The Rich Man's Love-Child

‘The standing stones at the top of Maiden’s Hill.’ Her voice sounded as if it had been dragged through gravel. ‘I’ll meet you there tomorrow afternoon at three. I want to sort through some of my father’s belongings in the morning and decide where they’re going to go.’

‘Three it is, then. And, Caitlin?’

Her heart slammed like a wrecking ball against her ribs at the look he was wearing. ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t let me down. If you do…I’ll come and find you.’

And with that he left her there on the pavement, her legs shaking so hard and her heart beating so fast that she couldn’t move for several minutes, until she had calmed down sufficiently again to think what she was doing. By which time she was numb with cold and desperately in need of some warmth.

Seeing the little blue and yellow sign above Mrs O’Callaghan’s bakery swinging back and forth in the wind, Caitlin headed over there—to the prospect of a steaming mug of milky coffee to help thaw the chill and the dread from her bones.

CHAPTER TWO

CAITLIN arrived at the standing stones early, bundled up warmly in corduroy jeans and a chunky knitted sweater beneath her coat, to stave off the relentless slicing wind that was already making her face burn with cold. Standing on the edge of the ridge with the stone circle behind her—all six-feet-high shale stones erect, apart from one recumbent in the middle—she stared out at the stormy Irish Sea, smashing wildly onto the rocks hundreds of feet below, and sensed a small flame of pleasure light inside her. It was a breathtaking location, and one she’d often yearned to go back to when she was far away in the busy traffic-jammed streets of London.

A magical haunt, with or without the numerous legends that surrounded it, it had taken on an extra enchanting quality after many times spent there with Flynn. They had even made love there one warm midsummer’s night, with the moon’s shining face showering them with its silvery light…as if it approved of their being there together.

Her blood throbbed with a primitive and powerful need at the recollection. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea after all that this be the place they meet? There were too many memories that lingered here…stirring, soul-ringing memories of love that were only taunting shadows of a path not taken. And now Flynn wanted answers…answers that behoved Caitlin to tell him that she’d had a child, and that he was the father.

She knew exactly the moment he arrived, because there was a frisson of electricity running through the air that made her scalp tingle in alert. It was ever thus that she had been so psychically attuned to his presence. As if they’d had some strange other worldly bond that mysteriously linked them together.

Wrenching her hypnotised gaze from the commanding sight of the foaming white-capped sea below her, Caitlin turned and saw his masculine dark figure striding towards her over the brow of the hill. The savage wind that was swiftly gathering force was now accompanied by spots of sleet that flattened his clothing against his lean hard body and turned his gleaming black hair to wet silk. Her violent shiver wasn’t just because of the icy cold that seemed to penetrate her own clothing and lay its death-like fingers on her bare flesh. A powerful swathe of want and need throbbed through her, and—too swept up in its passionate grip to move—she remained where she stood, a prisoner to its force, nervously watching him approach.

‘You came.’

Flynn didn’t smile as he released the words that were swiftly borne away on the soughing wind. Instead, he stared at her like a man possessed by a dream. Sleet clung to his ebony lashes and made the fascinating jade of his remarkable eyes glitter like flawless gemstones.

‘It’s bitter.’ Her teeth chattering and her boots shifting on the slippery frost beneath her, Caitlin wrenched her gaze free from his unsettling, diverting glance and started to move past him. ‘It’s a day for staying by the fire…not freezing to death!’

‘Let’s go over by the stones,’ he sombrely suggested. ‘It might shelter us a bit.’

Trying to brush back the windblown hair from her face, Caitlin glanced up into his solemn visage as she stood with her back to one of the standing stones, its dark companions making up a loose enclosure around them. Closely observing the way the taut skin stretched over his hollowed-out cheekbones, she saw how it rendered the implacable bones of his jawline rigid as iron. There was no spare flesh there. None. Its stark and fascinating definition could have emerged out of granite or marble, it was so faultlessly constructed. There was a fair smattering of dark growth shadowing the mainly smooth surface, though it was likely he had probably shaved only that morning, and his face reflected an austere and sombre beauty that seemed to come from the earth herself. It was no wonder that he seemed to blend so well into this wild and rugged landscape.

While Caitlin was so earnestly examining him, Flynn wasted no time in doing the same to her. Her chest tightened as she became weakly, stunningly aware of the raw need that was reflected back at her. To be observed in such a primal, voracious way by him snatched the breath from her lungs, made her feel as if she was drowning in a sensual aquamarine sea that commanded the total surrender of all her senses.

