HER ONE AND ONLY VALENTINE - (9 page)

The admission of guilt widened his eyes a little.

Rhiannon continued, her eyes filling up with the frustrated tears she had held at bay since she'd been forced to watch him with Lizzie. 'I've watched her with you and she's crazy about you. And you're equally as enamoured with her! And if you honestly think that I can love her as completely as I do and not feel guilty about her not having had that sooner—'

She paused to control her voice, which had begun to crack on the words, looking past him while she fought back the tears, only briefly glancing into his astonished face before she gulped out, 'Then
you
have no better idea of the kind of person
I
 
am
than I do of the kind of person
you are.'

'Rhiannon—'

The softer tone to his voice tore the last shred of control that she had left, so that when she looked up at him again she could barely see his face for the wash of tears in her eyes.

And she
hated
that he was seeing that! So her voice broke on the admission while she pointed an accusatory finger at his feet.

'I would
never
have denied her her father because I know what it's like to have a father reject his child! So you're right, okay? And I was wrong.
You win.'

Scanned by Coral

Rhiannon disappeared upstairs before Kane had time to react properly, which left him standing on the landing between flights. If nothing else she was right about one thing; he didn't know her any better than she knew him.

His gaze rose while he frowned, pondering whether or not to go after her, to ask all the questions she had left him silently asking. But somehow he didn't think she would appreciate it if he did, because, even without any actual confirmation of his gut feeling, he just knew that to push her again at this point would be too much.

No matter how much he hated what she'd done, he still had to respect the fact that she was Lizzie's mother.
His child's mother.

And, no matter how much he resented having his child kept from him for so long, he still had to show some respect to the woman who'd raised her so beautifully, especially now she'd admitted some guilt for the choice she'd made.

The problem was, her admission, delivered with so much emotion, made him think some more about his part in the wrongs of the past. Yes, he'd had his own reasons for not being there, for not telling her why he couldn't—

Like she'd her reasons for not telling him? He allowed, reluctantly, that that could well be the case. There was more to both sides of the story. But the only way he would know for sure if he was right about that was to get her to trust him enough to tell him and that involved an open line of communication, didn't it? Parents were supposed to be able to have that. Well,
good parents
were. If it just didn't involve getting to know Rhiannon all over again...

Truthfully, what he needed was a little time to mull it all over.
Again.
In between rapidly falling in love with his daughter, he'd already been mulling over a lot of things about her mother, and not coming up with too many answers—a fact that bugged the hell out of someone who had built his business on varying degrees of problem solving.

It was why he had pushed Rhiannon again. He needed answers. Because, as easy as it was to just stay angry at her, a part of him still needed to equate the Rhiannon he'd known before with the one in front of him in the here and now. To have purposefully kept his daughter from him for so long had been cruel—crueller than she could possibly realize—she
had
to have hated him. And yet she had done such an amazing job with Lizzie—how could that be? How could she hate him so much and yet shower so much love onto his child?

Was that just a mother's instinct? She'd already hinted at how much of him there was in Lizzie and, having spent time with her, he could see a lot of those things himself. Surely that must have been hard to see over the years?

So he'd pushed her to try and make sense of it and instead had been presented with even more to confuse him. He hadn't expected the response he'd got, and that was before she even admitted she'd been
wrong!

It was talking about their previous relationship that had confused him this time. Or rather, how she had immediately assumed they were talking about the sexual side of it and how he'd had an immediate, powerful physical response to that. Damn her.

In her large, soft brown eyes he could see that she remembered every bit as much as he did about their time together. Standing alone in the hallway now, he wondered if she
knew
that he could still see so much in her eyes. Oh, she was better at disguising her thoughts than she'd been at eighteen, there was no doubt about that, which meant he had to search a little harder now for answers than he maybe had back then. But when he caught her off guard he could still see more than she probably realized he could.

It had translated into another thing to resent about her. Because it meant he had another reason to study her, to spend time
looking
at her, seeking out those thoughts in her eyes and trying to decipher them.

And somewhere in the last few days, he'd remembered it was something he'd always liked about her before. That very 'visible' intelligence she had.

Lizzie had it too. Her skill in picking up things quickly didn't come just from him. Oh, no. Having spent so much time with her, he now knew that there was an equal amount of her mother in her—probably more, because she'd spent all of her life with Rhiannon.

His head was really beginning to hurt.

A door opened on the landing above him and he stood tall, every nerve-ending in his body tensing as he waited for Rhiannon to reappear. But, when he looked up, Lizzie appeared at the banister, a grin on her face.

'Are you waiting for me?'

Kane exhaled and smiled back at her, the tension in him disappearing in a heartbeat. 'Yep. C'mon. Let's go get something to eat.'

Being in Lizzie's company was the only time he felt completely at ease in the house. But he couldn't keep putting off spending time with Rhiannon and he knew it. The line of communication had to be opened. He wanted answers. More than that—he wanted to know
everything
so that he wouldn't have to keep studying her and
noticing things.

Like her natural ability to move gracefully, the sensuous way she would tilt her neck to rub her long fingers against her shoulders, how everything from the soft fall of her hair to that way she had of running the tip of her tongue over her full lips when she was nervous constantly reminded him of how innately feminine she was. And how that femininity would tug at an invisible part of him, the part deep inside that he hadn't felt so keenly in a long, long time around another woman.

