Yes, they all said, yes, of course, absolutely, they'd leave.
Nobody did.
In the end, the only people she didn't try to boss around were Briana and Sean. It was, she said, lovely having her youngest daughter nearby. And when she and Sean were alone, she told him it was better to know he was here than to imagine him wasting his time at a card table.
Sean knew his mother had never really approved of the way he lived but she'd never come out and said so before. He was surprised by her candor and she knew it.
"It's what a little glimpse of your own mortality does to you," she told him as he sat with her in the hospital's rooftop conservatory one afternoon. "A mother should speak bluntly to her favorite son."
Sean smiled. "I'll bet you say the same thing to Keir and Cullen."
"Of course," Mary said, smiling back at him. "You're all my favorites." Her smile dimmed. "But I worry about you the most. After all, you're my baby."
Sean raised his mother's hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. "I'm thirty years old," he said gently.
"Exactly."
"I'm almost disgustingly healthy."
"Good."
"And I'm happy."
"That's what you think."
"It's what I know, Ma. Trust me. I'm happy." .
Mary shook her head. "You're a gambler."
"I like gambling. I'm not addicted to it," he said, smiling at his mother, "if that's what you mean. I can stop whenever I want."
"But you don't."
"Because I enjoy it. You should understand that. Pa was a gambler."
Mary nodded. "He was, indeed," she said quietly. "It was the one thing about him that broke my heart."
Sean stared at her. "I thought—"
"Oh, I loved your father, Sean. Loved him deeply." She sighed. "But I wish he'd loved me more than the cards."
"Ma, for heaven's sake, he worshiped you!"
"He did, yes, in his own way, but if I'd been enough for him, he'd have settled down. Made a real home for us. You remember how bad it was, the years before we stumbled on to the Desert Song." Mary clasped her youngest son's hand and looked deep into his eyes. ' 'A man should find his happiness in a woman, not in the turn of a card."
"We're not all the same, Ma. What's good for Cull and Keir isn't necessarily right for me."
His mother sighed. After a minute, she squeezed his hand. "My birthday's the week after next." "Your..."
"My birthday, yes. And don't look at me as if I've slipped 'round the bend, Sean O'Connell. I can change the subject without being daft, though I'm not really changing the subject. I'm just thinking how quickly life slips by."
"Ma—"
"Let me talk, Sean. Why shouldn't we admit the truth? I almost died."
"Yes." A hand seemed to close around his heart. "But you didn't," he said fiercely. "That's what counts."
"Lying in that bed, drifting in that place halfway between this world and the next, I kept thinking, 'It's too soon.'"
"Much too soon," Sean said gruffly.
"I don't want to leave this earth until all my children are happy."
"I am happy, Ma. You don't need to worry about it."
"You're alone, Sean."
"Times have changed. A person doesn't need to be married to be happy."
"A person needs to love and be loved. That hasn't changed. You have your father's itchy foot and his gift for the cards, but that can't make up for the love of a good woman."
Unbidden, a face swam into Sean's mind. Green eyes. A mane of golden hair. A soft mouth tasting like berries warmed by the sun. It was the face of a woman a man would burn to possess, but love? Never. Thinking of Savannah McRae and the word "good" at the same time was absurd. Besides, his mother was wrong. A man didn't need love. He needed freedom. His father had loved his wife and children but Sean suspected he'd have been happier without them. In his heart, he was the same. It was the one bond he and his old man had shared.
"I know you think you're right, Ma," he said gently, "but I like my life as it is." He smiled. "You want to be a matchmaker, why not take on Briana?"
"Bree will find somebody," Mary said with conviction. "She just needs a little more time. But you..."
"I'll give it some serious thought," Sean said, trying to sound sincere even if he was lying through his teeth, but it was a white lie, and white lies didn't count. "Maybe, someday, when I meet the right woman."
Mary sighed. "I just hope I live long enough to see it happen."
"You'll be here for years and years."
"Nobody can see the future," his mother said softly.
