by Heidi Rice
Chapter Eight
“Damn, that was…” Ryder’s voice trailed off as Kate cuddled against him, her body still basking in afterglow.
“Amazing?” she supplied.
His chest vibrated with a deep laugh. “Yeah, amazing.” His fingers drifted up her arm. “Merry Christmas, Katherine Braithwaite—you’ve certainly made mine merry.”
Kate lifted up on her elbow. His eyes were closed, but she could see his smile of contentment. “Actually, everyone calls me Kate, not Katherine.”
He opened his eyes, sent her a baleful look. “So why did you tell me your name was Katherine?”
“To make myself feel superior.”
“Hmm…” He huffed out another chuckle, gave her bottom a proprietary pat. “Well, then, I’m going to keep on calling you Katherine, to annoy you.”
“Fair enough.” She settled back, deciding she didn’t mind a bit. She liked the way her given name sounded in his gruff American accent.
He tightened his arm on her shoulder. “Damn, I thought I’d sleep for a week when I flew in this morning, and now I don’t feel tired anymore.”
“No, neither do I,” she murmured, enjoying the weight of his arm, the enticing scent of sandalwood soap and sex and the chance to indulge in some idle pillow talk—with a man who had begun to fascinate her. She traced her finger over the demarcation line on his biceps. “You should have taken your T-shirt off,” she said, even though she found it endearing that he wasn’t that vain. “Then you wouldn’t have gotten a tan line.”
“Maybe not, but I would have gotten burned nipples—not to mention the crap taken out of me forever by Delta Company. Those guys take no prisoners.”
Kate’s finger stilled on his arm. “Where did you fly in from this morning?” she asked carefully, beginning to suspect her scathing assumptions about him sunning himself in a ritzy resort had been way off the mark—like all her other assumptions about him.
He folded his arm under his head and said lazily, “Afghanistan. I’ve spent the last two months embedded with a marine company in Helmand.”
“You’re a soldier?” she croaked.
“Hell, no,” he said forcefully. “I’m no hero. I’m a photojournalist. I was on assignment.”
“Oh.” She sat up abruptly, the shame grinding into her gut.
His hand settled on her back. “Something the matter?”
She looked over her shoulder at him, lying in the bed, his eyes dark with concern, and realized how much she’d misjudged him. She’d always believed she was a fair person—and it appeared she was anything but.
“I owe you an apology, Ryder. I made all sorts of nasty, small-minded assumptions about you when I didn’t even know you. And you didn’t deserve any of them.”
He sat up too, raised a knee under the bedclothes and draped his forearm across it, his hand still firm on her back. “You don’t owe me an apology. I did the same thing to you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Sure I did. You want to know why I went nuts downstairs after we’d spoken to Charles?”
She knew why, and it only made her more ashamed. “Because I said something nasty and inappropriate to a man who…”
He touched a finger to her lips. “No, you didn’t, Katherine. You were scared to death about the lights going out again, and you were a little short with him, that’s all. I blew it out of proportion because I’d gotten it into my head that you were as bad as my old man, and I couldn’t understand how I could want you the way I did, knowing that, so I punished you for it.”
She let a long breath out. “You wanted me? Even before you kissed me on the stairwell?”
The lines around his eyes crinkled as he sent her a boyish grin. “I told you the elf outfit was hot.”
She smiled, but then something else occurred to her and the smile died. “Why do you dislike your father so much?”
He let out a heavy sigh. “It’s a long story.”
“Was he a terrible father?” she asked, realizing that it was more than probable that a man with Lachlan Sinclair’s insatiable work ethic would also have been an absentee parent. Funny to think that until this moment, it had never even occurred to her that to be a good person you needed to do a lot more in your life than simply succeed.
“He wasn’t too bad. He wasn’t around much when I was growing up, and when he was he had very strict rules about what he wanted in his son and heir,” he said with little emotion. “But in the end, it wasn’t what he did to me, it was what he tried to do to Gully.”
