Up Close and Personal (10 page)

Crouching beside her, Ronan looked up at Laura and said, “Meet Deirdre, named for one of Ireland’s mythic heroes.”

Before Laura could speak, the dog was up and scuttling for her, prepared to pounce in exuberant greeting.

“No!” Ronan shouted and Deirdre dropped to her butt and wiggled in place.

Charmed and delighted at the wildly excitable dog that had thankfully broken the tension between she and Ronan, Laura bent down, and swiped the dog’s hair back from its eyes. Deirdre swiped her tongue across Laura’s face as welcome.

“An Irishman with an
English
sheepdog?” Laura asked, still laughing as she wiped her face and looked up at the man who’d come to stand beside her.

“I’m not so small a man I can’t admit that the Brits do
some
things right. And they did with Deirdre’s breed.”

He took her hand and she felt that now-familiar zing of something wicked sweep through her body. As if he knew exactly what she was feeling, he squeezed her hand, winked at her and said, “Come along then, see my home.”

Said the spider to the fly.

Eight

A
s webs went, it was a beauty, was all Laura could think.

Deirdre raced ahead of them, her claws clattering on the gleaming oak floorboards and sliding every time she hit one of the colorful rugs scattered about.

The walls were painted a soft blue and dotted with paintings—family portraits, mainly. While Ronan strode through the house, searching for who, she didn’t know, Laura took a moment to study the faces glaring down at her.

One man in particular looked as if he wanted to chew his way through the painting and clamber back into the world to rule it. The woman at his side, though lovely, looked no happier to be trapped in her canvas.

“My parents,” Ronan told her, coming up behind her so quietly she hadn’t heard his approach. Startled, and feeling a little guilty for what she’d been thinking, she turned to look at him. She could see the resemblance, she noted, though she’d never seen real coldness in his expression. Until now.

“Where are they now?”

He shrugged as if her question meant little to him. “Sniping at each other, no doubt, caught between Heaven and Hell as neither of them can agree on a thing.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“’Twas a long time ago,” he said, his gaze shifting from her to the portrait and back again. “They died in a car accident, the two of them, more than ten years back now.”

She thought of her own parents, happily nesting in Oregon, and how she would feel if she lost them. “It must have been hard to lose them both so suddenly.”

Ronan’s gaze caught hers. “Don’t put emotions where you think they should be,” he said. “My parents were as unhappy a pair as you’d ever meet and made sure to share that feeling with their only son.”

“Ronan—”

He shook his head and took her hand, leading her into the front room. “I found Patsy, my housekeeper, in the kitchen. She’s made tea and will be bringing it to the parlor right along.”

“Okay.” He didn’t want to talk about his parents so they wouldn’t. But Laura had to admit, at least privately, that learning about his parents helped her to understand him a bit better. No wonder he didn’t make much of family. Or love. No wonder he hadn’t known how to react when she’d told him of their lost baby.

Her mind still working on the problem of Ronan, she stopped dead and smiled as she looked at the room. The parlor was amazing. A white-tiled hearth, where a fire burned cheerfully against the gloom of the day. Pale green walls hung with seascapes. Oversize couches facing each other across a wide table that held a Waterford crystal bowl of autumn flowers.

“It’s lovely.”

“Aye, it is,” he said, stalking across the room to a spindle table that held a selection of crystal decanters. He picked up a tumbler, poured himself a drink, then turned to look at her, one hand resting on the mantel.

Laura sank onto one of the couches, her knees gone suddenly weak. God, he was gorgeous. In America, he had swept her right off her feet without effort. Here, in his home, he was even more devastating. He belonged here. Lord of the Manor, she thought, catching the glint of pride in his eyes. And at once, her mind turned to the ruined towers and castles they’d seen on their trip here. He could have stepped out of the past, she thought. Irish warrior. Proud. Strong. Unrelenting.

A chill swept across her skin and she shivered.

“Cold still?” he asked.

“No, I’m good.” Just crazy, she thought, to even be entertaining the kind of thoughts racing through her mind at the moment. She wanted him so badly, she ached with it. But sleeping with him would change nothing. He was still not the man for her. And if she let herself feel more for him, wouldn’t the pain be that much sharper when it inevitably ended?

“Ah, here’s tea.”

Patsy Brennan was short, with graying black hair scraped into a bun at the back of her neck. Her pale skin was milk smooth and her blue eyes held traces of tears. “Here we go, then. Hello, miss. Welcome to Ireland.”

“Thank you,” Laura said as the woman set a tray down in front of her on the table. There was a plate of sandwiches, another plate holding freshly iced, tiny cakes and a teapot with violets running its circumference. “It looks wonderful.”

