A Kiss, A Dance & A Diamond. Helen Lacey

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СКАЧАТЬ how to make him feel safe. Unfortunately, I feel as though I’m failing at every turn.”

      It was quite an admission, and one he was sure she hadn’t intended divulging. Hours ago, she’d made her feelings toward him abundantly clear—she still hated him. And yet now he was standing in her kitchen, listening to her earnest words, drinking coffee and acting as though it was all absurdly normal.

      “I’m sure you’re not,” he assured her. “Parenting is a challenge even in the best of circumstances.”

      “You’d know more about that than me.”

      A familiar ache hit him directly in the center of his chest, and he quickly averted his gaze. He didn’t want to see her eyes, didn’t want to speculate as to how much she knew about him and his life before he’d returned to Cedar River. But people talked. He knew that. But with everything else that was going on with his family—with his parents’ impending divorce, the discovery of his half brother, and then his other brother Liam secretly marrying the daughter of their father’s sworn enemy, he hoped that his own smashed-up personal life might not rate a mention on the radar. But when he did finally glance at her again, he figured that she knew enough. Maybe not everything, particularly how broken up inside he felt most of the time, but she certainly had some idea of what he’d been through.

      “Later,” he said and shrugged. “You can ask me later.”

      She shrugged loosely. “I shouldn’t have said that. Your private life is none of my business.”

      He nodded. “Anyway, for now, we should probably go and talk with Marco.”

      She placed her mug on the counter. “He’s upstairs.”

      He followed her from the kitchen and up the stairway, trying not to notice how her hips swayed as she walked. Or the way her perfume assailed his senses. Other than in a professional capacity, it had been a long time since he’d been so close to a woman. He hadn’t been intimate with anyone since he’d separated from Tori. Casual sex had never been his thing, and he wasn’t interested in a committed relationship, so the best thing was to avoid women altogether until he worked through his demons. But he hadn’t figured on his old attraction for Nicola making a comeback.

      Get a grip, O’Sullivan...

      Ten minutes later, he still hadn’t managed to coax Marco from his hiding spot in the closet, but the child was at least answering him. To his credit, he’d made the tiny space into a fort, complete with walls and windows, out of several old cardboard boxes and several towels pegged together. Looking at how he’d used his imagination allayed some of his concerns for the boy’s emotional well-being. This was clearly Marco’s safe place, his go-to spot when he felt cornered or unhappy or despairing. Kieran wasn’t an expert in child psychology, but he was relieved to discover that Marco wasn’t simply hiding in a confined space staring at the wall.

      “You’ve built a really cool fort,” Kieran said quietly.

      Marco was silent, then grunted. “Johnny says it’s lame.”

      “Well, I’m something of an expert at fort building,” he said, flicking his gaze toward Nicola, who stood in the doorway. He caught a tiny smile at the edges of her mouth and ignored the way it made his gut churn. “When my brothers and I were young, we turned our treehouse into a fort. It had a moat, too.”

      He heard a shuffling sound, like sneakers shifting across carpet, and then spotted Marco peering around the door frame.

      “A moat?” the boy asked. “Really?”

      “Yeah,” Kieran replied. “It had water in it, too. I fell into it once and dislocated my collarbone.”

      Marco’s eyes widened, and he stepped out of the closet. “That must have hurt a lot.”

      “It did,” he said and nodded. “So, your aunt said your hand was hurting.”

      “Yeah,” the boy said, his voice cracking.

      “On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?” Kieran asked.

      “Ten,” Marco replied quickly.

      Kieran glanced at Nicola, saw the concern on her face and offered a reassuring nod. “Ten,” he mused. “Really? That’s a lot. Are you sure?”

      Marco’s bottom lip wobbled. “Well...maybe a five.”

      “Five... I see. Then, that’s not so bad, right? Remember the word I said you need to say over and over?”

      The boy nodded. “I remember.”

      “Good,” Kieran said and smiled. “Keep saying it, over and over, every time your hand hurts. Now, your aunt also says it’s way past your bedtime, so how about you get settled into bed.”

      “Do I have to have more stitches?”

      “No, not a single one.”

      Marco looked pensive. “More medicine?”

      Kieran checked his watch. “Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

      “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

      Kieran looked at Nicola and she nodded. “How about you see how you feel in the morning and then talk to your aunt about it, okay?”

      The boy looked thoughtful for a moment and then nodded. “Okay.”

      “And keep saying the special word,” Kieran said and smiled. “I promise your hand won’t hurt as much.”

      Marco grinned a little. “Okay. Thanks, Doctor.”

      “And you can call me Kieran, okay? Because your aunt is a friend of mine.”

      “Sure thing.”

      Kieran turned toward Nicola. “I’ll leave you to get him settled.”

      She stepped into the room and nodded. “Thank you for this... I don’t know what I would have done otherwise...” Her words trailed off for a moment. “If you give me ten minutes, we can finish that coffee.”

      “Sure,” he said before giving Marco the thumbs-up sign. With the promise that he’d see him soon, he headed back downstairs.

      He lingered in the kitchen, ditched his jacket and hung it over the back of one of the chairs and sat at the table, looking around. Like the rest of the house, it was a modern, spacious room, with granite countertops and top-of-the-line appliances. He’d noticed an array of family pictures on the wall in the hallway when he’d arrived and quickly deduced that this was once Gino Radici’s home. He’d always liked Gino. They’d played football together in high school and, as Nicola’s boyfriend, they all used to hang out at JoJo’s pizza parlor most afternoons. Life had been easy back when he was in high school...his parents were happy, his family was a tight unit, Liz was still alive and he’d had Nicola.

      Until he blew her off.

      At the time, he’d believed he was doing the right thing. Maintaining a long-distance relationship from separate colleges was never going to work. She had her ambitions, and so did he. Then, the week before graduation, when СКАЧАТЬ