HER ONE AND ONLY VALENTINE - (18 page)

Lizzie shook her head firmly. 'Nope. I had Stephen's mum and dad as kind of almost grandparents for a while, but they weren't really mine. And Mum's parents never knowed me.'

He scowled, his gaze immediately drawn to Rhiannon's face across the room. Why not? Had something happened to them? Surely he'd have heard that from Mattie, if no one else? Not, he guessed, that he'd ever been that open to hearing anything about Rhiannon when he'd shut all thought of her out of his mind and been determined to believe that she'd moved swiftly on from the brief relationship they'd had. And he'd been damn quick to make that assumption, hadn't he?

Maybe it had eased his conscience, because it'd been easier to believe he hadn't thrown away something that might have been important. How in hell would he have known if it was important at twenty-one? He'd been too wrapped up in other things...

Lizzie, as usual, continued to deliver reams of the kind of information it would have taken him weeks to get out of her mother. 'They didn't think Mum should have a baby 'cos she was too young and all. But Mum wanted me more than anything in the whole world so she left home and had me. And we made our own family.'

Rhiannon grimaced before she could hide it and Kane swore inwardly in response. That was what she'd meant when she'd said she knew what it was like to have a father reject her? They had turned her away?

They had turned their own daughter away?

No wonder she'd hated him for not being there. The father of her baby had disappeared off the face of the earth, her parents had disowned her and she didn't have a well-paid job or any kind of financial support. It all added together to form a mental picture that Kane found very difficult to see.

And the huge wave of anger that formed inside him must have shown because Rhiannon's soft voice sounded again from across the room, with a tone of reassurance.

'And we did just fine didn't we, baby?'

Lizzie nodded, oblivious to the undercurrents. 'Better now that Kane's here, though.'

Kane smiled at her, then glanced at Rhiannon, who smiled back at him but couldn't seem to look him in the eye. 'Yes, better now.'

He knew she meant better for Lizzie's sake. But he also discovered a part of him hoped she meant it a little from her point of view too. He'd like it if she thought his being there, being a part of their lives, was better for all of them. That was the way it was supposed to be, wasn't it? It was part of a father's remit, after all—to take care of his family.

The thought would have knocked him off his feet if he'd been upright. Instead he tried to complete the missing parts of the puzzle. 'Where did you live?'

Rhiannon didn't look overly surprised by the question. 'A friend of mine from the coffee shop let me rent a room at her place. And I worked full-time until I had Lizzie, and then went part-time until she was older.'

'Auntie Kerri.'

'That's right.' Rhiannon shrugged as if it weren't as big a deal as Kane knew it was. 'When Kerri worked at night in one of the bars near the campus I looked after her kids and she helped with Lizzie when I worked. It worked for both of us; we've been friends ever since.'

Kane frowned harder. She'd made sacrifices to bring his child into the world; had told that child that she'd been wanted more than anything else, had raised her to be bright, happy, well balanced. No small achievement in the world they lived in. While the father who could have provided everything they needed and more had dropped off the planet. Even when he'd been ill, even if he hadn't recovered, he'd still have provided for them both. Didn't she know that?

How could she
not
know that?

Rhiannon smiled again. 'We were fine.'

'What about the course you were doing at night?'

She looked surprised he remembered. Hadn't she got that part yet? They may not have been in love back then, but he remembered
everything.
He made an attempt to silently communicate that to her, almost testing her to see if she could read his thoughts as well as he'd started to read hers.

But, even though she faltered, she shrugged it off again, literally, in a way that was really starting to irritate the hell out of Kane. 'I kept going for as long as I could. When I had Lizzie I quit so I could look after her; young baby, part-time work and course work weren't a good combination. So something had to give.'

'But she finished it in the post when I was bigger. 'Cos school is important and she needed it for her work when I was big enough for school.'

Rhiannon clarified it for him. 'I switched to an Open University course. Took a bit longer but I still finished it. And then I did temp work as a PA, which paid better than the coffee shop career. It was fine.'

Fine.
She kept using that word, didn't she? Well, it damn well wasn't fine with him. Fine wasn't anywhere near good enough.

'Motherhood matures you'—she'd thrown something like that at him right at the start of his stay at Brookfield, hadn't she? How much had she been trying to tell him between the lines that he'd missed? What else had he got wrong when he'd simply thought she'd held his child from him out of spite?

It hadn't been spite. He'd dumped her and left; she hadn't known why because he hadn't wanted to tell her—to show anyone for a single second that he was less of a man or might be less of a man by the end of his treatment. So, for all she knew, he didn't give a toss about her. She'd tried to get in contact with him and while he didn't answer her parents had disowned her and she'd been alone. Any wonder she'd believed he didn't give a damn. It had probably felt as if no one had, so she'd just knuckled down and got on with it.

All those years she'd worked hard to provide for Lizzie, just to keep their heads above water—she'd still managed to finish her education so that she could improve her career prospects—until—

'You didn't have to work when you married Stephen.' He clenched his teeth on the words.

It still bugged the hell out of him that that had happened. And knowing what he did now made it worse. Because Stephen hadn't just got to spend time with
his
child; he'd had Rhiannon. He'd wanted everything of Kane's from their days in grammar school. She must have seemed like the ultimate prize to him and that was why it had been so easy for Kane to believe he'd moved in on her the second he was gone. Lord alone knew he had hung around the coffee shop enough when she'd been there—hell, even when Kane had been dating her. And Kane had had to warn him off often enough...

