The Disobedient Wife

“What’s wrong with my having ambitions?

“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!

The Disobedient Wife

Elizabeth Power

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘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.’

‘Why? Because I was a wife and mother?’

‘As far as I’m concerned you still are!’ His tone was angry, his temper 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!’

‘Ha ha!’ It was all she could do not to fling at him that she had been there—always. Had been his for the taking, her heart, mind and soul too crazily in love with him even without the devastating ecstasies he had branded upon her body. Always his, until Lauren had intruded…

For a moment she felt his eyes, like twin lasers, burning through the thin veneer of her composure. A tendril of hair had come loose from her carefully arranged French pleat, and she fastened the recalcitrant red strand behind her ear with surprisingly shaky fingers, sensing those shrewd eyes following her every movement, those proud nostrils distend as though seeking the familiar scent of her perfume.

The briefest smile caused his mouth to curve with devastating sensuality, and Kendal’s nerves seemed to stretch taut as she recalled how often that look had preceded nights of endless ecstasy in his arms.

‘You turn up here, looking like some model off a catwalk, in the colour I always told you suited you best, reeking to high heaven of Givenchy. What was all this intended to do, darling?’ The smile was gone now. ‘Soften me up? Remind me of what I’ve been missing all these months and get me to agree to your ludicrous, and, if I might say so, characteristically selfish request?’

So he wouldn’t allow Matthew to go.

Kendal’s spirits sank although her head came up in a bright flame of defiance as she breathed through glossed lips. ‘Did anybody ever have the power to soften you, Jarrad?’

He sank his hands into his pockets, which brought her gaze reluctantly to his hard abdomen and the taut fitness of his thighs beneath the expensive cut of dark suit trousers.

‘You should know,’ he rasped, and for a moment something murky and tumultuous clouded the usual vital glitter in his eyes. ‘Although “soft” is probably far from how I would describe my responses to you.’

Kendal’s heart struck up a crazy rhythm, and colour showed on the pale sheen of her cheeks.

‘You would say something like that, wouldn’t you?’ she accused him breathlessly, jumping up to put a safer distance between herself and that potent, powerful masculinity.

‘Why not?’ His mockery was harsh, relentless. ‘It was about the only thing that was any good between us.’

‘No, you’re wrong!’ She wanted to forget it, to deny, if only to herself, that she had ever derived pleasure from this man’s lovemaking, that he had taken her, sobbing, mindless, through the very gates of paradise. ‘There was only Matthew!’

‘Ah yes, Matthew…’ He straightened and moved away from the desk, his height topping hers by half a head. The lean athleticism of his body and that compelling presence that had never failed to take her breath away succeeded now, so that for a moment her defences were stripped and impetuously she blurted out, ‘You’ve got to let me go.’

‘Why?’

There was danger in his cool study, and a flash of panic showed beneath the unusual green of her eyes.

‘I’m not stopping you,’ he said, turning away.

‘You know what I mean.’ She could hear herself starting to beg. ‘I mean Matthew. You’ve got to let me take him—’

‘No!’ The sheer violence of his refusal made her visibly flinch as he swung back to face her. ‘I haven’t got to do anything,’ he reminded her with cruel, intimidating softness.

‘So I lose the chance of this contract? Just because you’re being so petty-minded?’

She watched him go back to his desk and sit down, as though he were merely discussing a matter of the day’s filing.

‘I don’t call it being petty-minded—wanting to keep my son where I can be directly involved with his upbringing.’ He took the top off his pen, the gold fountain pen he always used, the one that she had given him for his thirty-second birthday two years ago. ‘You can go without him.’

Kendal caught her breath. ‘You know I won’t do that,’ she said, moving back over to the desk.

‘I know.’

Unbelievably he had resumed writing, that dark head bent in concentration. Scribbling some trifling note to his secretary, probably! she thought, frustration overcoming her so that before she could control herself she was grabbing the note from under that long, tanned hand.

‘You bastard!’ The crumpled paper hit his cheek before dropping onto the thick carpet beside his chair.

‘Yes!’ She gasped as with lightning reflexes he caught her wrist, twisting her arm, forcing her over the desk towards him. ‘But then we already know that, don’t we? Which is probably the reason you married me!’

She laughed in spite of the turbulent sensations that were gushing through her from the contact of those hard, tenacious fingers, a contact that was designed merely to humiliate—to crush.

‘Oh, sure! Spitefulness and brutality appeals to me!’ she breathed, her green eyes dancing. ‘Aren’t you getting confused with the reason I left?’

She tried to wrest her hand from his, the struggle only succeeding in loosening the clasp in her hair, bringing a sea of red waves tumbling down across her shoulder.

