by Anna Durand
My mouth opened, but for the longest moment I couldn't make any sound come out. "You know I can't give you what you want."
"I know you think you can't — or think you don't want to." He lifted my hand to lips and peppered kisses over my knuckles, his expression going soft and… affectionate. "We could be happy together, I know we can. Please let yourself think about the possibility, instead of dismissing it out of hand."
Pulling in a deep breath, I exhaled it slowly. "I'll consider your request."
"That's all I ask."
He set my hand on my leg and withdrew his hand, leaving me bereft at the sudden loss of contact. I'd grown dangerously addicted to his touch, his kiss, his unbelievable talent for tempting into doing things I shouldn't do. Worst of all, he was tempting me to break rule number two.
No love.
I let my gaze wander to his face. The sweet little smile on his lips. The faint lines around his eyes, lines of happiness. I relaxed into the soft leather of the seat, my head lolling to side so I could gaze at him a little longer. His profile entranced me, and when he turned his head to smile at me, I smiled back. Feeling girlish. Frivolous. Ridiculously happy.
I swung my head to the front, fixated on the road ahead and the yellow line speeding past us.
Dear God. I was falling for him.
Chapter Twenty-One
On this morning, I sat at my desk in the corner of the living room, swiveling my chair side to side, struggling to concentrate on my job search as I scoured websites for any kind of openings. For the past three days, Aidan and I had explored the western U.P. during day trips in his rented Mustang. We visited waterfalls and inland lakes, Lake Superior beaches and state parks, historic copper mines and little museums in between finding remote places to drive each other mad with our shared ardor and fantastic orgasms. He made me come hard, yes. But he also made laugh, made me feel appreciated and understood, and not once did he pester me to tell him why I wouldn't marry him.
Twice during our day trips, he received calls from Seona that left him agitated. I wouldn't tell him everything about me yet, so I couldn't ask for details about what hold she had on him. Why she was demanding money. Why he might give it to her, if he had the money.
When we'd reached the top of Brockway Mountain on the first day of our sojourns, Aidan had marveled at the panoramic view of the tip of the Keweenaw. Lake Superior stretched along one side of our view and the woods sloped down in front of us. Behind us, the shuttered gift shop stood silent and rather melancholy, but I couldn't stop smiling as I pointed out an ore boat on the lake and an eagle soaring above our heads.
Leaning against the concrete wall at the cliff's edge, Aidan had informed that "this view is nice, but it can't compare to seeing Loch Leven from the top of Beinn a' Bheithir."
"You're not speaking American, are you?"
He winked and grinned. "Gaelic. It's the name of a mountain near Ballachulish."
"Do you climb mountains?"
"No, I — " He turned his face away from me, swallowing visibly. "Not anymore."
I took his hand to settle his arm over my shoulders. Tucked against his body, I slipped my arms around him. "I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."
"Not your fault." He wrapped his arms around me, burrowing his face into my hair, drawing in a long breath as if the scent of my shampoo could sustain him. "Why marry a man you didn't love?"
"Why does Seona expect you to pay her off?" When he said nothing, I tilted my head up to look at him. "See, we both have secrets. I don't expect you to tell me all of yours."
"And I'd be a hypocrite if I expected you to answer my question. You're right. No more questions about your marriage." He kissed the top of my head and smiled. "Why don't we get back to our drive?"
Just like that, he'd morphed back into happy Aidan. Seeing him in pain, even for a few minutes, had set off a twinge in my chest that reminded me of my revelation in the car. I had to be wrong. I wasn't falling for this man I'd known for a week. Still, our acquaintance seemed to be turning into a whirlwind… romance.
Back in the present, my arms began to ache. I suddenly realized I'd been hovering my hands over the keyboard for so long my muscles had started to complain about it. Lowering my hands onto my lap, I stared at the computer screen. Since getting up at six-thirty this morning, I'd found exactly zero postings for which I was qualified. Partly because my eyes kept swimming out of focus and my thoughts kept wandering.
Hard to focus when I kept thinking about Aidan.
