house. The wind was chilly, and Nathan had built a fire while Carin changed clothes. Then he’d gone to change his own clothes, expecting to meet her back in the living room and spend the last evening they had together before everyone else arrived lounging in front of the fire.
That’s what he’d thought until he’d gone to his room to change. He had stripped down to his shorts when he heard a tap on his bedroom door. “Yeah?”
The door had opened.
Carin had stood before him wearing a towel and a tentative smile. Nothing else. “All my stuff is in the wash and I forgot to put it in the dryer,” she confessed. “Do you have some jeans and a sweatshirt I could borrow.”
Nathan remembered dumbly nodding his head. He didn’t remember saying anything. He didn’t think he could have. He’d seen Carin in a bathing suit, of course. He knew—had memorized—those slender enticing curves.
But it was different seeing her wrapped in a towel. It was different knowing that she had nothing on underneath. He remembered the feel of her soft fingers. He wanted to touch the rest of her. His body responded even as his mind tried to resist.
Embarrassed at his sudden fierce arousal, he had turned away toward the dresser. “I’ll get ’em,” he’d said hoarsely.
But instead of waiting outside his room, she came in. She came to stand beside him—so close that he could see goose bumps on her arms. “You’re cold,” he’d said. “We’ve got to warm you up.”
He hadn’t meant to reach for her. He hadn’t meant to make love with her. But the next thing he knew she’d been in his arms.
If he shut his eyes now, Nathan could still remember the tremble of her body against his, could taste her cool flesh as his lips had touched it.
Right here. Right in this room.
Nathan jerked back to the present, cursing the desire that flooded his veins, hating the need that seeing her again this afternoon had aroused!
He grabbed his gear and stamped out of the bedroom. He could sleep in any room. He didn’t have to stay in there where the memories would haunt him every second.
But the room next to his had been Dominic’s. And Carin had stayed in Rhys’s. He stood there, clutching his duffel, torn, frustrated, angry—
And heard a knock on the kitchen door.
He clattered down the stairs, expecting Maurice, who was going to help him build a dark room. “Hey, there,” he said, glad for the distraction, as he jerked open the door.
But it wasn’t Maurice.
It was a girl.
“Hello,” she said politely. “I’m Lacey. You must be my father.”
CHAPTER TWO
EVER SINCE DOMINIC had revealed her existence, Nathan had envisioned the day he would meet his daughter, had tried to imagine what he would say to her. And always—every time—their meeting had been at a time and place of his choosing.
He’d wanted it to be perfect, knowing full well that, having missed her first twelve years, it never would be.
Still, he’d made an effort.
He’d cleared the decks, finished his assignments, met his commitments. Whenever his agent, Gaby, rang him with new projects, new ideas, new shows, new demands, he turned them down. He wanted nothing on his schedule now but Lacey—and her mother.
He was prepared. Or so he’d thought.
He didn’t feel prepared now.
He felt stunned, faced with this girl who wore a pair of white shorts and a fluorescent lime-green T-shirt with the Statue of Liberty and the words New York Babe on it. She had a backpack on her back and sandals on her feet and looked like a hundred preteen girls.
But more than that, she looked like him.
Nathan tried to think of something profound to say or at least something sensible. Nothing came to mind. He had spent much of his adult life in precarious positions—hanging off cliffs, kayaking down white-water rapids, hanging out with polar bears, and tracking penguins in Tierra del Fuego—but none had seemed more precarious than this one.
Now he realized that Lacey was waiting—staring at him, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, her hand still stuck out in midair.
Awkwardly Nathan shook it and dredged up a faint grin. “I guess I must be,” he said. Must be your father.
He felt short of breath. Dazed. Positively blown away. His voice sounded rusty even to his own ears. He stood there, holding her hand—his daughter’s hand!—learning the feel of it. Her fingers were warm and slender, delicate almost. But there were calluses on her palm. He