The Collector's Edition Volume 1 (40 page)

“I’m sorry,” Keir murmured. “You shouldn’t have had to be so alone.” He crouched again and gently squeezed her knees. “I’m sorry it was like that for you.”

She doubted he could ever imagine what it had been like. No one could. “They wanted me to have an abortion,” she stated flatly. “I refused. So they sent me to my aunt in Queensland. It seemed best. I knew you weren’t in a position to help me, and I didn’t want to add to whatever you were going through. It was all such a mess.”

“My parents would have helped.”

“I would have been disowned by my parents if I’d gone to them, Keir.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I thought the only thing to do was to ride it through and wait until you came home. I thought…I believed…”

He grimaced. His eyes begged more belief from her. “There were good reasons I didn’t seek you out, Rowena. But I swear to you, if I’d known you’d had my child, nothing would have kept me away. Nothing.”

Was it true? He seemed so sincere. Maybe she had judged him unfairly, without enough knowledge of his side. What did he consider good reasons?

“I would have given you and Jamie everything I could,” he went on vehemently.

I’ll never know that,
Rowena thought sadly,
never know what might have happened if I’d somehow got in touch with him.
She didn’t want to think about it. It was all too late. “It’s pointless going over what might have been, Keir.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, withdrawing his touch and rising again. “And you want proof.” He suddenly grinned, his whole face lighting up with pleasurable anticipation. “Action you will have aplenty, Rowena.”

She stared at him, forcibly reminded of how attractive he was and how much she had once felt for him. But she wouldn’t make the mistake of falling in love with him again. That would only be asking for more heartache. This time she would follow her head, not her heart. He hadn’t said what his good reasons were for not seeking her out.

Before she could pursue the point, Jamie came in, carefully balancing a cup of coffee on its saucer. Sarah followed, bearing a plate of cookies. Impossible to continue an intimate conversation in front of the children.

“Are you feeling better, Mum?” Jamie asked anxiously as he set his offering down on the occasional table beside her armchair.

“Yes, thank you, Jamie.”

“These are my favourite cookies. You’ll like them, Mummy,” Sarah encouraged, handing her the plate.

“Thank you, Sarah.”

They all proceeded to sit down, Keir in the armchair opposite her, the two children on the lounge. Both Jamie and Keir watched her, waiting for her to eat and drink what had been ordered and brought for her. Sarah studied Keir with keen interest.

At least her younger daughter didn’t appear confused or upset by Jamie’s identification of Keir as his real father, Rowena observed in some relief. Sarah was clearly consumed with curiosity.

But what about Emily? Rowena worried as she dunked a cookie into her coffee and lifted it quickly to her mouth to satisfy the onlookers. The cat was out of the bag, well and truly. Jamie would hold his tongue if she asked him to, but Sarah couldn’t be trusted not to blurt out everything. She was too young to understand tact and discretion.

So much for waiting another day, Rowena thought disconsolately. Now she had to explain about two fathers going missing, and the return of one was not the one Emily would want. Keir would have his work cut out to win her older daughter over to accepting him as a replacement for Phil on any terms whatsoever.

She finished the cookie and took a sip of coffee.

“Are you and Mum friends now?” Jamie asked Keir hopefully.

Rowena almost choked.

“Your mother needs some convincing that I mean what I say, Jamie,” Keir answered quietly. “That will take a little time.”

“You’re not going to give up?” Jamie pressed.

“No. Nothing will make me give up,” Keir assured him.

“See?” Jamie said to Sarah, nudging her to take notice.

“Yes,” she agreed, gravely nodding her approval at Keir. “A real prince never gives up.”

“A prince!” Rowena spluttered over her coffee cup.

Sarah looked at her as though she was slow off the mark. “Jamie said it was like a fairy tale. The wicked witch took Daddy away, so the prince has come to look after us. And he’s going to take us to a castle where nothing bad can happen to us.”

“Oh, my God!” Rowena groaned, appalled at the licence Jamie had taken in explaining the situation to his little sister.

