Free A Father At Last by Julie Mac Page B

through.”

    “Kelly Atkinson.” She used her best professional voice.

    “I need to see you again, Kelly. Can you meet me tonight after work?”

    She closed her eyes. And smiled. Even after all these years, his voice sounded just the same on the phone—all close up and intimate, as if his mouth was hovering near her ear. And he did want to see her again; in typical Ben style, he’d got straight to the point.

    But did she want to see him again, risk her feelings getting the better of her—her reckless, unthinking feelings? Think of an excuse.

    “I’m…um…going to the movies with a girlfriend.”

    “Cancel. Now, are you on for tonight?”

    Kelly picked up a pen and doodled on her desk pad, thinking furiously. Dylan had been gone two days, and it was lonely at home. An evening out would be nice.

    Nice! She wrote the word in big letters on her desk pad and then scribbled it out.
    Nice wasn’t what a date with Ben Carter would be. Dangerous, yes. Exciting, yes. But not nice.

    “Say something, Kelly.” She could almost hear him drumming his fingers against his phone.

    “Wait! I’m thinking.”

    She wrote the word ‘ NO’ on her pad. Ben was bad news. He stirred impulses in her A Father at Last
    she didn’t want stirred.

    She was supposed to be telling him he had a son. All week, she’d agonised over her decision, lying awake each night for hours, reliving the fear his words had provoked, trying desperately to hang on to logic.

    She wrote ‘ NO’ again, in bigger letters this time, then she remembered her vow to herself at the beach the other night. She’d help Ben see that his way of life was all wrong. Or at least try. She owed him that much for the friendship he’d given her through those awful years when her father was arrested and then in prison. She’d try to set him on the right track.

    “Yes,” she said.

    Ben jumped on a bus, which took him out west, where he caught a cab back into Auckland’s city centre. He got the driver to drop him downtown, just a short walk through a shopping mall to the car park building where he rented a short‐term space for one of his vehicles.

    He’d taken more precautions than he really needed to. But then, he’d never forgive himself if somehow Kelly came to any harm because of her association with him. He checked his rear vision mirror frequently as he headed north over the harbour bridge. The stakes had got a whole lot higher in the last week or so.

    The deals were bigger, so was the danger. For the moment, those scumbags in whose world he was forced to operate were quiet. But they were mad dogs and if things went wrong, they’d destroy anything or anyone who got in the way.

    He was taking a calculated risk seeing Kelly, but if he had to disappear quickly, he wanted some memories to take with him. And there was still something he needed to tell her.

    Kelly found the place easily and knew immediately why he’d chosen this spot. The private show garden was out in the country, just north of the city in an exclusive lifestyle block belt where plush, oversized houses stood in grand splendour, surrounded by five or ten acres of pasture, usually with a pony or two and maybe some sheep grazing in the paddocks.

    Here, there was almost zero chance of running into any of the crooks he dealt with—
    not like there would have been if they’d met at a bar or restaurant in the city.

    She paid an entry fee at the gate and drove down the long, liquidambar‐lined drive to a parking area beside a cute little café. The gardens and café were open to the public late on summer evenings, and there were half a dozen other cars in the car park, none of which seemed to contain Ben.

    Julie Mac

    She parked and walked over to the café to study the blackboard menu outside.
    Suddenly, he was beside her.

    She jumped. “Do you always just appear like that, from nowhere?”

    “Not always.” He kissed her on the cheek and then took her hand, his touch sparking a