Nathan's Child Read Free

it had the effect of stiffening her spine. “I’m glad,” she said. “He wouldn’t have been happy with me.”
    â€œBecause you were in love with me.” Nathan didn’t look as if he relished saying the words. He tossed them out as if he had to say them, had to confirm them in order to justify his presence here—and his proposal.
    â€œI was twenty-one. A very innocent unworldly twenty-one,” she added with a grimace. “A very foolish twenty-one. I’ve grown up since. I thought I loved you. Now I know better.”
    And if that wasn’t entirely honest, it was as close to honesty as she dared to get. She wasn’t about to admit that seeing him again had sent her heart somersaulting and that no one but Nathan had ever affected her that way.
    It was hormones, she told herself sharply. Sheer animal attraction. Nothing more than a normal response to his male magnetism which, let’s face it, Nathan Wolfe still had in spades.
    But it was absolutely true—what Carin had said about growing up and knowing better now. It hadn’t been love, only infatuation. She’d been enchanted by his dark good looks and his brooding intensity. Mostly she’d been swept away by his enthusiasm, his focus, his dreams and aspirations.
    In her circumscribed world all the men she met were like her father—moneyed, high-powered men who ran business conglomerates and whose goal in life was to preserve the family millions and make more. There was certainly nothing wrong with those aspirations, as her father was only too willing to point out to her. His success at achieving them had, after all, paid for their Connecticut estate, their beach house on the cape, her very expensive private school education, and the art and music lessons she’d wanted to take.
    Carin knew that. But it had still been refreshing to meet a man who didn’t care how many houses he had, who had dropped out of college in his sophomore year and had gone to work on a freighter. That had been the first of many odd jobs. He’d worked as a stringer for a magazine in the Far East, had taken photos on a Japanese fishing boat, had been a deck hand on a copra boat in the South Seas and had washed dishes in exchange for meals and a place to sleep in Chile.
    She had listened, wide-eyed and enchanted, to Nathan’s tales of a world she had only dreamed about. And he had told her that that’s what his life’s dream was—to see theworld, to experience it, not just read about it…or own it, he’d added disparagingly. He wanted his photos to make it real for people who could never go themselves.
    To a young woman who had never had the courage to do what she really wanted to do—who hadn’t even known what she really wanted to do—Nathan Wolfe had been a hero.
    For a week.
    Now Carin said firmly, “Trust me, I don’t love you now. You don’t need to feel any belated compunction to marry me.”
    â€œThis isn’t just about you,” Nathan said sharply. “It’s about our daughter!”
    â€œ My daughter. I gave birth to her. I nursed her. I walked the floor with her. I patched up her cuts and bruises and sang her lullabies and read her stories.”
    â€œAnd didn’t even tell me she existed!”
    â€œYou wouldn’t have cared!”
    â€œThe hell I wouldn’t.”
    â€œYou left!”
    â€œAnd now I’m back!”
    â€œWell, we don’t need you! So just go away again. Go off to Timbuktu or Nepal or Antarctica. Take your photos. Enjoy your freedom. It’s what you wanted!”
    â€œWanted,” he agreed. “Past tense. Like loved.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” she asked warily.
    â€œI mean it’s not what I want now. And I’m not leaving.”
    She stared at him. “Ever?”
    â€œIf that’s what it takes.” He had the look of his brother again. Hard and implacable. Determined to