Dylan

by C. H. Admirand

  Dylan closed his eyes and cleared his throat. When he had his horns hidden again, he answered as politely as possible. “We did.”

  Tyler eyed him like he was something scraped off the bottom of his brother’s boot. Dylan looked over at Jesse and noticed the youngest was having trouble keeping his horns from showing.

  Needing to diffuse the situation before it ended in an all out brawl that would have Tyler’s girlfriend reading them all the riot act, he grinned. “A shrug’s the Garahan way of communicating.”

  Her hands were now on her hips. Lord, she was pretty when she was riled. No wonder Tyler agreed to let her hog-tie him. “A shrug could mean yes, no, or I don’t know.”

  “See?” he said nodding at Jesse and then Tyler. “She’s figured us out already.”

  Instead of the tongue-lashing he expected her to follow up with, she started to laugh—a rich, throaty sound. Add that to the fact that she’d stood by Tyler when the odds and his ex-girlfriend were against him, and Dylan knew why the oldest brother would leg-shackle himself to the woman. She was definitely a keeper.

  “Are you two ’bout done?”

  Jesse shoved him. Dylan shoved back. They nodded to one another and turned to face Tyler and shrugged again.

  Emily laughed harder. Dylan enjoyed the view. When she laughed, the strap holding up that excuse for a nightgown slid off her shoulder and threatened to expose what he knew would be perfection.

  His brother’s eyes narrowed. He said a silent thank you to God and braced himself, knowing they were a second away from a good old-fashioned family donnybrook. “Bring it on, Bro.”

  Tyler leaned forward about to leap off the porch, but Emily held him back with the strength of her words. “If you want to sleep downstairs on the sofa tonight, darlin’, you go right ahead and beat your brothers’ brains out.”

  She turned on her heel, giving the brothers a view of her first-class legs.

  The urge to fight left with Emily. Dylan cuffed Jesse on the back of the head. “Tomorrow I’ll fix mom’s swing.”

  Jesse looked at the pile of wood and nodded. “I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry for pounding on you.”

  Dylan grinned and swore; his fat lip split and started to bleed. He touched it with the tips of his fingers. “Lucky punch.”

  “Accurate punch.”

  Tyler smacked them both in the back of the head simultaneously. “We’ll all help put mom’s swing back together tomorrow.”

  They agreed and he added, “Next time, wake me up so I can get in on the fight.”

  The brothers were laughing as they walked inside and turned out the lights. “I’ve got to fix a few slats in Wildfire’s stall tomorrow and patch where that shingle broke off before I head in to work at Ronnie’s shop.”

  Jesse was halfway up the stairs. He called out over his shoulder, “I’ll check your stash of wood and see if I can come up with a couple that are the right length or close to it for mom’s swing.”

  Tyler put out his hand to stop Dylan from following too close behind. When their brother was far enough away not to hear, Tyler rasped, “Thanks.”

  Dylan nodded. He knew Tyler wasn’t thanking him for repairing the gift their dad had given their mother all those years ago; he was thanking him for helping Jesse release some of the emotions bottled up inside of him before he self-destructed.

  “Next time, we’ll wake you.”

  His brother’s quiet chuckle eased the rest of the tension still swirling around inside of Dylan. He might need a woman now and again, but his brothers shared a much closer tie; they were blood kin. You could get mad as hell at them, but when the chips were down and the bank was breathing down the back of your neck, just waiting to snatch one hundred fifty years’ worth of Garahan sweat, blood, and tears out from under you, you could count on your brothers to help you through and guard your back. Well… once they pounded on each other, they’d be ready to take on the world.

  Tyler took the stairs two at a time to catch up with Emily, who waited at the top. Dylan watched as Tyler scooped the laughing woman into his arms and carried his prize into his room, closing the door with his foot. Their muffled laughter eased the ache in his heart. Tyler deserved happiness as much as the rest of them, and had fought just as hard to hang on to Emily as she had to him.

