Читать книгу Desiring the Reilly Brothers: The Tempting Mrs Reilly / Whatever Reilly Wants... / The Last Reilly Standing - Maureen Child - Страница 9

Tina heard Brian’s car when he returned to the house late that night and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Moving to the curtains of the upstairs bedroom that had been hers since she was a child, she peeked out to watch him walk up the driveway. When he paused long enough to snarl insults at the barking dogs, she smiled.

She’d been half worried that he might bolt. It would have been easy for him to up and move to the base for a few weeks just to avoid her. But he hadn’t. And she was pretty sure she knew why.

Brian would never admit that he wasn’t up to the challenge of seeing her every day. He’d never allow himself to acknowledge that there was anything to worry about.

He took the flight of steps to the garage apartment two at a time and her heartbeat quickened just watching him move. By the time he opened his door and went inside, without a glance at the house, her mouth was dry and her breath came in short fits and starts.

“Okay,” she muttered, “maybe I’m the one who should be worried.”

When the phone rang, she lunged for it gratefully. Sprawled across the hand-sewn quilt covering her double bed, Tina snatched at the “princess” style telephone and said, “Hello?”

“So, you’re there.”

“Janet.” Tina rolled over onto her back and stared up at the beamed ceiling. Smiling, she said, “Right back where I started, yep.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And…?”

Tina grabbed the twisted cord in one hand and wrapped the coils around her index finger as she talked. “And, he’s just like I remembered.” Actually, he was more than she remembered. More handsome. More irresistible. More aggravating.

“So you’re still set on this.”

Tina sighed. “Janet, we’ve been all through this. I don’t want to go to a sperm bank. Can you imagine that conversation with my child? ‘Yes, honey, of course you have a daddy. He’s number 3075. It’s a very nice number.’”

Janet laughed. “Fine. I’m just saying, it seems like you’re asking for trouble here. I’m worried.”

“And I appreciate it.” Tina smiled and let her gaze drift around her old bedroom. Nana hadn’t changed much over the years. There were still posters of Tahiti and London tacked to the walls, bookcases stuffed with books and treasures from her teenage years and furniture that had been in the Coretti family since the beginning of time.

There was comfort here.

And Tina was surprised to admit just how much she needed that comfort.

Though she’d been born and raised in this house, this town, she’d been gone a long time. And stepping into the past, however briefly, was just a little unnerving.

“But you want me to back off,” Janet said.

Tina heard the smile in her friend’s voice. “Yeah, I do.”

“Tony told me you’d say that,” Janet admitted, then shouted to her husband, “okay, okay. I owe you five dollars.”

Tina laughed and felt the knots in her stomach slowly unwinding. “I’m glad you called.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I needed to hear a friendly voice,” Tina admitted. With Nana in Italy and Brian holed up in his cave, Tina had been feeling more alone than she had in a long time. “Even I didn’t know how much I needed it.”

“Happy to help,” Janet said. “Call me if you need to talk or cry or shout or…anything.”

“I will. And I’ll see you in three weeks.”

After her friend hung up, Tina sat up and folded her legs beneath her. She looked around her room and felt the past rise up all around her. She’d still been living in this room when she and Brian had started dating.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

Back then, she was still working part-time at Diego’s, an upscale bar on the waterfront, and studying for her MBA during the day. Brian was a lieutenant, the pilot’s wings pinned to his uniform still shiny and new. He’d walked into the bar one night, and just like the corniest of clichés, their eyes met, flames erupted and that was that.

In a rush of lust and love, they’d spent every minute together for the next month, then infuriated both of their families with a hurried elopement. But they’d been too crazy about each other to wait for the big, planned, fancy wedding their families would have wanted.

Instead, it was just the two of them, standing in front of a justice of the peace. Tina had carried a single rose that Brian had picked for her from the garden out in front of the courthouse. And she’d known, deep in her bones, that this man was her soul mate. The one man in the world that she’d been destined to love.

They’d had one year together. Then Brian dropped the divorce bomb on her and left the next morning for a six-month deployment to an aircraft carrier.

“So much for soul mates,” Tina whispered to the empty room as she left the memories in her dusty past where they belonged. Then she flopped back onto the bed, threw one arm across her eyes and tried to tell herself that the ache in her heart was just an echo of old pain.

The next day, Tina dived into work on her grandmother’s garden. Nana loved having flowers, but she wasn’t keen on weeding. She always claimed that it was because she had no trouble getting down onto the grass, but getting back up was tougher. But Tina knew the truth. Her grandmother just hated weeding. Always had.

