Rumours: The Legacy Of Revenge

‘Not raw. Dead and buried.’ His tone was flat, emotionless, but she could hear a speed hump of hurt. ‘I hate having it exhumed. It stinks.’

Kat hadn’t realised how close her hand was to his where it was resting on the bed. If she moved her pinkie a few millimetres it would come into contact with his. Something shifted in her belly at the thought of his darkly tanned skin touching hers. ‘She’s quite a personality, isn’t she?’

He grunted something unintelligible.

‘I liked Miranda too,’ Kat said. ‘A lot. I didn’t expect to but she’s nothing like I expected. I thought she’d hate me, but she made me feel like she really wants us to have a connection.’

‘She’s a sweetheart. Leandro’s a lucky man.’

Kat looked at their hands again. Watched as the distance between their fingers got smaller. Was she moving her finger or was he moving his? ‘Were you in love with her?’

‘Who?’

‘Claire.’

His lips folded inward like he was filtering his response. Blocking it. Banning it. The silence boomed with the beats of the muscle flicking in his jaw. In. Out. In. Out.

‘If you’d rather not talk about it...’ Kat left the words hanging. Dangling like a dare.

His gaze hit hers. Hard. Two-can-play-at-that-game hard. ‘Do you want to talk about your affair with a married man?’

Shame turned Kat’s stomach sour and made her face burn. ‘You know about that?’

‘Men like Charles Longmore can’t help boasting about bedding a celebrity.’

Panic took an ice-pick to her spine and a sledgehammer to her heart. If Flynn knew then who else knew? Would her shame be splashed on every tabloid? Everyone would blame her. They always did. The Other Woman always got the blame. No one ever blamed the philandering husband. Kat would be cast in the role of home wrecker and there would be no way to defend herself. ‘Oh no...’

‘It’s all right.’ Flynn’s voice had a reassuring steadiness to it. ‘He and I have come to an understanding.’

Kat swallowed back bile, her hammering heart going back to where it belonged in her chest. ‘How do you know him?’

‘Mutual acquaintance.’

She looked down at her clenched hands. ‘I didn’t know he was married. He lied to me. Lie after lie after lie. I broke it off as soon as I found out. The worst thing was I’d always been so annoyed with my mother for getting involved with married men. I feel like such a hypocrite.’

Flynn put his hand over her white-knuckled ones and gave them a light squeeze. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. He was a jerk. A cheat. No one will believe him anyway.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You’re way out of his league.’

Kat cocked her head at him. ‘Is that a compliment, Mr Carlyon?’

His smile tugged on her resolve like a child pulling at its mother’s skirt. ‘Yes, Miss Winwood. It is.’

Another small silence ticked past.

Kat relaxed her hands and smoothed them against her bent thighs. ‘I guess I should let you rest...’

‘I wasn’t in love with Claire.’

Kat wondered why that should make her feel such an odd sense of relief. It wasn’t as if she was worried about whether his emotions had taken a battering. Why should she care if he’d had his heart banged up?

You do care. You like him.

No, I don’t. Well...maybe a little...but only because he was so good about that creep Charles.

‘Claire thought she was pregnant,’ Flynn said. ‘I wanted to do the right thing by her and our child.’

‘At least you didn’t pay her to have an abortion.’

He gave her a fleeting half-smile before his expression went back to neutral. ‘It was way earlier than I’d planned to settle down, but I thought it would work out if we both were committed to doing the best thing for the baby. But she found out a couple of days later it was a false alarm. She ended our relationship then and there.’

Kat searched his inscrutable face. What emotions was he screening from view? How had he felt at having the future he had planned with Claire cut so abruptly? Or had he been privately relieved he was off the hook, so to speak? Many young men would be terrified at the thought of fatherhood being thrust upon them before they were ready. ‘You weren’t relieved?’

He gave a soft laugh. ‘No. Maybe later, when I’d got over myself a bit. But not then.’

‘Why was doing the right thing by her and the baby so important to you? Because you were adopted?’

He met her gaze in a lock that made something in her chest ping. ‘I wasn’t a straightforward adoption.’

‘What do you mean?’

