Father For Keeps

Carter gave a half smile and extended his hand toward the visitor. “Kate’s interested to know the purpose for your stay in Vermillion, Flaherty.” The two men shook hands. “What exactly are your intentions here?”

Sean looked around the group. Jennie walked over to stand next to Carter, who slipped an arm around her waist. Kate glared up at him from her seat on the settee. There was less warmth in the room than in an icehouse at midwinter.

“I came back to see Kate, to see if we could resume…if we could find…” He stumbled over the words, then cleared his throat and started again. “Of course, now that I know about my daughter, it just makes it all the more urgent.” He shot Jennie a glance to make sure that she realized that he was keeping her part in his return a secret. He wouldn’t reveal that he’d learned of Caroline’s existence from Jennie’s letter.

“Caroline’s my daughter,” Kate began, her voice shaking. Carter put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

“No one will deny that you are the father of Kate’s child,” Carter said in a lawyerly tone. “We’ve asked you here today to discuss the ramifications of that admission.”

This was not the discussion Sean had expected. He’d hoped Kate had come to her senses. He’d hoped for some kind of tender reunion, had even pictured taking her back to his room at the hotel to rekindle the passion they’d been so quick to find eighteen months ago. He felt awkward standing before her as if at some kind of tribunal.

“May I sit down?” he asked, gesturing to the highbacked chair.

“Of course.” Carter sat down again on the settee, and Jennie sank to a low stool beside him, leaving her hand in his.

As Sean took his seat, Kate spoke again. “You’re not taking away my baby, Sean.”

He looked up in surprise. “Is that what you think of me, Katie?”

“We just want to get this straightened out,” Carter explained. “As the father, you might have certain rights.”

“By all means, let’s get it straight,” Sean replied. He was beginning to get angry. “I have no intention of taking Caroline away from anyone. A baby belongs with her mother. But she belongs with her father, too. I’m here to try to make that happen.” He shifted his gaze directly to Kate and spoke intently. “I want us to be together, Kate. I’m asking you to forgive me and to give me—to give us—that chance.”

There was a long moment of silence during which it was obvious to everyone in the room that Sean’s words had somehow reached their target. Kate’s expression had softened and there was a look of something like longing in her clear eyes.

Finally Carter stood, pulling Jennie up with him. “I think I hear the baby,” he said.

Jennie gave him a puzzled glance. “Barnaby’s with her.”

Carter lifted an eyebrow and gave a slight nod toward Sean. “Maybe we’d better go check to be sure,” he said.

Jennie looked from Sean to her sister, then back to Carter, who nodded again. “All right.” She let him lead her across the room and out the curtain. “We’ll be close by if you need anything,” she told Kate. Then the couple ducked through the curtain and Sean and Kate were alone.

“Did you really come back for me?” Kate asked finally. “To try again?”

Sean wasted little time in moving in at what appeared to be a wavering of the opposing forces. He got up and swiftly crossed the room to sit next to Kate on the settee. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you in all these months, Kate.” This much he could say with complete sincerity.

Kate’s gaze became unfocused and drifted toward the window. “I couldn’t believe it when you left,” she began slowly. “We were so happy. My world had become a paradise, and then suddenly you were gone. You didn’t even come to say goodbye, just that cold letter…”

He took her hand. “Ah, Katie, if it sounded cold it was because I was writing it with a broken heart. I didn’t know what to tell you.”

“You said you had to go back to your family’s business.”

“I was forced back by my father. He said he was tired of my foolish whim to play prospector. If I hadn’t gone home, he might have disowned me.”

“And he forced you to leave so quickly you couldn’t even come to tell me in person?”

Her voice was growing cold again. Sean looked down at the floor. “No,” he said m a low voice. “That was sheer cowardice. I think I knew if I had to look into those beautiful eyes of yours to say goodbye, I’d never be able to leave.”

Kate pulled her hand out of his almost regretfully, without her earlier anger. “As you said the other day, I’m not the same person I was back then, Sean. We don’t know if we would even feel the same about each other.”

Sean met her eyes. “Maybe you don’t, but I knew it the minute I saw you again, Katie.” He recaptured her hand and this time brought it to his mouth and planted a kiss on her palm. “Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

She made no reply, and this time she didn’t pull her hand away. He followed the one kiss with another on the inside of her wrist, right at the spot where her pulse was pounding. His voice grew husky. “Since the minute I saw you, Katie, I’ve been wanting to do this again.”

He shifted closer on the settee and enfolded her in his arms, then bent to find her mouth with his. He was gentle, tentative almost, not at all the passionate, demanding lover she remembered. It was devastating.

She felt a swirling inside her head and then her mouth opened to accept his deepening kiss. For a moment the past year and a half receded and she was back on a hillside m the early spring, in love for the first time in her life.

He pulled her against him, her breasts hardening as they pressed into his chest. Her insides turned liquid and hot and her head fell back against his arm as his kiss became two, then three, then she lost count.

“I never forgot this, sweetheart,” he murmured. “All this time, I’ve remembered the taste of these lips.”

The sound of his voice helped clear the haze that had descended on her so abruptly. She pulled away, her cheeks burning.

“You haven’t forgotten, either,” he said. When she refused to meet his eyes, he took her chin in his fingers and gently turned her face up to look at him. “Have you?”

After a moment, she answered, grateful that her voice was steady. “They say a girl never forgets her first love.”

“And I was your first, Katie. That was your precious gift to me. I was a cad for accepting it and then leaving you, but I’m here to convince you to forgive me for that. Is there any hope?”

Kate sank back against the soft cushions of the set tee and sighed. “How could I ever trust you, Sean? You broke my heart once. Wouldn’t I be foolish to entrust it to you again?”

He smiled. “Five minutes ago I might have answered yes, but not after those kisses. Now I’d have to say you’d be foolish not to give me another chance. Because you’re still in love with me, Katie Marie Sheridan. A woman doesn’t kiss like that unless she’s in love.”

She didn’t bother to deny his assertion. Part of her had never stopped loving Sean Flaherty. But if she’d learned one lesson in the past eighteen months it was that sometimes loving is not enough.

“Perhaps we can spend some time together and see how we feel,” she said after a long pause.

Sean gave a whoop and leaned over to buss her on the cheek. “That’s my girl. That’s my sweet Kate.”

She slid away from him across the silk seat. “I’ve told you, Sean, I’m not the same sweet little Kate I was when we met, but we’ll get to know each other again and see what happens.”

“We’ll do this any way you want,” he assured her.

She nodded firmly. “For one thing, we’ll have none of that kissing business for a while. It muddles my thinking.”

Sean grinned. “Nothing wrong with a bit of muddled thinking now and then.”

Kate gave a reluctant smile. “Well, I prefer to stay clearheaded, thank you very much.”

He stood and reached for her hands. “Fine. I won’t kiss you again until you ask me to. I promise.”

She let him take her hands and pull her up to stand intimately close to him. The heat was instantaneous. She felt her cheeks flush again.

Sean laughed, obviously aware of her reaction. “Come on, my clearheaded darling, let’s go find my daughter so I can get better acquainted with her.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_b2325b91-746a-5229-89f9-43be52e89da1)