An Outrageous Proposal (6 page)

Meanwhile, she had a shop to get ready and a new cottage to
decorate and furnish.

She stepped back to take a look at her handiwork and smiled at
the wash of palest yellow paint on one of the walls of her new office. It was
cheerful and just bright enough to ease back the gray days that seemed to be a
perpetual part of the Irish life. The smell of paint was strong, so she had
propped open the front door. That cold wind she was so accustomed to now whipped
through the opening and tugged at her hair as she worked.

All morning, people in the village had been stopping in, to
offer help—which Georgia didn’t need, since she wanted to do this part
herself—or to offer congratulations on her upcoming marriage. So she hardly
jumped when a voice spoke up from the doorway.

“It’s lovely.”

Georgia turned to smile at Ailish as Sean’s mother walked into
the shop just a step or two ahead of her son.

“Thanks.” Georgia smiled at both of them. “I didn’t know you
were stopping by. Ailish, it’s so good to see you out of the hospital.”

“It’s even better from my perspective,” she answered quickly, a
soft smile curving her mouth. “I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to be home
again. Of course, I was planning on going back to my own home in Dublin, but my
son insists I stay at the family manor until I’m recovered—which I am even now,
thanks very much.”

“You’re not recovered yet and you’ll take it easy as the doctor
advised,” Sean told her.

“Take it easy,” Ailish sniffed. “How’m I to do that with you
and everyone else hovering?”

Georgia grinned at the expression of helpless frustration on
Sean’s face. She understood how he was feeling, but she really identified with
Ailish. Georgia didn’t appreciate hovering, either. “How’re you feeling?”

The smaller woman hurried across the tarp-draped floor and took
Georgia in a hard, brief hug. “I’m wonderful is what I am,” she said. “Sean’s
told me your news and I couldn’t be happier.”

Guilt flew like an arrow and stabbed straight into Georgia’s
heart. She looked into Ailish’s sharp green eyes and felt
terrible
for her part in this lie. But at the same time, she could
see that Sean’s mother’s face was pale and there were shadows beneath those
lovely eyes of hers. So she wasn’t as well as she claimed and maybe, Georgia
thought wildly, that was enough of a reason to carry on with the lie.

“Isn’t it lovely that you and your sister both will be here,
married and building families?” Ailish sighed at the romance of it. “I couldn’t
ask for a more perfect daughter-in-law.”

“Thank you, Ailish,” Georgia said and simply embraced the
guilt, accepting that it would now be a part of her life. At least for a
while.

“Now,” Ailish said, grabbing Georgia’s left hand. “Let me see
the ring…”

There was no ring.

Georgia curled her fingers into her palm and threw a fast look
at Sean who mimed slapping his hand to his forehead.

“We’ve not picked one out yet,” he said quickly. “It has to be
just right, doesn’t it?”

“Hmm…” Ailish patted Georgia’s hand even as she slid a curious
look at her son. “Well, I’ll look forward to seeing it.”

“So,” Georgia said into the quiet, “you’re not heading home to
Dublin?”

“Not for a bit yet,” she said, “though I do long for my own
things about me.”

“The manor was your home until four years ago, mother,” Sean
reminded her. “There’s plenty of your things there, as well. And someone to look
after you.”

“I don’t need a keeper,” Ailish told him. “Though there were
plenty of times I was convinced you did. Until you had the sense to become
engaged to Georgia.”

“Thanks very much,” Sean muttered, stuffing his hands into the
pockets of his slacks.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go sit in the car again
until you’re ready to leave, Sean. Georgia,” she added, leaning in to kiss her
cheek, “I couldn’t be happier for the both of you. It’ll be a lovely wedding,
and you know I think this one should be held in Dunley, as Ronan and Laura were
married in California.”

“Um, sure,” Georgia said, as the pile of lies she was standing
on grew higher and higher. “Only fair.”

“Exactly.” Ailish took a breath and let it slide from her lungs
as she smiled. “Have you thought about when the wedding will be?”

“We really haven’t gotten that far yet,” Sean told her. “What
with Georgia opening a new business and moving here and all, we’ve been too busy
to set a date.”

“Sometime soon then,” Ailish went on in a rush. “Perhaps a
Christmas wedding? Wouldn’t that be lovely? Sean will send a plane for your
parents of course, and perhaps they’d like to come out early, so we could all
work on the wedding preparations together.”

“I’ll, um, ask them.”

“Wonderful.” Ailish smiled even wider, then turned for a look
at her son. “I’ll speak to Father Leary tomorrow and see about having the banns
read at Mass.”

“All right then,” Sean said stiffly, “I’ll leave it in your
hands.”

“Good. That’s settled. Now,” Ailish added, “you two don’t mind
me. I’ll be in the car, Sean, whenever you’re ready.”

