Invincible

by Joan Johnston

  “Are you, Mother?” She wasn’t acting like it. He thought she rather wished him to Hades.

  “Yes, Max, I am glad,” she said, her face a picture of distress. “It’s just—”

  He stood. “Look, I know when I’m not welcome.”

  When he stood, he heard the girl at the chessboard make a strangled sound. When he turned toward her, she stood so abruptly her chair fell over backward. She was gawking at him as though he had two heads and neither was human.

  “Oh, my goodness!” Emily cried, as she rose to her feet, also staring at him.

  When he turned back to his mother, he found her standing, her hand against her heart, taking laborious, shallow breaths.

  The startled—fearful?—reactions of the three females raised gooseflesh on his arms. “What the hell is going on?” he said in a harsh voice.

  “Dad?” the girl said.

  Max whirled and looked behind him toward the door way, expecting to find someone standing there. From the three females’ anxious behavior, the girl’s father posed some kind of threat.

  The doorway was empty. The door, in fact, was closed.

  He quickly turned back to his mother. She edged around the wing chair, holding onto the back of it for support.

  “Max,” she said, her voice slightly breathless. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Since there was only one person in the room Max didn’t know, he turned back to the girl. While his back was turned, she’d crossed the room and was standing right in front of him. She peered up at him, her blue eyes wide. Her heart-shaped face was so pale a sprinkling of freckles stood out across her nose.

  “Hello,” he said. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant greeting because adrenaline was still flowing from his fight-or-flight response to the girl’s missing father.

  When the girl didn’t speak, he turned back to his mother for direction.

  She cleared her throat and said, “Max, this is your daughter, Felicity.”

  “Flick,” the girl corrected.

  Max’s heart stopped for a second as he turned to stare at the girl, then began to gallop. His daughter? The girl was nine or ten, if she was a day. He turned back to his mother and said in a hard voice, “If this is a joke, Mother, it isn’t funny. Where did you find this kid? What makes you think she’s mine?”

  “She’s your daughter, Max,” his mother said firmly.

  He turned back to the girl and demanded, “Who’s your mother, kid?”

  The girl lifted her chin and said, “My name is Flick, not kid. My mother’s name is Kristin Lassiter. And I don’t care if you are my father. I don’t like you!”

  She punctuated that statement by sticking out her tongue, then raced from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “Don’t worry, Your Grace,” Emily said to his clearly agitated mother as she ran after the girl. “I’ll take care of her. She’s just had a shock. She’ll be fine.”

  “She’s had a shock?” Max said sarcastically. He still hadn’t quite processed the fact that the girl’s mother was Kristin Lassiter. Ten years ago he’d spent a single night with Kristin. They’d had sex one time. He rubbed a hand over his face. Apparently, once was enough.

  Good God! Was it possible the girl was his daughter? He turned to his mother, jaw agape, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Close your mouth, Max. You’re going to catch a lot of flies that way.”

  He snapped his mouth shut, then opened it to say, “What’s going on, Mother? If that child is Kristin’s daughter, what’s she doing here with you? How do you know she’s mine?”

  “Let’s sit down where we can talk comfortably,” his mother said, crossing back around to take her seat in the wing chair.

  Max paced the carpeted stone floor in front of her, too upset to sit. “I’m waiting, Mother.”

  “I knew how upset you were when Kristin left the tour and wouldn’t return your calls.”

  He tried to remember whether he’d ever said anything to his mother about his friendship with Kristin. Anything at all. He remembered his mother asking once if he had any close friends on the tour. He might have mentioned Kristin. “How did you know about that? I mean, about Kristin not returning my calls?”

  His mother sighed. “I hired someone, a private investigator, actually, to keep me informed about—”

  He stopped pacing and turned on her. “You spied on me?”

  “It wasn’t spying, exactly, Max. You boys never returned my calls. I was worried. I needed some way to make sure you were all right. So I—”

  “Hired someone to spy on me,” he said angrily.

  “That’s one way to put it,” she said. “My investigator turned up an interesting piece of information. Very soon after Kristin lost at Wimbledon, she sought out an ob-gyn. I thought she might have some female problem, that she might be sick. I thought it might give you some comfort to know that Kristin had turned you away because she didn’t want you to worry about her being ill.

  “It turned out she was pregnant. I couldn’t be sure the baby was yours. My investigator took measures to confirm the fact with DNA. Felicity is your daughter.”

  “You’ve known all these years that I had a daughter, and you never said a word?”

  “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

  Max wanted to get away, but there was no escaping the truth. He crossed to the mullioned windows draped with red velvet and looked out at the green hills that stretched as far as the eye could see. But his gaze was turned inward. Too many emotions were rioting through him. Anger was first and foremost. Somewhere, trying to get out, was awe. I have a daughter. And joy. I have a daughter!

  A spunky daughter, he thought. A grin teased at the corners of his lips as he recalled Flick’s response to his uncivil behavior. The grin was never born, killed by more anger.

  He stalked back to his mother and confronted her. “What is Flick doing here, Mother? I’ve spent the past week in Kristin’s company.” That was an understatement! “And she never said a word about having a daughter. Much less that her daughter was staying with you.”

