HER ONE AND ONLY VALENTINE - (7 page)

Which wasn't a lie; the removers had barely been gone a couple of hours.

'I'll cook.'

Her eyes widened in disbelief as she stared up at him again.
'You'll
cook?'

His face remained impassive. 'I've been known to beat an egg.'

He did look as if he was ready to beat
something.

'It's really not necessary.' She hadn't actually contemplated them all sitting down to eat together every night. Was that seriously what he expected would happen? That they would sit around and play happy families while he was there?

'While you're still settling in, it makes sense if I throw something together. Lizzie can give me a hand while you're busy with something else. And anyway—' he smiled at Lizzie '—we wouldn't want Lizzie to starve to death, would we?'

Lizzie rubbed her stomach and sighed dramatically in response. T might be having a growth spurt, Mum. What would happen if I didn't get all the stuff I need to get tall?'

'You'd stay short.' She frowned briefly at Kane in warning. If he thought she was that easily dismissed he had another think coming. 'Really, I don't think you should have to cook for us. We can all respect each other's space while you're visiting.'

'Or we could just spend the time to get to know each other after all these missing years.' He let the innuendo hang in the air like poison. 'Don't make such a big deal out of the odd omelette.'

'I'm not.' Which was a lie. She was, because it
was
a big deal. 'It's just setting a precedent is all—'

He remained deathly calm, folding his arms across his broad chest. 'Is it?'

'Yes, it is. The last couple of nights have been thrown together but if you cook tonight you'll expect me to cook tomorrow night and then we'll end up in some silly routine.'

'And that would be silly, why?'

'You're always saying the more people that share the work the quicker it gets done, Mum.'

Rhiannon ignored her own words of wisdom. 'We don't need to eat together every single night.'

And the last couple of nights had been hell. Every mouthful of food had felt like swallowing broken glass.

'Because it makes much more sense for us all to fend for ourselves—cook at different times—that kind of thing? Next you'll want a rota for the cooker and the washing-up.'

She mumbled her response without looking at him. 'I don't happen to think that's unreasonable.'

'Well, I think you're being silly. Don't you, Lizzie?'

Rhiannon wondered how much time she'd get in prison for a spur of the moment murder...

'Yup, I think you're being silly too, Mum.'

Rhiannon glanced at Lizzie's face. She was smiling, but already her perceptive gaze was moving back and forth between the two adults.

Are you okay with helping him?'

Lizzie shrugged nonchalantly. 'Yup. But then that means we don't have to do the dishes, right?'

Rhiannon smiled down at her, glanced sideways at the studious expression on Kane's face and then bowed her head to concentrate on unwrapping more plates, a curtain of her long hair hiding her from him.

'All right, then. Whatever you're happy with, baby.'

Lizzie paused for only the briefest of moments before she answered with, 'W-ell, what would make me
really
happy is
a dog
and
a pony..
.'

Rhiannon couldn't help it, she laughed at the ridiculous situation she found herself in. Then suddenly realized she wasn't the only one laughing, the sound of her own laughter briefly mixing with deeper male laughter.

When she looked at Lizzie, the child's mischievous blue-eyed gaze moved again between the adults before she laughed too.

Rhiannon looked upwards in time to catch the tail-end of Kane's open smile before he tore his gaze from hers and ruffled Lizzie's hair, his voice gruff but laced with affection.

'That's it, kiddo, never give up.'

He hunched down beside her to discuss what they were going to make for dinner, the words fading into the distance as Rhiannon stood transfixed by the sight of them side by side. They were just so very alike—the shade of their hair, the colour of their eyes, the way that Lizzie would tilt her head in thought.

And there it was again, that instant ease between them. So natural, so uncomplicated—
already.

Another bubble of guilt rose up inside her. She had kept them apart all this time. And why, really? Because of her pride, because she'd been so very quick to decide he wouldn't want anything to do with his own baby? She could justify it by looking back at how much of a mess she'd been back then, how young and naive and alone and scared—but even so...

Seeing them together now made her look back on the judgement call she'd made and, no matter how she tried, she found the decisions she'd made coming up shorter than before.

It wasn't a good feeling.

When Kane glanced up at her again, it took a moment for his face to come into focus. She blinked back the moisture at the back of her eyes, avoided his gaze and cleared her throat with a soft cough as she lifted the last plates off the table.

'I'll leave you two to it, then. I'll be in the library.'

Still avoiding looking at him, she walked out of the room with her head held high, determined to get away before she let any of her inner doubts show.

She might have just been forced to realize she may have made a huge mistake. But she wouldn't show it in front
of him.
Watching him with Lizzie was punishment enough.

Because she already felt as if she was losing her daughter a little to him. And that hurt beyond words.

Inside a week Rhiannon was starting to cherish the time she had with Lizzie on the short trips to and from school. It felt like the only time they were alone, as if somehow she'd suddenly been thrust into a kind of competition for quality time with her daughter.

And she
hated
that.

It had been just the two of them for a lot longer than it had ever been with someone else in their lives.

And Rhiannon was discovering she preferred it that way.

Even the time when Lizzie was at school was tense. Because, though she managed to avoid Kane by focusing all her energy on unpacking and cleaning and adding the little familiar touches that would turn Brookfield from Mattie's house into a home that Lizzie could be happy growing up in, she was constantly aware that he was still there, even if he wasn't.

