Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) (17 page)

Kate would have liked to spend more time with Gil, but it was getting late and he had school in the morning. The day after that, however, would be Saturday, and Sean wasn’t returning until Sunday.

“Do you have plans for this weekend?” she asked.

Gil’s eyes were bright with anticipation as he shook his head.

“Then how about going to the Taronga Zoo with me? It’s been a while since I’ve seen a platypus or a wombat or even a koala.”

Gil liked the idea immediately, and he recounted the school field trip he’d just been on all the way home in the cab. Kate had the driver wait while she saw her nephew safely inside the house and said good-night.

When she got back to her hotel room, a bouquet of twelve yellow roses was waiting on her nightstand. The card read simply, “Now and always. Love Sean.”

Kate bent to sniff the luscious scent of the flowers, feeling optimistic about all the problems and differences she and Sean would have to work out in order to make a life together. Didn’t all couples have to do that?

She took a long, hot bath, read a third of the thick romance novel she’d bought that afternoon while shopping for her dress and fell into a sound sleep.

Since she hadn’t found a dress she liked the day before, she went out shopping again after breakfast. At a pricey little boutique tucked away between a pawnshop and a bookstore, she found a lovely ivory silk gown with a trimming of narrow lace around the hemline and along the V-shaped bodice. It was perfect.

After paying for the dress, Kate took it back to her hotel room and hung it carefully in the closet. She was just turning away from doing that when the telephone rang.

She answered with a questioning, “Hello?”

Sean’s voice came over the wire as clear as if he were in the next room instead of on another continent. “Hello, sheila,” he said. “Did you get the flowers?”

“Yes,” she answered, smiling. “They’re beautiful—thank you.”

“I’ll have to exact a certain price for them, of course,” Sean teased.

Kate felt warm all over, and she wished he could be right there in that room with her. “Of course,” she retorted in a low, sultry voice.

“How’s Gil?” was his next question.

“He’s just fine. We went to McDonald’s for supper last night, and we’re off to the zoo tomorrow.”

“Sounds like he’s pretty comfortable with you.”

Kate smiled. “He asked me if I was going to be his mom.”

The warmth seemed to fade from Sean’s voice, at least for the moment. “What did you tell him?”

Kate sat down, feeling deflated. “I said I’d be his stepmother,
if
you and I were to get married.”

“I see.” Sean still sounded uncomfortable, but that awful chill was gone from his voice.

Kate was never sure where her next question came from, because she hadn’t given it a moment’s thought beforehand. “I don’t suppose you’d let me adopt him?”

There was a long silence.

“Sean?”

“That would give you the same legal rights that Abby had,” Sean reflected.

“I know,” Kate answered. She knew she was walking on thin ice emotionally, and she was practically holding her breath.

“We’ll talk about it when I get back,” Sean said abruptly. Kate wished she could look into his eyes, for then she’d be able to read his thoughts.

“Which will be Sunday?” Kate asked brightly, anxious to soothe him.

“Probably,” Sean replied. “I love you, Kate.”

“And I love you.”

A few moments later they hung up.

The telephone immediately jangled again, and when Kate answered, she was surprised and a little alarmed to hear the operator say, “You have another overseas call, Ms. Blake. This one is from the States.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, and bit down on her lip as she waited. She felt inexplicably nervous.

“Your mother tells me you’re thinking of marrying that Australian,” Senator Blake boomed, without so much as saying hello to his daughter first. “Don’t you think that’s a little idiotic, given what he did to your sister?”

Kate braced herself. “He didn’t do anything to Abby. She manufactured her own set of problems, just like the rest of us.”

“He’d like to have you believe that. Katherine, I want you to get on the next plane and come home. I need you here in Washington, anyway.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kate answered flatly.

She could feel the storm brewing in and around her father. “Katherine,” he said in an ominously quiet voice, “I expect to see you in this office within seventy-two hours. Is that clear?”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m staying here, and I’m marrying Sean.”

“If you do, by God, I’ll disinherit you. You’ll be left with nothing but your grandmother’s trust fund!”

