Читать книгу His Seductive Proposal - Джанис Мейнард, Maureen Child - Страница 14

Kieran saw the three of them approach the house. He was watching from an upstairs window. Part of him resented the fact that his father was sharing time with Olivia and Cammie, something Kieran had intended as the primary focus of the weekend. But anger boiled in his veins, and he was afraid that if he snapped and confronted Olivia in Cammie’s presence, the child would be frightened.

Still, it was time for a showdown, and since nothing appeared to mitigate the harshness of the rage that gripped him, Olivia had better beware.

Dinner was an awkward affair with only the four of them. Jacob had been called way unexpectedly, and Gareth and Gracie were still in the honeymoon phase of their marriage, enjoying time together at home alone.

Cammie behaved beautifully at the overly formal table, conversing easily with Kieran and smiling shyly when Victor Wolff addressed her. Olivia was pale and quiet, perhaps sensing that a storm was brewing. The courses passed slowly. At last, Victor pushed back from the table. “I’ll leave you young people to it. If you’ll excuse an old man, I’m going upstairs to put on my slippers and sit by the fire.”

Cammie wrinkled her nose as he left. “A fire? That’s silly. It’s summertime.”

Kieran smiled, loving how bright she was, how aware of her surroundings. “You’re right about that, little one. But my father has his eccentricities, and we all adjust.”

“X cin…” She gave up trying to replicate the difficult word.

Olivia leaned over to remove crumbs from her daughter’s chin with a napkin. “It means that Mr. Wolff has lived a long time and he sometimes does strange things.”

“Like when Jojo puts hot sauce on his ice cream.”

Olivia grinned. “Something like that.”

Kieran saw himself suddenly as if from a distance, sitting at a table with his lover and their child. Anyone peering in the window would see a family, a unit of three. A mundane but extraordinarily wonderful relationship built on love, not lies.

But appearances were deceiving.

So abruptly that Olivia frowned, he stood up and tossed his napkin on the table. “Why don’t I tuck Cammie in tonight? Is that okay with you, Olivia?”

He saw the refusal ready to tumble automatically from her lips, but she stopped and inhaled sharply, her hands clenching the edge of the table. “I suppose that would be fine. What do you think, Cammie?”

“Sure. Let’s go, Kieran. Do you have any boats to play with in your bathtub?”

After they were gone, the silence resonated. Olivia realized that she was inconveniencing the waitstaff as long as she sat at the table, so she got up, as well. There were so many rooms in the huge house, it was easy to get lost. Not wanting to be too far away from Cammie, she found a staircase that led to the second floor and walked toward her suite. When she could hear laughter and splashing from the bathroom, she paused in the sitting room to call her mother.

Lolita’s well-modulated voice answered on the first ring. “Hello, darling. How’s the visit with your school friend?”

Olivia might possibly have fudged a bit on the details of her trip. “Going well. But I’m worried about you and Dad. Anything else from your psycho fan?”

“Don’t be so cruel, Olivia. Men can’t help falling in love with me. It’s the characters on the screen, of course, but I play them so well, they seem genuine and warm, especially to someone who has already experienced a disconnect with reality. We should have compassion for the poor soul who is obsessed with me.”

Olivia’s mother had no problem with self-esteem. But her nonchalance seemed shortsighted. Olivia might have been even more worried were it not for the fact that Javier Delgado took his responsibilities as a husband very seriously. He was narcissistic to a fault, but he did love his tempestuous wife, and he had the bodyguards and manpower to prove it.

“Still, Mom, please be vigilant. Don’t let down your guard.”

“It’s a tempest in a teapot, Olivia. Just a sad man wanting attention. Quit worrying.”

“Has he sent more emails?”

“A few. The police are monitoring my computer.”

“What did the notes say?”

“More of the same. Threats to me and the people I love. But you and Cammie are in a safe place for now, and your father and I are well taken care of. Everything’s fine.”

