Ana Seymour (3 page)

“I came back to see Kate, to see if we could resume…if we could find…” He stumbled over the words, then cleared his throat and started again. “Of course, now that I know about my daughter, it just makes it all the more urgent.” He shot Jennie a glance to make sure that she realized that he was keeping her part in his return a secret. He wouldn’t reveal that he’d learned of Caroline’s existence from Jennie’s letter.

“Caroline’s
my
daughter,” Kate began, her voice shaking. Carter put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

“No one will deny that you are the father of Kate’s child,” Carter said in a lawyerly tone. “We’ve asked you here today to discuss the ramifications of that admission.”

This was
not
the discussion Sean had expected. He’d hoped Kate had come to her senses. He’d hoped for some kind of tender reunion, had even pictured taking her back to his room at the hotel to rekindle the passion they’d been so quick to find eighteen months ago. He felt awkward standing before her as if at some kind of tribunal.

“May I sit down?” he asked, gesturing to the highbacked chair.

“Of course.” Carter sat down again on the settee, and Jennie sank to a low stool beside him, leaving her hand in his.

As Sean took his seat, Kate spoke again. “You’re not taking away my baby, Sean.”

He looked up in surprise. “Is that what you think of me, Katie?”

“We just want to get this straightened out,” Carter explained. “As the father, you might have certain rights.”

“By all means, let’s get it straight,” Sean replied. He was beginning to get angry. “I have no intention of taking Caroline away from anyone. A baby belongs with her mother. But she belongs with her father, too. I’m here to try to make that happen.” He shifted his gaze directly to Kate and spoke intently. “I want us to be together, Kate. I’m asking you to forgive me and to give me—to give
us—that
chance.”

There was a long moment of silence during which it was obvious to everyone in the room that Sean’s words had somehow reached their target. Kate’s expression had softened and there was a look of something like longing in her clear eyes.

Finally Carter stood, pulling Jennie up with him. “I think I hear the baby,” he said.

Jennie gave him a puzzled glance. “Barnaby’s with her.”

Carter lifted an eyebrow and gave a slight nod toward Sean. “Maybe we’d better go check to be sure,” he said.

Jennie looked from Sean to her sister, then back to Carter, who nodded again. “All right.” She let him lead her across the room and out the curtain. “We’ll be close by if you need anything,” she told Kate. Then the couple ducked through the curtain and Sean and Kate were alone.

“Did you really come back for me?” Kate asked finally. “To try again?”

Sean wasted little time in moving in at what appeared
to be a wavering of the opposing forces. He got up and swiftly crossed the room to sit next to Kate on the settee. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you in all these months, Kate.” This much he could say with complete sincerity.

Kate’s gaze became unfocused and drifted toward the window. “I couldn’t believe it when you left,” she began slowly. “We were so happy. My world had become a paradise, and then suddenly you were gone. You didn’t even come to say goodbye, just that cold letter…”

He took her hand. “Ah, Katie, if it sounded cold it was because I was writing it with a broken heart. I didn’t know what to tell you.”

“You said you had to go back to your family’s business.”

“I was
forced
back by my father. He said he was tired of my foolish whim to play prospector. If I hadn’t gone home, he might have disowned me.”

“And he forced you to leave so quickly you couldn’t even come to tell me in person?”

Her voice was growing cold again. Sean looked down at the floor. “No,” he said m a low voice. “That was sheer cowardice. I think I knew if I had to look into those beautiful eyes of yours to say goodbye, I’d never be able to leave.”

Kate pulled her hand out of his almost regretfully, without her earlier anger. “As you said the other day, I’m not the same person I was back then, Sean. We don’t know if we would even feel the same about each other.”

Sean met her eyes. “Maybe you don’t, but I knew
it the minute I saw you again, Katie.” He recaptured her hand and this time brought it to his mouth and planted a kiss on her palm. “Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

She made no reply, and this time she didn’t pull her hand away. He followed the one kiss with another on the inside of her wrist, right at the spot where her pulse was pounding. His voice grew husky. “Since the minute I saw you, Katie, I’ve been wanting to do this again.”

He shifted closer on the settee and enfolded her in his arms, then bent to find her mouth with his. He was gentle, tentative almost, not at all the passionate, demanding lover she remembered. It was devastating.

She felt a swirling inside her head and then her mouth opened to accept his deepening kiss. For a moment the past year and a half receded and she was back on a hillside m the early spring, in love for the first time in her life.

He pulled her against him, her breasts hardening as they pressed into his chest. Her insides turned liquid and hot and her head fell back against his arm as his kiss became two, then three, then she lost count.

“I never forgot this, sweetheart,” he murmured. “All this time, I’ve remembered the taste of these lips.”

The sound of his voice helped clear the haze that had descended on her so abruptly. She pulled away, her cheeks burning.