“Kind of you to say. Now I’ll just be off to—”

“What’s wrong, Patsy?” Ronan asked.

“Nothing a’tall,” the woman assured him. “And it’s nothing for the now, anyway.”

Laura kept her head down and poured herself a cup of tea.

“If it’s not for now, then there is something,” Ronan told her. “And your own Sinead called me only yesterday to tell me there was trouble, so what’s it about then?”

“She shouldn’t have called.” Patsy straightened up, all five feet of her, and gathered such a look of dignity about her, she could have been a queen.

“Aye, well, she did. And why shouldn’t she call?” Ronan asked, walking toward the older woman. “She’s been like a sister to me all these years and you more a mother than I ever knew.”

Patsy frowned at him. “You had a fine mother and all and this isn’t the time.”

Laura sank back into the couch cushions, trying to be invisible. If she’d had the slightest idea where to go from this room, she might have bolted. Instead, she was caught.

“Laura’s a…
friend
,” Ronan said and she scowled into her tea. A friend. A friend who had shared his bed, lost his child and had been blackmailed into a trip to Ireland that was getting more interesting by the minute. “You can say what you will in front of her.”

Frowning still, Patsy folded her arms beneath her comfortable bosom and tapped the toe of one shoe against the flowered rug beneath her feet. Throwing an apologetic glance at Laura, she said, “I’ll beg your pardon for his manners. It seems his rearing was somewhat lacking.”

“It’s okay,” Laura said, waving off the apology and picking up a cake.

“You’ve no need to apologize for me,” Ronan said. “Now tell me what the trouble is so I can fix it and be done.”

“As pushy a man as you were a child,” she said, half to herself and had Laura snorting in agreement. “Always did think you knew the way of things and that everyone else should simply say, ‘Aye, Ronan,’ and go along.”

“Hmm…” Laura said.

“Oh, miss,” Patsy told her with a sharp nod, “I could tell you stories about himself and his cousin Sean…”

“Please, call me Laura.” She took a bite of the cake and nearly groaned with pleasure.

“I will then and thank you, Laura. You’re a patient woman to be putting up with—”

Ronan’s shout caught both their attentions. “Will you tell me the bloody trouble?”

“There’s no trouble,” came a male voice from the doorway.

They all turned to see Sean Connolly, standing in between a young couple. Sean’s dark brown hair was wind-ruffled and his long-sleeved white shirt had grass stains on it. He looked rumpled, but proud.

The girl beside him had short black hair, tear-stained blue eyes that were too much like Patsy’s for the girl to be anyone but her daughter Sinead. And the boy had what promised to be an impressive black eye blooming on his face.

“Sean, what’re you doing here?” Ronan demanded, shifting his gaze from his cousin to the couple to Patsy. “Will somebody please tell me what the bloody hell is going on?”

“Laura,” Sean said, a wide grin splitting his face, “’tis good to see you again!”

“Thanks.” She hadn’t seen Sean since the night he had dropped Beast off at her house what felt like years ago. “You look busy.”

“Aye, I have been,” he admitted, then gave the boy in his grip a hard look. “But ’tis settled now.”

“He hit Michael,” Sinead cried, jerking a thumb at Sean.

“I did and will again,” Sean agreed.

The boy, Michael, Laura guessed, tried to make a break for it, but Sean tightened his hold on him before he could take a step. “Easy on, boy’o. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Ronan,” Sinead complained, “tell Sean to let him go.”

“Not until I know what’s going on in my own damned house!” Ronan’s shout was even louder this time, and Laura winced. She was pretty sure she heard the window glass rattle in the panes.

“Language!” Patsy snapped.

Ronan swiped one hand across his face, Sean shook Michael like a dog with a bone, Sinead wailed piteously and Laura fervently wished that she was holding a martini instead of a cup of tea.

“There’s to be a wedding,” Sean told him then leaned into the captive boy. “Isn’t there, young Michael O’Connor?”

The kid nodded.

Laura felt for him even though she hadn’t a clue what was going on.

“I’ll not marry him!” Sinead lifted her chin and stalked to the window seat across the room. She dropped onto it with all of the drama a young woman could muster and stared off through the panes at the gray day beyond.

Ronan looked at his cousin. “Why should she marry him?”

“She’s carrying his baby, and he’s decided to do the right thing, haven’t you, Michael?”

“Aye,” Michael muttered.

“Baby?” Ronan echoed.

“A wedding?” Laura said.

“More tea, miss?” Patsy asked.

