'How dare you just walk back, take advantage of my absence, lie to my mother, walk out with my child—?'
'I wouldn't harm her!' she began heatedly, but moderated her tone as his brows drew down in an angry scowl. 'I left a clear message.' One he'd acted on immediately, apparently not even bothering to change out of the suit he'd travelled in. He couldn't really imagine that she was so depraved she'd harm a single hair on his darling daughter's golden head, could he?
'And I didn't lie to your mother. Because you hadn't told her I'd been thrown out, she assumed—'
'Then you lied by omission.' Sweetly said, he might have been talking about the weather, remarking on how wonderful it was. But Caro knew better and so did Sophie, judging by the way she went red in the face and began to bellow.
Finn rose to his feet, rocking his child in his arms, making soothing noises as he tried to pacify the overheated, over-tired infant, but his strong, angular features were stamped with contempt as he instructed, 'Pack everything up ready to put in my car. Sophie and I are leaving.' His eyes were slivers of smouldering silver, glittering at her between thick black lashes. 'You found your way here, you can find your way back.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
'We'll head straight up towards the house,' Finn directed as Caro balanced the second plastic bag on top of the hamper she'd put in the buggy. 'You can wait on the terrace with Sophie while I bring the car up. I left it directly behind yours on the drive.'
She could imagine him leaping out of the vehicle, striding around until he'd located them, and now he couldn't wait to take his daughter and get away from her!
Heading straight up and across the belt of meadowland towards the paths and lawns of the formal gardens would eventually make for easier going than the route she had taken previously. And waiting outside the house with the baby while he went on his own down the long, long drive to bring his car up made a lot of sense. But it also made her feel small and lost and lonely.
Would he unbend sufficiently to offer her a lift down to where she'd left her car, or would he simply leave her where she was? The mood he appeared to be in, she wouldn't put bets on him doing the former!
Thankfully, Sophie had quietened down, her hot, tear-stained little face turned into her father's shoulder, the occasional hiccup and sniffle the only remnants of her earlier bawling session.
Finn probably had the gall to blame her for the noisy outburst, Caro grouched to herself as she dragged the laden buggy over the meadow, when in reality it was all down to him, for popping up out of the blue and making the little girl over-excited when she, Caro, had got her nicely ready to nap. She really hated to think that the child had been in any way affected by the veiled antagonism between her father and her nanny.
Staring at his impressively broad, retreating back, enraged by his high-handed attitude, she rubbed the back of her hand over her perspiring forehead and both the bags fell off the buggy, leaking towels and baby cream, disposable nappies, changes of clothing and baby wipes in every direction.
Her howl of frustration brought him striding straight back to her and if she hadn't been feeling so hot and bothered she knew the ice of his eyes would have given her frostbite.
'Give that lot to me.' He held out a commanding hand, his brows knitting with dark impatience. 'There's a storm about to break, or hadn't you noticed?'
Never mind the ominously darkening sky, the thick, still stickiness of the air—the real storm was happening right inside her.
She tossed him a glowering look of sheer resentment and he said brusquely, 'Take Sophie. Head up for the house.' And he carefully placed the now sleeping child in her arms and bent to retrieve all the scattered bits and pieces.
The first drops of rain hit as she hurried along the path between the double herbaceous borders. Huge drops, falling slowly at first and then fast and furiously so that she was forced to bend almost double to prevent Sophie from getting soaked as well.
Thunder was growling and prowling around the heavy skies and Finn brushed past her, seemingly having abandoned the burdened baby buggy, took her by the waist and hustled her up the steps to the terrace, pushing her and the baby beneath the slight shelter of the eaves while he fished a keyring from his trouser pocket and opened the tall French windows.
'Get inside,' he instructed tersely. 'We'll wait the storm out here.' He disappeared back into the deluge and Caro stepped through the glass doors and into the dim and empty room.
Not quite empty, though. A battered three-piece suite, a couple of mismatched bookcases—homemade, by the amateurish look of them, out of flimsy wood—and several cardboard boxes full of things wrapped in newspaper were piled up against one wall of the high-ceilinged, elegantly proportioned room.
When they'd viewed the property for the first time Finn had looked at the unwanted remnants of someone else's life and said wryly, 'It's amazing what people will hoard, isn't it? According to the estate agent these are the things the house-clearance people wouldn't look at when the owner sold up before moving to a retirement home.'
What a long time ago that seemed. A different life. Yet it wasn't. They were different people. That was what had changed—the people they were and the way they viewed each other.
Caro shivered, her wet clothes sticking to her body, and Finn walked back through the French windows, wetter by far, soaked to the skin. He dumped the picnic hamper and the two plastic bags on the floor. 'Is there anything amongst that lot we could wrap her in?'
'A woolly blanket.' Her mouth was so dry she could barely speak. He was making her nervous. He didn't look as if he'd listen to an apology coming from her, let alone accept it. And she had the uneasy suspicion that if he hadn't needed her to hold his sleeping daughter while he rummaged in the bags for that blanket she would have been out of his house, deluge or no deluge, and splashing down the drive to her car.
Finn located the blanket and strode over to the pile of unwanted furniture, swinging one easy chair around to face the other, pushing them together to create a makeshift bed, then jerked his head in Caro's direction, not speaking to her because he couldn't— not, he feared, without snarling. And not looking at her either because he couldn't—not without wanting her.
Fortunately, there was no need to issue instructions. She joined him and gently placed Sophie on her back in the confined chair space. This close, he could smell the elusive perfume that he remembered as being the seductive essence of her, could hear the whisper of her shallow breathing.
He covered his daughter with the blanket then felt every bone in his body lock with tension when the minx at his side reached out a hand and touched his arm.
'Don't you want to know why I hung around, waiting until you came back from France?'
'Not particularly.' He stepped away and watched her hand fall back to her side. Perversely, his skin burned where her cool fingers had touched him. 'It would probably give me nightmares.'