had written it only hours after Liam was born. She had known that there was little chance Liam’s father would heed it. He hadn’t paid any attention to her previous two letters, not the first one telling him she was pregnant, not the later one telling him again in case he hadn’t got the first one.
He’d never replied.
She’d understood—he wasn’t interested.
But still she’d felt the need to write one last time after Liam’s birth. She’d given him one last chance—had dared to hope that news of a son might bring him around. She wasn’t proud. Or she hadn’t been then.
Now she was. And she was equally determined. He wasn’t going to hurt her again.
“I didn’t know, Sara,” he repeated. He met her gaze squarely.
“I wrote you,” she insisted. “Before this—” she rattled the envelope in her hand “—I wrote. Twice.”
“I didn’t get them. I was…moving around. A lot. I wasn’t writing for Incite anymore. They sent it on. So did others. It kept following, apparently. But I didn’t get it. Not until last week. Then I got it—and here I am.”
Sara opened her mouth, then closed it again. After all, what was there to say? He’d come because he’d discovered his son. It still had nothing to do with her.
It shouldn’t hurt after all this time. She’d known, hadn’t she, that she didn’t matter to him the way he’d mattered to her. But hearing the words still had the power to cut deep.
But she was damned if she was going to show him her pain. She crossed her arms over her chest. “So? Should I applaud? Do you want a medal?”
He looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected belligerence. Had he thought she’d fall into his lap with gratitude, for heaven’s sake?
“I don’t want anything,” he said gruffly, “except the chance to get to know my son. And do whatever you need.”
“Go away?” Sara suggested because that was definitely what she needed.
Flynn’s scowl deepened. “What? Why?”
“Because we don’t need you.”
But even as she said it, she knew it was only half-true. She didn’t need him. But Liam thought he did.
“Where’s my dad?” he’d been asking her for the past year.
If he wasn’t dead, why didn’t he come visit? Even divorced dads came to visit, he told her with the knowledge of a worldly kindergartner. Darcy Morrow’s dad came to see her every other weekend.
“He can’t,” Sara said. “If he could, he would.” It wasn’t precisely a lie. Even though she’d believed Flynn had deliberately turned his back on them, she knew telling Liam that would be absolutely wrong. It wouldn’t be wrong to say his father would come if he could. He simply couldn’t—for whatever unknown reason. End of story.
Fortunately, Liam hadn’t asked why. But when told at school that Thanksgiving was a family holiday, he’d wondered again why his dad wasn’t there. And then he’d said, “Maybe he’ll come at Christmas!”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sara had cautioned. But telling Liam that was like telling the sun not to rise.
“I’ll take care of it,” he’d said, and when they went to the mall in Bozeman, mortified Sara by marching right up to Santa, telling him that for Christmas he wanted his father to come home.
Sara had been prepared for tears on Christmas morning when no father appeared. But Liam had been philosophical.
“I didn’t get my horse at Grandma and Grandpa’s right away, either,” he’d said. “I had to wait till spring.”
Because, of course, the colt hadn’t been born till spring. And now? Sara could just imagine what Liam would say when he came home this afternoon.
“He should have a father,” Flynn said now. “A father who loves him.”
There was something in his voice that made Sara look up. But he didn’t say anything else.
“He’s fine,” she insisted. His life might not be perfect, but whose was? “You don’t need to do this.”
“I do,” he said flatly.
“He’s not here.”
“I’ll wait.” He looked at her expectantly. She didn’t move.
He cocked his head and studied her with a look on his face that she remembered all too well. A gentle, teasing, laughing look. “You’re not afraid of me…are you, Sara?”
“Of course I’m not afraid of you,” she snapped. “I’m just…surprised. I assumed you didn’t care.”
The smile vanished. The look he gave her was deadly serious. “I care. I mean it, Sara. I would have been here from the first if I’d known.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She did know she wasn’t going to be able to shut the door on him. Not yet. She was going to have to let him in, let him wait for Liam, meet his son.
And then?
He was hardly going to be much of a father if he was in Ireland. But at least Liam would know he had one who cared.
But first she would need to set some ground rules. So, reluctantly, she stepped back and held the door open. “I suppose you might as well come in.”
“And here was I, thinking you’d never ask.” He flashed a grin, the one that said he knew he’d get his way.
Sara steeled herself against it—and against the blatant Irish charm. She stepped back to let him pass—and to make sure not even his sleeve brushed hers as he came in.
But as he passed through the doorway, he stopped and turned towards her. And he was so close that she stared right at the pulse beat in his throat, so close that it wasn’t his sleeve, but the chest of his jacket that brushed against the tips of her breasts, so close that when she drew in a sharp breath, she caught a whiff of that heady scent of woods and sea that she remembered as purely and essentially Flynn. Her back was against the wall.
“Did you miss me, Sara?” he murmured.
And Sara shook her head fiercely. “Not a bit.”
“No?” His mouth quirked as if he heard the truth inside her lie. “Well, I’ve missed you,” he said roughly. “I didn’t realize how much until right now.”
And then quite deliberately he bent his head and set his lips to hers.
Flynn Murray had always known how to kiss. He had kissed her senseless time and time again. She’d tried to forget—or at the very least tried to assure herself that it was only her youthful inexperience with kissing that had made her body melt and her knees buckle.
She’d told herself it would never happen again.
