Once Touched, Never Forgotten - By Natasha Tate Page 0,27
that was impossible. They’d used protection.
Every time.
“I’m a princess, see?” Emma pointed out, dragging his attention back to the here and now.
“What?” He stared at the child as she curtsied before him, his sense of vertigo rushing back tenfold as belated recognition slammed hard into his gut.
Emma didn’t look up at him with the curious hazel eyes of her mother.
No. She looked at him with the bright, distinctive blue eyes every single Whitfield for countless generations had shared. The eyes she’d inherited from her father. From him.
“You look funny,” she said, leaning forward to tug on his hand.
His breath escaped in a ragged rush. “Does your tummy hurt?” she asked, screwing up her tiny nose.
He blinked and drew in a steadying breath, forcing a smile to his face. “No, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m just thinking about your mother and how happy she must be to have you.”
“Momma loves me a lot,” Emma agreed. “She says I’m her angel. But I don’t want to be an angel. I want to be a princess.”
Suddenly everything clicked into place: Colette’s reason for leaving, her continued secrecy, her roommate. She’d borne him a daughter and she’d never breathed a word of it to him.
“Do you like princesses?”
He looked down at his beautiful daughter, the daughter he hadn’t even known existed, and anger at missing her birth, her first breath, first tooth, first everything twisted low in his gut. How could Colette have stolen four years from him? Four and a half years!
“I adore princesses,” he said in a soft voice. “Especially pretty princesses with blond hair and blue eyes.”
Now that he knew to look for it, he could trace the stamp of the Whitfield genes even more readily than before. He saw the trademark cowlick on the right side of her forehead that he and grandfather shared. He saw his own straight brows and the same bow in her upper lip.
“You do?” Emma’s face—his daughter’s face!—lit up with her smile and an unexpected tightness took hold of his chest. Damn Colette. She had some serious explaining to do, and this time she wasn’t escaping without telling him the truth.
The front screen door squeaked open and he heard Colette step into the home she’d chosen for their child. “Janet?” she called. “You haven’t put Emma down for her nap yet, have you?”
Stephen watched as Colette rounded the corner into the living room. Stumbling in shocked recognition, she froze and the blood drained from her face.
“Welcome home, Colette,” he said grimly, surprised that he sounded so calm when he felt like wringing her beautiful, duplicitous neck. “Or should I say Mummy?”
“Stephen,” she started, her lips trembling within her white face. “What are you doing here?”
He surged to his feet, the urge to shake her tearing through him with seismic fury. “I don’t think you’re in any position to ask questions,” he said, in an ominously quiet voice.
“I—”
“How is it that you have a four-year-old daughter I knew nothing about?”
Her hazel eyes darted frantically toward Emma and then back again. Fear was stamped in every fierce line of her face. “Not here, Stephen. Please not here—”
“Mr. Whitfield held Chrissie while she taked her nap,” interrupted Emma. “An’ he likes princesses, too. He said so.”
“That’s right, Emma,” he said, in a low, conversational voice. “Little blue-eyed princesses are a personal favorite of mine.”
“Don’t …” Colette began again, her arms wrapping about her ribs while a glimmer of tears gathered in her distressed eyes. “She doesn’t …”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“B-because,” she stammered, her gaze ricocheting from Emma’s curious face to his and back again. “I …”
“You?”
“I wanted to keep her safe.”
A rage he hadn’t felt for twenty-five long, long years made his chest burn hot and laced his words with a dangerous, deadly calm. “I suggest you tell Janet she’s on duty for a little while longer,” he said grimly. “You and I have some serious items to discuss.”
She flinched, and then swiftly recovered, her chin lifting while her slim shoulders braced for the worst. Her flashing hazel gaze, limned with a disconcerting blend of righteous indignation and fear, collided with his and held. “Fine, we’ll talk. In private,” she said, smiling down at Emma as if she needed to protect her. “Emma, sweetheart, why don’t you go find Janet while Mr. Whitfield and I have a grownup talk outside?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“START talking,” he said, the moment they were alone in her tiny yard.
“Not here,” Colette replied, striding across the street while she frantically tried to collect her thoughts.