  It was hard not to be jealous of his older brother. A feminine squeal of surprised pleasure was punctuated by the slamming of his younger brother’s bedroom door. Dylan shook his head. He knew it would take time for Jesse to get over Lori’s leaving, but tomorrow, after they’d all done their part to repair the swing, he’d be more than ready to meet Jesse head-on again.

  Still tangled up inside from wanting a woman who wasn’t quite ready to trust him, Dylan knew he’d relish the idea of beating on his little brother until Ronnie was ready to let him ease his frustration inside of her amazingly responsive body.

  And he just knew she would be. Hell, if her lips, mouth, and hands responded to his stealing a few explosive kisses, just imagine what the rest of her would do when he licked his way toward her sweetest spot.

  “Man, I don’t know how much longer I can wait to sample more of my East Coast woman.” His heart echoed that he wanted way more than a taste of the woman. He wanted her heart, body, and soul… and not necessarily in that order.

  Closing his door, he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots and socks. It was tricky unzipping his jeans with his johnson locked and loaded—from just thinking about Ronnie.

  His sigh was long and low. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

  Shucking his jeans, he stripped off his shirt and hit the sheets, amazed that he could close his eyes and drift off to sleep with a raging hard-on.

  His last coherent thought was about her and whether or not she’d taste like wild honey or caramel cream.

  ***

  Ronnie woke to brilliant sunshine streaming in through her bedroom window. She tried to close her eyes and ignore the fact that it was morning. She’d spent more time tossing and turning than sleeping after the pep talk Nonni had given her. But the sunlight on her eyelids was warm and welcoming. Giving in, she sighed, opened her eyes, and sat up.

  “I feel like something the cat dragged in.” She stumbled out of bed, dragging her sorry behind down the hall to the bathroom. “Well, crap.” The image looking back at her looked like something the cat had mauled.

  With an empty bladder, she headed toward the kitchen. “Coffee.” That would fix everything; after two or three cups, she’d be awake and able to do something about her lack of sleep.

  “That man’s got me tied up in knots.” And if that image didn’t just add to the tension screaming through her body this morning, her neck had a crick in it from trying to get comfortable enough to sleep last night.

  “Coffee first, yoga second.” With her morning planned, she rinsed out the coffeepot and filled it with cold water. Finding the innards to the percolator proved to be difficult. The basket for the grinds wasn’t in the dish drainer. After putting everything in the drainer away, she realized that the stand for the basket wasn’t either. They weren’t buried beneath the pots, pans, and bowls she’d used last night.

  Scouting for parts to her percolator first thing in the morning without caffeine surging through her system was not how she envisioned starting her day. “Crap, crap… crap!” She opened and closed cabinets, but didn’t find the essential parts to her glass percolator—the only shower gift she’d kept after severing her ties with her ex, the one from her grandmother who believed there was only one way to make coffee. Irascible as only an old lady could be, she’d been emphatic when she’d told Ronnie that drip didn’t count as real coffee.

  Ronnie’s head started to ache from lack of caffeine, but she ignored it and yanked the refrigerator door open. “May as well have orange juice if I can’t have coffee.”

  The basket for the coffee grinds was sitting on the shelf next to the orange juice. She pulled both out, poured a glass, a
nd set the basket on the counter next to the stove. Shaking her head, trying to wrack her brains to see if she could remember what she’d been thinking last night, the image of a tall, dark, and handsome cowboy with callused hands filled her. “Dylan.”

  A full body shiver accompanied the butterflies in her belly, a reaction she was becoming used to where he was concerned. She opened the fridge to put the orange juice back and found the rest of the coffeepot’s innards. The stand for the basket was nestled in with the eggs, and the basket lid was on the shelf by the bread.

  “Lord, I really need this coffee,” she mumbled aloud. “Where did I put the top to the pot?” She put the stand in the pot, added the basket, and counted out rounded spoonfuls of coffee. The scent permeated her bad mood and started to smooth out the rough edges waking up cranky had given her.

  “Can’t brew coffee without the damned top to the pot.” Resigned, she reached for her purse to dig out her keys and money to buy a cup of coffee and found the missing top.

