Modern Romance May 2016 Books 5-8. Дженнифер Хейворд
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by her and the baby so important to you? Because you were adopted?’
He met her gaze in a lock that made something in her chest ping. ‘I wasn’t a straightforward adoption.’
‘What do you mean?’
Kat saw his deepening frown, the slow blink, the tight swallow, the shadow of something pass through his gaze. Several somethings. It looked like he was shuffling through his thoughts, deciding whether he should reveal what he had stored inside the filing system of his mind.
‘I was a foundling,’ he finally said. ‘An abandoned infant with no name, no registration of birth or any other details pinning me to another soul on this planet. All I had was the ratty old bunny rug I was wrapped in and a soiled cloth nappy. And the worst case of nappy rash the authorities had ever seen.’
Kat stared at him in shock, her heart jolting at the thought of him as a tiny baby, suffering, abandoned, alone. ‘Oh dear, that’s so sad. Didn’t anyone ever come forward?’
‘Nope.’ The way he said the word made it sound as if he had long ago given up hope. Maybe he hadn’t had it in the first place.
Kat covered his hand with hers. Not that she did a great job of covering much of it, given her hand was so much smaller. He turned her hand over and entwined his fingers with hers. The heat from his hand warmed her body from her fingertips to her toes. ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like for you,’ she said. ‘Not knowing. Never knowing.’
His thumb moved back and forth against the fleshy base of hers. ‘Maybe it’s better not to know, or so I keep telling myself. I can’t see myself turning up any famous actors as my parents.’
Kat pulled her hand out of his. ‘I suppose you think I’m being petty about my father.’
‘He’s the only one you’ll ever have.’
‘He’s not the one I want.’
‘We don’t get to choose.’
She got off the bed and stalked to the window, folding her arms across her body. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘That’s another thing you might not have much choice over,’ he said. ‘What if you run in to him sometime?’
Kat swung back to face him with a look that would have curdled milk. ‘You mean with another impromptu dinner party at your house?’
‘I didn’t engineer the girls turning up.’
‘You engineered me house-sitting next door.’
‘So?’
‘So how can I trust you?’
He let out a long breath. ‘The question is, can I trust you?’
Kat frowned. ‘Why would you ask that?’
His gaze was direct. Don’t-mess-with-me direct. ‘I’ve told you stuff I’ve told no one. Not even the Ravensdales know I was abandoned as a baby. They only know I was adopted.’
Kat shifted her mouth from side to side, wondering if he regretted telling her. She seemed a strange ally for his secrets. She had made it clear she didn’t like him and yet he had told her things he had told no one else. Or did he suspect she did like him? That she liked him more than she wanted to admit to herself? ‘Why did you tell me?’
One side of his mouth lifted in a wry smile and he reached for his crutches to get off the bed. ‘I have absolutely no idea. Maybe it’s the painkillers and alcohol combination.’
Kat wondered if it was because he saw something in her that he saw in himself: the bone-deep sense of aloneness, of not belonging anywhere or to anyone. Of always having to rely on yourself with no one as backup. ‘I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.’
‘And when you make a promise you keep it, right?’
She glanced at his slanted mouth. Right now she wished she had never made that crazy promise to her friend Maddie. Right now all she wanted to do was press her lips against his and taste the sensual heat of him, to feel the potency of him awakening every female pore of her body into an inferno of lust.
He came to stand in front of her but because he was on crutches his mouth was closer than normal. She could see every line and contour, the way the edges turned up at the corners, as if he was used to smiling far more than not. It impressed her that he was so positive in outlook, considering his tragic beginnings and the way his adoptive family held him at arm’s length. Most people would be bitter and angry at the world. A little like me. So many people from difficult backgrounds became difficult people. The cycles of neglect and abuse often went on for generations.
But Flynn had made something of himself, refusing to let his tragic background stop him from achieving all he set out to achieve. He had qualities she couldn’t help admiring. Most of the men she had been involved with had exploited her in some way. But Flynn hadn’t sabotaged her fledging relationship with Miranda and Jaz, even though he’d had a perfect opportunity.
Why had he done that?
What did it mean?
Why was he treating her as if he had plans for building a future with her?
Kat looked into the dark-brown depths of his eyes, her stomach free-falling when they went to her mouth. He leaned one hand on his crutch and lifted the other to her face in a fainéant movement from the top of her cheekbone to just beside her mouth, his fingertip leaving a trail of fire against her skin. She sent her tongue out over her lips, swallowing deeply as she sensed him leaning closer. Her pelvis registered his proximity, her inner core contracting with a pulse of vicious need.
His mouth hovered above hers, his warm, faint-hint-of-whisky breath wafting over her tingling lips. His nose bumped against hers, a soft nudge that was powerfully, shamelessly, erotic. His stubble-shadowed skin grazed her cheek, sending her senses into a swishing, swirling tailspin. The tip of his tongue stroked the vermillion border of her bottom lip, a caress so intoxicating, so arousing, it nearly knocked her off her feet.
But somehow Kat managed to gather her scattered senses long enough to realise she had won a vital point against him. ‘You kissed me.’
His eyes contained a dark glitter that put that point she’d scored in jeopardy. ‘That’s not a kiss.’
‘You touched my lips with your tongue.’
‘Nah-ah. I touched the edge of your lip.’
‘You’re taking hair splitting to a whole new level,’ Kat said. ‘You did so kiss me.’
His mouth lifted in that devilish smile that did so much lethal damage to her self-control. And her resolve...wherever the hell it was. ‘That’s not a kiss.’ He leaned closer. ‘But this is.’
IN THE END, Kat wasn’t entirely sure if he or she had closed that final distance. All she knew was as soon as Flynn’s mouth came into contact with hers every thought of resisting him flew out of her head like bats out of a cave. His lips moved against hers with gentle pressure, not crushing, but cajoling hers into a passionate exchange that made every knob of her spine loosen. Her mouth flowered open beneath the first stroke of his tongue, the intimate invasion a toe-curling reminder of the act both their bodies craved—had craved from the moment they’d first met.
Was that not why it was so hard to step away and tell him to back off? Was that not why she had made that celibacy pact, because from the first moment she had laid eyes on him she had wanted him? She had recognised the danger he represented to her—the danger of being involved with someone where she wasn’t the one in control.
Her body was dizzy with longing for more of his drugging kiss. Her tongue tangled with his in a heated duel; it was a combat of wills, a collision of personalities, a celebration of all that was physically arousing