Kate didn’t care about the money she wouldn’t inherit, and her trust fund was quite adequate for her needs. But she did care about losing the senator’s love and approval. “Do whatever you have to do. I’ve made my decision, Daddy.”

At that, the senator hung up on his daughter with a resounding crash.

* * *

Kate was still upset the next morning when she set out to pick up Gil at Sean’s house. Her father had no right to behave like such a tyrant, and she was going to tell him so the next time she saw him.

Gil greeted her at the front door, dressed for a day at the zoo. His smile seemed as wide as the distance between Kate and the senator. Once she was inside, the little boy gave her a shy hug. “I’ve been thinking about going to the States,” he told her. “I think I should, since I’m half-Yankee.”

Kate grinned. “I think you should, too, but your dad might have a different opinion.”

“I could go if he changed his mind, though,” Gil told her enthusiastically. He brought a passport from the pocket of his jacket. “See?”

Kate nodded. “You’d better put that away before you lose it or something,” she said.

She was distracted from Gil by Snidely’s unmistakable bark. “You get out of my kitchen, you great hulking beast!” Mrs. Manchester cried, affronted.

“I think maybe you should go and tie up your dog,” Kate told her nephew.

He nodded his agreement and disappeared.

When the boy returned, he and Kate went outside and got into another taxi. They rode to Circular Quay, which was down near the Sydney Opera House, and boarded a ferry that took them across the harbor to the world-famous zoo.

They spent a happy morning examining one creature after another. Some were indigenous to Australia, while others might have been seen in any zoo.

Kate took a picture of Gil holding a baby koala. The little animal crunched nonchalantly on eucalyptus leaves all the while, willing to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of human beings.

When midday came, Kate and Gil had hot dogs and sodas for lunch. Kate reflected that her diet was going to hell on greased tracks; she’d have to get herself back on healthy food soon.

By early afternoon Gil was getting tired, so they took the ferry back to Sydney proper, found a movie house and bought tickets. Kate was glad to sit down, and she didn’t really care what the show might be.

It was an action-adventure story, as it turned out, and both Gil and Kate were soon drawn into the plot, as much a part of things as the main character. When they came out two hours later, they were blinking in an effort to focus their eyes.

A quick check of her pocketbook showed that Kate was nearly out of money. “Let’s go back to the hotel for a few minutes,” she said to her nephew. “Then we’ll have supper somewhere.”

“Great,” Gil agreed. It was an expression he’d heard in the movie, and he seemed pleased with himself for picking it up.

The hotel was several blocks away, but it felt good to walk after sitting for a couple of hours, and Kate and Gil played their game of exchanging idioms again as they went.

When they reached Kate’s room, she opened one suitcase, and then another, and then another, searching for her Australian money. She finally found some in her overnight case, which was sitting in the bathroom on the counter.

A knock at the door brought her out, smiling and curious, her wallet in one hand. The room looked as though it had been ransacked, she thought, as she passed by the trail of open suitcases she’d left behind her.

Sean was standing in the hallway when she opened the door, and she was so surprised that she just stood there for a moment, staring at him.

“When I go to America,” Gil was saying cheerfully in the background, “I’m going to spend a whole month at Disneyland.”

There was a slight change in Sean’s expression, but his words sounded normal enough. “Aren’t you going to kiss me, sheila?”

Kate realized that he was really there, and not a product of her overworked imagination, and she hurled her arms around his neck. “You’re back early.”

He removed her arms gently. “Surprised?” he asked, backing her into the room.

“Dad!” Gil shouted, hurling himself at his father. “We went to the zoo and saw a movie and once we had supper at McDonald’s!”

“Good,” Sean said quietly, ruffling Gil’s hair with one hand. He was smiling, but there was something odd in his face as he looked around the room at Kate’s suitcases.

Kate felt uneasy without knowing why. “Lucky we came back to get some money,” she said to Sean. “If we hadn’t, we would have missed you.”

Sean was still looking at the suitcases, and it seemed to Kate that he was a little pale beneath his suntan. “Is that so?” he asked.

Kate wanted to shake him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, keeping her voice as even as she could.

