"Because you did something spontaneous? Out of character?""It was an accident. I don't know why I kissed you. I apologize, and I do hope that you will try to besome sort of a gentleman and allow me to forget it ever happened. I promise, it won't happen again.Ever. Unless, maybe, I've overimbibed."

Cocking a brow, he didn't know if he should feel relieved or insulted. He leisurely dropped his gaze toher mouth before leaning into the doorway, at once suspicious. He couldn't remember a moment in hislife that she'd ever apologized to him for anything, and now he'd received two formal apologies in asmany days. He had to give her credit for brass, though, showing up here today, all alone.

But Rachel never did anything without a reason. "I thought you'd be on your way back to Ireland by now."

She peered around him and up the stairs. "I hope I'm not intruding."He took in the satchel she carried. "And I'll wager your annuity that you know well enough you'redisturbing me. How did you get out here?"

"The train takes a half hour from London. Once at the station, I hired someone from the livery to bringme. I actually came for two reasons," she forged onward."Couldn't you have waited until Monday at the office?"Her full mouth tilted at the corners. "Do you lop off the head of trespassers then?""I'm partial to red hair. If you're nice, I could spare you."

"How nice?"

His gaze dipping to her lips, he considered telling her that she asked a dangerous question. Then, looking away, he wondered what the hell he was thinking?

The butler appeared and saved him from a response. "Would the miss care for coffee or sherbet, Mr.

Donally?"

"Have you eaten lunch?" Ryan politely inquired. "You've come a long way to visit me. The least I can do is feed you before I send you back."

"Do make an exception today. Won't you?" She sighed, all pretense gone. "I really do need to talk to

you."

He could have. He'd made exceptions before when people had come here with demands on his time, but there was something about Rachel being in this house, close to him, playing nice. If they talked business, they'd argue, and, as he stood looking at her framed by the feminine walls in what used to be Kathleen's salon, as soft and pretty as any Monet subject, he discovered that he didn't want to spend this time arguing.

"What is your second reason for coming out here?" he asked.

"I wish to see Mary Elizabeth."

"You want to see my daughter?"

"Don't sound so surprised. I'm not as indifferent as you think I am, Ryan." She turned the satchel and flipped open the lid when he didn't reply. Withdrawing a worn photograph with frayed corners, she held it out to him.

It was a picture of Mary Elizabeth holding a rabbit. Ryan moved into the room and slid it from her hand. The photograph had been taken at a family gathering two years ago; he couldn't even remember the occasion. But he was surprised Rachel carried a memento of that occasion.

"Who sent you this?"

"Brianna." Rachel drew a tight breath and bent over the satchel, sounding remarkably discombobulated for a woman always so self-assured. "I have another."

He watched her ruffle through her satchel. Miss Organization was nervous as hell. His gaze touched the braid down her back. The scent of spiced apples wafted off her as if someone had dumped an apple pie on her head, and he suddenly wondered how any woman would want to smell like something someone should eat. He was still looking at her, trying to answer that question, when she glanced up and caught him staring.

Her expression froze. Then narrowed guardedly, as if she'd captured him committing some sin. His entire life, she always had a way of making him feel like a naughty altar boy who had just peeked up someone's dress.

"How are your skills at fishing?" he asked.

"Now, that all depends on what I am fishing for?"

"Fish." A slow smile tilted the corners of his mouth. "The kind that devours helpless creatures wrapped around hooks and dangled mercilessly in the water."

"The way you devour your competition?"

A little girl's voice sounded from up the stairs, and Ryan turned. He jogged up the staircase. His daughter, her hand grabbing each spindle in her careful descent, reached for him, and was in his arms when he turned to look back down at Rachel.

"Mary Elizabeth plans on catching dinner for tonight. Don't you, Mouse?"

"I likes to fish." His daughter beamed. "And ride my pony."

Ryan watched Rachel's eyes shift from his face to Mary Elizabeth's.

"This is what I do on Saturdays," he said, descending the stairs one foot at a time until he stood in front

of her. "Meet your goddaughter. Say hello, Mary Elizabeth."Mary Elizabeth plopped a thumb between her rosebud lips. Ryan's mouth touched her temple, but hiseyes remained on Rachel. "How old are you going to be soon, Mouse?" he asked his daughter, as heconsidered Rachel's apprehension.

His daughter held up four digits. "This many." She demonstrated.

Rachel could not have been more nervous.

Children were a foreign element in her life. Like lacy clothes and dainty bonnets.

And this particular child belonged to Ryan.

"She has your eyelashes," Rachel breathed.

"My eyelashes?" he laughed.

"I was always the first to admit you should have been born a girl."

"Did you hear that, Mouse?"

Mary Elizabeth giggled and buried her face against his shoulder.

"She's...truly beautiful, Ryan."

He was looking at her from over his daughter's downy head. "If you catch a fish, she'll probably be

impressed enough to talk to you.""Lord." Rachel laughed. "It's been years since I've held a rod in my hands.""Indeed?"Heat spilled into her cheeks. Flustered but determined to maintain the fragile peace they'd created, she merely smiled. "But then my skills were never on your expert level, Ryan Donally."

