Invincible (25 page)

K
ristin couldn't believe how easily Max had gotten himself invited to stay at his mother's residence in Berkeley Square. The impressive, three-story house, which faced the park at the center of the square, had been designed by the distinguished eighteenth-century architect, Robert Adam. It had been owned by many famous personages as it passed in and out of the possession of various Dukes of Blackthorne through the years.

“What a wonderful idea, Max!” the duchess exclaimed. “It makes perfect sense for you to stay here.”

Kristin shouldn't have been surprised that Max's request to stay at the mansion had been received so well. She knew Bella was desperately hoping for a fairy-tale ending to their love story.

“You can stay in your old room,” the duchess said. “I don't believe it's changed much since you were a boy. The original bed is large enough to accommodate you, as I recall.”

The “original bed,” Kristin discovered, was a monstrosity with an eight-foot high headboard and a
gruesome scene carved in the footboard. The first thing Max would have seen when he woke up each morning was a knight cleaving another knight in half with an ax. Kristin couldn't imagine letting a child sleep there. Max said it had been his bed since he was five and had gotten a room of his own, and he obviously loved it.

“That bed was slept in by Henry II,” he told Flick proudly.

“Who was he?” she asked.

“A famous king of England.”

Kristin figured the duchess must be positively salivating at the idea of her and Max sleeping in that royal bed. But nothing was going to happen. Kristin would make sure of that.

She planned to keep her distance from Max while he was staying under the same roof. She didn't want to end up hurt any worse than she already had been. It had been awkward, to say the least, when Max's girlfriend showed up at Hyde Park this morning. Kristin considered the whole episode a wake-up call, to remind her who she was dealing with.

A rogue. A man who never followed the rules. A man who took what he wanted when he wanted it. A man incapable of deep emotional relationships. Although, she didn't really blame Max for his inability to love.

Kristin knew how often he'd reached out to his mother in his teens and been rejected. It had never occurred to her until this very moment, but his relationship with his father must have been even worse. Max had never even had an expectation of seeing Bull show up at a match.

Kristin wondered just how many of the women Max had dated had considered him to be a deep pocket and a great lover, rather than a man in need of love and succor? No wonder he had no idea how to give or accept love.

Yet he'd offered friendship—and support—to a lonely girl. And he'd been faithful to that friendship until she'd pushed him out of her life. All because she hadn't been willing to believe that he truly cared for her.

Max might not be able to love, but you're unable to trust. Maybe you should take a look at the pot before you start calling the kettle black,
a voice inside her head chided.

She missed Max's friendship. If they were going to have to parent together, and it seemed they probably would, maybe that was the place to start. Kristin had to admit, it had been nice to have Max's help to cajole—or coerce, to use Flick's word—her father into attending speech therapy sessions.

Flick loved having her father around. She clung to his hand when they were walking or to his neck whenever he sat in a chair, as though she expected him to disappear if she didn't have hold of him.

Kristin knew she was going to have a great deal of trouble with Flick when they left London—and Max—behind and headed back to Miami. Her daughter was becoming more and more emotionally attached to her father. It was easy to see why.

Max listened raptly when Flick spoke. He catered to her every whim, something no parent could afford to do for long without spoiling a child. Kristin hadn't said
anything to Max so far, because she didn't think he was going to be around for long. But if he were ever to share custody of Flick with her, she would need to deal with the problem.

Meanwhile, Max and Flick were basking in each other's company. And in each other's adoration.

Kristin didn't think the word was too strong for what Flick felt for Max. It was only tonight, when he was tucking Flick into bed for the first time, that Kristin saw what could only be described as adoration for his daughter on Max's face.

“This is the neatest bed ever,” Flick said, gazing up at the blue silk canopy that covered the bed she was lying in.

“Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?” Max asked as he sat down beside her on the bed.

“Daddy,” Flick said in a reproving, singsong voice. “I've been reading since I was four.”

“Too bad for me, I guess,” Max said.

Kristin could see he was disappointed.

“Have you read
Winnie-the-Pooh
?” he asked Flick.

“A long time ago.”

“How about the Harry Potter books?”

“I read them all last year.”

“What are you reading now?” Max asked.

“I just finished
Treasure Island
.”

“How did you like it?”

“It was kind of boring in the beginning. Then it was okay.”

Max laughed. “I think I had the same reaction when I read it. What are you going to read next?”

