A Father At Last Page 2

  She shrugged, dragging her eyes from his so he wouldn’t see the truth, and turned her head slightly to focus on a spot over his shoulder. “I was around.”

  “Around, maybe, but not for me. Kelly...” He let go of her hand and reached for her chin, gently easing her head around to face him again and seeking out her eyes. “Do you Julie Mac

  remember that night?”

  She drew her eyebrows together and cocked her head slightly in what she hoped was a good impression of someone struggling to grasp a memory. “Vaguely, I guess.”

  She saw the flash of hurt in his eyes, deep and searing, and hated herself for doing this, but there was no other option. He’d live with the hurt, she’d live with the loss, but there was another person in her life now whose feelings were far more important than either hers or Ben’s.

  “So you have no recollection of how it was for us?”

  “No.” Yes! Every detail of that night is as clear to me as if it happened seven days ago, not nearly seven years.

  “I’m sorry you don’t remember.” Ben was watching her eyes, and the hand holding her chin moved fractionally to caress her cheek. “Because I do—very clearly.”

  She thought her knees might give way. “Well, I’m sorry too, but I obviously don’t have your powers of recall.” I remember every touch of your hands on my body, every slide of your skin against mine. She held his gaze, hoping to convey indifference.

  “Shall I remind you?” He dipped his head as if to kiss her.

  “No!” She jerked her head to the side. The memory of your mouth on mine is already imprinted on my brain forever.

  If she let him kiss her—if she kissed him—all the protective barriers she’d built around her would shatter and crumble in a second.

  “So why are you panting then?”

  “What?” She swung her head back to face him, and saw the start of a cheeky Ben‐of-old grin.

  “You’re breaking out in a sweat.” His hand on her cheek shifted slightly and he rested a fingertip against the pulse in her neck. “And your heartbeat is fast. I thought a bloke could take that as a sign that a girl wanted him to kiss her.”

  “Or that she’s scared because she’s trapped in a lift between floors.” It wasn’t true, she knew. She should have been scared, but with his solid presence beside her in the old timber and steel cage, she felt safe.

  So maybe he was right—in which case she needed to take charge of the situation.

  She dragged in a deep breath, and shoved hard with the hand that was still on his chest.

  “I’ve got to get going.” If she sounded rude, so much the better. “Get this lift moving please.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Where to, madam?” he asked, swinging around to the control panel.

  Unexpected disappointment shot through her, but she knew it was better this way.

  A Father at Last

  “Sixth floor, please.”

  She saw the hesitation, his hand stalled in front of the button as he read the label beside it.

  “The sixth floor is children’s wear.”

  His voice held a quality she couldn’t identify, and she didn’t know what to say.

  Silence hung in the lift like impending thunder.

  He swung to face her again, his expression unreadable. “Are you married?”

  She saw his eyes home in on her left hand.

  “Or living with someone?”

  “No, I’m not married, and no, I don’t have a live‐in partner.” For an insane moment she thought she saw relief in his eyes.

  “But you have a child.”

  She reached up a hand to fiddle with her hair. Denying Dylan’s existence seemed a terrible betrayal of her precious boy. But right now it would be better to tell a lie. Far simpler and cleaner. And then she realised his words had been a statement, not a question.

  “I heard you, outside the court, on your phone.”

  His words confirmed her dawning comprehension. She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Yes, I have a child, a boy.”

  Read the eyes. They tell you everything. They’d taught the students that in law school, and Kelly’s time in court had helped hone the skill. Right now, Ben Carter’s eyes were giving her chapter and verse, although his face was a rigid mask.

  “How old is he?” His voice was low and harsh.

  “He turns six on Saturday.” She saw Ben, always top of the class in maths at school, do the calculation in three seconds flat and she wished she hadn’t been so specific.

  “Is he mine?”

  There was an intensity in those golden eyes that almost made her flinch.

  She shook her head and stepped back fractionally. “Not yours, Ben.” She saw the regret in his eyes, sharp and surprising, followed almost instantly by an emotion she couldn’t identify.

  “Who’s his father?”

  “None of your damn business.” Kelly sounded strong, sassy even, but inside she was weak. She had to get out of here, fast. She stepped forward, reached her arm past him and pushed the button for floor six. She wanted to hold him, kiss him, tell him the truth, erase Julie Mac

  the regret from his eyes forever. But she couldn’t—not now, not ever.

  “And if I was his father, would you have told me?”

  His voice, little more than a raw whisper, was close to her ear, and his warm breath brushed her neck.

  She heard the creak of the pulleys above her, and the lift began to move. Her throat tightened. “You’re not listening. He’s not yours.” Fear crept through her belly. “And no, I wouldn’t have told you even if he was. Don’t you remember what it was like for me when it all went wrong for my father and he went to prison?”

  She hated the way she sounded close to tears. “Do you think I’d want a child of my own to go through that?”

  He said nothing and she couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, she watched the indicator lights above the door as the lift progressed slowly upwards.

  He stood motionless, but she could hear the steady in, out, of his breathing, feel his body close to hers, but a million miles away. Still, he said nothing.