The roses were droopy, the Gerbera daisies were being choked out by the dandelions and the pansies had given up the ghost. Tina knelt in the sun-warmed grass and let the summer heat bake into her skin as she leaned into the task.

Classic rock played on the stereo in the living room and drifted through the open windows to give her a solid beat to work to. The sounds of kids playing basketball and a dog’s frantic bark came from down the street. Muffin and Peaches watched Tina’s every move from behind the screen door and yipped excitedly whenever something interesting, like a butterfly, passed in their line of vision.

She’d already been at it for an hour when she straightened up, put her hands at the small of her back and stretched, easing the kinks out of muscles unused to gardening. In California, Tina lived in an apartment and made do with a few potted plants on the balcony overlooking Manhattan Beach. At home, she was always too busy working, or thinking about working, or planning to be working, to do anything else. And when had that happened? she asked herself. When had she lost her sense of balance? When had work become more important than living?

But she knew the answer.

It seemed as though everything in her life boiled back down to Brian. She’d buried herself in her ambition when he’d divorced her. As if by immersing herself in work she could forget about the loneliness haunting her. It hadn’t worked.

It felt good to be out in a yard again, she thought. Good to not be watching a clock or worrying about a lunch meeting. It was good just to be, even if the South Carolina humidity was thick enough to slice with a knife.

A thunderous, window rattling roar rose up out of nowhere suddenly and Tina tipped her head back in time to see an F-18 streak across the sky, leaving a long white trail behind it. Her heart swelled as it always did when she spotted a military jet. Every time, she imagined that Brian was the pilot. She’d always been proud of him and the job he did. There’d been fear, too, of course, but when you married a Marine, that was just part of the package.

She lifted one hand to shield her eyes as she followed the jet’s progress across the sky.

“Pretty sight,” a voice from behind her said, loud enough to be heard over the music still pouring from the house into the hot, summer air.

Tina sucked in a breath and slowly turned around to look up at him. She hadn’t heard him drive up. Hadn’t expected him to come back home in the middle of the day. In fact, she’d figured him for spending as much time away from the house as possible.

Yet, here he was.

Taller than most pilots, Brian used to complain about the cockpit of an F-18 being a tight fit. But she’d always liked the fact that he was so much taller than her. Unless she was on the ground having to tip her head all the way back just to meet his eyes. She stood up, brushing grass off her knees and then peeling the worn, stained, gardening gloves from her hands.

The sun shone directly into her eyes, silhouetting Brian, throwing his face into shadow. But she felt him watching her and knew that his gaze was locked on her. “What’d you say?” she finally asked, then remembered and said, “Oh. The jet. Yes, it is pretty.”

“Didn’t mean the jet, but, yeah,” he said, “it looked good, too.”

Tina felt a rush of warmth spin through her and told herself that a compliment from Brian meant nothing. Only that he was alive and breathing. He’d always been smooth. Always known just what to say. Known how to talk her down from a mad and how to talk her out of her panties.

Instantly, memories dazzled her body and the resulting warmth turned to heat and Tina had to fight to keep her knees from wobbling.

“Brian—”

“Tina—”

They started talking together, then each of them stopped and laughed shortly, uncomfortably. A twist of regret tightened in her chest as she acknowledged that discomfort. How had they come to this? she wondered. How had the passion, the love they’d once felt for each other dissolved into this awkward courtesy between strangers?

“You go first,” he said tightly.

Shaking her head, she said, “No, it’s okay. You go ahead.”

Nodding, he jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, rocked on his heels and shifted his gaze to one side briefly before slamming back into hers. “Tina, this isn’t easy for me, but…”

While he talked, Tina watched him. And as she watched, her brain, dazzled at first by his unexpected arrival, began to kick in. She noticed the way he held his head. The shrug of his shoulders. The way he stood and the way one corner of his mouth tilted up when he spoke. But it wasn’t just how he looked that was different. It was how he felt. Or rather, how he wasn’t making her feel. There was no buzz of electricity jumping up and down her spine. There was no hum of energy bristling between them. And no matter what else had passed between them, they’d always shared a combustible chemistry.

Whenever she was near Brian, the very air changed, and she felt that tingle right down to her toes.

Except, at the moment, she felt absolutely nothing.

As her brain calculated all of this information and more, Tina’s temper flared.

“…I know I don’t have the right to ask you to do anything,” he was saying.

She should call him on it now. He deserved it. Had to be Connor, she told herself. Aidan wouldn’t have tried it. In seconds, dozens of thoughts raced through her mind as she tried to decide how to handle the last of the Reilly triplets. When the solution finally dawned on her, she smiled.

So did he. “See? I knew you’d be reasonable. No sense in you staying here when it would just make it awkward for both of us.”

