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

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.”

He actually chuckled, a rusty sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it did her. “I like you, Olivia. Too bad I didn’t have a daughter to take after my dear Laura.”

Olivia couldn’t think of a response to that, so she held her peace, walking beside Kieran’s father as the three of them made their way back to the house.

Seven

Kieran saw the three of them approach the house. He was watching from an upstairs window. Part of him resented the fact that his father was sharing time with Olivia and Cammie, something Kieran had intended as the primary focus of the weekend. But anger boiled in his veins, and he was afraid that if he snapped and confronted Olivia in Cammie’s presence, the child would be frightened.

Still, it was time for a showdown, and since nothing appeared to mitigate the harshness of the rage that gripped him, Olivia had better beware.

Dinner was an awkward affair with only the four of them. Jacob had been called way unexpectedly, and Gareth and Gracie were still in the honeymoon phase of their marriage, enjoying time together at home alone.

Cammie behaved beautifully at the overly formal table, conversing easily with Kieran and smiling shyly when Victor Wolff addressed her. Olivia was pale and quiet, perhaps sensing that a storm was brewing. The courses passed slowly. At last, Victor pushed back from the table. “I’ll leave you young people to it. If you’ll excuse an old man, I’m going upstairs to put on my slippers and sit by the fire.”

Cammie wrinkled her nose as he left. “A fire? That’s silly. It’s summertime.”

Kieran smiled, loving how bright she was, how aware of her surroundings. “You’re right about that, little one. But my father has his eccentricities, and we all adjust.”

“X cin…” She gave up trying to replicate the difficult word.

Olivia leaned over to remove crumbs from her daughter’s chin with a napkin. “It means that Mr. Wolff has lived a long time and he sometimes does strange things.”

“Like when Jojo puts hot sauce on his ice cream.”

Olivia grinned. “Something like that.”

Kieran saw himself suddenly as if from a distance, sitting at a table with his lover and their child. Anyone peering in the window would see a family, a unit of three. A mundane but extraordinarily wonderful relationship built on love, not lies.

But appearances were deceiving.

So abruptly that Olivia frowned, he stood up and tossed his napkin on the table. “Why don’t I tuck Cammie in tonight? Is that okay with you, Olivia?”

He saw the refusal ready to tumble automatically from her lips, but she stopped and inhaled sharply, her hands clenching the edge of the table. “I suppose that would be fine. What do you think, Cammie?”

“Sure. Let’s go, Kieran. Do you have any boats to play with in your bathtub?”

After they were gone, the silence resonated. Olivia realized that she was inconveniencing the waitstaff as long as she sat at the table, so she got up, as well. There were so many rooms in the huge house, it was easy to get lost. Not wanting to be too far away from Cammie, she found a staircase that led to the second floor and walked toward her suite. When she could hear laughter and splashing from the bathroom, she paused in the sitting room to call her mother.

Lolita’s well-modulated voice answered on the first ring. “Hello, darling. How’s the visit with your school friend?”

Olivia might possibly have fudged a bit on the details of her trip. “Going well. But I’m worried about you and Dad. Anything else from your psycho fan?”

“Don’t be so cruel, Olivia. Men can’t help falling in love with me. It’s the characters on the screen, of course, but I play them so well, they seem genuine and warm, especially to someone who has already experienced a disconnect with reality. We should have compassion for the poor soul who is obsessed with me.”

Olivia’s mother had no problem with self-esteem. But her nonchalance seemed shortsighted. Olivia might have been even more worried were it not for the fact that Javier Delgado took his responsibilities as a husband very seriously. He was narcissistic to a fault, but he did love his tempestuous wife, and he had the bodyguards and manpower to prove it.

“Still, Mom, please be vigilant. Don’t let down your guard.”

“It’s a tempest in a teapot, Olivia. Just a sad man wanting attention. Quit worrying.”

“Has he sent more emails?”

“A few. The police are monitoring my computer.”

“What did the notes say?”

“More of the same. Threats to me and the people I love. But you and Cammie are in a safe place for now, and your father and I are well taken care of. Everything’s fine.”

The conversation ended with Olivia feeling no less concerned than she had been earlier. As much as she hated to admit it, her parents would always be targets because of their celebrity and their wealth. Which was exactly why Olivia had struggled so hard to make a home for herself and her daughter away from the limelight that surrounded Lolita and Javier. Even letting Cammie travel with her grandparents was a leap of faith, but Olivia wanted the three of them to be close, so she bit her tongue and prayed when necessary.