‘Now, that’s how I like you.’ He grunted in cold approval. ‘Ruffled and undignified and stripped of all those falsely cultivated airs! And perhaps you’d mind telling me again just why you walked out on me, Kendal? And don’t try to convince yourself I was anything other than tender with you. Except, of course, when you wanted me to be otherwise…’

It took all her strength, but she managed to free herself as everything that was feminine in her throbbed with the recollection of just how tender this man knew how to be.

‘Wasn’t incarceration and infidelity enough? You wanted a dutiful little wife at home while you carried on your secret little liaison with Lauren Westgate! Only it wasn’t secret, was it, Jarrad? Ralph found out—which was the real reason he had to go! Why you fired him! You and Lauren!’

The big swivel chair squeaked beneath Jarrad’s weight as he leaned back, draping one white-sleeved arm over the padded leather.

‘My relationship with Lauren had nothing to do with why your brother-in-law had to leave the company,’ he said with a grim cast to his mouth.

‘Like hell!’ she spat back, her eyes dark and wounded. It had been like twisting a knife in an already open wound when he had had her sister’s accountant husband struck off his payroll. Quiet, gentle Ralph, who had reluctantly given in to her demands to tell her what he knew, had confirmed what she had already suspected was happening between Jarrad and his lovely sales director. That raw wound had split wide open, producing scars that had never healed, when she had been left to witness the turmoil into which Jarrad’s action had plunged her own’s sister’s marriage, causing Chrissie to lose the baby she had been expecting. Then there had been the financial problems. Ralph’s loss of self-esteem. The final break-up…

‘You wanted brains and breeding and you got it, didn’t you? Brains in the office and a dumb, unsuspecting redhead to breed with at home!’

‘And Kendal Mitchell’s made up her mind about that, and nothing I say could ever convince her otherwise, could it?’ Jarrad said roughly.

Try me! Give me some proof that there was never anything between you and Lauren! Foolishly, even now, her heart cried out to him, although he hadn’t tried to offer any proof of it then. Nor had he done so when he had hounded her for those first six months after she’d left, demanding that she return home, and only for his son’s sake, though he hadn’t said that in so many words. But of course she knew it was only because of Matthew.

‘You’re right! Nothing can—or ever will!’ she flung at him, and turned on her heel, wanting to get out of there before the tears of frustration and regret she could feel burning behind her eyes threatened to degrade her in front of him.

‘Kendal!’

She froze on the spot, his imperious tone forcing her to glance back over her shoulder.

‘I meant what I said. You take that job in the States and you go on your own.’

‘And if I don’t?’ she challenged.

‘Then I’ll sue for custody.’

Kendal’s teeth sank into the inner flesh of her bottom lip. ‘You wouldn’t be that callous,’ she whispered.

‘Try me.’

‘You’d never get it!’

‘Why not?’ That hard, cruel mouth pulled down on one side. ‘An incarcerating and unfaithful husband,’ he said, using her own description of him, ‘doesn’t necessarily make for a poor father in English law.’

He was right, of course, and he would use every shred of power and influence he possessed to see it turned out his way. She knew from experience that Jarrad Mitchell always got what he wanted.

‘Get lost!’ she breathed, turning away, battling against an inner surge of panic.

‘No, that’s been your prerogative, darling.’ She heard his voice coming mockingly from behind her. ‘But not any more. Aren’t you rather forgetting something?’

She stopped in her tracks and turned back to him, frowning.

‘The address of where you’re staying,’ he supplied emotionlessly. And then, when she hesitated, he said, ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer to give it to my solicitor.’

He meant it! Oh, dear heaven.

As he got to his feet she wanted to claw his arrogant face with her carefully lacquered nails, because, of course, he’d been right when he’d said she had hoped that seeing her would soften him into submission. But Jarrad Mitchell never submitted to anyone, she remembered bitingly. He only ever controlled.

Well, get this! she thought, leaning on her small green handbag and scrawling the address of her new flat in the notebook she always carried, which contained the names of useful contacts in the design world. I’m going to take up your challenge of a fight and just for once I’m going to win!

Nevertheless her spirit masked a very strong element of doubt and not a little fear as she tore the page out of her notebook and flung it in the direction of her husband’s daunting figure, unaware of his cool amusement as the page fluttered under his desk from the sudden draught caused as she swept out of his office.

‘So what did he say?’

There was eager anticipation in Chrissie Langdon’s question as she watched her sister sip the sweet, hot tea she had made her.

‘You wouldn’t believe it!’

Five years older than Chrissie, Kendal wasn’t usually one to pour out her troubles to her sister, especially since, during the past year or so, Chrissie had had enough problems of her own. Today, though, it was obvious to Chrissie that her sister was clearly in a state.