Kat saw his deepening frown, the slow blink, the tight swallow, the shadow of something pass through his gaze. Several somethings. It looked like he was shuffling through his thoughts, deciding whether he should reveal what he had stored inside the filing system of his mind.

‘I was a foundling,’ he finally said. ‘An abandoned infant with no name, no registration of birth or any other details pinning me to another soul on this planet. All I had was the ratty old bunny rug I was wrapped in and a soiled cloth nappy. And the worst case of nappy rash the authorities had ever seen.’

Kat stared at him in shock, her heart jolting at the thought of him as a tiny baby, suffering, abandoned, alone. ‘Oh dear, that’s so sad. Didn’t anyone ever come forward?’

‘Nope.’ The way he said the word made it sound as if he had long ago given up hope. Maybe he hadn’t had it in the first place.

Kat covered his hand with hers. Not that she did a great job of covering much of it, given her hand was so much smaller. He turned her hand over and entwined his fingers with hers. The heat from his hand warmed her body from her fingertips to her toes. ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like for you,’ she said. ‘Not knowing. Never knowing.’

His thumb moved back and forth against the fleshy base of hers. ‘Maybe it’s better not to know, or so I keep telling myself. I can’t see myself turning up any famous actors as my parents.’

Kat pulled her hand out of his. ‘I suppose you think I’m being petty about my father.’

‘He’s the only one you’ll ever have.’

‘He’s not the one I want.’

‘We don’t get to choose.’

She got off the bed and stalked to the window, folding her arms across her body. ‘I’m not ready.’

‘That’s another thing you might not have much choice over,’ he said. ‘What if you run in to him sometime?’

Kat swung back to face him with a look that would have curdled milk. ‘You mean with another impromptu dinner party at your house?’

‘I didn’t engineer the girls turning up.’

‘You engineered me house-sitting next door.’

‘So?’

‘So how can I trust you?’

He let out a long breath. ‘The question is, can I trust you?’

Kat frowned. ‘Why would you ask that?’

His gaze was direct. Don’t-mess-with-me direct. ‘I’ve told you stuff I’ve told no one. Not even the Ravensdales know I was abandoned as a baby. They only know I was adopted.’

Kat shifted her mouth from side to side, wondering if he regretted telling her. She seemed a strange ally for his secrets. She had made it clear she didn’t like him and yet he had told her things he had told no one else. Or did he suspect she did like him? That she liked him more than she wanted to admit to herself? ‘Why did you tell me?’

One side of his mouth lifted in a wry smile and he reached for his crutches to get off the bed. ‘I have absolutely no idea. Maybe it’s the painkillers and alcohol combination.’

Kat wondered if it was because he saw something in her that he saw in himself: the bone-deep sense of aloneness, of not belonging anywhere or to anyone. Of always having to rely on yourself with no one as backup. ‘I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.’

‘And when you make a promise you keep it, right?’

She glanced at his slanted mouth. Right now she wished she had never made that crazy promise to her friend Maddie. Right now all she wanted to do was press her lips against his and taste the sensual heat of him, to feel the potency of him awakening every female pore of her body into an inferno of lust.

He came to stand in front of her but because he was on crutches his mouth was closer than normal. She could see every line and contour, the way the edges turned up at the corners, as if he was used to smiling far more than not. It impressed her that he was so positive in outlook, considering his tragic beginnings and the way his adoptive family held him at arm’s length. Most people would be bitter and angry at the world. A little like me. So many people from difficult backgrounds became difficult people. The cycles of neglect and abuse often went on for generations.

But Flynn had made something of himself, refusing to let his tragic background stop him from achieving all he set out to achieve. He had qualities she couldn’t help admiring. Most of the men she had been involved with had exploited her in some way. But Flynn hadn’t sabotaged her fledging relationship with Miranda and Jaz, even though he’d had a perfect opportunity.

Why had he done that?

What did it mean?

Why was he treating her as if he had plans for building a future with her?

Kat looked into the dark-brown depths of his eyes, her stomach free-falling when they went to her mouth. He leaned one hand on his crutch and lifted the other to her face in a fainéant movement from the top of her cheekbone to just beside her mouth, his fingertip leaving a trail of fire against her skin. She sent her tongue out over her lips, swallowing deeply as she sensed him leaning closer. Her pelvis registered his proximity, her inner core contracting with a pulse of vicious need.

