Legally His Omnibus Read Online Free PDF Page A

and uncle’s either, so I changed my name by deed poll to my mother’s maiden name. What are you doing here anyway?’ she demanded angrily. ‘You have no right—’
    ‘I’ve come round here because of this,’ Sean said curtly, stopping her protests as he removed her letter of resignation from his jacket pocket, and with it another fat white envelope.
    ‘This is your contract of employment,’ he announced. ‘It binds you to working a statutory notice period of four weeks. You can’t just walk out on your job, Kate.’
    Kate’s mouth had gone dry, and she knew that her eyes were betraying her shock and her chagrin.
    ‘You...you can’t hold me to that,’ she began valiantly. ‘You—’
    ‘Oh, yes, I can.’ Sean stopped her swiftly. ‘And I fully intend to do so.’
    ‘But why?’ Kate demanded wildly, stiffening as she heard in her own voice how close she was to the edge of her self-control. ‘I should have thought you’d want me gone as much as I want to go, given the speed with which you ended our marriage! You can’t want me working for you. Your ex-wife, the woman you rejected? The woman you—’
    ‘Rules are rules—you are legally obliged to work your notice and I want you back at your desk so that you can hand over your responsibilities to your replacement.’
    ‘You can’t make me!’ Kate protested. Her voice might sound strong and determined, but inside she was panicking, she recognised. She did, after all, have a legal obligation to work her notice period, and if she didn’t it could cause other employers to think twice about taking her on. With Oliver to bring up she just could not afford to be out of work.
    ‘Yes, I can,’ Sean corrected her. ‘You may have walked out on our marriage, but no way are you walking out of your job!’
    Kate’s shock deepened with every word he threw at her.
    ‘I left because you were having an affair—you know that. You were the one who ended our marriage, Sean.’
    ‘I’m not interested in discussing the past, only the present.’
    His response left her floundering and vulnerable. It had been a mistake to refer to their marriage, and even more of a mistake to mention his affair. The last thing she wanted was to have him taunt her with still suffering because of it.
    ‘I like value for my money, Kate. Surely you can remember that?’
    His comment gave her a much needed opportunity to hit back at him, and she took it.
    ‘I don’t allow myself to remember anything about you.’ The angry, contemptuous words were out before she could stop herself from saying them. She could feel the tightening of the tension between them, and with it came dangerous memories of a very different kind of tension they had once shared.
    ‘Anything?’ Sean challenged her rawly, as though he had somehow read her thoughts. ‘Not even this?’
    The feel of his hands on her arms, dragging her against his body, the heat of his flesh, the feel of his body itself against her own, was so shockingly and immediately familiar and welcome that she couldn’t move.
    Somehow, of its own volition, her body angled itself into Sean’s. Somehow her hands were sliding beneath his jacket and up over his back. Somehow her head was tilting back and her eyes were opening wide, so that she could look into the familiar hot, passionate blue of his.
    Shockingly, it was as though a part of her had been waiting for this, for him, and not just waiting but wanting, longing, needing.
    The steady tick of the kitchen clock was drowned out by the sound of their mingled breathing: Sean’s harsh and heavy; her own much lighter, shallow and unsteady.
    The touch of his hand on the nape of her neck as his thumb slowly caressed her skin sent a signal to her body which it immediately answered.
    Now she had to close her eyes, in case Sean could read in them what she could feel—the small, telling lift of her breasts as they surged in longing for his touch, the tight ache of her nipples as they hungered for