He stepped across the room and bent low, sweeping her phone off the floor and deftly turning off the ringer. “I thought you were going to call in sick.”
She lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. “I didn’t want to lie.”
The woman was an anomaly, without a doubt. But he appreciated that about her. “I admire your honesty.”
“I wish I felt better about it being actual honesty.” She slumped forward and sighed, then abruptly stood. “I can’t go to Dublin wearing a dress that needs to see the cleaner before it sees the light of day, so I need to go back to my place and pick up some more appropriate clothes. And I’ll need my passport.”
“We’ll get something at the airport that will tide you over. There are always sweats available. And, if you’ll allow it, I’ll have Collin go by your place while we’re getting ready. He can grab your passport and bring it to the airport.”
“It won’t be easier to just have me get it and some clothes?”
“By the time you decide what to wear, what you want to take versus leave, what makeup you want and so on?” His mouth curled at the gentle truth. “To be blunt? No. It won’t be more sensible let alone easier.”
“Fine.” She dug out her key and handed it over. “And then what?”
He smiled. “Before anything? A promise.”
Her brow furrowed. “What kind of promise?”
“An easy one.” He retrieved his own phone and made a point of showing her he was turning off the ringer. “No work this weekend. No taking calls, sneaking to read texts in the bathroom, et cetera. If we’re going, we’re going all out.”
“I won’t if you won’t. Deal?”
He saluted her with his phone before depositing it in his pants pocket. “Deal. Let’s get to the airport. We’re on the front side of rush hour, but it’ll still be a solid hour to get there. We can be in the air by nine thirty and in Dublin in time for a late dinner. We’ll shop for weather-appropriate clothes first thing tomorrow morning.”
She laughed out loud, the look of joy on her face absolutely priceless. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Neither can I.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
Gathering his pants and buttonless shirt, he dressed so much as he was able and left the room without answering her, because the truth was something he couldn’t quite put into words, and to lie to her would mean setting a precedent that had historically proven all too easy to fall into where women were concerned. So he said nothing. That didn’t stop the truth from ringing through his head, though. Why was he doing this?
Because I want to.
CHAPTER NINE
RACHEL LOVED THE smell of Irish wool. Silly, she knew, but there was something different about it, like it held the warmth inherent to the few Irish natives she had met in the single hour she’d been in Dublin.
Isaac had been efficient, arranging for their flight and a car and driver to meet them at the private strip at Dublin’s international airport. They’d been whisked away to a shop where Isaac was now outfitting her against the damp chill of the Irish fall. Outside, rain fell in a singular sheet that created a steady percussion, the sound creating white noise that threatened to lull her to sleep where she stood. The shop was warm and she’d been plied with tea and biscuits as she settled in to try on the growing mountain of clothes her lover seemed to think she needed, but all she wanted to do was sleep. And see the city. And go back to bed with the man who’d brought her to this amazing place.
This whole trip seemed surreal—an out-of-body experience her logical mind couldn’t make fit. Couldn’t rationalize. The experience was one she didn’t want to make sense of, though. It was simply too incredible to let reality seep in, because reality would ruin everything.
The first thing it would dismantle would be the man at her side. She was enamored with him, more so than she had ever deemed possible and certainly more than she cared to admit. This—this...thing between them was supposed to have been her one-night, take-her-life-back stand, and it was fast developing into something more. Something she was afraid to put a name to, afraid to speak out loud, as if acknowledging it would somehow make it all disappear like a curl of smoke in the wind. Likewise, she was terrified that if she tried to hold on to it, this new and fragile and wild thing would slip through her fingers. So what was she to do?
“Did you find an emergency exit and bolt?” Isaac asked, his tone infused with a sense of humor she had only caught a glimpse of since they’d met.
The last time had been on the flight, right after the pilot advised them to buckle their seat belts as they prepared to land. She’d lost all sense of cool and scrambled to the window with childlike enthusiasm. It was, after all, Ireland—her first glimpse of the Emerald Isle up close. She’d waited a lifetime for that particular moment. Isaac had impulsively tugged her hair and told her to sit down so they could land. She had huffed in impatience and flopped into her seat, and that was when she’d seen it—that glimpse of a genuine smile that lit his face from within. As desirable as anything, or anyone, she had ever seen in her life.
That was also when she had experienced that first real awareness, when like called to like, and she saw him not as a momentary lover but as someone who could be more if he cared to be. The realization had scared her silent, the awareness acting as an anchor that weighed her sharp retort so it fell off her tongue, down her throat and into the rising abyss of remorse left by her ex-husband.
She had been grateful Isaac hadn’t pushed her as they landed, hadn’t tried to get her to own what was bothering her. Instead, he’d left her alone. Almost too much so. That he was warming to her again made her relax. Breathe easier.
“Rachel?” he called again. “Come out and show me your outfit or I’m coming in there.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she replied, more in control of herself than she’d been even seconds before. “That would cause a scandal in such a conservative country, and the last thing you want is your name in the paper.”
