One shoulder raised in a ten-year-old's shrug. "I don't know. Jackie says you two are probably dating. She thinks Sean is hot."
Rachel made a mental note to talk with Deedee Pittman on Monday. "And what did you say?"
"I told her you were too old."
Rachel blinked, not sure if she should be grateful for this reprieve or not. "Oh."
"I didn't mean really old," Lindsey added. "You're still pretty. I just meant you probably weren't interested in boys and stuff. Because you loved Daddy, didn't you?"
Rachel's heart lurched at the anxious note in her daughter's voice. Whatever problems their marriage had, Lindsey had adored her father. "Yes, I did. When we got married, I loved your daddy very much."
Lindsey nodded, a little of the tension leaving her body. "That's what I told Jackie. I mean, it wouldn't be so bad if you were going out with somebody cool like Sean, but I figured you probably weren't interested."
Interested? She was obsessed. Smitten. Besotted.
And it didn't matter, Rachel thought, cold certainty balling in her stomach. It couldn't matter. Her children had lost their father and their home. They were being threatened by criminals, for heaven's sake. They needed to know that their mother, at least, would always be there for them.
Assuming, of course, she survived whatever Bilotti had planned for tomorrow.
"The only thing I'm interested in is getting us all settled down here," she said firmly. "You and me and Chris."
"So, we're not, like, moving again?"
Oh, her poor baby. "Maybe to an apartment. Sometime. You'd like your own bedroom again, right?"
"Yes." Lindsey looked at her sideways, the uncertainty in her eyes tearing at Rachel's heart. "Grandma said we were going to stay there. At the farm."
"Only overnight, sweetie, because I have a lot to do on Sunday." She put her arms protectively around her daughter's sturdy shoulders. The top of Lindsey's head almost reached her chin. So tall, Rachel thought, and yet the skin at the back of her neck was still baby fine. "Does that sound okay?"
Lindsey nodded against her rib cage, and Rachel's chest squeezed with fierce maternal love.
"Nothing has changed," she vowed. "Nothing is going to change. Mr. MacNeill is a friend, that's all."
The screen door swung open and he was there, silhouetted by sunshine, all knowing dark eyes and untamed black hair, holding the repaired lamp.
He raised one eyebrow, not saying anything. So, he'd heard. Regret stopped her breath. Should she apologize? Explain? But before she could speak, the phone shrilled on the wall. She jumped.
"I'll get it," Lindsey offered.
"No!" Rachel blurted.
"Got it," Sean said at the same time.
Crossing the kitchen in long, quick strides, he lifted the receiver. Another kind of tension built in Rachel. He listened a moment and then, following Gowan's instructions, handed her the phone.
"Is it…?"
His eyes narrowed with warning. His mouth was grim. "It's for you," he said.
* * *
Chapter 12
«^»
Her palms were sweaty on the steering wheel.
Relax, Rachel ordered herself. An overnight at a farm in Jefferson County was hardly exile in an alien land. Chris was raring to go. Even Lindsey had warmed to the trip after Sean invited the children to ride with him in his truck. Rachel could see her daughter's dark ponytail through the rear window ahead. And anything was preferable to leaving them at home, a target for the Bilottis.
Ten o'clock tomorrow morning, Carmine had demanded on the phone. All the nice folks will be at church or in bed. You bring the money in a brown grocery bag to the parking lot behind the high school. You come alone, and you don't tell anybody where you're going. Or you better be sure your mother's all paid up on her fire insurance.
Rachel shivered and gripped the wheel tighter. The road dipped up and down and under the branches of an ancient oak.
"Oh, how pretty," Myra said, leaning forward to peer through the windshield.
Rachel looked past a tangle of pink shrub roses. White between green lawn and dark pines, a two-story farmhouse gleamed in the afternoon sun. An old building with new paint, a gray barn and a weathered fence, it looked rooted in the Carolina clay in a way Rachel hadn't expected from a house belonging to the pilot brother of a Yankee carpenter. It looked well-kept. Welcoming. Solid. Wistfulness clutched her. It looked exactly like the kind of house she'd wanted to live in as a child. There was even a basketball hoop mounted over the ham door.