She glanced at her mother and said, “I want to read the Stephenie Meyer books. You know, the ones about the vampires and the werewolves. Mom says I'm too young and that I might have more nightmares.” She leaned in close to Max and said in a voice she didn't think Kristin could hear, “I've read Mom's Stephen King books, and they didn't give me nightmares, so I don't think Stephenie Meyer is going to be so bad.”

Max had shot a look of admiration for his daughter at Kristin, who'd simply shaken her head in an attempt to keep him from encouraging Flick to flout her mother's rules.

The mixture of Flick's intelligence and her youth was something else Max was going to have to learn to balance.

He'd responded to Flick's admission with pride in her ability to read, when it also deserved concern that Flick might be reading about subjects that could confuse or frighten her, long before she was old enough to understand them.

Max listened with patience as Flick said the brief prayer Kristin had taught her, ending with, “God bless Mom and Gramps and—”

Flick stopped herself and asked earnestly, “Do you mind if I ask God to bless you, Dad?”

Kristin watched Max swallow hard before he said, “That's fine with me, Flick.”

“Okay. God bless Dad and Sissy and Rita and Ralph. Sissy is my cat,” she explained, “And Rita and Ralph are my goldfish. They're staying with my friend, Sally. Oh, and God bless Gram and Emily and Smythe and Cook and Mrs. Tennyson.” She glanced over at Kristin and asked, “Have I forgotten anyone, Mom?”

“I think that's everyone, sweetheart,” Kristin said.

“Then Amen,” Flick finished.

“Amen,” Kristin and Max said together.

“Can you tuck me in, Dad?” Flick asked.

Max pulled the blankets up under Flick's arms. When he rose, she instructed, “You have to go all the way around.”

Max tucked the blanket around her small body, down one side, around her toes, and back up the other side, then said, “How's that?”

“I feel safe now,” she said.

Max shot Kristin a look, but he didn't ask the question she saw in his eyes:
Safe from what?

“Goodnight, baby,” Max said.

“I'm not a baby,” Flick admonished.

“Right. Goodnight, Flick.” He leaned over, hesitating as though waiting to be reproved by his daughter, before he kissed her gently on the forehead.

She grabbed his cheeks with her hands and pulled him down to her, turned his face in her hands and flicked her eyelashes against his cheek. When she let him go, she grinned and said, “They're butterfly kisses, Dad.”

Max cleared his throat before he said, “Thanks, ba—Flick.”

“Can I have the light on, Mom?” Flick said anxiously.

“Sure. I'll turn it out after you're asleep.”

“Would you check the closet again, Mom?”

Kristin went to the closet and opened it and moved aside the clothes to make sure nothing was hiding there.

“And under the bed?”

“I'll check for you,” Max said.

“I want Mom to do it,” Flick said quickly.

Kristin saw that he was hurt that Flick didn't trust him. Apparently, Flick's fear was greater than her desire to please her new father.

“Are the windows locked?” Flick asked.

“We're on the second floor,” Kristin reminded her.

“Would you check anyway, Mom?”

Kristin crossed to the windows, shoved the curtains aside and struggled to open each one without success. “They're locked tight.” She crossed back to Flick and leaned down to kiss her. “Goodnight, Flick.”

“Don't close the door all the way when you leave,” Flick reminded her.

“I won't,” Kristin promised.

After they left the room, Max turned to her, his voice hard and accusatory and said, “What is she so afraid of, K? Checking the closets and under the bed not once, but twice? Why does she have to be tucked in to be
safe?
Why is she afraid of the dark? What happened?”

“Let's go somewhere to talk,” she said. “I don't want Flick to hear us.”

Max shot a glance at Flick's open bedroom door down the hall. Then he gestured Kristin into his bedroom. And closed the door.

M
ax was feeling rage and helplessness. Something bad had happened to his child. And he hadn't been there to stop it. He was almost afraid to hear what Kristin had come into his bedroom to tell him. “I'm listening,” he said. “What happened?”

Kristin wandered around the room touching things. She traced the shape of a porcelain shepherd with his collie and studied the face of a Regency-era ormolu clock. He wondered if she wasn't able to speak or whether she just wasn't sure how to tell him whatever horrible thing it was that had made his daughter so fearful of the night.

“K? I have to know.”

She settled on the edge of the bed, near the violent carvings on the footboard. He wished for a sword or an ax like the ones held by those long-ago knights—any weapon that could make a bloody pulp of whoever had frightened his child.