Sean wouldn’t look at her. Instead, he turned his gaze toward Gil, who still stood at his side, looking up. “So, you’re planning a trip to America, are you?” he asked.

Dread went through Kate like a cold wind when she realized the conclusion Sean was drawing from the rifled suitcases and his son’s comment about Disneyland. “You don’t understand,” she said lamely.

“I think I do,” Sean said, and his voice was like dry ice.

Gil chose that moment to whip his passport out of his jacket pocket and present it. “I could go anytime I wanted,” he said proudly.

“I want you to wait for me by the elevators,” Sean told his son, speaking in a voice that was all the more ominous for its quiet, measured tones.

Disappointment flashed in Gil’s upturned face. “But we were going to have supper—”

“Go,” Sean said flatly.

After casting one baffled, injured look in Kate’s direction, Gil obediently walked out of the room and down the hallway. Kate would have gone after him, but Sean closed the door and barred her way.

“Pretty damned clever,” he said.

Kate let out a furious sigh. “I wasn’t planning to take your son away,” she told him, shoving one hand through her hair.

Sean looked at her with contempt, but behind that she saw the pain of betrayal. “I was a fool to trust you. All of it—the talk, the lovemaking—you did it all to get into my good graces, so I’d leave you alone with Gil!”

“That’s not true!” Kate cried. “You’re deliberately misunderstanding the situation. Gil and I went to the zoo and then to the movies, and I was out of money, so I came back here to get some—that’s why the suitcases look the way they do.”

Sean didn’t seem to hear her. He was like a geyser about to spew dangerous steam, and Kate had a terrible feeling that nothing she could say or do would move him. “Why did he have his passport, then?” he hissed, moving to grab Kate and then stopping himself at the last second. “Why was he talking about going to Disneyland?”

“I don’t know why he brought his passport,” Kate answered. “He got it out earlier to show it to me, and he probably just stuck it in his pocket.”

“Why were you interested?” Sean demanded.

It was no use, and Kate knew it. “We did talk about going to America,” she confessed. “But it was a someday kind of thing—not something immediate.”

“You’re just like your father,” Sean accused. “You’ll do anything, step on anybody, to get what you want!”

“No,” Kate argued, her eyes filling with tears as she shook her head.

She might not have spoken at all for all Sean seemed to care. “You’re like her, too—why didn’t I see that you’re no better than she was?”

Kate couldn’t bear any more. She grabbed Sean by the lapels of his windbreaker and shouted, “Listen to me, damn you. I’m not my father, and I’m not Abby—I’m just Kate! And I’d die before I’d betray you, Sean Harris, because I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything or anybody!”

With a gentle kind of cruelty, Sean brushed Kate’s hands away, turned on his heel and walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

Kate stepped into the hallway, her face wet with tears. “Sean, please...” she called after him, desperate.

“Goodbye,” he said coldly without even turning around to look at her.

Kate sagged against the doorframe, closing her eyes as she heard the sound of an elevator bell. When it chimed again moments later, she knew Sean and Gil were gone.

She went back into her room, like something wounded, and, after closing and locking the door, she sprawled across the bed, too sickened to think or move. It was a long time before she gathered the strength to call the airport.

There was a flight leaving for Los Angeles in two hours. Numb from the core of her soul out, Kate booked a reservation on that flight, refolded everything in her suitcases and called the desk for a bellhop. While she was waiting, she dialed Sean’s number.

Fortunately Mrs. Manchester was the one to answer.

“This is Kate,” the caller said brokenly. “May I please speak to Gil?”

The housekeeper sounded bewildered and kindly. “He’s right here, Miss Blake,” she said.

Gil came on the line a moment later. “Are you going, Aunt Kate?” he asked.

New tears welled in Kate’s eyes. “I have to, sweetheart,” she said. “You understand, don’t you?”

Gil was silent for a long time, then he answered, “I guess I won’t get to see Disneyland.”

Kate dried her cheeks with the back of one hand. “Maybe another time,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “I want you to promise to email me, Gil, and tell me all about school and sports and Snidely. Okay?”

“Okay,” he replied.