Rough Around the Edges

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Then they’re all wrong.” She rethought his protest. “And I don’t think they would, anyway. I think that your family knows exactly the kind of man you are.”

  Her naiveté made his mouth curve in earnest. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, love. Nobody really knows the kind of man I am, deep down. The real me.” He saw her begin to protest and he knew what she was going to say. That he could read her thoughts was a fact he just accepted without exploration. “Those things I put down on paper for you to memorize, that’s just the surface me.”

  She knew that. It was their living together these last weeks that had given her an inkling of what was inside. “And the inner you?”

  He had a sudden thirst that took him away from her and to the kitchen. “Will stay that way.”

  She followed him. “You’re afraid of being soft, aren’t you?”

  Opening the refrigerator, he helped himself to a bottle of beer. It occurred to him that since this bogus marriage had taken place, he hadn’t taken himself down to the Shamrock but once. He was going to have to do something about that, he decided.

  “Aren’t you?” he echoed.

  Kitt flipped the dials on the oven to the off position, then took the bottle from him and took a healthy swig before handing it back. Ordinarily, she didn’t care for beer, but tonight she had a craving. She didn’t think a single sip would hurt anything. It’d be out of her system by the time she had Shawna back.

  She’d have her daughter back thanks to him, she thought.

  Her eyes pinned his as she slipped the bottle into his hand. “I asked you first.”

  He shrugged, taking another long pull. Trying not to think about the fact that her lips had been on the bottle a moment earlier. “Soft people get walked on in this world and nobody’s ever going to walk on me.”

  She stared at him. “Funny, you just said what I promised myself just before we ‘ran into’ each other.”

  He wished she wouldn’t look at him like that. With eyes so blue that they almost hurt him. Inside, where it counted. He tried to sound disinterested. “That proves we’re two smart people.”

  Because he’d turned away, she moved until she was in his line of sight again. “Does it?”

  Her voice undulated through him. O’Rourke cupped her cheek, telling himself that contact was a fatal tactical error.

  He still didn’t pull back.

  “Sometimes too smart for our own good,” he murmured. Drawing back his hand, O’Rourke slid his fingers along her cheek.

  Soft, so soft.

  The next thing he knew, he was kissing her. Kissing Kitt with all the pent-up passion that he’d been storing up all these years without even being aware of it. It became too much to bear. Only half conscious of what he was doing, he took her into his arms, molding her to his body. Hungering for her. For the taste of her mouth, for the sweet temptation of her breath along his face. For the heat of her body as it touched his.

  He could feel things sizzling within him, urgently begging for release.

  Damn but he wished…

  Wished for things he knew couldn’t happen.

  The wisest thing he could do right at this moment was to break away. To step back and introduce space between them. Space and reason.

  But he wasn’t one who could be accused of always doing the wisest thing, he recalled. There were teachers in his past who could easily testify to that.

  His arms tightened around Kitt as his kiss deepened. For a moment longer, he gave himself permission to be nothing more than a simple man, enjoying the kiss of a woman he found everything but resistible.

  Her moan excited him further.

  The moan had surprised her, escaping the way it had. But she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t help herself. There was this rush of sensations taking over her body like pillaging Vikings, leaving nothing untouched. Nothing unscathed.

  Standing up on her toes, Kitt pressed herself further into the madness that all this represented. Into the madness and against him. She could have sworn that she was never going to want what she was wanting at this moment. That she was never going to find herself falling for another man, not after what she’d gone through with Jeffrey.

  But this wasn’t Jeffrey.

  This was some man she couldn’t figure out. A man who came through for her like a white knight when she needed one, and then regressed into less-than-knightly behavior when the need was gone. A man who had formed a business deal with her and then made her want to form a relationship instead.

  Best way to make him back away, she thought, her brain slipping further into a haze. Ask for a relationship. No man wants a relationship, no matter what he says. Besides, your batting average is way below acceptable, Kitt, she reminded herself. There was no getting away from the fact that when it came to men, she was a rotten judge of character.

  None of it mattered.

  The man had a mouth like sin and she couldn’t resist wanting it. She felt his hands begin to slid down her sides, felt her body begin to hum like a tuning fork that had suddenly been struck.

  She wanted him. Wanted to make love with him. Wanted to be wanted by him. Her heart racing, she began to tighten her arms around his neck.

  And then there was air.

  Air and space and a sudden feeling of loss she couldn’t begin to put into words. Stunned, she realized that he’d withdrawn his mouth from hers and had dropped his hands from her body as if she’d suddenly blistered his skin.

  Damn, why was this so hard? he berated himself. He wasn’t some animal that needed appeasing. He was a man with willpower. And a memory. This was wrong, what he’d almost allowed to happen. Wrong.

  It didn’t stop him from wanting it.

  Shoving his hands into his pockets before he was tempted to touch her again, O’Rourke took another step back. “It’s late, Kitt-with-two-t’s. Maybe we should go to bed.”

  She stood looking at him, her eyes uncertain as to his meaning.

  “Separately,” he added.

  She pulled air into her lungs. Slowly. Then nodded. “All right.” Her voice was devoid of any emotion. “That’s a good idea.”

