by Nora Roberts
kissed Darcy’s hand. “It’s been a great pleasure.”
A faint flush of pink riding on his cheeks, he left the pub.
“Well?” Darcy demanded, spinning around to Aidan. “
“Let’s give this a minute, just to be sure Finkle doesn’t turn about, rush back in, and throw himself to his knees to beg you to run off with him to Tahiti.”
Darcy chuckled and shook her head. “No, the man loves his wife. Now he might allow himself a misty dream about what the two of us might do in such a place, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“Then I’ll tell you.” He laid a hand on hers on the bar, placed the other on Shawn’s shoulder. “We’ve done the deal, as the three of us and Jude discussed, and we’ve shaken hands on it. He’s going back to New York, and the papers will be drawn up as soon as lawyers can manage it.”
“Twenty-five percent?” Shawn asked. “
“Twenty-five, and a say in approving the design for the theater. There are details yet, but between us, Magee, and the lawyers, we’ll iron them out.”
“So we’ve done it?” Shawn laid down the cloth he’d been using to wipe the bar.
“It appears we have, as I’ve given my word.”
“Well, then.” Shawn put his hand over the one Aidan held over Darcy’s. “I’ll tend the bar. Go on and tell Jude.”
“It’ll keep. We’re busy.”
“Good news is more fun when it’s fresh. I’ll handle it here, and close up as well. And as a return, you can give me the evening off tomorrow. If Kathy Duffy will take the kitchen. I haven’t had a free evening in some time.”
“Fair enough. I’ll call Dad as well,” he added as he flipped up the pass-through. “Unless you’d both rather I wait until morning when we can all speak to him.”
“Go on and call.” Darcy waved him out. “He’ll want to know straight off. He was distracted,” she said to Shawn when the door closed. “I’m not. Do you have something with Brenna in mind for tomorrow?”
Shawn merely took the empty glasses off her tray, set them in the bar sink. “You’ve customers, darling, and so have I.” And he leaned over a bit. “You’ve your business. And so have I.”
Miffed, Darcy jerked a shoulder. “It’s not your business I care a damn about. But Brenna. She’s a friend. You’re nothing but a brother, and an irritant at that.”
And knowing her irritant, she let it alone. She’d get nothing out of Shawn Gallagher, if he’d decided otherwise, with dynamite.
He had a plan. He was good at planning. That didn’t mean it always worked, but he was good at the figuring out of how it should work. There was cooking involved, and so he was in his element. He wanted something simple, a dish he could put together, then leave to itself until it was needed. So he made a tomato sauce with a bit of bite and left it to simmer.
It required a setting of the stage. That was something he preferred and something he believed would give him an advantage. He thought a man could use every advantage when it came to Brenna O’Toole.
It required a phone call, which he made from the pub at the end of the lunch shift when he was certain Brenna would be up to her neck in whatever job she was doing.
Just as he knew that, being Brenna, she’d come by after her workday to take a look at the broken washing machine he’d reported.
So when he got home, the sauce he’d left warming added an appetizing scent to the air. He picked some of the petunias and pansies that were happy to winter over in the garden and put these in the bedroom along with the candles he’d bought at the market.
He’d already changed the sheets for fresh, which had given him the idea about the washing machine.
Next there was music. It was too much a part of his life not to include it in any venture. He selected the CDs he liked best, slipped them into the canny little player he’d bought himself months before, then left them going while he went down to the kitchen to see to the rest.
He put out the cat, who it seemed sensed something important was going on and so put himself in the way at every opportunity.
He didn’t expect to see her till near to six, which gave him enough time to put together a platter of finger food. He hunted up wineglasses, polished them out, then opened the bottle of red he’d taken from the pub, setting it on the counter to breathe.
After giving his sauce a last taste and stir, he glanced around and nodded in satisfaction. It was all fine and done. The clock showed ten minutes before six when he heard her lorry pull into his street.
“She’s a timely sort,” he murmured, and was taken by surprise when nerves set to dancing in his belly. “It’s only Brenna, for Christ’s sake,” he told himself. “You’ve known her all your life.”
Not in the way he was about to, he thought. Nor she him. He had a sudden wild urge to dash into the little mudroom and rip something off the washing machine and forget the rest.
And since when had a Gallagher been a coward? Especially with a woman? With this lecture playing in his head, he started toward the front door.