“I couldn’t care less,” he answered, closer this time. “You have ten seconds to come out, or I swear to you I’m coming in.”
“Would serve you right,” she mumbled, tugging at the sweater’s hem and adjusting the fit so the garment hung evenly just below her natural waist. The jeans he’d picked out for her fit like a glove, but she still needed comfortable walking shoes, a couple pairs of underwear, basic toiletries—all the things to get her through a weekend in Dublin. “Dublin,” she mused aloud.
The dressing-room curtain was yanked aside, metal rings clattering against the curtain rod, and there he stood. A smile toyed at the corners of his mouth. “If you don’t make a decision, all you’re going to see of Dublin will be the inside of this dressing room.”
“It’s a lovely dressing room,” she replied.
He pinched her ass.
She yelped.
He stepped in close and kissed her, silencing any admonishment she might have come up with.
He was thorough, exploring her mouth with leisure, even when a woman nearby cleared her throat in an obvious attempt to get their attention. The second, louder throat-clearing made her gently break away.
“Stop,” she whispered, heat burning across her cheeks. “We’re causing a scene.”
“I can only say I wish my man looked at me with such open admiration,” the woman said, eyebrows raised. “I brought the extra jumper you asked for, sir.”
“Thank you, Linda.”
The saleswoman all but melted at Isaac’s gratitude, her appreciation visibly doubling when he slipped her a twenty note. “Enjoy the rest of your shopping. Let me know if there’s anything else I might do for either of you,” she said before fading away without further comment.
Rachel took the sweater he handed her. “You’re incorrigible. And I can’t afford this sweater.”
“I told you—this weekend, all of it is my treat.”
“I don’t want you paying for everything, Isaac. If you had just let me go by my place and get some clothes, this wouldn’t be necessary.”
“It would have taken a couple hours in rush hour to get to your place and then back to the airport. Every hour we spent trying to gather belongings for a spontaneous weekend away made the trip less spontaneous and...” He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling, seemingly searching for inspiration. Or that escape hatch he’d mentioned.
“And what?” she prompted.
“And every second we weren’t in the air was a second you could change your mind.” He stepped in close and pulled her into his embrace. “I wanted this time with you, Rachel.”
She let herself relax in the circle of his arms. “I wouldn’t have gone back on my word.”
“I know that. Or, at least, now I do.”
“Because I’m here?”
“In part. But also because I’m getting to know you better.”
“True.” Leaning back so she could see his face, she waited until he met her gaze. “Thank you for bringing me.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Let me see that sweater she just brought you.”
Rachel slipped out of the one she’d been wearing and into the one he’d chosen. Sliding past him, she crossed the dressing room and stopped in front of the full-length mirror. The clothes she wore fit her exceptionally well. Curling her toes against the cold seeping through her feet from the tile floor, she worried her bottom lip. This was going to be an expensive shopping trip. The last thing she needed was to spend the money, but she didn’t want him to provide her with everything she needed, either. That wasn’t the deal. At least, not in her mind. She’d provide for herself so there was no misinterpretation about what was going on or who they were—or weren’t—to each other. But this was going to seriously damage her vacation fund.
“You look incredible, you know.”
She looked up and found Isaac’s reflection in the mirror. He still stood outside her dressing room, one shoulder leaned against the door frame as he watched her through hooded eyes.
Tugging at the sweater, Rachel shifted her attention away from him, instead taking in the fit of the jeans and the sweater’s muted colors. “I like it.”
“Then it’s yours.”
“I’ll buy it, Isaac.”
“I want to get it and whatever else you need.”
“No.” She faced him then, forcing her hands to stay relaxed while keeping her arms at her sides. “I don’t want you buying everything I want. I need to do this for myself.” She drew a deep breath. “But thank you for the offer.”
He started toward her, steps slow. Steady. Kept coming at her even when she was less than an arm’s length away. He moved her back and into the vacant dressing room beside the floor-to-ceiling mirror. And pulled the curtain shut behind them.
Rachel’s nipples pearled at the sheer dominance Isaac exuded. To maneuver her like he had, to pull the curtain shut without even looking—He wasn’t intimidating her. Not even close. What he was doing was turning her on. She shook her head and looked away, trying to keep her cards close to her chest. Never had she been the woman who found overbearing men attractive, but this man? The whole thing simply worked. She wanted to tear off his clothes at the same time he shredded hers, then she wanted to go at it like frenzied animals. In a semipublic venue. Which was so, so not her style. But he brought out that part of her, made her feel alive and sexual and emboldened to take chances the old Rachel wouldn’t have thought of, let alone suggest. He empowered her as well as celebrated her empowerment, and the realization was enough to have her gaze whipping up to meet his.
He stared at her as he worked both hands under her sweater’s hem and found bare skin. He ran his hands around her waist, then splayed them across her lower back, his fingers dipping below the waistline of the jeans until they caressed the upper globes of her ass. Thumbs followed.
“Unzip your jeans.”
“Here?” she whispered.
