by Trish Wylie
At the time it had made him glad he’d broken up with her when he had, even if he had maybe handled it badly enough for her to make the decision that he wasn’t worthy parent material. After all, if she was only interested in marriage to step her into a safe financial environment it wouldn’t have been much of a marriage, would it?
Knowing that made it easy now to damp down the memory of how much fun he’d once had making up with her after one of their ‘debates’—long, languid sessions of making up. Until there had been a time when they had debated less and ‘made up’ more. At one time he had thought the memories would haunt him. But then she had married Stephen and he’d known he’d had a lucky escape.
All it had cost him was his daughter. And there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that she was his, now that he had spent time with her.
Lizzie giggled, the sound dancing around the room and drawing his attention back to her face. And instantly he smiled in response. For no other reason than it was what he always felt like doing when he looked at her.
‘I’d need to grow a bit first before I tried pushing Kane over. He’s humongous!’
‘Nah.’ He moved towards the back door with his bag. ‘We office types are real weaklings. I’ll bet you could push me over in a snap.’
Rhiannon watched him from below long lashes as he made the journey across the kitchen. A real weakling, my backside.
Her gaze moved slowly over his body, making the most of what had once been an everyday sight. The man had always had his own particular way of filling a woman’s eyes and the years hadn’t diminished that any.
Not that he was handsome in a conventional Prince Charming way, oh, no. He’d never been that simple to peg. He’d always been, well, sexy, truth be told. Ruggedly handsome, definitely all male, and there was a sexuality to that that had been hard to resist, for her anyway.
It had been the first time in her young life that she’d met someone who could affect her on such a basic sensual level with just a silent gaze or half a smile. And the kind of passion they had eventually shared had been inevitable from the first day he’d looked at her. Damn him.
‘That has to go in the recycle bin.’
Rhiannon watched as he glanced over his shoulder and flashed a brilliant smile at Lizzie, one that was open and honest, almost affectionate. And it tore off another piece of her heart when he answered with a brief salute and a, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Already father and daughter had an ease with each other, a rapport of sorts. And Rhiannon felt unreasonably jealous about that. Not for the way Kane was with Lizzie, but more for the way Lizzie was with Kane. She was still so innocent, so unbiased, so damn open and trusting.
‘It’s ’cos of the planet.’
‘Naturally.’
Rhiannon rolled her eyes at the pun while Lizzie giggled. But the second Kane closed the door behind him he looked straight at her with such a look of venom that she almost called him on it. Almost.
But in a small corner of her traitorous mind she immediately wondered what it would take to be on the receiving end of the look he wore on his face when looked at Lizzie. Not that she wanted him to look at her with that kind of open warmth. It was just that she was very aware of the vast difference in the way he treated them.
Surely he couldn’t entirely blame her for all of this? She wasn’t the one who’d disappeared without a trace. And if he’d thought anything of her, which she’d believed he did once upon a time, then surely he couldn’t have been so dumb as to not work out her baby was his!
All right, so she hadn’t known she was pregnant when he had broken up with her, and he had been gone for a while by the time she did know—but even so!
Whatever it was that had pulled him off the face of the earth so completely must have been damn compelling!
His deep voice broke into her thoughts. ‘Is there anything else that needs to be carried out?’
‘No. But thank you for asking.’
‘Can we eat yet?’ Lizzie kneeled on one of the long wooden benches at the side of the huge table. ‘I’m starved.’
‘You’re always starved.’ She smiled indulgently. At least with her daughter she was on safe ground.
‘Kane’s starved too.’ Lizzie nodded her head in his direction, her eyebrows hinting that he should back her up. ‘Right, Kane?’
‘I’m not sure I would use the word “starved”.’
Again Rhiannon’s gaze strayed across his body, moving over his flat stomach and then upwards to where his ribcage tapered outwards to his wide chest and broad shoulders, upwards still, until her eyes met his.
Kane smiled a slow smile in response, one that didn’t make it all the way up into his eyes, allowing her to silently know he’d witnessed her study of him—and almost hinting at it being a victory of some kind.
Rhiannon immediately frowned with annoyance and looked away. ‘I’m sure Kane doesn’t want to be stuck with us twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He allowed the words to come out in a low drawl. ‘I think we still have a lot of catching up to do, don’t you?’
She gritted her teeth. Damn him, ‘You must have things of your own to do, phone calls to make to corporate headquarters, that kind of thing.’
Anything that would give her time alone with her daughter—away from his constantly stifling presence.
‘No, I’m all yours.’
God, she hated him. ‘Well, dinner won’t be ready for a while and there’s still plenty of unpacking to do.’
Which wasn’t a lie; the removers had barely been gone a couple of hours.
‘I’ll cook.’
Her eyes widened in disbelief as she stared up at him again. ‘You’ll cook?’
His face remained impassive. ‘I’ve been known to beat an egg.’
He did look as if he was ready to beat something.
‘It’s really not necessary.’ She hadn’t actually contemplated them all sitting down to eat together every night. Was that seriously what he expected would happen? That they would sit around and play happy families while he was there?