  She pulled it out of her purse and stared at it. “I’ve got to do something about that man before he drives me crazy.” Short trip.

  Once the thought took hold, she started to laugh, a quiet chuckle that gave way to an all out belly laugh. She was wiping her eyes and putting the top on the pot before she stopped. It took the edge off the tension and had almost the same effect as a good cry. Who knew?

  Now that coffee was at the end of her morning rainbow, she could cope. She made breakfast—no point in enjoying her morning cup without something to line her empty belly. Her grandmother always insisted that the morning meal was the most important and set the tone for the way a person’s day would unfold. She wondered when it would be her turn to be right about something. Nonni couldn’t always be right, could she? Thinking of a certain dark-eyed Irishman with a smoldering look that turned her insides to jelly, she knew she’d have to give the man a chance and stop thinking about the curse so damned much.

  Maybe she was making it come true by trying so hard to avoid it, in some perverse inversion of the law of attraction or something. Maybe she should try to make the curse come true and then it wouldn’t. The circular thinking was making her head spin.

  The scent of frying bacon and percolating coffee filled her tiny kitchen, lightening her heart and soothing her frayed nerves. Scrambling eggs in the pan, she asked herself, “What am I going to do about that man?”

  Without warning, the image of his broad and beautiful chest, sculpted pectoral muscles, sprinkling of dark hair between those amazing muscles, and emerald green shamrock tattoo filled her mind. She stopped and knew what she wanted to do with and to the man… it was how to get her brain to shut off long enough to follow where her heart wanted to lead her that she didn’t know.

  “I’ve followed my heart before and look where it got me.”

  She’d told her grandmother that same thing last night and Nonni had reminded her that she’d followed her head. Ronnie sighed and admitted that Nonni had been right once again: she had married Anthony Faustino because he’d convinced her he would always be able to provide for her. At the time, being able to have things and beating the DelVecchio Curse had been more important than finding what she suspected she’d discovered with Dylan—the promise of a love that grabbed you by the heart and made you dizzy with it while you waited to see if the lust that tied you up in knots would fulfill that promise or simply burn itself out.

  As she sat down to eat, her brain kicked into high gear. There were times in life when you realized you’d been telling yourself something for so long that you’d come to accept and believe it to be the way things really happened. In that moment, Ronnie realized that she’d worked so hard to convince herself that she’d followed her heart where her first husband was concerned that she believed it. But the truth was that she let him convince her that she should marry him; his promise that he’d be faithful to her had been what she wanted him to say. In her heart, she hadn’t really worried about it because she didn’t really love him—but she had wanted to. It had become habit to think of him as the man she would marry and spend the rest of her life with. Her heart had willingly followed her head and disaster had followed in its wake.

  Carrying her plate to the sink, she washed it and set it in the drainer. With Dylan, she’d had no control over her instant attraction to him. She’d felt the rope slip around her shoulders as the blindfold had been ripped from her eyes. His dark and dangerous eyes had beckoned to her as he reeled her in. One kiss and her world tilted on its axis. She had been functioning on a different plane of existence since he’d laid his lips on hers, coaxing a response from her.

  Tingles sparked beneath her skin and shot warmth from her heart straight to her core. He set off a conflagration that had yet to be quenched. Was she just being pigheaded, fighting against what in her heart she knew was meant to be? Should she ignore the warning light flashing in the back of her mind, cautioning her to keep her heart safe from the man who was the DelVecchio Curse walking? Or should she trust in her grandmother and Mavis’s advice and turn off her mind and trust Dylan?

  “I need to clear my mind… yoga and then the hot shower.” Putting her immediate plan into action, she went to her bedroom and changed into the new workout clothes she’d bought before she left New Jersey. She slipped them on and immediately felt her mood lift. The pants were pale grey with Bootylicious emblazoned across the backside in lipstick pink with a sports bra in the same bright shade.

  Stopping in the bathroom, she grabbed a hair clip and swept her hair up and out of the way. Ready to take on the world, or at least loosen up the kinks in her neck and shoulder, she walked into the living room and bent over to pull the yoga mat out from under the sofa.

