One-Night Love-Child. Anne McAllister

old enough to spell the word. Meeting and falling in love with Flynn had turned them upside down. He’d come to her tiny town and changed her world.

      Flynn had made her want things she’d never dreamed of wanting—and for a few days or weeks she’d believed she could have them.

      She knew better now.

      She knew about hurt and pain and getting past them. She knew she wasn’t letting it happen again. Ever.

      “You look beautiful,” he told her. “Even more beautiful than I remember.”

      Sara’s jaw tightened. “You look older,” she said flatly.

      And harder. The lines and angles of his face were sharper, his features almost gaunt. He was still handsome, of course. Perhaps even more handsome, in a rough-edged harsher way. At twenty-six Flynn Murray had been all smooth easy smiles, pantherish grace and spontaneous Irish charm. At thirty-two he looked rugged and ragged and battle weary, like a man come home from war.

      There were surprising flecks of gray at his temples. And a scar creased his temple and disappeared into salt-and-pepper hair.

      Had some jealous boyfriend attacked him when Flynn had charmed a local girl?

      Sara wouldn’t have been surprised. Living a fast-lane life must be tougher than she’d ever imagined. How hard it must be, Sara thought mockingly, tracking celebrities all over the globe.

      Flynn’s mouth tipped ruefully and he shrugged. “You know what they say—it’s not the years, it’s the miles.”

      “And you’ve gone quite a few, I’m sure,” Sara said acidly. And he could keep right on going. She didn’t need him here now. Didn’t need him upsetting her life, her hopes, her son.

      Oh, God, Liam. A shaft of panic shot through her. He couldn’t have ignored Liam for five years just to turn up now, could he?

      “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

      And as if he could read her mind as well as disrupt her life in every other way imaginable, Flynn said, “I want to meet my son.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      SARA’S jaw set. She steeled herself against his words, his intent and, mostly, against the green magic of his eyes.

      “You’re a little late,” she said through her teeth. About five and a half years.

      “I am.” He nodded gravely. “I just found out.”

      Just found out? She blinked her disbelief. “Yeah, right.” There wasn’t enough sarcasm in the universe to flavor her response.

      But Flynn didn’t seem to notice. He was rummaging inside his jacket, pulling a small manila business envelope out of an inner pocket. He opened the envelope and extracted a dirty creased faded blue one. Wordlessly he held it out to her.

      Sara stared at it. Then, slowly, she reached out and took it from him with nerveless fingers.

      The paper looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of buffalo. She turned it over and saw at least half a dozen addresses printed and scrawled and scratched out, one on top of another. One word caught her eye: Ireland.

      That was a surprise. Six years ago he’d been delighted to be out of the land of his birth.

      “Nothing for me there,” he’d said firmly.

      Like her ancestors 150 years ago, she’d supposed. Her dad had often told handed-down stories about their own family’s desperate need to leave and find a better future for themselves. Though Flynn had never said it, she had no trouble believing it had been true of him, too.

      Now, curious about his change of heart, she glanced from the envelope to the man. But his green eyes bored into hers so intently that her own skated away at once back to the envelope.

      It had originally been a pretty robin’s-egg blue, part of a set with her initials on it that her grandmother had given her at high school graduation. Sara hadn’t had the occasion to write many letters. She still had some sheets of it left.

      But this letter she remembered very well.

      She had written it only hours after Liam was born. She had known that there was little chance Liam’s father would heed it. He hadn’t paid any attention to her previous two letters, not the first one telling him she was pregnant, not the later one telling him again in case he hadn’t got the first one.

      He’d never replied.

      She’d understood—he wasn’t interested.

      But still she’d felt the need to write one last time after Liam’s birth. She’d given him one last chance—had dared to hope that news of a son might bring him around. She wasn’t proud. Or she hadn’t been then.

      Now she was. And she was equally determined. He wasn’t going to hurt her again.

      “I didn’t know, Sara,” he repeated. He met her gaze squarely.

      “I wrote you,” she insisted. “Before this—” she rattled the envelope in her hand “—I wrote. Twice.”

      “I didn’t get them. I was…moving around. A lot. I wasn’t writing for Incite anymore. They sent it on. So did others. It kept following, apparently. But I didn’t get it. Not until last week. Then I got it—and here I am.”

      Sara opened her mouth, then closed it again. After all, what was there to say? He’d come because he’d discovered his son. It still had nothing to do with her.

      It shouldn’t hurt after all this time. She’d known, hadn’t she, that she didn’t matter to him the way he’d mattered to her. But hearing the words still had the power to cut deep.

      But she was damned if she was going to show him her pain. She crossed her arms over her chest. “So? Should I applaud? Do you want a medal?”

      He looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected belligerence. Had he thought she’d fall into his lap with gratitude, for heaven’s sake?

      “I don’t want anything,” he said gruffly, “except the chance to get to know my son. And do whatever you need.”

      “Go away?” Sara suggested because that was definitely what she needed.

      Flynn’s scowl deepened. “What? Why?”

      “Because we don’t need you.”

      But even as she said it, she knew it was only half-true. She didn’t need him. But Liam thought he did.

      “Where’s my dad?” he’d been asking her for the past year.

      If he wasn’t dead, why didn’t he come visit? Even divorced dads came to visit, he told her with the knowledge of a worldly kindergartner. Darcy Morrow’s dad came to see her every other weekend.

      “He can’t,” Sara said. “If he could, he would.” It wasn’t precisely a lie. Even though she’d believed Flynn had deliberately turned his back on them, she knew telling Liam that would be absolutely wrong. It wouldn’t be wrong to say his father would come if he could. He simply couldn’t—for whatever unknown reason. End of story.

      Fortunately, Liam hadn’t asked why. But when told at school that Thanksgiving was a family holiday, he’d wondered again why his dad wasn’t there. And then he’d said, “Maybe he’ll come at Christmas!”

      “Don’t get your hopes up,” Sara had cautioned. But telling Liam that was like telling the sun not to rise.

      “I’ll take care of it,” he’d said, and when they went to the mall in Bozeman, mortified Sara by marching right up to Santa, telling him that for Christmas he wanted his father to come home.

      Sara had been prepared for tears on Christmas morning when no father appeared. But Liam had been philosophical.

      “I didn’t get my horse at Grandma