Convincing her to marry him seemed impossible at the moment. Kristin wanted not just someone who loved her, but someone she could love. And he had no idea how to accomplish that feat.

No woman he'd dated had ever loved him. Not for himself, anyway. Kristin had come closest to caring. But he'd ruined all that ten years ago. He wasn't sure what he could do to make her start to care again. But he was going to do his damnedest to figure it out.

"Time to go, Flick," Kristin said. "Say good-bye to Gramps."

Max watched as Flick clung to her grandfather's neck. "Get well, Gramps," she said. "So we can go home."

Home. If Max got his way, she was already home. He suddenly realized that, while he'd worried how Kristin would make the transition from living in Miami to living in London, he'd never considered Flick's feelings on the subject. He was going to have to readjust his thinking to keep her in the loop.

Max was jolted from his reverie when he felt a small hand grasp his. He looked down and found his daughter looking up at him expectantly.

"Ready to go, Dad?"

"Sure," he said. "K?" he said, glancing in her direction. "You ready?"

She was brushing her father's hair back from his brow. Both of them looked embarrassed to be caught in such a tender pose. "Yes, I'm ready," she said, dropping her hand. "Remember what I said, Dad."

He made a face but didn't reply. Max would have put money on the fact the old man would be in speech therapy starting tomorrow.

"Where to now?" Max asked as they left the rehabilitation center.

"Your mother invited Flick and me to stay at the Blackthorne mansion in Berkeley Square, and I've accepted. We've already been there to see our rooms."

Max barely kept his mouth from dropping open in surprise. Kristin voluntarily accepting the hospitality of the Mean Witch? The world was turning on its ear.

She flushed, so he knew she was aware of how peculiar her decision seemed.

"If we stay with the duchess, Flick can have her own room and I'm still close enough to get to her if she wakes during the night," Kristin explained.

He shot a worried look at Flick, then looked back at Kristin and asked, "Does that happen often? Her waking up, I mean?"

"She sometimes has nightmares."

Max imagined his child having nightmares. And him not being there to hold and comfort her. "I think I'll ask my mother if I can stay with you in Berkeley Square."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Kristin said.

"Why not, Mom?" Flick asked plaintively.

Kristin made a face at Max.

Max realized he'd better start recognizing the fact that his daughter was listening whenever he spoke and wasn't shy about sharing her opinions of whatever he said. In this case, her sentiments helped him, but that might not always be the case.

"I want to spend as much time as I can with Flick," he said. And you. "There's plenty of room in that huge old place."

"That 'huge old place' is a magnificent home," Kristin said.

"And really, really old," Flick added.

Max laughed. "The Blackthorne mansion dates back to the mid-eighteenth century, I think around 1754."

"When we visited Gram there, Mom and I got really good scones at a place around the corner," Flick said.

"Don't forget the delicious tea," Kristin said.

Max frowned, trying to think of which place they might be talking about, then said, "Oh, yeah. Now I remember. The Gunter Tea Shop. It was originally called Gunter's."

"It's really old, too," Flick said.

"You're right about that," Max said with a laugh. He couldn't believe how much he was enjoying this simple conversation with Flick and Kristin. But he could already feel both of them slipping away. His exhibition match was just around the corner. Two weeks after that, Kristin and Flick would be returning to the States.

It didn't seem like nearly long enough to make Kristin fall in love with him. Especially considering how long it had taken him to fall in love with her. Of course, there had been the age difference back then. He tried to think what it was about Kristin that had made him start to care for her. Maybe he could emulate that behavior with the same result.

Listening. Helping. Caring. Simple things that had made him love her. All easier to do if he was staying with Kristin and Flick at his parents' Berkeley Square mansion.

It was time he got started.

26.

Kristin 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?"