Tempting Taine (15 page)

Taine smiled down at the
blonde
, the corners of his lips crinkling.
 
"Nothing important."
 

The sight of him smiling at another woman made Verity feel physically ill.
 
She swallowed hard to keep the bile down.
 
"Taine.
 
I just need two minutes of your time.
 
Please."

He turned his attention to Verity again.
 
"I'm not interested in anything you could say to me.
 
Now if you'll excuse me."
 
And
he retreated inside and shut the door behind him.

Defeated, all Verity could do was walk back down the driveway and back to her bicycle, her secret hopes crushed.
 
Why would Taine be at all interested in getting together with her again, when he had someone else on his arm?
 
A honey
blonde
in an expensive dress, who probably even got on with his witch of a mother.
 
No, he had no room for her in his life any more.

She just hoped honey blonde would let him make room in his life for his daughter, for Aroha.

Chapter 7

Verity woke up the following morning in Taine's guestroom after a rough night's sleep with a new determination in her heart.
 
She had left Taine once and survived.
 

Now she was older and stronger, she could leave him again.
 
And
it would not break her.

She dressed in yesterday's clothes, feeling grimy despite her shower.
 
Breakfast was a hurried affair of toast washed down with coffee.
 
Taine could not meet her eyes, and she avoided his.

Not until they reached town did Verity realize the absence of any fallen pine tree over the road, and no sign there had ever been one.

Taine watched as Verity hurried into the hospital as if she
couldn't
wait to see the last of him.
 
The thought hit him like a sucker punch to the gut.
 
He willed her to look back at him, to give just one small sign that she found it as hard to walk away from him as he found it to let her go.
 
But
no.
 
Nothing.
 
No sign at all that she felt anything for him at all, let alone that she
was touched
by the same madness that he was.

He cursed and hit the steering wheel of his truck hard enough to hurt.
 
Why was he such as damn fool over Verity?
 
Even knowing that she
didn't
care for him in the least, why was he still so damn crazy over her?
 

She had broken his heart when he was still little more than a boy, and it had never mended.
 

It never
would
mend while he obsessed over Verity like a
love-sick
teenager still.

He had hoped that taking her bed again would help douse the flame.
 
No woman could ever match up to the expectation of his memory.
 

Except
that
she
had
lived up to it.

Instead of dousing the flame, he had poured gasoline over it.
 
It had flamed up higher and hotter than ever.
 
He wanted her again worse than ever before.

He put his truck in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.
 
There was nothing he needed to do around town, no excuse he could drum up to linger in the area in the faint hope that he might run into Verity later.
 
He would go back to the farm and work out his bad temper on a good bit of hard work.

His father was sitting up in his wheelchair, a mohair blanket around his knees, waiting for him to arrive back.
 
When the front door opened, he wheeled himself out into the entryway.
 
"You get the Samuels girl back into town okay?"

Taine threw the keys of his truck on to the hall table.
 
"Yeah."

"You got the pine tree moved off the road nice and early, then?"

He reached for his oilskin from the hall closet and thrust his feet into a pair of gumboots, ready to check that the stock was safe from any threatened flooding.
 
"There was no damn pine tree."
 

The old man gave a wheezy chuckle.
 
"I didn't think so.
 
You've
got a bit of the old man in you.
 
And she's a nice kid to take such trouble over an old man like I am."

Taine gave a noncommittal grunt.
 
Only because he was paying her triple, he thought bitterly.
 
If his father knew that, he might change his tune.

"I always had a soft spot for her, but your mother…"
 
His father's voice trailed off into a sigh.
 
"She could be a right Tartar about some things.
 
Are you going out into the rain?"

"Yeah.
 
Why?
 
Do you need me to do something?"

His father's face closed off.
 
"I just thought it was about time we went through your mother's papers."

Taine hesitated.
 
"Maybe later."

The old man made a long face.
 
"It really needs doing, and I can't face doing it by myself.
 
I can't reach half the damn stuff while I'm stuck in this contraption, either," he added with frustration, banging the palm of his hand against the arm of his wheelchair.
 
"It gets in the way."

Taine shrugged his oilskin on and buttoned it up.
 
He did not want to disappoint his father, but he needed some physical activity or his head would explode.
 
"I'll be back in a couple of hours.
 
I'll tackle the papers with you after lunch."

