He sighed in defeat. “Next time then?”

“Next time,” Tilly appeased.

Kate chanced a glance across the counter where Tilly stood, smiling that dutiful smile she had always reserved for the sisters.

In the doorway, Lily stopped to say goodnight. “Lily,” Declan asked as the little girl showed Tilly and Kate the glow-in-the-dark stars on her pyjama shorts, “would you like to take Tilly upstairs to get your angel costume?”

A charge of anxiety chased up Kate’s spine at the prospect of being left alone with Declan after he’d just caught her admiring his fiancée.

Peppering kisses across the top of Lily’s head, Tilly passed the tea towel to Declan and led the little girl from the kitchen by the shoulders.

The kitchen fell silent.

“Did you enjoy dinner, Kate?”

Kate soaked the steak knives. “Yes, thank you.”

Silence.

“It was important to me that you came to dinner with Tilly tonight,” he started, “that I had the chance to get to know you better.”

You don’t know anything about me.

“Tilly values you very much as a friend,” he continued. “You’ve been very good to her since she arrived at St. Joan’s. I think we could even go as far to say that she considers you to be the sister she never had.”

Sister. Kate swallowed at the pointed remark. Did this powerful and formidable man think she was a threat? Could he feel his control wavering? “Yeah,” Kate said, gathering courage from deep within. “One thing gets me though…”

“What’s that?” he muttered, his back to her.

Even if her voice shook, she wasn’t going to let it stop her. “If you’re aware that we’re so close, why didn’t you call me?”

At the corner cupboard, he turned to face her. “Excuse me?”

Kate held his stare. “The night she went to hospital…”

“I have a lot on my plate, Kate. You understand that. I was trying to make sure Tilly was taken care of, and the children…”

“You put her in an ambulance and didn’t show up at the hospital until hours later when she was in recovery. Fair enough that you have kids and you don’t know anyone here yet to call on to babysit in the middle of the night, but Tilly needed somebody with her and you didn’t call me. I could have been with her so she wasn’t alone.”

He sighed condescendingly. “The ferries don’t run at night—”

“I would have called a water taxi.”

A plate screeched against another as he slid it into the cupboard. “Tilly was fine without you.”

Upstairs, Tilly laughed loudly.

Dangerously close to saying too much, Kate reached for the plug. What more could she say? The sink gurgled loudly. That she knew about Vanuatu? That, if he didn’t tell Tilly tonight, she would?

She barely had time to consider how best to broach the subject when, suddenly, he was sidling up next to her at the sink. As the hairs stood on the back of her neck, she tried not to tense under the heat of his gaze. “Whatever this emotional affair is that you think you have going with my fiancée,” he whispered, “it stops now.”