“Gully?” she said, confused.
“Yeah, Gully,” he said, emotion vibrating through his voice now. “Whom he’s never met and wishes to this day didn’t exist.”
“But how could he wish that?” she asked, astonished. “About his own granddaughter?”
His eyes met hers, the ice-blue gaze hard with contempt. “It’s real simple and real ugly.”
Holding the sheet, he leaned down and lifted his trousers. Pulling out his wallet, he flicked it open and held out a photograph.
“I took that shot a couple of months back on her birthday. See if you can figure it out.”
She took the photograph and stared down at a stunningly beautiful child, her sunny personality captured perfectly in the impish grin as she cuddled her puppy. The little girl had a delicate heart-shaped face, pale-blue eyes that were the same shape if not quite the same shade as Ryder’s, her father’s wide smiling mouth, masses of curling brown hair, and caramel-colored skin.
“You have a beautiful daughter. She has your eyes and mouth,” she said, handing him back the photograph and feeling sick to her stomach. “And your father is a bigot,” she finished, realizing that the man she had idolized from afar was a far-from-stellar human being.
“Among other things.” Ryder gave the photo a gentle swipe with his thumb, then tucked it back into his wallet and dropped the wallet on the floor. “He wasn’t too pleased when he heard that Christine’s dad was a tollbooth operator from Queens, either.”
He raked his hand through his hair, the movement stiff and self-conscious. “But yeah, his main beef was that Christine was African-American. He tried to pressure me into paying her off and disowning my own daughter.” He stretched his neck from side to side, as if trying to release the tension caused by the unpleasant memory. “In the end it was a whole lot easier to disown him.”
She could hear the tinge of sadness and inevitability and doubted it had been all that easy, which made her despise Lachlan Sinclair all the more.
“But you know what?” Ryder continued. “Once I’d made the choice and told him where he could shove his inheritance, I realized I didn’t need him or his damn money. I quit the MBA course he’d insisted I do and got work as a photographer’s assistant. Christine’s dad helped me get a night job on the booth, and I worked my damn butt off for the first time in my life.”
“But I don’t understand. Why are you listed as a company director then?”
He hitched a shoulder. “He had a heart attack three years back, said he’d reevaluated. I believed him at the time. He’s got nothing in his life except this place.” He glanced around the cavernous showroom, and Kate shuddered.
Maybe she wasn’t a bigot like Ryder’s father, but what did she really have in her life except her job?
“So I go through the motions,” he said, resigned. “I have a polite conversation with him maybe once or twice a year. But when he insisted on putting me on the payroll against my wishes, I knew he hadn’t really changed. So I stick the money in Gully’s college fund—because the irony kind of appeals to me—but I’d never let him meet her. Gully’s an intuitive kid, and I don’t want her exposed to that kind of prejudice any sooner than she has to be.”
“Did you ever try and make it work with Christine?” she asked, perhaps more interested in the answer than she ought to be.
“We tried for a couple of months after Gully was born.” He sounded pragmatic. Why that should make her heart lif
t, she had no idea. “But we didn’t fit. Christine’s scary smart, IQ off the charts, three PhDs, and she works as a research fellow at Cornell now.”
“And that was a problem?”
He sent her a bashful grin. “I guess it makes me sound shallow, but it’s a real turnoff feeling like a dumbass all the time.”
She laughed.
“Laugh all you want, the male ego is a delicate thing,” he said, grinning back, the tension broken. “But hey.” He sobered. “The important thing was we fit as Gully’s parents. And Christine met a guy named Bill, another professor, a couple of years after Gully was born. They’ve been married six years now. They seem happy. And he’s great with Gully,” he added, but there was a definite edge to his voice now. “So that’s good.”
“It must be wonderful for Gully having two dads who care about her,” she said, thinking how much she would have adored having just one dad.
“Well…” He rubbed a spot between his eyes. “It is and it isn’t. Me and Bill, we don’t get on much.”