“You haven’t forgotten, either,” he said. When she refused to meet his eyes, he took her chin in his fingers
and gently turned her face up to look at him. “Have you?”

After a moment, she answered, grateful that her voice was steady. “They say a girl never forgets her first love.”

“And I was your first, Katie. That was your precious gift to me. I was a cad for accepting it and then leaving you, but I’m here to convince you to forgive me for that. Is there any hope?”

Kate sank back against the soft cushions of the set tee and sighed. “How could I ever trust you, Sean? You broke my heart once. Wouldn’t I be foolish to entrust it to you again?”

He smiled. “Five minutes ago I might have answered yes, but not after those kisses. Now I’d have to say you’d be foolish
not
to give me another chance. Because you’re still in love with me, Katie Marie Sheridan. A woman doesn’t kiss like that unless she’s in love.”

She didn’t bother to deny his assertion. Part of her had never stopped loving Sean Flaherty. But if she’d learned one lesson in the past eighteen months it was that sometimes loving is not enough.

“Perhaps we can spend some time together and see how we feel,” she said after a long pause.

Sean gave a whoop and leaned over to buss her on the cheek. “That’s my girl. That’s my sweet Kate.”

She slid away from him across the silk seat. “I’ve told you, Sean, I’m not the same sweet little Kate I was when we met, but we’ll get to know each other again and see what happens.”

“We’ll do this any way you want,” he assured her.

She nodded firmly. “For one thing, we’ll have none of that kissing business for a while. It muddles my thinking.”

Sean grinned. “Nothing wrong with a bit of muddled thinking now and then.”

Kate gave a reluctant smile. “Well, I prefer to stay clearheaded, thank you very much.”

He stood and reached for her hands. “Fine. I won’t kiss you again until you ask me to. I promise.”

She let him take her hands and pull her up to stand intimately close to him. The heat was instantaneous. She felt her cheeks flush again.

Sean laughed, obviously aware of her reaction. “Come on, my clearheaded darling, let’s go find my daughter so I can get better acquainted with her.”

“D
o you think I did the right thing?” Jennie asked, snuggling against Carter in their soft bed.

“To go against your sister’s express wishes and write to Flaherty, putting her at risk of losing her child to his powerful family?”

Jennie winced and buried her face in his shoulder. “You don’t really think he’d try to take Caroline, do you?”

“I don’t even know the guy, honey. I think you were playing with fire, but I’ve learned my lesson about trying to make you change your mind when you get one of your notions.”

His voice held laughter and a lazy, post-lovemaking indulgence. “I find
that
hard to believe, counselor,” Jennie said dryly. “But, seriously, maybe this time I’ve made a terrible mistake. Kate and I have always tried to take care of each other.”

“And you’re still trying to take care of her, Jennie. That’s your problem. Your baby sister’s all grown-up now. It’s up to her to decide what she wants to do
about Flaherty. You’ll just have to trust her to make the right decision.”

“I don’t want her hurt again, Carter. She deserves to be happy.”

Carter sighed. “Perhaps you should have thought about that before you wrote the letter, honey. But it’s too late now. He’s here, and, personally, I think Kate is perfectly capable of dealing with him.”

“Do you think she’s still in love with him?”

“She hasn’t said a single kind word, and her eyes flash daggers when she looks at him, so I would say…yes.”

Jennie pulled her head up to look at him. “That doesn’t make sense.”

He pulled her on top of him and gave her soft bottom a loving pat. “It makes perfect sense. How many verbal daggers did you throw at me before I could get you to admit that you were crazy about me?”

She smiled at him in the darkness. “I threw plenty. But that was
before
I fell in love with you.”

Carter shook his head. “Nope. It was
because
you fell in love with me. The opposite of love is indifference, not hostility.”

“So your theory is that if Kate is hostile, it means she still cares about him?”

Carter pulled her a couple inches along the top of him, enough for her to feel evidence of his renewed arousal. “We can have a heck of a tiff, baby,” he said in a low voice, “and you still do this to me. The one thing I can’t be when I’m around you is indifferent. If Kate were calm and nonchalant, I’d say Flaherty
should start packing, but as it is. I don’t know. She just might weaken.”

Jennie shifted her legs to fit her body more closely around him, eliciting a low growl from her partner. “If he hurts her again, I’ll personally take Papa’s shotgun and run him out of town. I swear.”

Carter reached his hand up to pull her head down toward him. “I don’t want to talk about Flaherty anymore,” he said tersely. Then he proceeded to close her mouth with his own.

By the end of the week it was obvious that Carter had been right. Kate was anything but indifferent to her former lover. She tried to pretend that her interest was casual, but Jennie could recognize the signs in her sister—the extra primping before he was due to call, the starry gazes out the window when she thought no one was around, the flushed cheeks at the sound of his knock on the front door.

