that set her world on fire. And when he was inside her, she tried to ignore the possessive glitter in his eyes that said this time he’d made her his own.
Two weeks later, Flynn had to go to Brisbane on business for a couple of days and Danielle soon found she missed him. Nothing was the same without him. Yesterday had seemed duller and longer. The house seemed empty, the bed big and lonely.
She tried to tell herself it was just as well, that eventually she’d have to get used to not having him in her life again, only she couldn’t summon the energy. It was as if she were running low on batteries and she needed Flynn to recharge her.
“You miss him, don’t you?” Louise said as she served Danielle a late dinner on the patio, the dazzling sunset casting a golden hue over the landscaped swimming pool and cascading waterfall.
“He’s only been gone one night,” Danielle teased.
Louise sent her a wry look. “You’re fooling yourself, you know.”
Danielle’s cheeks reddened. “Flynn—”
“Needs you. And the baby. I can see how happy you make him, Danielle, and that makes me happy. I remember him as a child and he was a very sad little boy.”
Danielle’s heart squeezed tight at the thought of Flynn’s childhood. She could just picture him as a dark-haired boy picking up after his drunken father, making them something for dinner, from the meager scraps in the cupboard, his clothes threadbare.
“Why didn’t anyone help him back then, Louise? He was so young.”
“We all tried, but his father was a proud man and wouldn’t accept help and somehow the authorities never seemed to take any action.”
How could any parent make their own children suffer in such a fashion? In any fashion?
“How did his mother die?”
“In childbirth.”
Danielle gasped. “Flynn’s mother died having a baby?”
“Yes, but it won’t happen to you,” Louise quickly assured her. “She died a long time ago. They have much better medical treatments now.”
Danielle sat there, stunned. And he hadn’t told her? For a moment an incredible hurt clutched at her throat.
Then she realized that perhaps he had told her, but not in words. There had been his seeming anger when he’d found out she was pregnant and living alone. He’d stayed away from her, not because he’d thought she was trying to trap him as she’d suspected, but because the child she carried was a painful reminder of how his mother had died. An agony he didn’t want to deal with every day.
Yet here they were now.
“You love him, Danielle,” Louise said, interrupting her thoughts. “I know you do. I can see it in your eyes every time you say his name.”
Danielle blinked. “That’s ridiculous. You’ve got it all wrong.”
“No, I haven’t.” With that, Louise picked up an empty dish from the table and went back in the house.
Danielle sat back in her chair and stared after her. Louise was wrong. So totally wrong. She didn’t love Flynn. She wouldn’t let herself fall in love again, no matter how attracted she was to the man. She was stronger than that. Stronger and…a fool.
A fool in love.
Something unfurled inside her, came full circle and completed what had begun the day she’d met Flynn. Louise was right. She loved him. The thought staggered her, sent her reeling. Thank goodness she was sitting down.
She loved Flynn Donovan.
Oh, my God! She’d been too blind to see it before. Or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to know. Because loving Flynn meant making a commitment. And commitment meant something inside her had changed.
But had she changed enough to lay everything on the line and marry him? Certainly if he learned to love her, too, the rewards would be great. But if it all went wrong? The pain would be unbearable.
She swallowed hard. Could she marry a man who may only lust after her for the next twenty years…if that long? Dear God, she just didn’t know.
Suddenly her skin prickled and her heart began thudding in her chest. Her gaze shot to the patio door. Flynn stood there, his look so captivating in the fading light it sent a tremor through her.
“Flynn!”
In one fluid movement, he came toward her, tilted up her head and kissed her with a thoroughness that made her heart roll over. She melted into him, letting him take her lips as an offering of her love.
“You’re pleased to see me,” he murmured, easing back, a purely masculine look of satisfaction in his eyes.
She tried to act nonchalant. She needed