Dedicated to Deirdre

by Winston, Anne Marie

  She knew he was returning when she heard Murphy’s big feet beat a tattoo on the wooden boards of the porch. She went to open the door for the dog, then held it wide until Ronan had mounted the steps and come inside. As he approached, she saw that he carried a bottle of red wine. “This might go nicely with the pasta,” he said.

  “Thank you.” He was holding out the bottle and she took it, a bit startled as she recognized the label. Her tenant had expensive taste in wines.

  He stood just inside the door, taking in the room, and she saw what he was seeing. She’d worked hard to make this house a haven for her and the boys, and she was proud of the end result. Oh, there were any number of things yet that the old house needed, but she felt happy here.

  Copper pots hung around the old stone fireplace and a variety of half-burned candles, some rolled from beeswax by the boys, stood on the mantel. A wooden trestle table took up much of one end of the room on an oval rag rug near the fireplace; upside-down bundles of drying herbs and flowers hung from the exposed beams of the ceiling. At the other end of the room, more rugs were scattered over the brick floor, while unobtrusive—but thoroughly modern—black appliances gleamed. Oil lamps, a wrought-iron “tree” full of baskets, a rocking chair with an afghan tossed over the back...this was her kitchen.

  She already had set the table with glazed ceramic pottery, a treasure she’d resuscitated after finding it in a box in the attic. Now she said, “Dinner is almost ready. Tommy. Call your brother and wash your hands.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Ronan.

  “There’s a powder room on the right down the hall,” she said, pointing with the wooden spoon she was about to dip into the spaghetti sauce.

  He disappeared behind Tommy, and as he left the room, she felt the invisible presence he seemed to carry around him disappear, too. She’d dreamed about Ronan last night, an embarrassingly detailed dream from which she’d woken aroused and unfulfilled, wondering what it would be like to have him kiss her, touch her. It was only that she’d been alone so long, she had told herself, and he was here, underfoot all the time. And she knew from his concern the night of that abominable Christmas party that he was a nice man.

  He was good-looking, despite the way she’d downplayed him to Frannie. His chestnut hair had a reddish cast to it in the sunlight, and his jaw—often stubbled as if he’d forgotten to shave—was square, with a deep dimple right at the bottom of his chin. He towered over her, though that wasn’t difficult since she was only two inches over five feet, and she’d noticed that although he gave the impression of being lean, his shoulders blocked the light when he passed through her low doorway. His eyes were like a big cat’s, mesmerizing his prey, the golden gaze piercing and direct, ferreting out every secret she thought she had hidden.

  The telephone rang as she was putting cheese and a salad on the table.

  “Hella?”

  “Hello, honey.”

  “Hi, Mom.” She tucked the phone into the curve of her neck as she continued to work. “What’s up?”

  “I have a favor to ask. Or maybe I’ll be doing you one, depending on your point of view.” Her mother chuckled. “Your father came home with tickets to the circus for tomorrow. We’d like to take the boys, if you don’t have plans. In fact—” her voice warmed enthusiastically as the brainstorm hit “—why don’t I come get them and let them spend the night? I can be there in thirty minutes, they’d have a little time to play this evening, maybe take a late swim in the pool, and then they can sleep in tomorrow. We don’t need to leave to get to the circus until about ten.”

  Her mother’s timing couldn’t have been worse. If she came for the boys in thirty minutes, Deirdre would have to finish the meal alone with Ronan, a situation more awkward than she could imagine. But search as she might, she couldn’t come up with a plausible reason to nix the plan. “I guess that would be okay, Mom. If it’s all right with the boys.”

  Both children and their guest had straggled back into the kitchen as she spoke on the phone. She held the receiver to her shoulder and said to Lee and Tommy, “Would you guys like to spend the night with Gramma and Grampa and go to the circus tomorrow?”

  Wild war whoops were the answer, and she motioned for quiet as she said to her mother, “I think that’s a yes. See you shortly.”

