by Trish Wylie
The innuendo didn’t help. ‘I don’t want to see you at breakfast. If there’s anything else to talk about, then you can come back when Lizzie has gone to school.’ She looked away from his face, her gaze flickering upwards again while she frowned. ‘Things are already unsettled enough without her asking a dozen questions about you.’
It was a feeble excuse, he felt. ‘Then I’ll wait until she’s gone and, after the estate agent comes, we can talk. There isn’t a hotel or a B&B for miles.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about!’ Her chin rose as she punched the words out and for a moment she almost looked panicked, which didn’t make sense to him.
He didn’t see what the problem was himself.
‘Yes, there is.’ With another deep breath to maintain his patience, he leaned his face closer to try and make his point. ‘Whether you like it or not, the estate and the house are a partnership and if you won’t sell and you don’t have the money to buy the land back, then that makes us partners, which means we have some negotiating to do.’
Her large eyes narrowed, her voice icy as she calmly informed him, ‘I’d rather chew off my own leg than enter into any kind of a partnership with you.’
He quirked a dark brow. ‘Again, you mean?’
His gaze swept over the flush that immediately rose on her cheeks. Then he tilted his head to the side, his face hovering over hers. ‘I thought we made quite a “partnership” last time, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, you are a complete and utter—’
‘Now, that’s hardly the right language for the new lady of the manor, is it?’
Her eyes blazed with anger and he smiled. She looked as if she would dearly love to hit him again.
But in a heartbeat she regained her control. Her breasts rose and fell as she took a deep steadying breath and then her lashes lowered before she focused on his chest and informed him through tight lips, ‘I don’t want to discuss this in the middle of the damn night.’ She stepped back and around him. ‘So how about you sleep wherever the hell you want? Just make absolutely sure that Lizzie doesn’t set eyes on you before you leave. She has no idea who you are and I’d like to keep it that way.’
Kane turned on his heel and stared at her as she pushed the door open, unable to keep the bitterness from his tone. ‘Why the hell would it matter to me whether she knows who I am? She’s nothing to do with me.’
Rhiannon swore below her breath as she turned in the doorway, her eyes glittering in the candlelight. ‘That’s the first thing you’ve said in a very long time that I actually agree with. You stay away from her, Kane Healey. I mean it. She’ll find out what kind of a low life you are over my dead body.’
Already irritated that an edge of bitterness had shown in his voice, he scowled at her. What in hell was she talking about?
But, before he could ask, she was gone, the door swinging on its hinges behind her. And he didn’t follow, even if it left him clenching his teeth, feeling angrier than he had in a long, long time.
If he’d had any sense at all he would have done any ‘talking’ through a solicitor. But he had wanted—what?
Frankly, he was already too angry to look for an answer to that. What he hadn’t wanted was to be made painfully aware of just how much of an effect her presence could have on his libido. And he’d just got that in spades, hadn’t he?
The sooner he was out of this place the better.
CHAPTER TWO
‘SO, MUM, can I get a pony? And maybe a dog?’
Rhiannon smiled affectionately as they made their way out of the cavernous hallway and through the front door to scrunch across the gravel to her Jeep. Lizzie had hidden her first day at school nerves behind incessant chatter all the way through the breakfast that her mother had hurried in order to get them out before Kane appeared from wherever he had slept.
If she’d had her way they’d have eaten slices of toast in the Jeep. Just to be on the safe side.
‘How about we get properly settled in first before we stock a zoo?’ Though, after the adventure of the night before, a dog might not be a bad idea. They were two females alone in the middle of nowhere, after all. A dog would be a good idea. Something of a manageable size, with a nice deep, scary bark, that could live downstairs in the kitchen.
‘Whose car is that?’
Rhiannon’s heart sank, her hand on the Jeep’s door. She’d so very nearly got away from the house without any questions. So near and yet so far.
Pinning a bright smile on her face, she glanced briefly at the sleek, low-slung sports car peeking from the edge of the house. He must have gone into the house at the back.
‘It belongs to a friend of Uncle Mattie.’ Well, it wasn’t a lie. He had been a friend of Mattie’s, more so the last few years than when she had first met them all.
Lizzie looked all the more intrigued. ‘In the house? Why didn’t he come down for breakfast? Will I get to meet him after school?’
Not if her Mother had anything to do with it, she wouldn’t. ‘No, he’ll be gone by then. He didn’t know we’d moved in yet.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘How did you know he was a “he”?’
Lizzie shrugged her narrow shoulders, her blue eyes still wide with curiosity. ‘Guessed. What’s he like? Can’t he stay till I meet him? We can talk about Uncle Mattie. I’d like that.’
Rhiannon’s heart twisted at the simple statement. Of course she’d want to meet people who’d known her favourite ‘uncle’; talking about him was something that Rhiannon had been encouraging her to do. It was healthy. And, much as it killed her to have to deal with it when Lizzie hadn’t even reached the grand age of ten yet, she didn’t want her to bottle things up. But neither did she want her talking to Kane. About anything.
