Читать книгу It Started With... Collection - Miranda Lee - Страница 33

SHE emerged after only two minutes, leading a little clone of herself by the hand. Black curly hair. Pale skin. Square jaw.

Jessie’s expression, when she saw him waiting for her by his car, was a mixture of surprise and irritation. Her daughter’s big brown eyes carried curiosity and delight.

Introductions were made rather reluctantly, with Jessie calling him Mr Marshall.

Emily gave him an odd look. Some of the delight had gone out of her eyes. ‘Are you my mummy’s new boss?’ she asked. ‘The one who made her late?’

‘I am,’ Kane confessed. ‘But I’m going to make it up to you both by driving you home, then ordering a couple of pizzas to eat for dinner so that Mummy doesn’t have to cook tonight.’

He’d opened both passenger doors invitingly whilst delivering this plan for the evening to a frowning Emily. When he glanced up at Jessie to find out her reaction, a rather strange smile was playing on her generous mouth.

‘Is there a problem with that idea?’ he asked, looking from mother to daughter.

‘Mummy won’t let me go in any car that hasn’t got a proper car seat,’ Emily announced primly whilst Mummy just kept on smiling. ‘And Mummy won’t let me eat pizzas. She says they’re rubbish.’

‘Aah. Headed off at the pass,’ Kane muttered. ‘Calls for right-flank action. OK, how about I walk home with you and Mummy? That way I’ll know where you live for future reference. Then I can come back and get the car whilst you find out from your mummy what I can buy you both for dinner.’

‘We always eat with Dora on a Monday,’ the little powerhouse of information countered. ‘Today is a Monday. Isn’t that right, Mummy?’

‘Yes, sweetie,’ her mother said. With great satisfaction in her voice, Kane noted ruefully.

‘Checkmate, I think,’ Jessie added with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

Kane’s teeth clenched hard in his jaw. He’d see those eyes glitter for a different reason one day. Or he wasn’t the guy voted most likely to succeed!

‘Is that the correct metaphor?’ he asked, his soft voice belying his hard resolve. ‘Besides, chess is just a game. This is war. I will reconsider my tactics on the way to your house.’

Slamming the car doors, he zapped the lock, slipped the keys in his trouser pocket, then faced the enemy with one of his how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people smiles.

‘May I carry your bag for you, little lady?’ he offered, reaching for the small backpack which Emily had been dragging along the pavement.

‘I can carry my own bag, thank you very much,’ she informed him pertly. Although she needed her mother’s help to put it on.

Kane slanted Jessie a droll look. ‘A new feminist in training?’

‘No. An independent spirit. Everyone needs to be one of those these days to survive.’

‘You could be right. OK, how about you carry the bag, Emily, but I’ll carry you?’

Without waiting for her next objection, Kane hoicked Emily up to sit on his shoulders, one leg on each side of his head. She really was very light, even with a bag on her back.

‘You wrap your arms around my neck and I’ll hold your feet,’ he told her. But when he grabbed her sandal-clad feet, a shower of sand sprayed down the front of his designer suit.

‘What the…?’

‘Emily spends a good deal of each afternoon in the sandpit,’ Jessie explained without any apologies.

‘Right,’ Kane said through gritted teeth.

‘It’ll brush off easily enough,’ Jessie told him blithely. ‘Here… Look…’

He stiffened when she started brushing him down.

‘I think the sand’s all gone now,’ he said curtly after a minute’s torture.

She kept on doing it. ‘I don’t want you blaming me for ruining your lovely suit. Italian, is it?’

‘Yes.’ He named its designer.

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘I should have guessed.’

At last, she took her hands off him.

‘OK, you’ve been returned to your usual sartorial splendour. Let’s walk.’

Kane was very relieved to walk. Still, his reaction to her merely brushing his hands down over his chest gave him an inkling of how incredible it would be to have her touch him without clothes on.

‘It’s fun!’ Emily’s excited voice brought Kane back to the moment in hand. He’d loved riding on his father’s shoulders as a child.

‘It’s a bit like horse-riding,’ he said. ‘Have you ever been horse-riding, Emily?’

‘Yeah, I take her every weekend,’ Jessie muttered under her breath beside him. ‘When I can fit it in between the ballet and the violin lessons.’

Fortunately, Emily didn’t hear her mother’s sarcasm.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she said politely. ‘Mummy, can I go horse-riding?’ she asked in all innocence.

‘There aren’t any horses in the city, sweetie,’ Jessie replied. ‘We’d have to drive out into the country and we’d need a car for that. We don’t have a car.’

‘I’ll take you,’ Kane said, and was rewarded with the most savage glare from Jessie.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ she bit out.

‘But I want to,’ he said. ‘I’d enjoy it.’

And it was true. He would enjoy it.

‘When?’ Emily chimed in. ‘When?’

‘Soon,’ Kane promised.

‘Not till after Christmas,’ Jessie intervened abruptly. ‘We’re all too busy before Christmas. On top of that, Mr Marshall would have to get a proper child seat before we could go anywhere in his car. Such things take time.’

Her slightly smug smile suggested to Kane that she thought that getting a car seat would be just too much trouble.

‘Kane,’ he said firmly. ‘You are to call me Kane. Not Mr Marshall.’

‘Very well. This way…Kane.’

She led him round a corner that brought them into a tree-lined street that was much quieter than the road the day-care centre was on. Emily had fun picking leaves off the trees, her happy chatter distracting the two adults from their verbal foreplay.

Because that was what it was. Kane knew it, even if Jessie didn’t. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She was just too cynical about men to give in to her desire and just go with the flow. She thought if she delayed the inevitable, Christmas would come, he’d leave Wild Ideas and that would be that. Out of the office and out of her life.

