mouth thinned. ‘Jason has never shown the slightest inclination before to visit you and your father.’
‘Well, obviously he now feels differently about that,’ she snapped, unable to subdue the antagonism she always felt around this man.
‘Without asking my permission,’ his father rasped harshly.
‘Does he have to ask your permission for everything he does?’ she challenged.
Green eyes ripped into her coldly. ‘Jason is still only fifteen years old, and I think taking off on a whim is a little more serious than asking to go to the damned bathroom!’
He was right, of course he was right, Jason should never have just left the way he had and worried everyone. But it was the way Garrett called Jason visiting her father and her a ‘whim’ that rankled! ‘I realise he shouldn’t have done this quite the way that he did, but I also—–’
‘How magnanimous of you,’ Garrett drawled.
She flashed him a look of intense dislike. ‘But maybe if he felt close enough to you to be able to talk to you he could have told you how curious he felt about us!’ she snapped.
Garrett drew in a harsh breath, his expression contemptuous. ‘On the basis of a few hours’ acquaintance with Jason you have decided that I’m a totally unfit father who at best ignores him, and at worst browbeats him?’
‘No, of course not—–’
‘It certainly sounds like it to me!’
‘It wasn’t just that—–’
‘No, I forgot,’ he rasped. ‘There’s also the fact that you already disliked me intensely and would gladly believe anything anyone said against me!’
It had never been difficult to hate this man, it was true, to hate the way he had preferred Amanda not to visit her family after they were married, the pain he had caused Amanda during their marriage, until it became so impossible for her to live with a man who didn’t love her that she had finally left him and come home, only to be killed in a motorway pile-up the day after her arrival back in England. Garrett Kingham had arrived in time for Amanda’s funeral, and after the service he had told them he was taking Jason back to the States with him. The five-year-old boy was all they had left of Amanda, and Sarah could see how it was breaking her father’s heart to part with him too. But Garrett was immune to their pleadings, until finally, impatiently, Sarah had flown at him, screaming and kicking as she told him how much she hated him.
She had been sixteen then, her body mature but her emotions still those of a child, and all she had been able to think of was that he had hurt her sister and that he was taking Jason away from them too. She was a woman now, but she still hated him.
She looked at him coldly. ‘Maybe that’s because it’s always so easy to believe!’
He sighed. ‘Sarah, it’s late, I’ve had a long journey to get here, and I’m in no mood to argue with you.’
She stood firm in spite of the lines of tiredness she could now see beside his eyes and mouth. She didn’t want to think of this man as vulnerable, because that would make him human, and she knew that was something he wasn’t. ‘I told you, Jason is asleep, and, unlike the last time you dragged Jason out of his bed and away from us, I am now all grown-up and more than capable of handling you without resorting to violence!’
She wished she had never issued the challenge as his narrowed gaze moved over her insolently in a totally male assessment, making her instantly aware of her own inadequacies. She didn’t need Garrett Kingham’s contempt to tell her that although she was slender enough her body certainly wasn’t of the shape to drive a man wild with desire, just as she also didn’t need him to tell her that, although she and Amanda had a surface similarity, Amanda was the one that had sparkled and charmed, while she just quietly glowed.
Garrett’s mouth quirked in the semblance of a smile. ‘You don’t look any different to me now than you did at sixteen,’ he taunted. ‘Or any more capable of “handling” me.’
‘No?’ she flared at his condescension. ‘Then perhaps you would like to try and take Jason away again?’
His eyes narrowed to icy emerald slits. ‘I don’t like being threatened, Sarah.’
‘Really?’ she challenged, her head back. ‘Well, neither do I!’
They continued to glare at each other for several tension-filled minutes, Sarah determined not to be the one who backed down—mainly because she had no idea how to stop him taking Jason away now if he wanted to do so, despite her claim to the contrary. All she knew was that Jason was no longer a child to be dragged away when he didn’t want to go, and that it would break her father’s heart a second time if by some miracle Garrett persuaded Jason to go with him now. Her mother had died twelve years go, Amanda ten years ago, and she and Jason were all her father had left. She would keep Jason here, if only until tomorrow when he could say goodbye to them properly.
Finally Garrett was the one to drop his gaze, sighing as he folded his length down into one of the fireside armchairs. ‘Do you still make a delicious cup of coffee?’ he asked wearily.
She blinked. ‘I still make the same coffee.’ She wasn’t even prepared to take a compliment about such a trivial thing from this man!
He nodded. ‘Strong, just the way I like it. Black, please.’
She wanted to tell him that it was after twelve o’clock at night, that she was tired too, and certainly not in the mood to make coffee for anyone. But despite herself she could see that he really was tired, looking all of his thirty-nine years as he relaxed back in the chair. And with that realisation came the knowledge that he must have been worried out of his mind about Jason before receiving her call, that whatever else she thought about him, he did seem to love his son.
On the few occasions she had allowed herself to dwell on the past, Garrett had always seemed ageless to her, but now she could see that the years hadn’t dealt kindly with him, that his hair wasn’t blond at his temples but grey, giving it a salt-and-pepper look, the deep lines of cynicism beside his mouth long ago having banished any claim he might have had to youth. If he had made those around him unhappy he certainly hadn’t fared any better himself.
‘Very well, Mr Kingham,’ she sighed. ‘Then I would suggest you—–’
‘My name is Garrett, Sarah, as you very well know,’ he said drily. ‘Prove you aren’t still a child and use it.’
Her cheeks were burning as she moved about the kitchen preparing the coffee. She was a teacher, had been a married woman, and yet something about Garrett Kingham reduced her to the petulant child she had always been in his presence. How could Amanda have ever fallen in love with such a man, despite his surface attraction?
Amanda had been beautiful all her life, could have had her pick of any of the local young men who always seemed to be at the cottage to see her, and yet she had wanted to go to America to become an actress, so sure that she would be a success, despite her parents’ warning that every young girl who set out for Hollywood believed the same thing about herself, but few actually ever made it. Amanda had never actually appeared in a film, had become Garrett Kingham’s wife instead, and apparently the Kingham wives didn’t work. All Garrett required of her was that she be a mother to Jason and
