Her Charming Heartbreaker (8 page)

“It was only a harmless
um.”

“The type that usually
precedes a barrage of questions and assumptions.”

“I guess that means you
want to be alone.”

“No, if I wanted
solitude, I would have kept driving.”

“Okay. I’ll steer clear
of sticky subjects. Although, I’m not sure which ones qualify as
taboo.” She rocked on her heels. “The reason for your trip to Eden
is one. That’s all I can come up with, and to be fair to me, I
haven’t been that inquisitive.”

“It’s actually been fun
sidestepping your prompts for more information.” He smiled. “And
you’ve been a perfect hostess.”

“Not that perfect. I’m
sure the experience of setting foot inside The Gloriana will be
forever imprinted in your memory.”

“Whatever that man did
to you, he deserves a whipping.”

“Ouch. You’ve prodded
my taboo subject.” It had been several days since she’d thought
about Adam. Somehow, the experience had settled into the furthest
corner of her mind. Putting it all into perspective, she knew the
next time they saw each other they’d probably have a laugh and move
on as if nothing had happened.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to remind you,” he said.

“Think nothing of it,
I’m used to it.”

“I still think he
deserves some sort of comeuppance.” He took a step toward her. “You
should know—”

Eddie chuckled. “I
sense a platitude coming my way so I’m going to exercise my right
to impose my own restrictions on what can and cannot be discussed.”
She tilted her head. “Did I just sound like you?”

“Eddie Faydon, you are
one unique woman and despite everything, I’ll never regret coming
to Eden and meeting you.” He threw his head back and again looked
up at the sky.

Her heart gave a
startled thump. “This sounds like goodbye.”

After a brief silence,
he sighed. “I’ll be leaving at the end of the week.”

A couple of days and
then everything would return to normal. Would she miss him?
Probably. In fact, she could imagine looking at her watch and
thinking he was boarding his plane. And the next day she’d think
about him arriving at his destination and how he was getting on
with his life. She’d wonder if he was thinking about her and the
people he’d met back in Eden. Meanwhile, he was spending a couple
more days here…

“So you haven’t lost
all hope,” she said.

“Hope?”

“I know you don’t want
to talk about it, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say you
came looking for Claire Muldoon and it hasn’t worked out the way
you wanted it to.”

“How did you arrive at
that conclusion?”

By thinking too much
about him. “You haven’t been seen talking to any of the major
stakeholders in town... my brothers don’t count, and I doubt you’ve
been having clandestine meetings while out jogging, so I’m guessing
you didn’t come here on business.” Sure, he spent a lot of time on
the phone, which could be his way of doing business, but she didn’t
mention it because it would throw her theory out of whack. “All
your meal times are accounted for,” she continued, “As well as your
evenings, which you’ve spent at the pub. But there’s one exception.
Last night you were seen going into Groomingdale’s after closing
hours. The hair salon belongs to Claire Muldoon. Also, I just saw
you drive away from her house. All fingers might point to
inconclusive evidence, but it’s all I have to work with.”

“That’s deductive
thinking at its finest. You’re a regular Miss Marple.”

Yes, but was any of it
true? She waited for his denial, but it didn’t come. Eddie
shrugged. “I owe it to a misspent youth reading Agatha
Christie.”

“You should never
apologize for your choice of reading material. You never know what
you’ll learn.”

“Yeah? How do you feel
about graphic novels... you know, comic books?”

“Superheroes?”

She looked down at her
boots and smiled. “Zombie apocalypse.”

He chuckled. “
The
Walking Dead
?”

She nodded.

“It should be included
in school reading lists. You never know when those survival skills
will come in handy.”

His tone sounded
lighter but his jaw muscles hadn’t stopped twitching. She suspected
his neck and shoulders had hardened to steel. “If it makes you feel
better, you never really stood a chance with Claire. Her entire
life revolves around her son, Ben.”

He pushed off the car
and slipped his hands inside his pockets. “Is he a handful?”