“Yes.” His voice had dropped an octave. Or three.
He cupped her backside the best he could without the jeans being unbuttoned and unzipped, then slipped his knee between her legs at the same time he pulled her against him. He raised her leg until her sex was pressed against his thigh, setting a rhythm—up fast, down slow, up fast, down slow—that had the knot of denim sewn in the crotch rubbing all the right places. Dipping his face to her neck, he nipped her jawline as he squeezed her ass.
It took a moment for the small part of her mind that was still functioning to realize he’d stopped directing her speed and means of riding his rigid thigh and left her to keep going with the pace he’d established. She faltered a bit at the reality, but he pulled her back into the moment when his mouth found hers, all lips and teeth and demand.
She opened to him willingly, meeting his sexual hunger with her own. She tasted him, reveled in him and demanded more. He gave her what she wanted on a soft groan.
Outside, someone coughed rather delicately. “You’re finding everything you need for your visit, ma’am?”
The saleswoman who helped us. What was her name?
Rachel broke the kiss and tried to put distance between her and Isaac, but he refused to let go of her ass. His eyes shone with twin sparks—one lust, one humor. It was the latter that stopped her, kept her silent.
“We’re fine, Linda. We’ll be out in a moment with her selections.”
Not another word, only the sound of the woman’s footsteps as she hustled away.
“You really are incorrigible,” Rachel chastised. She wiggled and pulled at his arms in her attempt to get away.
He leaned in and nuzzled the sensitive spot just below her ear. “Hearing that in such a school-matron tone is turning me on in ways I’m almost ashamed to admit.”
“Did you go to Catholic school?”
Pulling away just far enough to meet her stare, his eyebrows winged down as he gave a small shake of the head. “No. Why?”
“Because while I’m all for a little role-playing in the bedroom, I am not putting on a nun’s habit and fulfilling some odd schoolboy fantasy you’ve been harboring all these years.”
The laugh that rumbled out of his chest was rusty but pure, and the look on his face said he was as startled as she was. He coughed and then cleared his throat. “I’ll remember that about the role-playing.”
“But you’re clearly not denying the nun-in-the-habit fantasy.”
“Just keeping the mystery alive.”
She snorted rather indelicately. “We’re so new to each other that it seems there’s more mystery than established fact between us.”
Isaac sobered but didn’t say anything. Instead, he removed his hands from her pants and stepped back, looking her up and down before his attention rested on her eyes. “True,” he said softly. “But mystery’s death most often comes at the hands of truth.” He pulled back the curtain and motioned for her to go first. When she reached the dressing room doorway, though, he shot his arm across her path and stopped her in her tracks. “I’d rather let the mystery live a bit longer than escort it to its death by laying my sins on the table for your perusal.”
She didn’t know what sins he referred to, but just then the specifics weren’t as significant as the weight of his words. That kind of weight made the listener weary. Whatever truth Isaac carried could be nothing less than life-altering.
Reaching up, she cupped his cheek. The urge to comfort him overwhelmed her, and she didn’t think, didn’t overthink. She simply went with the moment, offering him the first words that came to her. “There’s little anyone can do that cannot be forgiven.”
“Some actions might be forgiven, but they’re never forgotten.” He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, leaned into her hand and then opened eyes that
were bleak in a way she’d never seen them. “Not ever.”
Stepping back into the dressing room, he gathered several items she’d tried on and then walked out, arms loaded with clothes she hadn’t intended to buy. He paused and looked back, clearly fighting to lighten the mood. “Don’t pay attention to my morose side, Rachel. I would’ve left it in New York under lock and key but its keeper was busy. Let’s get you some shoes and blow this Popsicle stand, shall we?”
Rachel didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that wasn’t really knowledge, so she simply nodded. “Sure,” she said softly, following him toward the shoe department because, if nothing else, one thing held true.
Even an unanticipated emotional minefield would be traversed more easily in a good pair of shoes.
CHAPTER TEN
ISAAC HAD BEEN to Dublin often since his company’s European headquarters was in the city, so he had mentally mapped out the places he’d take Rachel. That way she would get the most out of their short visit. To his surprise, however, she had her own ideas. He suggested they take the hired car to see the city.
She insisted they walk.
He suggested they hire a local historian as a tour guide.
She wanted to talk to the people she encountered in the marketplace.
He suggested they dine at a well-known, Michelin-rated restaurant.
She insisted they find a pub and order local fare—catch of the day and a Guinness.
At that, he balked.
“Rachel,” he said as calmly as possible, “I’m not going to take you to a public tavern for your one dinner here.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Too good to rub elbows with the common man, Isaac?”
“No, but there are so many better choices we could make,” he answered, trying not to acknowledge the pleading in his voice. He didn’t want fish and chips. He wanted a six-course meal that involved both beef and lamb, maybe a main course of fish, a fine tart for dessert. Good coffee. Better beer. But none of what he had in mind would be served in a basket on a bed of fries, and, if they went to the tavern Rachel was currently navigating toward, that’s exactly what was in store.
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