  He saw the panic flicker in his mother’s eyes before she said, “I thought it was time you settled your differences with Kristin—and met your daughter. I simply arranged it so Kristin would play that exhibition match with you at Wimbledon.”

  “You what?” Max said.

  “I wanted to help.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me I had a daughter?” he demanded.

  “What would you have done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have a better question,” she said. “What do you plan to do now that you know about Felicity?”

  “Do? About what?”

  She made an exasperated sound. “Are you going to be a father to your daughter? Are you going to spend time with her?”

  “Doing what?”

  She made a frustrated sound in her throat.

  “I have no idea what a father does,” he said, exasperated now himself. “Except send his children away to school,” he said bitterly. “What is it you expect me to do?”

  “I’m sure Felicity could come up with a few ideas,” his mother said. “She’s a very bright child.”

  “She doesn’t like me,” Max said irritably.

  “What do you expect? You talked down to her and insulted her mother.”

  Someone knocked at the door. Max had his mouth open to say “Go away!” when the duchess called, “Come.”

  The door opened and Emily stepped inside. Felicity was right behind her. Emily urged Felicity forward. The girl took several more steps into the room, then looked back at Emily, who nodded.

  Felicity faced Max and said, “I’m sorry I stuck out my tongue at you.”

  “And?” Emily coaxed.

  Felicity made a face, then said, “I’m sorry I said I don’t like you. But you were so malicious, what did you expect?”

  Max was surprised by the apology. And offended by the word his child�
��apparently she was his child—had chosen to describe his behavior. “Malicious?”

  “Yes,” Felicity confirmed with the quick nod of a chin that was the spitting image of her mother’s. Her blue eyes—eyes the same color as his—were liquid with tears. “That means you hurt me on purpose,” the girl said. “It means you tried to be mean. And you were!”

  Max felt his neck heating. It had been a long time since anyone had made him feel ashamed. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I never knew I had a daughter. I was a little…surprised. I took it out on you.”

  “I could see your disapprobation,” she said seriously.

  He was startled into laughter by her use of a word he’d only heard in stuffy conference rooms. But knowing she thought he disapproved of her was no laughing matter. He could see he’d hurt her feelings again. “I’m not laughing at you, Flick,” he said, using the nickname she apparently preferred. “I’m simply delighted by your vocabulary.”

  She looked up at him earnestly, sighed and said, “It’s the bane of my mother’s existence.”

  He laughed again. “Your mom never was much of a student. She probably has to look everything up in the dictionary.”

  Flick smiled shyly and said, “I don’t mean to confuse her, I just think it’s fun using the new words I’m learning.”

  Max was over his shock enough to take a closer look at his daughter. Flick was tall for a nine-year-old, which she was if she’d been conceived the day before the Girls’ Singles Championship match at Wimbledon ten years ago. She had his eyes and nose and his black hair. She had her mother’s chin and cheekbones. And she was smart as a whip. Which she’d probably gotten from her grandmother.

  “Your grandmother said you might have some ideas about things we could do together while you’re here in England,” he said.

  Flick brightened. “Do you have any horses?”

  Max shook his head. “No.” She looked so crestfallen he said, “But we could go riding in Hyde Park. They have horses for rent there.”

  “Could I?” she said in an awed voice.

  Max was delighted that his daughter wanted to ride. He’d been riding horseback since before he could walk and had spent a lot of hours on fast, sleek horses playing polo. Riding horseback was something he loved that he could share with his newly found daughter. He smiled and said, “I don’t see why we couldn’t go riding.”

  “I’ll tell you why not,” a sharp voice said behind him.

  Max turned and found Kristin standing in the doorway like an avenging fury. Her anger wasn’t addressed at him. It was aimed at his mother.

  “How could you!” she said to the duchess. “You promised!”

  The duchess laid a protective hand across her breast and said, “I’m so sorry, my dear. Max showed up without warning. There was nothing I could do.”

  Apparently, that was enough to excuse the duchess, because Kristin turned her wrath on Max. “You don’t go near Flick without my permission!”

  “Flick is my daughter,” he replied in a quiet voice. “As I have belatedly found out. I have the right—”

  “You have no rights,” Kristin said, crossing to stand nose to nose with him, her voice low and furious. “She’s mine!”

  Max would never have questioned Kristin’s right to make the decisions about Flick’s life if she hadn’t thrown down the gauntlet. But she was wrong about one thing. “Flick isn’t just yours. She’s ours,” he corrected. “I’m her father, as my mother has been at pains to point out. A fact I’ve barely had time to process. I believe I’m entitled—”

  “Stay out of her life!” she hissed. “Stay away. Stay far away.”

  “Mom!” Flick cried. “Why are you so mad?”

  Kristin turned away as though he no longer existed and enfolded her daughter in her arms. “I’m sorry, Flick. I wasn’t expecting to find your father here.”

  “Dad says he’s going to take me horseback riding,” Flick said.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. That isn’t going to be possible.”

  “Why not?” both Flick and Max asked at the same time.

  She left Flick and crossed to snarl at him under her breath, “Because I say so!”

