The Ring on Her Finger (23 page)

He seemed genuinely confused about why he didn’t see more of the people he cared about. Such a curious man.

“You ask a lot of questions, Miss Shaugnessy, you know that?” He was smiling when he spoke, but there was something in his expression that was in no way happy.

“Maybe it’s because I’m curious.”

“Or maybe it’s because you’re suspicious.”

His remark surprised her. “Why would I be suspicious?”

“You were suspicious Friday night.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I was.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t understand why you wanted to spend time with me. Truth be told, I still don’t understand that.”

“You’re still suspicious then.”

“Perhaps I am still. A little.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be.”

So did Rosemary. “Well, maybe you could say something that would make me not be suspicious,” she said, injecting a lightness into her voice she didn’t quite feel.

“Like what?”

“Maybe you could explain to me why you invited me to come with you today.”

Instead of answering her, Nathaniel set the open bottle of wine back in the basket. For a moment, he only gazed at her in silence. Then he lifted his hand to her face, cupping her jaw gently in his palm. Slowly, he dipped his head, but he stopped before touching his lips to hers, as if he were giving her time to push him away if she wanted. His breath was warm against her mouth, and she held her breath as she waited to see what he would do. But it was she who moved next, tilting her head to one side and sitting up straighter to bring her mouth closer to his. When their lips finally met, it was because of her.

Nathaniel, however, was the one to take control of the kiss, the moment their mouths joined. He was, as always, a perfect gentleman, caressing her lips with tentativeness and tenderness, as if he wasn’t quite sure how she would respond to him. But how could he not know this was what she wanted? Perhaps he just needed a bit of encouragement. So she lifted a hand to his face, tracing her fingers along his throat and jaw before threading them into his hair.

He deepened the kiss after that, but still didn’t do any more than slant his mouth over hers, once, twice, three times, before pulling away. Then he gazed into her eyes, as if he were waiting for her to say something. All Rosemary could do was gaze back, having no idea what to say.

“That,” he finally said. He pressed his forehead to hers, curling his fingers around her nape, dropping his other hand to curve it loosely over her hip. “That’s why I invited you to come with me today, Rosemary. So that I could do that.”

Somehow, she managed to murmur, “Oh.”

“And I’m hoping we can see each other again soon, so I can do that again.” He pressed his mouth lightly to hers, then pulled away. “And again,” he said. He kissed her once more. “And again.”

Rosemary inhaled a deep breath and held it, hoping to still the rapid beating of her heart. She released the breath slowly, curling her fingers possessively into his shoulder. “I think that I’d...that I’d very much like to...see you...again. Soon.”

“Friday,” he said. “I have to go out of town tomorrow, but I’ll be back Friday. Have dinner with me. At my house.”

“Oh, I—”

“Please, Rosemary.”

He slanted his mouth over hers again, tasting her deeply, leisurely, profoundly. She told herself it wasn’t a good idea to go to his house, not when he made her feel all the wild, tempestuous, forbidden things he made her feel. She could have dinner with him. But not at his house. Someplace public. Someplace crowded and loud. Someplace where she wouldn’t get herself into trouble, as she had the last time she had dinner at the house of a rich, handsome, charming man.

Anyplace but there, she told herself. Anyplace but his place.

“Please, Rosemary,” he said again.

She nodded her head against his. “All right. I think I’d like that. I think I’d like it very much.”

By Monday afternoon, Lucy was congratulating herself for having been successful in avoiding Max all weekend. Though maybe her accomplishment wasn’t all that major, since shortly after their tête-à-tête—or whatever the hell it had been—on Friday, Max fled to his apartment, and shortly after that, a cab showed up in front of the carriage house, and shortly after that, it drove away with Max and an overnight bag in the backseat. Lucy still managed to avoid him all weekend. The fact that he wasn’t on the premises at the time of the avoidance was just incidental.

At any rate, he came back early Monday morning, and she was still able to avoid him—mostly because he fled to his apartment again, closed the door and locked it, did what sounded like pushing a big piece of furniture in front of it, and didn’t come out once. And also because, since it was her day off, Lucy was able to flee to her own apartment, close the door and lock it, push a big piece of furniture in front of it, and not come out once.

