Relief swelled in her and she turned her face into his hand, pressing her lips to his palm. “It just seems like such a lot to ask,” she whispered.
He chuckled and, not for the first time in their acquaintance, replied, “You didn’t ask, remember? I offered.”
She smiled back at him and, with a new-found confidence and comfortable daring, moved in to nestle against him. “You’ll have to watch those offers,” she teased, “You may have noticed I’m accepting them more often. If you’re not careful, you’ll be in over your head.”
“Sweetheart, I was in over my head the moment you sat down beside me in that theater,” he said dryly. He took the cup from her and set it with his on the nearby fireplace mantel. “But if you’re in the mood to accept offers…”
He fitted his lean length against her, his hands possessive, his intent unmistakable. Gwyn’s body cooperatively turned to molten lava.
Part of her, however, held back. Something niggled at the edges of her consciousness.
“Why sixteen years?” she asked.
Gareth pushed aside her hair and pursued a trail with his lips along her shoulder, up her neck, to the base of her ear.
“What?” he murmured against her skin.
Shivering, she made a belated effort to pull back. His arms tightened, holding her to him. She pushed harder, leaning back to regard him.
“Gareth, I’m serious. You said you’ve been ready to take on fatherhood for sixteen years. Why that number?”
His body went still against hers.
“Did I say that?” he asked lightly. Evasively.
Alarm bells sounded in her brain, clamoring for her attention. Something wasn’t right. She pushed harder and almost stumbled when he released her without warning, without a fight.
“You know you did. What’s going on?”
Faster than she would have imagined possible, Gareth’s eyes turned bleak. He leaned against the patio door frame again, his arms crossed across him, one fist raised to cover his mouth. Pain slashed across his features.
Dark premonition loomed over her like some kind of vulture.
She waited.
Gareth’s arms ached for the feel of Gwyn’s body within their circle again, but he didn’t dare reach for her. Her pulling away had left a gaping wound he would have sworn he could feel bleeding. He couldn’t bear to feel her recoil like that a second time.
And she would if he tried to touch her right now. He saw it in her eyes, buried just beneath the slowly splintering trust in lake-blue depths. He drew a ragged breath. Deprived of her touch and faced with the demons of his own creation, his faith in their ability to weather the truth seemed suddenly, sickeningly naïve. Maybe if they’d had more time first; if they’d talked more, made love more…
But like this?
It’s too soon. We’re too new…we won’t survive this. Not yet. Not now.
But a single, careless, offhand remark had left him with no other choice.
He steeled himself. Tightened his fist. Ignored the heat radiating from Gwyn’s body in stark contrast to his own icy core.
“Gwyn, there’s something I haven’t told you – ”
The trill of a cell phone cut him off and made them both jump. Gareth sent a black look in the direction of the sound coming from the counter by the sink.
“That’s mine,” he said. “Sean’s the only one who has the number. I don’t think he’d call without a reason.”
Gwyn nodded. Not a flicker crossed her face to indicate her thoughts, but her careful stillness alone spoke volumes. His cousin’s timing could not have been worse.
The phone shrilled again.
“It might be about one of the kids.”
Gwyn nodded again. Her expression didn’t change.
He strode across the kitchen to where he’d left his phone beside the sink. Lifting the offending instrument, he jabbed the talk button in mid-ring.
“This had better be good,” he grated.
“Oh, it’s good, all right,” Sean’s voice drawled in return. “Amy’s here.”
Chapter 34
Gareth faced three challenges following his cousin’s words: breathing, comprehension, and incapacitating disbelief. He found himself clutching the countertop, not for support, but for a lifeline to reality – a physical reassurance that he was still somehow connected to earth.
“Say that again?” he said hoarsely.
“Amy is here.”
“Here where? In Ottawa?”
“Here in my apartment.”
“Right now?”
“I’m looking at her as we speak, cuz.” Sean paused, then added, “And it gets better.”
Gareth suppressed a groan. “Catherine?”
“The paparazzi.”
“Bloody hell.”
“My sentiments exactly. And probably most of my neighbors’. And airport security’s.”
He released his grip on the table and rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Is she all right?”
“She’s shaken up, but I think she’ll survive. Those guys really are a bunch of sharks, aren’t they?”
“Tell me about it.” He’d always taken the paparazzi pretty much in stride, careful to protect his privacy while recognizing that they were an unfortunate part of the world in which he’d chosen to live, but the thought of those locusts swarming his unsuspecting and unprepared daughter…
His daughter. He passed his hand over his jaw and tried to force his mind past stunned and into functioning again. His daughter was here. Less than two hours away. He inhaled deeply and turned, mustering his thoughts.
Gwyn stared back at him.
The wind left his lungs with an audible hiss for the second time.
Gwyn.
Her eyes held his, filled with questions that made his gut clench. Bloody hell.
“You still there?” Sean asked.
Oh, what tangled webs we weave…
Setting his jaw, he resolutely turned away from the gaze he could no longer bear to hold. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m here. Tell me what happened.”
