Locking his car, he started to stride towards the building.
Kate could feel perspiration beginning to dew her forehead as she willed the traffic lights to change. Her stomach was so tight with nervous anxiety that it hurt.
She had swallowed her normal pride last night and asked Carol, Ollie’s best friend’s mother, if she could leave Ollie with her at seven-thirty for her to take him on to school with her son George. The pain in her stomach intensified. She hated treating her precious son as though he was a…a bundle of washing!
Why on earth had the new owner insisted on them arriving so early? Was he just unthinking, or uncaring? Whichever it was, it did not bode well for her future with the company, she decided fretfully.
As she reached the traffic lights she saw the broken-down car which had been the cause of the delay. It was already ten past eight, and it would take her at least another ten minutes to get to work.
Half past eight! Kate gritted her teeth as she hurried into the building. She was already walking fast, and she broke into an anxious run as she covered the last few yards. But the hope she had had that she might be able to slide discreetly into John’s office whilst the meeting was still in progress was destroyed as the door opened and her colleagues came out into the corridor.
‘You’re late!’ Laura whispered as she saw Kate. ‘What happened?’
It was difficult to talk with so many people in the corridor.
‘I’ll tell you later—’ she began, and then froze as two men came through the door.
One of them was John, and the other…the other…
The other was her ex-husband!
‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me—now?’
How well she remembered that smooth chocolate voice, with its underlying ice.
People were staring at her, Kate realised, and she fought off her sick shock.
John was looking anguished and uncomfortable. ‘Sean, I think perhaps…I am sure that…’
Arrogantly ignoring John, Sean demanded, ‘In here!’ He was holding the door open, waiting for her to walk past him and into John’s office.
For a moment their gazes met and clashed, battled, topaz fighting dense blue for supremacy.
Her ex-husband was their new boss!
How could fate have dealt her such a low blow?
When Sean had walked out of her life to be with the woman he was leaving her for she had prayed that she would never, ever have to see him again. She had given him everything she had had to give—defying her aunt and uncle to be with him, helping and encouraging him, loving him—but that had not been enough for him. She had not been enough for him. The success she had helped him to achieve had meant that he no longer considered her good enough for him.
She was holding her breath and badly needed to exhale, but she was terrified that if she did she was going to start shaking—and there was so way she was going to allow Sean to witness that kind of vulnerability.
How well she remembered that challenging hard-edged blue gaze. He had looked at her like that the first time they had met, defying her to ignore him. No one would dare to ignore him now.
‘Kate is a very—’ She could hear John about to defend her.
‘Thank you, John. I shall deal with this myself,’ Sean announced curtly as she walked past him into the room, and he closed the door, excluding John from his own office.
‘Kate?’ he demanded grimly. ‘What happened to Kathy?’
Just hearing him say that name resurrected far too many painful memories. She had been Kathy when he had taunted her the first time they had met, for being too posh to dance with a man like him. And she had been Kathy too when he had taken her in his arms and shown her—Fiercely she pushed away the tormenting memories.
Tilting her chin, she said coldly, ‘Kathy?’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘She doesn’t exist any longer, Sean. You destroyed her when you destroyed our marriage.’
‘And your surname is?’ Sean wondered whether she could hear or understand the cause of the anger that was making his throat raw and his voice terse as he grappled with his own shock.
‘Kate Vincent,’ Kate answered him coldly.
‘Vincent?’ he questioned savagely.
‘Yes, Vincent. You didn’t think I would want to keep your name, did you? And I certainly didn’t want my aunt and uncle’s—after all, like you, they didn’t want me.’
‘So you remarried just to change your name?’
Anger darkened Kate’s eyes as she heard the contempt in his voice.
‘Why were you late?’ Sean demanded abruptly. ‘Didn’t he want to let you out of his bed?’
Furious colour scorched Kate’s face.
‘Just because you—’ she began, and then stopped, swallowing hard as out of nowhere the memories started to fill her head. Sean waking her up in the morning with the gentlest of kisses…that was until she was fully awake…and then…
She could feel the tension building up inside her body, a tension activated by memories crowding out the reality she was trying desperately hard to cling on to, to use as a bulwark.
A bulwark? Against what? The love she had once felt for Sean had been completely destroyed, and by Sean himself. Cruelly and deliberately. Her body stiffened with pride. She was glad that he thought she had found someone else. Married someone else.
Had he married the woman he had left her for?
Sean’s mobile rang, and he answered it, frowning briefly as he told Kate that she could go.
As she turned to leave Kate heard a female voice saying, quite clearly, ‘Sean, darling…’
Kate was halfway through clearing out her desk when Laura came in.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘Clearing my desk. What does it look like?’ Kate responded tersely.
‘You’re leaving?’
Kate could see how shocked and dismayed Laura was.
‘You mean he’s sacked you just for being late?’
Kate permitted herself a thin and slightly bitter smile. ‘No, he hasn’t sacked me, but let’s just say I’m leaving ahead of having him do so.’
‘Oh, Kate, no!’ Laura protested, obviously upset. ‘I can see that things have got off to bad start for you—!’ She stopped, biting her lip and looking uncomfortable.
Laura would never make a politician, Kate reflected wryly, witnessing her colleague’s discomfort.
‘Laura?’ she prodded firmly.
‘Well, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything—to be critical…or unkind. But I did hear Sean asking John where you were,’ Laura admitted reluctantly, adding quickly, ‘I’m sure he’ll be understanding, Kate. He seems such a sweetie, and so gorgeous.’
A sweetie! Sean! Kate suppressed a bitter laugh.
Sean might be many things, but he had never been a sweetie—not even when she had first known him.
A tough, streetwise, untamed rogue male, who could make a girl go weak at the knees and hot in places she hadn’t previously known existed with just one taunting look, that was what he had been. And she…
Her face started to burn as she recognised where her unwanted thoughts