Elizabeth Power - The Disobedient Wife

“You do,” Kendal continued.

“That’s different,” Jarrad responded.

“Why? Because I was a wife and mother?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you still are!” His temper was clearly near boiling.

“And I suppose that means I should be in your kitchen! In your bed!”

“And what’s wrong with that? At least half the time, anyway!”

It was all she could do not to fling at him that she had been there—always. She’d been his for the taking, too crazily in love with him, even without the devastating ecstasies he had branded upon her body.

Always his, until Lauren had intruded….

ELIZABETH POWER was born in Bristol, England, where she lives with her husband in a three-hundred-year-old cottage. A keen reader, as a teenager she had already made up her mind to be a novelist, although it wasn’t until she was around thirty that she took up writing seriously. As an animal lover, with a strong leaning toward vegetarianism, her interests include organic vegetable gardening, regular exercise, listening to music, fashion and ministering to the demands of her adopted, generously proportioned cat!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

‘NOW let’s get this straight!’

Jarrad swung away from the window, the angry glitter in his cold blue eyes displacing the shock in the autocratic framework of his hard, handsome face, a face she had fallen so desperately in love with nearly three years ago. Only this wasn’t three years ago—it was now, Kendal reminded herself bitterly, the head she flung up revealing features that were both delicate and vulnerable—the red of her controlled, wild hair evincing an equally controlled yet fiery nature as she faced the man standing, glowering at her from behind the desk, bracing herself for the onslaught she had expected would follow.

‘You walk out of my life nearly a year ago. Disappear for six months so that I don’t know where the hell you are or what you’re doing, and then you calmly waltz in here and inform me that you’re going abroad—and taking my child with you! Well, I’m sorry, Kendal, but the answer’s no. A definite and categorical no!’

Tension gripped her insides as he turned again to glare out on the sunny June morning and the city traffic seven floors below.

London was going about its business, a silent world behind the effective double glazing, effective and efficient like the man who stood with his back turned squarely against her, every muscle taut with opposition from those wide shoulders down to that lean, hard waist beneath the fine tailoring of his shirt. The man who owned not just Third Millennium Systems International—one of the names in computer software—but the very building it stood in. And who, until a year ago, had thought he owned her, Kendal Mitchell… She tasted his name like some bitter elixir she had had no will to resist taking. Her, as well as their little son, Matthew.

‘You seem to forget something, Jarrad.’ Her voice was steady, concealing the nerves that racked her at just having to face him again. ‘Believe it or not, he’s our son.’

Those dark features, always somewhat uncompromising, were close to formidable as he turned back to her, that high forehead and straight, aristocratic nose harshened by the steely determination of that forceful jaw and that almost black hair that grew, thick and springy, to curl just below his immaculate white collar.

‘I’m glad you reminded me.’ That voice, deep and richly toned—that once had rendered her helpless with its powers of seduction—was now strung only with sarcasm. ‘I was of the opinion that you thought I had no right to even see Matthew—let alone have any say in his future. What have you been doing anyway for the past six months?’ He came round and positioned himself on the edge of the desk, just in front of her, exuding a raw energy from the disciplined fitness in the long, hard lines of his body. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

Hardly daring to breathe, in case the slightest movement should cause her to accidentally touch him, Kendal refused to shrink back against her seat as every instinct was warning her she should.

‘I needed the break. I had to get away.’ Darn it! Why are you letting him make you sound so defensive? she berated herself, hearing her own voice croak. ‘I went to Scotland.’

‘Working?’

‘No.’

One of those thick eyebrows lifted in almost mocking scepticism. ‘So the world of interior design has had to manage without you for a while?’

She didn’t respond. She knew only too well what he thought about her working. Wasn’t that what most of the rows had been about?

‘So why Scotland?’

Beneath the chic green suit she could feel herself growing clammy under his harsh interrogation, but with feigned nonchalance she lifted one elegantly padded shoulder. ‘Why not Scotland?’

‘Answer me!’

Kendal’s breath seemed to lock in her lungs. What could she say? Because when you knew where I was you wouldn’t leave me alone! Because you knew that if you kept on at me enough I’d come back, that I wouldn’t be able to resist you! It was the one reason she had jumped at the chance of this job in the States—to get away from him. From the fear of ever again succumbing to his lethal sexuality.

That impervious note in his voice compelled her to respond. ‘It was the farthest place I could think of from London where I could be on my own for a while. Where I could think.’

‘So now you’ve thought and you’ve decided you want to use your impeccable talents where the opportunities are and carve out a name for yourself in the New World—with Matthew in tow. Is that it, dearest?’ There was nothing but sheer, undiluted menace behind his smile.

‘No, I—’ He was making it sound so mercenary. As though money was the only thing that mattered.

‘Oh, don’t be modest, darling. If I recall, you used to have clients clamouring by the dozen. I seem to remember you being on the phone from morning till night!’

‘Hardly,’ she uttered in defence of herself, of the small business she had needed, and had been trying to build through the long, last traumatic weeks of her marriage. ‘And it isn’t only for money,’ she felt the need to tell him. ‘If I’d wanted money I could have come to you.’

‘Yes.’ His chest expanded beneath the pristine white shirt, and for a moment she almost imagined his sigh to be one of audible regret because, of course, he knew that that was the last thing in the world she would ever have done. ‘But it’s something else, isn’t it, Kendal? It’s the buzz you get out of that stubborn need to be independent—the climb to the top regardless.’

‘It isn’t regardless!’ A toss of her bright head revealed the long, slender line of her throat, the pulse beating angrily in its secret hollow. ‘And what’s wrong with my having ambitions anyway?’ Again she could feel the age-old arguments surfacing, refusing to be quelled. ‘You do.’ ‘That’s different.’