His mouth hovered above hers, his warm, faint-hint-of-whisky breath wafting over her tingling lips. His nose bumped against hers, a soft nudge that was powerfully, shamelessly, erotic. His stubble-shadowed skin grazed her cheek, sending her senses into a swishing, swirling tailspin. The tip of his tongue stroked the vermillion border of her bottom lip, a caress so intoxicating, so arousing, it nearly knocked her off her feet.

But somehow Kat managed to gather her scattered senses long enough to realise she had won a vital point against him. ‘You kissed me.’

His eyes contained a dark glitter that put that point she’d scored in jeopardy. ‘That’s not a kiss.’

‘You touched my lips with your tongue.’

‘Nah-ah. I touched the edge of your lip.’

‘You’re taking hair splitting to a whole new level,’ Kat said. ‘You did so kiss me.’

His mouth lifted in that devilish smile that did so much lethal damage to her self-control. And her resolve...wherever the hell it was. ‘That’s not a kiss.’ He leaned closer. ‘But this is.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

IN THE END, Kat wasn’t entirely sure if he or she had closed that final distance. All she knew was as soon as Flynn’s mouth came into contact with hers every thought of resisting him flew out of her head like bats out of a cave. His lips moved against hers with gentle pressure, not crushing, but cajoling hers into a passionate exchange that made every knob of her spine loosen. Her mouth flowered open beneath the first stroke of his tongue, the intimate invasion a toe-curling reminder of the act both their bodies craved—had craved from the moment they’d first met.

Was that not why it was so hard to step away and tell him to back off? Was that not why she had made that celibacy pact, because from the first moment she had laid eyes on him she had wanted him? She had recognised the danger he represented to her—the danger of being involved with someone where she wasn’t the one in control.

Her body was dizzy with longing for more of his drugging kiss. Her tongue tangled with his in a heated duel; it was a combat of wills, a collision of personalities, a celebration of all that was physically arousing between a man and a woman. Her mouth was on fire with the potency of his, the assault on her senses unlike any other kiss she had received in the past.

For one thing, he wasn’t holding her, on account of his crutches. It was only his mouth that was connected to her. His lips were fused to hers, drawing from her a response that was wild, hungry and desperately needy. Was it because she hadn’t been kissed in weeks and weeks—months, even? Or was it because Flynn’s kiss spoke to her on a level no one had ever been able to reach? She wanted to melt against his body but his crutches were an impediment. He was tilted towards her but if she pushed against him she was concerned he would fall. She wound her arms around his waist, her breasts coming into contact with the hard wall of his chest, but even that was enough to put him off-balance.

He lifted his mouth off hers and clutched at his crutches to rebalance himself. ‘This isn’t working quite the way it should.’

Kat lowered herself back on her heels, her hands falling away from his body, her cheeks hot as a bonfire. Two bonfires. Possibly three. What was she doing? Where was her self-control? Her resolve? Where the heck was her flipping resolve? ‘I suppose you think I’ll fall into bed with you now you’ve kissed me.’

His eyes were dark and glinting. Victory glinting. I-want-you-and-I-know-you-want-me glinting. ‘You could fall or you could walk the couple of steps. I’d offer to carry you but I’m not sure I could pull it off with these sticks.’

‘I’m not going to sleep with you.’

‘But you want to.’

Kat laughed but even to her own ears it sounded fake. So much for the actor’s handbook. She was going to have to brush up on the not-interested-in-you look.

She was interested in him.

He excited her. He challenged her. He thrilled her.

She had never met a more mesmerising man. Her senses were still reeling from having experienced the heart-stopping heat and passion of their first kiss—a kiss that had been months in the making. The chemistry between them had built each time they had been in contact. Every look, every bantering word exchanged, every locked gaze, had led to a kiss beyond anything she had experienced before.

What would happen if she allowed things to go further?