“I have to show your mother that the castle is hers first, Sarah. That could take a few days,” Keir warned indulgently.

“Stop!” Rowena cried, crashing her cup down and standing to take command. “Jamie, take Sarah out to the family room and stay there until I join you. I want a private talk with—with your father. And no more fairy tales. That’s an order.”

Jamie sighed and stood up, tugging Sarah with him.

“I like fairy tales, Mummy,” Sarah protested.

“No more today,” Rowena amended.

“Come on, Sarah,” Jamie urged. “We’ll build a castle with your blocks.”

“Yes,” Sarah gleefully agreed and skipped along beside him as they exited from the lounge room.

“I like fairy tales, too,” Keir remarked, rising from his chair. He gave Rowena a warm smile of approval. “Thank you for calling me Jamie’s father. It sounded good.”

Rowena found her tongue. “How dare you encourage this—this fantasy when—when…?” She floundered.

“I like your daughter very much,” Keir said, still smiling as he moved closer to her.

“You’re making trouble for me,” she cried in anguished protest.

“Rowena.” His arms enfolded her and his eyes glowed with a compelling intensity. “I want a happy ending. The only person who can stop that happening is you. All I ask is that you give it a chance.”

“You’re deluding yourself.”

“Let’s see if I am.”

“Life isn’t like a fairy tale. It’s…”

His head was bending towards hers. There was a purposeful glitter in his eyes, a simmering glitter, a mesmerising glitter. Rowena forgot what words she had meant to say. Her mouth remained open.

His lips brushed hers and ignited a field of electric tingles. She gasped. His mouth blanketed
the sensitive area, soothing it with a warm pressure that was too captivating to resist. It tugged at memories…her very first kiss on her sixteenth birthday.

She’d been waiting and waiting for it to be Keir who gave her that first kiss. How she’d longed for it, willing him to see she was grown-up enough for him, and it had been so right, so perfect, the touch like thistledown at first, and then…

He was doing it now, the slide of his tongue over the sensitive inner tissues of her lips, so tantalising, exciting…But she shouldn’t be letting him do it. He shouldn’t be stimulating these feelings. She wasn’t sixteen any more. Nor seventeen. Yet there was a need in her to know if it would all be the same as it had been then.

Keir lifted his head, ending the kiss, leaving her mouth aquiver with anticipation. He stroked her cheek with feather-light fingertips. His eyes held a soft tenderness that curled into her heart. “A new start, Rowena,” he murmured.

No, that was impossible, her mind dictated. The fantasy of reliving her youth crumbled against the stark force of the realities she had to face. “We can’t go back, Keir.”

“We can move forward.” He smiled. “I’ll go now and start the action to prove it.”

He was at the doorway to the foyer before she recollected herself enough to say, “You don’t appreciate how difficult this will be. There’s Emily.”

He paused to look back, still smiling. “I look forward to meeting her.”

“She’s older than Sarah.”

“Jamie told me. Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.” He grinned. “I’ll fight all your dragons, Rowena. I have a quest.”

And on that quixotic note he left. His devilmay-care grin stayed behind, stamped indelibly on Rowena’s mind. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand. He didn’t care what barriers he had to jump over or negotiate around. He had a quest.

“W
HAT’S
the wicked witch’s name?” Emily demanded again.

Rowena sighed. Her careful explanation of the present situation had been completely supplanted by Jamie’s fairy tale. Apparently it had more appeal. Children had a habit of judging things in black and white. Greys, Rowena reflected, were probably too difficult a concept to grasp.

“Her name is Adriana Leigh, and I told you, Emily, she’s not a wicked witch,” Rowena answered with somewhat frayed patience as she bent to kiss her older daughter good night.

“She is so, too, if she took Daddy away,” came the petulant reply.

“Your father wanted to go, Emily.”

“She put a spell on him,” Sarah piped up. “That’s what wicked witches do.”

