by Maggie Price
“No,” Michael said. “This is sedate compared to St. Patrick’s Day. Pop has a recipe for green beer that glows in the dark.” He held up a glass, checked it through the light over the sink. “Kerrie, it’s the dishwasher’s job to get the lipstick off, not the person drying.”
Kerrie Ryan Jones glanced up from the pot she was scrubbing. “Step right up and wash it yourself, smart guy. There’s plenty of suds for both of us.”
“My little sister gets a law degree, and all of a sudden she forgets how to wash a glass,” Michael said, giving A.J. a wink.
“So sue me,” Kerrie countered, and elbowed him in the ribs without missing a stroke with her scouring pad.
Laughing, A.J. placed the plate on a stack of already dried ones, leaned a hip against the kitchen’s massive center island and lifted her wineglass. Around her, the delicious aroma of baked bread commingled with that of simmering apples and cinnamon. The mind-numbing fatigue of the past forty-eight hours had disappeared, as had the case of nerves she’d battled when Michael first escorted her across the threshold of the huge rambling house filled with a sea of cheerful celebrants. Now she felt warm and content, as if she were floating. How could she not feel relaxed, when the entire Ryan clan had drawn her instantly into its lively circle?
“Who needs a refill?” Ian Ryan asked, as he strode through the door. Tall and lean as a whippet, Michael’s father was a striking man, with a head of thick, dark hair just going gray at the temples. With a bottle of whiskey secured in his large hand, he walked jauntily across the kitchen, eyeing A.J.’s glass with suspicion.
“Wine,” he said and shook his head. “Who in the world forced that vile liquid on you, girl?”
She smiled. “It wasn’t forced, Mr. Ryan—”
“Call me Ian.”
She hesitated, saw Michael send her a smile across his shoulder as he scrubbed a skillet. “Might as well do what he says, A.J. He’ll wear you down until you do.”
“All right, Ian,” she said, meeting the man’s expressive blue gaze. “Mrs. Ryan kindly offered—”
“Colleen.”
Michael laughed. “The same goes for Mother.”
A.J. exhaled a resigned breath. “Colleen offered the wine. It’s very good.”
Ian threw a companionable arm across her shoulders and gazed down. “I love my wife, truly I do, A.J., but when it comes to spirits, her taste is questionable.” He wiggled his dark eyebrows and winked. “Her other fine attributes make up for that one flaw.”
“I’m sure,” A.J. said. She had the image of Ian Ryan lounging in a turf-heated Irish pub, spinning yams and sharing rounds of rich whiskey with the locals.
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, gave her shoulders a numbing squeeze, then sauntered out the door, his voice booming a hearty, “Ho, ho, ho! Who needs a refill?”
Kerrie poked a suds-covered finger in Michael’s ribs. “You’ve made a big mistake.”
“How so?” he asked, almost dropping the skillet.
“You shouldn’t have brought A.J. here. Now she knows insanity runs in the family.”
He flashed a careless smile. “That’s okay, Sis. I wanted her to meet you anyway.”
“Fun-ny.”
Chuckling, A.J. watched brother and sister work side by side at the sink. Any stranger off the street could have picked out Ian and Colleen Ryan’s children, she decided. They’d all inherited their parents’ lanky height and their leanness. All had thick, dark hair and blue eyes that ranged from dark and simmering to cool ice, like Michael’s. The daughters were stunning, the sons broodingly handsome. Not one wallflower in the horde—A.J. could swear to it, she’d been hugged by them all.
“So, A.J.,” Kerrie said, craning her neck to meet A.J.’s gaze. “Is my brother a tyrant at the office, like he always was at home?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘tyrant,’” A.J. commented.
“See,” Michael said as he rinsed the skillet. “I’m a pussycat.”
“Slave driver fits him better,” A.J. added. “This is the first night off I’ve had in a week.”
Michael gave her a scowl, which softened into a slow, alluring smile that turned her suddenly shaky. How could a man look so perfectly at home, so sensual with his sleeves crammed up and his arms submerged in dishwater? she wondered.