‘We’d better get this over with,’ she heard herself say, and there was an emotional catch in her voice as her hand moved to restrain the dancing wheat-coloured strands of hair that the wind was buffeting around her frozen face.

She realised in that moment the devastating extent to which she had missed him. As though Flynn was the absent part of her soul that she’d always ached for—a silent, hurting emptiness that never diminished. Only Sorcha had made her life worth living again since she couldn’t be with him.

‘Why?’ he murmured gruffly as his hands dropped loosely to his hips. Then, before she could answer, ‘Why?’ with all the primitive force of a glacier splitting open. His expression was savage.

Flynn’s heart was pounding with more force than a blacksmith’s hammer as he searched Caitlin’s shocked white face for an answer. Did she have any idea of the wasteland of misery and pain she had consigned him to when she’d left? Did she know how it felt to have every day of your life since feel as if it were a hundred years long? Without love, without warmth. Winter, spring, summer and autumn—all had turned into one long, never-ending season of darkness and unhappiness.

Only his work gave him any solace. His writing career had really taken off after Caitlin had left—but then how could it not have when he’d made it his sole driven focus? His dedication to learning his craft, to improving and refining the books that had university professors and television producers alike clamouring for him either to lecture or make programmes about Ireland’s Celtic mythological legacy, had become vitally important to his psychological survival, and took up a large proportion of his time. But other than that time hung about like stale cobwebs in an empty, long-disused room.

Flynn had good people to help him run Oak Grove—the impressive MacCormac estate—and it had not been that difficult for him to pursue his chosen career. Even though his family still believed that looking after the estate should be more than enough…

Now, as he considered the brilliant sapphire-blue eyes and the beguilingly shaped lips before him, he realised that no matter how much his heart was secretly thrilled to see Caitlin again forgiveness would be no easy matter after what she had done. There was no excuse on earth that he would accept for her deserting him like that. None. And that included her father persuading or bullying her into break off their relationship, people gossiping about them, and the difficulties they’d faced in trying to be together in the face of their families’ hostility to the idea. Clearly, whatever feelings Caitlin had harboured for him, they hadn’t been strong enough to persuade her to stay.

Flynn knew his shortcomings where relationships were concerned, and he was quite aware that he wasn’t an easy man to love or to be with. Hadn’t Isabel already proved that? He could be both taciturn and morose, and the tendency to both had worsened after his ex-wife had so sorely deceived him. But when he’d met Caitlin he had started to hope that the trust Isabel had violated might one day be tenderly reinstated. But it was not to be…

In search of the peace of mind that so eluded him, Flynn had renovated an ancient cottage in the mountains and turned it into a writing retreat. Pretty soon it had turned into a retreat per se. It was simply easier not to be around people sometimes, and it helped to have a place to escape to. Once upon a time Caitlin had managed to come somewhere close to penetrating the hard shell he’d built around himself, but when she’d gone he had strengthened it doubly.

Now—and not for the first time in all the years they’d been apart—Flynn mused on whether he had imagined her tenderness and affection towards him. Could her seeming attraction for him have been just a product of a young girl’s fickle nature? An attraction for an experienced older man that had been there one minute and gone the next? What if she’d had a better offer of a more tantalising future somewhere else, and she’d been unable to resist and couldn’t bring herself to tell him? Was that why she had left?

Flynn deliberately slowed his breathing in a bid to calm himself down, even though his hands had clenched into fists of bitter frustration by his sides.

‘My reasons aren’t—they aren’t easy to explain,’ she said now, reluctantly answering his question.

The wind tore at her lovely yellow hair, and Flynn longed to grab a handful of its spun silk and submerge his senses in the wild, rain-washed scent of it. He intimately knew her body’s perfume, and time had not dulled it in his mind. But his fury hadn’t abated, and he clung onto its force to ground him, to try and kill the almost painful desire that was surging through his bloodstream just because he was near her.

‘I’ve got all the time in the world, darling,’’ he mocked, his glance hard and impervious as the standing stones that encircled them. ‘If it means we stand here and freeze to death until I get a satisfactory answer then…so be it.’

‘Well, I don’t want to stand here and freeze to death!’ Caitlin retorted with some spirit. ‘I want to get home. I have a lot to do to sort my father’s house out before I go back to London, and there’s only me to do it!’

