Read Online An Unforgettable Rogue by Annette Blair - Free Book Online Page A

bigger, but still a halfling, Claudia, nearly a woman, but sadder somehow.
    When Bea focused on his face, she gasped and stepped back, regarding him fixedly, her curly little saffron head tipped in concentration. “Do I know you?” she asked, her small voice wobbling.
    “Do not be afraid,” Hawk said.
    To his horror, she began to cry as she climbed into Alex’s lap.
    Hawk felt the blood drain from him and went stone cold, inside and out.
    Alex wrapped Bea in love and soothing words. The little one had taken one look at him and was frightened to death. His worst nightmare come true, or one of his worst.
    “Muffin?” Alex coaxed. “What is it, Love? Why are you crying?”
    “That man made me sad. I miss my Uncle Bryce.”
    Claudia’s gaze shot to his face then, as if the scales had slipped from her eyes, and she saw him true, and understood the reason for Bea’s confusion.
    Hawk gave her a half nod, and as quick as he did, Claude covered her mouth with a hand and her eyes filled to brimming, not for the first time that day, if he did not miss his guess. Her tears overflowed and spilled onto her cheeks.
    Hawk wished he knew whether she wept with happiness, or horror, or both. At least he understood the little one’s tears. “Come,” he said, lifting Beatrix away from Alex. “Come, Pup, I am Uncle Bryce.” He hugged her close and smoothed her hair. “No more tears for missing me. I am here, Sweet. I am here.”
    Bea looked up at him, taking her lip between her teeth, her eyes wide, sobs escaping at odd moments, her expression moving from doubt to wonder. “Uncle Bryce?”
    “Bumble Bea?”
    “Uncle Bryce!” she screamed, throwing her arms around his neck. Then Claudia was laughing and hugging him, too, and all his girls, Alex included, wept openly, laughing through their tears.
    And as Alex reached for his hand, and the little one kissed him all over his face, scars and all, Hawk felt, amazingly, as if he had come home … for the first time in his life.
    Beatrix had so much to tell him that they did not move from the carriage for fully three-quarters of an hour, and even then, Alex kept telling her that she would have the rest of her life to catch him up.
    “Hello the carriage,” came a gruff, old, curmudgeonly shout from the darkness. “Where has everyone got to?”
    “In here, Uncle Giff,” Alexandra said. “Come in, out of the rain.”
    Hawk shrugged at Alex, as his stodgy old uncle squeezed into the seat opposite, so busy ordering Claudia aside that he had not yet regarded the seat across from him. And when, at length, he did, he simply furrowed his grizzled brow in bewilderment.
    Hawk kissed Bea’s little head, firm against his chest. “I am Hawk, Uncle. I survived, after all.”
    “No.”
    “Truly, though I am a little the worse for wear, as you see.”
    “No.”
    Alexandra laughed. “Quiz him, Giff. You will discover that he knows all our atrocious middle names, including the most ridiculous of our secrets. No doubt about it. He is Hawksworth.”
    “No.”
    The girls burst into laughter and began talking at once, and Beatrix practically fell from the carriage, she was so excited, then she dashed for the house.
    In the foyer’s dim light, Hawk noted that his uncle’s hair had turned the color of pewter in the intervening time, and that his manly physique may have thickened and shifted somewhat. But all in all the old boy looked fit and spry and he seemed much less a curmudgeon than Hawk remembered.
    “Well what do you know,” his uncle said, quite belatedly slapping him on the back, at long last accepting the truth before him. “The dotty old magpie isn’t five feathers short a tail, after all, but wise as an owl.” Giff grinned. “Hildy,” he called, striding to the bottom of the stairs. “Hildy, you will never guess.”
    “Alex?” Claudia asked, stepping near. “Did you find Uncle Bryce today? Or yesterday?”
    Alex smiled. “He found me … before I married