She was already coming in, carrying her toolbox. Her jeans had a fresh rip in them, just below the right knee. There was a faint smear of dirt across her cheek.
She closed the front door, took two steps, then saw him. And nearly jumped out of her work boots. “Jesus, Shawn, why not just cosh me over the head as scare the life out of me? What are you doing here this time of day?”
“I’ve the evening off. You parked behind my car, didn’t you?”
“I did, yes, but I figured you’d walked down or gotten a lift.” While she waited for her heart rate to return to normal, she sniffed the air. “Doesn’t smell as though you’ve taken advantage of a free evening. What are you cooking?”
“A sauce for spaghetti. I thought I’d try it out before we gave it a go at the pub. Have you eaten?” he asked, though he already knew.
“I haven’t, no. Ma’s expecting me shortly.”
She wasn’t, as Shawn had called down to tell Mollie he’d give Brenna a meal while she was there. “Have your dinner here instead.” He took her hand, leading her back to the kitchen. “You can judge the sauce for me.”
“I might do that, but let’s have a look at your machine first to see what the matter is.”
“There’s nothing the matter with it.” He took her toolbox, set it out of the way on the floor.
“What do you mean, there’s nothing the matter? Didn’t you call up the hotel and say it wouldn’t run for you at all?”
“I lied. Try this.” He plucked up a stuffed olive and popped it into her mouth.
“Lied?”
“I did, yes. And I’m counting on the sin being worth the penance.”
“But why would you . . .” Realization dawned slowly, and left her feeling awkward and edgy. “I see. So this is the time and the place that suits you.”
“Aye. I told your mother you’d be staying awhile, so you’ve no need to worry about that.”
“Hmm.” She looked around the kitchen, paying more attention. Fragrant sauce simmering, a pretty plate of fancy appetizers, a bottle of wine. “You might have given me a bit of notice. A little time to settle in to the notion.”
“You’ve time now.” He poured wine into the glasses. “I know wine tends to give you a head the next morning, but a glass or two shouldn’t hurt.”
She’d risk the hangover, if the wine managed to cool her throat. “You know you didn’t have to bother with all this fuss for me. I told you from the start I didn’t need it.”
“Well, I do, and you’ll just have to tolerate it.” He was more at ease again, because she wasn’t. He took a step toward her. “Take off your—” He nearly laughed when her eyes widened. “Your hat,” he finished, then did so himself, setting it and his wine aside so he could run his hands through her hair until it tumbled in a way that most pleased him. “Have a seat.”
He nudged her into a chair, sat across from her. “Why don’t you take off your boots?”
She leaned
down, tugged on the laces, then sat up again. “Do you have to watch me? You make me feel foolish.”
“If you feel foolish with me watching you take off your boots, you’re going to feel like a real horse’s ass before much longer. Take off your boots, Brenna,” he said in a quiet voice that sent a ripple running up her spine. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about the matter.”
“I haven’t.” Annoyed, she bent down again to work on the boots. “I started this, and I finish what I start.”
But it wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined it. She’d simply pictured the two of them already naked, in bed, getting on with business. She hadn’t given a great deal of thought to the mechanics of arriving there.
She kicked her boots under the table and made herself look back at him, steadily back at him.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.” She couldn’t conceive of eating under the circumstances. “Dad and I had a late lunch.”
“All the better. We’ll eat later. Let’s take the wine upstairs.”
Upstairs. All right, they’d go upstairs. It had been her idea, after all. But when he took her hand this time, she had to force herself not to bolt. “This isn’t a fair way, Shawn. I’ve just come from working all day, and haven’t had a chance to clean up.”
“Would you like a shower, then?” As they walked up the back stairs, he rubbed the smudge from her cheek. “I’m happy to wash your back.”
“I’m just saying, that’s all.” She couldn’t shower with him, for God’s sake. Not just like that. The music drifted toward her, a whisper of harpsong. Her nerves were screaming.
She stepped into the bedroom, saw the flowers, the candles, the bed. And gulped her wine like water.
“Easy now.” He nipped the glass from her hand. “I don’t want you drunk.”
“I can handle my drink,” she began, then rubbed her damp palms on her thighs as he wandered around lighting candles. “There’s no need for that. It’s not full dark yet.”
“It will be. I’ve seen you in candlelight before,” he said easily as he touched the flame of the match to the candles he’d set on the narrow mantel over the fire he’d already set to glowing. “But I didn’t take time to appreciate it. I will tonight.”
