Читать книгу O'Reilly's Bride - Trish Wylie - Страница 8

SOMETHING changed.

Sean couldn’t narrow it down to a precise moment in time or some circumstance in particular. But something changed. And the fact that it changed around the time he was finally admitting he had a thing for Maggie didn’t help his inner turmoil any.

She was hiding something from him.

The first thing he’d noticed was how she would turn her eyes away from him. It was one of the things he’d always liked about her. She would look a person straight in the eye when she talked to them, would let them know they had her full attention. And it was a great trait for a reporter. People trusted that she was listening, that what they said mattered to her.

But now she would look down, her lashes hiding the windows to her soul when she spoke to him. And sometimes she even seemed to struggle to look him directly in the lens. Probably because she knew he might see something there.

Then there was the sadness. Not that she didn’t hide that pretty well. Every day she would smile, crack jokes with her workmates, laugh. But as a connouiseur of her laughter he knew that even that was missing something. It took a lot of careful scrutiny for him to spot the sadness, but it was there. In the unguarded moments when she thought no one was looking or for a split-second before she turned her eyes away.

Something had changed.

When she jumped the day that he crept up behind her in the office he smelt a rat. She was quick to flick the screen of her computer off before she fobbed him off with something about his not having yelled ‘boo’ and how she had been writing a personal e-mail. But that was a lie, Sean knew, because she looked away as she said it and she had been jumpy as all hell for the rest of the day.

It took a lot of investigative work for him to get to the bottom of it. But he got there. Eventually.

And when he did he couldn’t have been more knocked sidewards.

With determined steps he walked across the lawn of the big old country manor that had been turned into luxury apartments. Apartments where he and Maggie lived.

It was a gorgeous summer’s day and a great place for a birthday barbeque for one of their neighbours. But Sean wasn’t thinking about the celebrations. Or the food. Or even the beer clutched in his hand.

He was thinking about Maggie. And her latest brainwave.

‘Fancy meeting you here.’

He grinned, immediately recognising her smile for what it was. A front specifically for his benefit.

‘Yeah, fancy that.’ He took a swig of beer and stood by her side, his feet set slightly apart, claiming the piece of ground he was standing on while he looked at the small crowd and glanced occasionally at Maggie from the corner of his eye. ‘Don seems to be having a good time.’ Maggie looked over at their neighbour. ‘Yeah, he does.’ With a safe topic to discuss she immediately slipped into the easy role that until a few months ago had been so natural to her, leaning a little closer to Sean and nudging her shoulder against his upper arm. ‘You see the way he keeps looking at Rachel?’ Sean leaned his head a little closer to hers and dropped his voice conspiratorially. ‘She keeps looking at him too, when she thinks he can’t see her.’ The subject of the octogenarian love affair was one they frequently talked about. Maggie smiled and tilted her head to look up into dark eyes, her voice low. ‘You think they’ll ever get it together? Or is that still too much of a stretch for you into the realms of believing good things can happen?’ Sean’s eyes locked with hers and he stared at her for a long moment. ‘I’m learning to stretch some. So, maybe it might happen yet. They’ve been friends a long time though.’ ‘Yes, they have, but you only have to see the way they are together to know there’s more there.’ He blinked slowly and smiled.

Maggie searched his eyes, looking from one to the other. She tilted her head to the other side and searched again, then an eyebrow quirked and she asked, ‘What?’

The smile remained. ‘What?’

She stared back at him. ‘You have a look.’

‘Do I?’ He continued smiling his usual self-assured smile, his eyes giving nothing away.

It bugged the hell out of Maggie that he had the ability to do that and that he still felt the need to do it around her. He was just so controlled sometimes that she wanted to smack him silly. He held everything inside, guarded from the world so that in the brief instances he did open up it made it all the more of a gift to whoever was allowed in. But he still didn’t completely trust her, did he?

The fact that she’d had to hold back so much from him of late made the realisation almost hurtful. She hated that a relationship that had come to mean so much to her had got to this point.

He searched her eyes in a similar way to how she’d just searched his. ‘What?’

She mimicked his answer. ‘What?’

‘That mind of yours works in mysterious ways.’

‘At least I have a mind.’

‘Meaning I don’t?’

She only had to search for the briefest of seconds to find the spark in his eyes. ‘Not you, but possibly some of those other women you keep company with…’

‘At least they have brains enough to see what an amazingly sexy, damned good-looking, generally all-round great guy I am.’