She had no business dragging her mother and her children and her problems to this place, like a cat depositing dead mice on the doorstep, messy and unwelcome.
"Very pretty," she said.
The red truck rumbled down the long drive and stopped by the walk. Rachel pulled in behind. Sean swung out of the cab, all long legs and easy grace. The passenger door opened more slowly, and Lindsey hopped down.
"Uncle Sean!"
As Rachel got out of her car, a boy bolted from the house, a big golden dog running at his heels.
Sean grinned. "Hey, buddy."
The child launched himself from two yards away. Rachel watched Sean catch and whirl him around before dumping him on his feet. Close up, she could see the boy had his uncle's dark hair and grin. She could see, too, that the left side of his face was red and puckered with scars.
Beside her, Myra caught her breath in shock. Please, God, don't let her say something tactless, Rachel prayed. She opened her mouth.
But Lindsey had already planted herself in front of them. "Sean says you have kittens in your barn."
Half a head shorter, the boy smiled up at her with all his uncle's charm. "Yeah. Want to see?"
"Okay."
"I want to see," Chris said.
Sean cocked an eyebrow in Rachel's direction. "Is that all right with you?"
"I… Of course," she said, feeling more than ever that things were moving out of her hands.
"Have fun," Sean said to his nephew. "Where's your mom?"
"She's coming. Um…" Collecting his manners, the boy smiled at Rachel. "Nice to meet you."
She was captivated, and gave him her best First Day of School smile in response. "Nice to meet you, too."
The boy's voice carried back to them as the three children walked to the barn. "Dad says the kittens are, like, four weeks old. Their eyes are open and everything, but we have to be careful not to let them out yet."
"That poor boy," Myra breathed. "What happened to his face?"
Sean's expression tightened. "Jack? He was in a car accident when he was a baby. I told the kids about it on the ride over. But he's fine now."
Rachel was impressed, both by Sean's dismissal of his nephew's scars and his sensitivity in preparing her children to meet him.
"Lindsey liked him," she offered, which was a pretty lame thing to say, but it was enough to earn her one of Sean's warm looks.
"I thought I heard the truck."
A short, tidy woman with shrewd brown eyes and masses of light brown hair stepped from the porch. She kissed her brother-in-law on the cheek and then smiled at Myra and Rachel.
"Kate MacNeill." She introduced herself. "I'm so glad you could come."
Rachel wondered what her hostess would say if she knew the whole story behind this visit. But Sean had told his brother as little as possible, honoring Rachel's insistence that they pretend everything was normal. She hadn't considered how awkward her omission would make her feel. "I'm sorry to impose on you on such short notice."
"Not at all. We're used to company." Kate's gaze was frank, assessing. "Though Sean doesn't bring friends by very often."
Friends? Did she mean, women?
"Don't overthink it, beautiful," Sean said, taking Rachel's elbow and steering her toward the house. "I want Patrick to meet her," he told his sister-in-law. "Is he inside?"
"In the kitchen. Val has him chopping vegetables or something. I'm a terrible hostess," Kate confided t
o the other two women. "I make my guests cook."
Sean grinned wickedly. "And we like it that way. Kate's a doctor. We're afraid if we make her cook, she'll put syringes in the soup."
"I'll give you syringes," she warned him.
Lowering his head, he kissed her with obvious affection. "Can I pick where?"
Behind them, the screen door opened. "You want to stop flirting with my wife long enough to introduce me to our guests?" a deep voice inquired.
This had to be Patrick. Rachel studied him as he shook her mother's hand. Shorter and broader than his youngest brother, with close-cropped dark hair and piercing blue eyes, Patrick MacNeill radiated quiet strength. He looked, she thought, a lot like Sean would look in another eight or ten years.
Myra sighed with pleasure at being in the presence of two such beautiful men. Rachel felt a little breathless herself.
"Nice to meet you," Patrick said noncommittally. His big palm engulfed hers.
Rachel fought the sense of being judged and found wanting. "I appreciate you having us."
"Couldn't say no to Sean."