What could he say to that? Sean swallowed hard, searched for a change of subject and finally found one.
"That birthday—"
"Ah, yes. Dan and I want to have a big party."
"Not too much, though. You need peace and quiet."
"What I need is to get back into life."
Sean smiled. "You sound as if you're back into it already. And what would you like as a special gift?''
"Just all my children and grandchildren gathered around me.
"Nothing more?" Sean grinned. "Come on, Ma. Tell me your heart's desire and I'll get it for you."
Mary's eyes met his. "You will?"
"Yes. Absolutely. What do you want, hmm? Emeralds from Colombia? Pearls from the South Seas?" He bent forward and kissed her temple. "Name it, Mrs. Coyle, and it'll be yours."
His mother gave him a long look. "Do you mean it?"
"Have I ever made a promise to you and broken it?"
"No. No, you haven't."
"Well, then, tell me what you want for your birthday and you'll have it. Cross my heart and hope to die."
Sean said the words as solemnly as if he were seven years old instead of thirty, and he smiled. But his mother didn't smile. Instead, she looked so deep into his eyes that he felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck.
"I want to see you married, Sean O'Connell," she said. And from the expression on her face, he knew she meant every word.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Amazing, what a combination of medical science and determination could accomplish. Ten days after Mary O'Connell-Coyle's stroke, her doctors pronounced her well and sent her home.
Keir, Cullen and Sean accompanied Dan and their mother to the airport. They sat with her in the first-class lounge and asked if she wanted anything so many times that Mary finally threw up her hands and said if they didn't stop fussing over her, she was going to go and find a seat in the terminal.
"One seat," she warned, "with no empties nearby." She looked at her husband, who smiled, and smiled back at him. "All right. Two seats, then, but not another within miles."
The brothers looked at each other sheepishly. Then they hugged her and kissed her, waited until the plane that would take her to Vegas had safely lifted off, and headed, by unspoken consent, for a taxi and a quiet, very untrendy bar Keir knew in lower Manhattan.
"My arms hurt," Sean said solemnly. His brothers raised inquisitive eyebrows. "From doing all that lifting to get the plane in the air."
He grinned. His brothers laughed, and Keir raised his glass of ale. "To Ma."
The men touched glasses. They drank, then leaned back in the time-worn leather booth.
"So," Keir said, "I guess we can all head home. Me to
Connecticut, Cull to Boston." He looked at Sean. "You going back to that island?"
Sean felt a muscle knot in his jaw. "Yes."
"Can't get enough of the sea and sand?"
"I have unfinished business there."
"Must be important."
Getting even was always important, Sean thought coldly. "Yeah. It is."
Cullen grinned and nudged Keir with his elbow. "Something to do with that woman, I bet."
"What woman?" Sean said, much too quickly.
"Come on, bro. The babe you won in a game of cards." Keir reached for the bowl of peanuts. "You never did explain that."
&nb
sp; "There's nothing to explain."
"There's nothing to explain, he says." Cullen dug out a handful of nuts, too, and started munching. "A man wins a night with a hooker, and he says—"
"Did I say she was a hooker?"
Sean's voice was glacial. Cullen and Keir exchanged glances. He could hardly blame them. What was he doing? Defending Savannah's honor? It would be easier to defend a Judas goat.
"Well, no. But I figured—"
"Forget it."
"Look, I didn't mean to imply you'd sleep with a call girl, but who else would—"
"Leave it alone."
"All I meant was, what kind of woman would—"
"I said, leave it alone, Cull."
Keir and Cullen looked at each other again. Sean sat stiff and silent, trying to figure out why he'd almost made an ass of himself defending a woman who was not much better than Cull's description of her.
He was returning to Emeraude to deal with Alain Beaumont. It had nothing to do with Savannah. With the way she came to him in his dreams so that he'd lived that same moment a thousand times, her suddenly trembling in his arms, returning his kiss, sighing against his mouth... "So," he said briskly, "Ma really does seem fine." His brothers nodded, both of them grateful for the change in conversation.
