Once Touched, Never Forgotten

by Natasha Tate

  “But Momma said my daddy lived far, far away,” she said.

  Colette fingered the soft curls at Emma’s neck and answered. “He used to. He lived in England for a long, long time. But now he’s here,” said Colette. “And he’s very excited to have you as his little girl.”

  Emma nodded slowly, processing this new development in her small, insulated world. “Is he gonna take us to live in England now?”

  Colette ran a reassuring hand down Emma’s back. “No, sweetheart. We’ll stay right here, just like we always have.”

  “And he’s gonna live in our house?” she asked.

  “No, he’ll have his own house,” she rushed to answer before Stephen could. “But he’ll visit lots of times, and maybe you can visit him sometimes, too. Would you like that?”

  Emma cocked her head, her expression skeptical. “Is your house far away?”

  “I live at the hotel where your momma works right now, but maybe you can help me pick out new place to live. One that has a special room just for you.”

  “Can you get a castle?”

  He smiled and exchanged a quick glance with Colette. “I don’t know if there are any castles nearby, but we could certainly look.”

  “'Kay.”

  He leaned back to withdraw a small box from his suit pocket. “I’ve brought a present for you as well, if your momma says it’s all right for you to have it.”

  Emma gasped and immediately turned to Colette. “Can I?”

  Colette’s heart skipped a beat as she nodded, realizing she’d opened the door to losing her little girl to a parent with more money, more toys, and the ability to fulfill every material wish in a way she never could. “Of course you can, sweetheart.”

  Stephen nudged the white jewelry box across the table toward Emma, who in turn exclaimed with pleasure before pulling off the pink bow and grappling with the lid. She resisted Colette’s offer to help, her childish efforts notching her brow and catching her tongue between her teeth. When she finally figured out the hinges at the back, it was with undisguised pride in her own abilities that she opened the box and peered inside.

  Emma, who normally had a comment for everything, was rendered momentarily speechless.

  “Oh, look,” said Colette, her chest tightening as she leaned sideways to see the delicate gold chain and pendant nestled within. “It’s a necklace.”

  Emma nodded soundlessly, her blue eyes wide and shining.

  “It’s very beautiful, don’t you think?”

  She arched back to whisper in Colette’s ear. “It’s a princess necklace!” she divulged in an excited puff of warm breath. “With a crown on it!”

  It was the perfect gift, exquisitely perfect, in fact, and Colette lifted blurring eyes to gauge Stephen’s reaction. He was watching their daughter, his smile uncharacteristically uncertain around the edges.

  “What do you say?” she prompted Emma.

  Emma gasped in belated recollection of her manners, and then launched herself off Colette’s lap. Before Colette had registered her intent, Emma had raced around the table and wrapped her arms as far as they could reach around Stephen’s chair and waist. “Thank you, Daddy! Thank you!”

  For a beat of silence Stephen’s surprised gaze held Colette’s, before he leaned sideways to return Emma’s hug. “You’re welcome, sweet,” he said before clearing his throat. “Do you want me to help you put it on?”

  Emma nodded her enthusiasm, placed the box in his broad palm, and then swung to present her back, lifting her curls and tipping her head forward without a moment’s hesitation.

  Once he’d fastened the clasp, she lifted her chin and fingered the tiny gold and pearl crown. “Do I look like a princess, Momma?” she asked.

  Colette blinked back her tears and nodded while Stephen answered in a gruff voice, “You don’t just look like a princess, you are a princess.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I think you managed to find the only modern-day castle within a hundred miles of New York,” Colette observed three weeks later as Stephen welcomed them into the new home he’d purchased in the East Hamptons. With its long halls of checkered marble, heavy chandeliers, dual curved staircases, and an entry foyer that could accommodate the entire New York Senate, it was large enough to host state balls of fairytale proportions.

  “I promised our little princess a castle, and I always deliver on my promises,” Stephen answered as he offered his hand to their daughter. “Emma, would you like to see the movie theater or the indoor pool first?”

