HER ONE AND ONLY VALENTINE - (3 page)

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 undipped 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?'

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?

And yet the look on his face had been so raw, so unguarded, so—
real
—that it was hard to deny the truth of it. When Rhiannon had always
believed
—

No—had
known.
She shook her head. This had to be some kind of game. Something he'd convinced himself of so he could sleep better at night.

Turning away from the door, she jumped when his voice sounded from the hall behind her.

'Oh, no, you don't. You and I quite obviously need to have a
long
talk.'

When she looked over her shoulder he was walking her way with an expression of dark determination that sent her nerve-endings fluttering again.

'What about the estate agent?'

'I told them to reschedule. It'll wait.
This won't.'

She didn't want to talk to him any more. It was too surreal, too much to take in or understand, and she was suddenly tired beyond the levels of normal exhaustion.

And it wasn't just a physical exhaustion either. Two of the most stressful things in life were supposed to be moving house and the loss of a loved one—and she'd suffered both in the last couple of months. So, on top of those things, to have to face
this
now...
Well...

'We'll go into the sitting room. I'm not standing in a hallway while this is straightened out.'

Now he was directing her around her own home? Was there no end to his ability to rub her up the wrong way?

She lifted her chin and marched past his large body, careful not to brush against him on the way. 'We'll go into the stove room; it's more private in there if I'm going to argue with you again.'

Sound was less likely to carry anywhere from the room at the edge of the basement, with the sturdy stone walls that had belonged to the house when it started life as a fortified farm to act as a sound buffer. Lord alone knew there had been double the visitors she'd been expecting in the last twenty-four hours as it was! The last thing she needed was the part-time housekeeper or a visitor from the estate to pop in and hear all of the dirty laundry from her past aired!

But with the large stove in an archway at one side not having been lit for weeks there was a distinct chill in the room—a blessing on a hot day, few and far between as they could be— but not at a time when Rhiannon could have done with some welcoming warmth from
somewhere.

In front of the empty stove she turned to face him, watching with cautious eyes as he closed the low door behind him before throwing an angry glare at her as he walked towards the high-set window that looked upwards on to the garden. He began to pace, anger radiating from every pore of his large body.

Rhiannon watched and waited, her breath held still in her chest as she contemplated what tactic he would try next, while still aware on a subliminal level of the way he moved—with a kind of harnessed inner strength, a presence that demanded attention without any words...