by Trish Wylie
‘Pulling the world apart at the seams taking it out of you is it?’
The lack of sarcasm in her tone, accompanied with a teasing light in her eyes, was enough to keep the smile on his face. ‘It can be a little draining, as it happens.’
‘I’d imagine so—’ she tried an answering smile on for size ‘—but then they do say life’s what we make it…’
‘Not always. Sometimes life is what someone else made for us and we don’t get a big choice in it.’
It was the first real insight into how he was really feeling that Shannon had been given.
And was the first thing to allow her to let go a little, to be more relaxed—and to say what she thought.
‘Do you really think he left you Devenish to make you miserable? I doubt that was what he had in mind at the time.’
The warmth in Connor’s eyes faded. ‘You knew him that well, did you?’
‘No, I never met him.’
‘Then you can’t know what he was thinking. From where I stand it would have been much better if he’d left it the hell alone.’
Any warmth in his voice that had been there before was rapidly disappearing, and Shannon sensed that she was in danger of losing her window of opportunity.
Think, woman, think!
A surprisingly big part of her wasn’t willing to let go of the small chance to do some good—make him realize there was a life beyond his vendetta, show him the damage he would do with the sale of the building, maybe even in some small way compensate for what she had done so many years ago by giving him a chance to get a life for himself again.
So, she took a breath and allowed her thoughts to stray into an area that she had tried to avoid as much as humanly possible.
‘Would you have been able to leave it alone if you’d had a son out there somewhere?’
For the longest while he studied her eyes so intently that she feared he might see into her mind again.
But then he simply took a breath, his deep voice firm and determined. ‘I’d not have waited until I was dead to do something for him. I’d search to the end of the earth for a child of mine. And he’d grow up knowing his father and where he came from.’
The words were like a knife in Shannon’s heart.
When she didn’t speak, Connor continued to stare deep into her eyes. ‘I can’t forgive him for not doing that, any more than I can forgive my mother for not telling me sooner. It just goes to prove that a lie on top of a lie doesn’t ever have a good outcome.’
And still she couldn’t find words.
Which brought a smile back to the sensual curve of his mouth. ‘And now that you’ve pried that out, can we agree to try and be nice for the day? Because that happens to be the most discussion I’ve had on the subject.’
Shannon knew that, without even having to search his eyes for confirmation. Connor had shut himself off while he took revenge on the father he had never known. It was his way of working through it. Maybe not the right way, or the way she would have chosen herself, but it was the path he had taken.
Did that mean that the Connor she had known was still in there? Did it mean that he hadn’t actually changed into someone she could hate as much as she had once loved him?
Shannon swiped the end of her tongue over her dry lips, pursing them together while she avoided his searching gaze. ‘Maybe you needed to talk about this more than you thought you did.’
‘Maybe.’ He nodded in agreement. ‘And maybe we didn’t stand a chance at any kind of a temporary peace treaty until I told you even that much. I’m told trust is a two-way street.’
‘I’d heard that.’
Mimicking her earlier move, he tilted his head to bring his face back into her line of vision, waiting until her long lashes rose and she was looking him in the eye again. ‘So, what do you do after the story-telling, then? You’re gonna have to keep me busy if I’m going to stick to the no kissing or touching rule.’
The silence was suddenly broken by the echo of music from the next room.
Connor’s brows rose in surprise, his head turning to seek out the source of the sound.
‘What’s that?’
‘They run a dance class here on a Friday. Jive, ballroom, that kind of thing.’ She listened for a moment until the track was familiar to her. ‘Sixties today, by the sound of it, so it’ll be jive. All age groups can do that in varying degrees.’
When he looked back at her his dark eyes were lit up with what she immediately recognized as devilment. ‘Excellent.’
‘What are you doing?’
He had hold of her hand again. ‘You want to show me what goes on here—then let’s go.
Dancing is close enough to the touching thing to keep me happy.’
‘O-h-h no.’ Her laughter was a little more genuine this time. ‘I think we’ve established that when we dance together it isn’t just dancing—it’s foreplay.’
The tugging stopped while he smiled down at her with the kind of gorgeously sexy smile that set her alight every single time. ‘I can behave if you can. And anyway—’ he leaned closer to whisper in her ear ‘—play your cards right and the whole day will be like foreplay.’
Shannon shook her head. ‘If your ego gets any bigger you’ll have to give it a name of its own.’
Connor chuckled. ‘It’s either dancing or we go re-enact that scene from the movie in the Potty about Pottery class later. Your choice. I’m here to experience it all.’
A very vivid image of them sitting at a pottery wheel while wet clay slid between their joined fingers did things to Shannon’s pulse rate that she was quite sure shouldn’t happen without her needing a heart monitor—and suddenly dancing seemed the safer option. So, setting the large book on a small chair beside them, she took a deep breath and tightened her fingers around his.