‘So you’re going back to London?’ he ground out through gritted teeth. ‘I suppose you can’t wait to leave? Once upon a time you said you wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world but here…that you loved the landscape, the weather and the wildness…that it was in your soul. Clearly the temptations of London held far more allure for what I now know to be your true fickle nature, Caitlin.’

‘I’m not fickle! And I still love it here! In London it’s hard to breathe sometimes…too many people, wall-to-wall traffic and everyone on a treadmill they can’t get off! If it’s got a soul at all I never came close to finding it…not in all the time I was there. Not like this place.’

‘But the fact still remains that something lured you there!’ Flynn shook his head, still fighting to hold onto his temper. ‘What was it? Another man?’

‘No!’ She looked aghast, the gusting wind turning her corn-coloured hair into a gilded fan across her face. She pushed it impatiently away. ‘How could that have been possible? I spent all my spare time with you, Flynn! I only wanted to be with you!’

‘You’re lying. You must be! You forgot this place—this land you purport to love so much—as easily as you forgot me!’

‘I didn’t forget you. I never—’ She stopped, her expression bleak.

Fighting a dangerously treacherous urge to hold her, Flynn deliberately took a step back—as if afraid his body would act of its own volition without his strict and guarded control.

‘Nobody wanted us to be together, Flynn…Can you remember how difficult it was?’ Her voice was too soft, and he almost had to strain to hear the words beneath the howling of the wind. ‘My father…your family…they kept trying to keep us apart.’

‘Not good enough, sweetheart. Try again.’

‘I was only eighteen! What could I do? I had no power, no say in anything! And it was always perfectly obvious that your family wanted you to be with someone much more suitable, from your own class and background, not some farm labourer’s daughter like me! Did you think I wanted to hang around and eventually see that happen? I know I should have told you that we should finish and that I was going away, but—but when it came down to it I just couldn’t face you. You probably think I’m a terrible coward, but everything was just getting me down back then. Including the way my dad was with me.’

‘You should have told me that! Not left me in the dark about how you felt!’

‘It wasn’t so easy for me to talk to you about personal things back then.’

‘Why not?’

She looked as if she was struggling to answer him, and Flynn sensed the tension inside him build almost to the point of pain.

‘You—I didn’t think you’d understand. You always seemed so impervious to feelings. I was afraid you’d just try to brush my fears off…tell me not to be so stupid.’

‘I’d never have done that!’ He was genuinely shocked.

‘I’m just telling you how I felt.’

‘If you’d done that four and a half years ago, instead of just walking away like you did…out of the blue and without warning…we might have been able to salvage something out of the situation. Instead you left me with nothing, Caitlin! Nothing! And then to have your father gloat in my face that you’d finally come to your senses and realised you were better off elsewhere! A place he had no intention of giving me the location of! That I can neither understand or forgive!’

‘I—what can I say except that I’m very sorry? Sorrier than I can ever begin to tell you.’

Touching her hand to the large standing stone at her back, it seemed as if she was lost in some melancholic memory Flynn couldn’t share. He fought like a Trojan to keep the urge to shake her at bay, even as the scent of the sea filled his nostrils and more sleet settled in his hair.

‘So that’s it? That’s all the explanation I’m going to get?’

‘It’s—it’s freezing out here. We ought to go—’

‘Didn’t you hear what I just said?’

This time he completely failed to keep his frustration at bay. It didn’t seem enough somehow, what she’d told him. Surely there had to be something else to complete the puzzle of her desertion? And what did she mean by him seeming so impervious to feelings? Dear God! It was his feelings that had damn near crippled him these past few years with her gone!

But in the end Flynn knew that whatever embellishment Caitlin might come up with none of it would make him feel one damn bit better. He should accept that something about him hadn’t been enough to hold her and just forget her. Get on with his life as he had been doing until she had so unfortunately returned for her father’s funeral.

Now the chill in his bones was nothing to do with the sharp-bladed cruelty of the weather. It was just too bitter to see her again and watch her walk away a second time…

Staring at Flynn, at the dismay and disappointment etched into the haunting lines of his face as though they might take up permanent residence there, Caitlin didn’t have the courage to just come out and tell him about Sorcha…the beautiful child they had made together. She was frightened of how he would react, and was undone by the thought of him hating her worse than he must do already for her desertion. To learn that she’d had his baby and had kept the news from him for all these years would be far too devastating a blow for him on top of having to deal with her unexpected return.