“Amy let slip some details to a friend in the hostel where she was staying in Cardiff. Turns out he wasn’t much of a friend. When the local press started nosing around, she decided to clear out while she could. She managed to catch an earlier flight, figuring she’d just surprise you, but the paparazzi beat her here. I got a call from airport security about an hour ago – ” Sean broke off as Gwyn’s cell phone, still on the counter beside Gareth, began its own musical trill. “Is that another phone?”
Gareth scooped up the offending instrument and held it out to Gwyn in silence. He noted how very careful she was not to touch him as she took it.
“It was Gwyn’s,” he said to Sean, turning his attention away from her. One disaster at a time. “She has it now. Go on.”
“So anyway, a couple of my buddies from work picked her up and – ” Sean stopped again. “Did you say Gwyn answered her cell?”
“Yes, why?”
“If you can get it away from her, you might want to try,” his cousin suggested, an unfamiliar note of quiet in his voice. “You just made the local evening news.”
Gareth’s gaze flicked to where Gwyn stood by the patio doors again, her phone held against her ear with whitened knuckles, her face as still as marble.
“Gareth? You still there? Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” he said. “It’s too late.”
***
Gwyn watched as Gareth, little more than a shadow among shadows, locked the cottage door and pocketed the key. A snowflake drifted through the fading daylight to settle on her cheek. It lingered there for a second, its tiny coolness reflecting the frost that had claimed her heart. More flakes come to rest on the deck at her feet.
How fitting that the world and her soul should turn to ice at the same time.
Gareth turned to her. Her gaze flicked up at the movement, then shifted away again, coming to rest on the faint shimmer of the lake, visible through
the bare trees. She scrunched her hands into fists inside her pockets.
Gareth cleared his throat.
“Are you sure you’re all right driving home in the snow? I really wish you’d stay overnight and go back in the daylight – ”
A note of concern roughened his voice. She still didn’t look at him. Couldn’t bring herself to meet the eyes she knew searched her face any more than she could stay alone in the cottage where she and Gareth had –
She hunched her shoulders against a chill that had nothing to do with drifting snowflakes. They’d had this discussion already. In the cottage after they had both ended their phone calls and the unbearable silence had been broken by Gareth’s quiet, “I have to go.”
After she had nodded, and stayed silent, and any other words seemed inappropriate. Inadequate. Empty.
She hadn’t needed an explanation. Not after the details Sandy had provided – details from the newscast that aired as they spoke. She hadn’t even wanted an explanation. Not really. She was too stunned, too numb, too shattered to have listened to anything that Gareth might have said then. And he, seeming to sense that, had resorted to banalities. Would you like a coffee before we go? Do you have your toothbrush? Your sweater? Are you sure you’re not hungry? The roads could get bad with this snow – are you sure you’re okay to drive?
Yes, they’d had this discussion already, but maybe repeating it would be better than the wordless chasm that would stand between them otherwise.
And so she answered.
“I’ll be fine. I have winter tires on the car, and I’ll take my time.”
“At least follow me back so you don’t get lost in the dark.”
A new suggestion. One she instinctively wanted to refuse but made her hesitate. The last thing she needed now was to get turned around on dark, unfamiliar country roads – something all too possible in her present state of mind.
“Only to Perth,” she compromised. “I’ll probably stop there for a coffee. I’ll be fine after that.”
She sensed, rather than saw, his capitulation. A change in his shadow’s stance, perhaps, or the controlled quiet of an expelled breath.
“All right,” he said. “We should get going.”
His fingers closed over her elbow, but the tiny jolt of electricity that accompanied his touch seemed to travel through a stranger’s body, unconnected to her own. She let him guide her off the deck and across the gravel driveway to her car. Removing her hand from her pocket, she reached for the driver’s door handle.
Gareth’s warm fingers closed over hers.
She couldn’t pretend this touch had no effect.
Pain sliced through her, threatening to cleave her heart in two. In the blink of an eye, white-hot need heated her frozen soul to its core, making her desperate to be held, to be reassured, to be told that this was nothing more than a twisted, horrific nightmare.
Breathing became a torment.
“God, Gwyn, I am so sorry,” Gareth muttered above her head. Agony laced his voice. “I owe you so very many explanations – ”
Her heart squeezed inside her. “Don’t,” she whispered. She didn’t know how to deal with her own pain right now. She couldn’t possibly bear his as well.
“Your daught — ” she couldn’t finish the word. “Amy needs you, and it’s a long drive.”
His fingers tightened on her hand.
“And you, Gwyn?” he asked. “Do you need me?”
She pulled free. “We’d better go.”
He let her get into her car then, silently handing her overnight case to her when she was settled behind the steering wheel.
“Follow me out,” he reminded her when she reached for the door handle. “And call me when you get home.”
“I don’t think – ”
“I need to know you’re safe,” he growled. “Call me, or I’ll call you. And if you don’t answer, I’ll be on your doorstep.”
She knew he meant the threat. Knew, too, that she couldn’t see him again. Not tonight. Maybe not –
No. She wouldn’t decide that now. Not yet.
