A Marriage In The Making. Natalie Fox
she couldn’t bear it. Her eyes narrowed warningly. ‘Let me put your fluttering heart at peace, Mr Kennedy. My pulse races in defence of my feelings, not in excitement of them. I am your son’s carer and just because I am on my own with two small children to look after that doesn’t mean I suffer from a fluttering heart and the vapours when a man touches my wrist. In future we talk and think only of your son’s welfare and future. I would like you to keep your lightness of touch and your suspect innuendoes to yourself. Now, you think on all that before you dare speak to me again!’
With that she turned her back on him and was down by the edge of the water on the beach before she had herself fully under control. The warm water lapped her ankles, cooling her feet deliciously.
His touch had nearly broken her. That small, intimate, tender caress, so completely unexpected, had very nearly broken her. She didn’t even like him but it just went to show her state of mind when a stranger could make her pulse race so easily and effectively.
Karis crumbled to the sand in the shade of a dense palm and hugged her knees to her. Human contact, a man touching her, him touching her. No one had for so very long. She was always with the children, Tara and Josh, all day, every day, at all times. And when they slept she sat alone. Never anyone for her to turn to for comfort. No one to wrap his arms around her and just hold her. She ran a handful of sand through her fingers. Her life was just this, she thought ruefully: sand slipping away. No passion, nothing for her own lonely heart, just her life trickling away.
His touch, for whatever reason, had burned her loneliness into her soul like a branding iron. It felt like a searing, agonising scar on her senses and all because of a small, intimate caress of her wrist of all things. Imagine the effect of more, she thought desperately. The touch of his lips and…
She felt a light hand on her shoulder and she jumped in alarm, her heart thudding. Daniel was looking down at her and she felt her cheeks burn because of what she had just been imagining. He couldn’t know but all the same she looked away from him and trickled more sand through her fingers.
He sat next to her under the palm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said sincerely. ‘Deeply sorry for hurting you the way I do. None of this is easy for me.’ He shrugged slightly. ‘You aren’t at all what I expected. That first sight of you on the beach threw me completely when I arrived. You looked so young and natural, barefoot and with the breeze tossing your hair wildly around your shoulders, a baby on your hip and my son clinging to you for comfort. He was afraid of me and needing you and it tears at my heart for what I’ve lost.’
Karis drew painfully on her bottom lip as she stared out to sea. Yes, it must have cost him a lot of pride and pain to make such an admission. Already she had gathered that he was a proud man, a hard one too, a man with a past that had caused his son such misery, but here he was going partway to opening up his heart to her and making it right for his son.
‘I need you to help me get to know my son,’ he went on softly. ‘I need your co-operation; what I don’t need is you fighting me all the time. I’m partly to blame for that, I admit, and again I apologise, but meet me halfway, please. As you said we know nothing about each other and false impressions have been formed and that isn’t a good thing. I do appreciate what you have done for the boy but I’m going to need more, much more from you.’
Oh, he might have apologised and he had sounded sincere but did that man have a heart beating within that impressive chest of his? He’d abandoned his son, after all, and now he was here to claim him back again and it wasn’t going to be easy. Oh, no, not with his attitude and Josh’s fear and her stuck in between the two of them, working towards losing the child she cared for so very deeply. Her emotions were flustered, to say the least, as she turned her head to look at him.
‘Yes, I will help you,’ she told him softly. ‘I was never in any doubt that I would and you shouldn’t have been either. If I argue with you it’s because I know Josh and I have an opinion to air on his behalf. I want the best for him and I’ll go along with anything you suggest—if I think it is right for Josh,’ she added quickly.
He nodded and murmured, ‘Good,’ and they both sat for a while, staring out to sea, each with their own thoughts on what was best for the boy, though Kans’s were punctuated with the awareness of Daniel sitting next to her. Such a strong, hard man, both charismatic and infuriatingly arrogant at times, and yet a small boy had the power to reduce him to a wreck of worry and concern. He cared for Josh, she now knew, and it was a relief.
‘How do you mean to start this bonding with your son?’ Karis asked at last, her voice low and concerned because perhaps he didn’t realise just what a formidable task was ahead of him.
‘I thought you might have some ideas on that.’
‘I don’t have the qualifications, remember?’
‘Nor do I, remember?’ he countered.
She turned and smiled at him and found he was already smiling at her. Karis wasn’t surprised to find she did suffer from a fluttering heart but she was sensible enough to reason that it had come about because of more relief. It was better to be friends with him than enemies.
‘We’re going to get a long way fast, then, aren’t we?’ Karis said ruefully.
He grinned. ‘Let me make a suggestion, then. Let’s start by you bringing Josh over to the plantation house first thing in the mornings and—’
‘Uh-uh,’ Karis uttered negatively, shaking her head. ‘First hurdle to be overcome. Josh doesn’t go to the plantation house. I won’t take him. If Fiesta wants anything she comes to us.’
He stared at her in disbelief. ‘Why don’t you take him to the house? I would have thought it was part of his life, mixing with people.’
‘No one’s ever sober there!’ Karis protested. ‘Is that what you really want for Josh? Association with a load of inebriate vacationers? No way. I won’t allow that’ She got up from the sand and brushed her sarong down. ‘If there is any bonding to be done between you it’s not going to be done in that den of iniquity.’
He caught her arm before she swung away. He was frowning darkly. ‘I thought you had agreed to co-operate?’
Karis stared up at him, wondering what the cause of his sudden about-turn in attitude was. She was only doing her best for the boy. ‘Co-operating doesn’t mean blind submission to your every whim,’ Karis argued firmly. ‘Of course I’ll co-operate if I think it is in Josh’s best interests. I don’t think you entertaining Josh at the plantation house every day, surrounded by a lot of old soaks and languid, leggy blondes, is the right way to go about it.’
He let her go, lowered his head and raked a hand through his hair. Then he looked directly at her and nodded. ‘OK, I agree,’ he surprised her by saying. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I honestly hadn’t seen it that way. So what suggestions have you got?’ he asked.
Karis wasn’t sure she wanted the ball in her court. It was his son after all. But she knew Josh better. He hated the plantation house. He was always much more comfortable at the cottage, which was his home of course.
‘I presume you and…and Simone are staying in the main house?’
He nodded. ‘Could you take one of the cottages in the grounds instead?’ she suggested.
‘They are all taken, and besides, Simone wouldn’t—’
Karis looked at him when he stopped abruptly. ‘Say no more,’ she said lightly. ‘Wouldn’t have put you down as henpecked,’ she added cheekily.
Because she was smiling he did too. ‘Simone would delight in that remark,’ was his only comment. Then he got back to the subject in hand. ‘Yes, all the cottages are taken. What had you in mind?’
‘I’ve left Josh sulking long enough. Let’s talk about it on the way back,’ she murmured as she turned to head back to the cottage. Daniel fell into step alongside her and as they strolled along the beach she said, ‘Well, I was just thinking