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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.
With aching slowness he claimed her mouth, tasting her, nipping at her tongue. At last, her arms circled his neck and her sweet lips dueled with his. There was less tenderness tonight, more unrestrained passion. Frustration and conflict segued into ragged hunger and rough caresses.
He jerked her shirt over her head and fumbled with the bra, dragging it down her arms and tossing it away haphazardly. Red-hot desire hazed his vision, and he trembled as if he had a fever.
Her lush breasts took on gooseflesh in the night air, and her nipples pebbled into small, hard stones. He took them in his mouth, one after the other, and suckled her, dragging on her tender flesh with his mouth and plumping her breasts with worshipful hands.
Olivia moaned, a sound that went straight to his groin and sent scalding heat to scorch him alive. He ripped at her jeans, shoving them down her hips only enough to touch her between her legs. She was damp and ready for him.
Freeing his own eager sex, he fumbled in his pants pocket for a condom, rolled it on and then lifted her and braced her against the nearest tree. It was animalistic and raw and absolutely necessary.
With a grunt of determination, he thrust up and into her warm, hot passage. The sensation of being caressed by wet silk made him groan aloud. “I can’t get enough of you,” he said, the words muffled against her neck. “God, you make me burn.”
After that, conversation evaporated in the white-hot conflagration of his drive to completion. Olivia’s fingernails bit into his shoulders as she clung to him in desperation. He gripped her ass and lifted her high, angling his hips to fill her more deeply.
She cried out and trembled, heart pounding against his as she climaxed wildly, her inner muscles milking him. Her release triggered his. Keeping his hands under her ass to protect her from painful contact with the tree, he thrust recklessly, not caring if his hands suffered in the process. Nothing could have separated him from her in that moment.
She kissed him softly, and the simple caress was his undoing. Shaking, breathing hoarsely, he came with a rapid fire punch of his hips, feeling his strength drain away as he reached the end.
Legs embarrassingly weak, he went down, rolling onto his back in a sea of pine needles, settling Olivia on top of him as they both recovered. “Stay the summer,” he begged.
She put her hand on his lips. “Stop. Let it go for now. I’ll travel to New York with you. That’s two more nights, total. After that, Cammie and I have to go home. I have a project to finish, and she has play dates scheduled with friends. We have a life, Kieran. But I’ll consider returning later in the summer for a visit. Don’t push me on this.”
It was hard to be angry when she laid on top of him, every voluptuous inch of her his for the taking. Lazily he rubbed her firm, generous ass. She was the most intensely female woman he had ever known. As though her entire body was created for the purpose of male fantasy.
His erection was already perking up, but he had only brought one condom. Bad mistake. Instead of feeding his own hungry obsession, he reached between them and touched the tiny bud of nerves that made her quiver and pant. Deliberately he brought her to the brink again. She tried to fight him, but her body defeated her.
“Come for me, baby,” he urged, relishing the feel of her dew on his fingers. He might ache, unappeased, for hours, but it was worth it to hear her call his name as she spiraled into bliss and then slumped onto his chest.
Eight (#ulink_4a4ee4e1-97cc-5b8c-90c0-e26d968d50cb)
Olivia wanted to remain in the dark. Deep in the woods, she could pretend that she wasn’t scared of repeating mistakes that should have been far behind her.
She wasn’t lying to Kieran when she said she didn’t want Cammie falling in love with him only to experience a child’s broken heart when he left. But that was only half the truth.
Olivia couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t fall in love with him again, either, and that’s what was bound to happen if she remained on Wolff Mountain for the summer. Though she’d die rather than admit it, Kieran was irresistible. Look how she’d tumbled into his arms with barely a protest. Only physical distance could protect her. In New York, she planned to make her position clear.
Neutral ground, Kieran had said. The proposition sounded sensible on the surface. But Olivia had been to New York several times, and she knew that with the right man, the city would be magical.
She could always make celibacy a condition of the trip, but that would be self-deceptive in the extreme. She wanted Kieran… looked forward to spending an uninterrupted night in his arms. And by reminding herself that when it was done, it was done, she could protect her heart.