“A week?” Kerrie sent her brother a derisive look. “She gets a night off, and you force her to wash dishes?”
“Hey, whose hands are wet here?”
“A.J.’s right, you’re a slave driver.” Kerrie whooped when Michael flicked water in her face.
A.J.’s smile faded as an incomprehensible feeling of unease crept through her. She set her glass aside while brother and sister discussed the trip to Ireland they and their siblings had chipped in to buy for their parents’ Christmas present. Kerrie laughed and rubbed her cheek, leaving a trail of suds. In a gesture of easy affection, Michael reached up and flicked the bubbles away with a finger.
A.J.’s heart shuddered against a surge of painful emotion. Envy, she realized, her fingers tensing on the edge of the counter.
She and Ken had shared that same simple sense of companionship. They’d been close, shared their thoughts... except at the end. All that was gone, she thought bleakly. Forever.
Envy gave way to sorrow...then to an overwhelming flood of emotion she had no idea was brewing inside her. Gnawing on her bottom lip to keep from sobbing, she turned and walked out of the kitchen.
By the time Michael escorted A.J. to the front door of the Victorian brownstone, he was biting back nerves. Something had happened, driven her from his parents’ kitchen. While at the sink, he’d glanced over his shoulder in time to see her eyes go blank and her face pale. She had walked out without a word, as if something dark and haunting had taken her in its grip.
He’d finally found her nudged into the shadows of a third-floor window seat. His twin four-year-old nieces were ensconced on her lap, sleepily oblivious to the boisterous Christmas carols blasting up the staircase. A.J., too, had been oblivious, he’d thought as he studied her profile while she stared into the icy December night. He’d settled his hand on her arm and felt his chest tighten when she looked up with wounded eyes. “Please take me home, Michael,” was all she’d said.
Now, he stood watching her turn the key in the lock of her front door and push it open. She didn’t look at him, issued no invitation, but he followed her in anyway.
“My family’s crazy about you,” he said, closing the door behind him on a blast of frigid wind. He made no move to take off his coat, made no move toward her.
“I liked them, too. A lot.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
She shook her head. “It’s...” She pulled off her gloves, scrubbed the heel of her palm across her forehead. “I’m tired—”
“We were in the kitchen,” he said, taking a step toward her. “All of a sudden you were gone. When I found you upstairs, I could see it was all you could do not to cry.”
“I shouldn’t have gone with you tonight,” she said dully.
His eyes narrowed. “Did someone say something to upset you?”
“Of course not—”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Seeing you and Kerrie together, seeing how close you are, made me think about Ken.”
Michael bit back a groan. “God, I’m sorry. The holidays. This has to be hard—”
“It’s not just the holidays, Michael. Seeing all the love, the closeness, started me thinking about other things. Things I’m not necessarily proud of myself for thinking.”
“Such as?”
She dragged in a breath. “Like what you would do if someone presented evidence that implicated Kerrie in illegal activity. Activity you knew her incapable of.”
Michael had no idea what he’d expected her to say, but not words that hit him like a fist in the gut. There was hurt beneath her even tone, and he knew he had caused it. Without comment, he took off his coat and laid it across
the small chair by the door. When he turned back, her eyes were on him as if waiting for him to think through what she’d said. He didn’t need to think it through—he knew his exact reaction to that scenario. Just as he knew the question A.J. was about to put to him.
“What would you do, Michael? What would you do if someone accused Kerrie?”
“Defend her,” he said quietly. “No matter what.”
“Why is it so wrong for me to do the same for Ken?”
“It’s not.” He spoke carefully, studying her. There was no anger in her eyes, just a resolve that turned his blood cold.
“From the first of this, even now, you’ve made me feel as if it is.”
He looked away, his jaw clenching. “God, A.J.”