“Why?” she asked, feeling the pinch around her heart at the thought that he might still have feelings for Christine.
“To be fair to Bill—” He hesitated. “—which I hate to do, because Bill is one of those smart-ass guys who annoy me on principle.” He took a breath as if preparing to say something difficult. “Truth is, I’m jealous of him.”
“Oh?” Kate asked, trying not to get derailed by the pinch that had turned to a punch in her solar plexus. “Jealous of him having Christine?”
“Huh?” Ryder sent her a blank look then frowned. “Hell no, they’re made for each other. I’m jealous of all the time Bill gets to spend with Gully.”
And just like that, the punch turned to something a lot more disturbing.
“He’s there for her 24-7,” he added. “And even though I get her on holidays and some weekends, I’m not there for all the day-to-day stuff. Every time I miss something, like her first step, or the day she lost her first tooth, that’s it. It’s gone. It happened, and I can’t get it back or be there for her. Pretty soon she’ll be dating.” He shuddered theatrically. “Although I’m hoping that won’t be for at least another thirty years.” He let his shoulders drop. “But when it does, he’ll be right there, and I won’t. And I can’t stand it.”
“So Gully never comes to you for advice? Or support?” Kate asked, so touched by his dedication to his daughter she could feel tears stinging her eyes. If only everyone got to have a father like him, the world would be a much happier place.
He looked a little confused at the question. “Yeah, of course she does. We talk a lot, when she’s with me. And I e-mail, when I’m on assignment. Make sure I call, and that she always knows where she can contact me. But it’s not the same.”
“How is it different? You’re there for her if she needs you. And she knows that. That’s what being a good parent’s all about.”
“Well, I…”
“And didn’t you ever consider that one of the reasons Bill might be a smart-ass is because he’s jealous of you, too?”
“Why would he be jealous of me?” he asked, thoroughly confused now.
“Because I bet you’re Cool Dad. You get to do all the fun stuff, have lots of quality time with her, and he’s just Everyday Dad—the one who has to make her do her homework and brush her teeth.”
His smile was slow and rueful. “You’re one of those freaky smart people, too, aren’t you?” He folded his arms around her waist and tumbled her into the cascade of pillows. “Thanks,” he said, the tip of his finger drawing circles on her arm in an absent caress as she nestled into his embrace. “Bill and his smug smile have been bugging me for six years. But now that I know he’s only Everyday Dad…”
She cuddled close, resting her palm on his belly and letting her fingers drift over the lean strength of his abdomen, glad she had been able to help. “You shouldn’t feel insecure about your relationship with Gully. You’re a good father. I can tell.”
“Not that my ego needs constant stroking or anything,” he said with that charming air of self-deprecation, “but how can you tell?”
“Because it’s clear you value the relationship, and you want to get it right.” She sighed. “You put her feelings, her needs first, whenever you can. That’s special.”
And what made it all the more special was that his own father had done the opposite to him.
He lifted up on his elbow, trailed his finger down her cheek. “So what’s your old man like? Not as much of a jerk as mine, I hope.”
The tears stung a bit again, so she blinked. “I have no idea.”
“You never met him?”
She gripped his finger and kissed the tip, touched by his indignation, even if it wasn’t necessary. “I’m pretty sure my mum didn’t know who he was. She was a rock groupie, a free-love advocate long after it was fashionable, and every time I asked her who my dad was, she’d have a different answer.”
“Bummer.”
“You don’t know the half of it. She even told me once that Mick Jagger might be my father.”
He chuckled. “Isn’t he old enough to be your granddad?”
She laughed, too, the unhappiness not as painful as it had once been. “It gets worse. At the time, I didn’t know who Mick Jagger was. I was only ten. So I made the mistake of mentioning it to one of my friends. She told her mother. One thing led to another, and I ended up getting a detention from the headmistress for telling lies.”
He cradled her cheek, brushed his thumb across her lip. “Your headmistress must have been blind. Couldn’t she see you’ve definitely got Mick’s lips?”
