friends and business colleagues. But usually he’d preferred to dine out. Without his wife.
How naive and unsuspecting she’d been! Even when Darrell started giving Sylvia Templar so-called “legal advice,” which meant he had to see her more often still, for lunches or intimate dinners for two, or to attend Sylvia’s fund-raising events, Mardi still didn’t suspect—or she’d tried not to. She loathed jealousy and suspicion in wives, and with Sylvia’s husband away, it was understandable—or so she managed to convince herself—that Darrell, as the woman’s lawyer, would want to keep a close eye on her.
Looking back, it was painfully obvious that Darrell had fallen hook, line and sinker for Sylvia Templar’s glossy wealth, glamour and impeccable social connections—to say nothing of her luxurious home and lifestyle.
Mardi had been so gullible! She still had no idea when Darrell’s so-called “innocent relationship” with the beautiful Sylvia had changed into a fully fledged affair. She only knew that on the last Sunday in November, a couple of months after the two met, her husband and Cain Templar’s wife had died together in a car crash in the Blue Mountains on a night when Darrell was supposedly returning from a law-ethics weekend conference in the mountains.
The gleaming BMW that Darrell had bought only two months earlier, courtesy of a hefty bank loan, had been wrecked beyond repair.
Neither Mardi nor Benjamin Templar’s father had sent their sons back to the kindergarten for the final week of the term, or made any attempt to bring the boys together during the long summer break. Mardi, for her part, had wanted nothing more to do with the Templar family.
She’d assumed that Cain Templar had felt a similar disdain for her family. Maybe he’d wanted to keep away from them, but his son had finally worn him down, just as Nicky had been trying to do to her.
But to bring the boys together again now would be a ghastly mistake! She’d be moving away very soon, so why make it even more difficult for Nicky? For both boys?
Reluctantly she turned back. “You say you’re here because of Benjamin,” she said cautiously, frowning up at him.
“That’s right. My son—” He stopped, his head jerking toward the open window at the front of the house. “Can you smell something burning?”
“Oh, heck!” She spun round. “My cake! My pie!”
Chapter Two
Mardi groaned as she dumped the charred remains of her pie and cake on the sink. Tonight’s dinner ruined! She couldn’t afford disasters like this.
She rushed to the window and opened it, then began fanning the air with a tea towel.
“This is my fault,” Cain Templar apologized from behind, and she swung round, not realizing that he’d followed her to the kitchen.
“Well, yes, it is,” she agreed, in no mood for her usual politeness. What was she going to do about tonight’s dinner? “But there’s nothing much you can do about it.” She turned back to the sink. The pie was completely shriveled and dried out, but maybe she could cut off the charred edges of the cake and examine it to find out if the interior was still edible.
But she certainly wasn’t going to try that in front of Cain Templar! It would look ridiculously penny-pinching to someone with his millions. If it happened to him,
