скачать книгу бесплатно
And suddenly he found the words stuck in his throat. After a hundred—hell, after a thousand at least—visualizations of the moment when he would meet his son, he didn’t have the spit to say a word.
He opened his mouth and nothing came out. For the first time in his entire life, Flynn Murray had no words.
Sara, too, was staring at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something. He couldn’t. He shook his head.
Maybe she realized he couldn’t—or maybe she simply decided that taking charge herself was a better idea. Her hands came down to rest on the boy’s shoulders and squeezed lightly. When she spoke, her voice was soft.
“He’s your father, Liam.”
Liam’s eyes flew wide open. So did his mouth. He stared at Flynn, then abruptly his head whipped around so he could look up at his mother. His whole body seemed quiver with the unspoken question: Is that true?
Sara’s smile was faint and a little wary. But she gave the boy’s shoulders another squeeze, then nodded.
“He is. Truly,” she assured him. “He’s come to meet you.”
For a long moment Liam still searched her face. But then, eventually, he seemed satisfied with what he saw there. He turned back to Flynn. His gaze was steady and level and curious as he stared at his father in silence. The silence seemed to go on—and on.
And then, finally, in a slightly croaky but determined voice, Liam asked, “Where’ve you been?”
Absolutely mundane. Absolutely reasonable.
Absolutely devastating.
Flynn swallowed. “I’ve…I’ve been a lot—” he cleared the raggedness out of his throat, glad he at least had a voice now. He started again “—a lot of places. All over the world. I’d have been here sooner. But…I didn’t know about you.”
Liam’s gaze jerked around to challenge his mother’s. “You said you wrote to him.”
“She did,” Flynn answered for her. This wasn’t Sara’s fault. “Your mother wrote me before you were born. She wrote me later when you were born…but I didn’t get the letter. Not for a long time. Years.” He picked the envelope up from the top of the bookcase where Sara had set it and held it out. “Take a look. It’s been everywhere. But I didn’t get it until last week.”
Liam’s gaze shifted from Flynn’s face to the letter in his outstretched hand. But he stayed where he was, so Flynn moved closer.
Still the boy didn’t reach out right away. But finally he plucked the envelope from Flynn’s fingers and turned it over in his hands, then studied the multiplicity of addresses on it.
“I was working a lot of different places all over the world,” Flynn explained awkwardly. “It must have missed me everywhere I went. It finally caught up with me back home. In Ireland.”
Liam didn’t look up. He was rubbing his thumb lightly over the words on the envelope, staring at the writing, which, Flynn realized suddenly, he wouldn’t be able to read yet. He wasn’t old enough. “All those addresses are places I was,” he explained.
Then Liam looked up at him. “You live in a castle?”
Flynn blinked. He could read?
Apparently so, for Liam was pointing at the one address on the envelope that hadn’t been scratched out. “That’s what it says.” He scowled at it, then sounded out, “Dun-more-ee castle.” Liam read it out slowly then looked up again. “That’s your house?”
“No, dear,” Sara began, but Flynn cut in.
“It is. Dunmorey Castle.”
He heard Sara’s sharp intake of breath. Liam’s eyes went so wide that his eyebrows disappeared into the fringe of black hair that fell across his forehead. “You live in a real castle? With a moat?”
“I live there. And it is a real castle in name,” Flynn qualified, looking at Sara for the first time, seeing accusation in her gaze. “Mostly it’s a huge drafty old house,” he went on. “Over five hundred years old. Mouldering. Damp. And it does have a turret and some pretty high walls. But it doesn’t have a moat.”
“Well, that’s something, I guess,” Sara muttered.
“No moat?” Liam’s face fell. His brows drew down. “What makes it a castle then?”
“It was a stronghold. A really old fort,” Flynn explained. “Where people could go if they needed to defend themselves against invaders. And it was where the lord of the lands lived. The boss,” he added in case that made more sense. “That’s what makes it a castle.”
Liam digested that. “Can I see it?”
“Of course you can.”
“A picture, he means,” Sara said hastily. “Can he see a picture? Of your castle.” Her tone twisted the word as if she were blaming him for it.
The damn place was no end of trouble. Flynn shook his head. “Not with me,” he told Liam. “But I can get you some. Even better, I can take you there. You can see it in person.”
Liam gaped. “I can?”
“No!” Sara said sharply.
Liam twisted around to look up at her. “I can’t?”
“It’s in Ireland,” she explained, shooting Flynn a furious glance. “That’s clear across the ocean. Thousands of miles.”
“I could fly on a plane.” Liam was undaunted. “Couldn’t I?” He glanced around at Flynn for confirmation.
“You could,” Flynn agreed. “Best way to get there, in fact. We’ll talk about it.” He smiled at Sara.
Sara’s mouth pressed into a tight line. “I don’t think we’ll be talking about it anytime soon.” She turned to her son and said firmly, “He can tell you all about his castle, Liam. But do not expect to go zipping across the ocean.”
“But I’ve never seen a real castle.”
“You’re five. You have plenty of time,” Sara said unsympathetically. “And in the meantime you can make them out of Legos.”
Liam brightened. “I already did.” He spun towards Flynn. “It’s sort of real. But it doesn’t have a moat either. Wanna see it?” He was all eagerness now, hopping from one foot to the other now, looking up at Flynn.
The expression on his face now didn’t remind Flynn so much of Will as it did of the young Sara—when he had first met her. She’d had that same sparkle, that same eager, avid, intense enthusiasm.
Right now she was glaring at him, her jaw locked.
He had made a living out of reading people, picking up their body language, understanding when to move in, when to back off. He had no trouble reading Sara. She wasn’t thrilled to see him and, he supposed, he didn’t blame her. He hadn’t been here when she needed him.
