Natalie Fox - A Marriage In The Making

His sudden cool, calculated plans for Josh’s future and her swift, cruel dismissal shook Karis to her very roots. She almost physically shrank away from him and in fact must have moved because his hand shot forward and grasped at her wrist as if he recognised she was about to tear out of the room before he was finished with her.

‘That’s the way it must be,’ he said quietly, ‘and you must have known that when you took the job on. Nothing is for ever. Now, if you have anything more to say on the subject of my son I would be pleased to hear it. Do you have anything more to say?’ he asked, as if her life depended on her giving him a satisfactory answer. His eyes held a curious challenging glimmer.

Suddenly the firm grip on her wrist eased slightly as he waited for a response from her. Unwittingly she gave it as his thumb ran erotically over her pulse point, backwards and forwards, tiny strokes of fiery pressure that sent her blood whooshing through her veins. She felt sure he could feel it. Karis stared at him in mute confusion. Why was he doing this—touching her so intimately? And why on earth should the blood rush in her veins this way?

Suddenly she couldn’t bear the close contact a second longer and she snatched her hand away. He didn’t protest. Her eyes flamed with indignation as she rubbed at her wrist but his eyes suddenly sparkled teasingly and it was such a sudden mood swing it shocked her.

‘I’m glad you did that. I was beginning to think you were enjoying it,’ he said smoothly.

Karis didn’t need this sort of teasing banter to follow an intimate touch that had unsettled her so deeply. She lifted her chin because she wasn’t going to take it.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asked directly, considering attack to be the best defence. He only smiled enigmatically, which was no answer either way. To her surprise she found her mouth suddenly had a will of its own. ‘You did it so you must have wanted to. Your motivation puzzles me, though. Past experience has taught me that small, intimate gestures like those are usually connected with sounding the ground for further exploration but so far you have done little else but insult me so you can’t possibly like me. So why did you do it? Heaven forbid it was a test of my morality.’

‘Let me put your fluttering heart at peace, then,’ he mocked, and Karis felt her temperature rise. ‘Fluttering heart’, of all things! ‘I thought you were about to leave in a hurry and I wasn’t finished with you. I realised I must have come across as a bitter father and I wanted to smooth it with you. Then I felt your pulse and it intrigued me because it raced so at my pressure. I wondered why.’

And because his eyes were loaded with mischief now she couldn’t bear it. Her eyes narrowed warningly. ‘Let me put your fluttering heart at peace, Mr Kennedy. My pulse races in defence of my feelings, not in excitement of them. I am your son’s carer and just because I am on my own with two small children to look after that doesn’t mean I suffer from a fluttering heart and the vapours when a man touches my wrist. In future we talk and think only of your son’s welfare and future. I would like you to keep your lightness of touch and your suspect innuendoes to yourself. Now, you think on all that before you dare speak to me again!’

With that she turned her back on him and was down by the edge of the water on the beach before she had herself fully under control. The warm water lapped her ankles, cooling her feet deliciously.

His touch had nearly broken her. That small, intimate, tender caress, so completely unexpected, had very nearly broken her. She didn’t even like him but it just went to show her state of mind when a stranger could make her pulse race so easily and effectively.

Karis crumbled to the sand in the shade of a dense palm and hugged her knees to her. Human contact, a man touching her, him touching her. No one had for so very long. She was always with the children, Tara and Josh, all day, every day, at all times. And when they slept she sat alone. Never anyone for her to turn to for comfort. No one to wrap his arms around her and just hold her. She ran a handful of sand through her fingers. Her life was just this, she thought ruefully: sand slipping away. No passion, nothing for her own lonely heart, just her life trickling away.

His touch, for whatever reason, had burned her loneliness into her soul like a branding iron. It felt like a searing, agonising scar on her senses and all because of a small, intimate caress of her wrist of all things. Imagine the effect of more, she thought desperately. The touch of his lips and…

She felt a light hand on her shoulder and she jumped in alarm, her heart thudding. Daniel was looking down at her and she felt her cheeks burn because of what she had just been imagining. He couldn’t know but all the same she looked away from him and trickled more sand through her fingers.

He sat next to her under the palm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said sincerely. ‘Deeply sorry for hurting you the way I do. None of this is easy for me.’ He shrugged slightly. ‘You aren’t at all what I expected. That first sight of you on the beach threw me completely when I arrived. You looked so young and natural, barefoot and with the breeze tossing your hair wildly around your shoulders, a baby on your hip and my son clinging to you for comfort. He was afraid of me and needing you and it tears at my heart for what I’ve lost.’

Karis drew painfully on her bottom lip as she stared out to sea. Yes, it must have cost him a lot of pride and pain to make such an admission. Already she had gathered that he was a proud man, a hard one too, a man with a past that had caused his son such misery, but here he was going partway to opening up his heart to her and making it right for his son.

‘I need you to help me get to know my son,’ he went on softly. ‘I need your co-operation; what I don’t need is you fighting me all the time. I’m partly to blame for that, I admit, and again I apologise, but meet me halfway, please. As you said we know nothing about each other and false impressions have been formed and that isn’t a good thing. I do appreciate what you have done for the boy but I’m going to need more, much more from you.’

Oh, he might have apologised and he had sounded sincere but did that man have a heart beating within that impressive chest of his? He’d abandoned his son, after all, and now he was here to claim him back again and it wasn’t going to be easy. Oh, no, not with his attitude and Josh’s fear and her stuck in between the two of them, working towards losing the child she cared for so very deeply. Her emotions were flustered, to say the least, as she turned her head to look at him.

‘Yes, I will help you,’ she told him softly. ‘I was never in any doubt that I would and you shouldn’t have been either. If I argue with you it’s because I know Josh and I have an opinion to air on his behalf. I want the best for him and I’ll go along with anything you suggest—if I think it is right for Josh,’ she added quickly.

He nodded and murmured, ‘Good,’ and they both sat for a while, staring out to sea, each with their own thoughts on what was best for the boy, though Kans’s were punctuated with the awareness of Daniel sitting next to her. Such a strong, hard man, both charismatic and infuriatingly arrogant at times, and yet a small boy had the power to reduce him to a wreck of worry and concern. He cared for Josh, she now knew, and it was a relief.

‘How do you mean to start this bonding with your son?’ Karis asked at last, her voice low and concerned because perhaps he didn’t realise just what a formidable task was ahead of him.

‘I thought you might have some ideas on that.’