  Quickly, she got the rest of the meal on the table, adding two wineglasses and handing Ronan a corkscrew as she cut the boys’ spaghetti into manageable sizes. She tried not to notice how efficiently Ronan opened the bottle with a few deft twists of his wrist, then slowly and smoothly extracted the cork before filling her glass and his.

  “We can dispense with the tasting ceremony,” he said.

  She made a determined effort to smile casually, nodding in agreement. It felt incredibly strange to be sitting at a table with a man again, although if she was truthful, Nelson had rarely taken family meals with them. Most of the time she and the kids had been on their own.

  “So tell us where you’ve been going when you walk,” she said. “Have you found a favorite spot yet?”

  He considered the question, but Lee couldn’t stand to be quiet for long. “We all have a special spot,” he said. “Mine’s the big rock up on the hill. It’s my fort.”

  “An’ mine’s the pine tree clearing,” said his brother. “We play we live in there sometimes.”

  Ronan smiled. For the first time he noticed Lee was missing both top front teeth. His little brother had a lisp a deaf person could hear. They were both so damned cute he thought they could be the kids he saw in commercials. “You’ll have to show me your fort and your house in the clearing someday,” he said. “Maybe next week you can come with me when I take my walk.”

  “O-kay!” Lee clenched his fist in the air and drew it down to his side.

  “Nelson Lee.” His mother was giving him the eye. “You have manners. Use them.”

  “So.” Ronan thought he’d draw fire away from the kid. “Does Mom have a special spot?”

  “Uh, not re—”

  “Yep.” Lee bounced in his chair. “She likes the creek. She takes off her shoes and goes wading sometimes.”

  “One time we all taked off everyfing and got inna water.”

  Deirdre made a choking sound. A deep red blush washed up from her neck to her hairline as she said to Tommy, “Do you remember our rule about telling Private Family Stuff?” To Ronan she said, “Don’t ever have children. The whole world hears all.” She picked up her wineglass and took a healthy swallow, but he noticed she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  That was okay for now. He sensed her skittishness, and he wondered if she’d had any relationships since her husband. The idea made him frown. He hoped she hadn’t given any other guy the kind of green light she was giving him tonight, arranging for her mother to take her kids so they could have the evening alone. Thinking of what would happen later tonight was a bad move, he decided, shifting in his chair to ease the sudden tight fit of his shorts. A very bad move. Purposefully he turned his attention back to the meal.

  Supper was lively, as he’d expected with the little boys around. He learned that they had both been hospitalized last summer after they used big, healthy-looking poison ivy leaves for a “salad” they decided to sample outdoors. Lee proudly showed him the missing space in his front teeth, courtesy of a close encounter with a swing that he didn’t see coming his way. Tommy showed him a small scar on the side of his knee where he’d had stitches after he’d fallen from a tree. He learned that Lee’s favorite color was green and that Tommy slept with a stuffed alligator he’d had since he was an infant.

  “From my father,” Deirdre explained. “My father is a biologist. He’s a little...different. How many people do you know who would pick out a three-foot, stuffed alligator for a six-pound baby?”

  Ronan agreed that it was an unusual gift while he watched the shift and play of shadow over her smooth ivory shoulders, bared by the light summer clothing. He was truly amazed by her children. How she stayed
sane keeping up with these two was beyond him. He’d felt himself sweating as the boys described their various creative escapades.

  But he couldn’t keep his mind on the conversation. It was taking a concentrated effort not to stare at his hostess with his tongue hanging out. She looked like a porcelain doll, he decided. She must garden, because he knew she didn’t hire anybody to help out with the yard work, but her ivory flesh looked as though it had never known the kiss of the sun.

  When she emptied her wineglass, he refilled it and handed it across to her, and her fingers brushing over his raised goose bumps up his arms in a pleasantly arousing tingle. Even more arousing was the knowledge that the tingle was going to get a whole lot stronger later this evening.