  “Yes!” she answered, reaching for his outstretched hand and jumping forward to stand by his denim-clad thigh. “C’mon, Momma!”

  Emma, more excited than Colette had ever seen her, skipped alongside Stephen as he led them on a tour of each wing of the colonial mansion. He showed them a six-car garage, countless bedrooms, a giant gourmet kitchen, and multiple entertaining rooms of various sizes while Emma exclaimed over every new discovery.

  “Can we play hide ‘n’ seek?” she asked, after they’d explored the extensive exterior grounds.

  “Maybe later,” answered Colette. “Right now, I’m worried you’d get lost and I’d never find you.” Dressed in a caramel-colored wrap skirt, blue oxford and espadrilles, Colette had trailed behind Stephen and Emma for the entire tour, feeling inexplicably tense. Colette’s tiny home would have fit inside Stephen’s a good dozen times, and the sheer size of the place overwhelmed her. Though it was beautiful beyond Colette’s wildest imaginings, it reminded her of a fantasy getaway, or a mausoleum she doubted could ever feel like a real home.

  Emma, on the other hand, thought it was perfect, and she spent the next half-hour rushing pell-mell down the interior hallways, exploring nooks and crannies and investigating the maze of cupboards beneath the stairs.

  Colette would have thought watching a small child explore with no particular destination in mind would have bored Stephen to distraction, but it hadn’t. He was proving to be a wonderful father to Emma: kind, patient, and involved. In fact, if she were honest with herself, he was everything she’d hoped he might be with their daughter. So why wasn’t she happier about it? And why, like now, when he looked at her with those blue eyes of his, did her every cell seem to come alive with yearning? Ever since she’d called a halt to their lovemaking that fateful day in his office, he’d stopped trying to seduce her. He talked to her only about Emma or hotel business, and avoided being alone with her at all costs. He hadn’t mentioned marriage again, and he seemed to have forgotten all about his requirement that she be his mistress.

  While Colette, to her eternal consternation, found herself unable to think of anything else.

  It was because he was too handsome, she thought dizzily. His black hair, gleaming with blue lights no matter the weather, begged to be smoothed back from his broad forehead. His hands and forearms, bronzed and muscular beneath rolled white cuffs, and his powerful legs encased in worn denim, created a heady combination of male virility that had her eyes darting to the unmistakable bulge between his thighs.

  Heat scalded Colette’s cheeks as she dragged her attention back to his chin. How was she supposed to think clearly with him looking the way he did?

  With him looking at her the way he did? She felt the weight of his stare on her face, the hungry gaze that seemed to track her movements whenever they happened to be in the same room. Knowing he wanted her, yet had no intention of acting on his desire, made her insides twist up in nervousness. In longing. In a wholly inappropriate, unwelcome desire to touch. To feel. To forget all the reasons things could never work between them and simply start anew.

  She told herself she should be glad he hadn’t pushed for more, that he no longer touched her. That when he tired of playing at being a father and left, she’d be grateful that they hadn’t slept together. She would be.

  Several hours later, after a swim and a movie, they retired to Stephen’s private dining room for dinner. The three of them sat at one corner of an impossibly long
mahogany table and ate grilled steaks, seasoned new potatoes, and fresh green beans grown in his new estate gardens. Household staff appeared and disappeared soundlessly while Emma chatted about all the things she planned to do during her future sleepovers.

  After they’d finished, and their plates had been cleared away, Colette collected the dessert she’d brought from home. “Do you want ice cream with your pastry?” she asked Stephen, her spoon poised over a fresh carton of vanilla bean. “Don’t I always?” he answered.

  Colette scooped a hearty portion of both ice cream and fruit tart onto his plate and then leaned to assist Emma with the finishing touches. “That’s right,” she said, her hand curved around Emma’s. “You drizzle the strawberry sauce over the whole thing, first this way and then … that. Perfect!” She grinned at Emma and then lifted the dessert for Stephen’s inspection. “What do you think? It’s Emma’s first homemade fruit tart.”

