HER ONE AND ONLY VALENTINE - by Trish Wylie Read Free Book Online Page A

to bounce on regardless.
    'Oh, hi, Mum. We unpacked all the stuff for my room and Kane helped me tear up the boxes.'
    'That was good of him.' Rhiannon glanced at the anger in his eyes before refocusing on her daughter, as if she saw her as some kind of shield between them. 'So what were you just saying to Kane?'
    Lizzie shrugged. 'We were talking about Stephen.'
    Kane watched Rhiannon's throat convulse as she swallowed, her eyes flickering up to his face and then away before she answered with a tightlipped, 'I see.'
    Yeah. He'd just bet she did. Because she'd known from the start how little he thought of Stephen and yet she'd still gone ahead and married him and allowed him to become some kind of a stand-in father figure to Lizzie too. It was hellish hard to swallow.
    His eyes narrowed when she looked back at him.
    'Kane says they were friends from way back.'
    Rhiannon's finely arched eyebrows rose, her brown eyes full of disbelief. 'Friends?'
    Kane rectified the misconception in a flat tone. 'I said we knew each other.'
    Lizzie looked surprised. 'You weren't friends?'
    Forcing a smile in the face of such innocent curiosity, he added, 'Not exactly, no.'
    'How come?'
    He took a breath. 'Because we don't always get on with everyone we know.'
    'Just like you don't get on with everyone in school.'
    Kane glanced at Rhiannon again as she spoke, understanding immediately what she was doing but ignoring any hint of a rapport between them that that might have indicated. He was way past the stage of appreciating anything nice she might try to do, even if she was currently trying to smooth over a difficult topic on his behalf.
    Lizzie sighed. 'Mum's still mad at me 'cos I pushed Sarah McCracken and she fell down.'
    'Little girls don't go around pushing other little girls over.' Rhiannon glanced at Lizzie, then briefly up at Kane before concentrating on unwrapping a few more of the plates on the table in front of her, stacking them into a rapidly growing pile. 'Even when the other little girl says something they don't agree with.'
    Wasn't finding it easy to look at him for long, was she? Kane smiled a small smile as he glanced down again, trying to keep all of his attention on Lizzie. Maybe her mother was starting to feel a little guilty? Well, she damn well should!
    'What did Sarah say?'
    Lizzie shrugged again. 'She said I only played football so that the boys would like me.'
    He bit back a larger smile. 'And do you?'
    'You want to watch she doesn't push you too. She may look all sweetness and light, but she has a temper.'
    Like her mother used to have. Kane remembered the sometimes heated debates they used to have; he remembered how defensive she'd been about where she'd come from and how single-minded she'd been about making something of her life. And she'd managed it through a marriage into one of the oldest families in Dublin in the end, hadn't she? She'd traded up.
    At the time it had made him glad he'd broken up with her when he had, even if he had maybe handled it badly enough for her to make the decision that he wasn't worthy parent material. After all, if she was only interested in marriage to step her into a safe financial environment it wouldn't have been much of a marriage, would it?
    Knowing that made it easy now to damp down the memory of how much fun he'd once had making up with her after one of their 'debates'—long, languid sessions of making up. Until there had been a time when they had debated less and 'made up' more. At one time he had thought the memories would haunt him. But then she had married Stephen and he'd known he'd had a lucky escape.
    All it had cost him was his daughter. And there wasn't a single doubt in his mind that she was his, now that he had spent time with her.
    Lizzie giggled, the sound dancing around the room and drawing his attention back to her face. And instantly he smiled in response. For no other reason than it was what he always felt like doing when he looked at her.
    'I'd need to grow a