It was a fairly apt interpretation of what had happened, Rowena thought, although if it hadn’t been Adriana, it would have been someone else sooner or later. Adriana had merely hastened what had been brewing.

“Can we undo the spell, Mummy?” Emily asked hopefully.

Rowena gently stroked her hair. “I’m afraid not, darling. But your daddy did say he’d come and see you.”

“When?”

“I guess when he’s ready to, Emily.”

“For Christmas?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“He’d better. Or she is so, too, a wicked witch,” Emily declared with conviction.

Rowena could only silently agree. Whatever Phil’s faults, Adriana was pandering to them, not caring who got hurt. On the other hand, Adriana’s influence didn’t exonerate Phil of responsibility for his actions.

She gave Emily an extra good night kiss. “Go to sleep now and don’t worry about it. Daddy will call us and let us know. All right?”

“All right, Mummy.”

She snuggled obediently into her pillow. Rowena moved to the door, checking that Sarah was still settled. She was well burrowed down, her head barely visible. Yet as Rowena switched off the light, Sarah had the last word.

“Anyhow, we’ve got the prince on our side, Emily.”

A more comforting thought than any she’d been able to give, Rowena conceded ruefully, but if the prince fell down on his quest, the collapse of the fairy tale would cause more trauma than Rowena cared to contemplate. Did Keir even begin to comprehend all the ramifications of what he had put in motion?

Jamie was waiting for her in the kitchen, seated on the counter stool again, his book ostensibly open. “Are you mad at me, Mum?” he asked without preamble.

What he had done was irrevocable. There was no point in recriminations. Besides, perhaps it would turn out for the best.
Give me a chance,
Keir had said. She had no other option now. She forced a smile. “No, I’m not mad at you, Jamie.”

His face lit with relief, and a wide grin broke through his cautious control. “The flowers look great, don’t they?”

Beyond him, on the coffee table in the family room, sat a glorious basket of flowers, Christmas bells, dark red lilies, scarlet carnations, yellow daisies, a profusion of blooms in season. It had come just after Emily had arrived home from school, and attached to it was a card that read, “To cheer you, Keir.”

It had lent substance to the fairy tale.

Rowena had to concede it had also given her heart a lift. It had been years since Phil had given her flowers. “They’re beautiful, Jamie. It was nice of Keir to send them,” she added warmly, wanting to erase any guilt Jamie might have about going to Keir behind her back.

“He explained about you being separated by the accident and all that. He really does care about us, Mum. I could tell.”

“Yes, I think he does,” Rowena agreed, wishing she had heard the
all that.
She would like to know Keir’s good reasons for not seeking
her out when he’d returned to Australia from California. Not that it really mattered now.

A new start.
Was he courting her with flowers?

“You won’t have to worry about Dad getting nasty on you any more, Mum. Keir said he would fix everything,” Jamie said with satisfaction.

Rowena hoped Jamie’s faith in his new-found father was well-placed. She couldn’t quite quell her fears over what might eventuate now that Keir had thrown his hat in the ring. She frowned over Jamie’s use of his Christian name. “I don’t think you should call him Keir, Jamie.”

“He suggested it. He said it would be easier for Emily and Sarah if we all called him Keir. That way they won’t get mixed up about fathers. I thought it was a good idea.”

It amazed and impressed Rowena that Keir had been considering the girls’ reaction to him even before he met them. It showed he really did care how they felt. “What about you, Jamie? Did you want to call him Dad?”

“No. Not yet anyway. It didn’t feel right.”

Too soon. Too big a leap in one day. Phil had been his dad for so long, Jamie couldn’t be expected to suddenly transfer that identity to a virtual stranger. “How do you feel about Keir?”

Another wide grin. “He passed all my tests, Mum. For my real father, I don’t know that I could have got much better.”

She had to smile. “Well, I hope he lives up to his test score.”

“He’s doing good so far.”

“Time will tell, Jamie.”

Would Keir pass her tests, as well? Rowena wondered. Even her son had been wary of giving his trust. Rejection cast a long shadow.