‘He’s very busy; I’m sure he’ll be gone by the time you get back.’ The look of disappointment on her daughter’s face almost doubled her up with guilt. It was only natural for her to try and reach out for something comforting in the face of so much change. Talking about her Mattie with someone must have seemed an ideal security blanket, ‘How about when you come back we go and see what pictures of Uncle Mattie we can find to put on that wall in the library?’
Lizzie brightened a little, her head bobbing up and down, which flicked her long, dark chocolate-brown pony-tail out behind her. ‘Okay.’
‘Right, well, let’s get you to school, then.’
It was only once Lizzie was settled into her new classroom in the primary school, a universe smaller than the city one she was used to, that Rhiannon allowed her thoughts to return to what she had to face back at Brookfield. She wasn’t looking forward to it.
And the night before she had tossed and turned, her ears straining to hear any sound of Kane moving around the house, while her thoughts had run riot, trying to cope with how her hatred of him burned like acid in the pit of her stomach as she searched frantically for a quick fix solution to the problem he had presented her with.
Maybe if she’d managed more sleep she might have found an option or two. To have what sleep she had managed uninterrupted by fitful dreams of the past would certainly have helped too…
Tugging angrily on the steering wheel, she made the final turn through the huge wrought iron gates that heralded the entrance to Brookfield.
Having Brookfield and its hundred and something acres to work on was supposed to help both her and Lizzie to focus their intense emotions from Mattie’s passing, elsewhere. It was supposed to be a chance to look forwards, not back, and at the same time to allow them to never forget the one person who had helped them when they had needed it most.
They finally had a chance at a real future—the two of them together against the world.
Once through the gates, the Jeep was immediately surrounded by an avenue of tall skeletal trees that wouldn’t see leaves for months yet, while Rhiannon thought about the bitterness in Kane’s voice when he had asked her why it would matter to him whether or not Lizzie knew who he was.
He had to be out of the h
ouse before Lizzie came home; there was no question about that!
Even if a small, resentful part of Rhiannon thought for a brief moment that it might do him good to see how amazing and beautiful and bright and funny and audacious her child had turned out to be.
Low branches reached out to scrape against the high roof of the Jeep as she got closer to the one part of her past she had tried hardest to leave behind.
Designed for the coaches that would have driven to the large house when it was first built in the late nineteenth century, the original owners could never have envisaged the need for anything wider than a large coach to use the driveway, so they had simply built it to enter on one side of the lake and leave on the other in one large scenic circle that only ever widened in front of the house itself. It made for a beautiful drive, one that normally acted as a soothing balm for Rhiannon’s soul.
The trees thinned and allowed a glimpse of the lake and the impressive house beyond. Brookfield.
All of her young life, growing up in a block of flats in a poorer part of Dublin, Rhiannon could only have dreamt that a place like Brookfield existed outside a fairy tale. And she still remembered the first weekend Mattie had brought her to his ‘little country cottage’. That first turn on to the wide gravel in front of the three-storey country house, when the sun had come out from behind a cloud and glistened in every one of the dozens of small panes of leaded glass, had been like coming home. And it still did that to her, even if the place was now laced with loneliness, without her best friend to greet her at the door. And a rising resentment that Kane Healey was there when Mattie wasn’t.
She wouldn’t let him take it from her. She’d find a way to make it work without the estate.
With a sigh of resignation, she set the handbrake and unclipped her seat belt, but when she walked into the entrance hall there wasn’t a sound except the echo of her footsteps on the smooth slate floor. Nothing. Not even a whisper.
And yet she could still sense Kane’s presence.
She moved down the hallway and peeked through doors. Into the lounge, the dining room, the sitting room, the games room and lastly the gigantic kitchen—where she smoothed the palm of her hand over the well worn surface of the gigantic wooden table as she walked to the other end of the room.
Where in hell was he? She shouldn’t have to go looking for him!
She raised a hand and kneaded the muscles on the back of her neck where her skin prickled with an awareness of his presence behind her before his deep voice sounded, close enough to make her jump a little, and softer than she remembered it being in a very long time.
‘Still tired from the long drive yesterday?’
She lowered her hand. ‘Yes.’
‘You got your old place all packed up?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I’ll bet you did that on your own too, right?’
‘I needed to know where everything was packed so I could find it when it gets here.’ She really didn’t want to make small talk with him.
He nodded as he reached her side, glancing at her briefly from the corner of his eye on the way past. ‘That makes sense. Though I’d have thought Stephen might have helped out.’
Rhiannon wasn’t about to discuss her disastrous short-lived marriage with him either. So she took a breath and ploughed on in. ‘Let’s get this out of the way, shall we? I’m not selling you the house.’
‘Yes, you mentioned that.’ He smiled infuriatingly but, before she could react, he swung a hand towards the large Aga that heated the room. ‘Coffee?’
Rhiannon silently groaned, then pinned a sweet smile on her face. ‘Oh, please, do make yourself at home.’
‘I will. Do you want a cup?’
Not unless he wanted to end up wearing it soon, no. ‘I’m fine, thank you. I already had breakfast.’
‘Yes, with Lizzie. It must be a big day for her, her first day at a new school.’