‘While you’re still settling in, it makes sense if I throw something together. Lizzie can give me a hand while you’re busy with something else. And anyway—’ he smiled at Lizzie ‘—we wouldn’t want Lizzie to starve to death, would we?’
Lizzie rubbed her stomach and sighed dramatically in response. ‘I might be having a growth spurt, Mum. What would happen if I didn’t get all the stuff I need to get tall?’
‘You’d stay short.’ She frowned briefly at Kane in warning. If he thought she was that easily dismissed he had another think coming. ‘Really, I don’t think you should have to cook for us. We can all respect each other’s space while you’re visiting.’
‘Or we could just spend the time to get to know each other after all these missing years.’ He let the innuendo hang in the air like poison. ‘Don’t make such a big deal out of the odd omelette.’
‘I’m not.’ Which was a lie. She was, because it was a big deal. ‘It’s just setting a precedent is all—’
He remained deathly calm, folding his arms across his broad chest. ‘Is it?’
‘Yes, it is. The last couple of nights have been thrown together but if you cook tonight you’ll expect me to cook tomorrow night and then we’ll end up in some silly routine.’
‘And that would be silly, why?’
‘You’re always saying the more people that share the work the quicker it gets done, Mum.’
Rhiannon ignored her own words of wisdom. ‘We don’t need to eat together every single night.’
And the last couple of nights had been hell. Every mouthful of food had felt like swallowing broken glass.
‘Because it makes much more sense for us all to fend for ourselves—cook at different times—that kind of thing? Next you’ll want a rota for the cooker and the washing-up.’
She mumbled her response without looking at him. ‘I don’t happen to think that’s unreasona
ble.’
‘Well, I think you’re being silly. Don’t you, Lizzie?’
Rhiannon wondered how much time she’d get in prison for a spur of the moment murder…
‘Yup, I think you’re being silly too, Mum.’
Rhiannon glanced at Lizzie’s face. She was smiling, but already her perceptive gaze was moving back and forth between the two adults.
‘Are you okay with helping him?’
Lizzie shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Yup. But then that means we don’t have to do the dishes, right?’
Rhiannon smiled down at her, glanced sideways at the studious expression on Kane’s face and then bowed her head to concentrate on unwrapping more plates, a curtain of her long hair hiding her from him.
‘All right, then. Whatever you’re happy with, baby.’
Lizzie paused for only the briefest of moments before she answered with, ‘W-ell, what would make me really happy is a dog and a pony…’
Rhiannon couldn’t help it, she laughed at the ridiculous situation she found herself in. Then suddenly realized she wasn’t the only one laughing, the sound of her own laughter briefly mixing with deeper male laughter.
When she looked at Lizzie, the child’s mischievous blue-eyed gaze moved again between the adults before she laughed too.
Rhiannon looked upwards in time to catch the tail-end of Kane’s open smile before he tore his gaze from hers and ruffled Lizzie’s hair, his voice gruff but laced with affection.
‘That’s it, kiddo, never give up.’
He hunched down beside her to discuss what they were going to make for dinner, the words fading into the distance as Rhiannon stood transfixed by the sight of them side by side. They were just so very alike—the shade of their hair, the colour of their eyes, the way that Lizzie would tilt her head in thought.
And there it was again, that instant ease between them. So natural, so uncomplicated—already!
Another bubble of guilt rose up inside her. She had kept them apart all this time. And why, really? Because of her pride, because she’d been so very quick to decide he wouldn’t want anything to do with his own baby? She could justify it by looking back at how much of a mess she’d been back then, how young and naïve and alone and scared—but even so…
Seeing them together now made her look back on the judgement call she’d made and, no matter how she tried, she found the decisions she’d made coming up shorter than before.
It wasn’t a good feeling.
When Kane glanced up at her again, it took a moment for his face to come into focus. She blinked back the moisture at the back of her eyes, avoided his gaze and cleared her throat with a soft cough as she lifted the last plates off the table.
‘I’ll leave you two to it, then. I’ll be in the library.’
Still avoiding looking at him, she walked out of the room with her head held high, determined to get away before she let any of her inner doubts show.
She might have just been forced to realize she may have made a huge mistake. But she wouldn’t show it in front of him. Watching him with Lizzie was punishment enough.
Because she already felt as if she was losing her daughter a little to him. And that hurt beyond words.
CHAPTER FIVE
INSIDE a week Rhiannon was starting to cherish the time she had with Lizzie on the short trips to and from school. It felt like the only time they were alone, as if somehow she’d suddenly been thrust into a kind of competition for quality time with her daughter.
And she hated that.
It had been just the two of them for a lot longer than it had ever been with someone else in their lives.
And Rhiannon was discovering she preferred it that way.
Even the time when Lizzie was at school was tense. Because, though she managed to avoid Kane by focusing all her energy on unpacking and cleaning and adding the little familiar touches that would turn Brookfield from Mattie’s house into a home that Lizzie could be happy growing up in, she was constantly aware that he was still there, even if he wasn’t.
