by Dorien Kelly
Still fussing with her wet hair, which she’d twisted and clipped at the back of her head, she lingered between the kitchen area and the table. Flynn stood in front of the oven. Unless her nose was as off as the rest of her, he was pulling out blueberry muffins.
“Did you make those?” she asked.
“Sorry, but I’m a reheat-only kind of chef.”
Somehow, that didn’t make her feel better. Taking a moment to get her brain back in the game, Annie walked to the small dining table. On it waited a few croissants, a bowl of raspberries and a plate with fresh melon slices in hues of pale green and sherbet-orange.
Annie’s stomach grumbled. She had to get this over with. “About last night…” She trailed off, watching him juggle muffins from a misshapen tin that he must have found in the cupboard. His hand brushed against the metal’s hot edge, and she heard him mutter a blunt phrase.
He was even a sexy klutz, and she was in deep trouble. She grabbed a croissant, tore off one pointy little end and popped it into her mouth. The rest she hoarded on her plate for future stress relief.
“You were saying?” Daniel prompted as he carried two fat muffins to the table.
Still chewing, she brushed past him and filled two slightly chipped green mugs with coffee, then returned. “Here’s the thing. The way I acted last night was some sort of crazed reaction to travel. That wasn’t me.”
“You’re sure about that?” he asked as he held out a chair for her.
She wanted to yank it from him and tell him to quit being so nice.
“Positive.” The real Annie would never have flung herself at someone as together as Daniel Flynn. She always salvaged her guys from the scratch-and-dent bin.
She sat, and he soon settled opposite her. She let her brain switch off and her mouth go on autopilot. “We’re going home today, and I’d appreciate it if we could leave behind everything that happened last night.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. I don’t think we should be so, um…personal with each other.” She paused just long enough to nod her thanks as he placed a muffin on her plate. “I can’t pinpoint why last night was wrong, but it was. I mean, it’s not like I can say I shouldn’t sleep with you because we’re in the same office. You’re a consultant and I’m pretty much a short-timer. But something just isn’t working for me.”
The smile he shot her way from over the rim of his mug carried a wealth of confidence and sensual awareness. Annie swallowed hard.
“I don’t mean sexually,” she said before he could point out the obvious. “I just mean that this is making me uncomfortable.” She plucked some raspberries from the small bowl in the middle of the table and downed them, then broke her muffin in quarters. “So, no sex, okay?”
His utter calm made her palms grow a little clammy. Silence stretched out between them. The only noise in the suite came through the open balcony door. Somewhere below, a shopkeeper was sweeping the sidewalk. Without even looking, Annie knew that person was doing a better job at cleaning up a mess than she was. Still, she managed to keep her mouth shut and wait for Daniel to speak.
Finally, after a bite of croissant and some more coffee, he got back to her. “You’re waiting for me to nod my head and give it a ‘Yes, Annie,’ aren’t you?”
She picked the sugary top off a piece of muffin. “That would be the general idea.”
“But I’m afraid the answer’s no.”
“No?”
“Unlike your other rules, this one’s sadly lacking in detail.”
“Come on, how much more specific can you get than ‘no sex’?”
He laughed. “Love, you have a former president who wrapped himself all around that one.”
“I’m not a politician, okay?” And she was pretty damn sure she wasn’t his love, either.
“No, but let’s be thinking about this executive order, just the same.” He speared a narrow wedge of melon and set it on his plate. “See, it hits me even harder than your ‘I’m the leader and you’re the follower’ speech. There, I might have been inclined to humor you, but this?” He shook his head. “How about we break down the ‘no sex’ bit?”
“Do what you have to, Flynn,” she said, feigning a boredom that simply didn’t exist.
He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s say I kiss you—just a casual brush against the cheek—is that considered sex?”
“Of course not.”
“And so you’re saying that it’s permitted?”
“I guess. But not in the office.”
“Grand, then. Casual kisses are fair game. How about on the lips, Annie? No tongue, of course.”
After last night’s total abandon, his words shouldn’t be making her blush, but they were. She picked up a cantaloupe slice and fit it to the curve of her croissant.
“No, that’s not sex, either,” she said without looking at him.
She heard the scrape of a chair.
“Be right back,” he said. “I’ve a feeling I should be taking notes.”
Annie watched as he dug though his bag and extracted a notebook and a fat black pen. He pulled the cap from it, and she saw it was a fountain pen, which struck her as romantic, somehow.
“Ready now,” he said once he’d sat, pushed aside his plate and written kiss—yes. His script was a lefty’s bold and angular scrawl, one more clue in the mystery-of-Flynn’s-allure puzzle that she had no business solving.
“How about full-out snogging…you know, tongues and moans and what-have-you, like last night? If we had gone no further than that, would it have been sex?”
Before she could work up an answer, another bite of muffin had to die on the altar of Memories Best Forgotten.
“Technically, no, that’s not sex, but it is a bad idea.”
Pen scratched against paper. Full snog—bad idea.
“So now we’ve moved into a gray area,” he said. “How about touching you? Will I be breaking your rules if I come round to your side of this table and put my hands under your top?”