She hadn’t agreed to go off alone with him yet, so Jennie assumed she was keeping some degree of control on the relationship, but she suspected that would change. Sean could be very charming.and very persuasive. Even though she’d been responsible for bringing Sean back to Vermillion, Jennie’s misgivings grew. As the older sister, she felt as if she should at least warn Kate about giving in too far, too fast. But since the couple in question already had produced a child, the advice seemed a bit silly.

So when Kate asked shyly if Jennie would mind Caroline while she had supper at the hotel with Sean, Jennie merely agreed and held her tongue.

Kate sensed her sister’s apprehension and was grateful for her forbearance. She had enough doubts herself without adding Jennie’s. Sean had wanted to be alone with her all week, and she had continued to resist, though every day she felt more comfortable in his company, more tender watching his obvious delight in his daughter, and more reluctant to see him leave in the evening. He’d kept his word and had not tried to kiss her, but the tension between them as they parted each night made it obvious that at the barest nod from her, she would once again be in his arms.

The first chill of fall was in the air as they crossed the street toward the Continental Hotel. She was glad she’d worn the old silk shawl that had been her mother’s. She and Jennie had divided their mother’s clothes between them after her death. They were too short of money not to use them, though for weeks it had been a pang to see them on each other.

“I should have hired a rig,” Sean said, looking at the glowing western sky. “I remember how you liked sunsets.”

“I don’t get much time for a drive in the country these days,” Kate answered a bit wistfully. “I almost envy Jennie her job up at the mine. It gets her out into the mountains every day. Of course, I’d probably be intimidated cooking for all those men.”

Sean took her arm to help her up the stairs to the wooden sidewalk in front of the hotel. “You cook for the three miners boarding with you.”

“That’s different. Dennis, Brad and Smitty are almost like family nowadays. And they’re easy to please. They say anything I make tastes like heaven.”

“Sweetheart, we had some of the finest cooks in San Francisco at home when I was growing up, and not a one of them could produce a brisket like the one we had last night.”

“Ah, Sean Flaherty, you and your Irish blarney again,” she protested. But she was pleased in spite of herself. Sean’s descriptions of his wealthy childhood had always intimidated her. The luxuries of Nob Hill sounded much farther than a mountain range away from her simple Vermillion life. Meeting Sean had opened a whole new world to her, a world beyond the mountains, where men and ladies wore fine clothes, dined on exotic foods and delighted each other with their witty sallies. There had been a time when she’d dreamed of marrying Sean and being swept off to that enchanted world. But those days were over. She was happy at Sheridan House with her daughter and the rest of her family around her. Nevertheless, remembering Sean’s tales of lavish San Francisco banquets, she’d worked all yesterday afternoon to be sure the supper was perfect.

“I can tell you one thing,” Sean was saying with his crooked grin. “We won’t be dining as finely tonight. The Continental must have recruited the hotel chef from one of the neighboring mines. His steaks are hard as ore and twice as gritty.”

Kate chuckled. One of the things that had made her fall so fatally for Sean had been his humor. Though there’d always been plenty of lively talk around their table, Kate had to admit that her own family had been a serious bunch.

He did his best to keep her fascinated throughout
the meal. The laughter felt good. She hadn’t laughed so hard or felt so carefree since a year ago spring, before Sean had left her, before the death of her parents in the flu epidemic, before she’d learned that she would have to face the town unwed with a baby growing inside her.

“Ah, Katie Marie, you need to laugh more often,” he said as the waiter cleared away their plates including the rum cake which Kate had scarcely touched. “It makes your face glow like a freshly opened rose.”

She nodded and swirled the coffee in her cup. “Yes. There was too much sadness in our household after Mama and Papa died…and then I was so sick with the baby. And Jennie had a terrible battle with Carter when the town was trying to close down the boardinghouse.” She straightened up in the chair and smiled. “But that’s all past now. Carter and Jennie are happy as two June bugs on a screen, Caroline is healthy…;”

“And her father’s come back,” Sean added softly.

Kate lowered her eyes. “Yes. He’s come back. And I’ve discovered that he still can make me laugh like no one else I’ve ever met.”

Sean reached across the table and grasped the hand that held the cup, stopping the swirling. “He can still make you feel, too, Katie. He can make you laugh and then cry from the intensity of it. Remember?”

He spoke softly, but the words drummed into her ears. She did remember. The intensity. The tears of release after Sean had brought her to incredible heights of passion. But she remembered other tears later, the ones she’d shed after he had left her. Oceans of them. She pulled her hand away and put down the cup.

“I think I’d better get back, Sean. Caroline will be wanting her mama before going down for the night.”

“I thought Jennie was going to feed her a bottle.”