What would usually have been taken as one of their usual ‘sparring type’ answers was imparted with a somewhat huskier tone of voice than Maggie was used to hearing from him. But as she searched his eyes again he turned his head and looked back over the crowd, raising his bottle to his mouth.

Maggie’s eyes automatically followed the bottle, watched as his mouth fitted around the lip, saw his throat contract as he swallowed. She hated that she noticed but she did.

‘I already know what a great guy you are.’ The words were spoken with sincerity, even though she didn’t have to point out that she hadn’t agreed with the other descriptions of his ‘assets’.

‘Do you, now?’ He studied the last of the liquid in the bottle, swirling it around against tinted glass.

Maggie felt her heart miss a beat at his question. He had an uncertainty in him she’d never seen before. Sean was just always so confident on the outside. Everything he did, the way he held himself, it all spoke of a complete lack of self-consciousness. Until now. What had her sister said to him during the long conversation they’d been having on the far side of the lawn?

‘OK, what’s going on?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘You’re the one who seems to think that any woman interested in me might not have a brain in their head.’

Maggie frowned. ‘I was kidding.’

‘Were you?’ He glanced at her, then away again.

The question astounded her. For crying out loud she had even introduced him to a couple of the women he had dated way back at the start. That was, until she’d learned better than to get involved in all that would inevitably follow. Now she guarded her single friends with the ferocity of a lioness guarding innocent cubs.

But those earlier women most certainly had not been brainless. They had been smart, successful, pretty women. Like anyone he had been even remotely interested in. So what was with the sudden concern? It wasn’t as if he’d even done that much dating of late. She’d noticed that.

The thought then crossed her mind that maybe he had met someone he had more than a passing interest in. She’d certainly been less aware of him being with anyone new but that didn’t mean there wasn’t somebody. Maybe he was serious about someone and having those feelings was making him insecure. Wasn’t that what happened with something that important?

The idea made her stomach churn ridiculously and she had to take a deep breath when she looked away from his profile. God only knew she wanted him to be happy, to learn about real love and to have all the things he hadn’t quite completely admitted out loud he wanted for himself down the line. A woman to love, to love him back. A family of his own. Children who would look just like him.

Maggie wanted those things for him.

But that didn’t mean that losing something of the friendship and the closeness they had wouldn’t hurt. Even the thought of it already hurt. Because in her own way she was already taking the initial steps that would distance her from him.

Clearing her throat, she looked down at the ground and then back at his profile. ‘Did you meet someone new?’

His eyes shot round to meet hers and he wanted to ask her if it would matter. But the words got stuck. He smiled to ease the tension. ‘Me?’

She smiled back at him, her composure in place. ‘Yes, you, unlikely and all as that may be. You tend to go through women faster than most.’

‘No, I didn’t meet someone new.’ He said the words softly and watched for her reaction. To see if she looked at all relieved. But when she just continued to smile at him he jumped right on in with both feet. ‘But then I haven’t advertised myself anywhere or felt the need to, funnily enough. Unlike someone I could mention.’

Her smile faltered. So that was it, then. Her sister had told him about that during their little tête-à-tête on the other side of the lawn. She straightened her spine again and moved a couple of steps away from his side.

‘I may as well have announced it on the news.’

He continued to study her intently before she turned her face from him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘If you’ve been talking to Kath then you know exactly what’s going on.’

‘She said you’ve decided to hunt down some poor unsuspecting single parent.’ His mouth twisted at one edge. ‘What’s the thinking there, then? You want to make sure he can be a good father before you tie yourself down? Sort of already broken in, kinda thing?’

Maggie flushed under his scrutiny. ‘Funny, Sean, really hilarious. You just have such insight into the female mind that it’s a miracle you’ve stayed single this long.’

He frowned at the sharp tone in her voice; frowned even harder when she turned on her heel and walked away. In the space of a heartbeat he was on her heel. ‘Well, explain it to me, then, ’cos I just plain don’t get it.’

‘You don’t have to get it. It has nothing to do with you.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

She swung round so suddenly he walked straight into her and had to reach out his hands to grasp hold of her upper arms to steady them both. A little juggling saved both them and his bottle from an ungraceful contact with the hard ground that would have been aided by a small thing known as gravity.

When they were both firmly on their feet his hands remained, his hold loosening a little, thumbs brushing back and forth against her skin. He laughed. ‘Did the earth move for you too?’