If familiarity really bred contempt then he wanted that familiarity.

'I lit a fire in the stove room.' He stood in the kitchen doorway, studying Rhiannon with cautious eyes while he attempted to keep a soft tone to his voice.

She looked tired—dark circles under her eyes, her pale skin lacking its normal creamy glow.

And he'd grudgingly admired her guts for coming down to sit through dinner. No matter how she felt about him being there, she never let it affect the way she was around Lizzie. And that couldn't be easy, he
knew.

Running a cloth over the end of the table, she focused completely on her task, taking a breath before she answered him. And that had to be tiring too, the constant caution around him in the brief moments when they were alone together.

He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, leaning a shoulder against the door jamb. 'This place is draughty as hell, isn't it?'

'Yes, it can be. Most old houses of this age and size are, I think.'

All right, that had worked. So maybe talking about Brookfield was a starting point.

'Mattie said you always loved this place.'

'Yes.' She nodded, turning to rinse the cloth out at the deep Belfast sink. 'Brookfield is special. It's the kind of place you dream about when you're a little girl. I once saw a doll's house with three storeys like this place in a shop window and it became a dream house in my mind. And Lizzie has always loved it here.'

Kane thought back to the little he could remember of Rhiannon's life from before. And discovered he didn't remember much beyond the fact that her family hadn't been well off. Had she told him more than that? She couldn't have; he'd have remembered.

She spoke again. 'Where is she?'

Ah, okay, she was looking for her shield again, was she? And, with a quick glance at the set of her narrow shoulders, he could see that she wasn't happy with being alone with him again minus that shield. Well, if he was going to have to do without it in order to open a line of communication then Rhiannon was going to have to deal with it too.

'She went up to take her shower.' He pushed off the door frame and walked across to the Aga. 'Do you want coffee?'

He sensed her hesitation so placed an air of nonchalance into his tone. 'I'm making one anyway.'

'All right, then.'

Lifting the kettle from the back of the Aga, he stepped closer to Rhiannon at the sink to fill it with water. The minute his arm brushed hers, she jumped back a couple of inches and Kane sighed impatiently, studying her from the corner of his eye as he poured the water.

'I don't bite.'

She didn't answer him.

But she did fold the cloth, set it over the edge of the sink and step away from him to gather mugs and coffee from a cupboard.

Kane lifted the plate on the Aga and set the kettle on the plate to boil, before moving to the fridge to get milk. And in the tense silence it occurred to him that it was the first task they had worked on together, albeit in silent communication, since he'd come to the house. She'd stayed on the periphery while he spent time getting to know Lizzie, hadn't she? Not that he would probably have appreciated it any if she hadn't. But, even so—

'I think you and I should spend some time together before we tell Lizzie who I am.'

Rhiannon's eyes filled with disbelief. 'Why on earth would we do that?'

'Because I happen to think two parents who can work together is a better combination than two parents who spend all their time arguing. And we need to know each other better than we do now for that to happen.'

He set the milk carton down beside the mugs and tilted his chin a little to keep looking at her, his eyes searching hers to see what she was thinking.

She wasn't too enamoured with his idea.

And he smiled a little at that. At least he knew he wasn't the only one experiencing difficulty with it. 'We both know she's a bright kid. She's bound to feel the tension there is when you and I are both in the same room. And eventually that's going to lead to questions.'

Brown eyes searched his in the same way he had been doing with hers and Kane smiled a little more as he realized she was trying just as hard to read him. He doubted she'd be as successful though; he'd spent years learning how to keep his thoughts hidden from those around him; in private as well as in business.

Her eyes narrowed. 'You're saying we should get on better for her sake?'

'Yes.'

'And how exactly are we going to manage that?'

He shrugged a shoulder as the kettle bubbled. 'We liked each other well enough to make her together in the first place.'

A rose-coloured flush spread on her cheeks as she looked away from his face, focusing on spooning coffee into mugs. Her voice lower, she said, 'That was a long time ago. We were barely adults ourselves.'

'That's true. But surely, as adults, we should be able to find a way of getting on well enough to put Lizzie before ourselves.'

Her hand faltered and some granules of coffee spilt over the edge of one mug so she had to set the spoon down and retrieve the cloth to wipe them up. 'I don't see how we can be friends— we never took the time to do that before. It's too late now.'

'I don't think it's ever too late to make the effort to ensure our daughter doesn't feel like she has to bounce from one of us to the other.' He lifted the boiling kettle and carefully poured the hot water into each mug. 'Do you?'

As he filled each mug, she followed up by stirring the contents until the granules dissolved. 'I don't want her to feel she has to do that.'

'Neither do I.' He set the kettle back on the rear of the Aga and replaced the cover over the hotplate. 'That would be something we agree on.'

He turned and watched as she poured milk into the mugs, her long lashes flickering while she thought. And then he watched as she ran the end of her tongue over her lips, as her throat convulsed when she swallowed, as her small breast rose and fell when she took a deep breath. Then her face turned and she looked up into his eyes, the tiniest hint of a smile on the edges of her mouth as she handed him one of the mugs.

'Yes, I suppose it is.'

His mouth curled into a more relaxed smile. 'It's a place to start.'