After a couple of hours trekking up and down the hills in the rain and herding cows out of the low lying fields, he had worked off some of his frustration into exhaustion.
 

Verity was simply who she was - he had to stop putting her on a pedestal.
 
If he expected less of her, he would not be so bitterly disappointed whenever she failed to live up to his expectations.

He did not believe that he was simply not her type.
 
There was no reason for her to reject him out of hand.
 
After all, they were both single and he was a wealthy man.
 
He had offended her last night by mentioning it, but it had to be a point in his favor.
 
The odd expensive present
couldn't
go amiss.
 
He would just be a little less crass about flaunting it in her face.

She still desired him at the very least.
 
That gave him something to work on.
 

Because if last night had taught him one thing, it was
that
he still wanted Verity.
 
Badly enough to put aside his pride even after she had rejected him once already.

A quick shower and a bite to eat later, and he joined his father in the study.

When his mother had been alive, she had
ruled the roost
in the home and the study had been her domain.
 
His father had loved the land and under his
care
the farm has prospered, but it was his mother who had taken care of the finances and made them wealthy.

At his entrance, the old man looked up guiltily from the pile of papers he was examining.
 
"You should take a look at these," he said, as he wheeled himself out the door.
 
"I think I shall take a rest now.
 
I'm feeling a mite peaky."

Taine grabbed the pile and stretched out on the low leather sofa.
 
How his mother would scold him now if she could see his feet up on the furniture.
 

A few old accounts, some condolence cards, a minor bill that
had been overlooked
and which he set aside to pay.
 
Then, at the bottom of the pile, a stack of nearly a dozen handwritten envelopes addressed to him.
 

He leafed through them.
 
One of them
had been neatly slit
open.
 
He emptied out the contents.

A brief note in the same handwriting and a couple of photographs of a baby dressed in pink.

He unfolded the note.

Dear Taine,

I know you
don't
want to see me again - you made that very clear when we last met.
 
But
you have a right to know you have a daughter.
 
She is three weeks old now.
 
I have called her Aroha.
 
Aroha Samuels.

I
won't
apologize for the way we parted.
 
I did what I had to do, for both our sakes.
 
I hope you can find a place in your life for our daughter, even though you clearly
can't
for me.
 

Verity

Taine laid down the letter and picked up the photographs again.
 
His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly make out the image.
 
His daughter.

He traced the line of the baby's face, tears blurring his vision.
 
He could not believe it.
 
He had a daughter.
 
Verity had given birth to a child.
 
His child.
 

And
no one had seen fit to tell him about it?

Christ, no wonder Verity had behaved like a jumpy cat around him.
 
What woman would want a man who had abandoned her to bring up their child alone without a word?

His father had to have known.
 
The plea to go through his mother's papers, the strategically placed envelopes, the sudden need for a nap in the middle of the day…

His temper rising, he stalked out into the hallway after his father.

He did not have far to go.
 
The old man was sitting in his wheelchair in the hallway, his face wrinkled in a mask of worry.
 
"You found them, then?"

Taine stabbed the envelope at his father.
 
"How long have you known?"

His father seemed to shrink into himself until he was no more than a hollow shell.
 
"Since just after Celeste died.
 
I found them tucked away in the back of a drawer of her writing desk."

His hands clenched into fists and he ached to hit them into something to relieve the fury in his soul.
 
"What great timing.
 
So damn good that I can hardly believe it."
 
He had just enough pity left in him to restrain himself from picking his father up by the scruff of his neck and shaking him until his teeth rattled and the truth fell out.

His father's face grew grey in the face of his fury.
 
"I didn't know before then.
 
I swear it.
 
Of course, there was the odd rumor going about, but I
didn't
believe any of them.
 
I was so sure you
would've
told your mother and me if you'd become a father, whether you'd meant to be one or not.
 
I discounted them all as idle gossip."
 
He sighed deeply and ran his hand over his forehead.
 
"Celeste had always run the house with a fist of iron.
 
God help me if I ever tried to interfere.
 
I
didn't
find the pictures until she was gone.
 
And then I put the rest of the letters aside for you."

Taine felt tears prick the back of his eyelids.
 
"Mum knew, then.
 
All this time."

"She must've."
 
He heaved another pained sigh.
 
"I don't like to think she was capable of such spite, but no one else would've opened that one letter and then hidden the rest of them.
 
I
don't
know why she didn't burn them.
 
Maybe she planned to tell you one day."