He'd thought when they got married it was just Stephen finally being a man and accepting his responsibilities. Had that just been another false belief for Kane to ease his conscience?

Whatever way he looked at it, he was finding himself falling desperately short of being much of a guy. And that just didn't sit well with him. Not just in the fatherhood department either. It mattered to him with Mac too.

'No, I still worked, not that Stephen liked it too much. And marrying him was a mistake; it didn't last long. We lived apart for most of it, and when we divorced I rented the house in Dublin from him.'

Kane's hands bunched into fists below the table.

'He wanted me to go to stupid boarding school.' Lizzie rolled her eyes.

'I didn't let that happen, did I?' Rhiannon added, more quietly this time, so that Kane's gaze immediately flew to lock with hers before she blinked and looked away. 'It's all history now.'

He watched as Rhiannon moved across the room to plant a kiss on the top of Lizzie's head. 'And that's probably enough information for one night. There's chicken for dinner.'

'Yay!'

'I'm going to have a bath; I take it I can trust you two to make sure nothing gets burnt to a crisp?' She glanced at him briefly again from the corner of her eye. And that one look told him he'd heard more than she would have ever volunteered. She still felt the need to hide things from him—but why? What else was she holding back?

If she really thought he was done with her, then she had another think coming. He was a member of this family now; the sense of protectiveness that filled him was overwhelming now, though not so much for feeling protective of Lizzie—that was a given—it was the sudden need to extend that protectiveness to Rhiannon that surprised him the most. When exactly
had that
happened?

He'd known all about the early resentment he felt when he'd been so aware of how she moved, how soft her hair looked, how her thoughts would cross over her expressive eyes. He was all too conscious of the physical attraction that flared every time he was near her—because he'd even come dangerously close to kissing her again by the lake before they'd been interrupted, hadn't he?

And he had spent the walk back wondering how she would have responded if he had. Would she have run away as she had last time? Would she have stayed? Would she have considered seeing where the physical attraction would lead them this time?

But the depth of emotion he had seen in her eyes, with tears streaking down her cheeks after they'd told Lizzie who he was—
that
had done the most damage to his original resolve not to get involved with her again, hadn't it? Maybe that was when it had happened.

'We never burn dinner,' Lizzie complained.

'Well, don't start now.' She glanced at him again as she left the room.

Oh, yes, she
knew
he wasn't done with her. So he winked at Lizzie. 'I'll be right back and you're in charge of the dinner.'

Rhiannon was almost on the first landing as he came out of the kitchen, her shoulders slumped, head bowed as she took each step.

He took the stairs two at a time. 'Wait a minute.'

Her shoulders rose before she turned, her eyes guarded. And Kane hated that. He'd thought they were getting past that stage.

'I thought you were going to watch dinner.'

'I didn't know your parents turned you away.'

'Why would you have; you weren't—'

'There?
I know. It would have been better if I had been, I can promise you that.'

She frowned hard and glanced up the landing, almost as if she was wishing there was an escape route. 'It worked out fine in the end.'

He stepped closer, a part of him desperately wanting to take the dull tone from her voice. '"Fine". You use that word a lot, don't you?'

Confusion clouded her eyes for a moment. 'Yes, fine. I don't understand the problem with the word. It was—' she enunciated the word with a little more deliberation '—
fine,
as in not a problem. We got through. Just like now—everything is fine— it's working out, isn't it?'

He opened his mouth to answer that but, before he could say a word, she frowned and added, in a softer tone, 'Thank you for the way you were with Lizzie. I can't possibly feel any worse about keeping you both apart, especially after today. If it helps any knowing it, there's nothing you can do or say to punish me more than I'm already punishing myself for that mistake.'

'I don't want to punish you, Mac.' He reached out for her hand, his thumb grazing back and forth against the beating pulse below the soft skin of her wrist. 'And I don't think you should punish yourself any more either. I understand why you hated me when you did, and I think we can both look back on it all now and make more sense of the mistakes we both made. It's done. And now we're—'

'Fine?' She smiled a very small smile before her chin dropped and she studied his hand holding hers.

Kane smiled at the top of her head, his eyes following some of the deeper strands of red. And for the first time in a very long time he was at a loss for words.

But not managing to find what he wanted to say—in all likelihood because he didn't actually know
what
it was he wanted to say—gave Rhiannon cause to break the awkward silence by extricating her hand from his. And when her chin rose she had a brighter smile pinned on her face and a shield across her eyes that stopped him from reading her thoughts.

A wave of something resembling fear crossed his chest before she spoke. 'I'm glad this happened, I really am. I want you to know that, Kane.'

'I am too.'

She nodded. 'We've laid all the ghosts to rest now.'

His eyes narrowed at the statement, as if somehow by shutting a door on the past he sensed she was closing some kind of a door on the future too. When he wanted—

Hell. He didn't know what he wanted. She had an innate ability to pull the rug out from underneath his feet. And, just to add to his sense of frustration at that fact, she then reached out and patted his arm.
Patted his arm
—as of he was some kind of elderly relative or the damn dog!

'I'm glad we can be friends again.'

Kane frowned. 'And when exactly were
wefriendsT

Her long lashes flickered as she focused on a point past his shoulder. 'I think it's important we be friends now—for Lizzie's sake.'

For Lizzie's sake.
It was a phrase he'd used all too often himself, but suddenly it didn't seem enough any more; there had to be...
more...

'Well, yes, I agree b—'