"Very few people can say no to my brother-in-law." A very pretty, very pregnant blonde with a trio of silver hoops in one ear came out on the porch. She directed a friendly smile at Rachel. "Hi. I'm Val."
"Very few women can say no." The screen door swung again, and another big, outrageously handsome man joined them on the porch. Rachel looked up into amused blue eyes set in a lean, clever face.
Sean hadn't told him anything, she decided.
"Con MacNeill," the giant said.
"Rachel Fuller."
Once more, her hand was enclosed in a massive grip. "It's a pleasure."
"Dibs," Sean said briefly.
Everyone on the porch goggled at him. Con released her hand slowly.
"Excuse me," Rachel said. "Did you say, 'dibs'?"
"Yeah. It means, like, 'I call' or—"
She was hot with embarrassment. And more thrilled than she wanted to admit, even to herself, by his possessiveness. "I know what it means. I can't believe you said it."
"Sean will say anything." The pretty blonde smiled again.
"We've just had more practice ignoring him," Con added.
Rachel felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. She looked to the nearest likely adult for rescue. "Are they always this bad?"
Kate MacNeill laughed. "No. Sometimes they're worse. You get used to it."
Would she? Would she have the chance?
She watched, fascinated and a little resistant, as the MacNeill clan opened and encompassed them, sweeping her own family away on a tide of warmth. Myra was carried off to the kitchen to drink iced tea and help Val make potato salad. The children, straggling back from the barn, were co-opted into an impromptu baseball game, siding with Sean against his brothers and Jack.
And Rachel was left stranded on the front porch with sharp-eyed Kate MacNeill.
The other woman sank into a rocker with a sigh. A curly haired girl toddled from the house and demanded to be held on her lap. Kate complied, confiding, "It feels good to sit. I was on call last night. Didn't get home till three."
Rachel shifted on her own chair—one of Sean's, she noted absently, stroking her hand over the arm as if she could draw strength from the wood. "I hope we're not putting you out too much."
"Oh, no. Sean explained you had some kind of emergency?" When Rachel didn't elaborate, Kate shrugged and continued. "Besides, we were all eager to see the woman who had our Sean so excited."
Rachel was flattered. Touched. Embarrassed. It was bad enough that she wasn't being completely open about the kind of emergency that forced her to rely on the compassion of strangers. She didn't want to give them the wrong idea about her relationship with Sean as well.
"He's just being kind," she said.
"He is kind," Kate agreed. "But he wouldn't have invited you here out of kindness."
Rachel looked over the lawn, where Con, as catcher, and Sean, as batter, were going head-to-head over a strike call. Chris was following the argument from first base, eyes wide, grin nearly splitting his face. Guy stuff. Despite her own discomfort, she felt her lips curve upward in a smile.
"And he's good with children," Kate said.
"He is." Rachel could see that. She could picture him with babies of his own, a girl with his impudent dark eyes, a boy with his jaunty grin. Yearning almost stole her breath. And then she sighed. Sean MacNeill didn't want to be anybody's daddy. No matter how effective he was against bullies, she wouldn't saddle him with her children or her problems.
"But I can't expect him to take responsibility for mine," she said. "It's different when they're your own."
"Mmm." Kate nuzzled her little girl's neck, making her giggle with delight. "That's what Patrick thought before he met me."
"You're not—"
"I'm Jack's stepmother."
Rachel frowned ruefully. "I've just been rude, haven't I?"
"Not rude. Maybe a little set in your thinking? Children take love where they find it. And goodness knows, Sean has a lot of love to give."
"Yes," Rachel said dryly. "And he spreads it around, too."
Kate laughed. "Go ahead and tell me to mind my own business. I admit I'm fond of my brother-in-law. I guess I don't want to see him hurt by the same mistake twice."
"What mistake?"
"Hey, beautiful!" Sean loped to the porch, sun on his hair and in his eyes, exuding heat and pheromones. She was dazzled by him, her brain flooded with sunshine, her chest with warmth.
"We're getting clobbered here," he said, squinting up at her. "I'm recruiting you for our team."
Con hefted the bat over his shoulder. "As what?"
"Relief pitcher."
His brother snorted. "In a family game? Get real."