It had stunned her to consider that he’d cared for her to such a degree that he was still furious at her leaving. The Flynn she remembered had not been a man who had readily or easily revealed much about what he was feeling. Except when he was making love to her…Then there had been no barriers to stop him from showing her exactly how he felt. Sometimes, alone in her bed at night in London, Caitlin had no difficulty in conjuring up the thrilling memories of how this man had loved her, and it had kept her warm even when she’d felt as if her heart was rent in two for ever.

There was no doubt she would have to tell him about Sorcha some time soon. But it just couldn’t be right now.

‘I know we have unfinished business, and there are things that I should say…things I should have told you before I left. Maybe when you’ve calmed down we can—’

‘Calmed down?’

She could see that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. She exhaled a resigned sigh into the frigid air. ‘I can see you’re still mad at me, but maybe that’s why we should both have some time to think things through before we meet again?’

‘Think things through? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing for these past four and a half years?’

He took a step towards her, put his face up close to hers—so close she could see every tiny grooved line and pore indenting his skin. She could see the midnight shadow that studded his well-defined jaw, and Caitlin’s heart thudded in shock at the barely contained anger that rolled off him towards her.

‘I thought—’ She took a nervous swallow. ‘I thought you might have married again or—or perhaps be living with someone by now?’

Oh, how she’d dreaded that. Even though there was no earthly or logical reason why Flynn shouldn’t be with someone else by now.

‘I’m no celibate priest, but I’m not in a relationship, no. Why, Caitlin? Did it make it easier for you all these years living in London to think of me being with someone else? Sorry to disappoint you. I guess betrayal leaves a nasty taste in the mouth that’s not easy to relinquish. These days I have only one real use for women, and I’m sure you don’t need me to go into details!’

‘No, I don’t.’

It was almost more than she could bear to imagine him for even one second with another woman, doing the things he had done with her. Oh, God…would this pain ever heal? This longing for him abate? Fixated on the beautiful sensual mouth that hovered so near, Caitlin could almost taste the kiss that her lips longed for. His kisses had been heaven and forbidden fruit all at the same time. Her knees went weak as water at the memory.

As if not trusting himself to be so close to her, Flynn moved abruptly away again—but not before his jade eyes made a blistering examination of her face.

‘And what about you, Caitlin? Do you honestly mean to tell me that there’s been no other man in your life since you left? That you’ve spent every night in your bed alone?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You’ll believe whatever you want to believe!’

‘Can you blame me?’

He strode right away from her then, driving his hand in mute outrage through his sleet-sodden black hair.

‘Flynn!’

She ran after him, cold to the bone and shivering uncontrollably.

‘Please don’t just walk away!’

‘Why not?’ he growled, his expression bleak. ‘Isn’t that what you do?’

‘Please, Flynn,’ she implored again, too weary in mind, body and spirit to argue any more—knowing whatever she said would likely be a red flag to a bull while he was in this frame of mind. ‘I don’t want us to be enemies. I know we can’t be friends, but don’t you think we could try and resolve our differences and at least be civil to each other?’

‘We’d better get out of here.’

Ignoring her plaintive question, Flynn pulled up his jacket collar as far as it would go, with freezing hands almost blue with cold. In spite of his animosity and anger towards her, he could see that Caitlin was in even worse straits. Her wheaten-gold hair was drenched and flattened to her head, and her lips were almost colourless…like wax. The last thing she needed after just burying her father was to come down with a bout of flu…or even…pneumonia.

‘This wind is getting worse and the light is going. Did you make your way here by yourself?’

‘I got a lift to the road and walked from there,’ she replied, her teeth chattering.

‘My Land Rover’s parked down at the bottom. I’ll run you home.’

For a moment she looked as if she might refuse the offer of a lift, but a second later she briefly inclined her head.

‘Thanks…Just halfway down the lane will do. I can walk the rest of the way from there.’

When Flynn pulled up in the lane that led to what had been Tom Burns’ old cottage, he switched off the ignition and turned in his seat to regard his now silent passenger.

‘We could meet at the house tomorrow at around ten. Do you want me to come and get you?’

‘No, it’s all right. I prefer to walk. Ten it is, then.’

She pushed open the door at her side and stepped down onto the snowy road without another word.

Flynn sat and watched her walk up the lane—a slender, duffle-coated figure with bright hair whipped by the wind—and he gripped the steering wheel as though he would break it, shuddering out a long, slow breath.

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