We'd indulged in quite a few erotic encounters, in various spots along our journey. I'd learned I was as insatiable as he was — and that I loved trying new things with him. Nothing kinky, just scorching sex in every position imaginable, and in the upcoming days, maybe a few neither of us had thought of yet.
Rubbing my eyes, I groaned in frustration. Letting a hot guy drive me to distraction was idiotic. Time to suck it up, banish thoughts of him and especially thoughts of my confused feelings for him, and concentrate on the task at hand. Find a goddamn job. I'd neglected my job search for three days, too caught up in Aidan to think about anything else. I set my fingers on the keyboard and typed salient phrases into a job search site. Ten minutes later, I'd found one listing for a part-time, seasonal secretary — in remote Alaska. And it paid minimum wage. No stipend for moving expenses either.
My mind traveled back to Aidan. Those amazing lips. His skillful hands working my slick flesh. His cock filling me up and —
"What are you doing?"
I yelped and jerked, twisting my head around to find Aidan behind me, bending over with his head near mine. A faint smile curved his lips and that playful gleam twinkled in his eyes.
"Don't sneak up on me," I said, and lightly slapped his arm. "You scared me half to death."
"At least it was only halfway."
"Not funny." I grumbled out a sigh. "Why are you spying on me?"
"You seemed absorbed by whatever it is you're doing."
"And scaring the shit out of me sounded like a good plan?"
"Didn't mean to frighten you."
I swiveled my chair sideways to the desk, laying one arm on the desktop. He stayed right there, bent at the waist, his face a foot from mine and his smile turning wry.
"You can tell me," he said. "Whatever it is. I'm good at keeping secrets."
Gazing into those crystalline blue eyes, I was tempted to tell him everything. Keeping secrets gave me heartburn at best and turned me into a neurotic mess at worst. For five years, I'd concealed a big, damning secret. Sharing non-secret — something I simply hadn't told him yet, something that couldn't get either of us thrown in jail — might ease a bit of the stress.
Aidan placed the pad of his thumb on my lower lip and pressed down. My lip popped free of my teeth. I sat up straighter, clearing my throat, surprised to discover I'd been biting my lip.
"Don't be anxious," he said. "I won't think less of you, no matter what it is."
I glanced at the computer, clicked a mouse button to bring up the job search screen, and faced him again. As I drummed my fingernails on the desktop, I realized I was biting my lip again and released it a second before his thumb would've touched my mouth. He withdrew his hand. I groaned in resignation. "I've been looking for a job. I'm unemployed and have been for months. My savings will run out very soon and I have zero prospects for employment."
One of his eyebrows hiked up. "That's your shameful secret?"
"It's not a secret. I hadn't gotten around to tell you is all. 'I'm an unemployed pauper' isn't something I tell everyone I meet."
"You don't need to be ashamed of having no money."
"I'm not ashamed of being poor. Not being able to find a job, that's another thing altogether." I drummed my fingers on the desk. "I have a master's degree in library science but I've never had a job that required it, even when I worked in a library. Today, I'm considering a part-time secretarial position in Alaska. It's nobody's fault, but it sucks and it's demoralizing.
Not the kind of thing I'm dying to share with the world."
Aidan dropped into a crouch beside me. "I know how you feel."
"Guess you do."
"Why not ask your family for help? Surely, they'd be glad to step in."
"The man who balked at accepting his brother's help is encouraging me to accept the aid of my family."
"I'm twice a hypocrite, eh?" He shrugged and sighed. "Donnae mean to be. But you did trick me into taking Lachlan's charity so…"
"I owe you a personal humiliation of my own?" I puckered lips, struggling not to smile. "We sure have a strange relationship, don't we?"
"But it works for us, doesn't it?"
"Suppose it does."
He stared at me for a few seconds, the intensity of his gaze making my skin itch. Finally, he said, "You called this a relationship."
"No, I — " Oh damn. I had. "I meant in the general sense, not like we're in a relationship."
"Ah, of course." His gaze flicked to the computer screen and back to me. "The job search seems to be making you tense."