They watched her through the window to make sure she was all
right, and once she was safely in the car again, Georgia grabbed his arm. “The
priest? She’s going to have the banns read in church?”

This was suddenly way more complicated. For three weeks
running, the priest would read the names of the couples wanting to be married,
giving anyone with a legal or civil objection a chance to speak up. But that
just meant the news would fly around Dunley even faster than they’d
expected.

He pushed one hand through his hair. “Aye, well, that’s the way
it’s done, isn’t it?”

“Can’t you ask her to wait?”

“And use what for a reason?” He shook his head. “No, the banns
will be read but it changes nothing. We’ll still call it off when you break up
with me. It’ll all be fine, Georgia. You’ll see.” He grabbed her left hand and
ran his thumb over her ring finger. “I’m sorry though, that I forgot about a
ring.”

“It isn’t important.”

His gaze locked with hers. “It is, and it’ll be taken care of
today. I’ll see to it.”

“Sean,” she whispered, moving in close, then sliding a quick
look at Ailish to make absolutely certain the woman couldn’t overhear them, “are
you really
sure
we’re doing the right thing?”

“I am,” he insisted, dipping his head to hers. “She’s tired,
Georgia. I’ve never seen my mother so pale, and I’ve no wish to give her a
setback right now. Let’s see her up and moving around and back to herself before
we end this. We have a deal, right?”

She sighed miserably. “We do.”

“Good then.” He kissed her hard and fast. “I’ll just take
mother to the manor house, then I’ll come back and help you paint.”

Surrendering, she smiled and asked, “Are you a good
painter?”

“I’m a man of many talents,” he reminded her.

And as he walked out of the shop, Georgia thought, he really
hadn’t needed to remind her of that at all.

Six

“I
’ve an itch between my shoulder blades,”
Sean confessed the following day, as he followed Ronan into the front parlor of
his cousin’s house.

He felt as if he were surrounded by women lately. Ordinarily,
not a bad thing at all. But just now, between Georgia and his mother and his
housekeeper and even Laura, who was giving him a glare every time they met up,
he was ready for some strictly male company. And his cousin was the one to
understand how he was feeling. Or so he thought.

“Not surprising.” Ronan walked to the corner, where an elegant
table stood in for a bar, and headed for the small refrigerator that held the
beer he and Sean both needed. “It’s probably much what a rabbit feels when the
hunter’s got his gun trained on it.”

Sean winced and glared at his cousin’s back. “Thanks for that.
I’ve come to you looking for solidarity and you turn on me like a snake. Are you
going to be no comfort to me in this?”

“I won’t.” Ronan bent to the fridge, opened it and pulled out
two beers. As he closed the door again, he spotted something small and white
beside it on the floor and picked it up. “A shirt button?”

“What?”

“A shirt button,” Ronan repeated, standing up and glancing down
at his own shirt front as if expecting to see that one of the buttons had leaped
free of the fabric. “Where did that come from?”

Sean knew exactly where. It was one of his, after all, torn
from his shirt the first night he and Georgia had made love, right here in this
room, before a roaring fire. At the thought of that, he went hard as stone and
covered his discomfort by snapping, “How’m I to know why your shirt button is on
the bloody floor? Did you not hear me, Ronan? I said I’m in trouble.”

Frowning still at the button, Ronan tossed it onto the table,
then crossed the room and handed one of the beers to Sean. “’Tis no more than
you deserve,” he said, tearing off the bottle cap and taking a long drink. “I
warned you, didn’t I, at my own bleeding wedding, to keep your hands off our
Georgia?”

Sean uncapped his beer as well and took a long, thirsty drink.
Ronan had indeed warned him off, but even now, when things had gotten so
completely confused, he couldn’t bring himself to regret ignoring that
warning.

“When a man’s tempted by a woman like her,” Sean mused, “he’s
hard put to remember unwanted advice.”

“And yet, when the shite hits the fan, you come to me for more
of that advice.”

Sean scowled at his cousin. He’d thought to find a little male
solidarity here in this house that had been as much his home as Ronan’s since he
was a child. Seems he’d been wrong. “When you’ve done gloating, let me
know.”

“I’ll be a while yet,” Ronan mused and dropped onto the sofa.
Propping his booted feet up on the table in front of him, he glanced up at Sean
and said, “What’s got you so itchy, then?”

“What hasn’t?” Shaking his head, Sean wandered the room, unable
to settle. Unable to clear his mind enough to examine exactly why he felt as
though he were doing a fast step-toe dance on a hot skillet—barefoot.

“Then pick one out of the bunch to start with.”

“Fine.” Sean whirled around, back to the fire, to face his
cousin. Heat seared him from head to toe, and still there was a tiny chill
inside it couldn’t reach. “Father Leary dropped in on me this morning, wanting
to have a ‘pre-marriage’ chat.”

