Barefoot on a Starlit Night

by Jo McNally

  “I love you, Finn.” She kissed his cheek, which had been brushing against hers. “But I really hope your family isn’t planning another banquet-sized meal tonight.”

  He chuckled, holding her hand in his and turning it so the sun glinted off the diamond. “After I promised on my soul that I’d definitely ask you today, we agreed to dine out tonight. We’ll meet them all in Cashel. There’s a lovely restaurant in a converted church there.”

  “You know I loved seeing the Rock of Cashel that first day.”

  “Now you’ll see it at night with the lights on it. It’s pretty spectacular. The restaurant is right at the base of the hill.” Finn kissed her again. “And there’s a very nice hotel nearby.”

  “A hotel room? All to ourselves?” She groaned with relief and anticipation.

  Mum and Dad O’Hearn hadn’t put Finn and Bridget in separate rooms, but they had put them in the bedroom directly above their own. The old house was fully updated, but there was no insulation between the two floors, meaning their every move was broadcast below. They’d had to be very creative since their arrival. The shower made an excellent lovemaking spot. And his parents did leave the house occasionally.

  Whenever that happened, she and Finn would dash upstairs to muss the bedsheets, then straighten them again as soon as they were finished. But no matter what they did, they were always aware and listening for someone to arrive home or knock on the bathroom door.

  “A real hotel room. All to ourselves. Sally will drive Mum and Dad home after dinner, and you and I can stroll to the hotel and...maybe watch the telly for a while. There’s a good show that...”

  She turned and straddled his lap, her knees on the bench on either side of his hips. She held his head in her hands with a laugh.

  “No telly. No nothing, other than getting naked and staying that way for hours and hours.”

  His eyes shone with both heat and amusement.

  “Let’s work that into our wedding vows, shall we? I, Finn O’Hearn, vow to get naked with you for hours and hours, day after day, until death do us part.”

  She hesitated. “Will we get married here or...?”

  His arms slid around her waist until her chest was pressed against his, their faces just inches apart.

  “We’ll be married in Rendezvous Falls during the holiday break. My family will come t’ meet your family, and I’m sure chaos will ensue.” A gust of piercing wind ruffed his hair and sent hers blowing across her face. “But we won’t care, because I’ll whisk you away after the wedding to spend a long honeymoon far from all o’ them.” He shuddered at another gust of wind. “Preferably on a warm beach somewhere. Alone.”

  “You know what? That sounds like a perfect plan.” She stared into his eyes, feeling a warm flood of love washing over her. How lucky was she, to be loved by a man like this?

  “In fact...” She pressed her lips to his as the Atlantic roared against the rocky cliffs below. “It sounds like a perfect life.”

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Sweet Nothings by Moonlight by Jo McNally.

  Sweet Nothings by Moonlight

  by Jo McNally

  CHAPTER ONE

  “YOU CAN’T HIDE from her forever, you know.”

  Mark Hudson grunted at his friend’s statement.

  “I mean it, man,” DeAndre continued. “If you really came to Rendezvous Falls to win Evie back, avoiding her seems like a weird way to do it. I’m just sayin’.”

  The two men were walking down a deserted Main Street. The shops and restaurants were closed up tight. Hardly a surprise at one o’clock in the morning on a July Friday night. Everything was dark except the old-fashioned streetlights and a few random windows on higher floors.

  Mark scowled. “I’m not avoiding her.”

  That was a lie, of course. He was totally avoiding her.

  DeAndre laughed. “Man, you’re out here in the middle of the damn night because you know she won’t be around.”

  Mark just hadn’t come up with the right plan yet. Who was he kidding? He hadn’t come up with any plan yet.

  “We’re here in the middle of the night because we have work to do.” They turned the corner onto Third Street. Both men set down their ladders and supplies and stared up at the three-story brick wall outside the former hardware store. A tall, narrow scaffolding stretched up to the roof. DeAndre let out a low whistle.

  “Why does this wall look even bigger with the white primer on it?”

