Michelle Douglas - The Secretary's Secret

When he sat back beside her she expertly unhooked the fish and popped it in the bucket.

‘Okay, next lesson—how to bait the hook.’

He took his cue from her. She didn’t want to talk about that kiss and he was damn sure he didn’t want to either. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything.

They caught two bream apiece. Even given that kiss, the confusion it sent hurtling through him, Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun. ‘I have to hand it to you, Kit. This fishing gig was a good idea.’

He grinned when she said, ‘I won’t say I told you so.’ They sat in companionable silence, their lines dangling in the water and the breeze playing across their faces. They swung their feet and breathed the invigorating salt tang that seasoned the air and listened to the cries of the seagul s. ‘You know, I always dreamed that my dad would take me fishing like this.’

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She hadn’t mentioned her father before. ‘He didn’t?’

She snorted. ‘He didn’t know one end of a fishing rod from the other.’

Neither had he before today.

‘When I told my grandma about that little dream, she took me fishing herself.’

‘On this rock?’ He couldn’t get enough of her stories about her childhood.

She pointed back along the way they’d come. ‘We dropped hand lines further along that way in the channel. A much safer spot for a child.’

‘And?’ He didn’t know what he was waiting for. He rubbed the back of his neck. Would his child dream that one day its father would take it fishing too?

The thought unnerved him.

‘And we didn’t catch a thing, but we had the best time.’ She laughed, the memory obviously a good one. ‘Eventual y my grandma and I graduated to this rock.’ She patted it.

He stretched his neck first one way then the other.

Kit’s child would have her for its mother. It wouldn’t miss out on anything. It wouldn’t want for anything.

Except a father.

‘Your childhood sounds idyl ic. You were close to your family?’ He wanted her surrounded by family who would look out for her, support her.

‘My family is my mother and grandmother. I adore them both.’

His heart started to pound. ‘And your father?’

A shadow passed over her face. He immediately regretted darkening her day. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business.’

‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘I think you should know about my father, Alex. It might help you understand where I’m coming from.’

He didn’t need to know about her past to know that she was wonderful now. But he was happy to listen to anything she wanted to tel him.

‘My parents never married. Their relationship was over long before I was born and my mother had me without any support from him.’

‘You and your mum were happy?’

‘Oh, yes, but when I started school and saw the

‘Oh, yes, but when I started school and saw the other children with their daddies, I wanted one too. I started asking Mum a lot of questions, pestering her about my dad until she final y promised to track him down for me.’

He could imagine the younger Kit with her golden hair and her golden skin and her golden eyes. And her yearning. He swal owed. ‘And?’

‘And final y she did. I was so happy. He took me swimming and for ice cream. I got to introduce him to Caro and Denise and Alice and al my other friends.’

‘And then?’

She shrugged. ‘I saw him off and on until I was fifteen. He’d show up three or four times a year with a belated Christmas present, take me out for my birthday, that kind of thing.’

She fiddled with her fishing rod, resettled her hat on her head. Alex didn’t move.

‘I was a bit slow on the uptake. It took me a while to realize he didn’t actual y enjoy hanging out with me.’

Bile burned the back of his throat. ‘Kit, I’m sorry. I

—’

She waved his sympathy away. ‘You know, I could’ve accepted it if he’d made al those visits out of a sense of responsibility or duty, but…I caught Mum paying him.’

He frowned. He wanted her to turn and look at him, but her gaze remained on the swirling water below.

‘My mother had been paying him, bribing him, to play father to me.’

Her voice was strangely impassive and it took a moment for the import of her words to hit him. When they did his hands threatened to snap his fishing rod in two. He’d have preferred to wrap them around her father’s throat. The hide of the man!

‘I never saw him again. I was pretty angry with my mother for a long time too.’ She paused, pursed her lips. ‘But now, with a baby of my own on the way, I understand my mother’s actions so much more.’ She glanced at him and then glanced away again. ‘You see, Alex, I want my baby to have everything good in this world and that includes a father.’

Her words chil ed him to the very centre of his being. ‘Kit, I—’

‘I know what you told me, Alex. I know you said you would not be a father to our baby.’

Our baby. He closed his eyes. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t, but that he couldn’t .

‘I would love to change your mind about that.’

‘I—’

‘No, just listen to what I have to say. I’m not asking you to respond. I just want you to hear what I have to say. Okay?’

His heart dropped to his knees. He managed a heavy nod.

‘I know what it’s like to yearn for a father with your whole being until everything else shrinks in importance. Knowing how important it was to me, do you think I would purposely and consciously ever deny that to my child?’

She turned then and her golden eyes met his. ‘I couldn’t do it, Alex. I could never do what Jacqueline did. I could never deny my child its father.’

He closed his eyes, tried to block out al her goldenness and the spel she was threatening to weave about him.

‘Like I said,’ she continued, ‘I’m not asking you to respond to any of this. It’s just…’

He opened his eyes. He couldn’t help it.

‘The thing is, Alex, if you’re using that as an excuse to avoid fatherhood then you’re going to have to come up with another one because that one doesn’t exist.’

A hole opened up inside his chest. ‘I’m sorry your father did that to you, Kit. You can rest assured that I would never do that to your child.’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘You mean to hurt it in an entirely different way. At least I met my father and had a chance to know him and find out who he was.

Even if he did disappoint me, at least it stopped me from building unrealistic fantasies around him.’

Was that what their child would do?

‘Anyway—’ Kit shook herself ‘—enough of al that for one day. Wanna learn how to clean and scale a fish?’

He tried to match her tone. ‘How could I resist an offer like that?’

Her laugh could no longer lighten his heart. Her father’s absence had left a hole in Kit’s life, had left an indelible impression there that nothing could erase. Alex hadn’t meant to do harm to anyone. But his actions had harmed Kit, and they would harm her unborn child’s.

unborn child’s.

His child.

He dragged a hand down his face.

‘So you’re squeamish, huh?’

He pul ed his hand away to find her attempting to demonstrate the correct way to gut a fish.

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Not going to throw up, are you?’ Her half-grin robbed the words of their sting.

He wanted to lay himself at her feet and beg her to forgive him. For everything.

He didn’t. Instead, he took al of the fish from her hands and, fol owing her instructions, cleaned each and every one of them. It was the least he could do.