He disappeared again briefly at the start of the second week to conduct business back in Dublin, but he still managed to be back before Lizzie went to bed. And while he'd been gone a van-load of high-tech equipment had arrived, specifically, it felt, to remind Rhiannon that he hadn't gone for good.

She wondered just how long he intended the charade to continue. Because it honestly felt as if a little of her was dying every day. She'd never felt so alone. There was no one she could talk to about how she was feeling, not really, and where would she begin? After all, she'd learnt early in her life to cope alone and, much as she loved the few close friends she had, she wasn't going to phone them every second to talk it through when there was no point. They couldn't fix it.

Under different circumstances she knew she'd have talked to Mattie. But all that thinking that way did was to magnify the grief she'd been burying at the loss of her best friend. The grief she had hoped to work through by keeping busy at Brookfield and focusing on Lizzie being happy.

The latter goal was something Kane seemed to have taken off her hands, which left her working on Brookfield alone and finding reminders of Mattie at every corner. Increasing the sense of isolation in her own home, and making her more miserable with each passing day.

As it was what she considered her 'turn' to make dinner, she laid the table and checked nothing was burning before she went to seek out Kane and Lizzie.

It was only as she walked up the sweeping stairway to the second floor that she heard laughter echoing in the distance. And once again, surreally, there was deep, distinctly male laughter as well as the familiar melodic giggle that Rhiannon knew so well, the sound floating down temptingly from the third floor where generations ago the house servants would have lived.

It felt as if he was deliberately taunting her as she got closer.

'No way.'

'Yes way.'

'Then how does the Warrior Princess get past the monster? Quick, before I get killed!'

'Ah, now, a smart kid like you should be able to work it out. That's the whole idea.'

Gently pushing open the low door, Rhiannon's eyes took stock of the room with a quick glance. At one time it would have been a dormitory; it was long and low, with four small windows sunk into the low eaves.

Except now it had a high-tech office suite in varying stages of construction, with flat computer screens, telephone lines and sheets of bubble wrap hanging out of cardboard boxes.

Well, he hadn't wasted any time marking out his territory, had he? With a frown, she vowed to ask him outright just how long he planned on staying.

Sitting in front of one of the large screens, where an animated flame-haired woman seemed to be working her way through some kind of magical maze of roaring monsters, was her enthralled daughter. And by her side was someone Rhiannon hadn't seen in years.

With ruffled hair curling adoringly against the back of his broad neck, wearing a plain navy T-shirt, faded jeans and beaten up trainers. Looking like he had used to look when he had been so very infectiously enthusiastic about everything life had to offer.

His deep laughter sounded again as Lizzie huffed in frustration at the game they were playing—
together.

While Rhiannon stood alone in the doorway and felt the knife twist again in her stomach. She really didn't know how much more of this she could take.

So she scowled hard at what she could see of his profile, at the deep crease in the cheek she could see while her mind filled in the one on the other cheek that she couldn't. And even as resentment swelled in her chest again, so consuming that it almost stole away her breath, she
remembered.
She remembered afternoons with him, doing exactly the same thing with much more antiquated equipment. She remembered his excitement for the technology, the ideas, so far beyond her realms of comprehension, to make it better. How he would talk for hours about things that didn't make any sense to her, but she would listen anyway, just to hear to deep rumble of his voice and to see the sparkle in his eyes.

'Why can't I get her to go through that gap?' Lizzie let go of her control pad long enough to point at the edge of the screen.

He examined her profile, his eyes still sparkling in a reflection of her enthusiasm even as his tone of voice changed. 'Why don't we ask your mum?'

They both turned their office chairs to look at her, Kane's expression cautious again.

'Kane has some
really
cool games.'

'I'd heard that.' Cool games that half the world's children played on various pieces of equipment these days. She'd been surrounded by Micro-Tech goods for years, had tripped over magazine articles and seen his face on TV more than once. He was considered a technological wizard.

Rhiannon frowned briefly at him as she remembered how it had felt as if he'd been deliberately rubbing her nose in it with his success back then.

Then she smiled at Lizzie. 'Dinner's almost ready. Don't you think you should go get cleaned up and change out of your school uniform? I'm sure Kane has stuff he wants to do too. He doesn't need you up here disturbing him all the time when—'

'I don't mind her keeping me company.'

Rhiannon ignored him. 'If you have your homework done after dinner you can maybe play again for a while before bedtime.'

The concessions weren't getting any easier to make, but with each passing day she was finding herself making more of them without stopping to think about it as much. Probably because she was becoming more and more aware of the fact that Lizzie was flourishing under her father's attention. He always had time for her, listening intently to the things she said, helping her with her homework when she asked him to, explaining things in a way she always seemed to 'get'.

And although Rhiannon knew that, for Lizzie, he still held an element of 'new friend' novelty, she also knew with the instincts of a parent that it went beyond that for Kane. He was making up for lost time.

And there was that inner pang of guilt again.

One dark brow quirked the tiniest amount at how easily she had given up some ground, then Kane winked at Lizzie con-spiratorially. 'C'mon then, kiddo. I'll give you a hand with your homework so you can come back quicker, okay?'

Rhiannon had to damp down the sudden need to drag Lizzie from the room while telling Kane in no uncertain terms that she had just as much right to that time with Lizzie as he did. Because, yet again, he had made her feel as if he had formed some kind of 'team' with Lizzie that she wasn't a part of.