“I’ll call.”
Chapter 35
Gareth glanced into the rear view mirror as he maneuvered past the massive trucks sanding Perth’s main street. The headlights that had followed him for the last half hour had dropped back and a turning light had come on, signaling Gwyn’s intent to stop, as she’d said she would, for a coffee. Her vehicle turned into the brightly lit parking lot of a donut shop. Lifting his foot from the accelerator, he hesitated.
The two halves of his life wrenched at him. Gwyn behind him, Amy before him. Both suffering. Both in need. But only one, he knew, who would let him try – in all his clumsiness – to help right now.
He pushed down on the gas pedal again, leaving Perth, and Gwyn, behind. Trying to ignore the certainty that an invisible thread connecting them stretched tighter with every mile, nearing its endurance, threatening to snap.
When he pulled into the visitor parking lot of Sean’s apartment building an hour later, a dozen paparazzi immediately swarmed his car. He shoved open his car door against the tide and shouldered his way through with none of his normal patience for what he considered a hazard of the job.
Locusts, he thought again. They might be a part of the world he’d chosen to live in, but Amy hadn’t been given any such choice. Scowling, he made no apology for treading on an unknown foot. Given the chaos they’d created in his life this evening, they were damned lucky that toes were all he stepped on.
He lengthened his stride, ignoring the clamor of voices and the microphones and cameras shoved into his face. In a matter of seconds he reached the safety of the apartment building. A uniformed Ottawa police officer steadfastly guarded the glass-door entrance. Sean must have called in reinforcements.
Swinging the door open at his approach, the cop grinned at him.
“Normally I’d ask for proof of residence,” he said, “but I suspect you’re the cause of the entire ruckus.” He pulled the door shut behind Gareth and added, “Things should calm down soon. We’re waiting for a court order to move them back a hundred meters and prohibit entry to the building.”
In the face of everything else, a court order seemed too trivial for words, but Gareth forced a smile he hoped at least looked grateful.
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
The cop looked like he might like to continue the conversation, but Gareth was in no mood for pleasantries. He focused on the elevators at the other side of the lobby and made himself look stressed. No great stretch under the circumstances. “If you’ll excuse me – ”
“Of course. Go!” The cop waved him on without hesitation. “And, Mr. Connor – good luck. She’s a beautiful girl.”
Gareth paused in mid-stride and turned back, looking at the other man properly for the first time. Obviously brought up to speed by Sean at some point, he looked to be about fifty-ish himself, probably with kids of his own around Amy’s age. That would explain the understanding in his eyes. The unspoken connection between one father and another.
“Thank you,” he said again. And this time he meant it. The smile, too.
The ride in the lift took forever, giving him far more time to reflect than he would have liked. Time to wonder when Gwyn would arrive home, and if she would keep her word about calling him. Time to wonder if his agent had begun damage control yet. Whether Catherine had seen the news, and how she’d reacted. What his first words to his daughter would be. How he would explain to her…how he would explain to Gwyn…
If he would ever get the chance to do the latter.
At last the lift opened onto the empty corridor leading to Sean’s apartment. He stood for a long moment with his hand holding the door to one side. He’d probably walked down this hallway fifty times since he’d arrived in Ottawa. How had he never noticed how long it was? Stepping into the hall, he let the lift door swish shut behind him.
This was it.
Placing one foot ahead of
the other, he began the walk toward his daughter. By the time he arrived at the brass “1021” tacked to Sean’s door, his palms were slick and his belly hollow. Sixteen years of waiting for this day, and now look at him. He’d rehearsed more for this moment than any role he’d ever played, but he’d never felt less prepared.
Of all the many things he’d expected from this overdue foray into fatherhood, a serious humbling hadn’t been one of them.
Sliding the key into the deadbolt with one hand, he turned the door knob with the other.
Chapter 36
Gwyn sat in a corner of the donut shop, her fingers wrapped around the cooled ceramic cup and its less-than-appealing contents. She hadn’t even tasted the coffee she’d ordered. Just sat and stared at the brown-paper-bag colored fluid until the steam stopped rising from its surface and the cream began to congeal around the edges.
Sat, stared, and waited.
But for what? The numbness to subside? Hurt to take over? Anger? She had every right to feel both, she knew. That he could have deceived her like that – and the magnitude of the deception still took away her breath - knowing her history, knowing what Jack had done to her…
Instead she felt nothing but a sense of loss that went too deep for words. Too deep for feelings. Very nearly too deep for her to function at all.
Sudden musical tones jolted her out of her melancholy. She dug into her coat pocket and pulled out her cell phone, glancing at the call display before she flipped it open. Home.
“Hi, Sand,” she answered.
“Hey, kiddo. How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
“Sure you are.” Bottomless sympathy echoed in Sandy’s words. “You almost home?”
She closed her eyes. “Actually, no. I’m staring at a cup of cold coffee in Perth.”
“Perth? I see. Just how cold is this coffee?”
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