Harlequin Desire June 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2

by Maureen Child

  He was going to walk away…

  “But this isn’t a one-way street and I need something, too. I’m thirty-five years old and I want a partner, a friend, someone I can lean on. But you’re determined to believe I’m going to hurt you. You are throwing away something with the potential to be amazing because you’re scared.”

  Of course she was! Didn’t she have a right to be?

  “I’m scared, too, but I’m done with being the only one who is fighting for us. I’m tired of being the only one who believes in us. I don’t believe in soul mates. In a world of eight billion people there has to be more than one person I can be happy with. Since you don’t want to join me on this ride, I’m going to find someone who will.”

  His words were like a punch to her heart, a Taser to her soul. Keely opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find air, her tongue unable to find the words. After a minute of staring at her, Dare yanked his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, fished out some bills and tossed them on the table. “Right. Thanks for nothing.”

  Keely wrapped her arms around her stomach and watched him walk away, wishing she was brave enough to call him back, wishing she could throw caution to the wind and love him.

  He was walking away, but this time, and unlike all her previous lovers, she’d pushed him to do exactly that.

  * * *

  Unable to sleep, Beah, dressed in Finn’s shirt, walked out of his bedroom onto the smooth deck and leaned her forearms on the railing, looking down onto the harbor. It was chilly, sure, but Beah welcomed the icy breeze on her bare legs. She’d always liked the cold, liked how alive it made her feel.

  Hot sex with Finn Murphy had the same effect on her. She’d been in Boston for a while now and she’d had a lot of sex, and all of it was fantastic. While she kept a few items in her room at Mounton House, most of her clothes were hanging in Finn’s closet, her shoes were mixed with his on his rack, her toiletries cluttered the surface of the bathroom cabinets. She’d all but moved in.

  It was going to be hard to go back to London and her empty apartment. She’d never considered herself to be particularly lonely in London, but she suspected she would be when she returned. In Boston, she’d become—because Finn was close to his brothers and their partners—friends with his sister Tanna, his brother’s significant others, Joa and Sadie, and she’d met the Brogan twins and their partners. She’d been invited to lunch and to girls’ nights out, or to join them for a “before work” cup of coffee. They were smart and funny and, despite being Boston’s A-listers, very down to earth.

  She had friends…and she liked it.

  Work was also, currently, fun. She liked working out of the Boston office, being down the passage from her direct boss, Ronan. Email exchanges and telephone calls had worked but she liked being able to pop her head into Ronan’s office, to chat face-to-face about a client or a pitch. Working out of Murphy headquarters made her feel less isolated.

  Yep, going back to London was going to suck. But she’d soon be moving into Michael’s upmarket offices in Kensington and she’d have a new challenge, new clients, and would be too busy to think and feel.

  And that was how she liked to live her life…

  Wasn’t it?

  Beah heard Finn step out onto the deck and smiled when he wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. Beah lifted her hands to hold his wrists, sighing as his heat warmed her back, butt and the backs of her thighs.

  Finn, big and bold, gave the best hugs. He made her feel treasured and safe and protected. The way she did ten years ago before they fell apart.

  Don’t get used to it, Beah. This isn’t a long-term thing.

  “It’s freezing out here, Bee.”

  He’d never been a fan of the cold. “Just a few minutes more.”

  “Don’t blame me if our fingers fall off from frostbite.”

  “Stop being dramatic, Murphy,” Beah replied, amused.

  She looked across the harbor, sighed at the luxury boats. “Do you sail? I can’t remember.”

  “Levi, Tanna’s fiancé, owns a marina and a couple of boats. I go out with him occasionally, but it’s not something I’m passionate about.”

  Beah dropped a kiss on his wrist below the cuff of his sweatshirt. “And you still love risky sports?”

  Finn hugged her closer, shivered, and Beah took pity on him. Stepping out of his arms, she walked to the sliding door and back into his warm bedroom, the covers messy from their lovemaking.

  Finn closed the door behind him, picking up the conversation. “Yeah, I still ski and parachute.”

  Such tame words for what he really did.

  “Double black diamond runs and BASE jumping?” Beah heard her words, grateful she didn’t sound accusatory or shrill. God, they’d had many arguments on this subject, about him risking his life, about his need to escape. Hindsight was a great tool and she now realized that more than wanting him to give up his pursuit for adrenaline, she’d just wanted him to give her as much attention as he did his sports. She’d wanted him to turn to her, to open up, to spend some of his free time with her.

  Finn led her out of the bedroom and down the stairs to his light-filled, airy kitchen. After asking her if she wanted coffee and powering up his machine, he raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to lecture me?”

  Beah shook her head. “I’m not your wife anymore, Finn. I have no right to comment on how you spend your free time.”

  A strange expression crossed Finn’s face, one Beah couldn’t decipher. Was it sadness? Relief? Confusion? Who knew? Finn turned his back on her and opened the fridge.

  “But I never understood why you loved it.” And why you preferred risking your life to talking to me.

  “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

  Beah stared at the back of his head as he looked in his fridge for something to snack on. It was classic avoidance behavior. He didn’t want to discuss the matter so he changed the subject.