The noise of Cammie’s bedtime rituals moved from the bathroom to the bedroom. Olivia walked through the door in time to see Kieran tuck his daughter into the raised bed, giving her a kiss in the process. “My turn,” she said.

Feeling awkward beneath Kieran’s steady gaze, she hugged Cammie and tucked the covers close. “Sweet dreams.”

Cammie’s eyes were already drooping. “Nite, Mommy. Nite, Kieran.” The two adults stepped into the hall. Kieran’s expression was brooding, none of the lightheartedness he’d exhibited in Cammie’s presence remaining. “Put some other shoes on,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”

Kieran saw on her face that she recognized the blunt command for what it was.

She frowned. “When you have a child, you can’t waltz away whenever you want. She’s too small to be left alone.”

“I’m not stupid, Olivia.” Her patronizing words irritated him. “Jacob returned a little while ago. Cook is fixing him some leftovers. He’s bringing a stack of medical journals with him and has promised to sit up here until we get back.”

“I don’t know why we have to leave the house.”

“Because it’s a beautiful night and because I don’t think you want to risk having our conversation overheard.”

That shut her up. He was in a mood to brook no opposition, and the sooner he stated his piece, the better.

About the time Jacob appeared upstairs, Olivia returned wearing athletic shoes as instructed. She had changed into jeans and a long-sleeve shirt in deference to the chill of the late hour. Even in summer, nights on the mountain were cool.

They chatted briefly with Jacob, and then Kieran cocked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Outside, Olivia stopped short. “You haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“To the top of the mountain.”

“I thought we were on top.”

“The house sits on a saddle of fairly level land, but at either end of the property, the peak splits into two outcroppings. One has been turned into a helipad. We’re headed to the other.”

She followed him in silence as he strode off into the darkness, deliberately keeping up an ambitious pace. If she ended up exhausted and out of breath, perhaps she wouldn’t be able to argue with him.

When the trail angled sharply upward, she called out his name. “Kieran, stop. I need to rest.”

He paused there in the woods and looked at her across the space of several feet. Her face was a pale blur in the darkness. The sound of her breathing indicated exertion.

“Can we go now?” He was determined not to show her any consideration tonight. Nothing would dissuade him from his course of judgment.

She nodded.

He spun on his heel and pressed on. They were three miles from the house when the final ascent began. “Take my hand,” he said gruffly, not willing to place her in any actual danger.

The touch of her slender fingers in his elicited emotions that were at odds with his general mood of condemnation. He pushed back the softer feelings and concentrated on his need for retribution.

Clambering over rocks and thick roots, they made their way slowly upward. At last, breaking out of the trees, they were treated to a vista of the heavens that included an unmistakable Milky Way and stars that numbered in the millions.

Despite his black mood, the scene humbled him as it always did. Every trip home he made this pilgrimage at least once. To the right, a single large boulder with a flat top worn down by millennia of wind and rain offered a seat. He drew her to sit with him. Only feet away, just in front them, the mountain plunged into a steep, seemingly endless ravine.

Olivia perched beside him, their hips touching. “Are you planning to throw me off?” she asked, daring to tease him.

“Don’t tempt me.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights.”

“We’ll come back in the daylight sometime. You can see for miles from up here.”

They sat in silence for long minutes. Perhaps this had been a mistake. The wild, secluded beauty of this remote mountain was chipping away at his discontent. Occasionally the breeze teased his nostrils with Olivia’s scent. All around them nocturnal creatures went about their business. Barred owls hooted nearby, their mournful sound punctuating the night.

Olivia sat quietly, her arms wrapped around her.

He rested his elbows on his knees, staring out into the inky darkness. “You committed an unpardonable sin against me, Olivia. Robbing me of my daughter—” His voice broke, and he had to take a deep, shuddering breath before he could continue. “Nothing can excuse that… no provocation, no set of circumstances.”

“I’m sorry you missed seeing her grow from a baby into a funny, smart girl.”

“But that’s not really an apology, is it? You’d do the same thing again.”

“The father of my child was a liar who abandoned me without warning or explanation. And later, when I did discover the truth, I found out what kind of man you are. An eternal Peter Pan, always searching for Neverland. Never quite able to settle down to reality.”

“You think you have me all figured out.”

“It’s not that hard. All I have to do is look at the stamps on your passport.”

“Traveling the world is not a crime.”