"Duh."
He rested a palm on my thigh, skating it up to the juncture of my hip. "I can ease that tension and make you very relaxed."
"Um…" Flashback alert. "Thanks, but I need to focus on my job search right now. I can't keep living here past next month unless I find work. You'd be better off hunting for a financially solvent American girl."
"Don't care about money." Aidan moved his hand to my inner thigh. "I'm bankrupt, remember? We have more in common than I knew."
"Oh great. Two broke people." All of a sudden, keeping secrets from the man who'd given me mind-blowing orgasms and treated me with nothing but kindness seemed idiotic. I couldn't believe I'd worried about telling him I was jobless. Maybe I could share the rest.
No, not yet.
"Listen," I said, "can this stay off the MacTaggart grapevine for the time being?"
"I won't tell. You can trust me."
"You know I do." I'd told him as much, and hell, I must've trusted him from the start. Why else would I have let him do the things he'd done to me? I'd loved every second of it, even while anxiety about this whatever-it-was between us gnawed at my gut.
He leaned in, his face near mine, those kissable lips millimeters from mine. "My offer to distract you is an open one. Take me up on it anytime."
The hairs all over my body shivered erect from the heat of his gaze and the sultry tone of his voice, not to mention the nearness of his body. We'd had sex quite a lot, but this seemed like far more than a flirtatious offer for a roll in the hay.
"Maybe later," I said.
"Aye," he said, his voice a sensual rumble. "Later. I'm always ready for you."
"Likewise."
He traced a fingertip down my jaw. "Feel free to sneak into my room in the dead of night."
My traitorous body thrummed with excitement at the possibility. "Since you've been sleeping in my bed, that's pretty much a certainty."
"Tonight, I'll sleep in the guest room." His fingertip skimmed across my lips. "Just so you can sneak in and crawl under the sheets with me. We've never made love in the dark."
Hard to breathe. Hard to move. Hard to think or focus on anything except his lips. I imagined tiptoeing into his bedroom at two a.m., slipping beneath the sheets, crawling down his long body to close my mouth around his penis while it swelled into a raging erection.
"You like the idea," Aidan said.
I sank into my chair. "Oh yeah, I really do."
"Then I'll be waiting for you tonight." He brushed his lips against mine, straightened, and said, "I'm having a shower. Care to join me?"
I needed a couple seconds to shake off my erotic fantasy. "Not this time."
"My sister's coming tomorrow, so this may be our last chance to rattle the house."
"As much as I'd love that, I can't. Gotta continue the fruitless job search."
"You'll find something eventually." He kissed the top of my head. "I believe in you."
"Thanks." I believe in you too, I wanted to say. For some reason, I couldn't speak the words. They sounded too intimate, too much like something a woman in love might say.
Aidan padded off toward the bathroom.
I couldn't keep from thinking about him in the shower. Naked. Wet. Muscles flexing. Water cascading over his shoulders and down his chest and back. I could run my hands over that body and lave every inch of him with my tongue, as I'd done so many times before. Couldn't get enough of it — of him.
The doorbell rang.
I jumped. My hand flew to my chest as the doorbell sounded again. I hurried across the living room and swung the door open.
Gavin frowned at me. "Why aren't you answering your phone?"
Chapter Twenty-Two
"My phone?" I stared at my brother, all six-foot-one of him, slightly cowed by the stern expression on his face. Pale gold eyes bored into me, demanding answers. I ratcheted my spine straight, squared my shoulders, and met his gaze head-on. "I've been busy."
Since Aidan and I had been on daily day trips out into the wilds of Upper Michigan, we'd likely gone out of cell range a lot of the time. Plus, I'd been a little distracted by my new companion. That body. Those hands. Those lips. I lost track of everything else whenever he took my body, whispering Gaelic phrases in my ear while he drove me to the heights of ecstasy.
Oh lord, Aidan. I glanced at the hallway, down which the sizzling Scot had disappeared a little while ago, heading for the bathroom. I couldn't hear the shower running. And more than anything in the entire universe, I did not want to explain Aidan to my brother.