  Mark didn’t answer. There was nothing as exciting as a blank slate to an artist before the first stroke of paint touched it. All the possibilities. All the anxiety. All the anticipation. His smile grew. This was the wall that brought him back to Rendezvous Falls. This was the opening he’d needed to come home. Home to Evie.

  “Mark? Your eyeballs aren’t going to get the job done by themselves. What’s next?”

  Mark shook himself out of his artist’s trance. “Right. Uh......go fire up the projector across the street. The scaffolding over there should be at the right height, but you’ll have to make sure the grid lines are absolutely straight up and down. I don’t want to be painting crooked houses.”

  DeAndre nodded and jogged across the street while Mark started unpacking. The plan was to outline the mural tonight in gray, then fill in the blanks over the next few weeks, finishing in time for the art festival. There were so many details in the image stretching down this long wall that Mark opted to use the projection method instead of a grid map, which meant doing at least one night shift to get things started. His friend hit the power, and the wall lit up with a projection of what the finished project would look like.

  Four tall, narrow Victorian homes, each a different array of colors, filled the wall. Everything in the image was stretched tall to take up the full three stories of surface, including the trees, picket fences and, yes, even people. It was an homage to the town’s claim to fame: the homes that lined its streets and brought tourists to see the Crazy Victorian Houses of Rendezvous Falls.

  DeAndre rejoined Mark and looked up. “You had to use up the whole damn three stories, didn’t you?”

  Mark shrugged. “I use every inch of the space given me. Is the projector lined up perfectly straight?”

  DeAndre’s dark eyes narrowed. “Yes, Dad. Just like you told me to.”

  “We don’t want to get all the way up there just to climb down again to fix it.” Mark handed his friend a can of paint. “I had to do that four times in Memphis because the projector kept tilting. I barely finished it before the sun came up.” He glanced at his watch. “I figure we have five hours.”

  “Then let’s get to it.” They climbed the scaffolding, which was sturdier than it looked. The town workers had anchored it to a metal bar attached to the top of the building. The chains would slide horizontally along the pipe as they moved the scaffolding sideways.

  DeAndre nodded, impressed, when they got to the top platform. “Nice to know they don’t want us to give our lives for your art.”

  Mark handed him a harness. “The rail keeps the scaffolding from falling. The harness keeps us from falling. Hook the ring on the cable right there. And get busy. We’ll work this section top to bottom, then move over and do it again.”

  “Tell me why I’m helping you with this again?” DeAndre looked down—way down—to the sidewalk.

  Mark clapped him on the back. “Because you’re my brother-from-another-mother and you’re happy I’m home?”

  “Ri-ight.” DeAndre scoffed. “Or maybe because you’re payin’ me and I’ll do just about anything for the dough.”

  “Nah. I think my first guess was right.” Mark applied the first brushstroke to the sharp angle of a Victorian roofline. He gave a sidelong glance at his lifelong friend, now a high-school teacher and football coach. “Unlike me, you are gainfully employed, with benefits. But I’ll
pay you, anyway.”

  “Yeah, you will,” DeAndre snorted. “I got a wife and three babies at home and they like to live indoors and eat and wear clothes and stuff. My paycheck only goes so far.”

  By the time the sun threatened the horizon, they were working the final section, at the bottom of the wall closest to Main Street. They’d been drinking caffeinated energy drinks all night. It was a miracle their eyes weren’t bugging right out of their heads, cartoon-style.

  They’d covered every topic of conversation they could think of, solving most of the world’s problems on shaky scaffolding over the dark, quiet streets of Rendezvous Falls. Mark even told DeAndre how his neighbor, Victoria Pendergast, and her friends, had tried to set him up with Whitney Foster, a complete stranger, at Falls Legend Winery last weekend. DeAndre couldn’t stop laughing.

  “You’re telling me two old ladies set you up with some woman just because she was an accountant? Were they feeling sorry for you or for her?”

  Mark worked on the outline of the landscaping in front of the fourth house in the mural, painting the general shape of the roses that would eventually tumble over a fence in the scene.