  Some things never changed and she was a fool for thinking, hoping, they would.

  Beah walked over to the cupboard, grabbed a glass and filled it with water. After taking a few sips, she rested the cool glass against her forehead, wishing she could stop wishing.

  She wanted things to be different…but mentally and emotionally, she was back where she’d been so long ago. Despite her promises to herself to keep this simple and bedroom-based, she still—why?—wanted Finn to open up to her.

  And she might be a hair’s breadth away from falling in love with him again—a terrifying possibility but one she could no longer avoid.

  Finn straightened, closed the fridge and Beah noticed his hands were empty. He leaned his shoulder into the stainless steel appliance and rubbed the back of his neck. “Exercise takes me out of my head,” he said, his expression thoughtful. “It clears out the junk and allows me to see situations clearly.”

  Wow, he was talking. This was new.

  “I don’t have a death wish, Beah. I don’t go out there thinking I could die. Sure, death and injury are a risk, but it’s not something I think about because I don’t want or intend to die.” Finn hesitated a moment before continuing. “When I jump off a building or free climb, I sink or swim or fall by my own choices. It’s the only place I feel like I am in complete control.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And I don’t know if I can explain it to you.”

  Beah felt Finn’s eyes on her face, heard his sigh. Beah expected him to shut down but he continued to talk. “One of my earliest childhood memories is of people asking me questions, trying to talk to me, but I never got a chance to respond because Carrick and Ronan jumped in and spoke for me. I guess my reticence started then because I didn’t, apparently, talk much, or at all. I suppose it became a habit.”

  Okay, that made sense. Finn worked out his problems on his own. He n
ever shared his inner thoughts with anyone, not even her. Stupid that it still hurt.

  “I still don’t understand why you think it’s a good idea to throw yourself off buildings,” Beah stated. Finn walked over to her, took the glass from her hand, filled it up with water and downed the contents. He looked out the narrow window to the dark night beyond.

  “It makes me feel alive, it reminds me to live. I’ve seen death often—my birth mom, Raeni, Thandi, even Tanna came damn close to dying—that I feel like I need to feel life. What I do requires total focus, immense concentration. I have to push aside the crap, the minutiae of life and only think about what I’m doing in the moment. And it’s in those moments that I feel I am truly one with the world, tuned in,” Finn added. He smiled his quirky, ovary-rolling smile. “And yeah, I enjoy the rush.”

  “Thanks for explaining it to me. I understand better now.” Beah rested her hand on his warm forearm and squeezed. “I appreciate you opening up.”

  Finn lifted his hand to push a curl behind her ear, to run the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone. “I can’t help but notice you don’t talk half as much as you used to.”

  Yeah, she’d been a spiller, telling him anything and everything, thinking if she opened up, so would he.

  Beah, not able to look at him, walked over to the coffee machine and opened the cupboard doors above the machine to look for cups. “I used to be a talker, now I’m a bit more like you. I tend to work things out by myself.”

  “Did I do that to you?” Finn asked.

  Beah shrugged. He hadn’t done it to her; nobody had that much power. But after their divorce, she’d chosen to retreat, to become more emotionally isolated. It didn’t hurt so much when you looked around for emotional comfort and found none. “We choose our actions, Finn.”

  She didn’t want to spoil what had been a lovely day by talking about the past, so Beah changed the subject. “This is a really nice place.”

  Finn looked around and nodded. “I enjoy it.”

  Beah, from memory, fixed Finn a cup of coffee before making her own. She sipped, sighed and rolled her head, trying to work out the tension in her neck.

  Finn slid onto a modern stool at the island and wrapped his big hands around his mug. He looked at her, green eyes intense. “Talking about talking, I sense you are wrestling with something, that you are trying to make a decision… Can I help?”

  Beah looked down at her bare feet, her toes tipped with red. Wow, Finn paid more attention to her than she’d thought. Her first instinct was to lie, to tell him he was allowing his imagination to run riot, but that was a cop-out. He’d been honest with her; she could—to a point—be honest with him.

  But she couldn’t tell him everything, not yet. She held up her hand in a silent request to give her a moment to think.

  When the spring sales were over, she’d ask for a meeting with the Murphy brothers and explain her reasoning for wanting to go out on her own. Until then, she’d keep her plans under wraps. None of them needed the additional stress—the sale was too important, too once-in-a-lifetime to distract her from providing the best service to her clients…

  Clients she hoped would leave with her when she left Murphy’s. And why did she feel a rush of guilt at that thought? It wasn’t like she would be telling them not to deal with Murphy’s, it just meant they would become her clients and not Murphy’s clients. She could deal with other auction houses, grow her income and her business…

  Not that she needed much more than she already had. She owned her house and another she’d bought as an investment property. She had a solid, extensive portfolio of stocks and investments, a huge retirement fund. All her needs, and most of her wants, were covered by her monthly salary and the huge commission she earned from Murphy International.

  Why was she doing this if it wasn’t for the money? Beah ignored Finn’s quizzical expression and walked out of the kitchen, past the dining area and down the steps into the sunken lounge, to look out Finn’s huge windows and onto the water. Why was she determined to own her own business, to set up something new?