‘You’re just gonna love the embroidery class.’ With her hand still holding tightly to his, she pulled him towards the door. ‘Of course, then there’s Tumblin’ Tinies at six on this floor, a meditation class at seven, and—’
Connor squeezed her hand as they walked into the foyer and made the turn into the next room. ‘Persuading me this place is so damn great might go better if you didn’t make it all sound like some kind of endurance test.’
With her hand pushing the door open, she looked back at him with gleaming eyes, a bubble of mischief forming in her chest. Well, it was either that or nervous energy.
‘I remember you having more of a sense of adventure, Connor Flanaghan.’
Connor merely grinned in response, raising his other hand to the small of her back to guide her forwards. ‘Attempting to jive with a woman dressed as a fairy-tale princess is adventurous enough for me for one day.’
Shannon’s chin dropped, her mouth an ‘o’ of surprise as she suddenly remembered what she was wearing. In a way she should have been thankful that he hadn’t visited last week when she’d been dressed as a leprechaun, but even so…
‘I can’t jive in this!’
‘Sure you can. If you can dance dressed as an Egyptian dancing girl then this should be a cinch.’ He ignored the look of shocked outrage on her face at the mention of her seduction apparel from back in the day. ‘Though I sincerely hope you kept that all these years. I wasn’t done with it when you left in the middle of the night.’
Before Shannon could make a comment, he looked over her head and smiled in greeting—so she had to make do with smiling at the class as they joined it while swallowing down another sharp shard of pain in her chest.
Then she sent up a silent plea that she hadn’t just got in over her head…
Again.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘ALL RIGHT, WHAT’S next?’
Connor leaned across the counter in an attempt to read Shannon’s diary upside down, glancing up at her face to see what he could see in her eyes while silently hoping there wasn’t anything else in the damn diary. He knew what activity he wanted to spend the rest of the evening doing.
And it did
n’t involve a crowd.
The day had certainly brought a great deal more enjoyment than he had thought it would, even if he did now have more information on embroidery and pottery than he would ever be likely to use in everyday life. He’d obviously needed a break more than he had realized if playing around with bunches of kids, unemployed teenagers and old-age pensioners had brought a smile to his face.
But he knew it had more to do with being with Shannon. Because he’d been right—the day had turned into a kind of slow foreplay. Surrounded by people the entire time, each brief touch or sideways glance had felt as if it were stolen, forbidden somehow, which made it unbelievably erotic.
So that he had ended up having to focus on each new activity with increasing degrees of attention in order to keep his mind off whisking her away for more adult activities.
It had been hard. Literally.
But there was something new between them too, something invisible that started as a niggle and became a nagging voice in his mind as the day progressed. And the fact that he couldn’t put a finger on what it was was becoming more and more of a source of irritation to him.
It distracted him from the crackling sensual awareness that had been there all day, which at times had probably been useful, but Connor wasn’t sure he wanted to be distracted from that now.
Which meant he was going to have to risk life and limb by trying to find out what it was, didn’t it?
But it was bugging him.
She glanced up at him with a small smile, then back down at the diary. ‘Oh, I think what you’ve done already could be deemed going above and beyond the call of duty. I was kidding when I said you had to do everything.’
Above and beyond the call of duty, maybe, but at least now he understood what happened there every day. They ran an eclectic group of activities to go with the equally eclectic group of people that came through the doors. But he still didn’t get why it was the location made that big a difference…
‘You wouldn’t be trying to get rid of me, would you, Sunshine?’
She tried to hide it, but he caught sight of another small smile twitching at the edges of her mouth before she forced it away. It was something she’d been doing a lot of in the last hour or so. Almost as if she was giving away too much ground by showing she was having fun.
Though she hadn’t managed to hide those smiles any better than she had the heated gazes they had exchanged.
Her long lashes flickered as she glanced up at his face again, green eyes studying him for a long moment while he smiled back at her.
Then she sighed, closing the diary. ‘There’s only film night left. And it’s not for another half hour.’
‘What’s film night?’
Her head tilted, arched eyebrows rising in amused disbelief.
And Connor chuckled in response. ‘What kind of film? ’Cos I don’t do chick flicks. And why don’t they just go to a cinema like other people do?’
‘A lot of them like to come to somewhere close to home ’cos they find getting around tough as they’ve gotten older. And it’s not a chick flick; it’s a black and white movie night. We do all the classics—anything I can get on DVD anyway. You’ll hate it. No blowing up things, no naked women, no fast cars.’
‘You don’t know I won’t like it.’
‘You’ll be happy watching some period melodrama from the forties with a bunch of over seventies?’
He blinked at her. ‘You said it wasn’t a chick flick.’
‘Not the way you’d think of one. But it’s still hardly going to be anywhere near butch enough for you.’