  “Both, I think. Whitney said her aunt’s feeling guilty for giving her a huge accounting mess to clean up, and Mrs. Pendergast... I guess she thought I must be desperate since I moved into my grandmother’s garage.”

  “So this Whitney, did she... I don’t know...look like an accountant?”

  Mark rolled his eyes. “And what does an accountant look like, DeAndre? A short guy with freckles and glasses like me? No. Whitney looked like a freakin’ supermodel. And she was funny and smart.”

  “And you’re not seeing her again because...?”

  “Hello? I’m only in the market for one woman.”

  His friend laughed loudly. “Oh, right. The woman you keep hiding from.”

  Really need to come up with a plan...

  “Screw you.” Mark dropped to one knee to work the last of the details. After catching up on his sleep, he’d start adding the details during daylight hours. He glanced toward the sunrise. “We need to get that projector down.”

  “Are we done?”

  “As done as we need to be.” There were footsteps behind him, and Mark, still on one knee, didn’t bother looking up as he continued. “Let’s pack up and get out of here before people start waking up.”

  “Too late, hotshot.”

  The sharp female voice made Mark’s blood run cold, then blaze as hot as the sun cresting the hills on the far side of Seneca Lake. A quick glance to his side revealed a pair of bright purple sneakers and orange ruffled ankle socks. A tattooed vine of morning glories wrapped around a shapely calf. He used to kiss his way up that vine at night. The memory caused another searing blast of heat. Evie Rosario’s voice was amused, but cold. Icy cold.

  “As much as I like the sight of you on your knees—at perfect kicking height—I don’t think these sneaks would do enough damage to be satisfying. Are you really not able to look me in the eye, Mark?”

  He swallowed hard and forced himself to look up at the only woman he’d ever loved. The one he’d stupidly left behind ten years ago. The one who had clearly not forgiven him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EVIE FORCED HER face to remain immobile as Mark slowly stood. She refused to show him how much it hurt that he’d been in Rendezvous Falls for nearly a month—a month—without once trying to contact her.

  His sandy brown hair was longer than she remembered, hanging over his forehead until he reached up to push it back. His gray-blue eyes were looking at her, but not really. It was like he was studying some point off her left shoulder instead of having the balls to look her straight on. Such a jerk. And a liar. And now...he was a coward. Who needed that? Not her. Not anymore.

  She’d fallen into bed fully clothed last night after leaving the Purple Shamrock. She and her new friend, Whitney Foster, had enjoyed a few drinks and a lot of laughs. But working at a diner meant late nights were a really bad idea. Breakfast prep started before dawn, and if she fell behind, her mother would be on her case for days. But sleep had been hard to come by with the muffled conversations and rattling of scaffolding right outside the walls of her apartment over the old hardware store downtown. She knew there was a mural going up, but was it really necessary for them to work on it at night? She’d tossed and turned, then finally given up. She was going to have one long-ass day today. If this painting at night was going to be a regular thing, she was going to be a very unhappy town resident, and when Evie was unhappy, people knew it.

  That’s why she’d trudged down the stairs even earlier than usual this morning to confront the inconsiderate mural people—she’d heard they’d hired some out-of-town crew—and let them know that all-night work sessions were not going to be acceptable. She’d heard a couple of low male voices as she rounded the corner, and one of them sounded eerily familiar. As soon as she saw his short, stocky form hunched over on one knee, painting the wall, she knew.

  Mark Freaking Hudson.

  “Hi, Evie.” His voice cracked on the two simple words. She glared at him until he shuffled his feet uncomfortably and blinked away. She was five foot seven, and he was maybe an inch taller. She placed her fisted hands on her hips, more for his protection than anything else. Who knew where those fists would end up if left to their own accord?

  “Seriously? That’s all you have to say to me? ‘Hi, Evie?’” She started to step forward, but caught herself. Getting too close to him was dangerous...for both of them. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Mark swallowed hard, then looked over his shoulder at the large wall behind him. Yesterday, it had been covered with white paint. Now she could see a ghostly drawing of houses and people and trees. Evie let out a low groan.

