Dedicated to Deirdre

by Winston, Anne Marie

  She barely recognized her own behavior. There was no excuse. But it had been so nice, so very nice, to see admiration in a man’s eyes when he looked at her. To see desire and passion and need. And to know that a man could make her want him, too.

  She’d been giddy from the wine, but she couldn’t blame that. Ronan Sullivan was the most sexually compelling man she’d ever met. Just being in the same room with him made her feel jumpy and jittery and aware of her own feminine sexuality.

  He’d been polite and pleasant and perfectly correct for most of the time she’d known him. But after the boys had left with her mother, the atmosphere had changed. She’d recognized the shift, felt his intense interest; his kiss hadn’t been unexpected.

  Or unwelcome, either, if she were truthful with herself.

  No, she hadn’t been averse to being kissed. She had actually looked forward to it, to experimenting with a few little caresses as her first step in becoming a single, dating woman. She just hadn’t been expecting every brain cell she had to go on vacation when he had touched her. She hadn’t been expecting the huge flare of need that erased all thought from her head and urged her to twine herself around him like a piece of cling wrap.

  Wearily she rolled onto her back again.

  Crying never helped anything. Except maybe to purge her of the worst of the pain. Tomorrow would be here as soon as she fell asleep. Tomorrow she would work in the morning, get her children back in the afternoon and do what she usually did in the evening: housework, laundry or more sewing. An exciting Saturday night.

  She was awakened the next morning by Murphy standing beside the bed, panting heavily. It was his “I need to go out” pant, and she pulled herself out of bed and shuffled downstairs to let him out into the yard. She showered, dressed and braided her hair—it really had been too hot yesterday to wear it loose.

  She opened the refrigerator door and stood, staring without seeing, until the cold air reminded her and she removed the orange juice. While she was making herself a slice of toast, the telephone rang.

  “Hello?” It was early, but everyone knew she got up at the crack of dawn, so it wasn’t unusual.

  “Hi, Dee!” It was Frannie.

  “Good morning.” She could hear the baby fussing in the background. “Sleepless night?”

  “Yeah, but Jack was the one pacing the floor,” her friend said with distinct glee. “Listen, are you going to be around today?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a really strange request from a customer and I need your help. Mind if I run out this afternoon?”

  “Not at all. I’d love to see you. There’s only one condition.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your entry fee is the baby.”

  Frannie Laughed. “Not a problem. Until he’s weaned, we’re stuck with each other except for brief escapes to the grocery store.”

  “I remember those days.” Thinking of nursing her own babies brought a sweet swell of feeling. She’d loved every moment of those baby days.

  Baby.

  Ronan. A breathless dread crept through her.

  Cusses. She was doing her best not to think about him this morning. With determination she finished the conversation, let Murphy back in and fed the big lug, then started toward the old sunporch she’d converted into her sewing room. The New York order was a significant one; the sooner she completed it, the sooner she’d get paid.

  She worked straight through lunchtime, only remembering it when the dog began to get restless. Oh, well, it wasn’t as if she was going to waste away to nothing if she missed a meal. Standing at the sink, she peeled an apple and ate it slice by slice. She was just washing her hands when Murphy let her know someone was coming.

  Frannie’s van was pulling to a halt in the lane when she walked out front. Murphy was bouncing around the vehicle, barking and ru-ruing like he did when he recognized a friend, tail slapping from side to side. The driver’s door opened. Frannie stepped out and waved, then walked around to the passenger side to get the baby.

  Then the front passenger door opened. A blond head appeared, followed by a slim, shapely figure who walked forward with her arms out. “Hi, honey!”

  “Jill! When did you get back?” Deirdre hurried to hug her other closest friend, who had been on a cruise for the past few weeks.

  “Last night. Late. I called Frannie this morning, and when I found out she was coming out, I horned in.” She released Deirdre and stooped to throw her arms around Murphy’s thick neck in a rough-and-tumble hug. “Hello to you, too, you dumb dog. Quit slobbering on me.”