  “It looks delicious,” Stephen said.

  “It’s my favorite,” Emma told him as she readied her drizzling spoon for the next serving. “Momma let me roll the dough all by myself.”

  “Did she now?” His gaze snagged on Colette’s and a reminiscent smile eased its way across his face. “She taught me how to make my favorite dessert, too. Only mine was black and white mousse cake.”

  Colette sucked in a breath, remembering the first time she’d tried to teach him that unique blend of almond, chocolate, cream and ganache. He’d watched her until she’d finished her explanation, his eyes tracking her like a lazy cat’s, and then demanded to lick the bowl. Except he’d spread the leftovers on her flesh before he’d done any licking at all. Her nipples tingled at the erotic memory of his mouth at her breast, tasting her. Consuming her.

  “Maybe you can make that next time?” he asked.

  Colette’s face heated and she immediately shifted her focus to the ice cream between her hands. “Sure,” she mumbled, grateful that Emma was in the room to corral her impulses.

  Later, after Emma’s bath and a lengthy debate over which princess nightgown would go best with her new pink-canopied bed, she was finally ready for her first sleepover at Daddy’s. Colette lifted Emma up to her high mattress and helped her climb beneath the covers.

  “Do you get to sleep over, too?” Emma asked.

  Colette’s hands stalled and the heat of Stephen’s gaze upon her profile made her skin flush. “No, sweetheart,” she said, tugging the blankets high and tucking them beneath Emma’s arms. “Momma has her own bed at home, remember?”

  “Maybe Daddy can give you one of his so you can have two beds like me!”

  Rather than continue a discussion she didn’t care to have, Colette dug in her bag for Emma’s favorite storybook. “Would you like me to read to you before lights out?” she asked.

  After Emma had listened to her favorite fairytale twice, read once by Colette and once again by Stephen, Emma drifted off to sleep in her high bed, a golden-haired angel dressed in yellow and pink.

  “Thank you for letting her stay,” Stephen said quietly.

  “She’s talked of nothing else for days,” she admitted.

  They stood looking down at the sweet curve of Emma’s cheek and curled fist, neither of them speaking for several seconds.

  “I think she likes the house,” he finally whispered.

  “You think?” Colette shook her head, a small smile tugging at her mouth. “If you keep spoiling her like this,” she warned, “she’ll be impossible at thirteen.”

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” he answered in a low voice.

  Colette turned to face him, stunned anew that he planned to be around for Emma’s adolescence. That the permanence of fatherhood didn’t seem to deter him at all. “You’re good with her,” she said softly. “Better than I expected.”

  “You do tend to underestimate me, don’t you?” he answered, without lifting his gaze from their slumbering child.

  She didn’t answer, uncomfortably aware that he probably spoke the truth.

  “I’ve always liked children,” he continued, leaning to draw the blanket up over Emma’s curved shoulder. “And Emma’s particularly easy to like.” His big palm cupped the back of her head before he straightened and strode silently toward the door.

  He exited the room without another word, and Colette felt her perceptions of him shift yet again. After watching him with Emma, his harsh edges softened by the incongruity of a child at his knee and a doll in his hand, she could no longer cast him in the role she’d formerly assigned to him.

  For beneath the veneer of international playboy and ruthless businessman lurked a layer she’d never suspected. A layer Emma could rely on and trust.

  A layer perhaps she could trust as well.

  CHAPTER TEN

  STEPHEN could hear Colette behind him as she closed Emma’s door with a soft click. Uncomfortable with the frustrated desire he always, always felt for her, he strode down the muffled carpet of the hall toward the staircase. Though he’d been able to keep himself in check these past few weeks, doing so had proven to be a special kind of hell.

  No torture the Whitfield family had ever devised came close to the hours he’d spent with Colette without touching her. Without kissing her.

  “Where’d you learn to interact with children?” she asked, stopping a couple of treads above the base of the staircase.

