Anne McAllister - One-Night Love-Child

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.

All of a sudden her lukewarm attitude towards their Valentine’s Day date had undergone a definite change. Focusing on Adam would be far better than spending the evening at home thinking about Flynn.

She glanced at her watch. It was quarter to four. She didn’t know how long he expected to stay, and she didn’t want to follow them to Liam’s bedroom and ask. Even from the kitchen she could hear Liam’s excited chatter and Flynn’s low baritone responses. She could hear that blasted Irish lilt in his voice. God, it was seductive. Even now—forewarned, forearmed—it had the power to raise goose bumps along her spine and make the back of her neck tingle.