  “Come on in.” She felt happier than she had all day. She turned to ask Frannie if she needed help carrying anything in, but a movement caught the corner of her eye and she automatically turned to look. So did Jill and Frannie.

  Ronan had walked around the corner of the barn, headed for the woods. When he saw them, Jill waved enthusiastically. He hesitated a moment, then began to walk toward them.

  “Whoa! Where did you get that?” Jillian’s tone was hushed as she brushed dog hair off the aqua sleeveless top that made her gorgeous tan glow. She shoved her huge redframed sunglasses to the top of her head for a better look.

  Frannie whistled under her breath. “Is that your tenant? You lucky, lucky girl.”

  “Hey, none of that. He’s off-limits to married mothers,” Jill said. “Anyone have a tissue? I’m drooling.”

  Deirdre took one quick look, their gazes meeting for a fleeting second before hers bounced away. He was wearing faded gray sport shorts of some soft fabric that clung to his body and a navy sweatshirt whose arms had been cut out by a haphazard hand. As usual, he needed a shave, and his chestnut hair gleamed in the sun. His muscles bunched and flexed like a big jungle cat as he strode toward them, the shorts hiding not one detail of his blatantly male physique.

  “Good afternoon, ladies.” Ronan stopped a few feet away. His tone was smooth and cordial, but he didn’t smile.

  “Jill, Frannie, this is Ronan Sullivan. He’s renting the apartment over the stable.”

  “Dee!” Jill’s tone was horrified. “That place is a rat trap.” She stepped forward and extended her hand to Ronan, smiling coquettishly. “I’m Jillian Kerr. of that old stable is too rustic for you, I could probably find room for you at my place. You give me a call and I’m sure I can find something to do with you.”

  Ronan’s eyebrows rose and he finally smiled. “I just bet you could.”

  If he’d wanted to twist a knife into her, he couldn’t have done a better job. Last night had been special to her, even if Ronan only started it because he thought she was giving him a green light. How could he flirt with her friend right in front of her? Even though she knew Jillian was joking, charming him effortlessly as she did with every man she met, a fist of denial clutched at her throat. She hated the thought of Ronan flirting with anyone. The tears she thought she’d finished with last night rose hot and thick behind her eyes, and she looked at the dusty stones on the ground before her, willing them back into whatever bottomless reservoir they came from.

  “I’m Frannie, and this little sumo wrestler is my son Brooks.” When Deirdre didn’t speak, her other friend introduced herself.

  Deirdre finally looked up again as Ronan murmured something conventional in return. Her friends both were casting her curious glances. Ronan’s face was stony again and his eyes went hard and flat when he turned to her. “I’m going for a walk now. May I take Murphy along?”

  “Yes, thank you. He needs to work off some of his excess energy today.”

  “Me, too.”

  His tone wasn’t suggestive, but a picture of his hard chest, the washboard muscles of his stomach, rose to taunt her. She knew she was blushing, and she turned away quickly, addressing her friends. “Come on in. This heat can’t be good for Brooks.”

  No one spoke until they entered the house and walked back to her kitchen. She hurried to a cupboard and got out glasses. “Lemonade all right with you two?”

&nbs
p; Jillian nodded.

  “Ice water for me, please. A big glass. Since I started breastfeeding, my mouth is always as dry as cotton.” Frannie cleared her throat. “You and your tenant certainly are polite to each other.”

  “I thought perhaps I detected a certain...tension...in the air,” Jillian suggested. “But surely I was mistaken.”

  Deirdre kept her eye on the glasses she was filling. “You must have been.”

  Jill laughed. “Dee, honey, you’re not fooling us. I can spot attraction a mile away. What is going on between you and our handsome Ronan?”

  She couldn’t tell them. Not even these two, her dearest friends in the world, who had seen her through the hellish days of her divorce and supported her when she thought she just couldn’t be strong anymore. “It’s—I—I’m sorry,” she managed, her voice shaking. “It’s not something I can talk about right now.”