“You haven’t meant to,” she added hastily. “It’s just...” She shook her head, pulled off her coat, tossed it negligently across the banister. “The other night at the dance and...here...I had myself convinced it doesn’t matter that you think Ken is guilty. He’s dead, after all. It shouldn’t matter, I know that. But it does, Michael. It would matter to you if our situations were reversed and I had no faith—”
“I hadn’t thought...” He walked to her, laid a hand on her shoulder. “I hadn’t equated things that way.”
“Neither had I. Not until tonight. Not until I saw you with your family.” She shrugged from his touch and began pacing, her low heels sounding hollow echoes across the wood floor.
“You’re a cop, Michael. Cops don’t deal in faith—they can’t. They deal in cold facts and piles of evidence. You have to look at things without emotion, I understand that.”
Unsteadiness seeped into his hands and he clenched them against his thighs. “I can’t look at you without emotion.”
“You’ve been nothing but fair,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. She reached the entrance to the study, turned. A slight limp evidenced itself when she retraced her steps. “You believe in my innocence, when all the proof you have is my word. You risked your badge by going to bat for me with McMillan. I’m grateful for that.”
“Grateful?” He wasn’t sure if it was her words or the resignation in her voice that sent him after her. “Dammit,” he said, when he snagged her arm and whirled her around to face him. “I don’t want your gratitude!” he grated, locking his hands on her shoulders.
“I believe in Ken,” she said quietly as she stood passive beneath his touch. “You don’t. I thought because I...” She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them and met his gaze. “Because of how I feel about you, I thought it didn’t matter that you can’t accept on faith what I know is true about Ken. Tonight showed me it matters a great deal.”
His fingers bit into her flesh. “Stop sounding like you’re saying goodbye!”
“I can’t change what I believe about Ken. What I know is true. And you can’t change how you feel, can’t change the fact that you have a mountain of damning evidence against him...” Her body trembled beneath his hands. “You said you want me to be sure I can accept your feelings about Ken, that you don’t want me to regret our being together—”
“A.J.—”
“Right now, I think I’d regret it a great deal.”
When she started to step back, he tightened his hold. It stunned him that, for the first time in his life, he felt capable of begging.
“I don’t want to feel this way, Michael.” Her voice cracked. “But I do, and I have to be honest. I owe you that.”
“Owe me?” he asked with derision, before dropping his hands.
He turned, went to stand in front of the narrow window beside the door. Jaw tight, breathing unsteady, he watched the wind sweep a handful of brown leaves across the dimly lit porch as he thought of what A.J. had endured the past month. The agony of her brother’s murder, the pain of burying him, the numbing grief she’d had to deal with while he, himself, came full steam at her with evidence and accusations. Through it all, her faith in Ken had held firm. And now tonight she had so simply made him see that had they traded places, his actions would have mirrored hers.
It humbled him to realize that, after nearly fifteen years of doing his job in a cool, emotional void, he’d suddenly come face to face with the fact that he was just as human as the next man. Just as human and just as full of faults.
How the hell could having your eyes opened so thoroughly rip your guts apart? he wondered, as the leaves formed a swirling whirlpool beneath the porch light.
With a resigned shake of his head, he turned to face her. “What I said about Kerrie goes for every member of my family. No matter what anyone claimed, no matter how damning the evidence against them, I’d defend them all to my last breath.”
“Because you believe in them.”
“Yes.”
“Trust, belief—those aren’t bad things, Michael.”
“You’re right, they’re not. And I’ll regret for the rest of my life that for even a moment I made you feel like they were. I did what I’ve always done, A.J.—gone by the book, not let the emotional side of things interfere with my handling of a case.” Even from where he stood he could smell her perfume, the beguiling scent of her hair and skin. “You hit the mark on something else,” he said quietly. “I can’t change how I feel. Wouldn’t want to.”
Her face was pale as ice. “I’m not asking—”
“You want my faith and my trust where Ken’s concerned? You’ve got them.”
She opened her mouth, shut it. Her lips trembled before she pressed them together.
He walked back to her, cursing himself for not realizing how much his refusal to trust had hurt her. “You’re not asking anything of me that you haven’t asked since that night I ordered you to Internal Affairs. You’re asking me to trust you, have some faith.”