  But she really didn’t think so as she turned to go into her room.

  Neither did he.

  Chapter Eleven

  Passing the small cubbyhole that had generally been accepted as O’Rourke’s space, Simon retraced his steps and looked in. It was a little before seven in the morning. Simon had thought he’d get a jump-start on the day, but obviously O’Rourke had beaten him to it. From the looks of the wilting breakfast muffin on the desk, he’d been here for some time.

  As he had been for the last few weeks, Simon noted. For a while there, he’d hoped that O’Rourke had finally met a force of nature greater than his own stubbornness. That it appeared now that he hadn’t was disappointing to Simon.

  Sensing someone was there, O’Rourke looked up, a scowl firmly imprinted on his handsome face. Unable to walk away from a computer problem, he’d been wrestling with the newest bug in the hardware program for the last two hours and it was giving him one hell of a headache.

  “What?”

  O’Rourke had fairly spat out the word. Simon nonetheless took it as an invitation and walked into the alcove. “Is it my imagination, O’Rourke, or have you been haunting the office even more than usual in the last few weeks?”

  O’Rourke lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, dismissing the question. Right now, his disposition was somewhere south of surly. It took effort to be civil, even though none of this was Simon’s fault.

  It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own, he supposed. There hadn’t been another way open to him, except for the marriage, but he hadn’t expected the consequences to be so serious. He hadn’t expected to feel anything for the woman who was helping him with this charade, at least, nothing beyond gratitude and perhaps a small amount of friendship.

  He hadn’t expected to feel his whole body heating at the sight of her in the morning—her hair in her eyes, the
faded Packers football jersey she slept in teasing the tops of her thighs. Teasing him as well. And he hadn’t expected to have his thoughts turning to her at the strangest times during the day, for no other apparent reason than she had just popped into his head.

  It was no way to conduct a business arrangement.

  He hadn’t anything more to offer Kitt than he had to Susan, and Susan hadn’t seen fit to want it. Of course, there was the promise of money now, but Kitt wasn’t the type to be swayed by money. A woman like that needed attention and he couldn’t give it to her.

  Not that she’d probably want it from a man who’d used her to stay in this country so that he could make his dreams come true.

  It was a moot point.

  His scowl deepened as he tried to concentrate on his work and failed. Again. What the hell had crawled into his brain lately? Why couldn’t he seem to think straight anymore?

  He had the answer to that, too. And he didn’t like it. “No, it’s not your imagination. I’ve been here more than usual.”

  Leaning a hip against O’Rourke’s desk so that the man was forced to look at him, Simon said, “Mind if I ask why?”

  O’Rourke hardly spared him a look. “I’ve got work to do,” he said tersely.

  That part was obvious and he wasn’t asking about that. They now had, thanks to the financial backing they’d just secured at the beginning of the month, enough manpower to work that out without O’Rourke dedicating his every waking moment to being here. O’Rourke had been the father to the idea, now it was time to do some serious delegation.

  “Why?” Simon repeated. The look O’Rourke gave him was dark. “I know you well enough to know that something’s bothering you. What is it?”

  “Nothing,” O’Rourke snapped, then instantly regretted it. Simon deserved better. Hell, so did he.

  Pushing back from his desk, O’Rourke rose, towering over Simon as he ran his hand along the back of his neck. God, but he felt at a loss, hemmed in by his own damn integrity.

  For the most part, he believed in keeping his own counsel. But it wasn’t working this time.

  He faced Simon squarely. “I think I’m in love.”

  O’Rourke expected to hear Simon hooting with laughter. That he didn’t surprised him. So did the look of concern on his friend’s face.

  “In love?” Simon blew out a long breath. “That’s bad. Does Kitt know?”

  O’Rourke laughed shortly. Therein lay the whole irony. “It is Kitt.”

  Puzzled, confused, Simon ventured cautiously. “Well, that’s good, then.” He peered at O’Rourke’s face. “Isn’t it?”

  O’Rourke’s frown only became more so. “No, not really.”

  Lost, Simon shook his head. “In love with the woman you’re married to—is that a bad thing where you come from?”

  O’Rourke sighed deeply. He shouldn’t have said anything. “It is if you’re supposed to have a strictly business relationship.”

  “So it got a little friendlier. Sometimes that happens with ‘business relationships.’ What’s so wrong with that?”

  O’Rourke pinned him with a black look, warning him not to venture any further into his thoughts than he already had. “It didn’t get that friendly, so get your mind out of the gutter—”

  “Bedroom,” Simon interjected.

  “Especially there. And I’ll have you know there’s everything wrong with it.” One look at Simon told him his friend clearly wasn’t following this. “Don’t you see, if I do anything, she’ll think I tricked her. I can’t even make a move without being guilty—”

  “O’Rourke—”

  But O’Rourke wasn’t listening. His head was too full of thoughts, of objections as well as desires that refused to allow themselves to go quietly.

  “Besides, what kind of a husband would I make, anyway?” He was pacing around the small area like an oversize, trapped panther. “Always working. She’ll leave me.”