  There was a moment of astonished silence.

  Then Jillian moved to her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay, honey. You know where we are if you need us.”

  Frannie nodded, her eyes sympathetic. Then she turned to the diaper bag she carried everywhere, pulling a sheet of sketch paper from a pocket. “Here. Before I forget why I came out here in the first place, take a look at this. I have a customer who wants to have an exact replica of her wedding gown made for a Barbie doll.”

  Deirdre took the paper, concentrating on Frannie’s words while she gathered her composure. “I don’t normally design for the eleven-inch dolls, but I probably could do this. It might be fun. What fabrics are you using?”

  Jillian reached for the baby. “You two go right ahead and talk sewing. It’s mumbo-jumbo to us, isn’t it, Brooksbuddy? Let’s go play with some toys.”

  Three weeks later her New York order was almost finished. The clothing for eighteen-inch specialty dolls had been ordered by a nationally known toy store for its display window. The scene was a winter one around a frozen pond, so the dolls had to be garbed in layers and layers of clothing. She’d even made tiny leather ice skates, and knitted eensy-weensy mittens, mufflers and hats.

  She was anxious to get the order finished. Not only because of the money, which would be welcome, considering that she had a balloon payment on her mortgage due next month, but also because she planned to work Frannie’s customer’s Barbie doll wedding dress in before she started another order. The fabrics would be a challenge in miniature, and she needed a challenge to occupy her mind right now.

  She was consumed by worry these days, unable to focus her attention on anything for long before her troubled thoughts intruded again. What if she was pregnant? She’d soon be able to take an early pregnancy test. And then she’d know. If only she were able to wave a wand and make time fly forward a few weeks.

  If course, if she could make time fly, she also could go backward. And be smart, sensible and sober. Then she wouldn’t be “what-iffing” herself to death.

  What would she do if she were going to have a baby? Another child would strain her resources almost beyond her ability to provide for her family, even if her lawyer ever succeeded in getting Nelson to pay her for the months of child support he’d ignored so far. She really needed another two or three years to get her business solidly entrenched, and if she had an infant, it would be even harder to devote the time she needed to her projects.

  But there was no question in her mind about what she would do. She could never terminate a life. No, if she was pregnant, then her family would have a new member. She knew she would love another child when it arrived, but right now she was praying one wouldn’t arrive at all.

  The evening with Ronan had receded in chronological time, but in her memory, every detail was as fresh and clear as if he’d just taken his hands from her body. It still bothered her to admit she’d been so easy. That was a word reserved for other women, women who frequented bars seeking out the very thing she wished she could erase from her life.

  But in a strange way, though she regretted her behavior, she had made peace with the memories. She didn’t regret that she no longer thought of Nelson, of silently staring at the ceiling and enduring when he decided to remind her that she was his wife. And she didn’t regret that she knew now how shiveringly, excitingly intense the act of coupling could be with a man who was tuned in to her responses. Her body tingled just thinking about it. About him.

  She’d barely seen Ronan since. He came to take Murphy for his walk and they exchanged a sentence or two through the screen door. Occasionally she saw the boys chasing after him and she would call them in. She didn’t want her children bothering him.

  He closeted himself away in the stable most days. It made her wonder if he wasn’t having much luck with whatever kinds of things he was writing. Still, he had had no problems so far paying his rent, so she supposed it wasn’t her problem. Or her business.

  “Hey, Mom!” Lee charged into her sewing room, narrowly avoiding a stack of new fabrics she’d just received.

  “Careful, hotshot,” she cautioned. “What do you need?” The boys had been watching a movie in the next room, and she’d been pleased that they were being so quiet. Sometimes she had to resort to working after they were in bed, because they were under her feet too much during the day. She felt a dull guilt each time she had to refuse them an ounce of her time because she had to work, but right now there was no help for it.

  “You gotta help us cut up the watermelon.” Wide brown eyes beseeched her to come right now and help.