  Tommy proudly presented his baking effort for dessert, an angel food cake with lurid green icing made from whipped topping, food coloring and vanilla pudding. He’d seen the frosting recipe in his Sesame Street magazine, he informed Ronan, and Bert an’ Ernie made it. Ronan had no idea who Burton Urney was, but he thought the guy should be drawn and quartered for teaching little kids to make disgusting-looking things like that. He tasted it gingerly and was surprised to find it was pretty darn good.

  Murphy began to bark as Ronan was finishing his second piece of cake, and Deirdre’s mother breezed in the back door. She stopped dead when she saw Ronan sitting at her daughter’s kitchen table with Tommy on one knee and a smear of green icing on his cheek.

  “Good evening,” she said, eyes as striking as her daughter’s sweeping over him from head to toe. Though she was quite polite, he could sense the curiosity radiating from her.

  Ronan set Tommy on a chair and rose, politely offering his hand. “Hello. I’m Deirdre’s tenant, Ronan Sullivan.” Deirdre’s mother was no taller than her daughter, with an amazingly trim figure for someone he figured had two-plus decades on her. Her hair was snow-white, carelessly anchored in a bun at the back of her head from which stray tendrils escaped and wisped around her head. He was looking at Deirdre in thirty years, he realized.

  It wasn’t an unpleasant thought.

  “Ronan, this is my mother, Maura Halleran,” said Deirdre.

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Halleran,” he said.

  When she smiled at him, his heart was lost. “Sullivan,” she said, “A good Irish name. When did your family come over?”

  “Come over?” As far as he knew, his parents were still safely ensconced in their condo.

  “From Eire.” Her green eyes were deadly serious. “My grandmother O‘Leary was born there. We O’Learys haven’t been away that long. The Hallerans abandoned—”

  “Mo-ther.” Deirdre had obviously heard this before. “Take my children and go before you scare Ronan away. He’s a good tenant and if he leaves, who knows what kind of maniac I’ll wind up with.” She kissed her mother’s cheek and herded her and the boys toward the door. “Could be someone like you.”

  He was still laughing to himself when the boys hollered goodbye and disappeared around the corner of the house with their grandmother, after retrieving the amazing alligator from Tommy’s room.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, belatedly remembering something. “They didn’t pack anything. Don’t kids still need suitcases?”

  “Not for a night at Gramma’s,” Deirdre said. “She keeps extra sets of clothes there all the time. The only thing that can’t be replaced is the alligator.”

  “Ah.” Another tidbit to file away. He never knew when a reference to a grandmother might come in handy in a story.

  Deirdre was hovering nervously in the middle of the room and he patted the seat beside him. He’d been anticipating this moment ever since she’d announced before dinner that the boys would be going to their grandmother’s house. “Come sit down. I imagine you don’t get many chances to put your feet up when those two are around.”

  “You imagine correctly.” But she didn’t sit down. Instead, she began gathering plates and flatware and fitting them into the dishwasher. “I’m sorry about my mother. She’s always been interested in Irish history. Well,” she added, “that’s the polite way to phrase it.”

  “I liked your mother,” he said mildly as he rose and gathered glasses, carrying them to the sink. If she needed some time to ease into his arms, that was all right.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “Sure I do. You cooked. It’s only fair that I help clean up. Besides, the sooner the table is cleared, the sooner you’ll sit down and relax.”

  He didn’t imagine the startled glance that came his way as she quickly put away the remains of the meal. But she didn’t comment, just bent and hauled an enormous dog bowl out from beneath the sink. “I have to feed the big guy first.”

  He was riveted to the spot by the sight of her rounded bottom straining against the seat of her overalls when she bent over. He could hear his blood roaring through his veins, could feel his body reacting and he resisted the strong impulse to grab her by those lush hips and pull her back against him, to tear off first her clothes and then his, to plunge into her and let his flesh pound against those smooth buttocks that would be as porcelain white and soft as the rest of her until they both were satisfied.

