CHAPTER TWELVE
One month later
‘WHEREIS MRS WOLFE?’ Jack demanded of Katherine’s housekeeper, Mrs Goulding, as he marched into her office in the basement. He’d searched the Mayfair house and couldn’t find his wife.
‘She had an appointment in Harley Street this afternoon,’ Mrs Goulding replied.
The anticipation—which had been expanding under his breastbone and making it virtually impossible for him to concentrate on the endless conference calls he’d had that day to finalise the last of the Smyth-Brown takeover—popped like an overblown balloon.
‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, his impatience—because she hadn’t been here when he had arrived, as she normally would be—turning into something else.
He’d left her in the early hours of the morning to return to his penthouse after spending most of the night ravishing her. She’d been deeply asleep, which wasn’t like her at all. She’d been working hard recently on her new business after taking the decision to open a small shop in Knightsbridge to make her online bakery brand more visible.
It had been three weeks since they’d returned from their so-called honeymoon in the Maldives and the need hadn’t abated one bit. If anything it had got considerably worse. But what was perhaps a great deal more concerning was the unsettled, agitated feeling that had begun to assail him whenever Katherine was out of his sight.
He had become obsessed with his trophy wife.
The rest of the week in the Maldives—after she had agreed to sleep with him—had been nothing short of idyllic. But not for the reasons he would have assumed.
She had been as eager as he to indulge their sexual connection. In fact, she had thrown herself into it with as much enthusiasm as he had. They’d made love on the beach, by the pool and on the power launch while anchored off one of the deserted islands on the atoll, after a morning spent snorkelling on the reef. And every night, every morning and many of the hours in between, when he’d woken dreaming of her, to find her body curved into his, wet and eager as he woke her.
She hadn’t denied him once, had even initiated the contact on more than one occasion, her tentative, adorably artless attitude to sex becoming almost as demanding and adventurous as his by the time the trip had ended.
He’d remained living in the penthouse—to get the distance he needed—and she hadn’t objected. He’d almost been disappointed when she had failed even to comment on his decision. While he still had his clothes in the penthouse, and despite his best intentions to ensure he continued to live his own life, he spent every night with her in Grosvenor Square before returning home, often in the early hours of the morning, to wash and change before heading to his office.
Keeping his belongings in the penthouse had become inconvenient, so he’d been forced to move some items into the house here. Again, she hadn’t commented, hadn’t pushed. She probed occasionally about his past, his childhood, but had allowed him to deflect those questions easily. And, when she had made offhand comments about the baby, the pregnancy, she hadn’t pressed when he had failed to engage.
He should have felt fine. Their life was just as he wanted it, just as he had envisaged it when proposing this marriage.
So why wasn’t he content?
Perhaps because it wasn’t just the sex that had captivated him since they had returned. He also enjoyed the conversations in the evenings when he arrived from the office to find her in her study, video calling her team or strategising with her marketing manager, or in the kitchen, rustling up something delicious after giving the chef a night off.
During those conversations he had discovered exactly how smart, erudite and witty Katherine was, her intelligence and single-mindedness a match for his own. They’d argued about politics, culture and sport, and had talked at length about her business plans and her long-term goals. She’d come to him with queries, questions, hiring problems and strategy suggestions, and he’d been happy to help.
And she’d quizzed him about his own business. Because he had deflected any personal questions about his childhood, he had refrained from asking about hers, even though he was hopelessly curious now about her past. He wanted to know how she had survived after being kicked out of her home at seventeen. And how she had managed to retain such an optimistic and surprisingly naive attitude towards the generosity of the human spirit when he most certainly had not.
And why couldn’t he stop thinking about her even now?
It would be pathetic, if it weren’t so disturbing.
‘I don’t believe anything is wrong, sir,’ the housekeeper said. ‘It may be a scheduled appointment.’
It may be?What if it wasn’t? Surely she would have told him if it was routine? She’d mentioned her antenatal appointments in the past. And he’d made a point of not engaging with the information. He didn’t want to give her false hopes where his involvement with the child was concerned. But, even so, he knew she would have said something if she was going to be late home. They had a ball to attend tonight, which was why he had arrived home early... That and the fact he seemed less and less able to stay at the office when he knew she awaited him at the house.
Katherine had been tired last night, after returning from a concert they’d attended at the O2. He’d sourced the box seats because he’d caught her dancing to one of the famous band’s songs a few weeks ago, and had watched her unobserved, charmed by the sight. He should have left her alone last night and returned to the penthouse after dropping her off, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself, the excuse of ensuring she was okay having morphed into something urgent and unstoppable once they’d got to her bedroom.
The guilt that had been sitting at the back of his mind all day tightened its claws around his neck now like a malevolent beast.
Her subdued mood last night had left him holding her a little tighter as he waited for her to drift to sleep in the early hours of the morning. And it had been harder than ever to pull himself out of the bed and leave her to return to his own place.
Deepening their relationship was not part of the deal. And not something he wanted. Because it would only complicate things when he had to let her go. But perhaps he should have stayed with her last night.
‘How was she this morning?’ he barked, not quite able to keep the frantic urgency out of his voice.
Damn. If he’d woken up with her he would know the answer to this question. Why hadn’t he stayed?
‘She seemed tired, Mr Wolfe,’ the housekeeper said. ‘But then she had an early morning meeting, so she had to leave an hour ahead of her usual schedule.’
‘She... What time did she get up?’ he rasped, the malevolent beast beating on his ribs now.
‘Six o’clock.’
He swore under his breath, the guilt and panic turning to anger. She hadn’t fallen asleep until two a.m. Why hadn’t she told him she had to be up so early? He wouldn’t have kept her up half the night if she had.
‘Is there a problem, Mr Wolfe?’ the housekeeper asked.
Yes, there’s a damn problem. My wife may be seriously unwell and it’s my fault. And her fault, for not telling me to leave her alone.
His mind reeled, the unguarded feelings starting to overwhelm him.
‘No,’ he snapped. He headed back through the house towards the entrance hall, tugging his phone out of his pocket en route and speed-dialling Katherine’s number. But as he charged down the hallway, intending to drive straight to Harley Street, an echo of his phone’s ring tone sounded.
He stopped in the entrance hall to see his wife standing by the front door.
‘Katherine!’ He charged towards her and grasped her shoulders as the panic surged. ‘Are you okay? What were you doing at the doctor’s?’
‘Jack?’ Her eyebrows launched up her forehead, but he could see the fatigue still shadowing her eyes. ‘What are you doing here so early?’ she said, apropos to absolutely nothing.
‘I asked first,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’ He forced himself to stare at the slight mound of her stomach, which he had noticed more and more in the last few weeks whenever they made love. ‘Is it the pregnancy?’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said, but he could hear the weary note in her voice as she tried to shrug off his hold. His grip tightened.
‘Jack, you need to let me go,’ she said with strained patience, as if he were holding her for the fun of it. As if his head wasn’t starting to explode. Why the hell couldn’t she give him a straight answer? Was something seriously wrong and she didn’t want to tell him?
‘My phone’s ringing and I need to answer it,’ she added, cutting through the flash flood of disaster scenarios in his head.
He cursed, letting go of her with one hand, to fish his own phone out of his pocket and turn it off.