‘Oh, I would! Believe me, where Jarrad Mitchell’s concerned, I would!’ Chrissie breathed, rolling large brown eyes emphasised by her small face and her short, spiky brown hair. She darted a glance to eighteen-month-old Matthew, whom she had been looking after that morning, and who had just discovered that hurling a book across the carpet was far more exciting than turning its pages. ‘Go on. Fire away.’

Kendal put down her cup and saucer on the wicker table which formed part of the rustic, bohemian furnishings that Chrissie loved. In fact, when Chrissie had moved into the Victorian semi with Ralph three years ago—newly married and spending money like water—Kendal recalled how she had tried to help her economise, suggesting cost-cutting ways with the design.

Now, though, being in the same position as Kendal was, and between jobs as an office receptionist, Kendal knew that if it hadn’t been for the proceeds of their old home—half of which she had released to Chrissie on her last birthday, the other half of which she had put in trust for Matthew—her sister would have had difficulty keeping up payments on the house even when she was in full-time employment.

Now she sat back, took a deep breath and said, ‘He’s going to sue for custody.’

Chrissie whistled under her breath. ‘What? If you go abroad? Or in any case?’ she appended, suddenly looking aghast, and Kendal groaned. She hadn’t actually considered that he might do it regardless.

‘I think he meant if I take this job.’

‘So what will you do?’ Chrissie sank down onto the low floral-patterned sofa opposite her older sister. ‘Not bother?’

Kendal gave her an exasperated look. ‘Chrissie! That would just be giving in to him. I’ll go—and with Matthew—and I’ll fight Jarrad every step of the way!’

‘You might live to regret that.’ Chrissie picked up the cup of herbal tea she had made for herself. ‘The man’s a fighter, Kendal. And the worst possible kind. He doesn’t take any prisoners. He’ll chew you up and spit you out and have you crawling back to him for mercy before it ever comes to court. Jarrad Mitchell can do anything!’

Kendal grimaced, and yet was unable to contain a fleeting smile as she glanced sideways and saw Matthew, sitting surrounded by the scattered pages of his little picture book, beaming up at her in wide-eyed innocence. ‘You make him sound like some sort of mythical demon,’ she uttered with an inexplicable little shudder as she reached for her cup and saucer. ‘And as though you almost admire him for it!’ she went on to chide disbelievingly, although she knew that wasn’t far from the truth.

From the moment Chrissie had met Jarrad at her own wedding three years ago she had looked up to him with the kind of hero-worship one would expect from a naive teenager—which of course she had been then—and, surprisingly she still displayed it to some degree, despite the brutal way in which he had treated her husband.

’It’s his determination I admire—that scary determination that ensures nobody and nothing gets in his way and makes everybody respect him,’ Chrissie stated almost contentiously. ‘I wish Ralph had had just a quarter of it. Perhaps if he had, we’d still be…’ She shrugged as though she’d learnt from the pains of over a year without the good-looking, quiet-voiced accountant that it was no use wishing.

‘And he’s not a demon—just a man,’ she went on in that same, near-contentious tone, although it took Kendal a second or two to realise that she was still referring to Jarrad. ‘But as I said he’s a very determined one. Determined, tough and a lot more capable of withstanding the sort of emotional pressure that a battle like this is going to put on you. You can’t take him on, Kendal. For heaven’s sake, compromise! Meet him halfway or something.’

Kendal looked at her sister obliquely. ‘You mean give up the chance of this job?’

For a moment something glittered in those dark eyes, and Kendal was struck by Chrissie’s likeness to her father. But then she had inherited his dark hair and complexion too, Kendal thought, remembering the father who had abandoned them without a care. He had left his wife and children for another woman, only to desert again after Jane Harringdale had taken him back—an act, Kendal reflected painfully now, that had proved too much for their mother’s poor health and had ultimately brought on that fatal collapse.

‘Apart from a few months while you were having Matthew, you’ve always been working.’ It was a reproof, and yet it sounded like a complaint, too, from Chrissie.

‘I’ve had to,’ Kendal stressed quietly. When their mother had died eight years ago Chrissie had been just thirteen, and Kendal herself only eighteen, and Robert Harringdale hadn’t wanted to know. It had been a struggle, therefore, bringing up her sister alone, doing office work during the day while studying for her qualifications as an interior designer at night—particularly as Chrissie hadn’t been an easy teenager, always critical of herself as well as others, often questioning her own worth. As one so-called expert had remarked at the time, she had blamed both her parents for leaving her.

Consequently, desperate for love, and despite Kendal’s attempts to be both mother and father to her, Chrissie had married the first man who had come along shortly before her eighteenth birthday. And, with Ralph being ten years older and therefore more mature, it might have worked out, Kendal thought—eventually. If it hadn’t been for that cold, calculated act of Jarrad’s…