“I don’t see why you have to make the situation romantic instead of what it is.”
“Not afraid of a little romance, are you, Mary Brenna?”
“No, but . . .” He turned, and the subtle and shifting lights of flame danced over his face, behind him, around him. He might have stepped out of one of the pictures Jude drew. Of faerie princes and valiant knights and poetic harpists.
“There’s something about the way you look,” she managed, “that makes my mouth water half the time. I don’t much care for it, to be honest with you, and I’d prefer getting it out of my system.”
“Well, now.” His voice was as smooth as hers was annoyed. “Why don’t we see what we can do about that?”
Keeping his eyes on hers, he crossed to her.
TWELVE
HOWEVER ODD THE situation, Brenna thought, it was still Shawn, a man she’d known and cared for all her life. However ridiculous it all seemed, she still wanted him. Nerves were as out of place as the harpsong and the candlelight.
So when he laid his hands on her shoulders, when he ran them lightly down her arms to link with her hands, she tipped her head up. “If I laugh,” she told him, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just the whole business of this that strikes me funny.”
“All right.”
Since he only stood watching her, seemed to be waiting, she rose to her toes and took his mouth with hers. She didn’t mean to rush it, as she’d already concluded he wouldn’t allow that in any case. But at that first taste she wanted more, she wanted it all. And quickly. Her hands flexed in his as she chewed on his bottom lip.
“I’ve got this powerful urge for you. I can’t help it.”
“Who’s asking you to?” He wouldn’t rush, no, but it was tempting to pick up the pace. That fascinating little body of hers was already vibrating against his, and her mouth was like a fever. But he thought it would be much more satisfying all around to let her drive him crazy for a while yet.
“Come up here.” He let go of her hands to take her hips, to hitch her up so that her legs wrapped his waist as they’d done once before. “And kiss me again. I like it.”
Now she did laugh, and the nerves that had worried her flitted away. “Do you, now? Well, as I recall, the first time I did it . . .” She brought her mouth to within a breath of his, then drew back—once, twice. “You looked as though I’d coshed you over the head with my hammer.”
“That’s because I wasn’t expecting it, and you turned my brain upside down.” He gave her bottom an intimate, and friendly, squeeze. “Bet you can’t do it again.”
“Oh, so it’s a wager, is it?” Eyes glinting with the challenge, with the fun, she fisted her hands in his hair. “You’re about to lose.”
She put herself into her work, he had to give her that. He could all but feel his eyes roll back in his head as her mouth attacked his. There were times when surrender wasn’t a humbling experience at all. There was a hint of wine still on her tongue, warm and rich. Mixed with her own flavor, it spun into him, a lovely and intoxicating combination.
Harpsong and candlelight, a hot-blooded woman twined around him. He let both the passion and the romance pump into his system. Alluring. Arousing.Pleasure took on a fine, sharp edge.
She felt his fingers dig into her hips, heard his breath quicken like a man who’d done a fast sprint up a long hill. When he shifted, turning toward the bed, triumph flashed through her.
She would have him now. Her way. Fast and furious and done. Then this terrible pressure in her chest, her belly, her head, would find release. Her breath caught in a laughing gasp when he spilled her onto the bed, then covered her, pressed her into the mattress, tight body to tight body.
“I’ll have to give you that one.” There was a gleam in her eye that only sharpened when he pulled her hands over her head and cuffed her wrists. “But now it’s my turn. As I recall, the first time I kissed you, your eyes went blurry and blind.” He closed his teeth gently over her jaw. “And you trembled.”
Deliberately she arched her hips, pressed against him. “I’ll bet you can’t do it again.”
A man that aroused, that ready, wouldn’t dawdle. She was sure of it. Still, she braced herself. And still she trembled when his lips skimmed tenderly, tormentingly over hers. Her arms went limp, her mind blank as glass. The pressure that had built to crisis point slid into a glorious aching.
The first hint of the rising moon slipped into the room to shimmer silver against the gold of candle flames.
He cupped her breasts, his fingers tracing the shape of her against her work shirt, before moving to the buttons. She wore a man’s white T-shirt beneath. After he tugged the denim aside, Shawn found himself fascinated at just how sexy her small breasts looked, felt, under that simple white cotton.