Kane refused to be deterred. The more difficult she was, the more he was determined to have her, not just in his bed, but in his life. His feelings might not be true love as yet, but they were more than lust. Oh, yes, much more.

Five minutes later, she stopped to open the front gate of a delightful old Federation house. It had a lovely rose garden on either side of a paved front path that led up to an enclosed front porch and a front door with stained-glass panels on either side.

Dear Dora, it seemed, was not exactly poor. Homes like this in Roseville were not cheap. Kane wondered if she rented out her granny flat to Jessie and Emily more for the company than the money.

‘I’ll have to put you down now, Emily,’ he said as he approached the front steps. ‘Otherwise you’ll hit your head on the porch roof.’

Jessie’s heart turned over as she watched Kane lift Emily off his shoulders and set her gently down. The look of adoration that her child gave him made her want to hit the bastard.

Because that was what he was being. A right bastard. Using Emily to get to her.

Well, it wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t going to bed with him now, no matter how much she’d wanted to when she’d been brushing him down a few minutes back. The man was built, all right. Clearly, he worked out a lot.

Dora must have heard them arrive because she whisked open the front door before anyone rang the bell.

Jessie had to laugh at the look on her face when she saw Kane.

‘This is Mr Marshall,’ Emily piped up. ‘Mummy’s new boss. But he likes to be called Kane. He wanted to drive us home but he didn’t have a car seat for me, so Mummy said no. But his car is lovely,’ she rattled on. ‘It’s very shiny and silver. He’s going to take me in it to go horse-riding after Christmas. He’s going to have a car seat by then. He wanted to buy us pizza tonight but Mummy said no. Can he come to dinner, Dora? You always cook too much food. Mummy said so last Monday night.’

Jessie was besieged by a mixture of pride that her four-year-old daughter could talk so well, and embarrassment at the ingenuous content of her chatter.

Dora just laughed. She was used to Emily. Kane looked genuinely enchanted, which confused Jessie to no end. Was he that good an actor, or did he really like Emily?

She would have thought a man who didn’t want his own children would be more impatient and less kind.

He must really want to go to bed with me an awful lot, Jessie decided, not sure if she felt flattered or infuriated.

‘I’ll have to pop a few extra potatoes in,’ Dora said. ‘It’s roast lamb tonight. Do you like roast lamb, Mr Marshall?’

‘Love it. And it’s Kane, remember?’

‘Kane,’ Dora repeated. ‘But I thought…’ And she threw Jessie a frowning glance.

‘Would you believe Kane has a twin brother named Curtis?’ Jessie replied. ‘An identical twin brother? He’s married, whereas Kane is divorced.’

‘Really?’ Dora said, enlightenment in her eyes. ‘Fancy that!’

‘Yes,’ Jessie agreed drily. ‘Fancy that.’

‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters,’ Emily said with a sigh. ‘That’s because my daddy died.’

‘Yes, your mummy told me about that, Emily,’ Kane said, squatting down to her height. ‘That was very sad. But you’re sure to get a new daddy one day. Your mummy’s a very pretty lady. Would you like a new daddy?’

Before Emily had a chance to reply, Jessie hurried over and swept her up into her arms. ‘Enough idle chit-chat. We have to get Emily bathed and changed before dinner. Why don’t you stay and talk with Dora, Kane, while I do that? Dora, ply our guest here with some of your cream sherry. That should keep him out of mischief.’

‘I don’t ever drink and drive,’ Kane replied, an amused lift to the corner of his mouth. ‘But I’m sure Dora and I can find plenty of subjects to talk about whilst I watch her cook.’ And he gave Jessie a look which implied that by the time she returned for Dora’s roast-lamb dinner, he’d know everything there was to know about her.

She and Dora had had many deep and meaningful discussions over the last year or so, and women, unlike men, usually told the truth about themselves. A clever questioner could find out anything he wanted to know.

Jessie suspected she’d just made a tactical error.

But it was too late now.

She comforted herself with the knowledge that no matter what Kane discovered, she still had her own mind, and her own will-power. He couldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

The trouble was that deep down, in that hidden woman’s place which she’d been ignoring for over four years, the craving to be made love to was growing.

Sexual temptation was a wicked thing. Dark and powerful and primitive. It was not swayed by reason, or pride. It was fed by need, and fanned by desire. She wanted Kane’s body inside her much more than Dora’s roast dinner.

She wanted him in ways that she’d never wanted Lyall.

So what are you going to do about it, Jessie? she asked herself bluntly as she went through the motions of giving her daughter a bath.

‘Mummy,’ Emily said as Jessie massaged the no-tears shampoo through her thick curls.

‘Mmm?’ Jessie murmured a bit blankly. Her mind was elsewhere, after all.

‘I like Kane. He’s nice.’

‘Yes, yes, he is.’

‘Do you like him, Mummy?’

‘I…well…I…’

‘He likes you.’

Jessie sighed. No point in trying to pull the wool over Emily’s eyes. Or in lying. Not if she eventually gave in and went out with Kane on Friday night.

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘I think perhaps he does.’

Jessie waited for the next question. But none came. Emily just sat there in silence.

Jessie bent down to see the expression on her daughter’s face. But it carried that brilliantly blank look which her daughter could adopt when she wanted to hide her feelings from her mother.

‘Emily Denton, what are you thinking?’ Jessie demanded to know.

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t lie to me. Tell.’

‘I was thinking about Christmas, Mummy. Does Santa always give you what you ask for?’

Jessie was glad of this change of subject. ‘He does, if you’re a good girl.’

‘I’m a good girl.’

Jessie smiled and gave her daughter a kiss and a cuddle. ‘You surely are. You have nothing to worry about, sweetie. Come Christmas Day, you’re going to get absolutely everything you asked for.’