CHAPTER TWO

      CAITLIN arrived at the standing stones early, bundled up warmly in corduroy jeans and a chunky knitted sweater beneath her coat, to stave off the relentless slicing wind that was already making her face burn with cold. Standing on the edge of the ridge with the stone circle behind her—all six-feet-high shale stones erect, apart from one recumbent in the middle—she stared out at the stormy Irish Sea, smashing wildly onto the rocks hundreds of feet below, and sensed a small flame of pleasure light inside her. It was a breathtaking location, and one she’d often yearned to go back to when she was far away in the busy traffic-jammed streets of London.

      A magical haunt, with or without the numerous legends that surrounded it, it had taken on an extra enchanting quality after many times spent there with Flynn. They had even made love there one warm midsummer’s night, with the moon’s shining face showering them with its silvery light…as if it approved of their being there together.

      Her blood throbbed with a primitive and powerful need at the recollection. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea after all that this be the place they meet? There were too many memories that lingered here…stirring, soul-ringing memories of love that were only taunting shadows of a path not taken. And now Flynn wanted answers…answers that behoved Caitlin to tell him that she’d had a child, and that he was the father.

      She knew exactly the moment he arrived, because there was a frisson of electricity running through the air that made her scalp tingle in alert. It was ever thus that she had been so psychically attuned to his presence. As if they’d had some strange other worldly bond that mysteriously linked them together.

      Wrenching her hypnotised gaze from the commanding sight of the foaming white-capped sea below her, Caitlin turned and saw his masculine dark figure striding towards her over the brow of the hill. The savage wind that was swiftly gathering force was now accompanied by spots of sleet that flattened his clothing against his lean hard body and turned his gleaming black hair to wet silk. Her violent shiver wasn’t just because of the icy cold that seemed to penetrate her own clothing and lay its death-like fingers on her bare flesh. A powerful swathe of want and need throbbed through her, and—too swept up in its passionate grip to move—she remained where she stood, a prisoner to its force, nervously watching him approach.

      ‘You came.’

      Flynn didn’t smile as he released the words that were swiftly borne away on the soughing wind. Instead, he stared at her like a man possessed by a dream. Sleet clung to his ebony lashes and made the fascinating jade of his remarkable eyes glitter like flawless gemstones.

      ‘It’s bitter.’ Her teeth chattering and her boots shifting on the slippery frost beneath her, Caitlin wrenched her gaze free from his unsettling, diverting glance and started to move past him. ‘It’s a day for staying by the fire…not freezing to death!’

      ‘Let’s go over by the stones,’ he sombrely suggested. ‘It might shelter us a bit.’

      Trying to brush back the windblown hair from her face, Caitlin glanced up into his solemn visage as she stood with her back to one of the standing stones, its dark companions making up a loose enclosure around them. Closely observing the way the taut skin stretched over his hollowed-out cheekbones, she saw how it rendered the implacable bones of his jawline rigid as iron. There was no spare flesh there. None. Its stark and fascinating definition could have emerged out of granite or marble, it was so faultlessly constructed. There was a fair smattering of dark growth shadowing the mainly smooth surface, though it was likely he had probably shaved only that morning, and his face reflected an austere and sombre beauty that seemed to come from the earth herself. It was no wonder that he seemed to blend so well into this wild and rugged landscape.

      While Caitlin was so earnestly examining him, Flynn wasted no time in doing the same to her. Her chest tightened as she became weakly, stunningly aware of the raw need that was reflected back at her. To be observed in such a primal, voracious way by him snatched the breath from her lungs, made her feel as if she was drowning in a sensual aquamarine sea that commanded the total surrender of all her senses.

      ‘We’d better get this over with,’ she heard herself say, and there was an emotional catch in her voice as her hand moved to restrain the dancing wheat-coloured strands of hair that the wind was buffeting around her frozen face.

      She realised in that moment the devastating extent to which she had missed him. As though Flynn was the absent part of her soul that she’d always ached for—a silent, hurting emptiness that never diminished. Only Sorcha had made her life worth living again since she couldn’t be with him.

      ‘Why?’ he murmured gruffly as his hands dropped loosely to his hips. Then, before she could answer, ‘Why?’ with all the primitive force of a glacier splitting open. His expression was savage.

      Flynn’s heart was pounding with more force than a blacksmith’s hammer as he searched Caitlin’s shocked white face for an answer. Did she have any idea of the wasteland of misery and pain she had consigned him to when she’d left? Did she know how it felt to have every day of your life since feel as if it were a hundred years long? Without love, without warmth. Winter, spring, summer and autumn—all had turned into one long, never-ending season of darkness and unhappiness.

      Only his work gave him any solace. His writing career had really taken off after Caitlin had left—but then how could it not have when he’d made it his sole driven focus? His dedication to learning his craft, to improving and refining the books that had university professors and television producers alike clamouring for him either to lecture or make programmes about Ireland’s Celtic mythological legacy, had become vitally important to his psychological survival, and took up a large proportion of his time. But other than that time hung about like stale cobwebs in an empty, long-disused room.

      Flynn had good people to help him run Oak Grove—the impressive MacCormac estate—and it had not been that difficult for him to pursue his chosen career. Even though his family still believed that looking after the estate should be more than enough…

      Now, as he considered the brilliant sapphire-blue eyes and the beguilingly shaped lips before him, he realised that no matter how much his heart was secretly thrilled to see Caitlin again forgiveness would be no easy matter after what she had done. There was no excuse on earth that he would accept for her deserting him like that. None. And that included her father persuading or bullying her into break off their relationship, people gossiping about them, and the difficulties they’d faced in trying to be together in the face of their families’ hostility to the idea. Clearly, whatever feelings Caitlin had harboured for him, they hadn’t been strong enough to persuade her to stay.

      Flynn knew his shortcomings where relationships were concerned, and he was quite aware that he wasn’t an easy man to love or to be with. Hadn’t Isabel already proved that? He could be both taciturn and morose, and the tendency to both had worsened after his ex-wife had so sorely deceived him. But when he’d met Caitlin he had started to hope that the trust Isabel had violated might one day be tenderly reinstated. But it was not to be…

      In search of the peace of mind that so eluded him,