"Aw, let her play, Uncle Con," Jack said, adding unwisely, "She's just a girl."
Patrick grinned. "Uh-oh."
"Fighting words," murmured Kate. "Can you pitch?"
Rachel was tired of inaction, of sitting on the sidelines. Here, at last, was an arena she could fight in. "I can pitch."
"Then get 'em, girl."
She belonged. Sean thought with satisfaction as they all trooped back to the house to clean up for dinner, laughing and sweaty and dirty, crowing over runs scored and talking big about "next time." His relief pitcher had struck out the mighty Con and given Jack a piece of the ball that landed him a double. And they'd won. Rachel glowed with victory. Her lovely long legs were stained with grass and dirt from sliding into third, and her face was pink with exertion.
He wanted to back her up against the side of the house and plunge into her like a diver into water.
Later, he promised himself.
For now it was enough to have her here, laughing with Kate, complimenting some new recipe Val was trying out for her restaurant. Always appreciative of women, all women, he took a moment to enjoy the contrasts between them: Kate, calm and tidy in her catalog clothes, and Val, like a pregnant fairy queen in her flowing skirts and jewelry, and Rachel, in shorts and dirt, towering over them both.
But she fit in, he thought with pride. Her family fit in. Her mother was soaking up Con's attention as they stringed beans into a colander. Chris and Jack had their heads together, sneaking sodas from the fridge when they thought no one was looking. The comfortable chaos reminded Sean pleasantly of childhood dinners, of Thanksgivings with his uncles watching football and his aunts in the kitchen and his cousins—Ross and Luke and Maggie and Mick—crowded around the table of his parents' house in Quincy.
It felt good. Right.
None of which stopped his slow burn when he looked over and saw Rachel talking earnestly with Patrick about some school bond issue. Sean had told her straight-up and early on he didn't care beans about the five years' difference between them, but there was no getting around the fact that Patrick was nearer her age than he was. More nearly her equal in education, too, Sean thought bleakly. Hell, either of his brothers was
more her type: steady, settled and financially secure.
He was a chump to be thinking Thanksgiving dinner when all she wanted from him was sex in the back of his truck.
Nothing is going to change. Mr. MacNeill is a friend, that's all.
Sean scowled.
"Why the long face, bro?"
Pride demanded he deny it. "I'm thinking."
Con's amused gaze flicked to Rachel and back. "I can see how that would be a strain," he drawled, and then winced as his wife kicked him under the table. He changed the subject. "I brought your business plan for the loan application along. We can go over it after dinner."
"Yeah?" Despite his cool pose, Sean felt his heart begin to hammer. "Think the bank will go for it?"
Con shrugged. "Who can say? Looks good, though. Well thought out."
Sean hid his flash of pleasure at his brother's praise. "Did you include those photos I sent?"
"Of the wardrobe and chairs and things? Yeah. They should help, You sure you want to put the truck up as collateral, though?"
Sean squelched his brief regret. He wasn't going to fail. "Don't have any choice."
Patrick spoke up. "You know, Con and I talked it over. We'd be willing to—"
"No." And if he did fail, it would be on his own. "I appreciate the help with the proposal, though."
"We just want to see you protect your cash flow."
Con nodded. "A lot of start-up businesses fold because they're under-capitalized."
"Mine almost did," Val added.
Sean couldn't resent his family's interference. Not when it was so clearly motivated by concern. But he wished they wouldn't emphasize what a gamble he was taking with Rachel sitting right there, listening to every word.
"That's why I'm applying for the loan," he said evenly.
"And his business is not going to fold," Rachel declared in her schoolteacher tone. "His furniture is beautiful. He can sell as much as he makes, and he works extremely hard. Of course he'll do well."
Con raised his eyebrows. "She sounds like Mom."
"Well." Patrick cleared his throat. "Looks like we'd better take this new … venture seriously, then."
"Very seriously," Val said with a twinkle. They weren't talking about the furniture business anymore. Sean wondered if Rachel caught on. Her brow creased uncertainly as she looked around the circle of amused and interested faces.
THE TEMPTATION OF SEAN MCNEILL Page 15