“No, but it’s an inherently selfish lifestyle. I’ll admit that your work is important, but those bridges you build have also created unseen walls. You’ve never had to answer to anyone but yourself. And you like it that way.”

The grain of truth in her bald assessment stung. “I might have made different choices had I known about Cammie.”

“Doubtful. You were hardly equipped to care for a baby. And by your own admission, you’ve returned to Wolff Mountain barely a handful of times in six years. You may feel like the wronged party in this situation, Kieran, but from where I’m standing, both of our lives played out as they had to—separate… unrelated.”

He couldn’t let go of the sick regret twisting his insides with the knowledge that he had never been allowed to hold his infant child. “You call me selfish, Olivia, but you like playing God, controlling all the shots. That hardly makes you an admirable character in this scenario.”

“I did what was necessary to survive.”

“Lucky for you, your parents had money.”

“Yes.”

“Because, otherwise, you’d have been forced to come crawling to me, and that would have eaten away at your pride.”

“I would never have come to you for money.”

He pounded his fists on his knees. “Damn you. Do you know how arrogant you sound?”

“Me? Arrogant?” Her voice rose. “That’s rich. You wrote the book, Kieran. All you do is throw your weight around. I won’t apologize for protecting my daughter from an absentee father.”

“Military families deal with long absences all the time and their children survive.”

“That’s true. But those kids suffer. Sometimes they cry themselves to sleep at night wishing with all their hearts that their mommy or daddy was there to tuck them in. It’s a tough life.”

“But you never gave us a chance to see if we could make it work.”

“You had sex with me for six weeks and never told me your real identity. What in God’s name makes you think I would have put myself out there to be slapped down again? You hurt me, Kieran… badly. And when I found out a baby was on the way, it was all I could do to hold things together. If you had at least contacted me, who knows what might have happened. But you didn’t. So forget the postmortems. What’s done is done.”

“I want to tell her I’m her father.”

“No.”

“I have legal rights.”

“And you have plane tickets to Timbuktu at the end of the summer. Telling her would be cruel. Can’t you see that?”

“She needs me. A girl should have a daddy to spoil her and teach her how to ride a bike.”

“And you’ll do that via Skype? Is that what you had in mind?”

“God, you’re cold.”

“What I am is a realist. We’re not talking about how much Cammie needs you. This is really about you needing her, isn’t it? And if you’ll stop and think about it, the mature thing to do would be to walk away before she gets hurt.”

“I want her to stay for the whole summer.”

“She would fall in love with you and then be crushed when it was over. Absolutely not.”

“We’re getting nowhere with this,” he groused. “It’s a circular argument. I have a proposition. My cousin Annalise is returning tomorrow. She’s great with children, and Cammie will love her. I have to make an overnight trip the following morning to New York to meet with a charitable board about the September project. I want you to come with me and we’ll see if we can work this thing out.”

“There’s nothing to work out.”

“Let me put it this way… either you agree to go to New York and hash things out on neutral ground, or I tell Cammie the truth when she wakes up in the morning.”

“You can’t.”

“Try and stop me.” He was beyond pleasantries, fighting for his life, his future.

Olivia leaped to her feet and he grabbed for her wrist. “Be careful, damn it. You’re too close to the edge of the cliff.”

She struggled instinctively, and then froze when his words sank in. “Take me back to the house.” Unmistakable tears thickened her voice.

He stood up and backed them both from the precipice. “Don’t make this so hard, Olivia,” he murmured, sliding his hands down her arms. “We’re her parents. Together. I don’t want to fight with you.”

“But you want to torture me.”

“Not that, either.” Her nearness affected him predictably. “I want to make love to you, but I don’t have a death wish, so I suggest we get off this ledge.”

He steered her down the winding, narrow path until they were once again cloaked in the pungent forest of fir and pine. When he halted and slid his hands beneath her hair to tilt her face toward his for a kiss, she didn’t protest. But her lips were unmoving.

His thumbs stroked her cheeks, wiping away dampness. “You have to trust me, Olivia.” He could feel the tremors in her body as he pulled her closer. “I won’t hurt Cammie. I won’t hurt you.” He said it almost like a vow, but as the words left his lips, he realized the truth of them.

Traditional or not, Olivia and Cammie were his family… as much or more than Gareth, Jacob and Victor. He would protect them with every fiber of his being, to the death if necessary. If he could make Olivia understand how deep his feelings ran, how desperately he wanted to take care of both the women in his life, perhaps she would be more inclined to believe his sincerity and his resolve.