  Then, after they’d passed the fourth floor, he pushed the button for the fifth, and surprised her, leaning in, brushing his lips against her cheek, murmuring, “I hope your little boy brings you truckloads of happiness, Kelly.”

  For a long moment, the only sounds were their breathing and the mechanical clunkings of the lift.

  Then he added, unexpectedly, “You smell good. I remember you wearing that perfume—back then.”

  She turned to face him, and saw the heat in his eyes, those amazing liquid gold eyes, halfway between green and brown.

  “Here, I bought something for you.” He reached down to pick up the department store bag from the floor beside him and put the gold rope handle in her hands. Then he fished in his pants pocket, pulled out a wad of notes and dropped them in the bag. “Buy your little fellow a treat for his birthday. Go to the fun park or something. Tell him it’s from an old friend of yours.”

  “He doesn’t need a fancy treat.” Kelly grabbed at the money in the bag. “Dylan’s not a spoilt kid. We’re having a picnic tea at the beach with some of his friends.” She held the money out to him. “Here. Take this back.”

  But he made no move to take it. Fleetingly, she thought of stuffing it back in his jeans pocket, but dismissed the idea instantly.

  Her eyes had obviously betrayed her intentions, because he gave a knowing and infuriating smile. But the smile failed to reach his eyes, which right now looked incredibly sad. And when she saw the sadness, she was almost undone.

  And then she was—completely undone, because he leaned in and kissed her, full on A Father at Last

  the mouth, not with a tentative, questioning, first time kiss, but with a ‘been there before’

  kiss, strong, hard, skipping the preliminaries. And Kelly couldn’t help herself.

  She responded to his heat instinctively and without rational thou
ght. Her tongue met his, and she heard his quickened breathing and heard—no, felt—the vibration in his chest as he groaned and deepened the kiss. He’d pulled her close, so her body touched his, like a homecoming—but an impossible, sad homecoming. Her hands went to his hips, as his tangled in her hair, and she knew she’d lied to herself for all those years.

  Then the lift stopped, and he pulled back from her.

  “Trust me, Kelly,” was all he said. When the doors opened, he turned, stepped out and walked away without looking back.

  “This store will shut in ten minutes. Please complete your purchases and make your way to the exits.”

  The loud message on the store speakers snapped her out of her daze. She was standing in the middle of the children’s wear department, her mind filled with Ben, all her senses running a wide‐screen replay of those five minutes in the lift—five minutes with Ben Carter that threatened to knock down all the defences she’d built up over the last few years.

  And then there was the bottle of perfume. She’d looked in the bag after he’d left the lift, and saw he’d bought the perfume she couldn’t afford. Which meant he did remember her favourite scent. Or more likely, she thought now, he knew she’d wanted it because he’d followed her.

  She’d dropped the wad of cash, still in her hand, into the bag. What normal citizen walked round with a bunch of notes loose in a pocket instead of in a wallet? The whole lot, cash and perfume, could go to the women’s refuge she supported. Now, impossible as it seemed, she needed to concentrate on Dylan’s present.

  Quickly, she located the tables holding the mini rugby jerseys and matching shorts—

  easy to find since the focal point of the display was a life‐size male mannequin wearing All Blacks gear and bearing a remarkable resemblance to the New Zealand rugby team’s present captain.

  Finding her son’s size on the well‐stocked tables wasn’t so easy, and besides, her concentration was shot to pieces by constant thoughts of Ben.

  He’d tried to find her after their night together. Was that good or bad? Not good, she reminded herself. But then, she’d tried to find out about him when Dylan was a toddler.

  Her discreet inquiries had come up with nothing. Googling his name on the net didn’t tell her anything new; there were the old news articles about the smart kid in trouble with the police and suspended indefinitely from his school for hacking into its computer system and handing out the confidential contents of teachers’ files to other students.

  Julie Mac

  There were the almost gleeful media follow‐ups of his earlier entrepreneurial black market hawking of soft drinks in the school grounds after the high school had banned the sale of fizzy drinks in the tuckshop. And later, a brief report from one of the local papers, covering his court appearance.

  But nothing else. Surprising, she’d thought at the time, considering he’d been seen by some of her friends—more than once—hanging out in his early twenties with guys known as the local drug pedlars.

  She’d found no clue as to where he lived or worked, not a single hit on any social networking sites.

  Then, just a couple of years ago, she’d seen him in a television news clip of an incident at Auckland Airport’s domestic terminal. A man, his back to the security cameras, walked up to a prominent Member of Parliament and punched him in the face, hard. The portly middle‐aged MP buckled up, blood gushing from his fleshy face, while his assailant walked on calmly. Security guards rushed to grab the attacker, who made no effort to get away.

  When the man, tall and dark‐headed, turned fractionally towards the security camera, Kelly knew she was looking at Ben Carter.

  She’d scanned the news avidly for the next few days, and was amazed to read that the MP had declined to press charges. It was election year; he earned much‐needed brownie points by saying he wouldn’t waste precious court time and public money by bringing charges against the unidentified assailant, a poor, sad, loser. A stranger who was probably on drugs, and had done no real harm, the MP had said at the time.

