The Marriage Secret
Read The Marriage Secret Online
Authors: Kim Lawrence
Kim Lawrence
Chapter One
“Can I help you?” The slight figure clad in an ankle-length trench coat didn't appear to hear the security guard.
The newest addition to the security team at Lynch Compusoft cleared his throat and raised his voice to a less apologetic level. “I'm afraid, Missâ¦Miss!” he called out, deserting his post to intercept the intruder.
As he spoke the diminutive figure stiffened and came to an abrupt halt. When she turned, a cloud of rich chestnut hair whipped across her pale,
almost
pretty face.
“Mrs!” Emily corrected him firmly.
She took a calming breathâshe could hardly blame a total stranger for mistaking her married status when her own husband forgot it when it suited himâ¦and just lately it seemed to suit him most of the time, she brooded darkly.
“Sorry, but I'm afraid I need to see some identification.”
“I'm Mrs. Lynch.” The guy didn't look like this was ringing any bells for him. “Mrs.
Finn
Lynch.” Your boss, she felt like adding, the
genius
âaccording to certain reputable financial journalsâwho, in 10 years, had turned the software company that bore his name from a one-man operation into a globally recognizable brand name.
“I'm just going up to see my husband. Don't worry, he's expecting me⦔ The last bit was a blatant lie, but Emily felt she was entitled to the odd half-truth under the circumstances.
Circumstances being in this case a husband who was lying, selfish rat!
The young man's expression hardened perceptibly.
“You'll have to come up with a better one than that! Mr. Lynch is here, but
Mrs. Lynch
is already with him and has been all night!” he revealed with an air of triumph.
So what's new, Emily felt like asking.
Emily hadn't mindedâwell not
much
âthat Finn seemed to have forgotten it was their third anniversary. In her mood of euphoria she'd been inclined to forgive him almost anythingâ
almost!
During the three years they'd been together Emily had got used to Finn's unique concept of time. So for the first hour she'd spent waiting for him this evening, she had managed to carry on smiling, anticipating the expression on his face when she finally got to share her news.
It wasn't until he was three hours late and the meal she'd lovingly prepared was a shriveled mess that her resentment had kicked in, big time!
“Hello, Maeve speaking.”
Hearing the husky tone of Finn's glamorous ex-wife Maeve answering the phone when she'd rang his office had transformed Emily's resentment into full-blown rage!
“I'll have to ask you to leave,” the security guard announced brusquely, interrupting her thoughts.
“Mrs. Lynchâ¦How are you?”
Emily turned to see a familiar figure clad in the same security uniform as the young man. “Very well, thanks, Alec. I was just on my way up to see Finn,” she explained as the older man escorted her past his stunned looking junior toward the lift.
“I've brought some dinner for him.” She held aloft the bag into which she'd scooped the miserable remains of their celebratory dinner.
“Have a nice meal,” Alec said as he pushed the lift button for her. She took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she was about to find.
Sitting side by side on the chunky leather sofa in Finn's office, her husband and his ex-wife were chinking glasses as Emily, her chin up but her heart breaking, walked in. They didn't hear her; they were too wrapped up in each other.
“Happy anniversary, darling,” Emily drawled, emptying the contents of her bag into her husband's lap.
Finn shot to his feet, causing the nasty congealing mess to spill onto his shoes.
Emily surveyed the damage and felt a pleasant glow of malicious satisfaction. Her only regret was that the shoes weren't the hideously expensive handmade numbers he often wore. Today he'd ditched the sharp formality of expensive tailoring in favor of the casual look.
Six feet five inches of lean, athletic muscularity, Finn looked incredible in anything he wore. The gene pool had been kind to him: along with the curly dark eyelashes and stunning blue Irish eyes he'd inherited from his mother, Finn had been blessed with his Italian grandfather's classical profile and warm, golden Mediterranean coloring.
“What is this?” The initial shock over, Finn looked fastidiously disgusted, but rigidly in control.
Antipathy flared afresh in Emily's tight chest as their eyes met and clashed. “Oysters, duck in raspberry sauce, asparagus, baby new potatoes and, oh, profiterolesâall your favorites.”
Maeve, who'd always been under the impression her ex's schoolteacher wife was boringly placid, gasped at the sheer audacity of this provocative response.
Maeve looked up to check out how Finn was taking it; she knew he was less bothered than most men by the idea of looking foolish, but even
he
had his limits. She was shocked and a little envious to discover that Finn's burning, distracted gaze was fixed on the area where two buttons of his wife's long shapeless coat had parted to reveal a sliver of slim pale thigh.