His hand went up, brushed her dark hair behind her shoulder. “You say Ken was incapable of doing the things to which the evidence points. I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t say that if you absolutely didn’t believe it. All right, A.J., I accept what you know in your heart. Someone planted that evidence. Ken is innocent. One hundred percent.”
Seconds passed in silence as she stared up at him, her eyes unreadable.
“Dammit,” he said quietly, terrified that his understanding had come too late, that she was about to walk out of his life. “Say something.”
“Michael, I...” She reached up, traced an unsteady fingertip along his jaw, triggering a wave of warmth through his body. “Will you do something for me?” she asked, her voice nothing more than a whisper.
He grasped her hand, pressed it hard to his lips. He’d tear the walls down if she asked him to leave. “Anything.”
“Take me to bed.”
The pain-filled understanding she’d witnessed in Michael’s eyes only moments before had made A.J. weak...as did the desire that now burned in them. Never in her life had she been so afraid of losing something. Never in her life had she felt such elation as in the instant when Michael’s fingers wound through hers and she turned to lead him up the oak staircase.
As they walked, the house engulfed them in a cocoon of warm silence; the lamp from the entry hall sent a mixture of dim light and charcoal shadows drifting up the stairs.
As if an unspoken agreement had passed between them, she knew this time would be far different from the frantic near coupling that had ended with the telephone’s ring two nights earlier. Now, there was no annihilating heat throbbing beneath her skin, no fatal voltage zinging in her nerves. It was Michael’s simple linking of his fingers with hers that stunned her, as if an inescapable possession had taken place.
He now accepted her faith in Ken, trusted what she believed in her heart. In all her life she would never forget the solemn intensity in his eyes that had accompanied the words.
In her bedroom she switched on the lamp on the night-stand, then turned. Michael’s clear blue gaze moved over her entire body, then came back to her face as he drew her to him.
These were not the same impat
ient hands of two nights ago that undid the small buttons at the neck of her sweater but hands that moved with slow ease, as if endless hours stretched before them. As he worked, his fingertips grazed her flesh, sending little ripples of sensation down her spine.
When he eased the garment over her head, his eyes flashed and darkened, as if her simple cotton camisole were as tantalizing as the black lace she’d worn before. He touched his lips to hers, her breath shuddering at the tenderness of his kiss. His hands came up, caressing nipples that swelled beneath cotton while his mouth played with hers until time spun away.
She had the heady sense of him easing off her slacks and panties in one smooth movement, confirmed by the cool rush of air against her bare flesh. Heat curled deep inside her, sparked by the dark, intoxicating appeal of standing before him in the ivory camisole with her lower half exposed.
His eyes blazed as his palm journeyed across the flat range of her belly, making her nerves quiver. “You’re so beautiful.”
Her hands went to his sides, gripping his sweater, pulling it over his head. Seconds later, his shirt followed. When she reached for his belt, he caught her wrists. “There’s time for that,” he said in a low voice and placed a kiss on her temple. “I want you in my arms, first.”
Suddenly he was behind her, drawing her back against his chest, his thighs. The heat of his flesh burned through cotton. She felt the roughness of his slacks, the hardness of his arousal against her bare bottom. His arms slid around her; his hands cupped her breasts while his lips nuzzled the nape of her neck. Her nipples burned against his palms as his mouth journeyed to her shoulder, using the thin strap as a guide to trail paralyzing kisses across her flesh.
Her heart pounded in her throat, her ears, her head. She lifted an impossibly heavy arm, hooked her hand around the back of his neck, turned her head and found his mouth.
“I want to hold you, feel you,” he murmured. His hand took a slow, intoxicating slide downward to the juncture of her thighs, cupping her. He deepened his kiss while his fingers kneaded her sensitized flesh with caressing slowness. Every pulse point in her body stirred to life, heating her skin until all sensations melded together, sparking into flame deep inside her belly.