  He was hard as a rock now, distinctly uncomfortable in the shorts that had seemed plenty roomy when he’d put them on. Turning his back to her, he spotted the wine still on the table, and on the pretext of retrieving it, used the opportunity to tug himself into a more comfortable position. Even the touch of his own hand made his flesh leap and he closed his eyes, forcing himself to think of his story, the apartment, his agent’s phone call earlier in the day... anything to keep him from giving in to the primal demand to turn back to that enticing little body this very minute.

  His hand shook as he reached for the bottle and the two glasses. “I’ll take the wine out on the porch.”

  “I’ll join you in a moment.”

  He hoped it was a long moment. He hadn’t had a reaction like that to a woman since he was about seventeen; he wasn’t sure he liked it. But he guessed it made sense. Deirdre had been in his mind for a long time. He’d never expected that he’d ever even see her again, much less be invited into her bed. Well, strictly speaking, she hadn’t invited him yet, but why else would she have sent her children away overnight? She wasn’t the kind of woman who would carry on with her kids sleeping in the next room, even assuming he would have, which was assuming an awful lot.

  The object of his lustful thoughts backed through the screen door then, carrying the dog bowl. Murphy was attached so closely to her side Ronan was sure she would fall over him. But she set down the bowl without incident, and he watched, fascinated, as Murphy gobbled down his dinner in less than ten seconds.

  Deirdre shook her head fondly. “Murph, you’re a big hog, do you know that?”

  The big hog wagged his tail and made a peculiar noise, not a howl, not a growl, more a ridiculous “ru-ru-u,” a definite answer to his mistress.

  Ronan laughed, and she smiled. “He thinks if he’s charming enough, someday I’ll give in and let him have more.”

  She turned and came toward Ronan, and he picked up her wineglass and handed it to her as she sat down beside him on the sturdy, old-fashioned glider. Murphy, seeing his hopes of additional chow dashed, wandered out into the yard to make sure no other dog had invaded his territory.

  Deirdre tucked one foot beneath her; the other, he was amused to see, didn’t reach the floor. He gently pushed against the floor, setting the glider into a gentle motion.

  She didn’t speak, neither did he. It was after eight, and the warm June day was finally drawing to a close, the sky dimming and night sounds beginning to filter through the air. A bird called plaintively a time or two, and the rasping of a cricket’s wings rose. From a distance the demanding bellow of a frog rhythmically boomed beneath the softer noises.

  “It’s so beautiful out here.” Deirdre’s voice was hushed and reverent. “Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world, sitting out
here after the boys are in bed, enjoying the peace.”

  Coming from someone who’d been through what obviously had been a hellish marriage, he thought that was a telling statement. “You feel safe here.”

  Beside him, she was silent, and he could almost feel the air around her withdrawing. “Some people take safety for granted,” she said. “To me, it’s a gift.”

  “How did you find this place?” He wanted her to relax.

  The aura of tension eased palpably. “My friend’s husband knew the previous owner. When he found out I was looking for a place, he thought of this.” She paused. “I owe him an enormous favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” He didn’t like the sound of this, friend’s husband or not.

  She shrugged. “Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. I’d do anything—absolutely anything—that he asked.” She lifted her glass and drank, and he reached for the bottle and filled it again.

  “Lucky guy,” he commented.

  “Yes, he is.” She appeared oblivious to the innuendo in his words. “He’s married to one of my best friends, they’re so wildly in love it’s embarrassing to watch sometimes, and they just had their second child.”

  He felt a little better. Lifting his arm, he slowly laid it across the back of the glider, casually resting against her shoulder but not completely surrounding her. Yet. “Do you ever think about getting married again?”

  “Are you crazy?” She reacted so strongly that he damn near spilled his wine as the swing swayed crazily for a moment. Then she shoved off the glider and he lifted his eyebrows in inquiry. She went to the door and yanked it open for Murphy, who had come up to lie on the rug in front of the screen. His big tail had barely disappeared when she let the door bang shut behind him and spun on her heel. As she stalked across the porch, he could see that she was seething with fury. “I will never get married again. You saw what a prince I chose the first time around.”