The conversation ended with Olivia feeling no less concerned than she had been earlier. As much as she hated to admit it, her parents would always be targets because of their celebrity and their wealth. Which was exactly why Olivia had struggled so hard to make a home for herself and her daughter away from the limelight that surrounded Lolita and Javier. Even letting Cammie travel with her grandparents was a leap of faith, but Olivia wanted the three of them to be close, so she bit her tongue and prayed when necessary.

The noise of Cammie’s bedtime rituals moved from the bathroom to the bedroom. Olivia walked through the door in time to see Kieran tuck his daughter into the raised bed, giving her a kiss in the process. “My turn,” she said.

Feeling awkward beneath Kieran’s steady gaze, she hugged Cammie and tucked the covers close. “Sweet dreams.”

Cammie’s eyes were already drooping. “Nite, Mommy. Nite, Kieran.” The two adults stepped into the hall. Kieran’s expression was brooding, none of the lightheartedness he’d exhibited in Cammie’s presence remaining. “Put some other shoes on,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”

Kieran saw on her face that she recognized the blunt command for what it was.

She frowned. “When you have a child, you can’t waltz away whenever you want. She’s too small to be left alone.”

“I’m not stupid, Olivia.” Her patronizing words irritated him. “Jacob returned a little while ago. Cook is fixing him some leftovers. He’s bringing a stack of medical journals with him and has promised to sit up here until we get back.”

“I don’t know why we have to leave the house.”

“Because it’s a beautiful night and because I don’t think you want to risk having our conversation overheard.”

That shut her up. He was in a mood to brook no opposition, and the sooner he stated his piece, the better.

About the time Jacob appeared upstairs, Olivia returned wearing athletic shoes as instructed. She had changed into jeans and a long-sleeve shirt in deference to the chill of the late hour. Even in summer, nights on the mountain were cool.

They chatted briefly with Jacob, and then Kieran cocked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Outside, Olivia stopped short. “You haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“To the top of the mountain.”

“I thought we were on top.”

“The house sits on a saddle of fairly level land, but at either end of the property, the peak splits into two outcroppings. One has been turned into a helipad. We’re headed to the other.”

She followed him in silence as he strode off into the darkness, deliberately keeping up an ambitious pace. If she ended up exhausted and out of breath, perhaps she wouldn’t be able to argue with him.

When the trail angled sharply upward, she called out his name. “Kieran, stop. I need to rest.”

He paused there in the woods and looked at her across the space of several feet. Her face was a pale blur in the darkness. The sound of her breathing indicated exertion.

“Can we go now?” He was determined not to show her any consideration tonight. Nothing would dissuade him from his course of judgment.

She nodded.

He spun on his heel and pressed on. They were three miles from the house when the final ascent began. “Take my hand,” he said gruffly, not willing to place her in any actual danger.

The touch of her slender fingers in his elicited emotions that were at odds with his general mood of condemnation. He pushed back the softer feelings and concentrated on his need for retribution.

Clambering over rocks and thick roots, they made their way slowly upward. At last, breaking out of the trees, they were treated to a vista of the heavens that included an unmistakable Milky Way and stars that numbered in the millions.

Despite his black mood, the scene humbled him as it always did. Every trip home he made this pilgrimage at least once. To the right, a single large boulder with a flat top worn down by millennia of wind and rain offered a seat. He drew her to sit with him. Only feet away, just in front them, the mountain plunged into a steep, seemingly endless ravine.

Olivia perched beside him, their hips touching. “Are you planning to throw me off?” she asked, daring to tease him.

“Don’t tempt me.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights.”

“We’ll come back in the daylight sometime. You can see for miles from up here.”

They sat in silence for long minutes. Perhaps this had been a mistake. The wild, secluded beauty of this remote mountain was chipping away at his discontent. Occasionally the breeze teased his nostrils with Olivia’s scent. All around them nocturnal creatures went about their business. Barred owls hooted nearby, their mournful sound punctuating the night.

Olivia sat quietly, her arms wrapped around her.

He rested his elbows on his knees, staring out into the inky darkness. “You committed an unpardonable sin against me, Olivia. Robbing me of my daughter—” His voice broke, and he had to take a deep, shuddering breath before he could continue. “Nothing can excuse that… no provocation, no set of circumstances.”