Only an act of supreme will kept Annie from letting her eyes fall closed as she recalled the feel of his hands, hot and sure, against her skin. “Flynn, I—I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t sleep with you.”
He capped his pen and set it on top of the notebook. “Would it shock you if I told you that until you persuaded me otherwise, I had no intention of letting it go beyond a bit of panting and groping last night?”
“Panting and groping?”
“To refresh your memory, you were panting, and I was taking care of the groping.”
He’d given the best deadpan delivery she’d ever witnessed. “Are you trying to tick me off?”
“Why not? I’m bloody furious right now.” He pushed away from the table and circled to her side. “I’m not some mindless bastard out for a rut, Annie.”
He came down on his haunches and angled her chair so that she faced him. “I don’t make love to a woman casually and I don’t do it without thought. We haven’t known each other long, but until this morning, I thought at least we knew each other well.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, eyeing her waiting plate of food.
He laughed. “Of course you don’t, now. You’ve given your edict and what’s left to be said?” He stood, then held out his hand to her.
Since she had no choice, Annie took it. He drew her to her feet. When she tried to reclaim her hand, he kept his fingers laced though hers.
“Be honest. Are you embarrassed?”
She wanted to tell him the truth—that she was scared out of her mind. That she’d never reacted to a guy the way she had last night. That even though it was a really bad idea, she was just easy enough to want to do it again this morning, and that’s what had her stressed enough to visualize eating her way through Pike Place Market. But she’d already been too needy in front of him. She needed to regain her dignity.
“Embarrassed? Jeez, Flynn, I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know anything right now, an
d I figure that’s as good a reason as any not to—to—”
“Make love?” he suggested.
“Okay. Make love.”
“Then we won’t.”
She was definitely up for an award nomination in the category of Most Conflicted Chick, because once he’d agreed, Annie felt about two inches shorter from the emotional letdown.
“Until I’m sure you’re a woman of your word,” he added.
And Flynn was rising fast among the nominees for Most Able to Push Annie’s Buttons.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Last night you told me just what you wanted…all the interesting details.” He laughed, then gave her a lopsided smile. “Of course, you fell asleep right after. And this morning you’ve been everything in a woman that drives a man to murder, so I think I’m entitled to a bit of doubt. From here on, Annie, whatever happens between us is up to you.”
Nice, but she’d been pretty sure that she had a vote already. She was about to remind him as much when he spoke again.
“Now, I’m an optimist,” he said. “I figure that sooner or later, you’ll decide to make love—sooner being the preferable timing. But just so I don’t wake to another morning of Annie-remorse, I’ll be wanting the words from you in writing.”
She tugged her hand from his. “In writing? Like a contract?”
He winced as though she’d suggested something lethal. “Contract? No, too many endless obligations there. I’m thinking of it more as a moment to pause. If you can put it on paper, I’ll know you mean it.”
Annie mulled the concept. A written demand for sex… Weird, but the thought appealed to her. In fact, it was just kinky enough to make her toes curl, and in a good holding-all-power way, too.
“Any words in particular?” she asked, coloring her tone with some snarkiness, just so she was playing the game right.
Daniel laughed. “I’d be making it brief. No point in having me read too much when we could be getting on to better things.”
“And if I don’t feel like writing the words?”
He walked back to the table, paused and plucked a couple of raspberries from the bowl. “I begin to test those rules of yours. To see how well you bend.”
“I don’t.” She lied, of course. When it came to guys, she’d made a career of contortionism—first a crisp conservative for her grad school money-hound boyfriends and then a green eco-warrior for Garth. Not this time, though. For matters of business and personal pride, she needed to keep on-task.
“Really?” he said, looking ripe for the challenge.
On the other hand, all work and no play made Annie a very cranky girl. She watched as Daniel popped one raspberry in his mouth and ate it. Then he strolled her way as though he had a leisurely day to arrive. Though he made for some fine viewing pleasure, Annie ceded nothing, using a steel spine to mask her mush for knees.
“Don’t get too cocky, Flynn,” she warned.
He held the remaining raspberry to her mouth, brushing it against her lower lip in a soft caress. At the same time his gaze locked with hers, lit with temptation and a humor she’d seen little of from the other men in her life. Damned if she didn’t take the raspberry like a circus poodle performing for kibble.
“It’s confidence, Annie, not cockiness.”
He had her there. If confidence were a tradable commodity, Daniel Flynn would be a billionaire. And unless she picked up on this skill, she’d forever be broke.
Confidence, the best that she could figure, came from asserting power. And so long as she was in charge, she wanted to explore the power she held over Daniel Flynn. She would have kissed him, except she was too short to reach his mouth without his cooperation. Instead she tugged his black shirt free from his jeans. She slipped her hands beneath it and ran them across the warm skin of his stomach, feeling his abs tighten beneath her palms.
She smiled at his indrawn breath and the way he said her name as though it was a warning.
“Just testing a little,” she said. “Do you bend, Daniel?” She followed the curve of his rib cage around to his back. Wow, but he felt good. Bummer she’d been acting like a trained poodle instead of a cat, because right about now she was ready to purr.