With her back still to him she began, “Since she was seven, Flick has been attending a Swiss boarding school, but she always comes home for holidays. She was home
this past Christmas and wanted to spend the night with a new friend she'd met at Sunday school.”

She looked at him, her eyes liquid with emotion. “I couldn't see the harm in it.”

Max felt his gut tightening with fear. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest. But he had to know. “What happened?”

“The weather was beautiful. It almost always is in Miami,” she said with a sigh. “Last Christmas it was almost too warm. Flick and her friend were camping out in the family room in sleeping bags. The family left their jalousie windows open overnight to take advantage of the cool air.”

Max held his breath, waiting to hear what came next.

“A burglar came in through the window.”

“Bloody hell.”

“He accidentally stepped on Flick. She woke up and made a noise and he grabbed her to shut her up.”

Max could feel his heart squeezing with pain and fear for his daughter. “He didn't—”

She reached out to him and said, “No, Max. He didn't. But he covered her nose and mouth with his hand to keep her quiet.”

She looked at him, her eyes agonized and said, “She couldn't breathe. She thought she was going to suffocate.”

“Bloody, bloody hell.”

“The family's dog started barking and growling to wake the dead. Flick's friend woke up and screamed
and her father came running with a baseball bat. The burglar threw Flick down and slid back out through the space he'd made by removing a few of the glass louvers in the window.”

Max's hands bunched into fists so tight his knuckles turned white. “Did they catch the son of a bitch?”

Kristin shook her head. “He disappeared into the night. Ever since, Flick has been…anxious at bedtime.”

Max had only seen Flick in the daylight, when she was a vivacious and effervescent and
normal
child. Who, it turned out, was terrified of demons in the dark.

“I should have been with her.”

“I've told myself that a thousand times,” Kristin said. “There was nothing you—or I—could have done to keep what happened from happening. Because of what I do for a living, I'm a nut for security at home. But I can't very well demand equal care from every friend of Flick's. What happened to Flick…” she shrugged helplessly and said “…just happened. The chances of it ever happening again are astronomical. But the incident left her scarred.”

“Permanently scarred?” Max asked. Was his beautiful daughter going to spend the rest of her life expecting a bogeyman to jump out of the closet or out from under the bed.

“She got a lot of good counseling at school. She seemed to be fine. Until we came here. Staying at Blackthorne Abbey and then at my hotel and now here. I guess it's just too many strange places.”

“What can I do?” Max asked. “How can I help?”

“She'll be fine, Max. With love. And time.”

He crossed around the foot of the bed and sat beside her. “I want to be there to protect her, K. I want to be a father to her. What can we do to make this work?”

“The crisis is past, Max. There's no need for you to do anything.”

“What I
need
is to be there for my daughter,” he shot back. He shouldn't be surprised by the protective instincts he felt. It was how the human species had survived. “I intend to be there for her from now on. Whatever it takes.”

“Meaning what?” Kristin said, lifting a worried brow.

“Meaning that if we can't work out some sort of shared custody—”

“Don't try taking Flick from me, Max,” she warned, jumping up from her perch on the edge of the bed. She faced him like a lioness protecting her cub, her hands curved into dangerous claws and her teeth bared. “I'll fight you. With everything I am. With everything I have.”

He rose, towering six inches over her head, a dark avenging angel with broad, muscular shoulders and powerful arms. But physical strength wasn't his only—or even his greatest—advantage. “Whatever you do, it won't be enough, K. I have more money, more time, more resources.”

“I'm her mother!”

“And I'm her father.”

“What do you want, Max?”

“Marry me, K.”

“You're not a good bet, Max,” she said bluntly.

“Maybe I wasn't in the past. I can change.”

“Not fast enough,” she said even more brusquely.

“We're good together, K. Admit it.”

He saw she didn't want to. At last she said, “Yes, we're good together. In bed—”

“And out,” he finished for her.

“I think I could love you,” she continued inexorably.

The words were a balm to his heart, but when he took a step toward her, she held out a flattened hand to keep him at bay. Tears were streaming down her face, but her eyes looked fierce and her jaw was clenched.

“This isn't just about us, Max,” she said ruthlessly. “Not anymore.”

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. She was going to give him up to save her—their—daughter from him. “I can be a good father to Flick,” he argued.