* * *

Ronan felt as if his head might explode.

And at the moment, he would have welcomed it.

Patsy shouted at Sinead, Sinead shouted at Sean, Sean shouted at Michael, and Ronan shouted at all of them. The only sensible person in the room was Laura. And she sat on the sofa, watching them all as if they were on the bloody television.

“I’ll not marry a man you had to chase down like a dog,” Sinead told Sean.

“I didn’t run,” Michael said.

“Oh, aye, a fast walk, then?” Sean sneered at the boy.

Sinead pregnant? How was that possible, he asked himself. Only a day or so ago, she was twelve, playing with dolls in the garden. Following him about like a puppy, peppering him with questions. His heart turned over in his chest. Somehow he had missed her growing up on him.

Pregnant.

Was there an epidemic he hadn’t heard about? His friend Sam Travis’s wife was having a child. Now Sinead. And of course, he thought, his gaze sliding to the woman sipping tea as casually as if she were alone in the room, there was Laura.

She’d had his child inside her. A stir of something he couldn’t identify rushed through him. Would she have been any easier to talk to than Sinead had Laura kept the baby? Would he have faced her down in a shouting match over a marriage he would have insisted on?

Laura looked up just then and caught him looking at her. In her eyes, he saw shadows, and he knew that she, too, was thinking of their own situation and comparing it, now, to Sinead’s. They would have to talk about this. But for the moment, there were the loud shouts in the room to deal with.

“Sinead,” Ronan bellowed, and got everyone’s attention. “Let’s make this as simple as possible. Are you carrying Michael’s child?”

She sniffed, wiped away a single angry tear and lifted her chin. “I am.”

“Then you’ll marry,” he said flatly, sparing one warning glare at the father of the girl’s baby. “As soon as we can manage.”

“As it should be,” Sean said, satisfied.

“The banns could be read at Mass as early as Sunday,” Patsy was saying, more to herself than anyone else.

“I told her I’d marry her already. You didn’t have to blacken my eye,” Michael said.

“’Twas fun,” Sean assured him.

Sinead hopped up from the window seat, rushed across the room and slapped both hands against Ronan’s chest in accusation.

“I called you to
help
me,” she said, hurt in her voice and shining in her eyes.

“I am, lass.” Ronan looked at her with sympathy. “Why don’t you want to marry him?”

“Because I’ll be no man’s
duty
,” she said with a glare over her shoulder for the boy who was her lover. “I’ll marry for love or I won’t marry at all.”

“Love?”
Ronan took her shoulders in his big hands and held her still when she might have skittered to one side. He looked into her face and saw her as a child and now as the woman she was and his heart turned over. He could sympathize with what she was feeling, but he knew what was best for her. “Did you love him when you made the child?”

She looked down, to the side, above her head, anywhere but into his gaze. But Ronan waited her out and hardly noticed the hush in the room. Finally, she looked up at him and whispered, “Yes.”

“And did he love you?”

“I did, and I do,” Michael called out from where Sean still kept a wary hand on his shoulder.

Ronan ignored the boy and focused on Sinead. “You’ll marry, Sinead. You’ve wanted Michael since you were sixteen and nothing’s changed. Only the timing of the thing.”

“I don’t want him to
have
to marry me,” she insisted.

“Responsibility’s never an easy thing, but it’s the only way and well you know it,” Patsy put in from where she sat on the couch.

Ronan took a quick look at Laura who was biting her bottom lip as if forcing herself to be quiet.

“Responsibility shouldn’t be the reason for a proposal,” Sinead argued, turning from Ronan to face her mother.

“It’s not like that, Sinead,” Michael argued and broke free of Sean’s grip to head toward her.

Ronan stepped in between, still fighting the urge to blacken Michael’s other eye. He could understand passion, but he didn’t understand not taking precautions. Though even as he thought it, he remembered that Laura had become pregnant even
with
a condom being used.

Sean pulled Michael back, Patsy stood up to argue toe-to-toe with her daughter, and Sinead once again started crying. Ronan stood like a man lost in his own home and watched as Laura slipped from the room like a ghost.

* * *

Laura had had enough of the shouting and recriminations. Deciding no one would miss her if she disappeared, she took a chance and stepped through a pair of French doors leading onto a stone patio.

Instantly, the Irish wind pummeled her like a fist in a velvet glove. Icy, all enveloping, it wrapped itself around her and sent chills racing along her skin. And still it was easier to take than the drama she had just skipped out on.

Because the drama had hit too close to home, she thought, walking briskly across the patio. Her heels tapped musically against the stone as she set off blindly, not knowing where she was headed.