Ronan snorted. “Aye, I had one with the old man, as well.
Always amazed me, bachelor priests thinking they know enough about marriage to
be handing out counsel on how to treat a wife.”

“Worse than that, he wanted to tell me all about how sex with a
wife is different from sex with a mistress.”

Ronan choked on a sip of beer, then burst out laughing. “That’s
what you get for having a reputation as quite the ladies’ man. Father didn’t
feel it necessary to warn me of such things.” As Ronan considered that, he
frowned, clearly wondering whether or not he should be insulted.

“Fine for you,” Sean grumbled. “I don’t know which of us was
more uncomfortable with that conversation—me, or the good father himself.”

“I’d bet on you.”

“You’d win that one, all right,” Sean said, then took another
drink of his beer. Shaking his head, he pushed that confrontation with the
village priest out of his head. “Then there’s Katie—”

“Your housekeeper?”

“No, the other Katie in my life, of
course
my bloody housekeeper,” Sean snapped. “She’s buying up bridal
magazines and bringing them to Mother, who’s chortling over them as if she’s
planning a grand invasion. She’s already talked to me about flowers, as if I
know a rose from a daisy, and do we want to rent a canvas to stretch over the
gardens for the reception in case of rain—”

“Shouldn’t be news to you,” Ronan said mildly. “Not the first
time you’ve been engaged, after all.”

“’Tisn’t the same,” Sean muttered.

“Aye, no, because that time it wasn’t a game, was it? And when
Noreen dumped your ass and moved on, you couldn’t have cared less.”

All true, Sean thought. He’d asked Noreen Callahan to marry him
more than three years ago now. It had seemed, he considered now, the thing to do
at the time. After all, Noreen was witty and beautiful, and she liked nothing
better than going to all the fancy dos he was forced to attend as Irish Air made
a name for itself.

But he hadn’t put in the time. He’d spent every minute on his
business, and finally Noreen had had enough. She’d come to understand that not
even getting her mitts on Sean’s millions was enough motivation to live with a
man who barely noticed her existence.

Sean had hardly noticed when she left. So what did that say
about him? He’d decided then that he wasn’t the marrying sort and nothing yet
had happened to change his mind.

“This was all your idea,” Ronan reminded him.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” He scrubbed one hand across
his face, then pushed that hand through his hair, fingers stabbing viciously.
The longer this lie went on, the more it evolved. “There’s a pool at the
Pennywhistle, you know. Picking out dates for the wedding
and
the birth of our first child.”

“I’ve five euros on December twenty-third myself.” Ronan
studied the label on his bottle of Harp.

“Why the bloody hell would you do that? You
know
there’s not to be a wedding!”

“And if I don’t enter a pool about your wedding, don’t you
think those in the village would wonder why?”

“Aye, I suppose.” Sean shook his head and looked out the window
at the sunny afternoon. Shadows slid across the lawn like specters as the trees
that made them swayed in the wind. “No one in the village was this interested in
my life when it was Noreen who was the expected bride.”

“Because no one in the village could stand the woman,” Ronan
told him flatly. “A more nose-in-the-air, pretentious female I’ve never come
across.”

Hard to argue with that assessment, Sean thought, so he kept
his mouth shut.

“But everyone around here
likes
Georgia. She’s a fine woman.”

“As if I didn’t know that already.”

“Just as you knew this would happen, Sean. It can’t be a
surprise to you.”

“No, it’s not,” he admitted, still staring out the glass, as if
searching for an answer to his troubles. “But it all feels as though it’s
slipping out of my control, and I’ve no idea how to pull it all back in
again.”

“You can’t,” Ronan said easily, and Sean wanted to kick
him.

“Thanks for that, too.” He sipped at his beer again and got no
pleasure from the cold, familiar taste. “I’m seeing this whole marriage thing
get bigger and bigger, and I’ve no idea what’s going to happen when we finally
call it off.”

“Should’ve thought of that before this half-brained scheme of
yours landed you in such a fix.”

“Again, you’re a comfort to me,” he said, sarcasm dripping in
his tone. “I’ve told Georgia I’ll see to it that everyone blames me. But now I’m
seeing that it’s more complicated than that. Did you know, my assistant’s
already fielding requests for wedding invitations from some of my business
associates?”

“Lies take on a life of their own,” Ronan said quietly.

“True enough.” Sean’s back teeth clenched, as he remembered
exactly how he’d gotten into this whole thing, and for the life of him, he
couldn’t say for sure now that he would have done it differently if given a
chance. “You didn’t see my mother lying in that hospital bed, Ronan. Wondering
if she’d recover—or if, God forbid, I was going to lose her. Seeing her face so
pale and then the tears on her cheeks as she worried for me.” He paused and
shook his head. “Scared me.”