Making love with Flynn Carlyon would be dangerous. How could she keep her heart disengaged when he was already ambushing her with his wit, his humour, his intelligence, not to mention his Olympic-standard determination? He wanted her and wasn’t afraid to let her know it. The knowledge of his desire for her spoke to her own desire for him like a secret code embedded in her body. She could feel the electrifying shockwave of longing every time he looked at her with that smouldering gaze. The silent message he conveyed moved through her body, making her pulse race and her heartbeat escalate. ‘I’m not getting involved with you.’

‘Because I’m too close to your father?’

Kat knew it wasn’t just because of her father. It wasn’t even because of her celibacy pact with Maddie. It was because she knew getting involved with Flynn would not be a simple affair. The way he made her feel was so different from anyone else. She hadn’t fallen in love with anyone before. But then she had never got to know anyone so well before. She’d had infatuations and mild crushes, but she hadn’t learned anything about them as people.

But with Flynn it was completely different.

She had got to know him over the last few months, finding out more and more things about who he was, what he wanted, what he represented. The values he held. The information about his background was deeply personal stuff and yet he had chosen to reveal it to her. It made her feel as if their relationship was on a completely different footing from any she’d had before. No one had ever come close enough to make her want the fairytale. She had always been career focused, not marriage-and-family focused.

But Flynn made her feel stuff. Stuff she didn’t want to feel. Not just a potent attraction but a sense of relating to someone who understood what it was like always to be on the outside.

But what did he want?

He was a commitment-phobe, or so Miranda and Jaz had intimated. Was he interested in her only so he could get her to Richard’s party by fair means or foul? She was a task he had to accomplish, a box that had to be ticked.

Or did he want her because he too felt this powerful connection that pulled and tugged at every organ in her body?

Kat gave him a pointed look. ‘Are you close to my father? Are you close to anyone?’

The glint dulled in his eyes. ‘Don’t try and analyse me, Kat.’ He turned away on his crutches to settle back in a sitting position on the bed.

‘Why haven’t you had a serious relationship since Claire?’

‘Been there, done that, packed away the tuxedo.’

‘So you’re not interested in ever settling down?’

‘Nope.’ The word sounded like it was underlined. In bold.

‘Once bitten, twice shy?’ Kat said. ‘Seems a bit defeatist, if you ask me. What if you fall in love?’

‘I won’t.’

‘Is that something you can control?’

‘I’ve never met anyone I want to spend the rest of my life with.’

‘But that could change,’ Kat said. ‘You could meet someone tomorrow who completely rocks your world.’

His eyes held hers for a beat. ‘So could you.’

She looked away first, watching out of the corner of her eye as he made his way back to the bed. He lay back on the pillows, propping his arms behind his head. ‘Can you unzip my boot for me?’

Kat approached the bed with a scowl that would have sent a drill sergeant running for cover. ‘Would you like me to bring your pipe and slippers while I’m at it?’

He smiled a breath-snatching smile. ‘If I told you what I’d like you to do you’d blush to the roots of your hair.’

She pressed her lips together, undid the zip on his leather boot and slipped it off his foot. His bandaged foot was swollen and there were purple and black streaks running between his toes. She touched her fingers to his foot to check for excessive heat. ‘Do you need more painkillers?’

‘No, I’m fine, but you can take the food away.’ He closed his eyes as if signing out for the night. ‘I’m not hungry.’

Kat hovered at the end of his bed. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

He opened one twinkling eye. ‘A goodnight kiss wouldn’t go astray.’

Her lips hadn’t stopped tingling from the last one. She wasn’t game to do a repeat. Her self-control was on a precarious knife-edge as it was. ‘You don’t give up easily, do you?’

His smile was one of those lazy, spine-melting ones. The ones that made her want to dive headfirst into his bed and crawl into his skin. ‘We want the same thing,’ he said. ‘Sex without complications.’

‘Sex is always complicated.’

‘Maybe you haven’t had the right partner.’

Kat put her hands on her hips. ‘So you think you are?’

His eyes kindled. ‘I’m damn sure of it.’

She tried to ignore the pulse of lust that throbbed in her core. Throbbed and ached. ‘How can you be so confident?’

His eyes moved over her flushed features, lingering the longest on her mouth. ‘One kiss told me all I needed to know. That’s why you won’t do it again, because you’re frightened you won’t be able to control yourself.’