  “What watermelon?” They pretended all the time; she just went along with the make-believe scenarios if they weren’t dangerous.

  Lee regarded her impatiently. “Ronan’s watermelon.”

  “All right.” Her sons were enthralled with Ronan; the more she enforced the Let’s Not Bug the Tenant rule, the more desperately they wanted to be with him. She supposed that if they had to talk about him, she’d go along.

  Lee took her hand when she rose from her chair, practically dragging her through the house and out the back door. When she saw Ronan standing on the porch, an enormous watermelon cradled in his arms, her heart leaped into her throat.

  “Hello.” She was proud that her voice sounded so calm. He was wearing another shirt with the arms cut off but this one also had been hacked off at the waistband; at least, she assumed that was where it originally had been intended to fall. It obviously had been washed a few hundred times since then, and now it barely reached to the middle of his broad chest. The muscles in his arms bulged. Below the shirt, a tanned torso was bisected by a thick arrow of dark curly hair running vertically into the waistband of his shorts.

  She wanted to reach out and touch so badly that she curled her fingers into fists and dug her nails into the palms of her hands.

  “Hi.” His voice was deep, his golden eyes intent. “I won this at the little market up the road.”

  “You...won it?”

  “Yeah. The lady who owns the market got a truckload in and this one was so much bigger than all the rest she decided to raffle it off and give the proceeds to the Cancer Society. I only bought a ticket to be polite.”

  “Looks like you should be polite more often.” It had been a flippant response; purely off the top of her head.

  So when his eyes met hers and he quietly said, “I think so,” she didn’t have a response. There was a double meaning hidden in there somewhere, she was sure, but the look in his eyes confused her, and she was afraid to think about what that look might mean.

  “You can borrow one of my bigger knives to cut it up,” she offered.

  He shook his head. “Too lazy. I gave it to Tommy and Lee.”

  “Oh.” She turned to her sons. “Did you say thank you?”

  “They did,” Ronan confirmed.

  “Mommy, are we gonna watch firewoks on the Fouwf of July?” Tommy cocked his head in inquiry. “Aunt Jill told me firewoks comes soon.”

  Deirdre nodded, a little confused by the sudden change of topic. She wanted to
end this conversation. “Three more days,” she confirmed. “I guess we’ll go up on the hill like we did last year. Did you like that?”

  Tommy nodded. “And take a picnic like last year.”

  “Mr. Sullivan, you can come with us,” said Lee. “On the picnic. You’ll really, really like the fireworks.”

  “Oh, boys, I’m sure Mr. Sullivan has plans for the Fourth.” This was her own fault. If only she hadn’t taught her children to be so cussed friendly. She looked at Ronan over her sons’ heads, waiting for him to acknowledge the easy out she’d given him.

  “Actually,” he said, “I don’t.”

  Four

  What did he think he was doing? she asked herself silently on the Fourth as she sliced his watermelon into manageable chunks for her children. Having a picnic with Ronan, even with the distraction of her sons, would be a true test of endurance. She couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather picnic with less.

  Liar.

  It’s the truth, she told herself, slicing vigorously.

  Come on, Deirdre, admit it. There’s nothing wrong with admitting to a little bit of lust. Except that you wish it wasn’t just lust

  She sighed as she packed the watermelon into a container and placed it in the cooler. It must be a girl thing, to romanticize every guy who comes close. She had proof positive that Ronan was no Prince Charming, and yet she had caught herself daydreaming at least once a day, reveries in which he became the perfect second husband, adoring her, adoring her children from her first marriage—

  That part really was a fantasy, she told herself. Yesterday, she’d been weeding around the front of the house when a loud, close crash nearly stopped her heart. Looking around, she’d seen that the bottom pane of the window just to her right was shattered. She’d known, even before she’d called for the boys, that they must have gotten a little carried away with their game of catch. Still, she hadn’t thought either one of them was big enough to be breaking her windows yet.