“Awkward?” she said on a deep, throaty purr. “Brian, honey, we know each other way too well to be awkward together.”

“Huh?” He looked confused.

Good. Tina chuckled gleefully inside, but on the outside, she gave him a sultry smile and stepped close enough to walk her fingers up his chest and then stroke his cheek. “I missed you, Brian,” she breathed and took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “I’m…lonely.”

She let that one word hover in the air between them and watched with some small sense of satisfaction as panic lit up Connor’s eyes just before he backed up a step. “Now, Tina, I don’t think you really mean that and—”

“Brian, baby,” she cooed, closing in on him with unerring instinct, “haven’t you missed me, too?”

“Uh, sure.” He looked around wildly for help that wasn’t coming.

Tina moved in even closer and reaching up, wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him, pressing her breasts to his chest. He pulled his hands free of his pockets and tried to hold her away from him. But she’d felt the frantic beat of his heart and knew she’d gotten payback. “So, kiss me, Connor.”

“Kiss you—” he broke off and looked down into her eyes. “Connor?”

“You idiot.” She released him and took a step back while having the pleasure of watching him mentally trying to backtrack.

“Look, Tina…”

“Did you really think you could fool me?” she demanded hotly, all kidding aside.

“Whoa,” he said, swallowing hard and shaking his head. “Tina, I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

The temper she’d felt building a moment before leaped into pure rage, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to feel steam coming out of her ears. “Sure you do. But it looks like both you and Brian have forgotten a few things. See, I can tell you guys apart. Always could. Remember?”

He scraped one hand across his jaw, then shoved both hands into his pockets again. “Okay, it was a bad idea.”

“Bad idea?” She stared up at him in openmouthed fascination. “I don’t believe you guys. What? Are we in junior high? What were you supposed to do, Connor? Talk me into leaving so Brian wouldn’t have to face me again?”

A short bark of laughter shot from his throat as he pulled his hands free of his pockets and held them up in surrender. “Come on, Tina. It was just—”

“What?” she demanded, moving in on him, keeping pace as he backed up toward his—Brian’s—car parked in the driveway. “A joke?”

“No!” He scraped one hand across his jaw and stumbled over the hose that had been stretched out across the lawn. He recovered quickly, did a fast two-step and kept moving toward the safety of the car. “Brian just thought—I mean I just thought—”

Muffin and Peaches sent up a din of barks and frantic yelps that had Connor throwing an uneasy glance at the screen door.

“This was his idea, wasn’t it?” she challenged, so disgusted with Brian and Connor, she could barely squeeze the words out of her tight throat.

“No—yeah—I mean…” He looked at her again and threw both hands high in an I’m innocent pose that didn’t convince her. “It was just an idea.”

“A bad one.”

“I see that now.” He nodded and swallowed hard. “Believe me. But hey, you gave me a couple bad minutes there, too, you know.”

“Where’s Brian?” she demanded, still moving closer.

“Now, Tina…”

She glared at him as she saw his mind working fast, trying to come up with a stall. Then she realized that the triplets solidarity would work against her here. Connor wouldn’t squeal on his brother. But then, he didn’t have to.

“Never mind,” she said tightly. “He has to come back here sometime, doesn’t he?”

“Uh, you bet.” At last, he backed into the car and reaching behind him, grabbed the door latch. Unwilling to take his gaze off her, he opened the door and slid inside as fast as he was able.

But before he could slam the car door shut, Tina grabbed the edge of it and leaned in toward him. It did her heart good to watch those blue eyes so much like Brian’s suddenly sparkle with trepidation.

Served him right.

“Now you listen to me, Connor Reilly…”

“Oh, I’m listening, Tina.”

“You tell your brother that I want to talk to him.”

“Right.” He reached for the keys dangling from the ignition and fired up the engine. “I’ll tell him.”

“And don’t you even think of trying this on me again, Connor.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then slowly gave her a wide smile. “Not a chance, ma’am. You’re just too scary.”

Now that the first, furious blast of anger had dissipated a little, she could appreciate the humor in the situation. At least as far as Connor was concerned. Tina’s mouth twitched, but she refused to smile back at him.

“You know something, Tina?” he said softly, “even though you just took about five years off my life, it’s good to have you home.”

Now she did smile. It would have been impossible not to. No woman could stand against a Reilly man for very long. “Go away, Connor.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stepped back, slammed the car door, then stood and watched as he pulled out and drove away. The minute he’d turned the corner though, Tina headed for the house. If she and Brian were going to have a confrontation, then she’d be damned if she’d do it sweaty and dirty from the garden.