“I’ve always liked your hands.” She had her eyes closed now, the better to absorb the little shocks of sensation.“I like them even better now.” But when he lowered again, when his mouth closed over her through the cotton, her eyes flew open. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”
He might have chuckled, if he could have found the breath for it. But his lungs were clogged, and his head already starting to reel. Where had this been all his life? This taste, this texture, this shape? How much more had he missed?
She was tugging off his sweater as he dragged her up. Breath ragged, they stared at each other. Whatever shock there was on both sides, she nodded as he did. “Too late,” was all he said and pulled the shirt over her head.
“Thanks be to God.”
They dived at each other.
His hands might have been faster now, and just a bit rough here and there. His mouth might have been hotter, more impatient than it had. But it didn’t stop him from being thorough. He wante
d every bit of her, and would remember always, the taste of her flesh, that tender spot just under her breast, the way that angle went to curve from her rib cage to her hip, and the silken feel of it all under his palm and fingertips.
The strength of her was no small matter, and outrageously erotic as they rolled together, as he felt her muscles bunch. Erotic still when he made that strength waver toward weakness, feeling her shudder against him when he found some new spot that pleased her.
The music was flutes now, lilting and faerie-like, a rise of pipes beneath it. The moonlight strengthened, a pearl gleam on the air that was fragrant with candle wax and turf smoke.
She buried her face against his throat, fighting to catch her breath. “Shawn, for God’s sake. Now.”
“Not yet, not yet, not yet.” He said it like a chant. He wanted those small strong hands of hers never to stop running over him. He wanted to find more and still more of her with his own. Didn’t those lovely legs deserve his attention now that he’d tugged the ripped denim away? And the back of her shoulder was such a marvelous place to linger.
“For a little thing, there’s so much of you.”
Desperate, she sank her teeth into him. “I’ll die in a minute.”
“Here, now. Here.” And his mouth took hers again as he slid his hand between her legs, slipped his fingers into the heat.
She came in a flood, fast and full with her body bucking against him. He swallowed her cry of shock and release, absorbed it, savored it even as his blood burned for more.
Then she was pliant, soft as the wax that pooled at the base of his candles, and he was free to feast on her mouth, on her throat, on her breasts.
“Just let me have you for a while.”
The pressure built again, layer by layer, slick and slippery until she slid off the edge a second time. How could he bear it? she wondered. His flesh was damp as hers, his heart leaping as high and fast, his body as tensed and ready.
Once again she arched against him, once again she wrapped her legs tight around his waist. And their eyes met in the shifting light.
“Now.” He murmured it as he slipped into her, silky and smooth, as if they’d mated a thousand times before.
Her breath trembled in, then out. His hands covered hers, and she laced her fingers with his. They watched each other as they began to move.
Easy and lovely, like a dance remembered. Rising and falling, pleasure met with pleasure. Then, as if the music demanded it, a subtle quickening of pace. His eyes were darker now, that dreamy blue going opaque as he lost himself. When she tightened around him, when her eyelids fluttered closed and the moan rippled her throat, he held on, held on.
Then he buried his face in her hair and let himself go.
She was going to need a minute. Perhaps an hour. A day or two might be best. After that, she imagined she could move again, or at the very least think about moving. But for now it seemed like the finest of ideas to just stay as she was, sprawled over Shawn’s bed with him plastering her into the mattress.
Her body was absolutely golden. She imagined that if she had the energy to open her eyes and look, she’d see it glow in the dark.
It was just as she’d said before. Once the man stopped thinking, he did a fine job of things.
“You aren’t cold, are you?” His voice was muffled and sleepy.
“I doubt I’d be cold if we were lying naked on an ice floe heading for Greenland.”
“Good.” He shifted, settled in. “Let’s just be here for a little while yet.”
“Just don’t fall asleep on top of me.”
He made some sound, and nuzzled. “I like the way your hair smells.”
“Sawdust?”
There’s some of that. It’s nice enough. And there’s a hint of lemon with it.”
“It’s probably the shampoo I stole from Patty.” Her body was waking up again, and she began to take more notice to the way he fit against her, the way their legs were tangled. Even as interest began to stir, she also noticed the sheer weight of him.
“You’re heavier than you look.”
“Sorry.” He tucked an arm under her and rolled. “ Better?”
“It wasn’t so bad before.” But, now that he mentioned it, it was better to be able to cross her arms over his chest and look down at his face. It was so damn pretty, that face, that she didn’t even mind, for now, the smug way his lips were