  Max felt a ball of anger growing inside him. Along with the fact he had a daughter, he was belatedly realizing that he’d been robbed of the chance of knowing Flick the first nine years of her life. Robbed. “How about we let the courts decide how much time I get to spend with my daughter.”

  He watched her face blanch at the threat.

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Watch me.”

  She glared at him, but she said, “Fine. You win.”

  He raised a brow. She’d conceded without much of a fight. Without any fight at all. Which meant she already knew he’d get some sort of custody if he took her to court. Maybe full custody? Was that what she feared? That he wanted to take Flick away from her?

  The thought hadn’t occurred to him. It might have at some point, he conceded. But he’d spent enough time separated from his own parents to know that that was no life for a kid. “I just want to take my daughter riding in Hyde Park,” he said. “You’re welcome to come along.”

  Why had he said that? Kristin probably wouldn’t come. But if she did, it was going to be an uncomfortable hour for both of them. He glanced at Flick, whose anxious glance shot from one parent to the other and back again. Damned uncomfortable, and not just for the two of them. For the three of them.

  “Flick has never been on a horse,” Kristin said.

  “They have gentle mounts,” he said. “And I’ll be with her.” He corrected himself, “We’ll be with her.”

  “I don’t know how to ride, either,” she said.

  “As I said, they have gentle mounts. I can teach you both. We’ll walk the horses. You’ll be safe as houses.”

  “Please, Mom?” Felicity said. “I’ve always wanted to go horseback riding, but you never let me.”

  So she’d appealed to a brand-new father. Smart girl, Max thought. He could see Kristin wavering and said, “I’d like to spend some time with Flick. We might as well do something she’s always wanted to do.”

  “All right,” Kristin said. “But we’ll have to wait until after the exhibition match to—”

  Max shook his head. “The match is too far off. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can go in the afternoon. After practice.”

  “How is Flick going to get to London?” Kristin said.

  “You can take her back to London with you tonight.

  She can stay in your hotel room and come watch us practice tomorrow morning. I can drive both of you back here tomorrow after we go riding.”

  “In your Porsche?” she said skeptically.

  “I’ve got a Range Rover,” he said. “It’s got plenty of room.”

  “Then I can go?” Flick asked her mother, bouncing on her toes, she was so excited.

  “Yes, you can go,” Kristin said.

  Flick lurched the few steps to grab her mother around the waist and hug her.

  Max barely had time to envy Kristin before Flick whirled and slammed her frail body against his. She grabbed him around the waist and hugged him tight. Before he could react, she’d pulled free and was running for the door.

  “I’ve got to tell Smythe,” she yelled over her shoulder. “He said you might take me horseback riding, Dad, if only I would ask.”

  Dad. Max marveled at the word and everything it involved. He had a child. Who’d been without a father for nine years. He only knew one thing for sure. He wanted to be a part of her life.

  He turned to Kristin and said, “We need to talk.” When he saw his mother opening her mouth to speak, he added, “Alone.”

  20

  Kristin followed Max across the hall to the Blue Room like a condemned woman heading to the gallows. No fire burned in the blackened stone fireplace, and the high-ceilinged room—decorated in shades of blue, of course—was chilly. She wrapped her arms around herself, to quiet her trembl
ing body, but she still felt cold inside and out.

  This was her worst nightmare come to life. Max seemed determined to insinuate himself into Flick’s life. She was going to be left to deal with the aftermath of tears and loneliness when he was gone. Maybe there was a way to convince him to keep his distance after their horseback ride tomorrow. Or perhaps not to take the ride at all.

  Max walked to the tall windows, shoving aside the royal-blue damask curtains that concealed the view, to look outside. Kristin saw the morning sun was gone, replaced by gray skies and threatening rain clouds. She remained near the door, keeping a low Victorian sofa between them. Max must have driven here. She’d taken the train, which had gotten her here too late to stop him from meeting Flick.

  When Max turned to her, he had his hands behind his back in a pose she’d seen used by his father, the billionaire financier. It was a pose that spoke of power and privilege. It was a pose meant to intimidate a lesser mortal.

  You’re invincible, Kristin. The words immediately played in her head, the way they had a lifetime ago when she’d found herself facing an opponent she feared. She squared her shoulders, loosened her grip on the back of the sofa and slid her weight to the balls of her feet, an instinctive fight-or-flight response to danger.

  Max met her gaze and said through tight jaws, “I’m resisting the urge to choke the life out of you.”

  She wasn’t sure how to reply to a statement like that. She thought it was hyperbole, but she wasn’t entirely sure. Hyperbole was one of Flick’s first big words. Kristin had looked it up but never used it. Until now. It meant an extravagant exaggeration. If that was the case, there was no need to respond—or to run. So she held her tongue.

  His eyes never left hers. She saw murder in them.

  Her heart began to race, speeding adrenaline into her veins. He was angrier than she’d thought. Dangerously angry. She understood why he’d linked his powerful hands behind his back. She remained poised to flee.

  “A week past, I found out how little you trusted me ten years ago,” he said. “Today I found out how fully you betrayed my trust in you.”