Maybe in August she and Cammie would make one final quick trip for Kieran to see his daughter. Then he’d fly out across the globe, and she and Cammie could get back to their normal lives.
Why did that thought have to hurt so much?
Olivia had grown up in chaos, being dragged around to movie sets all over the world, hiding in her bedroom when her flamboyant parents indulged in one of their theatrical shouting matches. All she had ever wanted was a peaceful, normal existence to raise her child. And if she looked seriously, surely there was some nice guy out there who would want to marry her and add to the family.
Try as she might, such a picture never came into focus.
Kieran held her hand as they made their way back to the house. Their feet made scarcely a sound as they walked.
Her fingers clung to his, wishing she had the right to be with him like this forever. He was a loving man, and an honorable one, despite his youthful misjudgments. He loved his family, and he was clearly on his way to loving Cammie, as well.
But ultimately he saw Wolff Mountain as a trap, one that had robbed him of his childhood. And though he might visit from time to time, he was never going to settle in one place.
They entered through the back of the house, treading quietly in deference to sleeping servants. When they entered the room where Jacob kept watch, he stood up and stretched. “I was about to give up on you.”
Kieran grimaced. “Sorry. The time got away from me. It’s a beautiful night.”
Jacob’s gaze settled on Olivia. He was a quiet, intense man, and his piercing eyes, like the X-ray machines he used, seemed to see right through her. “You need to watch out for my brother,” he joked. “We used to call him the ‘were-Wolff,’ because he loved roaming the woods at night.”
She blushed, feeling as if Jacob could see exactly what she and Kieran had been up to. “I enjoyed the walk,” she said. Her red cheeks were probably a dead giveaway, but she kept her expression noncommittal.
In the wake of Jacob’s departure, an awkward silence bloomed. Kieran’s jaw was rigid, and hunger still tightened the planes of his face. “Will you come to my room?” he asked.
She shook her head, backing away. “I need to get some sleep. Cammie will be up early. Good night.”
Her retreat was embarrassing to say the least, but she needed distance. His masculinity dragged her in, demanding a response, and for tonight, she needed to regroup and figure out how to protect her vulnerable heart.
Late the following morning Kieran’s cousin Annalise arrived. She blew in on a burst of wind and rain, her laughter contagious and her genuine welcome hard to resist.
“So glad to meet you both,” she said, squatting in Prada pumps to hug Cammie.
She was tall, dark-headed and gorgeous. And when she looked at Cammie, she was clearly shocked.
Olivia squirmed under her assessing gaze, but refused to be lured into saying something she would regret. “How was the family vacation?”
Annalise hugged her cousins, as well. Kieran and Jacob had showed up to eat lunch with her before going back to their construction project at Jacob’s clinic. Gareth had gone home to see Gracie. “Daddy and the boys are still fishing in Wyoming, but I reached my fill of tying lures and fighting mosquitoes. Plus, I had to get home to see Kieran. It’s like a sighting of the Loch Ness monster. You don’t want to miss it.”
“Very funny.” Kieran suffered her teasing with an easy grin, slinging an arm around her shoulders as they walked to the dining room. “Admit it, brat. You just had to come home and meet my guests.”
She wrinkled her classically beautiful nose. “You got me.” She gave Olivia a rueful glance. “It’s a well-known failing of mine,” she said, patting Cammie’s head as she seated herself at the table. “Whenever we were little, the guys tortured me by pretending to have secrets I wasn’t privy to. I’d badger them unmercifully, until half the time they admitted that they had made it all up.”
“It must have been hard being the only girl.”
“You have no idea.” She paused, expression concerned. “Where’s Uncle Victor?”
“He had a rough night,” Jacob said. “But he hopes to be with us for dinner.”
Over a lunch of cold salads and fresh fruit, Olivia watched Annalise interact with her family. There were three more males not present, the brothers Annalise spoke of, as well as Vincent Wolff, who was Victor’s twin. Clearly Annalise was close to Kieran and Jacob. She teased and kidded them with open affection.
