hard finger towards the floor ‘—where he belongs, with his mother—for the time being—if it isn’t too much trouble! Not with some hired help who’s paid to step in whenever his mother decides she’s too busy to care for him herself!’
His words cut her to the quick so that she almost wanted to lash out at him. But despite her quickly roused temper—even after the way he had wronged her while she had still been living with him—she had never quite degraded herself by striking him.
‘How dare you?’ she breathed, choking on the thought that he might even consider that she was anything but a good mother to Matthew.
‘Yes, I dare,’ he uttered with soft intimidation. ‘It’s my legal right as your husband and—more significantly—as your child’s father. And talking of rights—I intend to claim them. And we’ll start with visiting rights—as of now! I’ll be away from tonight on a conference that’s going to take at least till the middle of next week. But I’ll be round again next Friday afternoon at two. Be here, and see that Matthew’s here as well. I intend to take him home with me for as long as I desire to have him. And you’re coming with him!’
‘No!’ Panic strung her voice at the mere thought of what he was suggesting. Of course he could see Matthew, but there was no way that she was going back to the matrimonial home that she had run from in such hopeless despair a year ago.
He took no heed of her startled objection, though, only added, ‘And if you don’t like it, then I’m afraid, my dearest, you can darn well lump it, because those are the conditions. And if he isn’t here, Kendal, there’ll be hell to pay!’
He stormed out then, leaving her standing, alone and shaken, listening to the angry growl of the Porsche she presumed he still drove. That determined thrust of power as he pulled away reflected his mood, breaking the stillness of the day, before he turned the corner and the growl became a roar and then faded away altogether.
After he had gone, Kendal found it impossible to concentrate, her earlier enthusiasm for the Arkwrights’ job having totally deserted her.
Why couldn’t he leave her alone?
The question screamed through her brain as it had done so many times during those first six months after she had taken Matthew and fled.
She had gone first to a hotel—because she hadn’t wanted to burden the newly separated and unhappy Chrissie—then to the comfortable, moderately priced accommodation she had rented to the mutual benefit of herself and an old school-friend who had taken a temporary job away from London. But Jarrad had persisted in pursuing her, which had eventually driven her to Scotland—but of course she knew why. There was no mystery to it. He wanted his son, to be with him, see him grow up.
She could understand that. Didn’t it hurt and distress her enough that she had had to deprive her child of a normal family life because of his father’s infidelity, just as she and Chrissie had been deprived because of their own father’s infidelity to their mother? But, whether she desired it or not, Jarrad also wanted her, Kendal, and she knew now that it wasn’t just so that she could be a mother to Matthew.
She flopped down onto a chair, dropping her head in her hands to try and banish the shaming memory of the sensations that had flared so dangerously to life in her again the instant he had touched her, sensations she had hoped crushed by time and the torturous reality of his affair with Lauren. But they hadn’t been, and she had to admit now that it wasn’t just a one-sided thing—that powerful sexual chemistry that governed everything he said and did. It was totally reciprocal, and always had been, right from the first day they had met.
She had tried to ignore it at first—this mutual and terrifying attraction—to ignore the feelings that had come to startling life within her from the first moment she had seen him at Chrissie and Ralph’s wedding. He had been Ralph’s boss after all. But even without knowing that she wouldn’t have failed to recognise those qualities that had made Jarrad Mitchell a leader—successful as well as immensely wealthy. The determined purpose, the daunting self-confidence and the compelling energy with that cool, unmistakable air of command.
These were qualities she had known and feared, had always been wary of, because hadn’t her father been as successful in his own field? And just as Chrissie had fallen for and married the first man who had come into her young life, Kendal herself, conversely, had always been the cautious one. Her distrust of men had kept her aloof, with the result that she had had no more than brief, uninvolved, and certainly non-intimate relationships with the opposite sex by the time she’d met Jarrad. Nor had any other man she’d met tugged so vibrantly at her senses.
Which was why, when he’d taken her hand during their introduction after the photo session, it had been like putting a match to blue touch paper! she thought drily now.
She had managed to treat him with only polite reserve at Chrissie’s wedding, to dodge his persistent attempts, during those weeks that had followed, to get her into his life. Because he’d made that intention clear, sometimes turning up at Chrissie’s, sometimes telephoning her when she’d been in the office, sometimes appearing at some social gathering where she’d happened to be, although he’d always seemed to have some practical reason for being there.
Yet, during all that time, though her physical impulses had been urging her to give in and go out with him—plunge in with both feet and embark on the most dangerous and exciting adventure of her life—her strong-willed determination—which she had often employed to control what she knew was a naturally impetuous nature, and which had kept her from getting hurt—had won. So that at last, it seemed, he had lost interest.
That was until nearly a year later, when she had been sent by her firm to use her design skills on the newly constructed, beautifully appointed home of a new client, only to find that it was him.
He had been so impeccably formal then, that she hadn’t dared to question his motives. And it was just as well, she had thought with an absurd and shocked dismay 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