She and Max really did seem to have a lot in common.

What she couldn’t avoid, unfortunately, especially since she was locked in her apartment with nothing to do, were her memories of their tête-à-tête (or whatever the hell it was) which assailed her at the most inopportune times—i.e., constantly—and which left her feeling all hot and bothered, wanting to relive the actual events. She still wasn’t sure how things progressed to the point they did. One minute, she and Max were eating popcorn and chatting like friends, and the next they had been overcome by a sexual conflagration that had them trying to consume each other. What exactly had been the bridge that led between the two states, however, Lucy honestly couldn’t say.

Certainly, she’d been physically attracted to Max since the moment she laid eyes on him. He was too handsome, too masculine, too charismatic, too damn sexy for her not to be attracted. But she’d been physically attracted to men before and never experienced the kind of intensity or immediacy of the heat she felt for him. Maybe because, in addition to being so physically magnetic, he was a nice guy. He was good-natured and friendly and self-deprecating, not at all what she would have expected a man like him to be. Someone who looked like Max should be vain and shallow and self-absorbed. But he wasn’t any of those things. He was...sweet. That was the only word Lucy could think of to properly describe him.

Sweet and sexy. What woman could resist such a combination?

It was only natural that she had succumbed to him Friday night. What woman wouldn’t have? Had things continued the way they were headed, she would have woken up beside him Saturday morning, naked, satisfied and pleasantly achy, and she wouldn’t have felt one ounce of remorse. Because as crazy as it sounded, she was on her way to falling in love with the guy. Her responses to him, her feelings for him, were unlike anything she’d ever experienced with a man—even the ones with whom she’d been intimately involved. Whatever she’d felt in the past paled in comparison to what she felt now—the warm, gooey affection and the blazing inferno of need and the...the never wanting to let him go.

That was it, Lucy realized. She never wanted to let Max go. She wanted to be where he was forever. The idea of not having him around was just flat out intolerable. She knew that, because he wasn’t around now, and something inside of her felt empty because of his absence. He just... He spoke to something in her, that was all. He touched something in her. Something that no one else had ever been able to reach. And he liked her. Her. Not Lucinda Hollander, heiress, but Lucy French, housekeeper. He probably wouldn’t even care if he discovered she was dys—That she had a different learning pattern.

He just made her feel things she’d never felt before—good things, warm things, nice things. About herself and about the world around her. And she made him feel good, too—she knew it. He was right—she’d felt his response to her. He’d been as turned on as she was. He’d been as eager to make love as she’d been. So why had he put a stop to what both of them obviously wanted?

I can’t have you, Lucy. It’s not allowed.

His words echoed in her head as clearly as if he were speaking them aloud right now. He’d said that about a lot of things since she first met him. Going into the Coves’ house wasn’t allowed. Owning a car wasn’t allowed. Good wine wasn’t allowed. Having Lucy wasn’t allowed. The Coves couldn’t have made all those rules. Max wouldn’t stand for it. He was the kind of man who made his own rules. So if none of those things was allowed, it was because he was denying them to himself. But he wasn’t the kind of man who would deny himself basic pleasures, either.

So why was he doing it?

By Monday afternoon, Lucy was genuinely wishing it wasn’t her day off. She was so restless and edgy, she actually wanted to clean the Coves’ house. From top to bottom, inside and out. She even wanted to do their windows. All eighty billion of them. Maybe she’d go ahead and work today and ask Mrs. Cove for Thursday afternoon off instead. Of course, there were other ways to deal with excess energy besides housecleaning...

Oh, no, there weren’t, she immediately contradicted herself. Not today, there weren’t. Unfortunately, the house was already reasonably clean—Lucy had been surprisingly good at her job, provided there were no lists involved. And Mrs. Hill probably didn’t need any help with dinner preparation, either, since it didn’t look like anyone was going to be home for dinner tonight. Rosemary was out with that nice Mr. Finn again—something brewing there, for sure—Mr. Cove was out of town on business, and Mrs. Cove and Abby—

Hey, Abby, Lucy thought, brightening. Abby’s rooms were always a wreck. Her being eight years old and all, it was their natural state. Following the weekend, they generally looked like an atomic test site. And since Rosemary was gone for the day, she wouldn’t be around to tidy up.