“Thanks, but I've already eaten,” Finn returned thickly. His concentration was totally shot wondering what, if anything, Emily had on under her coat.
“It was so considerate of you to let me know.”
“Something came up.”
For Finn this was quite an elaborate explanation.
“So I see,” Emily sneered, glaring with unambiguous animosity at the older woman, who looked embarrassed.
“Emily!” Finn's voice was harsh with warning.
Emily watched Maeve stand up; a man's woman, all sleek, slinky, and oozing sex appeal. “I'll leave you two to⦔
“No, Don't go, Maeve!” Finn appealed as his ex-wife shrugged on a fur-trimmed coat.
Misery tightened like a fist around Emily's heart. He'd never begged
her
to do anything: Finn demanded and she, like the besotted, love-sick fool she was, gaveâand gave, and gaveâ¦
“If
she
doesn't go, I will,” Emily, close to bursting into tears, announced belligerently.
Mouthing
“sorry”
to a furious looking Finn, Maeve slipped tactfully away.
“You put Maeve in an impossible position,” Finn censured icily as the door closed.
“You put
me
in an impossible position when you carried on working with your ex-wife on a daily basis after we were married. I don't expect you not to see her,” she admitted, trying to be fair. “You have a child together⦔
“Not again!” Finn groaned. “I've told you, it doesn't matter to me whether or not you and I can have children.” He knew from bitter experience that Emily wouldn't believe him.
Now was her chance to tell him. Emily opened her mouth and heard herself say.
“Are you sleeping with Maeve, Finn?”
Did I really say that?
Throat tight and aching, heart thudding, but looking defiantly unrepentantâon the outside at leastâEmily met Finn's outraged glare head on.
“I'm touched more than I can say by this display of trust,” he bit out softly.
Emily flushed uncomfortably under his icily ironic gaze, but her soft jaw firmed stubbornly.
“That wasn't an answer, Finn, that was a strategic distraction!” Her eyes narrowed. Didn't people avoid answering questions when they had something to hide?
His lip curled. “No, Emily, that was disillusioned distaste.”
Emily flushed. “What am I meant to think?”
“Possibly that I meant the vows I made on our wedding day?”
“You made the same vows to Maeve,” she pointed out.
Finn's expression darkened with annoyance. “That was different.”
“How exactly?”
“Just
different!
” Her normally articulate husband came to an abrupt halt, his gaze sliding uncomfortably from hers.
To Emily these signs of evasion were condemning. Oh, hell! Up to this point she hadn't
really
thought he was sleeping with Maeveânot deep down.
“You can't deny you see more of
her
than you do me!” Could I sound more childish if I tried?
“Besides being Adam's mother, the woman is my marketing director, of course I spend time with her! You knew that situation wasn't going to alter when you married me.”
“Sure, you laid down the rules, as usual,” she observed belligerently.
“Maybe I just enjoy Maeve's company more?” Finn suggested, the maverick pulse in his lean left cheek working overtime.
“And maybe I've got tired of playing the understanding wife to your selfish husband!” she flung back.
“My enjoyment of her company could have something to do with the fact Maeve doesn't expect me to account for my movements in minute detail.”
The gross unfairness of this remark took Emily's breath away. She'd shown the tolerance of a saint!
“Trying to take an interest in what your partner does is not jealousy.”
“You just asked me whether I was sleeping with my ex-wife,” he reminded her dryly. “What would you call that?” Finn raked a hand through his thick glossy dark hair; the gesture was one of intense weariness. “Maeve isn't the problem here, your pathological jealousy and lack of self-esteem is.”
“I had oodles of self-esteem before I married you! What are you doingâ¦?” She quavered in alarm as her husband began to unzip the jeans he was wearing.
“What does it look like?” he asked kicking off his soiled trainers.
Emily's breath snagged in her throat as his jeans followed the same route. Parts of her that shouldn't started to tingle. Even seething with hot resentment just looking at Finn's lean, bronzed body could turn her bones to water. She watched as he shed his shirt and selected some fresh clothes from the concealed storage cupboards lining the wall.
Clad in a pair of boxers, he turned. Emily took one look into his smoldering eyes and realized even before her gaze dropped that the sexual tension had not been a one-way thing.
“What have you got on under that thing?” he demanded in a raw voice that made her quivering stomach muscles spasm.