  “Oh. My. God. You’re the mural artist the town’s been so hush-hush about?” She stepped back and took in the whole wall in the soft morning light. Four tall, narrow Victorian houses, trees, people, fences—more than her eyes could take in. It was impressive, but she’d wouldn’t let him know that. “No wonder they billed it as a surprise. Local boy comes home to paint home. Can’t get much more homespun and Rendezvous Falls cute than that.”

  She turned and almost ran smack into DeAndre Fox. Built like a tank, he was carrying a square black case and had a bright orange extension cord draped over his shoulder.

  “Hey, DeAndre. You got roped into this, huh?”

  He laughed. “Can’t say ‘no’ to this guy, no matter how much I try. How are you, Evie? How’s the diner doing?”

  She glanced at her watch. She needed to start cracking eggs and fire up the griddle pretty soon.

  “Everything’s great. At least it was, until my sleep was interrupted by two guys yukking it up right outside my apartment wall all night long.” She stretched and yawned, just to make her point. “This isn’t going to be an ongoing thing, is it?”

  DeAndre shook his head, lifting the case. “Sorry. I didn’t know that apartment was occupied. We needed one night to project the lines on the wall so Michelangelo here could know what the hell he’d be painting.” He looked at Mark. “Did you put a silencing hex on him or something?”

  She turned to face the one-time love of her life. She took a sharp breath, embracing the anger—hurt?—that stiffened her spine and made her chin rise.

  “That’s what happens when you confront the biggest mistake you ever made.”

  Mark blinked, and seemed to shake himself out of his trance. His eyes went warm, damn it, as he swept them over her from head to toe and back again.

  “You’re right, Evie. I’ve made some blunders, and you’re the biggest.” He looked to the sidewalk before meeting her eyes again. “I was such an idiot back then, but I’ve changed. I’ve come back here to prove that to you...”

  She held up her hand, palm hovering in front of his face. “Stop r
ight there.” Mark’s mouth opened, so she shoved her hand even closer. She was surprised she didn’t hit his nose. “You’ve been in town for a month. This town isn’t that big, so the only way we haven’t seen each other before now is because you made sure of it. So don’t go all Shakespeare on me now when you’ve been hiding from me for weeks.” She looked him up and down with disdain, ignoring the solid biceps and broad shoulders. She needed to avoid distraction, because she deserved to be angry, and he needed to hear it. “Nothing’s changed. You’re still the same lying, spineless coward you were when we were nineteen.”

  DeAndre whistled, then muttered, “Oh, you’re dead, man. She just murdered you right here on the street.”

  When she lowered her hand, his blue eyes were dark with turmoil. He didn’t say anything, just stared until it felt like he was looking right into her wounded heart. To her surprise, that heart flipped an extra beat. She turned and walked away without a word, and he let her go. He hadn’t fought for her then, and he clearly wasn’t ready to fight for her now.

  It hurt even more the second time around.

  * * *

  MARK’S HEAD DROPPED as Evie stomped away from him. He knew he’d hurt her, but he’d still held on to the hope she’d be so happy at his return that maybe she’d throw herself into his arms in delight.

  But...no.

  She’d nursed her hurt into a phosphorescent flame of rage. It rolled off her like thunder, and he was a little surprised actual flames hadn’t shot from her eyes. Evie had always been an all-in kinda girl when it came to her emotions, and that clearly hadn’t changed. What had changed was that her emotions appeared to have been reduced to pure hatred for him. He rubbed the back of his neck. Hadn’t counted on that happening.

  “I told you not to avoid her when you got back. It’s a small town.” DeAndre bumped his shoulder. “People talk. Come on, let’s pack up.”

  Mark went through the motions like a robot. He kept seeing Evie’s stormy dark eyes. Seeing all the pain lying behind them. And knowing that he’d put it there. He should have fought for her back then, but he’d felt he had no options. Now he was going to have to fight twice as hard. He turned to DeAndre as he hoisted the ladder onto his shoulder.