Lucy changed into a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with the Dust Bunnies logo, then embarked on the path to the big house, confident that cleaning Abby’s rooms would take care of her excess sexual—er, she meant restless—energy. And it would be a nice surprise for both Rosemary and Abby when they got home. Best of all, it would put some literal distance between her and Max. Sitting in the apartment all day, knowing he was right across the hall, even if there were two locked doors—and two big pieces of furniture—between them, was just too tempting.

Her conviction almost faltered when she entered Abby’s bedroom. The kid was the biggest pack rat Lucy had ever seen, and she obviously liked to have everything out in the open where she could see it. There was stuff scattered all over her room, under furniture, over furniture, inside furniture, outside furniture, much of it reminiscent of Lucy’s own childhood. She was surprised to find so many dolls—Abby was such a tomboy. Likewise, the pinks and lavenders of the rooms, not to mention all the white French provincial furniture, didn’t suit the little girl at all. Then again, most of the dolls didn’t look especially played with, and all of them were in the playroom, on shelves, not in Abby’s bedroom, on the floor, where all her favorites obviously were. Lucy suspected the dolls, like the color scheme, had been selected by Alexis, for the perfect little girly girl she’d always dreamed of having. Lucy remembered her own childhood bedroom reflecting nothing of her real character, either, since her mother, like Alexis, had been the one to make those choices for her.

What didn’t surprise her about Abby’s room was the clutter of sports paraphernalia—Abby really was a tomboy. There were balls and gloves and sticks for every sport, along with video games from all the major athletic franchises. Many of these were in the bedroom, leading Lucy to conclude they were the things most played with. The little girl even loved car racing, as evidenced by a huge stack of magazines piled near the bed. How cute, that such a little girl would be so swept up by fast cars. No wonder she had a crush on the Coves’ car guy.

Lucy headed for the magazines first, stacking them as neatly as she could in preparation of transferring them to the shelves in the playroom. As she gathered them, she glanced at the photographs on the covers, pictures of blurrily speeding race cars and smiling, sweaty-haired men holding big trophies aloft. She was about to hoist up her first pile when her gaze lit on one of the magazines still fanned out on the floor. On first glance, the cover was just another familiar pose of another smiling, sweaty-haired man holding another big trophy aloft. On second glance, however, she saw that the man was—

Max.

She closed her eyes and opened them again, sure she must have been hallucinating thanks to her head being so full of him. But looking at the photograph again, she saw that the man did indeed look exactly like Max Hogan. His hair was shorter, and he looked a little younger, and his smile was ten times wider and brighter and happier than any she’d seen from him, but the man on the magazine cover could have easily been his twin.

No, not his twin. Her stomach knotted at the realization. That was Max. She knew it.

She screwed up her courage and forced herself to look at the words accompanying the photograph, swallowing back the nausea she felt rising as she did. Focusing very, very intently, and concentrating very, very hard, Lucy made out the letters M and X with fairly little difficulty. The H and O beneath them jumped around a bit and swam against the other letters there, but she was reasonably certain she made out a G and an N before they all began folding in on each other the way they always did. Max Hogan. That had to be what the letters said when they were all arranged properly. Especially since it was Max Hogan in the photo.

She tried to decipher the name of the magazine, but all she could make out in her agitated state was a capital F and the number one. Formula One. Her brother Emory loved Formula One racing. This was obviously a magazine devoted to that. Lucy didn’t know a lot about it, but she knew it was a big deal for its followers, especially in Europe.

I worked overseas.

I did car stuff.

That was what had Max told her that first day, as they walked up to the big house. She dropped onto her fanny with a solid bump, clutching the magazine tightly in both hands. It really was Max on the cover of a racing magazine. And he really was holding a trophy. And he was happy. Really happy. Happy like she’d never seen him before.