“I’m sorry you missed seeing her grow from a baby into a funny, smart girl.”

“But that’s not really an apology, is it? You’d do the same thing again.”

“The father of my child was a liar who abandoned me without warning or explanation. And later, when I did discover the truth, I found out what kind of man you are. An eternal Peter Pan, always searching for Neverland. Never quite able to settle down to reality.”

“You think you have me all figured out.”

“It’s not that hard. All I have to do is look at the stamps on your passport.”

“Traveling the world is not a crime.”

“No, but it’s an inherently selfish lifestyle. I’ll admit that your work is important, but those bridges you build have also created unseen walls. You’ve never had to answer to anyone but yourself. And you like it that way.”

The grain of truth in her bald assessment stung. “I might have made different choices had I known about Cammie.”

“Doubtful. You were hardly equipped to care for a baby. And by your own admission, you’ve returned to Wolff Mountain barely a handful of times in six years. You may feel like the wronged party in this situation, Kieran, but from where I’m standing, both of our lives played out as they had to—separate… unrelated.”

He couldn’t let go of the sick regret twisting his insides with the knowledge that he had never been allowed to hold his infant child. “You call me selfish, Olivia, but you like playing God, controlling all the shots. That hardly makes you an admirable character in this scenario.”

“I did what was necessary to survive.”

“Lucky for you, your parents had money.”

“Yes.”

“Because, otherwise, you’d have been forced to come crawling to me, and that would have eaten away at your pride.”

“I would never have come to you for money.”

He pounded his fists on his knees. “Damn you. Do you know how arrogant you sound?”

“Me? Arrogant?” Her voice rose. “That’s rich. You wrote the book, Kieran. All you do is throw your weight around. I won’t apologize for protecting my daughter from an absentee father.”

“Military families deal with long absences all the time and their children survive.”

“That’s true. But those kids suffer. Sometimes they cry themselves to sleep at night wishing with all their hearts that their mommy or daddy was there to tuck them in. It’s a tough life.”

“But you never gave us a chance to see if we could make it work.”

“You had sex with me for six weeks and never told me your real identity. What in God’s name makes you think I would have put myself out there to be slapped down again? You hurt me, Kieran… badly. And when I found out a baby was on the way, it was all I could do to hold things together. If you had at least contacted me, who knows what might have happened. But you didn’t. So forget the postmortems. What’s done is done.”

“I want to tell her I’m her father.”

“No.”

“I have legal rights.”

“And you have plane tickets to Timbuktu at the end of the summer. Telling her would be cruel. Can’t you see that?”

“She needs me. A girl should have a daddy to spoil her and teach her how to ride a bike.”

“And you’ll do that via Skype? Is that what you had in mind?”

“God, you’re cold.”

“What I am is a realist. We’re not talking about how much Cammie needs you. This is really about you needing her, isn’t it? And if you’ll stop and think about it, the mature thing to do would be to walk away before she gets hurt.”

“I want her to stay for the whole summer.”

“She would fall in love with you and then be crushed when it was over. Absolutely not.”

“We’re getting nowhere with this,” he groused. “It’s a circular argument. I have a proposition. My cousin Annalise is returning tomorrow. She’s great with children, and Cammie will love her. I have to make an overnight trip the following morning to New York to meet with a charitable board about the September project. I want you to come with me and we’ll see if we can work this thing out.”

“There’s nothing to work out.”

“Let me put it this way… either you agree to go to New York and hash things out on neutral ground, or I tell Cammie the truth when she wakes up in the morning.”

“You can’t.”

“Try and stop me.” He was beyond pleasantries, fighting for his life, his future.

Olivia leaped to her feet and he grabbed for her wrist. “Be careful, damn it. You’re too close to the edge of the cliff.”

She struggled instinctively, and then froze when his words sank in. “Take me back to the house.” Unmistakable tears thickened her voice.

He stood up and backed them both from the precipice. “Don’t make this so hard, Olivia,” he murmured, sliding his hands down her arms. “We’re her parents. Together. I don’t want to fight with you.”