Even the sound of her name on his lips was enough to twist her gut. Lizzie was her one weakness and Kane had to know that. But having accompanied his words with a narrow-eyed, searching gaze that seemed to see right through her, it proved exactly what she needed to goad her into standing a little taller.
‘That would be absolutely none of your business, now, would it?’
Kane blinked slowly, crossing his arms over his broad chest while he considered her. And, just when she was opening her mouth to add something more, he answered in a low drawl, ‘You have a real problem with being overly defensive about her; you do know that, right?’
She folded her arms beneath her breasts in a mirror of his stance, frowning back at him. ‘And I just wonder why that might be.’
‘You tell me.’
Oh, he was a piece of work! In her eyes he was evil personified, even without the additional visual image of being dressed from head to toe in black—black thick-knit polo-neck sweater, black jeans, no doubt black shoes on his large feet. He was the bad guy.
And she’d already spent years honing her hatred.
Unable to look at him for a second more, she unfolded her arms and leaned forward, the palms of her hands flat on the table surface.
‘I want you gone. Anything you need to discuss with me about access to your land or the use of my outbuildings, you can negotiate through a solicitor.’
He smiled a small smile that was far from warm. ‘You’re overreacting just a tad here, don’t you think? There’s no need to be immature about this. Just because I hit a nerve when I mentioned your over-protectiveness towards your daughter—’
Her mouth gaped open as he pushed the subject again. Oh, he could not be serious, could he? Immature? Over-protective?
She pushed her hands against the table, glowering at him as she ground out the words from between her clenched teeth. ‘I’m only over-protective when it comes to keeping her away from you! And actually, for your information, I learnt to be mature fast. Motherhood will do that to you.’
‘Bound to, when you have a baby so young.’ He enunciated each word with a calm voice that Rhiannon dearly wanted to slap him for.
She would never have believed she had it in her to hate one person so much!
‘Go away, Kane. Go away and don’t ever come back. I won’t let you hurt Lizzie. You even think for one second about playing daddy to her after all this time—’
He swore viciously, silencing her.
‘Why the hell would I want to play daddy?’ Unfolding his arms, his large hands bunched into fists at his sides, his blue eyes flaring with the same anger she could hear in his clipped voice. ‘She has a father.’
‘The hell she does! Her father wanted nothing to do with her from before she was even born!’
Kane scowled darkly. ‘He married you, didn’t he? I’d say that proved he wanted something to do with her.’
Rhiannon’s breath caught, her chest cramping, and she even flinched back from him as if he’d slapped her with an invisible hand.
‘Is that what you told yourself?’ She shook her head in amazement, stunned not only by his words, but by the fact that hearing them still had the power to sting so badly. ‘That she was someone else’s child? Oh, you’re really something, aren’t you?’
For the first time, her words seemed to confuse him. ‘What the hell are you talking about now?’
A tension-filled silence fell while Kane scowled darkly and Rhiannon shook with years of suppressed anger and resentment. So when the ancient doorbell jangled above the door behind her head she jumped at the sound, her eyes drawn to the small brass bell labelled ‘Front’.
Kane was still scowling when she looked back at him. ‘That has to be the estate agent.’
‘Fine, then you can deal with that on your way out. There’s no need for them to look at the house because it’s not for sale.’
She was halfway across the hall towards the library when Kane blocked her way, his hand reaching out to catch hold of her arm. Long fingers circled and squeezed in silent warning—warning her to stay put
because he wasn’t done—while the heat of his touch seeped through her skin, radiating into her chilled blood.
‘What do you mean, “someone else’s child”?’
Rhiannon had to tilt her head up to look into his face, hissing the words up at him without trying to hide any of the venom held inside. ‘I really don’t care what you told yourself to ease your conscience. But the simple fact is you gave up the right to Lizzie a long time ago and popping in on some pretence to see how she’s doing now won’t fix that. I’ve made damn sure she has no idea who you really are. So keep your distance. Because if you hurt her, I’ll kill you, I swear I will. She doesn’t need to know what a disappointment her father is.’
The hold on her arm tightened when she tried to jerk free. ‘Are you telling me that Lizzie is mine?’
Rhiannon swore under her breath as she tried again to tug her arm free. ‘Let me go, Kane!’
‘Are you telling me that she’s my child?’
She tugged again, her focus drawn to where he was holding her, while her mind sought frantically for a way she might possibly break free. How dared he use physical strength to subdue her? How dared he make her body burn from that touch when it was meant to do nothing but dominate her?
‘Rhiannon!’ The tone in his voice changed, with an edge of what could almost have sounded like hope to her disbelieving ears.
Which drew her gaze back to his face, and what she saw there shocked her to the core.
‘Of course she’s yours.’ She shook her head in amazement, ‘How can you not have known that? When I sent you that letter I made it more than plain—’
‘What letter?’
CHAPTER THREE
THE front doorbell rang and rang until Kane had no choice but to release her and deal with it.
Rhiannon stood in the doorway of the library, her back against the wood frame, trying to make sense of what had just happened. He had genuinely looked as if he hadn’t known, as if it had been a complete shock to him. He had even looked as if it mattered to him. But that couldn’t be right. How could he not have known?