“You little tease. You’re talking this way on purpose to drive me crazy, aren’t you?”
“Is it working?”
He gave her a searing look. “Get a towel for this pup.”
He toweled St. Paddy off in record time and carried him into the kitchen.
“Y’all come back,” Rose called after him.
“Count on it.” Daniel took St. Paddy into the kitchen, and once the puppy was tucked into his box he drifted right off to sleep. Daniel figured the puppy would sleep for a while, maybe long enough to give Daniel some privacy with Rose. It was time for him to prove to her that he didn’t consider her to be made of porcelain.
He washed his face and hands in the kitchen sink and dried off with a paper towel. When he returned to the bathroom she’d cleaned out the tub and was running fresh water in it.
She was leaning both hands on the tub, her legs braced slightly apart as she glanced over her shoulder. “Is he asleep?”
The pose was so provocative his mouth went dry. “Out...out like a light.”
“You can have first bath.”
“I think we’ll do this together.”
She looked him up and down, excitement lighting her eyes. “I don’t know if we’ll both fit, officer. You seem to have grown.”
“We’ll work on it.” He slipped off his briefs, releasing a full erection, and walked toward her. Her quick intake of breath and a darkening of her eyes were his reward. Holding her gaze he slid two fingers under the delicate lace panel inset of her panties, and in one swift motion ripped the garment from her body. He was through being tentative.
“Daniel!”
“You can tell people I ripped them in a fit of passion.” He stepped into the tub and offered her his hand. Wordlessly she stepped in after him as warm water swirled around their ankles. “Turn around,” he said.
Her eyes widened, but she turned her back to him.
Taking the curved bar of soap from the holder beside the tub, he knelt in the water behind her, dampened the soap and eased the bar up the back of her leg. She quivered. He dipped the bar in the water again and ran it slowly up the back of her other leg to the top of her thigh. Then he cupped his hand, scooped up warm water and allowed it to trickle down her thigh.
“What are you doing?” she murmured, her voice breathy.
“Cleaning you up.” He soaped between her thighs with lazy circular strokes before rinsing with more cupped water.
“I’ve never had...a bath like this.”
“It gets better.” He paused briefly to turn off the tap. Then he washed the curve of her backside slowly while he reveled in the way her breathing grew faster and more shallow. He wondered if she’d eventually be so in tune with him that she’d climax with only this kind of caress. He wondered if he’d be her lover long enough to find out.
The soap had become slippery, so he tightened his grip when he slid it between the petals of her femininity. As the curve of the bar came in contact with her flash point, she gasped. He wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her steady as he rubbed the soap back and forth. Then he tossed the soap aside and began to rinse her with splashes of water, followed by intimate explorations with his fingers.
Her legs began to shake. “Daniel—”
“I’ve got you. Go with it, Rose.”
Continuing the caress, he began kissing the tender flesh of her backside. The kisses progressed to gentle nips as she moaned and trembled in the circle of his arm. When she cried out with the first convulsion of her orgasm, he placed his mouth on the exact spot she’d requested and applied firm suction. If nothing else, she’d have a bruise to remember him by.
Perhaps it was her long moan of completion, or the act of marking her, or her stance when he’d first come back into the room, but a primitive lust took command of him, a driving need he could not control. He’d never intended to make love to her in the bathtub, because he hadn’t prepared for it, but he was no longer rational.
Desperate to have her in a way that harkened back to the most basic needs of a man for a woman, he got to his feet and leaned her forward over his arm. Once her hands were braced on the edge of the tub, he grasped her hips and entered her, pushing deep. He never remembered such blinding passion. It seemed that burying himself inside her was absolutely necessary, and without this release he would surely die. His strokes were swift, his climax indescribable.
As the red haze slowly cleared, he was swamped by feelings of tenderness...and regret. He had no right to act without a thought for consequences. Withdrawing gently, he kept his arm around her as he stepped from the tub and grabbed an oversize bath towel. He wrapped her in it and lifted her out of the tub to set her on the bath mat.
“Wow,” she said, her voice husky.
“Yeah.” And now they had to discuss the possible consequences, he thought. But he postponed it, wanting to maintain the soft joy that surrounded them in the aftermath of raw passion satisfied. He dried her carefully, crouching down to run the towel over her legs and buttocks. Sure enough, a definite bruise about the size of a silver dollar was forming there.
“You gave me a hickey, didn’t you?”
“Yep.” And he figured placing that brand on her was probably what had stirred the instinct passed down by his ancient forebears to complete the possession.
“Hold that hand mirror behind me so I can see.”
He took the gilt-framed mirror from the counter and held it while she peered over her shoulder at the round, purple mark.
“Looks like an expert job.”
“You came to the master.” He stood and put the mirror back on the counter.
“Don’t laugh, but I really like it. It’s like a badge of womanhood. Now I have another request. Am I too big for you to carry into the bedroom?”
He smiled at her. “Depends on how you want to be carried.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can manage it this way.” He grasped her arm, stooped and hoisted her over his shoulder.
“Hey! That’s not romantic.”