“Well, it’s always better if I feed her myself.” She spoke the words in a rush and stood up abruptly, trying to tamp down the sudden panicky feeling.

Sean stood, as well, reached into his pocket and carelessly tossed three silver dollars onto the table. “Katie, it’s after ten. Caroline’s undoubtedly been asleep for over an hour.”

“Have you become such an expert on her schedule, suddenly, with less than a week’s practice?” Her voice was sharper than she had intended, but Sean didn’t seem to be offended. He walked around the table and took her arm.

“We’ve had such a lovely evening. I’m not ready to give you back yet.” He put an arm behind her waist and steered her toward the Continental’s narrow staircase. “We’ll have some Queen Charlotte in my room.”

“What’s Queen Charlotte?”

“It’s a raspberry claret—very much the rage in San Francisco. I brought some with me just for you.”

San Francisco. That mysterious, glamorous world he’d painted for her in tantalizing glimpses in between their magical moments of lovemaking. Yes, she wanted to go upstairs with him to drink Queen Charlotte and get heady on the elixir of faraway places and close-up passion. Her body was strumming with the wanting of it. But her mind told her that once she climbed those stairs with him, she’d be lost. She’d have unlocked her mended heart and left it vulnerable,
out in the open, just waiting for him to rend it apart again.

She stopped his forward movement by holding on to the end of the banister. “I can’t, Sean.”

She was up on the first step so their eyes were level, just inches apart, hers anguished, his pleading. “Let me help you remember how good we were, Katie,” he said, low and husky.

Kate looked around for some sign of life to help break the spell of those intent blue eyes, but the hotel lobby was empty. Even the desk clerk had abandoned his post. She turned back to him and took a deep breath. “That spring I let you make love to me, Sean, because I was young and foolish and desperately in love. But it was a mistake.” He tried to protest, but she held up a hand and continued, “Mama always said the wisest people were the ones who make plenty of mistakes, because they learn so much from them.”

The image of her sensible, down-to-earth mother, the woman who had wanted to raise her daughters in the simplicity and beauty of the mountains, helped Kate grow calmer.

Sean seemed to sense that he had lost the battle. He dropped his arm from behind her. “I promised that you’d do the asking next time, Katie,” he said with a sad smile.

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He put his hands at her waist and boosted her off the step, then left them there for a long moment. “Having a baby didn’t thicken that waspish waist of yours any, sweetheart,” he said, his voice a little shaky.

She slipped out of his grasp. “There are plenty of pleasingly plump girls in town if you’re on the lookout, Sean,” she snapped.

“Katie! That wasn’t a complaint. You’re.perfect. Just the way you are.” He stepped back and took a quick glance at her graceful, slender form. “You’re perfect,” he said again softly, almost to himself.

Kate suddenly felt tired. She’d been up feeding Caroline before dawn. “Will you take me home now, Sean?” she asked.

He stood looking at her one more long moment, then seemed to come to some kind of resolution. His face became animated once again. “Yes, I’ll take you home. But tomorrow night we’re going for that sunset drive.” When she started to demur, he added, “We’ll take Caroline along with us. That way we won’t have to trouble Jennie again. C’mon, sweetheart. I want to have a picnic with my daughter.”

Once again, Kate knew the more she let this go on, the more at risk she was, but a sunset picnic with Sean and their daughter sounded wonderful. She smiled her agreement. “I’ll pack us a supper.”

Barnaby was the only member of the household to put it to her directly. They spoke in the kitchen as he helped her make the meat pies Kate had planned for supper. She would pack several to be eaten cold on the picnic. In his matter-of-fact voice that was just beginning to show signs of slipping into manhood, he said, “I thought Mr. Flaherty was a bad man, Kate, ‘cause he left you, and you had to have Caroline all
by yourself and almost died. So I don’t understand why you’re going on a picnic with him.”

Kate smiled slightly at the unanswerable logic. “Sometimes adults do things that don’t make much sense, don’t we?”

Barnaby nodded. He needed a haircut and his body had sprouted out of his clothes, as it seemed to do regularly these days. He resembled a miniature scarecrow. “So how come you’re going?” he persisted.

Kate gave a little shriek as her finger slipped off the towel and touched one of the hot pie tins. She set the pie on the counter and dipped the tip of the burned finger into the pan of dishwater. “Well, for one thing, Sean is Caroline’s father. I think it’s only fair for me to let him get to know her and give her the chance to have a father, if things could work out that way.”

“You mean, like you marrying him after all?”

Even Kate hadn’t wanted to confront the question after roundly rejecting Sean’s initial proposal, but now that the issue was raised, she realized that marrying Sean was exactly what had been on her mind these past three days. It was hard to believe after all she’d been through, but suddenly it seemed the only course that would make her life perfect. She had her health back, she had Caroline. Now all she needed was Sean.