Caution—that was what was needed. Having been plunged into the wilderness by Phil’s defection, it was very tempting for her to be swept along on what might feel like a magic carpet, but she couldn’t squash the sense of dangers lurking at the edges, ready to grab them all if she wasn’t vigilant.

Rowena’s apprehensions, however, received one telling blow the next day. The mail was delivered at ten o’clock, and amongst an assortment of Christmas cards was an official letter from a Chatswood bank. It was not the bank Phil usually dealt with, and it was addressed to her. Mystified, Rowena opened the envelope and read the letter enclosed.

It informed her that trust accounts had been opened in the names of her three children. If she would call at the bank, at her convenience, the paperwork could be completed for her to become the signatory for each account.

Rowena was totally stunned at the speed with which Keir had moved to fulfil her demand. More than her demand. He had not only opened a trust account for Jamie, but for Emily and Sarah, as well. He must have done it straight after he left her yesterday for this letter to have come in the mail this morning.

She reread it to make absolutely sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Still she could hardly bring herself to believe it. There was only one way of checking if it was bona fide—go to the bank in question and present it to whomever was in charge of such things.

Emily and Jamie would not be home from their last school day of the year until three-thirty. She had plenty of time to get herself to Chatswood and back. She dressed in her navy suit again, feeling the need to look smart. Sarah was happy to have the opportunity to wear her best dress. It was made of a pretty red and white print, with a white yoke and pockets. Sarah loved red.

The drive from their home in Killarney Heights only took fifteen minutes. Rowena entered the bank with Sarah in tow at eleven forty-five and made her way to the inquiries counter. A young woman came to attend to her needs, and Rowena handed her the letter. “My name is Rowena Goodman and I’ve come to settle this business,” she said, hoping everything was in order.

The woman read the letter then smiled at Rowena. “Would you please take a seat, Mrs. Goodman? I’ll check if the bank manager can see you now.”

Rowena did as she was told, but her heart pounded with apprehension. Did bank managers oversee new accounts? Her only experience with a bank manager was over a home loan with Phil, and that had involved a lot of money. Phil had
only recently finished paying off the mortgage on the house.

A few highly nervous minutes later, the door to a side office opened and a semi-bald, middle-aged man wearing gold-framed spectacles made a beeline for Rowena, his hand already stretched out in greeting. “Mrs. Goodman, delighted to meet you. I’m Harvey Ellis, the manager.”

Rowena stood and shook his hand. “How do you do, Mr. Ellis.” The letter had to be genuine! She wouldn’t be welcomed like this if it wasn’t. “This is my daughter Sarah,” she offered belatedly.

“Hello, Sarah.” His voice dripped with indulgence and he beamed at Sarah as though a three-year-old girl was his idea of a Christmas box.

“Hello,” Sarah replied, staring at his shiny, bald pate.

“Come right this way, Mrs. Goodman. We can sit comfortably in my office while you do the necessary signatures. I trust you have identification with you.”

“Yes.” Her mind whirled. Driver’s licence, credit cards…But she had really only come to satisfy her curiosity, to know if Keir had truly done it.

It was a very streamlined executive office. Rowena and Sarah were ushered to comfortable chairs, and Mr. Ellis settled behind his massive desk. Its clean surface made Rowena wonder if any real work was done here. However, there was
one folder in front of the bank manager, and he proceeded to open it.

“Now, as you undoubtedly know, Mr. Delahunty has placed one hundred thousand dollars in each of the children’s trust accounts. Jamie, Emily and of course—” he smiled benignly “—Sarah.”

“One…” Rowena shook her head. Her mind was buzzing with astronomical figures. She must have misheard. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Ellis. Would you please run that past me again?”

“Mr. Delahunty…”

It was the same the second time. Rowena sat dazed, vaguely aware that the bank manager was explaining her part as signatory for the children, but none of it sank in. Then he was shoving papers at her and offering her a pen. All she could think of was the enormity of what Keir was handing over to her. It was far, far beyond any expectation she’d had of him.

