The walls and shelves had already been stripped of the expensive oil paintings and decorative ornaments Darrell had insisted on buying—another sore subject—though she’d sold them for far less than he’d paid for them. Some hadn’t been paid for, and she’d been faced with the bill.
She didn’t invite Cain to sit down. That would be making him too welcome. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for Nicky and Ben to see each other again,” she said without preamble. “We’ll be leaving here in a couple of weeks—sooner, if I can find another place before then. Our house is already sold….” But the money had gone to the bank, not to her.
Cain narrowed his eyes as he looked down at her for a disconcertingly long moment. “Too many bitter memories?” he asked finally, a hint of his own bitterness evident in the twist of his mouth.
She shrugged. Let him think that was why she was selling up and moving away. It was close enough to the truth. The house did have bitter memories. Especially the queen-size bed in the main bedroom. Darrell had stopped making love to her about the time he’d started seeing Sylvia Templar. He’d made excuses about having to work late, or having to entertain business clients until late, pleading tiredness when he came to bed, if she happened to be still awake.
At first he’d made token apologies for leaving her alone so often, insisting he was doing it all for her—for her and Nicky. But as the weeks went on, he’d stopped seeming to care, becoming irritable and touchy, and finding fault with everything she did.
When he’d started comparing her openly with Sylvia Templar, she’d finally lost her patience—and her temper.
“If she’s so perfect, why don’t you go and live with her?”
He’d thrown up his hands in disgust. “Heaven help me, Mardi, sometimes I wish I could. At least she and I are on the same wavelength!”
Mardi had felt a coldness brush down her spine, the unpalatable truth hitting her—her husband had fallen in love with Sylvia Templar! Or with what she represented. Wealth, luxury, the best connections. “So I’m not good enough for you anymore?” she’d flung back, her self-esteem at an all-time low.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Mardi, don’t be so suburban. You’re becoming such a nag and a bore. I don’t need these kind of hassles. I need a wife who’ll support me, not pull me down and hold me back.”
She felt as if he’d struck her. “When have I ever pulled you down or tried to hold you back? I’ve let you do whatever you want to make a success of your life. I’ve looked after the house and the garden, I’ve raised Nicky practically single-handedly, I’ve made most of our own clothes and I’ve taken on a part-time job to make ends meet. All this to give you the time and the space to become the successful lawyer you want to be.”
“You ungrateful witch! If it wasn’t for Nicky—” He’d stopped abruptly, glowering at her. “Oh, hell, I’m going out! A man can’t come home for peace and quiet anymore.”
It was two weeks later that he’d gone to the Blue Mountains for the so-called legal-ethics conference he’d never returned from, and amid the shock of his death, and the death of his female passenger, the truth of his double life had come out.
Bitter memories? Yes…she still felt bitter that her husband had left his family so badly in debt, and equally bitter—more bitter than heartbroken—about his affair with Sylvia Templar. But she also wondered if she could have been partly at fault herself, as Darrell had accused her. Had she driven him into Sylvia’s arms through not being supportive enough, not wanting the kind of high-flying life he’d wanted, not attending more social functions with him? But he hadn’t wanted her to. She hadn’t fit in, hadn’t “played the game.” The truth was, she hadn’t felt comfortable with his shallow, social-climbing, money-mad friends. They’d left her cold.
Maybe she should have tried harder to keep up with him. Her lip curled at the thought. To live beyond her means, as he’d lived beyond his? To lie and cheat and fool people into believing she was richer and more important than she was? To fawn on people she despised? No, she thought, recoiling. She would have been lowering herself, not lifting herself to her husband’s level. She would have been as bad as he was, as dishonest, as shallow. She refused to feel guilty about the way she’d handled her life.
But her confidence had been battered, as well as her trust in men. In husbands. In love. It would be a long time before she would ever trust another man. Or feel confident enough in herself to take the risk of trusting another man.
Her eyes clouded. How would she ever find peace of mind until her husband’s massive debts were paid off…until Nicky had his infected tonsils removed and was fit and healthy again…until Grandpa’s painful hip was replaced?
Cain Templar watched the changing expressions in Mardi’s long-lashed amber eyes and wondered if it was repressed anger he was seeing, or a deeply buried pain and heartbreak. It was hard to tell.
She was a surprise to him. He’d been half expecting Darrell Sinclair’s widow to be a mousy little thing with a whining voice and little personality—a downtrodden, wishy-washy woman who’d been completely under her unfaithful husband’s thumb. But there was a natural warmth and vibrancy about her, a spontaneous spring in her step, which even her husband’s betrayal and the shock of his death hadn’t managed to quench.
And he’d seen her before, he realized. He’d bumped into her at Ben’s kindergarten last September, on the morning he’d left for New York. He’d had no idea who she was then, or that the boy with her was Ben’s friend Nicky. Normally his wife or a babysitter had driven Ben to and from kindergarten each day, but on that particular day he’d had a late-morning plane to catch and had taken Ben to St. Mark’s himself.
He’d barely glanced at the woman at the gate—an ordinary, unremarkable woman, he’d thought in that first fleeting glimpse. And then his gaze had collided with hers, and the unusual amber color of her eyes, beneath her long golden lashes, had caught his attention for an unsettling instant, the morning sunlight turning her eyes to pure gold. Her soft brown hair, pulled back in a neat ponytail—far neater than it was now—had caught the sun, too, and gleamed with honeyed highlights.
Little did he know then that their lives would become entwined a few months later in the most bitter of ways. Her husband…and his wife. His chest heaved. And their sons, by a cruel twist of fate, were best friends.
Which was why he was here now. The only reason he was here, he reminded himself sharply.
“As I said, I’m here because of Benjamin, my son.” Cain’s voice was harsher than he’d intended it to be. He felt oddly off balance, struck again by the steady warmth of those unusual amber eyes, regarding him unblinkingly through wayward honeyed strands from her loosening ponytail.
Annoyed at his reaction, he flicked his gaze away, letting it sweep down her flour-smudged T-shirt to her equally grubby shorts, which looked as if she’d wiped her floury hands on them.
“My son’s becoming uncontrollable,” he admitted grimly, trying not to look at the long, lightly tanned legs below the short shorts. Disgusted with himself for even noticing them, he snapped his gaze away from her altogether, to stare at the wall behind. What was it about this ordinary suburban housewife that was causing this edginess in him?
“Ben’s very moody,” he muttered, dragging his thoughts back to his son. “He won’t do as he’s told, he has temper tantrums like a two-year-old and he’s been through at least five baby-sitters since my—since Christmas.”
Five baby-sitters? Mardi felt a rush of compassion for the small boy who’d lost his mother and been left with strangers since. Why hadn’t his father taken time off work and cared for the boy himself during the