“But it gets the job done.” Laughing, he hauled her into the bedroom and dumped her onto the feather bed with its bank of lace-trimmed pillows scattered over the headboard. “And in my line of work, that’s the main goal. It doesn’t have to be pretty.”
“I swear you have been taking lessons from old John Wayne movies.”
He looked at her lying there amidst the white lace and wanted her again. But the time had come to confront the realities of nature. He climbed in beside her and took her into his arms. “We need to talk, Rose.”
She snuggled against him. “What a novel suggestion.”
“Hey, this is serious stuff.” He shifted her so he could look into her eyes. “I lost control. We need to face what might happen as a result.”
Her gaze was warm. “Don’t take all the blame on yourself. I could have stopped you.”
“Maybe not.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “If I’d said no, you would have forced me?”
“No.” He gave her a lazy grin. “I would have convinced you to say yes.”
“Oh, ho! I guess I don’t have to worry about damaging your ego.”
“We’re talking about desperation, not ego. I’ve never felt quite so...needy as I did then.” He was admitting quite a bit with that statement. He searched her face to see how she’d react to it.
“Neither have I,” she said, her expression open and vulnerable.
He took a deep breath and decided to risk a little more. “When I agreed to this weekend, I thought we’d have a fling, a fun roll in the hay, with no complications. It’s what we both said we wanted.” He paused. “But this doesn’t feel like a fling.”
“No, it doesn’t feel that way to me, either.”
He leaned down and pressed his lips gently to hers. “Thank you for saying that,” he murmured, kissing the freckles on the bridge of her nose. “But even if we’re both rethinking the situation, from now on we’re using protection. We
don’t need the added pressure of an accident right now.”
“True, and I can’t be trusted to be the voice of reason, obviously. I didn’t want to stop, either.”
His blood began to heat anew. He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “And it’s obvious that we’re headed down that road again. I’m going for supplies.”
“Good idea. But really, Daniel, I don’t think we have to worry. Getting pregnant with one slipup is unusual, don’t you think?”
He stood. “Not so unusual for an Irishman.”
11
MAUREEN O’MALLEY wished that Daniel hadn’t gone off to his training session on this particular weekend. The parish was having a special Friday night potluck, and she’d figured on talking Daniel into going because she knew he had the time off. At least three young Irish ladies would be there that Maureen wanted Daniel to meet, now that Rose Kingsford had turned out to be such a disaster.
Maureen was putting the final touches on her chowder casserole when the phone rang. Thinking it was Fran Kavanagh, who’d suggested sharing a cab to the church in view of the weather, Maureen dried her hands on her apron, hurried to the phone and answered it slightly out of breath.
“You’re panting as if you’d run all the way to the phone. Were you expecting a gentleman caller, Maureen Fiona?”
“You!” Once she recognized Bridget’s voice, Maureen slammed down the receiver.
It rang again.
Maureen snatched it up. “I’ll not be talking to you.” She started to hang up again.
“It’s about Daniel!” yelled Bridget.
Fear twisted Maureen’s insides as she pressed the receiver to her ear. “What about him? Is he all right?”
“Physically, I’m sure he’s fine. But his soul is in terrible danger.”
Maureen let her breath out in a whoosh of sound. “Well, I care about his soul, naturally, but his body is my first concern. ’Tis just like you, Bridget Hogan, scaring a person half to death. I thought there’d been an accident or the like.”
“There well could be if we don’t put a stop to what’s going on,” Bridget said darkly.
“You always were one to drag out a story. As Daniel says, cut to the chase.”
A mighty sigh carried across the telephone line. “This isn’t easy for me to say about my own flesh and blood. My daughter, Rose—”
“I know perfectly well who your daughter is, you deceitful old banshee!”
“I’m the same age as you! And look twenty times better, too!”
“Ha! You know what happens when you’re skinny and you get old? Sag, sag, sag! As my mother used to say, ‘After fifty, plump up and stay seated.”’
“Never mind what your mother used to say. What I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll be still for one second, is that Rose wants to have a child out of wedlock.”
“No!”
“Yes. On purpose, and raise the baby all by herself. I don’t know where she got such an idea.”
“If you don’t know, I do. ’Tis because you married a Protestant Brit instead of a good Irish Catholic, and that’s the truth of it.”
“Cecil has nothing to do with this idea of hers.” There was a pause. “No, come to think of it, he probably is to blame. I’m glad you mentioned it. But that doesn’t matter now. We have to stop them.”
“Them?” Maureen had a sick feeling she knew what was coming.
“She’s picked your Daniel as the father for this unholy plan.”
“He wouldn’t be doin’ such a thing!”
“What if he doesn’t know? What if she puts one over on him?”
“If she tricks Daniel into getting her in the family way, I will wring her neck for her! Good thing he’s off on a training weekend with the department.”
“You really think that’s where he is, you silly goose?”
Maureen drew herself up to her full height of five feet, two inches. “He wouldn’t be lying to his own mother.”