“Mrs. Goodman?” It was a prompt.

“I have to speak to Mr. Delahunty first. This isn’t quite what I thought it was,” she said distractedly.

Harvey Ellis looked surprised. “Well, if you’d like to use my phone, Mrs. Goodman…”

“Yes, please.”

He pushed it towards her.

“I need to speak to him privately,” Rowena pressed, too embarrassed to reveal the true situation to the bank manager.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said obligingly, standing up. “Will ten minutes be enough?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She didn’t know if it was or not, but the moment he’d gone she leapt from her chair, snatched up the receiver and feverishly jabbed the numbers for Delahunty’s, knowing them off by heart from calling Phil. She was put through to Keir’s secretary.

“Good morning. Keir Delahunty’s office. How may I help you?” Her welcoming voice instantly conjured up the homely image.

“It’s Rowena Goodman. Is it possible for me to speak to Keir, please?”

“One moment, Mrs. Goodman. I’m sure he’ll be happy to take your call,” came the warm reply.

Rowena wildly wondered if the news of Keir’s interest in her and Jamie was all over the building. If so, Phil might…

“Rowena, what can I do for you?”

“Does Phil know about Jamie’s visit? And about you coming to me?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Your secretary…”

“Everything held in the strictest confidence. Has something happened, Rowena?”

“No, I—I’m at the bank, Keir.”

“I hope Harvey Ellis is treating you as he should.”

“That’s not the point. This—all this money…”

“Educating children is expensive. Over the years—”

“Keir, I can’t accept it!”

“It’s simply a safeguard against the future.”

“But three hundred thous—” She bit down on the last word, remembering belatedly that Sarah had a mind like a sponge. “It’s far too much,” she said curtly.

“It’s ready cash. I changed my will yesterday, making you and the children my beneficiaries. If anything should happen to me—”

“Keir, for heaven’s sake!”

“It’s protection for you until we’re married.”

“Married! Keir, I
am
married. I’ve only been separated from my husband for two and a half days. It’ll be a year before a divorce becomes possible. And I’m not going to be rushed into anything!”

“Rowena, you wanted proof of commitment from me,” he said gently. “I want to give it to you. I want to give you everything you need.”

“I can’t say I’ll marry you, Keir. I don’t know. It mightn’t work. There’s so much—”

“I promise I won’t rush you,” he soothed. “All I ask is that you give us a chance. We’ll take one step at a time.”

“This step is too big.”

“No, it’s easy, Rowena. Just attach your signature to whatever needs signing. I can afford to give your children financial security, and I choose to do it. Okay?”

“It’s…it’s madness.”

He laughed. “The best kind of madness there is, Rowena. Are you and the children free tomorrow?”

“Yes. Unless…” It was Saturday tomorrow. Phil might want to see the girls.

“Unless what?”

Then again, he might not. He hadn’t called. Why should they wait around on his and Adriana’s convenience? Phil had forced separate lives upon them.
Let us lead separate lives,
Rowena thought defiantly. Besides, Keir was showing more caring than her husband—her
ex
-husband—had. A lot more!

“It doesn’t matter,” she declared with determination. “What do you have in mind?”

“A castle.”

Rowena suddenly had a vision of ramparts and turrets. “You can’t mean that.”

“Well, it’s really a house. But we can call it a castle. I’d like you to see it. Will ten o’clock suit for me to pick the family up?”

A smile tugged at her mouth. The magic carpet ride was zipping along at supersonic speed, and she really ought to get off and plant her feet firmly on the ground, but she couldn’t help feeling fascinated about where it might lead next. “Yes. Ten will be fine,” she heard herself say.

“Now do what Harvey says, Rowena. Then you can go home and bask in a sense of security.”

No, she couldn’t do it, no matter what argument Keir used. She would feel as though he was buying her. Such a huge commitment from
him automatically placed a commitment on her, one she wasn’t prepared to give at this juncture in her life.