Gavin squinted at me with stoic disapproval, the way only an ex-military man could. "Are you going to tell me or do I have to tell you?"
"Tell you what?"
He angled toward me a smidgen, still squinting. "I talked to Tara."
Cold rushed through me, but I fought to camouflage my discomfort. I hadn't asked Tara not to tell Gavin about my house guest, hadn't occurred to me I should. Feigning innocence, I asked, "What'd she say?"
Lips compressed, he hissed a breath out his nostrils. "You're living with a foreign guy."
"I'm not living with him." My fingers ached, probably because I was gripping the door knob like the whole house might float away without me holding it in place. "His motel room was damaged by a burst pipe and he couldn't find anywhere else to stay."
"You've got a strange man in your house, not a stray puppy."
My mouth fell open, but no words emerged. My brain couldn't piece together a coherent syllable, much less a whole sentence.
Gavin took hold of my shoulders and turned me sideways, then strode into the house.
Mandy and Misty came tearing through the dog door, made a beeline for Gavin, and leaped up on him with such glee that he staggered backward a step. As the puppies slopped their tongues on any exposed skin they could reach, he tried to calm them with a hand on each of their heads. After a moment, they returned their front paws to the floor, content to have their heads scratched.
Kneeling to pet the furry girls, Gavin leveled his gaze on me again. "I don't like this one bit, C."
I let Gavin get away with calling me C because he was my big brother and big brothers got special dispensation. I would've hated it if anyone else called me that.
Shutting the door, I folded my arms over my chest. "I'm a grown woman, Gav. I can do whatever I want, without your permission."
"Without any sense either."
The puppies jerked their heads up, ears pricked, and took off for the hallway.
I would've preferred to believe they got a sudden urge to bounce around on my bed and ball up the quilt so they could pounce all over it. Unfortunately, I'd heard the faint click of the bathroom door opening. The puppies had taken off to lavish their attentions on Aidan.
Panic iced through me. Overbearing, ex-Marine brother meets hot Highlander who's ravishing his little sister on a regular basis. Nothing good could come of this.
&nb
sp; I snagged Gavin's arm and tried to pull him toward the door but he wouldn't budge, solid and immovable as a two-ton granite statue.
"Please," I said, "let's go outside and talk. It's a beautiful day."
His eyes narrowed again. "What don't you want me to see?"
And of course, that's when Aidan sauntered out of the hallway half-naked and damp, a towel in one hand.
I clamped my lips between my teeth, wincing.
Gavin turned around, coming face to face with my house guest. His eyes seemed to go flinty, narrowed to the merest slits and zeroed in on the Scotsman. My brother didn't fist his hands, but his fingers tensed and curled toward his palms just enough to convey his desire to throttle someone. Probably me. Maybe Aidan too.
"Hello," Aidan said, his smile friendly and wide.
My brother clenched his jaw. His gaze darted from Aidan to me.
Aidan had donned his low-slung jeans but he wore no shirt. His bare chest glistened with lingering dampness from his shower. His wet hair was wild, and when he lifted the towel to scrub his head with it, his hair got even wilder. The trail of hair down the middle of his chest tapered into a line that dived beneath the hip-hugging waistband of his jeans, like an arrow pointing straight to his privates.
He couldn't have looked more like a sex god if he'd tried.
My brother lodged his hands on his hips. "Who the hell are you?"
"Aidan MacTaggart." The Scot held out a hand to my brother. "And you are?"
Gavin glanced at Aidan's hand, his lip curling an eensy bit. "I'm the Marine who's about to kick your ass from here to Mexico."
That did it. I stomped between the two men and rounded on my brother. "Stop acting like a caveman. Aidan is not the enemy and I can take care of myself, thank you very much." I leaned toward him and whispered, "Remember who took care of you after Mom and Dad died."
At the mention of our parents, the anger evacuated his body. He pinched his forehead between his thumb and forefinger, sighing as if the weight of the world resided on his shoulders alone. It had been a low blow, I knew, but all I could think of to defuse the situation.