“You think being a father is wielding a baseball bat at one of the bad guys. You think it's taking a child on a horseback ride. You think it's buying her clothes—”

“It
is
all those things,” Max protested.

“It's also holding a sick child's head while she vomits in the toilet, or cleaning vomit off the carpet, when she doesn't make it to the bathroom. It's listening to her whine when she's tired and having the fortitude to send her away to boarding school when it's the best thing for her.”

“How is boarding school the best thing for Flick?”
he asked angrily. “How is being away from her mother for months at a time best for our daughter?”

“I had to work to support us. A lot of times it meant being away nights and weekends. My father was busy eighteen hours a day with his tennis academy. Flick was left alone with babysitters and housekeepers. I got off work so late the only interaction I had with Flick was to kiss her forehead after she was sound asleep.”

“So quit.”

She glared at him. “You haven't heard a word I said. I have bills to pay! I need my job! I can't be home for Flick. At least at boarding school she gets to spend her days and nights with girls her own age. Girls in her same situation. When she comes home on holiday, I take my vacation days and spend every minute with her.”

“Quality time?” he said sarcastically.

“Make fun of me if you will,” she said. “It's worked for us. I'm not saying the situation is perfect. But you can see Flick is happy and well-adjusted. I did the best I could.”

“I can do better,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “I can arrange to be there when Flick comes home for dinner every night.”

“Can you?” she demanded. “Are you willing to give up a challenging and rewarding job? Willing to give up traveling the world, at least during the school year? What, exactly, are you planning to do during the day while your daughter is away at school? The dishes? I doubt it!” she snapped.

“You're being ridiculous.”

“Am I? As time goes by, and Flick goes off to college, where will you be? Home, without a life of your own, that's where!”

Max had to admit she was asking questions he'd never had to consider. Raising issues that had never crossed his mind. He was rich enough never to have needed to work. He'd done a great deal of gambling and sailing and playing polo and riding around in flashy cars with fast women in his teens and early twenties. He'd quickly gotten bored. He'd wanted to lead a life that mattered.

The CIA had been delighted to have him. He'd worked for his country for the past four years—and done some good, he thought. The undercover investigation he was involved in right now might save the president of the United States from being assassinated. If he did quit, what would he do with his life?

Being a parent was a big job, but Kristin was right. The job changed dramatically when Flick turned eighteen and left home for college and began to lead her own life.

That was only nine years from now.

He was reminded again of how much of his daughter's life he'd missed. And more determined than ever not to miss another minute of it.

“What if we just live together, without being married?”

“Live together where?” she asked. “Miami?”

“You don't have to work, K. You can come to London and—”

“My life needs purpose, too,” she said simply. “I work for the FBI. In the United States.”

“Maybe not for much longer,” he couldn't help pointing out.

She paled. “Maybe not. But until I'm forced to quit, I'm not going to quit.”

“I can support you.”

“Yes, but will you? What happens if you get bored with us, Max? What happens if another woman catches your fancy?”

“We can write a contract—”

“That your lawyers can fight in court,” she pointed out.

“I can put money in a bank account for you and Flick.”

“If we have your money, why do we need you?”

Max had never felt so frustrated. “Is that all you think I have to offer? Financial security?”

“It's the only thing I'd be willing to count on you providing.”

“You can trust me, K.”

“Based on what?”

“Give me a chance, K. Please.” He couldn't believe he was begging.

She shook her head. “I'm sorry, Max. I can't take the risk.”

“You can't keep me out of Flick's life.”

“I don't think that's going to be a problem, Max. You'll get an assignment from the CIA that takes you to Argentina or Morocco or Belarus, and we won't see
you again. Until then, the less you see of Flick, the better. I don't want her to spend her life waiting and hoping that you'll come back someday.”

“That's not fair, K,” he said quietly. “You were the one who shut me out of your life.”

She pressed her palms against her damp eyes. “Point taken.”

There was no sense arguing anymore. They weren't going to agree. Instead he said, “I'd like to play tennis tomorrow with Flick.”

She opened her mouth to deny him, he was sure, but changed her mind. “All right. What time?”

“No objection?”

“I'm sure Flick will enjoy it.”

“How about ten?”

“Fine.”

“Will you come with us?” he asked.

“You and Flick on opposite sides of a tennis court? I wouldn't miss it,” she said with a Cheshire grin.

“Why is that?”

“I expect to see your daughter kick your ass.”