"Absolutely." Cullen grinned. "Did you hear her chew out the nurse who insisted she had to leave the hospital in a wheelchair?"
The brothers chuckled, then took long pulls at their mugs of ale. Keir circled the wet rim of his glass with the tip of his index finger.
"That birthday party is gonna be some kind of event." "Nice of the girls to offer to plan it," Sean said. Cullen gave a dramatic shudder. "Whatever you do, don't let 'em catch you calling them 'girls.' Besides, 'nice' has nothing to do with it. They just don't trust Dan or us to get it right." He motioned to the waitress for another round. "Either of you have any idea what you're going to give Ma as a gift?"
"Cassie thought maybe a cruise to Hawaii." "Marissa's thinking along the same lines. She suggested a week in Paris."
"Not bad. Hawaii this winter, Paris come summer... Sean? Want to toss in a spring vacation?"
Sean shifted uneasily in his seat.' 'I've got a problem with that."
"What? With giving her a trip?" "With what to give Ma. She won't want a trip. Not from me.
"How do you know that?"
Sean took a few peanuts from the bowl and rolled them in his hand. "Idiot that I am, I asked her what she wanted."
"And?"
"And she told me."
Cullen and Keir looked at each other. "Well?" Cullen said. "You gonna keep us in suspense?"
"She wants..." Sean hesitated. Even now, it sounded impossible. "She said she wants me to get married."
There were a few seconds of silence. Then Keir laughed. "Trust Mary Elizabeth to get straight to the point."
"It's what she wants."
"Sure it is, but she'll settle for a trip to... What?"
Sean took a deep breath, then let it out. "I promised."
His brothers stared at him. ' 'You what?''
"Don't look at me that way! How was I to know she'd ask for something so crazy?''
"Right. And Ma won't expect you to keep a crazy promise. She'll understand."
"Exactly. It's like when you're joking around and somebody says, you know what I'd really like? And you say tell me what it is and I'll do it, but both of you know it's just..." Cullen's words drifted to silence. "You really promised?"
"I really promised." Sean looked up. "I'd do anything for Ma. But this..."
"Do you even know a. woman you'd want to marry?" Keir asked, and sighed with resignation when Sean laughed. "Well, you could always hire an actress."
"Yeah," Sean said glumly. "Too bad Greta Garbo's dead."
The brothers all chuckled. After a while, the topic turned to the latest baseball trade and everybody but Sean forgot all about it.
Ma won't expect you to keep a crazy promise. She'll understand.
Sean turned off the reading lamp above his seat in Trans Carib's first-class cabin. That was the trouble. His mother would understand. She'd look at him and sigh, and give that little smile that meant he'd failed her again.
He'd always failed her.
Cullen won every athletic award in high school. Keir won every academic honor. They'd both finished college, gone to grad school and made places for themselves in the world.
What had he ever done besides cause trouble?
He'd been suspended more times than he wanted to remember in high school, mostly because he hated sitting in a classroom. He'd loved hockey and he'd been good at it. Great, maybe, until the day a puck damned near took his eye out because he'd been a smart-ass who wouldn't wear a helmet with a visor. Yeah, he'd finished college but he'd floated through, all the time just yearning for graduation so he could bum around the world with a backpack.
Sean frowned at his reflection in the window.
That was then. This was now. He'd made a fortune. The backpack had turned into handmade leather luggage, he stayed in five-star hotels instead of hostels, and if he didn't have a permanent base, it was because he preferred it that way. He'd changed. He'd found success. He was the luckiest O'Connell brother. The one with nothing holding him down, nobody holding him back...
He was the brother who had nobody.
The universe seemed to hold its breath. A chasm, dark and deep, yawned at Sean's feet.
"Mr. O'Connell?" The flight attendant smiled. "Your dinner, sir."
"I'm not..." Sean hesitated, forced a smile. "Great. Thank you."