"Then you do have skills?"

Ryan made no move, except to touch her with eyes that looked to have the power to delve into her

thoughts and know her innermost secrets. Eyes that always had the power to make her burn. "It's been a

long time since I've played...at anything."

"What do you say, Mouse?" He turned a casually wicked eye from her to his daughter. "Should we rescue her from her life of toil?"

Rachel sighed. More likely, she needed to be rescued from them, she realized.

Chapter 3.

"T here's another one!" Mary Elizabeth squealed from her place on the loamy bank, but whatever it wasshe saw, shot up the stream when a rock splashed in the water."Maybe you shouldn't throw rocks at them," Rachel suggested."I wants the black one!"

Ryan leaned against a tree at the edge of the glade, a piece of straw between his lips, and watched Rachel tread barefoot in ankle-deep water, her copper skirts hiked to her knees and tucked in at her waist. "I think that one is already swimming for the ocean," she said, dangling a hook and worm in the water before casting the line beyond the rocks.

That afternoon, he'd almost felt sorry for Rachel when Mary Elizabeth convinced her that all the big fish were hiding in the middle of the stream-until she'd stripped off her shoes, stockings, and her bloody petticoats, and waded into the stream.

Ryan admired tenacity.

To a point.

A flash of leg showed beneath her skirts. Folding his arms, he drew in a breath and looked up at the sky, needing to find solace. Anything. She'd been inordinately cooperative and nice all afternoon.

And he'd been watching her frolic with his daughter like some bloody wood nymph. Rachel, who had always been the prim and proper, Miss Holier-Than-Thou, the closet opera singer, the girl who had thrown his toy soldiers into a hot kiln and melted them all. She'd been obnoxious or pretty, depending on his mood or hers-but he could always count on her to be nice when she wanted something from him. Like the time she'd brought him crumpets and weaseled his favorite goldfish from him.

His gaze ranged across this secluded world he owned. A river meandered peacefully through the parkland surrounding his estate. Two hundred acres of parkland surrounded his Georgian manor house. Another ten thousand acres spilled out over sheep and cow pastures. He owned three houses in England, including the one he'd just purchased in Bristol. He came home to this one because this was where he found his peace. Apart from contracts and business.

Eight years ago, he took over the board of directors at D&B. But the greatest extent of his wealth came from his investments in the iron-ore industry. He had always managed to accomplish the impossible, including the unfriendly acquisition of Ore Industries just a year ago, the most publicized of his moves in the last few years. Few people knew that Lord Devonshire had been his target. Devonshire, who had sat at the head of that board like a bloody king, who thought no one could touch him.

To stop his financial bleeding, Devonshire had negotiated a betrothal between his ward, as high-society as one could get and still breathe the air, and the Irishman who had taken Ore Industries out from beneath him.

Indeed, a betrothal with Lady Gwyneth Abbot offered something far more valuable to his future than merely a wife. Ryan wasn't marrying Lady Gwyneth for love. He'd buried that part of his soul with his wife almost four years ago.

At least he'd thought so until Rachel's declaration last night at the ball.

Except, he didn't want her here.

He didn't want to be ten years old again or sixteen or twenty-two, when he would look at her and wonder what it would feel like to shove his hands up her skirt. He didn't want to be that young again and bloody vulnerable, for he had lived too long giving no quarter. He had relied too of ten these past years on the fight in or out of the boardroom of his life to settle differences. He was too old, and it was too late to change now-even if he had wished to do so, which he didn't. He wanted Rachel to go back to Ireland.

"Mr. Donally." One of his servants approached.

Ryan pushed off the tree to take the message she delivered, then squinted looking toward the house. His solicitor stood on the terrace. "Don't go too far, Amy," he said, tossing the straw to the ground, "in case Miss Bailey should be in need of help."

"Yes, sir." She dipped into a brief curtsy.

For once, Ryan was relieved to forsake pleasure for business.

Flashes of blue appeared above the sprawl of tree limbs as a puff of wind carried the overhead cloud bank south. Rachel watched a pair of robins dart between banks of honeysuckle that seemed to be growing everywhere. Earlier a servant had approached and given Ryan a message.

"I eated a worm once," Mary Elizabeth said.

Rachel looked down at the little girl. They sat cross-legged and barefoot on the comforter, a meal of chicken sitting between them. "What did you say?"

"Fish eats worms. Birds eats worms." She shrugged as if it were perfectly natural to eat what birds and fish ate.

Rachel wondered what a sane adult might say to that.

"Was it any good?"

She squinched her face. "I likes custard better," she confided, and, on another melodramatic sigh, added, "Uncle Christopher gots a dog. Cousin Richard and Daniel gots three cats. But the cat eated Chrissy's bird, so Uncle Johnny buyed Chrissy another one. She's this many." Mary Elizabeth held up four fingers. "When I'm four I wants a puppy, but Da says no puppies cause puppies make too much noise and piddle on the floor."