A small gasp—a sound only Caitlin heard—eased out slowly from between her lips. Straight away she detected a disconcerting change in him. Not a physical one, but one more psychologically rooted. Her intuition told her that he’d closed in on himself even more than before, and the knowledge sent her stomach plunging to her boots. It was as though an impenetrable glass wall now isolated him and his feelings firmly away from the rest of the world.
He’d ever been reclusive—keeping his deeper emotions and thoughts mostly hidden and resisting anyone getting too close—but he was so beautiful he was like a burning flame to a moth. His very presence elicited excitement and a forbidden sense of danger too. Tears burned in Caitlin’s eyes, and although the fabric of them was deeply sewn with unbreakable threads of sorrow for what she had lost, they were also shot through with a fierce, almost violent joy at seeing him again.
She barely moved as he crossed the road to join her—a tall, broad-shouldered figure, dressed from head to foot in black, moving with the predatory, almost feral grace of a creature. She couldn’t take her eyes off him…
‘I heard you were back.’ His voice sounded slightly rough—as though some unexpected emotion had partially locked his throat.
Caitlin’s own mouth was so dry she could barely get a word past its arid landscape. His jade thick-lashed eyes were intense and hungry. ‘My father died…I came home for the funeral.’
His hard jaw seemed to tighten, but there were no immediate condolences forthcoming. She hadn’t expected there would be. He would have nothing good to say about her father, and although it grieved her she couldn’t really blame him.
‘So I see,’ he said instead, and then, before Caitlin could reply, ‘I won’t ask how you’ve been keeping because you look well enough…but you might tell me where you’ve been living all this time?’
She put a shaky gloveless hand up to her straight blonde hair and the edge of her palm glanced against her cheek. Right at that moment she was convinced that there was not a scrap of difference in the temperature of her skin and the hard-packed ice covering the pavement.
‘London…I’ve been living in London. With my aunt.’
‘That’s where you went when you left?’
Beneath his harsh, accusing glare, Caitlin felt like the worst criminal in the world. ‘That’s right.’
‘So you didn’t fall ill, get abducted by aliens or lose your memory?’
‘What?’
‘How the hell would I know what happened, seeing as though you never even thought to tell me you were going?’
She flinched as though he’d slapped her hard. It took her a few moments to recover. ‘Must we discuss this in the street? If you want to talk, I’ll talk…but not here.’
Glancing across Flynn’s broad shoulder, Caitlin’s blue eyes briefly scanned the snow-covered street that was dotted with mid-morning shoppers. She felt suddenly intensely vulnerable. She’d already discovered that there were people here who knew her, and some of them had no doubt heard about what had happened between her and Flynn. The idea that people were watching them made her skin crawl. All the odds had been stacked against their relationship from the outset. Nobody had wanted them to be together, and nearly everyone had disapproved. But none of that would have mattered if Flynn had truly let Caitlin into his heart…and if she had allowed herself to fully trust him…
‘Tell me something. Would you have come to see me at all if I hadn’t bumped into you like this?’ he demanded.
‘I was intending to do so…yes.’
‘I wonder when that would have been, Caitlin? After all, you must have such a busy life…so busy that you couldn’t even pick up the phone and ring me! Not even once in four and a half years!’
‘I know it must have seemed heartless what I did, but—’
‘Heartless?’ he mocked. ‘Sweetheart, that doesn’t even come close!’
‘What I mean is—’ She faltered, her heart going wild. ‘You obviously want an explanation, and you have every right to one, but this is hardly the right time or place, Flynn.’ Knowing that her eyes must convey at least some of the tremendous guilt that was churning her up inside, Caitlin frowned. ‘We haven’t seen each other for years, and believe me—I deeply regret that everything went so wrong in the end.’
‘Do you?’ Flynn’s glance was unflinching in its raw intensity. ‘And why did it go wrong, Caitlin? I’ll tell you why! Because you ran away! You ran away without even having the damn decency to tell me why!’
Shivering, Caitlin lowered her gaze. What could she tell him? He no doubt believed that it had been her father who had influenced her decision to leave and end the relationship. God knew Tom Burns had made his dislike of Flynn and his family only too clear. His antagonism had gone deeper than mere dislike…he had actively resented the MacCormacs with a vengeance—despising their wealth and the influence they had in the community. But if Caitlin’s only hurdle in being with Flynn had been her father’s temper and his aversion to the match she could have got over it. She’d loved Flynn with all her heart. He had become as essential to her as her own breath. But she hadn’t left him because of her father…It had been much more complicated than that.
There’d been that humiliating conversation she’d overheard between Flynn and his mother, during which Estelle MacCormac had been so unstintingly cruel in her summation of Caitlin’s motives for seeing her son. ‘She’s only sleeping with you for what you can do for her and that dreadful father of hers! Don’t kid yourself that a girl like that cares a fig about you personally! Next thing you know she’ll be trying to trap you into marriage by telling you that she’s pregnant!’
Hearing herself spoken about as if she were the most awful little trickster, Caitlin had reeled away in shock and horror. After that, coupled with her father accusing her of bringing ‘shame and disgrace’ on him, by behaving like a little slut with Flynn MacCormac of all people,’ she’d had no choice but to phone her aunt Marie in London and ask if she could go and stay there for a while. Especially as she had also just found out that she was indeed pregnant with Flynn’s baby…
It would have done no good trying to talk to him and explain. He would hardly have been likely to believe anything she’d said after his mother had done her worst. And, although Flynn had passionately demonstrated that he wanted to be with her, he’d never actually said that he loved her. In fact he’d hardly ever opened up to her about his personal feelings at all. Consequently Caitlin had found herself unable to trust him with her doubts and fears. So, instead of screwing up her courage and confronting him, she had fled to London.
She hadn’t meant to make it a permanent move, but time had overtaken her and, consumed by her new parental responsibilities, she had had no choice but to stay and try and make the best of it. Every day she’d been away from her homeland…away from Flynn…her heart had grown heavier. But how could she ever have gone back when her news might only have confirmed to him his mother’s belief in her motives? She’d had no choice but to let him go.
As the years had passed and she’d made a life for herself and Sorcha it had grown ever harder for Caitlin to contemplate returning home. She’d always known Flynn must despise her by now, and she’d been heartbroken at the thought of facing his contempt…as she was facing it right now. And he didn’t even know about the child they had made together yet…
‘So, what is it you want to do now, Flynn?’ Her heavy sigh made a plume of steam as it hit the near freezing air, and Caitlin at last lifted her gaze to face him again. The formidable chill in his glance had not lessened any.
‘What is it I want to