Once Touched, Never Forgotten by Natasha Tate

Author:Natasha Tate
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781408926086
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2011-08-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

EMMA must have seen their arrival through the window, because she’d already pushed the screen door open before they’d finished climbing the porch steps. She wore a voluminous yellow gown that Stephen thought looked a little the worse for wear, making her look like a bedraggled fairy plucked from a picture book.

“Momma!” she hollered, launching herself at Colette’s waist with undisguised glee. “You’re home!”

Colette staggered a bit for balance, one arm flying up to wrap about Emma’s back while her free hand shot out to grip the handrail. Stephen reached to press a steadying hand at the small of Colette’s back, and she immediately stiffened away from his touch. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said, dipping to press a kiss against their daughter’s tousled head. “Have you been a good girl this morning?”

The grinning mite nodded enthusiastically. “I drawed a picture and me an’ Janet maked lemonade. From scratch!” she crowed, a budding chef who’d obviously internalized her mother’s exacting standards for freshness.

“You remember Mr. Whitfield, don’t you?”

Emma cocked her golden head, her blue eyes tracking his features with undisguised interest. “'Course. Momma’s your en … your em …” Her tiny rosebud mouth puckered as she tried to recall the word. “What’d you say she was?”

She was supposed to be my mistress. “My employee?”

Emma beamed and nodded her head. “Yes, your employee. An’ you like princesses with blue eyes.”

A queer rush of possessiveness gripped his chest as he stared down at his daughter. How had he not recognized her as his from the very first? “Yes, I do.”

“Sweetheart,” Colette interrupted as she moved up to the top step and reached for the door. “Why don’t we go inside and fetch Mr. Whitfield some of that lemonade you made? He and I have something important to tell you.”

“'Kay, but we hafta make more,” she said as she turned to skip past her mother. “Me and Janet drinked it all.”

He and Colette trailed inside after their daughter, her excited chatter informing Janet of their arrival. “Let me do the talking,” Colette murmured beneath her breath.

Resenting her claim of control yet again, he felt irritation coil in his chest. “Why? So you can spin it in your favor?”

“So I can spin it in hers,” she hissed. “I want to minimize her shock and confusion.”

“There wouldn’t be any shock or confusion if you’d—”

“I know that,” she snapped, turning to face him with her hands knotted at her thighs. She checked over her shoulder and then lowered her voice. “But it doesn’t change the reality of here and now. She doesn’t know you are her father yet, and we can’t just spring it on her without taking time to prepare her.”

“Prepare her?” he asked, arching a brow.

She scowled, a trapped lioness protecting her cub. “She’s a child, Stephen, a sweet, innocent child, and telling her will require a bit more sensitivity than you possess.”

He felt himself bristle beneath the insult. “I can be—”

“You can’t.”

Scanning her mulish expression and the lines of worry around her hazel eyes, he realized with a sudden lurch in his gut that she was scared.

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