“No, he’s just her
entire world. Being a single mom—”

He snatched his
sunglasses off. “She’s not married?”

“Did you think she
was?”

“She’s not married?” he
asked again.

“Are you into married
women? Like a fetish—”

“What? No… I’m…” He
turned away from her.

Eddie thought she heard
him swear under his breath. “She told you she was married?” Why
would Claire lie? To put him off? If he’d been pestering her, or
worse, stalking her…

“I don’t know. You tell
me.”

“I would, if I had more
details. Actually, if you’d opened up to us the way we encouraged
you to do, then maybe you would have found out sooner.” She
laughed. “I think that’s called irony.”

“It’s not funny,
Eddie.”

“Yes, it is. You must
be suffering from irony deficiency.”

He groaned and this
time she thought she heard him say
think, damnit,
think
.

“If you had a kid and
someone offered you an all expenses paid overseas trip, what would
you do?”

He wanted to take
Claire on an overseas trip? Probably somewhere glamorous and exotic
like a tropical island... “You want me to say I’d ditch the kid,
and I almost wish I could be that type of person and embrace the
spirit of adventure, but children are a lifetime’s responsibility.
You don’t walk away from that without good reason.”

He turned and hitched
his hands on his hips. “What if someone offered to look after your
son?”

“It would have to be
someone I trust. Also, there would have to be a fallback plan,” she
said ticking off each pointer on her fingers. “What if the person
looking after my son got sick? In fact, I’d want to have a failsafe
contingency plan.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier
to take him with you?”

“I was getting to
that,” she said wiggling her little finger. “Point number
four.”

“Bottom line, you
wouldn’t turn down the offer.”

“Not a chance. I’d find
a way to say yes.”

“Even if it meant
getting someone to babysit?”

She gave him a small
nod.

“How about someone like
me?”

That didn’t make sense.
He’d offered Claire an overseas trip but he wanted to stay?
“Hypothetically? Maybe-possibly-yeah-sure.”

“I’m talking about an
all expenses paid trip, Eddie.”

“All right. Stop
pressuring me. Give me a minute to think... hypothetically.” She
saw the hint of a smile appear. “I wouldn’t want to go through life
regretting the missed opportunity. So I’d find a way to say yes,
thank you.”

He looked down at the
ground and brushed his hand across his chin.

“Theo, you can’t really
do the whole Carpe Diem thing when there’s a child involved.
Also…”

“What?”

“If you met online,
then there’s the whole ‘do I really know him’ question.”

He laughed. “Online?
What are you talking about?”

Eddie lifted her
shoulders. “Okay, shoot me. I’m fishing for more information. How
did you two meet?”

Shaking his head, his
lips stretched into a grin. And then he took a step toward her.
Eddie managed to blink, but then her mind went blank.

He took her hand, and
drew her to him. “You’re a genius,” he said and kissed her.

Or rather, his lips met
hers, and then he drew back.

She expected him to
offer an instant apology or explain or something… Please say
something, she silently begged, or make a noise, any noise,
anything to fill the deafening silence. Then as if in answer to her
prayer, she heard her heart thumping against her chest. And then
she became aware of another pulsing beat lower down…

“Speaking of regrets,”
he said in a thick voice, his eyes sweeping around her face.

“We were?”

His hand slid to her
waist and drawing her against him, he tilted her chin. Eddie felt a
gurgle of laughter rising up to her throat. She couldn’t hold it
back. And when she tried harder, her chest shook.

“I wondered about
that.”

“About what?”

“I wondered if you’d
laugh.”

“I know I’m laughing
but I’m not sure why. And I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”

“This.” He leaned in,
and brushed his lips against hers, this time he turned it into a
caress. Gentle. Teasing. And deliciously enticing.

Eddie heard more soft
laughter and realized it came from her but then the sound changed
to humming. It took her a few moments to catch up with what was
happening. Theo Kendrick had pressed her against him, molding her
body to his and he was kissing her.