  “Whoa, don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself here? You haven’t even given her a chance to ‘stay’ in the right sense of the word and you’ve already got her leaving you.” Reaching a little, Simon laid a hand on O’Rourke’s shoulder. “Maybe she’d like seeing her husband only on a limited basis.” O’Rourke looked at him quizzically. “We call that quality time here.”

  O’Rourke remained unconvinced. “Where I come from, they call it being self-absorbed and that’s what it’ll seem to her that I am.”

  “You could change, then,” Simon commented.

  There was no use making promises that he would not keep. O’Rourke knew the kind of man he was. It was all or nothing. And this was more than just his dream. He wasn’t the only one involved anymore.

  “I’m not going to change—”

  Simon had a feeling it wasn’t all written in stone the way his friend seemed to believe. “For the right woman—”

  Stifling an angry huff, O’Rourke stood over him. “Why are you doing this?”

  Smaller by five inches and twenty pounds, Simon held his ground. Their friendship, formed in the last year in college, went deep, and he didn’t want to see O’Rourke throw something meaningful away. “Because from the little I’ve seen of her, I think Kitt’s a great girl and she’s taken some of that surly edge off you.”

  Steely eyes narrowed until his brows touched. “What surly edge?”

  Simon held his hands up. “Sorry, I meant your Irish charm.” The grin faded as his expression became sober. “So, what are you going to do?”

  That remained the big question. The one O’Rourke didn’t have an answer to. Wanting Kitt wasn’t enough. “I don’t know. Work it out, I guess.”

  Simon clapped him on the back. “Just as long as the work you’re doing isn’t all here.”

  Simon had bullied him into coming home at a decent hour by calling him a coward, the one word guaranteed to turn him into a stubborn sixteen-year-old, bent on disproving his accuser.

  Putting his key into his pocket now, O’Rourke smiled to himself. Kitt was in the living room, concentrating so hard on something she had on the coffee table, she didn’t seem to hear him come in.

  He wondered what had absorbed her attention so fully. “What’s that?”

  Startled, she looked up and then smiled her greeting. “Hi. I didn’t hear you come in.” Because he was looking at the paper she’d been filling out, she turned it around so that he could see it. “It’s a job application. I went down for an interview today.”

  A job interview. It was starting. Pretty soon, with the hours he kept, even if he got home sooner, they wouldn’t be in the same place at the same time.

  Well, what the hell had he expected, for her to turn into some barefoot and pregnant woman waiting on him hand and foot? He wouldn’t have wanted that, anyway.

  Except maybe the pregnant part.

  He stopped himself in time.

  He tried to look disinterested as he shrugged out of his windbreaker. “Oh?”

  She nodded, but the excitement she’d felt earlier this afternoon, during the actual interview, was growing fainter. She hadn’t a clue as to why. Work used to mean so much to her. It defined what she was, where she was coming from. She liked being her own person.

  Now it didn’t mean quite as much. Was she still in the final throes of postpartum depression?

  “Hellenic Industries.” Rising, she took the jacket he’d just draped over the back of the sofa and walked with it to the coatrack by the door. “They’ve just landed a new contract for work on the space station.” She hung the jacket up. “I think they liked me.”

  “What’s not to like?” The damn wolves probably took one look at her and began tossing coins as to who would devour her first.

  The thought surprised him. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t think like that and he didn’t know anyone else who thought like that. He forced a reassuring smile to his lips, though he was feeling nothing of the kind.

  His comment made her pause and she looked at
him. Was that a compliment, or a crack? God, but he was so hard to read. Not that she was any good at that sort of thing, she reminded herself, thinking of how wrong she’d been about Jeffrey.

  But O’Rourke only added to her confusion. He’d all but disappeared these last few weeks. Right after he’d kissed her the night they’d taken Shawna to the hospital. Kissed her senseless and made her think that they were going to…going to make…

  It didn’t matter what she had thought. He had thought something different. Any idiot could see that he was backing away from her. Pronto.

  She’d thought that he was different. The day after, when they’d brought Shawna home from the hospital, he’d been so attentive to the baby that she’d thought, hoped really, that she’d actually found a decent man she could slowly build a life with.

  But then he backed away so quickly it made her head spin. And her heart.

  Served her right for letting herself dream a little. This would teach her. The only one she could depend on was herself. It was time she pulled herself back up on her feet. Two months was long enough to drift. She needed to get back to work. To be her own person.

  And not to rely on any man, no matter what.

  “Well, they might not have liked my credentials,” she pointed out matter-of-factly.

  He wasn’t thinking of her credentials. He was thinking of what it would be like to come home and not find her here. And that would be where this would lead. He had no doubts that she would stick to the bargain, stay the year. But the second it was up, she’d be gone.

  And he, he realized, didn’t want her to be. “Have you ever thought about being something other than an aerospace engineer?”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a business of your own,” he said.

  “Making my own space station?” she asked, tongue in cheek.

  “No, I mean—” He didn’t know what he meant. He was rambling, O’Rourke thought in disgust. “Never mind, it was just a passing thought.”

  She didn’t like not being in the loop. He had something to say and, good or bad, she wanted to hear it. “Well, let it pass this way and maybe I can answer you better.”