LITMIR.BIZ

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fault he’s so smart and has done so well for himself. He’s always been driven and superfocused.’

      ‘He said he has no interest in meeting his biological parents,’ Kat said. ‘Do you know why?’

      ‘I think a lot of men who’ve been adopted are like that,’ Miranda said. ‘I guess they find it hard to understand what it’s like for a woman to have to make that impossibly difficult decision to relinquish a baby.’

      ‘Maybe he’ll tell you since you’re getting on so well,’ Jaz said to Kat with a spark in her gaze.

      Kat gave her a speaking look. ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

      * * *

      The girls left after an hour of eating and chatting on lighter topics. Kat found it a surreal experience to be on such familiar terms with the two young women she’d spent the last three and a half months actively avoiding. She even felt a little sad once they’d left. Their tight unit reminded her of all she had missed out on as a child. She hadn’t had close friends growing up, or at least not as close as Jaz and Miranda were. She had moved around too much when her mother had changed jobs or relationships. It had been hard to create a bond with friends when in the back of her mind she knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be taken away to some other place where she would have to start all over again. Her friend Maddie was the only exception, but even then they had met as adults, when Kat had visited Maddie’s beauty salon when she’d first moved to London, and their friendship had grown from there.

      She wondered if she would see Miranda or Jaz again or if by seeing them it would bring her into contact with her father. She wasn’t ready to meet Richard Ravensdale. She didn’t think she would ever be ready. How could she stand in front of a man who had wished her existence away?

      But the thought of meeting her half-brothers was tempting. Miranda had spoken so highly of them. What would it be like to have twin older brothers to watch out for her? To have a family who included her in their lives?

      Who actually wanted her in their lives?

      * * *

      Kat put some food on a tray and carried it upstairs with Cricket at her heels. Flynn’s door was closed so she had to put the tray on a hall table outside before she could knock. ‘Flynn? Are you awake? I brought you some dinner.’

      There was no answer so she opened the door. Flynn was lying on his back with his foot elevated, his eyes closed, but she could tell he wasn’t asleep. There was too much tension in his body. She could see it in the terrain of his face: the twin lines running down either side of his mouth, the groove between his brows, the in and out flare of his nostrils, as if he was carefully measuring each breath. Was it his foot giving him grief or had Jaz’s mention of his ex-fiancée done that to him? Eleven years was a long time to be bitter over a relationship break-up. She tried to imagine him as a man in love. He didn’t seem the type to let his emotions rule his head. He was charming and laid-back, but always in control. Or was his bitterness anchored in the fact that Claire had been the one to walk out? Some men found rejection hard to take. Perhaps his being adopted had made him even more sensitive to it.

      Kat came and sat on the edge of the bed feeling a bit like a kitten approaching a lion. ‘So, I take it Jaz struck a raw nerve?’

      ‘Not raw. Dead and buried.’ His tone was flat, emotionless, but she could hear a speed hump of hurt. ‘I hate having it exhumed. It stinks.’

      Kat hadn’t realised how close her hand was to his where it was resting on the bed. If she moved her pinkie a few millimetres it would come into contact with his. Something shifted in her belly at the thought of his darkly tanned skin touching hers. ‘She’s quite a personality, isn’t she?’

      He grunted something unintelligible.

      ‘I liked Miranda too,’ Kat said. ‘A lot. I didn’t expect to but she’s nothing like I expected. I thought she’d hate me, but she made me feel like she really wants us to have a connection.’

      ‘She’s a sweetheart. Leandro’s a lucky man.’

      Kat looked at their hands again. Watched as the distance between their fingers got smaller. Was she moving her finger or was he moving his? ‘Were you in love with her?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Claire.’

      His lips folded inward like he was filtering his response. Blocking it. Banning it. The silence boomed with the beats of the muscle flicking in his jaw. In. Out. In. Out.

      ‘If you’d rather not talk about it...’ Kat left the words hanging. Dangling like a dare.

      His gaze hit hers. Hard. Two-can-play-at-that-game hard. ‘Do you want to talk about your affair with a married man?’

      Shame turned Kat’s stomach sour and made her face burn. ‘You know about that?’

      ‘Men like Charles Longmore can’t help boasting about bedding a celebrity.’

      Panic took an ice-pick to her spine and a sledgehammer to her heart. If Flynn knew then who else knew? Would her shame be splashed on every tabloid? Everyone would blame her. They always did. The Other Woman always got the blame. No one ever blamed the philandering husband. Kat would be cast in the role of home wrecker and there would be no way to defend herself. ‘Oh no...’

      ‘It’s all right.’ Flynn’s voice had a reassuring steadiness to it. ‘He and I have come to an understanding.’

      Kat swallowed back bile, her hammering heart going back to where it belonged in her chest. ‘How do you know him?’

      ‘Mutual acquaintance.’

      She looked down at her clenched hands. ‘I didn’t know he was married. He lied to me. Lie after lie after lie. I broke it off as soon as I found out. The worst thing was I’d always been so annoyed with my mother for getting involved with married men. I feel like such a hypocrite.’

      Flynn put his hand over her white-knuckled ones and gave them a light squeeze. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. He was a jerk. A cheat. No one will believe him anyway.’

      ‘Why do you say that?’

      ‘You’re way out of his league.’

      Kat cocked her head at him. ‘Is that a compliment, Mr Carlyon?’

      His smile tugged on her resolve like a child pulling at its mother’s skirt. ‘Yes, Miss Winwood. It is.’

      Another small silence ticked past.

      Kat relaxed her hands and smoothed them against her bent thighs. ‘I guess I should let you rest...’

      ‘I wasn’t in love with Claire.’

      Kat wondered why that should make her feel such an odd sense of relief. It wasn’t as if she was worried about whether his emotions had taken a battering. Why should she care if he’d had his heart banged up?

      You do care. You like him.

      No, I don’t. Well...maybe a little...but only because he was so good about that creep Charles.

      ‘Claire thought she was pregnant,’ Flynn said. ‘I wanted to do the right thing by her and our child.’

      ‘At least you didn’t pay her to have an abortion.’

      He gave her a fleeting half-smile before his expression went back to neutral. ‘It was way earlier than I’d planned to settle down, but I thought it would work out if we both were committed to doing the best thing for the baby. But she found out a couple of days later it was a false alarm. She ended our relationship then and there.’

      Kat searched his inscrutable face. What emotions was he screening from view? How had he felt at having the future he had planned with Claire cut so abruptly? Or had he been privately relieved he was off the hook, so to speak? Many young men would be terrified at the thought of fatherhood being thrust upon them before they were ready. ‘You weren’t relieved?’

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