“Scared me, too,” Ronan admitted. “Your mother’s important to
me, you know.”

“I do know that.” Sean took a deep breath, shook off the
tattered remnants of that fear and demanded, “So out of your fondness for my
mother, why not help save her son?”

“Ah no, lad. You’re on your own in this.”

“Thanks for that, as well.”

“I will say that if Georgia ends up shedding one tear over what
you’ve dragged her into,” Ronan told him, “I will beat you bloody.”

“I know that, too.” Sean walked back and sat down beside Ronan.
He kicked his feet up onto the table and rested his bottle of beer on his
abdomen. “I’d expect nothing less.”

“Well then, we’re agreed.” Ronan reached over and clinked the
neck of his beer against Sean’s. “You’re in a hole that’s getting deeper with
every step you take, Sean. Mind you don’t go in over your head.”

As he drank to that discomforting toast, Sean could only think
that Ronan was too late with this particular warning. He knew damn well he was
already so deep, he couldn’t see sky.

* * *

From Georgia’s cottage kitchen downstairs came the
incredible scent of potato-leek soup and fresh bread.

Georgia inhaled sharply, then sighed as she looked at her
sister. “I think I’m going to keep Patsy here with me. You go on home to Ronan
and have him cook for you.”

“Never gonna happen,” Laura told her on a laugh. “Besides,
Patsy wouldn’t leave now even if I wanted her to—which I don’t—she’s too crazy
about Fiona.”

Georgia looked down at the tiny baby cuddled in her arms and
smiled wistfully. Milk-white skin, jet-black eyelashes lying in a curve on tiny,
round cheeks. Wisps of reddish-brown hair and a tiny mouth pursed in sleep. A
well of love opened in Georgia’s heart, and she wondered how anything so young,
so helpless, could completely change the look of the entire world in less than a
month.

“Can’t blame Patsy for that. I know I’m Fiona’s aunt, but
really, isn’t she just beautiful?”

“I think so,” Laura answered, and plopped down onto Georgia’s
new bed. “It’s so huge, Georgia. The love I have for her is so immense. I just
never knew anything could feel like this.”

A trickle of envy wound its way around Georgia’s heart before
she recognized it, then banished it. She didn’t begrudge her sister one moment
of her happiness. But Georgia could admit, at least to herself, that she wished
for some of the same for herself.

But maybe that just wasn’t going to happen for her. The whole
“husband and family” thing. A pang of regret sliced through her at that thought,
but she had to accept that not everyone found love. Not everyone got to have
their dreams come true. And sometimes, she told herself, reality just
sucked.

“It’s terrific,” Georgia said, and jiggled the baby gently when
she stirred and made a soft mewing sound. “You’ve got Ronan, Fiona, you’re
painting again…” As Georgia had given up on her design dreams to sell real
estate, Laura had set aside her paints and easel in favor of practicality.
Knowing that she’d rediscovered her art, had found the inspiration to begin
painting again, made Georgia’s heart swell. “I’m really happy for you,
Laura.”

“I know you are,” her sister said. “I want
you
to be happy, too, you know.”

“Sure I know. But I am happy,” Georgia said, adding a smile to
the words to really sell it. “Honest. I’m starting a new business. I’m moving to
a new country. I’ve got a brand-new niece and a new home—what’s not to be happy
about?”

“I notice you didn’t mention your new faux fiancé.”

Georgia frowned a bit. “I don’t
have
Sean.”

“As far as the whole village of Dunley is concerned you
do.”

“Laura…” Georgia sighed a little, then crossed the bedroom and
handed the baby back to her mother. She understood why her sister was concerned,
but hearing about it all the time didn’t help and it didn’t change anything.

“All I’m saying is,” Laura said, as she snuggled her daughter
close, “well, I don’t really know what I’m saying. But the point is, I’m worried
about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“Oh, okay. All better.” Laura blew out an exasperated breath.
“I love Sean and all, but
you’re
my sister, and I’m
worried that this is going to blow up in your face. The whole village is
counting on this wedding now. What happens when you call it off?”

Niggling doubts had Georgia chewing at her bottom lip. Hadn’t
she been concerned about the same thing from the very beginning? Everyone in
Dunley was excited about the “wedding.” Ailish had ordered a cake from the baker
and then gleefully told Georgia that it was all taken care of.

“I don’t know, but it’s too late to worry about that now,” she
said firmly, and crossed the room to tug at the hem of the new curtains over one
of the three narrow windows overlooking Sean’s faery wood. A smile curved her
mouth as she thought of him.

“I see that.”

“What?”

“That smile. You’re thinking about him.”

“Stop being insightful. It’s disturbing.”

Laura laughed and shook her head. “Fine. I’ll back off. For
now.”

“It’s appreciated.” Georgia didn’t need her sister’s worries
crowding into her head. She barely had room for her own.