His Seductive Proposal: A Touch of Persuasion / Terms of Engagement / An Outrageous Proposal

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 was twenty degrees cooler than down in the valley, and Olivia fell in love with the peace and tranquility found in towering trees, singing birds and gentle breezes.

She and Cammie ran into Victor Wolff on the way back to the house. He was slightly stoop-shouldered, and his almost bald head glistened with sweat. From what Olivia had gleaned from the private investigator and from a variety of internet sources, Victor had been a decade and a half older than his short-lived bride… which meant he must now be banging on the door of seventy.

The old man stared at Cammie with an expression that made Olivia’s heart pound with anxiety. He shot a glance at Olivia. “The child has beautiful eyes. Very unusual.”

Olivia held her ground, battling an atavistic need to tuck her baby under her wing. “Yes, she may grow up to be a beauty like my mother.”

Cammie had no interest in adult conversation. She started picking flowers and dancing among the swaying fronds of a large weeping willow that cast a broad patch of shade. Victor’s eyes followed her wistfully. “I may die before I get to see any grandchildren. Gareth is the only one of my sons who is married, and he and Gracie have decided to wait a bit to start their family.”

“Are you ill?” Olivia asked bluntly.

He shook his head, still tracking the child’s movements. “A bad heart. If I watch what I eat and remember to exercise, my son, the doc, says I probably have a few thousand more miles under the hood.”

“But you don’t believe him?”

“None of us knows how many days we have on this earth.”

“I’m sorry about your wife, Mr. Wolff. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been losing her so young.”

He shrugged. “We argued that day. Before she left to go shopping. She wanted to let the boys take piano lessons and I thought it was a sissy endeavor. I told her so in no uncertain terms.”

“And then she died.”

“Yes.” He aged before her eyes. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Olivia.”

“We all do, sir.”

“Perhaps. But I almost ruined my sons, keeping them locked up like prisoners. My brother, Vincent, was the same. Six children between us, vulnerable little babies. I was terrified, you know. My brother and I both were.”

“That’s understandable.” She began to feel a reluctant sympathy for the frail patriarch.

Suddenly his eyes shot fire at her, and the metamorphosis was so unexpected that Olivia actually took a step backward. “Kieran’s a good boy. It’s not his fault that the memories here keep him away.”

“We all have our own demons to face,” Olivia said. “But children shouldn’t have to suffer for our mistakes.”

“Are you talking about me or about you?”

His candor caught her off guard. “I suppose it could be either,” she said slowly. “But know this, Mr. Wolff. I will do anything to protect my daughter.”