‘Really? Is that what you think?’

‘Come here and prove me wrong.’

Kat knew she should resist his challenge but she wanted to prove it to herself as well as him. She would show him she could press her lips to his and feel nothing. No fireworks. No shooting stars. No fireballs of lust ripping through her body.

She stood next to him and lowered her mouth to his smiling one. It was the only point of contact, lips on lips. But he didn’t respond. He didn’t do anything to prolong the kiss. In fact, he didn’t do anything but lie there like a mummified body.

Wasn’t he feeling anything?

Anything at all?

She pressed her lips back down again, moving them against the firm warmth of his in a slow-moving caress. She couldn’t remember a time when she had kissed a man with such concentrated intensity. It was as though all the nerve endings in her body had gathered in her lips, heightening their sensitivity. She sent out the tip of her tongue to trace the seam of his mouth, the touch slow, sensual and soft. She did it again, once, twice, and then the third time he gave a swift intake of breath and took control of the kiss. His arms came around her, bringing her down on the bed beside him, his mouth clamped to hers in a searing kiss, their tongues teasing and tangling, their lips sliding and sucking, their teeth nipping and tugging. She felt the full force of his arousal against her thigh, the potent power of it triggering her own intimate moisture.

He rolled her so she was half under him, his mouth still pressed hotly to hers. She swallowed a gasp as he slid one of his hands across her breast in a light skating touch that left her aching for more. She stroked his hair, his face, his back and shoulders as he plundered her mouth, inciting her desire to a level she had not thought possible. Never had desire rushed through her at such a breakneck pace. It was as if a drug had invaded her system, powering her up to do things she normally would never dream of doing. She reached for his belt and unhooked it, then went for his zipper. She wanted to feel the throb of him in her hand, to feel the desire he felt for her skin-on-skin.

He made a guttural sound when she got his zipper down, responded by slipping a warm, dry hand up under her sweater to cup her breast. Even though she was still wearing a bra her senses went wild. Off-the-scale wild. Scarily out-of-control wild. The promise of more was there in his hand as he cradled her. It was there in the roll of his thumb over her lace-covered nipple, making it go pebble-hard.

He left her mouth to bring his down to her breast, sucking on her through the lace, then when she thought she could stand it no longer he deftly unhooked her bra and drew on her with his warm, moist, tantalising mouth.

Kat reached for him with desperate fingers, peeling back the fabric of his underwear to access the satin-covered steel of his flesh. He made another deep sound of approval as she explored his length, concentrating on the blunt tip where his pre-ejaculate fluid had gathered.

His mouth left her breast to concentrate on the other one, subjecting it to the same delicious torture until she was writhing with longing beneath him. Such swift arousal was unusual for her. She wasn’t used to her body aching with such urgent pressing need, as if she would die if he didn’t follow through and complete their union. She could feel her clitoris stirring, swelling and aching for contact, for friction. The frustration of being so close and yet not close enough was making her resolve melt like a sugar cube dropped in a pot of hot tea.

Who cared about the stupid celibacy pact?

She wanted him. She wanted him with every cell in her body. She wanted the release his kiss hinted at, the release his hard body promised.

Flynn’s mouth came back to hers in another passionate onslaught that made her senses sing like a choral symphony. A thousand-member choral symphony. But just when she thought he would take it to the next level he drew back, breathing heavily but still in control. ‘As much as I’d like to finish this, I’m going to call a halt.’

Kat called on every bit of acting expertise she possessed to look cool and composed when inside she was screaming, Don’t stop now! ‘Because you think I wasn’t going to?’

He brushed a strand of hair off her face, his eyes holding hers in a lock that made her insides wobble like a jelly near a jackhammer. ‘It’s something else, isn’t it? This thing we have going on.’

Kat edged out from under him and put some order to her clothes. ‘There’s no thing going on. We kissed and fooled around a bit, that’s all.’

‘I want you, Kat, but I’m prepared to wait until you’re willing to admit you want me too. We do this as equals or not at all. Your choice.’

‘What is it you want?’ Kat said. ‘A fling? A future? A one-off? Or is this just a ploy to butter me up so I agree to meet my father?’