Well, flattering and all as it was she thought him butch, she was right. A black and white movie wouldn’t be his usual choice of activity for a Friday night. But after the twenty minutes he’d managed in the meditation class before laughing he reckoned he could pretty much endure anything she threw his way. It had become some kind of test in her eyes and he knew it. Which only made him want to succeed all the more at the things she’d decided he would fail at—so he shrugged.
‘Depends on how good the film is, and whether you can manage to rustle us up some popcorn and a seat on the back row.’
Shannon studied him in silence.
‘You don’t want me to stay is the truth. You didn’t think I’d last this long, even when you should know me better. And it kills you to admit you’ve had fun with me being here.’
‘This wasn’t supposed to be about me having fun, it was supposed to be about you understanding what we have going here.’
What they had ‘going’ remained to be seen in Connor’s eyes. Occasionally, just very occasionally during the day, there would be small flashes of the way they used to be when they were together. Honest to goodness laughter, silly teasing comments, mutual understanding of a wisecrack that others around them might not necessarily have got.
It was exactly what he’d been missing of late. Just spending time in someone’s company doing things that weren’t a constant reminder of how complicated his life had become or the associated permanent bad mood that accompanied it was like taking a holiday.
But there was more simmering beneath the surface too—an anticipation of what was to come. He’d known it from the moment he had mentioned the ‘disguise’ she’d worn that one time, and the green of her eyes had darkened a shade. And he had felt it when they had danced again, when her body had moved with his and she would quietly catch her breath, or when he would spin her away and back and her breathing would speed up as she’d looked at him with languid eyes.
Every move, all day, had been a precursor.
He took a breath, his gaze still locked on hers as he smiled. ‘You’re not getting rid of me, you know. You’re stuck with me.’
And there was the something again.
His smile remained. ‘There’s that look again. Do you want to tell me exactly what it is I’ve inadvertently done to bug you this time?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She made a show of straightening some of the papers laid out on the wide counter top, her hand moving up briefly to brush the corkscrew curl back into place.
Which made him smile again. She’d always done that thing with her hair when she was nervous, from way back when she was young. The mass of soft curls had been tough to control at the best of times, and Shannon had been so damn determined to tame it. As if she had to be in control of everything, or that it working loose from whatever band she had it in was a sign of her quirky personality trying to escape from the restraints she had on it.
A quirkiness she had no problem exhibiting these days. Oh, no. Her latest T-shirt announced: ‘My imaginary friend thinks you have serious mental problems.’
‘You do that when you’re nervous, you know.’ He nodded his head at the curl, which bobbed loose the minute she looked up at him. ‘You always did.’
Her hand rose, stilled, and went back down to the counter while she mumbled back, ‘Yes, well, I keep thinking I should just get it cut. But I never do.’
‘I’m glad.’
She cleared her throat. ‘Look, I normally don’t stay down here for the film nights anyway—’
The gregarious, over-the-top Mario chose that moment to bound down the stairs beside the reception area with a large box of buttered popcorn in bags. ‘I have the chairs all in place and the DVD wired up to the screen. Just the popcorn to put out and the tea urn to fill and that’s me. I’ve saved your usual place near the back so that no one tries to steal it this time.’
He winked at Connor on the way past, ‘Can’t have some wrinkly taking her place, now, can we? She loves these things. Never misses a weepy, does our Shannon.’
Connor smiled, nodding at Shannon as Mario disappeared into the room that had been used earlier for the kids’ story time session. ‘Normally don’t stay down for these, huh?’
A pink tinge was working its way up her neck. ‘I don’t go to every single one.’
‘Yeah, I got that from the words “never misses”.’
When she turned to walk out from behind the counter, Connor pushed up off his elbows and stepped around, blocking her exit. ‘Actually, you’re wrong—I do understand a bit better what goes on here. It’ll help me to find a replacement building that’s right for everyone.’ He dipped his head down to look up into her eyes. ‘You’re sure there’s not something else bugging you? I thought as the day went on, if nothing else, we were making some headway towards remembering how to get along again.’
‘There’s not much point in us getting along.’
‘I disagree.’
‘There’s a surprise.’
He stepped a step closer. ‘There were plenty of times today when you looked happy I was here. And plenty of times when you looked at me with the same thing on your mind that I had.’
Shannon tried a sidestep and was blocked. ‘Well, there were times when watching you trying to join in with some of the activities was amusing to watch, I’ll give you that.’
Another forward step. ‘I had fun, surprisingly—though I doubt I’ll be taking up any of the activities in the near future. Go on, now you try—“I had fun too Connor. I’m glad you were here.” You can even tell me how impressed you were with that gorgeous pot I made in the pottery class.’
She flashed him a brief smile. They both knew the pot had been horrifically sad. Then she stilled, her mouth pursed into a thin line while she studied the collar of his shirt. ‘All right, I will admit there may have been moments of fun in there that reminded me of how you used to be.’