But he’d come when he found out, hadn’t he? They’d get it sorted. They had to. But they weren’t going to do it now in front of their five-year-old son. So he gave Sara a quick smile that, he hoped, appeased her for the moment, then turned to Liam. “I’d like that.”
“C’mon, then!” And Liam was off, pounding up the stairs.
Flynn looked at Sara. She glared. Then she shrugged. “Oh, hell, go with him. But don’t you dare encourage him to think about jetting off to Ireland!”
“It’s possible, Sar’. Not immediately but we should discuss—”
“No, we shouldn’t! Damn it, Flynn, you can’t just pop up and disrupt our lives. It’s been six years!”
“I didn’t know—”
“And you didn’t want to know,” Sara said, “or you’d have come back.”
“I thought—”
“I don’t care what you thought. You knew where I was. I didn’t leave! If I’d mattered at all, you’d have come back. You never came!”
“You were going to med school.”
She stared at him. “Do I look like I went to med school?”
He blinked, then shook his head, dazed. “What do you mean? How should you look?”
“I got pregnant, Flynn. I had two and half years of university left for my bachelor’s. I had a baby. It was all I could do to get through that. I didn’t go to med school.”
“But—”
“Circumstances change. Plans change.”
“Yes, but—” He couldn’t believe it. She’d been so driven. “Is that why you’re so ticked at me?”
She stared. “What? Because I couldn’t go to med school? Of course not! I don’t care about that. I got my degree. I have my own business. I’m a CPA—certified public accountant. I like my work. I like numbers in boxes. I like adding things up and having them come out right. I like knowing the answers! Speaking of which, what the hell is this about you living in a castle?”
He shrugged, still trying to come to grips with Sara as a CPA, not a doctor as he’d always imagined. Sara as a mother had been tricky enough. But Sara changing her determined plans boggled his mind. She’d been so committed, so determined. She’d said flat-out that nothing was going to stop her.
“Castle?” she prompted, when he didn’t answer immediately.
“I inherited it,” he said dismissively.
“You told me there was nothing for you in Ireland!”
“There wasn’t. I wasn’t supposed to inherit, I didn’t want to. My brother died.” He got angry all over again just thinking about it. Sometimes he wanted to strangle Will—except he wanted his brother alive. That was the whole problem.
“Will,” she said, making the connection.
“Will.” It always felt like a lead ball hitting him in the stomach when he said his brother’s name.
Sara pressed her lips together. “Well, I really am sorry about that. It was…a shock, I gather.”
“An accident. Coming to get me at the airport.”
A mixture of pain and sympathy flickered across her face. “Oh, God.”
“Exactly.”
Their gazes met again. The connection that had been so strong seemed to be flickering back to life—and Flynn couldn’t believe how astonishingly happy that made him feel.
And then, as if she shut the light off, Sara’s expression went blank. “You’d better go see the castle,” she said, pointing through the door to the kitchen. “Just through there and up the stairs.”
Thank goodness he went after Liam.
Sara didn’t know how much longer she could have stood there and talked rationally—well, almost rationally. Her heart was hammering. Her hands were trembling. She had to get a grip. Had to stop flying off the handle at him. Had to stop caring!
For years she’d managed to convince herself that she didn’t—that her three days of aberrant behavior with Flynn Murray had been some sort of alchemical reaction that would never be repeated.
And all it had taken was the sight of him standing on her doorstep and she was in meltdown all over again.
It was the shock, that was all. He was the last person she’d expected to see when she’d opened the door this afternoon. And the sizzling awareness she’d felt when she’d seen him had caught her off guard.
She didn’t even want to think about what had happened when he’d kissed her!
But thinking about him with Liam wasn’t much better.
They were so much alike.
Sara had always known that Liam resembled his father. But without pictures—and try as she had to find any of him among all those taken during that hectic February weekend, she’d discovered none—she’d told herself Liam simply had his father’s coloring. After all, she occasionally saw glimpses of herself, her own father, her mom, even her brother Jack in her son.
But when Liam and his father were in the same room, she didn’t only see glimpses of Flynn in her son. He was almost a clone.
But even more than Liam’s features, it was his body language that was so much like his father’s. He moved like Flynn, with the same intensity of purpose. And when he was stymied, he even prowled around rooms like Flynn.
Both Flynn and Liam were edgy, intense, determined. When Liam wanted something—like building a castle or learning to read—he went after it. Like his father. And while Liam was still occasionally little-boy clumsy, Flynn, even with his limp—dear God, she still couldn’t believe he’d been shot!—was clearly powerful, controlled and in command. Sara was sure that Liam would be exactly like that one day, too.
She wondered if Flynn saw it.
She wondered exactly what Flynn did see—and what he was really doing here. To see his son, yes. She could accept that. But what else did he want? What more?
He wasn’t going to waltz in here and try to take her son away from her, was he?
Just because he lived a in castle now, he didn’t need to think he could take over her son.
Or was it just her son he had in mind?
The memory of that kiss snuck back in to torment her—the memory of his lips on hers, the possessive hunger of that kiss! Surely he didn’t want her again?
Of course he didn’t. If he had, as she’d told him, he’d have come back long before this. God knew he could have had her then.
But this had been a power play, pure and simple. He was just proving he could still make her react, could still—let’s face it, Sara, she said to herself—turn her on.
And yes, damn it, he could. He had! He’d nearly swept away her reason, had made her weak with longing, with wanting him exactly the way she’d wanted him all those years ago.
But at least this time she’d managed—barely—to resist. And she would not let it happen again. It could only happen, she assured herself, if he caught her unawares.
But there would be no more “unawares.” Now she was forewarned. Flynn Murray had burned her once. There was no way she was letting him do it again!
Thank God she was going out with Adam tonight.