“Bend? I, erm…”
He trailed off as she drew her hands forward and slid the soft cotton shirt upward. His skin really was the delicious golden hue she half recalled from last night. He’d clearly seen the sun in more tropical locales than Ireland.
“You were saying?” she prompted, then with her eyes still meeting his, shimmied downward until she could sample what she’d exposed.
She kissed the spot right above the waistband of his jeans and laughed a little as he jumped beneath her mouth. She ventured upward and to the right a few inches, this time opening her mouth against him and nipping just enough to be certain she had his full attention. It occurred to her that she might have found the ideal food substitute for those stressful moments in life. She kissed him again, flicking her tongue against his skin.
His laughter sounded a little choked, which made her smile.
Daniel drew her upward, leaving her bereft of her favorite morning treat. “God, Annie, I’ll bend like a pretzel if that’s what you want.”
Definitely in charge, she walked a circle around him, trailing her hand over his tight butt. “I’m still deciding what I want, but I’ll add the pretzel thing to the list, okay?” she said when she was again in front of him. “And until then, I’ll take a kiss.”
“One within your rules, of course,” he said, one dark brow raised.
She nodded in agreement. “Of course.”
Daniel Flynn kissed as he did everything else she had seen him do—like a virtuoso. And though it generally wasn’t her favorite state, Annie was okay with living in the moment. Stretching it out an hour or two didn’t sound half-bad, either.
But since perfection never lasted long in her world, someone knocked at the suite’s door. She could hear laughter and muffled voices from the other side.
“Damn,” Daniel said, glancing toward the noise. “It must be Pat and God knows who else.”
“Pat?”
He began tucking his shirt back into his jeans. “He was at dinner last night—the far end of the table,” he replied in a distracted sort of way. “He’ll be giving us a lift to the airport. I think he’s forgotten that it’s a crime for an Irishman to arrive early.”
Pat and company knocked again, and someone called a laughing, “We know you’re in there.”
“Are you going to answer that?” Annie asked as she unclipped her still-damp hair and tried to tame its guy-induced disarray.
“In a minute,” he said. “One promise from you, first. When we get back to Ann Arbor, no more icy Annie, if you could?”
She sighed. “Daniel, work is work.”
“True, but the workday isn’t twenty-four hours, especially since you’ve announced yourself a short-timer.”
“I said that? I couldn’t have.”
“You did, and just a few minutes ago, too.”
“You probably didn’t hear me right,” she blurted, moving into cover-your-ass mode.
“But I did.”
“Let’s talk about it later.” She bolted to the door to admit Pat and his merry band of saviors. As Flynn shot her a dry look, Annie shuffled “Learn to panic with your mouth shut” to the top of her skills-to-be-acquired list.
And front and center on her reminder list—Irishmen never forget.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Daniel sat with Hal in a dark, wood-paneled Hunt Club dining room. The place smacked of aristocracy in a way that made his refined-through-generations rebel blood go into high alarm. Of course, Annie’s avoidance of him last night once they’d returned home might also have been enough to account for his current dark mood. He didn’t expect her to bare her soul. Just a few bits of her body and a detail or two of her plans would suffice. Instead, here he was with Hal, who looked no happier than he, though undoubtedly f
or different reasons.
During coffee, they chatted about the places Daniel had taken Annie, and the possible recruits he’d talked to. When Daniel suggested that this conversation should include Annie, Hal brushed aside the thought.
“Annie will do what she’s told,” he replied. “The girl’s like a granddaughter to me.”
Daniel managed not to choke on his disbelief at the thought of Ms. Annie meekly following orders. He had thought his own family dysfunctional, but it seemed that they were bloody normal compared to some.
Breakfast was served, and Hal turned to his meal with enthusiasm. Between bites, he said, “I’ll bet you’re wondering why you’re here.”
Whether interpreted as “here in Ann Arbor” or “here at breakfast,” the response remained the same. “Yes, I’ll admit to being a bit curious.”
“Getting old is a bitch,” Hal eventually said. He frowned at his plate and set aside his fork. “My arteries are blocked. Too much good food, I guess.”
Daniel eyed the remains of sausages, potatoes and fried eggs in front of the man. “And you’re on medication?”
“I was supposed to have surgery in May.”
“Grand,” he said, feeling grimmer than he had in months. Since a year ago April, to be exact, when he’d had to drag his da to Galway for prostate surgery. And this was the thanks fate threw him—another stubborn old bastard sure he could outlive the devil.
“I haven’t keeled over, have I?” Hal pointed out before spearing a lone bite of sausage.
“Yet.” Maybe this inability to admit to illness was a generational thing. Da had married late, and had his first son when he was already past forty. Hal was no younger than Da. Daniel hoped he wouldn’t be nearly as thick when he reached seventy.
“So you were sitting in my family’s pub instead of getting this taken care of?” Daniel asked.
“The trip was already booked.” The older man at least had the sense to appear embarrassed as he offered up his excuse.
“If you’re looking for me to applaud your foolishness, you’ve brought the wrong Flynn for the job.”