“But you want to torture me.”

“Not that, either.” Her nearness affected him predictably. “I want to make love to you, but I don’t have a death wish, so I suggest we get off this ledge.”

He steered her down the winding, narrow path until they were once again cloaked in the pungent forest of fir and pine. When he halted and slid his hands beneath her hair to tilt her face toward his for a kiss, she didn’t protest. But her lips were unmoving.

His thumbs stroked her cheeks, wiping away dampness. “You have to trust me, Olivia.” He could feel the tremors in her body as he pulled her closer. “I won’t hurt Cammie. I won’t hurt you.” He said it almost like a vow, but as the words left his lips, he realized the truth of them.

Traditional or not, Olivia and Cammie were his family… as much or more than Gareth, Jacob and Victor. He would protect them with every fiber of his being, to the death if necessary. If he could make Olivia understand how deep his feelings ran, how desperately he wanted to take care of both the women in his life, perhaps she would be more inclined to believe his sincerity and his resolve.

With aching slowness he claimed her mouth, tasting her, nipping at her tongue. At last, her arms circled his neck and her sweet lips dueled with his. There was less tenderness tonight, more unrestrained passion. Frustration and conflict segued into ragged hunger and rough caresses.

He jerked her shirt over her head and fumbled with the bra, dragging it down her arms and tossing it away haphazardly. Red-hot desire hazed his vision, and he trembled as if he had a fever.

Her lush breasts took on gooseflesh in the night air, and her nipples pebbled into small, hard stones. He took them in his mouth, one after the other, and suckled her, dragging on her tender flesh with his mouth and plumping her breasts with worshipful hands.

Olivia moaned, a sound that went straight to his groin and sent scalding heat to scorch him alive. He ripped at her jeans, shoving them down her hips only enough to touch her between her legs. She was damp and ready for him.

Freeing his own eager sex, he fumbled in his pants pocket for a condom, rolled it on and then lifted her and braced her against the nearest tree. It was animalistic and raw and absolutely necessary.

With a grunt of determination, he thrust up and into her warm, hot passage. The sensation of being caressed by wet silk made him groan aloud. “I can’t get enough of you,” he said, the words muffled against her neck. “God, you make me burn.”

After that, conversation evaporated in the white-hot conflagration of his drive to completion. Olivia’s fingernails bit into his shoulders as she clung to him in desperation. He gripped her ass and lifted her high, angling his hips to fill her more deeply.

She cried out and trembled, heart pounding against his as she climaxed wildly, her inner muscles milking him. Her release triggered his. Keeping his hands under her ass to protect her from painful contact with the tree, he thrust recklessly, not caring if his hands suffered in the process. Nothing could have separated him from her in that moment.

She kissed him softly, and the simple caress was his undoing. Shaking, breathing hoarsely, he came with a rapid fire punch of his hips, feeling his strength drain away as he reached the end.

Legs embarrassingly weak, he went down, rolling onto his back in a sea of pine needles, settling Olivia on top of him as they both recovered. “Stay the summer,” he begged.

She put her hand on his lips. “Stop. Let it go for now. I’ll travel to New York with you. That’s two more nights, total. After that, Cammie and I have to go home. I have a project to finish, and she has play dates scheduled with friends. We have a life, Kieran. But I’ll consider returning later in the summer for a visit. Don’t push me on this.”

It was hard to be angry when she laid on top of him, every voluptuous inch of her his for the taking. Lazily he rubbed her firm, generous ass. She was the most intensely female woman he had ever known. As though her entire body was created for the purpose of male fantasy.

His erection was already perking up, but he had only brought one condom. Bad mistake. Instead of feeding his own hungry obsession, he reached between them and touched the tiny bud of nerves that made her quiver and pant. Deliberately he brought her to the brink again. She tried to fight him, but her body defeated her.

“Come for me, baby,” he urged, relishing the feel of her dew on his fingers. He might ache, unappeased, for hours, but it was worth it to hear her call his name as she spiraled into bliss and then slumped onto his chest.