The girl set down his tray, poured his wine. Alone again, Sean ignored the filet mignon and reached for the burgundy. His mother's brush with death must have affected him more than he'd realized. Funny, how easily a man's perspective could get skewed.
He had everything. He was living a life he loved. Sean raised his glass and saw his reflection. Not everybody could say that, he thought, and suddenly, the face he saw in the glass wasn't his.
Savannah looked back at him.
Was scamming strangers a life she loved? Coming on to men to ensure a win? Did having Alain Beaumont put his hands on her make her happy?
What was with him tonight? What did he care what made Savannah McRae happy? How come he couldn't get it through his head that the tears she'd shed, the way she'd melted in his arms, had all been part of the act?
Sean tilted the glass to his lips and drank. He was going to stop thinking about Savannah. She didn't mean a thing to him. And he was going to take his brothers' advice and tell his mother the truth.
Ma, he'd say, / never should have made you a promise I can't possibly keep.
But before he did that, he'd confront Beaumont and his mistress. They owed him, and he was damned well going to collect.
Ivory moonlight dappled the dark waters of the Caribbean where the Lorelei lay at anchor. The night was warm and still. Savannah, alone in her stateroom, was counting the minutes until Alain left to go ashore.
Only then would she feel safe.
A tremor raced through her. Despite the heat, she felt chilled. She reached for a sweatshirt and pulled it on over her thin cotton T-shirt.
Ten days had passed since the night she'd ruined everything. Ten days, but it felt like an eternity. Alain alternated between rage and deadly silence. Of the two, she'd begun to think his silence was the worst.
He was planning something. She knew it. He had been, ever since...
She had to stop thinking about that terrible night, but how could she? Alain was going to do something to punish her for what had happened. Wondering what and when was killing her.
It had taken her a very long time to get back to the harbor that night. She'd left the hotel by a back door, walked down the hill, then along the road. At dawn, an old man with a donkey cart gave her a lift. He hadn't asked her any questions. Maybe women with tear-stained faces, limping along in evening wear, were standard issue here.
The tender had been waiting at the dock; for one wild minute, she'd imagined turning around and running away. Then she'd thought of Missy, and she'd stepped into the boat and let the crewman take her to the Lorelei.
Alain was waiting in the yacht's salon, his face white, his mouth twisted into a narrow line. One look, and she knew he'd already heard the story.
Not all of it, of course. Not what had happened in O'Connell's bedroom, how the realization of what came next had suddenly become real.
All Alain knew was that she'd lost. It was enough.
"Alain," she'd said quickly, "I'm sorry. I did everything I could and it almost worked, but—"
He grabbed her so hard that she'd borne the marks of his fingers on her arms for days. Grabbed her and shaken her like a rag doll.
"You stupid putain!"
Even now, she shuddered, remembering the venom in his voice.
"How could you do this to me?" he'd roared.
"I told you," she whispered, "I don't know what happened. He was losing. And then—and then—"
Alain slapped her, hard enough to whip her head back. "Do you know what you cost me tonight?"
"Yes. Yes, I know. Almost five hundred thou—"
"Almost half a million dollars. How will you pay it back?"
"I'll win it at cards. I promise."
"How? By playing with my money? Does that sound reasonable to you?"
"It's—it's the best I can—"
"Shut up!" His spittle flew into her face as he leaned toward her. ' 'Did you think I was joking? About wanting you to make O'Connell look like a fool?"
"No. No, of course not. But—"
"You didn't make a fool of him. He made a fool of you!"
"Alain, you must believe me. I was winning. I don't know what happened, only that suddenly—''
"When did you tell him you know me?"
"I never—"
"Don't lie to me! You told him. And that's who you made a fool of, you brainless creature. Me. Me! O'Connell's probably still laughing."
"No, He didn't laugh. Not at you!"
"I told you not to lie to me." Alain flung her from him. "And I told you the price you'd pay," he snarled and reached for the phone.
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