  And that was the last she knew of him. Of course, she could have phoned his parents, or called around to their home. A check in the phone book told her they were still at the same address. But knocking on their door would have caused all sorts of wrong conclusions. Besides, they were good, decent people; it was entirely possible they’d washed their hands of their wayward son.

  “This store will close in two minutes. Please make your way to the exits.”

  The disembodied voice on the department store speakers, polite but firm, brought her back to the present. She quickly paid at the counter and headed for the lifts with the last of the straggler shoppers.

  As she left the shop, she thought of Dylan’s reaction to his new clothes. His eyes would light up with pleasure and excitement. His golden eyes, just like his daddy’s.

  Ben grabbed a bottle from his fridge, sank into the sofa, and pushed the button on the TV

  remote for the sports channel. He watched motor racing for a few minutes, but didn’t turn up the sound.

  He took a long pull on his beer, then swore. He’d done something really dumb today, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

  A Father at Last

  He hadn’t needed to follow her—not really. His scumbag colleagues had given up waiting for her long before she came out of the court building. He shouldn’t have followed her, shouldn’t have risked dragging her into his seedy underworld.

  But seeing Kelly had been like a breakthrough of sun on a winter’s day, a ray of goodness and hope in an increasingly tawdry world. And once he’d seen her at the court, he couldn’t leave it at that. Couldn’t live with ‘hi and goodbye’ again, not this time. Six years and nine months ago, way back in the past, he’d been prepared to accept that she simply didn’t want him. After their night together, he’d tried—God, how he’d tried—to contact her, to find her. But it was clear she hadn’t wanted to hear from him, or see him, again.

  Okay, he’d been man enough to accept that, even though it hurt like hell. He’d even been content to follow his mother’s counsel and leave well alone when he’d found an address for her three years ago. Making a pest of himself with a woman wasn’t Ben Carter’s style.

  But seeing her today, touching her, kissing her, tasting her, changed everything.

  He suppressed a groan and flicked through the channels, looking for something half-pie decent to take his mind off her, then gave up. In a few minutes, he’d make himself something to eat, and then he had to go out again. But first, there was a phone call to make.

  He punched in a number on his mobile phone.

  “Any progress, bud?” asked the person he’d called.

  “Yeah, plenty,” said Ben. “I’ll deliver the goods, no worries. But I want more time.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, then, “You’ve got that extra time, mate, but watch yourself out there.”

  He put the phone down, picked up his Steinlager and let himself think of Kelly again.

  She was strong and proud and every bit as attractive as when he’d seen her last.

  Maybe more so. That golden‐red hair was still a curly, tangled temptation, her face still lively, intelligent and likely to turn the head of any male under the age of eighty.

  He thought of those lowlifes he was with at court today, commenting and sniggering at her, and anger surged through his veins in a hot tide.

  He picked up his beer, drank deeply—and resisted the temptation to bang the bottle down hard on the coffee table. Anger—any emotion—had no place in his life right now.

  Anger displaced reason. Anger was unproductive. Anger was dangerous. As were other emotions. Like attraction to a woman.

  He dropped his head into his hands. Who the hell am I kidding?

  He could still feel Kelly’s mouth under his, soft but eager—no, more than eager—

  hungry, starving hungry. And if she was starving, he was ravenous. Courting Kelly right now wa
s crazy, he knew that. But he wouldn’t let her go this time—couldn’t.

  Julie Mac

  Chapter 2

  Long Bay was aptly named, Ben thought, just a little sourly, as he came to the northern end of the kilometre‐long stretch of golden sand on Auckland’s North Shore.

  Walking along the beach, sussing out every group of young mums and little kids on the sand or in the water was downright embarrassing—even if he was wearing a cap pulled low on his head and face‐hiding sunglasses.

  Trouble was, so were most of the young mums. At five thirty in the afternoon, the sun was still fierce. He’d thought Kelly, if she were here with her little boy and his friends, would be easy to spot with that mane of fiery hair. But if she’d tied it up and stuck a hat on top, and wore big sunglasses, it wasn’t going to be easy.

  He headed for the grassy reserve behind the long strip of sand. There were picnic tables here, big stands of old pine trees for shade, and space for kids to kick a ball or fly a kite. He’d walk back down to the southern end, and if he didn’t see her, he’d call it quits.

  He spotted a group of three young women, sitting at a picnic table under the trees, watching a bunch of little boys kicking a soccer ball around on the grass, between them and the beach. Then one of the mothers laughed, loud and uninhibited.

  Kelly!

  She was sitting on the far side of the table. Sure enough, her hair, loose around her shoulders and glinting in the sun, was a dead giveaway, even with the wide‐brimmed cowboy‐style sunhat she’d put on top.

  Then he heard the little boy on the seaward side of the grassy strip call, “Hey, Dylan, kick it to me!”

  Ben’s eyes homed in on the boy with the ball ten metres away, and at that moment, his life was changed forever.

  The little fellow with the ball was wiry, his limbs tanned, his dark hair thick and wavy.

  Instinct told Ben the truth.

  Or maybe it was simple rationale: the boy was a dead ringer for Ben’s sister’s little boy.