  The sunshine beckoned, so she laid out her mat in her favorite spot, right beneath the window. Inhaling a deep, cleansing breath, she was ready to begin with Mountain Pose. Moving fluidly through her routine, she was limber and ready for the Downward Dog pose. Ronnie felt the beauty of her mind and body perfectly in tune as she repeated the movements.

  Reaching for the long-sleeved shirt on the arm of the sofa, she pulled it on and sat on her mat in the Lotus position. Extending her arms palms up, she closed her eyes and began to meditate.

  Renewed in body and spirit, she put away her mat, ready for that hot shower.

  ***

  Standing beneath the hot spray after meditating always opened her mind. Usually, she could sort through whatever problems she had, but this morning, her thoughts kept coming back to Dylan Garahan.

  His dark eyes held secrets and promises that beckoned to her whenever their gazes met. She knew what he wanted; what she didn’t know was whether or not she was ready to take that dive over the edge into madness. Oh, she knew she’d enjoy the ride and probably let him share her bed for the next little while. What worried her was that he’d be satisfied with one night, and she wouldn’t, leaving her in the same position she’d been in before, wanting a man who was no longer interested.

  Why was she thinking about that now? Dylan wasn’t her ex. He couldn’t be more different. Anthony dressed in Armani suits and handmade Italian loafers, while Dylan preferred well-worn denims, boots, and black Stetson. Her mind wandered as she dipped her fingertips into her favorite body scrub. She let the almond scent wrap around her as she smoothed it on and rinsed it off, mentally shedding her insecurities. Ronnie felt revved as she turned off the shower and reached for a fluffy yellow towel.

  “Female rituals are so good for the soul,” she told her reflection. “I wonder what Shannon and Lenore are up to today?”

  A few minutes later, she was on the phone. “How are things over at the Mysts of Time?”

  Listening to her friend, she smiled. She knew exactly what Shannon was going through, having to rebuild what she’d lost. “Did Emily recommend the same carpenter to you?” She hoped Emily hadn’t; she didn’t like the idea of her pretty blonde friend distracting the man who was about to become her lover. Which was the main re
ason she wasn’t as close to Shannon as she was to Mavis—her past had taught her not to trust women friends her own age.

  “Pam Dawson sent over this really great handyman,” Shannon said. “He’s got the job nearly finished.”

  Ronnie would have loved to have her shop back in one piece as quickly, but knew that Dylan was nearly working twenty-four/seven. She hoped he had it in him to finish the job; she’d be done if she had to put in that many hours of hard labor.

  “How’s it going over at your place?”

  Ronnie hesitated. Should she tell Shannon everything that was going on? It had been so easy to talk to Mavis. The woman was old enough to be her mother and had been the first friend she’d made here in Pleasure. Would Shannon try to steal her man, as her ex–best friend had stolen her husband? Dylan was definitely worth stealing!

  “Hey, is everything all right?”

  The concern in her friend’s voice helped her decide to reach out to her and share a little bit more. “Yeah. Sorry, I’ve been busy and what with Dylan messing with my mind—”

  “Honey, I’d let that man mess with more than just my mind if I was you.”

  Ronnie’s heart fluttered in her breast. “That’s what has my mind in a twist.”

  Shannon’s throaty laughter sparked her own. “I wouldn’t mind getting twisted or tied up by that man.”

  She couldn’t agree more. “That’s the rest of what has me feeling upside down and backwards. I’ve never met anyone like him before. He’s the complete and total opposite of my ex-husband.”

  “You’ve got an ex?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Long story, ends badly.”

  Shannon was silent for a couple of minutes, then said, “Why don’t I come on over and we can talk about it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about my ex,” Ronnie insisted.

  Her friend laughed again. “Hell, I don’t blame you. I want to talk about Dylan.”

  This time, Ronnie’s laughter bubbled up from deep inside as she made the decision to trust a woman her own age. “I’ll put the coffee on. I’m waiting to hear from my insurance agent. They owe me a check.”