  Because, maybe, she was hoping a new venture, a new challenge, would fill the hole inside her, would quiet the nagging voice frequently reminding her something was missing. She wanted a new challenge so she didn’t have time to think of anything else, her rogue thoughts drowned by her work…

  She wanted to be busy so she didn’t have time to miss her marriage, to mourn her dreams of being part of a unit, of having her own family to love and laugh with.

  Beah sipped her coffee and heard Finn behind her. Instead of reaching for her, he placed his shoulder against the glass pane, sensing she needed time. And space.

  “I can see you have a lot on your mind, Beah,” Finn quietly stated. “How can I help?”

  He couldn’t. Because what she most wanted from him he couldn’t give her. Not back then and not now.

  Beah gave him a quick shake of her head. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I’m not wrestling with something. I am. But I can work it out myself.”

  Finn opened his mouth and she expected an argument. Instead, he sent her a wry smile. “I’m here if you need a sounding board, Bee. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Because we are friends with benefits?” Beah demanded, wincing at the bitterness she heard in her voice.

  “Because I still care for you,” Finn quietly said.

  He still cared for her. Whop, whop, whop.

  She was on the edge of tumbling back into love, of handing her heart over, and he just cared for her. Well, wasn’t that a metaphorical bucket of cold water? Finn sipped his coffee, staring at the dark water beyond the deck. “How is your dad? Do you ever hear from him?”

  Beah frowned, a little off-balance at his abrupt change of the subject. Beah ignored the cold hand gripping her heart. “Nope, such an action would require him making an effort and my dad never excelled at putting himself out.”

  Finn walked over to the nearest chair, sat down and placed his feet on the coffee table. “You sound bitter.”

  Of course she was. She had a right to be! “My father left my mom when he realized how much care and support she’d need. He left me to cope with a terminally ill parent. He moved in with his long-term mistress, a woman whose child he adopted as his own, the woman he married a few days after my mom’s funeral. Do I not have a right to be bitter?”

  Finn just handed her a gentle, understanding smile. “I’m bitter, and angry, on your behalf. What a prick.”

  Beah almost smiled at Finn’s matter-of-fact tone of voice. And he was right—her dad was a prick. “What about your stepsibling? Have you met her? Does she know about you?”

  The grip on her heart tightened, iced up. “Nope, we were never introduced. She’ll be fifteen, sixteen this year.”

  “Does she know about you?” Finn asked.

  “I have no idea. Probably not,” Beah admitted. She looked at her watch, feeling uncomfortable with the depth of the conversation. They were just exes having sex. They weren’t supposed to be talking.

  Sex was uncomplicated, easy. Sex didn’t require anything more than a mutual exchange of pleasure. Sex didn’t need words or emotions or conversations.

  And these types of conversations made her think she might, just might, mean something more to him than a bed buddy, someone he cared about. Conversations like these gave her hope and hope was, as she knew, damn dangerous.

  She had to shut this down, to reerect any emotional barriers she’d constructed between them. She had to protect herself. She would not open herself up to Finn again and find herself in the same position she did years ago, needing more from him than he could give.

  Nope. Not happening.

  She knew of a great way to distract them both. Beah put her coffee cup on the table and slid her leg over his thighs and her arms around his neck. She looked at his mouth, dragged he
r fingertips through his soft beard. Sex they could do, and do well; talking was dangerous.

  “I love your eyes,” Beah told him, admiring the darker green ring holding in that lighter shade.

  Finn lifted an eyebrow and his hand rested on her bare thigh, sliding up and over her hip.

  “I love all of you.”

  Beah’s heart bounced off her rib cage and she quickly reminded herself he was talking about her body, cautioning herself not to read too much into his comment. She cursed herself for her earlier stupidity. She was not the same idealistic, unrealistic girl who’d married him so long ago.

  Beah dropped her head to kiss the side of his mouth, to nibble on his jaw. This was not an emotional connection, a rejuvenation of a love affair.

  They were work colleagues, two people who were attracted and were acting on their attraction.

  Nothing more, nothing less. This was cut-and-dried, simple.

  They. Were. Done.

  But she needed to make sure they were on the same page, reading from the same book. “You mean you love what we do to each other, right?”

  Finn just held her face in his hands, handed her an enigmatic smile and pulled her down to take her mouth in a fierce kiss.

  It was only much, much later Beah remembered that he never answered her question.

  EIGHT

  Beah sat in Paris Cummings’s overly decorated sitting room, staring at her hands instead of the amazing art on the walls. She had a tiny chip in the pale pink polish on her right hand, and the diamond ring she wore on her right hand—her mom’s engagement ring from her dad—needed a cleaning.

  She wished a dirty ring and a tiny chip in her nail polish could keep her occupied but a million thoughts buzzed around her brain, chief of which was how much she missed Finn.

  She’d left Boston in a hurry early yesterday morning because one of her oldest clients, a Russian oligarch, told her he would be in London the following day and he could only see her at three the next afternoon. He was, he’d also told her, in a buying mood.