LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I’m sure it will survive,” Cain Templar said dryly, brushing himself off.

      And I’m sure you could afford to buy another one if it didn’t, Mardi reflected, and paused to wonder if he actually could afford to buy his fine Italian suits, or if he was another Darrell, living well beyond his means.

      Of course he wasn’t. He was Cain Templar, the genuinely wealthy, highly successful merchant banker, whose glamorous wife, Sylvia, had been having an affair with her husband. And the Templars’ home, which Darrell, her insatiably ambitious, social-climbing lawyer husband, had visited often and gone into raptures about, but which she had never seen or been invited to, was a magnificent harborside mansion in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs.

      She turned away, watching Nicky and Scoots until they disappeared round the side of the house. How insensitive of this man to come here. His wife had ruined her life—ruined her son’s life!

      Mardi glowered. If only she hadn’t fallen sick with the flu last September! Darrell had first met Sylvia Templar on the very morning he’d driven Nicky to kindergarten for the first time. Sylvia’s husband, she recalled Darrell mentioning at the time, had just left on a two-month overseas business trip. How convenient that had turned out to be!

      From the moment he met her, Darrell had openly raved about “Benjamin’s beautiful mother,” and how she was the perfect corporate wife…an asset to her husband and a real help to his career as a merchant banker. “She’s an example to other wives,” he’d enthused in his typically insensitive fashion. “Always impeccably groomed, beautifully dressed, the perfect hostess, at ease in any company…And she knows everybody—everybody who matters, that is. You could learn a lot from her.”

      Yeah…like how to play around with other women’s husbands.

      Darrell had relentlessly encouraged his son’s friendship with Sylvia’s five-year-old son, Ben, inviting Benjamin to their home at weekends and allowing Nicky to visit their home in return.

      Mardi had tried, for her son’s sake, to be friendly with Sylvia on the few occasions they’d met, either when Benjamin came to play, or on the rare evenings Darrell invited Sylvia to their home for a dinner party, along with Darrell’s successful, influential friends and business colleagues. But usually he’d preferred to dine out. Without his wife.

      How naive and unsuspecting she’d been! Even when Darrell started giving Sylvia Templar so-called “legal advice,” which meant he had to see her more often still, for lunches or intimate dinners for two, or to attend Sylvia’s fund-raising events, Mardi still didn’t suspect—or she’d tried not to. She loathed jealousy and suspicion in wives, and with Sylvia’s husband away, it was understandable—or so she managed to convince herself—that Darrell, as the woman’s lawyer, would want to keep a close eye on her.

      Looking back, it was painfully obvious that Darrell had fallen hook, line and sinker for Sylvia Templar’s glossy wealth, glamour and impeccable social connections—to say nothing of her luxurious home and lifestyle.

      Mardi had been so gullible! She still had no idea when Darrell’s so-called “innocent relationship” with the beautiful Sylvia had changed into a fully fledged affair. She only knew that on the last Sunday in November, a couple of months after the two met, her husband and Cain Templar’s wife had died together in a car crash in the Blue Mountains on a night when Darrell was supposedly returning from a law-ethics weekend conference in the mountains.

      The gleaming BMW that Darrell had bought only two months earlier, courtesy of a hefty bank loan, had been wrecked beyond repair.

      Neither Mardi nor Benjamin Templar’s father had sent their sons back to the kindergarten for the final week of the term, or made any attempt to bring the boys together during the long summer break. Mardi, for her part, had wanted nothing more to do with the Templar family.

      She’d assumed that Cain Templar had felt a similar disdain for her family. Maybe he’d wanted to keep away from them, but his son had finally worn him down, just as Nicky had been trying to do to her.

      But to bring the boys together again now would be a ghastly mistake! She’d be moving away very soon, so why make it even more difficult for Nicky? For both boys?

      Reluctantly she turned back. “You say you’re here because of Benjamin,” she said cautiously, frowning up at him.

      “That’s right. My son—” He stopped, his head jerking toward the open window at the front of the house. “Can you smell something burning?”

      “Oh, heck!” She spun round. “My cake! My pie!”

      Chapter Two

      Mardi groaned as she dumped the charred remains of her pie and cake on the sink. Tonight’s dinner ruined! She couldn’t afford disasters like this.

      She rushed to the window and opened it, then began fanning the air with a tea towel.

      “This is my fault,” Cain Templar apologized from behind, and she swung round, not realizing that he’d followed her to the kitchen.

      “Well, yes, it is,” she agreed, in no mood for her usual politeness. What was she going to do about tonight’s dinner? “But there’s nothing much you can do about it.” She turned back to the sink. The pie was completely shriveled and dried out, but maybe she could cut off the charred edges of the cake and examine it to find out if the interior was still edible.

      But she certainly wasn’t going to try that in front of Cain Templar! It would look ridiculously penny-pinching to someone with his millions. If it happened to him, he’d simply go out and buy another pie and another cake. At one time, she might have, too.

      “Oh, there must be something I can do,” Cain said smoothly. “Look, I promised to take Benjamin to McDonald’s tonight…” He grimaced. “Not my own cup of tea, but he’s been nagging me for a burger for ages and I couldn’t keep fobbing him off and saying no. Why don’t you and your son join us?” he invited, though there was little emotion in his voice, as if he had no more wish to see more of the Sinclairs than Mardi did of the Templars.

      “Ben talks about Nicky incessantly,” he added as she started to shake her head. “I gather they were close mates at kindergarten last term.”

      Mardi sighed. “Yes, they were,” she said, stressing the past tense. “And thanks, Mr. Templar, but—”

      “Cain,” he murmured coolly.

      “Cain. Thanks, but there’s no need for you to take pity on us. It’s my own fault for not removing the pie and the cake from the oven earlier. And I really don’t think—” She stopped, waving a helpless hand. “Look, we can’t talk in here.” The smoke-filled air and the charred smell were making it impossible. “Let’s move to the front of the house.”

      Nicky, hopefully, would stay out in the garden with Scoots until Cain Templar had gone. He need never know that the man who’d called had been his friend Ben’s father.

      As they turned to leave the kitchen, her grandfather hobbled in, a gnarled hand curled round his walking stick.

      “What’s burning?” he demanded in his thin, wavery voice.

      “It’s just the pie and cake I was baking, Grandpa.” Just? She saw Grandpa frowning up at the tall dark man at her side and remembered her manners. “Oh…this is Cain Templar, Grandpa. He’s here to discuss a—a business matter.” Her eyes warned her visitor not to dispute her statement. She didn’t want Grandpa rushing out and blabbing to Nicky that the father of his beloved Ben was here.

      With luck, Grandpa, who was getting a bit hard of hearing, wouldn’t have caught the name “Templar” or made the connection with Sylvia Templar—that Jezebel, as he called her. It would be too embarrassing if he launched into a savage tirade on man-hungry wives who ran off with other women’s husbands.

      “My grandfather…Ernie

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