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The rain had plastered her hair to her beautifully shaped head, moulded the fine cotton of her clothes to that exquisite, graceful body. Finn
gritted his teeth. This close, this woman was in danger of sending him out of his mind.
This woman had blamed him for something he hadn't done, and lied and schemed to get close to him, using sweet, innocent little Sophie, and this same woman had brought him to the point of believing himself in love with her!
How could his character judgement be so out of kilter? How could he have wanted to spend the rest of his life with someone so irrational, so blinkered?
And, worse yet, there was the sheer absurdity of believing himself in love—and for the first time in his entire adult life—with a woman who had used her sex as a weapon, allowed herself to share sexual intimacies with a man she had believed to be married in order to punish him for something he hadn't done!
This was a woman to be avoided at all costs!
'I needed to apologise to you—'
'You did? Now, I wonder why? Because you are devious, because you were hell-bent on revenge—a despicable thing, revenge, or don't you think so? Or because you don't bother to ask questions, just appoint yourself judge, jury and executioner—?'
'Don't!' Her voice was thick with misery, her golden eyes sparkling with sudden, unshed tears. Her obvious distress unsettled him.
He moved away from the soundly sleeping baby, gravitated to the French windows and stared out at the drenching rain, at the distant flashes and flickers of
lightning.
'I want to say I'm sorry—desperately sorry—for believing the things Katie said about you.'
Her smooth brow furrowed. It was difficult to apologise to someone who couldn't be bothered to listen. His back was turned to her, the rain-sodden fabric of his shirt clinging to those wide, rangy shoulders. She felt excluded, a pariah, and probably justifiably, she concluded mournfully.
'But I've got to admit I did believe them—to begin with, that is,' she tried again. 'Then, when I got to know you better, and 1...' She couldn't possibly confess her true feelings for him; she wasn't that courageous. 'And like you, I really doubted you could have done what she'd accused you of.'
'Seduced a child. What was she at the time? Seventeen? With a mental and emotional capacity of a ten-year-old,' he said flatly. 'You shared mine and Sophie's lives, believing I was that type of bastard.' That hurt.
'Not for long.' Her voice shook. 'I believed it before I met you because Katie had told me it was so. Though, to be absolutely fair, she never once said that you took her to bed, or that she attempted to drown herself after she learned you'd married Fleur Ferrand who was then carrying your child: Sophie.
'She didn't exactly say those things, not in so many words, but they were implied and for some reason best known to herself—maybe because it made her feel she was the centre of attention—she allowed me to go on believing the lies.'
He turned, his eyes bleak, and she said thinly, 'That makes Katie sound dreadful. And it's not as simple as that. Very few things in life are really simple—you don't need me to tell you that. But I do know that Katie truly did believe she was in love with you, and because you had shown an interest in her, made time for her, taken her to lunch—certainly at that time the only man who ever had—she talked herself into believing her own fantasies.
'And I've always looked after her, stuck up for her against Gran—who can be terrifying—because she's never been able to stick up for herself; she's too timid. She's always been lonely, too shy to make friends. So I've always protected her because there was no one else to do it. Mum's too fond of a quiet life to want to make waves. And by taking the job of Sophie's nanny I thought I would have the time to find a way to pay you back. For that I am truly, deeply sorry.'
He looked at her with desolate eyes. He walked back into the body of the room, putting distance between them. She sounded sincere but how could he trust her? Why should he even want to? And she was shivering. From being chilled, or from nervous tension? Did he even care?
Schooling all expression from his features, all emotion from his voice, he said, 'Apology noted and accepted. Now may we forget it? The subject's distasteful. I take it there's food in that hamper? Could you investigate while I look for something to burn in the hearth to help us get dry?'
Thunder cracked, closer now, and the rain poured relentlessly down the window-panes. They could be sheltering here for quite some time, he thought grimly, and strode out of the room, going in search of the dusty-looking matchbox that he vaguely remembered seeing lying on the floor of one of the box rooms when they'd viewed the property for the first time.
He would never forget that day. Something warm and sweet had tugged at his heart, something that had said they were a family. It had certainly felt that way, as if they belonged together.
It had been a day of bitter disillusionment, too. He would never forget that, either.
The matchbox was probably empty, just another piece of debris the house-clearance people had neglected to remove, but it gave him the excuse to get out of that room, away from her, away from the stupid, self-destructive yearning to take her in his arms and make love to her until they were both too exhausted to move, let alone think.
He took the stairs two at a time, the release of energy not doing as much as it should to restore his mind to a more peaceful state. For the first time ever he could well imagine what it would feel like to have an addictive personality, to crave something you knew darn well was bad for you!
The box held two matches, one spent, the other live. Finn almost felt like smiling. Trying to make a fire would give him something to do. It could be as much as an hour before Sophie woke and helped to defuse the tension just by being her cute and demanding small self.
He collected the ramshackle bookcases and carried them through to the back where the noise of their breaking wouldn't disturb Sophie. They broke into pieces like the painted orange boxes they had obviously been made from and with the help of some rumpled sheets of newspaper, taken from the packing cases, and the single match, he was able to sit back on his heels and spend a satisfying few moments watching the flames leap up his own chimney.
'Couldn't you get clapped in irons for burning someone else's property?'
'They can always try suing!' He had heard the note of humour in her voice—albeit a slightly wistful one—and responded in kind. 'Though I guess the burning of antique orange boxes, covered in old brown paint, could be headline material. Come closer.' He stood up, moving so that the warmth from the flames could reach her. But she just stood where she was, her face a pale blur in the dim, rainy light. She was still shivering.