He disappeared again briefly at the start of the second week to conduct business back in Dublin, but he still managed to be back before Lizzie went to bed. And while he’d been gone a van-load of high-tech equipment had arrived, specifically, it felt, to remind Rhiannon that he hadn’t gone for good.
She wondered just how long he intended the charade to continue. Because it honestly felt as if a little of her was dying every day. She’d never felt so alone. There was no one she could talk to about how she was feeling, not really, and where would she begin? After all, she’d learnt early in her life to cope alone and, much as she loved the few close friends she had, she wasn’t going to phone them every second to talk it through when there was no point. They couldn’t fix it.
Under different circumstances she knew she’d have talked to Mattie. But all that thinking that way did was to magnify the grief she’d been burying at the loss of her best friend. The grief she had hoped to work through by keeping busy at Brookfield and focusing on Lizzie being happy.
The latter goal was something Kane seemed to have taken off her hands, which left her working on Brookfield alone and finding reminders of Mattie at every corner. Increasing the sense of isolation in her own home, and making her more miserable with each passing day.
As it was what she considered her ‘turn’ to make dinner, she laid the table and checked nothing was burning before she went to seek out Kane and Lizzie.
It was only as she walked up the sweeping stairway to the second floor that she heard laughter echoing in the distance. And once again, surreally, there was deep, distinctly male laughter as well as the familiar melodic giggle that Rhiannon knew so well, the sound floating down temptingly from the third floor where generations ago the house servants would have lived.
It felt as if he was deliberately taunting her as she got closer.
‘No way.’
‘Yes way.’
‘Then how does the Warrior Princess get past the monster? Quick, before I get killed!’
‘Ah, now, a smart kid like you should be able to work it out. That’s the whole idea.’
Gently pushing open the low door, Rhiannon’s eyes took stock of the room with a quick glance. At one time it would have been a dormitory; it was long and low, with four small windows sunk into the low eaves.
Except now it had a high-tech office suite in varying stages of construction, with flat computer screens, telephone lines and sheets of bubble wrap hanging out of cardboard boxes.
Well, he hadn’t wasted any time marking out his territory, had he? With a frown, she vowed to ask him outright just how long he planned on staying.
Sitting in front of one of the large screens, where an animated flame-haired woman seemed to be working her way through some kind of magical maze of roaring monsters, was her enthralled daughter. And by her side was someone Rhiannon hadn’t seen in years.
With ruffled hair curling adoringly against the back of his broad neck, wearing a plain navy T-shirt, faded jeans and beaten up trainers. Looking like he had used to look when he had been so very infectiously enthusiastic about everything life had to offer.
His deep laughter sounded again as Lizzie huffed in frustration at the game they were playing—together.
While Rhiannon stood alone in the doorway and felt the knife twist again in her stomach. She really didn’t know how much more of this she could take.
So she scowled hard at what she could see of his profile, at the deep crease in the cheek she could see while her mind filled in the one on the other cheek that she couldn’t. And even as resentment swelled in her chest again, so consuming that it almost stole away her breath, she remembered. She remembered afternoons with him, doing exactly the same thing with much more antiquated equipment. She remembered his excitement for the technology, the ideas, so far beyond her realms of comprehension, to make it better. How he would talk for hours about things that didn’t make any sense to her, but she would listen anyway, just to hea
r to deep rumble of his voice and to see the sparkle in his eyes.
‘Why can’t I get her to go through that gap?’ Lizzie let go of her control pad long enough to point at the edge of the screen.
He examined her profile, his eyes still sparkling in a reflection of her enthusiasm even as his tone of voice changed. ‘Why don’t we ask your mum?’
They both turned their office chairs to look at her, Kane’s expression cautious again.
‘Kane has some really cool games.’
‘I’d heard that.’ Cool games that half the world’s children played on various pieces of equipment these days. She’d been surrounded by Micro-Tech goods for years, had tripped over magazine articles and seen his face on TV more than once. He was considered a technological wizard.
Rhiannon frowned briefly at him as she remembered how it had felt as if he’d been deliberately rubbing her nose in it with his success back then.
Then she smiled at Lizzie. ‘Dinner’s almost ready. Don’t you think you should go get cleaned up and change out of your school uniform? I’m sure Kane has stuff he wants to do too. He doesn’t need you up here disturbing him all the time when—’
‘I don’t mind her keeping me company.’
Rhiannon ignored him. ‘If you have your homework done after dinner you can maybe play again for a while before bedtime.’
The concessions weren’t getting any easier to make, but with each passing day she was finding herself making more of them without stopping to think about it as much. Probably because she was becoming more and more aware of the fact that Lizzie was flourishing under her father’s attention. He always had time for her, listening intently to the things she said, helping her with her homework when she asked him to, explaining things in a way she always seemed to ‘get’.
And although Rhiannon knew that, for Lizzie, he still held an element of ‘new friend’ novelty, she also knew with the instincts of a parent that it went beyond that for Kane. He was making up for lost time.
And there was that inner pang of guilt again.