Maggie felt her skin heat where he was touching, felt the warmth moving up her arm and spreading across her chest. Her heart fluttered and she looked up at him from beneath long lashes. Sean looked down at her with his deep, fathomless dark eyes, the smile still on his lips, and her cheeks flushed a deeper red than before.

Swallowing, she took a shaky breath and asked, ‘How could it possibly have anything to do with you?’

He wondered if she had any idea how much she had got under his skin? They’d been flirting around a deeper involvement up until recently; he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t know that. But did it really add up to anything more in Maggie’s mind? Or was it simply wishful thinking on his part?

He took the one safe route open to him. ‘Can’t your best mate worry that you might make a mistake?’

Maggie avoided his eyes while her mind worked on an answer to his question. She’d known he would probably have the most difficulty with what she’d decided to do. That he would push the most to find the motive behind her decision. He cared about her in his own very individual way, she knew that much. Knew it and had to skirt around it for reasons of her own.

She could never tell him the truth. Because if he knew he would try to stop her, would argue every step of the way unless she was very much mistaken. And she’d already made up her mind. There could be no shifting her. No turn-around.

His thumbs continued to move against her skin. Soothing, reassuring and letting her know that he was right there, beside her, with her. But little did he know that the touch did more than reassure and the last thing it did was soothe.

For months she had been fighting the pull towards him. At first she hadn’t wanted to face up to the fact that she could even see him that way. As anything more than just a friend, a buddy, her pal, her mate. But it had just been so strong, so very real that it had scared her. It had been a losing battle though.

Even now, while his thumbs moved back and forth and back and forth, her blood was humming in her veins, her skin was heating, her pulse was beating irrationally. She couldn’t let him keep touching her. Bad, bad plan.

Sean watched as she moved out of his hold. He frowned when she seemed to shiver, before wrapping her arms around herself. And she still couldn’t look him in the eye.

If she was this disgusted by him touching just her arms then he was way off base with what he’d thought had been happening between them.

He frowned harder.

‘You don’t need to worry about me, Sean. I know what I’m doing.’ She smiled with a little more conviction as she forced out the words she had been rehearsing in front of a mirror for days. ‘You know how much I want a family; we’ve talked about it loads. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sick to death of the whole singles thing and I’m not getting any younger. I don’t want to wait till I’m old before I find the right guy.’ She paused for a breath. ‘I tripped across the site when I was doing some background on the dating scene for that piece we did last month and it just made sense to me. That’s all.’

He blinked the whole way through her speech and then asked, ‘Is it?’

‘Oh, for crying out loud, yes!’ The fact that he was still asking questions with that deadpan expression was making her more and more nervous. ‘Why does it need to be any more complicated than that? We’ve talked about what we’d both like from our lives since that night in the honeymoon suite and for me a family is the most important thing. I’m just doing something about it, that’s all.’

That was all. And she’d never even considered him in that equation. Why would she? It wasn’t as if he’d given the impression it was something he wanted in the here and now. It was only recently he’d even allowed himself to admit inwardly that it was something he wanted. How could he have expected her to know? He wasn’t exactly an open up and share kind of guy after all. Not with the deep stuff anyway.

‘Fine.’ He took a breath and looked away from her. ‘Good luck with that. Just be sure you don’t end up chatting to some speckly faced kid.’

She waited several long moments before she replied. Ignoring the jibe at the end of his sentence, she decided to take the easy route out with a softly spoken, ‘Thank you.’ And then she walked away.

Sean frowned as he watched her leave. He drained the remnants of his bottle and then marched off in search of a new one.

He’d been very wrong on this thing he had with Maggie, or had thought he had with Maggie. There were no visible signs of her holding an unrequited adoration for him. It was just an awful shame that he didn’t feel the same way.

But he wasn’t about to spill that to her when she was so obviously uninterested. Because he might have lost his mind but he wasn’t about to part with his pride. There were limits.

But he had thought, for a while, that there was something more there for her too. He wasn’t an adolescent or so inexperienced that he hadn’t noticed when she’d looked at him with a slow-burning smoulder in her eyes. Maybe it had even been the catalyst for his own silent smouldering. But something had changed her mind. Something more involved than what she’d just stated was behind this scheme of hers. And even if she wasn’t in love with him, the part of him that was her friend, that cared so much, just couldn’t stand by and let her make a big mistake. Not if her motives weren’t genuine.

He was going to find out what was going on. Whether she liked it or not. Because it mattered to him. He might not be able to show how much he cared right that minute but he could show it in another way. He could help her find the right guy for her.

He could also try and persuade her that that guy was right in front of her nose.