“Oh, please!” She laughed—but something that had always been a dull ache around her heart didn’t ache as much tonight.
He kissed her, chuckling with her as he fell back on the bed. She took his hand, the feeling of connection so intense it scared her a little. “The point is, even though I didn’t have a dad, I used to spend hours fantasizing about him, and if he had been anything like you, I would have been chuffed to bits.”
“Chuffed, huh?” he said, obviously enjoying the word. He lifted their joined hands to his mouth, kissed the back of hers. Then rolled over and snuck his hand under the sheet. “That’s real sweet of you, Katherine. But given the extremely hot sex we just had, I’m thinking it’s also a bit kinky.”
She laughed again, the memory of the hot sex making her cheeks flush. “Will you please stop!”
He levered himself up, nibbling kisses along her collarbone, while his hand cupped a swollen breast. “No can do,” he said, his voice husky with arousal. “But I tell you what, I’ll let you call me Daddy this time.”
She was still smiling when he sent her flying over the edge.
Chapter Nine
“Hey, Sleepy, it’s time to wake up,” Ryder whispered, nobly resisting the urge to nibble on the tempting earlobe next to his lips, which was infused with the addictive scent of cinnamon.
He sat back on the bed and gazed at Katherine’s face, soft and seductive in sleep despite the harsh fluorescent lights that had come on when the power was restored.
He’d exhausted her. They’d exhausted each other. During a night that had held so many surprises, he’d been wide awake for the past hour—trying to figure out what to do. He didn’t want this to end here. That much was for sure.
Last night, he’d discovered that beneath Katherine Braithwaite’s prim and proper English exterior was a smart, sensitive, and incredibly sexy woman he wanted to continue seeing. But he’d been puzzling over the practicalities while he got dressed and packed up the stuff from the night they’d spent together. And whatever way you looked at it, he couldn’t offer her anything other than a long-distance, half-assed relationship. Now that he knew what she’d dealt with as a child, from a mother who had been anything but reliable, and knowing how important her routine and her job were to her, he knew she needed and deserved much more than that.
His life was complicated enough—h
e was already struggling to juggle his commitments to a growing daughter and a career that took him to far-flung parts of the globe at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t even offer to see Kate in the next couple of weeks, because he was bringing Gully back to stay with him in New York after spending the night in Ithaca. And then he had a trip to Disneyland lined up for them both over New Year’s.
And that was only the start of the problem. His commissioning editor at the press association where he worked was already making noises about him doing a story on the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest at the end of January. It would be a hard, grueling assignment, lasting at least a month, maybe longer. It was a story he would have relished doing five years ago. Right now he wasn’t relishing the idea so much.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that he would have to leave Gully again so soon, how the hell could he consider starting a new relationship in the little personal time he had?
He touched Katherine’s cheek, the petal-soft skin beneath his fingertip and the frown line that appeared between her brows making every part of him ache. Damn, he was going to have to let her go. And it hurt more than he would ever have imagined. She’d come to mean more to him in the space of a single night than any woman had in way too long to remember.
“Katherine, honey, wake up.” He gave her bare shoulder a gentle shake. “The security cameras came back on a couple of minutes ago,” he continued in a firm voice. “You need to get dressed before you end up butt-naked on YouTube.”
He grinned as her eyelids fluttered open. That had gotten through.
“What?” she said groggily, the sheet dropping.
He tucked it back around her shoulder. “Here, I’ve got your PJs,” he said, slipping them to her. “You better put them on under the sheet. We don’t want to give the security guys too much of a thrill.”
Her eyes snapped wide open as she went from semi-sleep to full-shock mode in the space of a single second, then flinched as the bright lights made her eyes water.
“Bloody hell,” she croaked, grasping the sheet and whipping it over her head. “For Pete’s sake,” came the muffled, indignant squeak from beneath. “Don’t just sit there, shield me or something.”