Annie West - Sultry Nights

‘What about you, Kate? Would you like children some day? You’re good with Rosie—you seem to have a natural affinity …’

She just about managed not to choke on her wine, and put down the glass carefully, a little blindsided by his swift change of subject. Normally, with such a question from someone else, her natural inclination to reply honestly that she’d never wanted anything more would make answering easy. But here, now, with Tiarnan, she had to protect herself.

She shrugged one shoulder and looked down. ‘Yes, I’ve thought of it. What woman my age doesn’t?’ Her voice was light, unconcerned, but her womb seemed to contract as she battled a sudden vivid image of holding a dark-haired baby in her arms, Tiarnan’s head coming close to press a kiss against the downy, sweet-smelling skin.

In complete dismay at her wayward imagination, and in rejection of that image, she looked up almost defiantly, feeling brittle. ‘But not yet. I’m not ready to be tied down. I’m sure it’ll happen some day, though, when I meet the right person.’

Tiarnan lounged back. Kate could imagine his long legs stretched out easily under the table. In comparison she felt incredibly uptight and tense.

‘And you haven’t met the right person yet, I take it?’

‘Well, I’d hardly be here now if I had, would I?’ She cursed herself for letting him get to her, making her sound snappy. Tiarnan’s eyes had become assessing. Looking deep.

He shrugged too. ‘I wouldn’t know, Kate. To be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Let’s just say that in my experience women are perennially unsatisfied—either with themselves or their lives—and will do whatever it takes to relieve their boredom.’

‘That’s a very cynical view to have.’

He shrugged and took a sip of wine. ‘When the first relationship you witness has deep flaws, it tends to colour everything else.’

Kate’s prickliness dissolved in an instant. ‘I know your parents didn’t … get on.’

Tiarnan’s mouth tightened. ‘To put it mildly. I don’t have to tell you what it was like … But if none of that had happened I wouldn’t have Sorcha for a sister.’

Kate said quietly, ‘The fact that your mother took Sorcha in as her own was pretty selfless.’

He made a rejecting motion with his hand. ‘A selfless act which drove the wedge between her and my father, and ultimately Sorcha too, even deeper. My mother was—still is—a devout Catholic. She took Sorcha in more out of a sense of religious duty than anything else.’

They both fell silent for a moment, very aware of how that had caused such pain and hurt to Sorcha when she had found out. Kate knew instinctively that there was very little likelihood that Tiarnan would discuss this with anyone else—it was just because of who she was, and the fact that she knew already. Any intimacy she was feeling now was false.

Something rose up within Kate, compelling her to say quietly, ‘I do believe, though, that it’s possible.’

‘That what’s possible?’

‘For people to be happy. I mean, look at Sorcha and Romain; they’re happy.’

Tiarnan’s face looked unbearably harsh in the flickering light of the candles for a moment. ‘Yes, they are.’ He sounded almost surprised, and then his voice became hard. ‘I, however, learnt my lesson a long time ago. I indulged in the dream for a brief moment and saw the ugliest part of women’s machinations, and how far they’re prepared to go to feather their nest.’

Kate’s heart clenched. He was talking about Stella, of course—and every other woman too, it would appear, by proxy.

Tiarnan looked into his wine glass, tension gripping him. He cursed himself again for allowing this woman to loosen his tongue, and forced down the tension. He looked up and caught Kate’s eye, allowed himself to dive into the deep blue depths. He saw her exactly as she was: a woman of the world, successful, confident, single. Not afraid to take what she wanted. She was like him. Immediately he felt on a more even keel. He snaked out a hand and caught hers, revelling in the contact, the way her skin felt so warm and firm and silky. Revelling in the sensual anticipation.

‘For people like us, however, things are different … We won’t be caught like that, seduced by some empty dream.’

Kate’s heart clenched so hard at that she had to hold in a gasp. She stung inside that he believed her to be the same as him. Ironically enough, out of his sister and Kate, Sorcha had been the more cynical of the two, constantly teasing Kate for her innate romantic streak, for her maternal instinct. Sorcha had been the one with the high walls of defence erected around her, and Romain had been the only man capable of gaining her trust, opening her heart …

Yet, despite her own largely loveless upbringing, Kate had somehow emerged clinging onto those maternal instincts and that romantic dream. And a very secret part of her was still doggedly clinging onto it, despite witnessing the cynicism of the man to whom she was willingly, stupidly planning to give herself, in the hope that perhaps it would cure her of this obsession. The fact that he believed her to be as jaded as he was surely had to be in her favour? Protection for when she would walk away? He would believe her to be in one piece, unmoved, moving on with blithe disregard to her next lover. And she would be, she told herself fiercely now. She’d be blithe if it killed her.

She wanted to ask him about his wife—ask if she’d managed to break through his cynical wall to make him believe in love for a brief moment. But even if she had, considering how she had deceived him about Rosie, it could only have reaffirmed his beliefs, made them even more entrenched.

Kate forced down all her questions and leaned forward to start eating again, even though her appetite seemed to have vanished. She smiled brilliantly.

‘Well, then, we can rest easy in the protection such beliefs can offer us: no expectation, no disappointment.’

The words seemed to score through her heart like a serrated knife, they so went against her own personal philosophy. A philosophy she couldn’t share with Tiarnan.

Tiarnan smiled lazily, eyes narrowed on hers. ‘A kindred spirit. I couldn’t have put it better.’

As Kate forced herself to eat and sip the wine, engage in conversation that moved away from darker topics, she told herself that at least now she was under no illusion that some kind of fairytale would happen here. Tiarnan was utterly content with his life and there was no way he was going to let in Kate to shake things up.

The plates were gone, Mama Lucille had bade them goodnight, and Kate had kissed her in thanks for the meal, making the older woman look embarrassed but happy. Papa Joe, her handsome husband, had come to collect her to walk her home. Being bowed with age didn’t diminish his charm. He seemed as naturally friendly and happy as his wife, and they heard them laughing and conversing loudly in local French patois all the way down the garden path. Witnessing their happiness made Kate’s conversation with Tiarnan over dinner feel all the more unbearably poignant.

The heavy perfumed air was alive with the sounds of insects. Kate felt almost painfully sensitive to everything. All too aware of what she yearned for and what she was prepared to settle for with Tiarnan. He reached out and took her hand, and predictably she tensed.

‘You don’t seem very relaxed.’ He stated the obvious.

Kate shrugged and forced down her tangled thoughts of yearning. ‘Despite what you might believe, I’m not used to being whisked halfway across the world to become a rich man’s mistress for a few days.’

Tiarnan’s jaw clenched. She kept talking about the time limit. And she certainly wasn’t just a rich man’s mistress. She was going to be his lover. Her words over dinner, her reassurance that she was like him, should be making him feel at ease, confident, and yet they weren’t. Not entirely. He didn’t trust her. And he didn’t know why that rankled. What woman did he trust? He was used to not trusting women.