“Rose lied to me. I finally weaseled it out of her agency that she’s on holiday this weekend, not on assignment as she told me.”
“We’ve already established Rose’s character. ’Tis not surprising that she lied to you.”
“I wouldn’t be casting stones, if I were you, until you call your son’s station,” Bridget challenged. “See if there is a training weekend or not.”
“I won’t.”
“I know you, Maureen, and you will, as soon as I hang up. You’d better take down my number so you can call me back and we can figure out what to do.”
“I won’t be calling, because Daniel’s on a training weekend.”
“You’ll call me back, all right.” Bridget recited her number.
Maureen squeezed her eyes shut and started to hum, as if she didn’t need that number any more than a second set of thumbs. “Goodbye, Bridget. I’ll not be speaking to you again in this lifetime.” She hung up the phone.
Five minutes later she was obliged to dial Bridget’s number, which had stuck in her mind like glue. “Where do you think they went?” she asked without identifying herself.
“Oh, and who would this be?” Bridget asked.
“You well know who ’tis.”
“Could this be the mother of that boy who would never lie?”
“Bridget Mary, you haven’t changed a bit! Are you going to tell me where you think they went, or must I come over there and sit on you until you decide to be nice?”
“I know exactly where they went. Rose has a little cottage about two hours north of the city.”
Maureen gasped. “They’re shacked up?”
“Honestly, get with it. Nobody says ‘shacked up’ these days. Anyway, we have to go up there. Do you have a car?”
Maureen thought of her husband’s old Pontiac parked in the apartment house’s basement garage. Daniel had been trying to get her to sell it, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She hadn’t told Daniel, but sometimes she went down to the garage and just sat in the passenger seat, pretending she and Patrick were about to take a drive.
“Goodness, woman, do you have a car or not? Or am I right in supposing you’re losing your marbles?”
“ ’Tis my husband’s car.”
“Can you drive it?”
Maureen thought about the few solo trips she’d made in the big old Pontiac. She remembered a wee problem with backing and cornering. But she wasn’t about to tell Bridget about that and let her get the upper hand. “Yes, I can,” she said.
“Good. Come over and pick me up.”
Maureen panicked and grabbed the first excuse she could think of. “But ’twill be getting on toward dark in another hour or so. We can’t be gallivanting around upstate in the dark, Bridget.”
Indistinct muttering greeted that announcement.
“What’s that you’re saying?” Maureen asked.
“The deed will be done by then!” she hissed. “But it can’t be helped. They probably fell to it once they arrived, so we’d already be too late, and I suppose we shouldn’t go at night. All we have left is to confront them and make certain they do the honorable thing.”
“Get married?” Maureen squeaked.
“It’s a black day, isn’t it? When you and I have to contemplate becoming related, I mean. Can’t be helped. Pick me up at eight. Here’s the address.”
Maureen wrote down the address on the back of the electric bill. A Central Park West address. She’d have to drive into the heart of Manhattan. She hung up the phone and crossed herself.
ST. PADDY SLEPT for two hours, allowing his new owner to enjoy a gloriously long lovemaking session on the feather bed with Daniel, and to share a simple meal with him in front of the small fireplace. They’d found they both liked sitting on the floor next to the rustic coffee table.
Daniel had braced a chair against the board barricading Paddy inside the kitchen. They’d found Paddy was strong enough to push the heavy board aside and wiggle out the opening.
They’d just poured another glass
of wine and started a game of chess when the puppy scratched at the board. Rose let him out, tied the bandanna collar around his neck, knotting it tighter this time, and took him outside briefly while Daniel stoked up the fire.
After Rose fed the puppy, she decided to let him stay in the living room while she and Daniel finished their chess game.
St. Paddy roamed the living room for a few seconds before flopping down next to Daniel and attacking his shoe.
“Paddy, no!” Rose started to get up and pull him away.
“It’s okay. He’s just teething and needs something to chew.”
“I have some old loafers in the closet that I was planning to give away.”
“No, then he’ll learn to chew up shoes. A few rags knotted together would be better.”
“Let me see what I can find.” Rose rummaged through the laundry area and came up with some likely candidates. She brought them to Daniel, who tied them into a chew toy for St. Paddy.
The puppy flopped down and started working away at the knotted rags.
Rose resumed her seat on the floor and studied her next chess move. “You seem to know a lot about dogs,” she said after moving her knight.
“As I said, we had family pets when I was growing up.” Daniel captured her knight with his pawn.
“Don’t you miss that companionship?” She captured his knight with her bishop.
“Pets don’t fit the bachelor existence too well.” He moved his queen out of danger.
Rose gazed at him. “So you picked a job where you ride a horse.”
He shrugged. “Just following in my dad’s footsteps.”
“You know what I think? I think you’d have a great time in the country, playing with all the animals.” She moved her bishop again. “Check.”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at her. “Going back to something you said today, is that an invitation?”
She forgot about the chess game. “Do you want it to be?”
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know, Rose. All this—” His gesture encompassed the fire, the puppy, and her. “It’s very appealing. But I couldn’t afford something like this on my salary.”
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