  He turned to find her face at eye level with his, far closer than he’d anticipated. A few strands of hair had slipped their moorings to curl around her jaw, and the urge to tuck them back into the neat coil at her nape roared through him with the force of a hurricane.

  Knowing that he didn’t dare touch her sent a sharp spike of irritation through his gut and sharpened his tone. “Why? Because a man like me shouldn’t know the first thing about how to behave around his own daughter?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise while her skin blushed a soft, delectable pink. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she protested.

  Feeling unreasonable, and not caring, he bit out, “No? Then how did you mean it, exactly?”

  “Don’t bark at me for being curious, Stephen.” Her hand had tightened against the banister, her knuckles and fingertips white even though her voice remained calm. Oh, yes. That was his Colette. Eternally in control and calm. It made him want to shout at her, to shake her, to kiss her until ragged emotions made her hands and voice and flesh tremble. “Some men can be uncomfortable around kids,” she continued, unaware of the firestorm of longing, of pure, unadulterated want simmering beneath the surface of his skin. “And the world knows that caring for a child is hardly innate for a man who spends all his time—”

  “I’m not that kind of man,” he snapped.

  Though she stiffened, she didn’t back down. “It still doesn’t mean you’ve had experience with children.”

  He glared at her for a moment, before biting out, “My mum’s family is big. Dozens of cousins all over the place, and most of them with a couple of kids apiece. Between holidays and Sunday dinners spent tending children while the adults gossiped, I probably have more experience than you.”

  She stared at him, her mouth slightly parted and her eyes wide with shock.

  “What?” he sneered. “Not convinced? Shall I tell you about all the nappies I changed, the bottles I heated, the—?”

  “No,” she rushed to say. “It’s just … I have a hard time picturing you as the family nanny.”

  “Only because you can’t see beyond your own prejudices,” he ground out.

  “I don’t—”

  “You do. You look at me and see a playboy.” Defensiveness and righteous anger flared hot within his chest. “A selfish, self-centered man incapable of commitment or fatherhood.”

  “No,” she protested. “I don’t. Not anymore. I mean, I did at first, but I’m beginning to realize I never really knew you at all.”

  “And whose fault is that?” he asked.

  When she stared at him, stunned and silent, he turned
on his heel and strode toward the wing that housed his master suite.

  “Certainly not mine!” she finally blurted, clambering down the remaining steps and hurrying after him. “You’re the one who never told me anything about yourself beyond the most superficial of details!”

  He stopped at the door to his bedroom, turning to face her with fury tightening his lungs. “Would you have been interested if I had?”

  She stiffened as if he’d slapped her. “How can you even ask such a thing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He leaned over her until she arched her neck to maintain the distance between them. He could see the fragile beat of the pulse in the side of her neck, the dilated pupils of her wide, distressed eyes. Knowing he’d disconcerted her made him viciously, irrationally glad. “It could be that talk about your past was strictly off-limits,” he reminded her in a low, menacing voice. “Or have you conveniently forgotten about your demand for no commitments, no strings, and no questions?”

  She pressed her mouth shut to conceal its faint hint of trembling.

  “You wanted nothing beyond hours of mind-altering sex and culinary abandon,” he continued cruelly. “Which I provided. Without complaint.”

  A crimson blush streaked northward from her neck. “We didn’t share a child then.”

  The air between them heated with his frustration, his banked arousal, and an anger he didn’t dare analyze. “Are you telling me that now we have Emma you’re suddenly going to tell me all about your past and answer all of my questions?”

  Hazel eyes flared in alarm before she shuttered them behind a sweep of lashes. “Is that what you want?”

  I want a hell of a lot more than that, sweet. “You can’t even stomach the idea of kissing me again. Why would I be foolish enough to think you’ll answer questions you’d never answer before?”

  “Because it’s your right to know about the mother of your child.” She swallowed, her hazel eyes filled with a dizzying combination of guilt and fear. “You deserve to ask any question you want, no matter how difficult it might prove for me to answer.”