His Seductive Proposal. Maureen Child
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host to get a much-needed cup of caffeine. The awkward silence grew.
Kieran took pity on her. “Go take a shower if you want to. I’ll pour you some coffee and set it on the nightstand. Okay?”
“Thanks,” she muttered, escaping to the privacy of her room. In twenty minutes she had showered and changed into trim khakis and a turquoise peasant shirt that left one shoulder bare. She hadn’t needed to wash her hair this morning, so she brushed it vigorously and left one swathe to lie over the exposed skin.
The coffee awaited as promised. She drank it rapidly and went in search of a second cup. What she saw stunned her. Cammie, often shy around strangers, sat in Kieran’s lap in a sunshine-yellow rocker as he read to her from an Eric Carle book.
The two of them looked up with identical expressions of inquiry. Cammie’s typical smile danced across her face. “You look pretty, Mommy. Kieran’s going to take us to the attic.”
Olivia glanced down ruefully at her fairly expensive outfit. “Do I need to change?”
Kieran laid the book aside and shook his head. “The Wolff attic is more of a carefully maintained museum than a dusty hiding place. You’ll be fine.”
While Cammie took another turn with the train, Kieran spoke, sotto voce to Olivia. “She’s right. You look lovely.” He brushed a kiss across her cheek. “I wanted you when I woke up this morning.”
The gravelly statement sent goose bumps up and down her arms. She glanced at Cammie, but the child was oblivious to the adult’s tension. “You shouldn’t say things like that. Not here. Not now.”
He shrugged, unrepentant, and suddenly she saw the source of Cammie’s mischievous grin. Circling Olivia’s waist with one arm, he pulled her close and whispered in her ear, his hot breath tickling sensitive skin. “If you had stayed in my bed last night, neither of us would have gotten any rest. Remember the evening after the Coldplay concert? We didn’t sleep that night at all.”
His naughty reminiscence was deliberate. In a hotel room high above the streets of London, they had fallen onto the luxurious bed, drunk on each other and the evening of evocative music. Again and again he had taken her, until she was sore and finally had to beg off.
The resultant apology and intimate sponge bath had almost broken his control and hers.
“Stop it,” she hissed. “That was a lifetime ago. We’re different people.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t think so.” He bit gently at her ear lobe, half turned so Cammie couldn’t see his naughty caress. “You make me ache, Olivia. Tell me you feel the same.”
She broke free of his embrace. “Cammie, are you ready for the attic?”
Kieran grimaced inwardly, realizing that he had already strayed from his plan. As long as he pushed, Olivia would run. Only time would tell if another tack would woo her in the right direction.
As they climbed the attic stairs, Cammie slipped her little hand into his with a natural trust that cut him off at the knees. Frankly it scared him spitless. What did he know about raising a kid? He’d been too young when his mother died to have many memories of her. And when his father imploded into a near breakdown, the only familial support Kieran had known was from his uncle, his two brothers and his cousins, all of whom were grieving as much or more than he was.
He halted Cammie at the top of the stairs. “Hold on, poppet. Let me get the switch.” It had been years since he had been up here, but the cavernous space hadn’t changed much. Polished hardwood floors, elegant enough for any ballroom, were illuminated with old-fashioned wall sconces as well as pure crystalline sunbeams from a central etched glass skylight. Almost thirty years of junk lay heaped in piles across the broad expanse.
Olivia’s face lit up. “This is amazing… like a storybook. Oh, Kieran. You were so lucky to grow up here.”
Though her comment hit a raw nerve, he realized that she meant it. Seeing the phenomenal house through a newcomer’s eyes made him admit, if only to himself, that not all his memories were unpleasant. How many hours had he and Gareth and Jacob and their cousins whiled away up here on rainy days? The adults had left them alone as long as they didn’t create a ruckus, and there was many a time when the attic had become Narnia, or a Civil War battlefield, or even a Star Wars landscape.
He cleared his throat. “It’s a wonderful place to play,” he said quietly, caught up in the web of memory. Across the room he spotted what he’d been looking for—a large red carton. He dragged it into an empty spot and grinned at Cammie. “This was my favorite toy.”
“I remember having some of these.” Olivia squatted down beside them and soon, the Lincoln Logs were transformed into barns and bridges and roads.
Kieran ruffled Cammie’s hair. “You’re good at building things,” he said softly, still struggling to believe that she was his.
“Mommy says I get that from my daddy.”
His gut froze. “Your daddy?”
“Uh-huh. He lives on the other side of the world, so we don’t get to see him.”
Kieran couldn’t look at Olivia. He stumbled to his feet. “Be right back,” he said hoarsely. He made a beeline for the stairs, loped down them and closed himself in the nearest room, which happened to be the library. His throat was so tight it was painful, and his head pounded. Closing his eyes and fisting his hands at his temples, he fought back the tsunami of emotion that had hit him unawares.
A child’s simple statement. We don’t get to see him…. How many times had Olivia talked to Cammie about her absentee father? And how many times had a small child wondered why her daddy didn’t care enough to show up?
His stomach churned with nausea. If he had known, things would have been different. Damn Olivia.
As he stood, rigid, holding himself together by sheer will, an unpalatable truth bubbled to the surface. He did live on the other side of the world. He’d logged more hours in the air than he’d spent in the States in the past five years. What would he have done if Olivia had found him and told him the truth?
His lies to her in England had been the genesis of an impossible Gordian knot. One bad decision led to another until now Kieran had a daughter he didn’t know, Olivia was afraid to trust him and Kieran himself didn’t have a clue what to do about the future.
When he thought he could breathe again, he returned to the attic. Cammie had lost interest in the Lincoln Logs, and she and Olivia were now playing with a pile of dress-up clothes. Cammie pirouetted, wearing a magenta tutu that had once belonged to Kieran’s cousin Annalise. “Look at me,” she insisted, wobbling as she tried to stand up in toe shoes.
Kieran stopped short of the two females, not trusting himself at the moment to behave rationally. “Very nice,” he croaked.
Olivia looked at him with a gaze that telegraphed inquiry and concern. “You okay?” she mouthed, studying him in a way that made him want to hide. He didn’t need or want her sympathy. She was the one who had stripped him of a father’s rights.
He nodded tersely. “I’ll leave you two up here to play for a while. I have some business calls to make.”
Olivia watched the tall, lean man leave, her heart hurting for him. In hindsight, she wondered if she and Kieran might have had a chance if he hadn’t lied about who he was, and if she had been able to get past her anger and righteous indignation long enough to notify him that she was having his baby.
It was all water under the bridge now. The past couldn’t be rewritten.
She and Cammie were on their own for most of the afternoon, despite Kieran’s insistence that he wanted to get to know his daughter. After lunch and a nap, Olivia took her daughter outside to explore the mountaintop. They found Gareth’s woodworking shop, and Cammie made friends with the basset hound, Fenton.
On this beautiful early summer day, Wolff Mountain