Instinct kicked in with
an order to step away, but her legs had turned to noodles. And
instead of engaging her brain and reasoning her way out of what
could turn into an awkward moment, she responded by kissing him
right back, moving against him, letting his warmth wrap around her.
But a part of her could still reason. Any minute now, she expected
him to draw away and make up some sort of excuse for doing
something entirely unexpected. She wondered if she had time to put
her hands on his shoulders, to maybe rake her fingers through his
hair and mess it up at bit.

Yes, yes. Do
it.

Her hands settled on
his shoulders, feeling their way up to his neck, taking little
tactile snapshots of the way he felt under her fingertips, adding
it all to the layers of sensations swimming around her head.
Sensations she recognized because they reminded her of how much fun
it was to be cocooned in a pair of strong arms. But then the kiss
deepened, triggering a wave of new sensations that felt as if
they’d been waiting a long time to come alive. Eddie focused on
those. They rushed at her, firing up sparks inside her body,
spreading a burning sexual need that rose from the tips of her
toes—

Her breath hitched and
a part of her hesitated. The part that felt overwhelmed by the
swell of wanting and needing rising inside her. Then she heard a
voice in her head, hollering from a distant place and telling her
this was wrong. But before she could claw her way back to reason,
she took one of those little leaps of faith and threw herself right
into kissing Theo Kendrick, settling into a rhythm that stirred a
deep wanting inside her—

Much too soon, he drew
away, his lips pressing against the edge of her mouth, then moving
to the hollow of her throat and finally coming to a rest stop
against her neck. Eddie thought she heard a low rumble coming from
him, the sound a mixture of relief and frustration.

As he held her, she
opened her eyes, only then realizing she’d closed them.

“I got a bit carried
away. That was... a lot more than I expected. Give me a
minute.”

He needed time to
think... or to recover?

He looked at her then,
his eyes missing the usual spark of amusement. Had he just come to
his senses? She couldn’t tell. Then again, she was looking through
a haze of sexual awareness so she wasn’t sure if she could trust
her own eyes.

He sighed heavily and
drew her against him again.

“Theo?”

“Hang on, I’m trying to
engage my sluggish male brain.”

She’d done that to him?
“Do you want to stand on your head for a bit?”

He chuckled. Then his
hands eased away from the small of her back and reached for her
hands. “You feel so good.”

Eddie thought now would
be a good time to think about what came next. They’d managed to get
a bit of a bonfire happening—

He drew away again.

His eyes were now in
sharp focus. His expression serious enough for her to realize he
wasn’t about to deliver happy news.

Eddie sighed. What had
she been thinking? Kissing Theo?

Theo frowned.

“Eddie, how old is
Ben?”

“W-what?”

“Ben... Claire’s son.
How old is he?”

Chapter Seven

“And then what
happened?” Joyce asked.

After Theo had given
her a taste of heaven, he’d asked her how old Ben was...

Eddie pressed her lips
together. Mentioning that part would mean stripping off the last
layer of her pride. While her world had tilted and shifted, Theo’s
had gone on as usual.

“Then he left. He
squeezed my shoulder, got in his car, and took off.” Driving at
breakneck speed and heading back to Claire Muldoon’s house. But not
before he’d ruined her life. With one kiss? What did that say about
her? That she’d never had a man take her into his arms and wrap her
up in a thorough kiss. Even thinking about it made her legs
quiver.

“I haven’t seen him
since.” His bed hadn’t been slept in and she knew that because Dani
had gone to Melbourne for a gig so Eddie was back on cleaning
duties. “Also, he settled his account paying for one more night.”
At some point, he’d returned to the pub, but she’d been out and her
brother Matthew hadn’t asked any questions. Here today, gone
tomorrow.

Eddie brushed the tip
of her finger along her lip. He’d called her a genius and had
thanked her with an innocent brush of his lips against hers. She
didn’t know for sure what he’d been grateful for. Maybe her
reasoning had pulled him out of a mental rut. But how could she
explain the real kiss? The one that had made her heart fill up like
a balloon, sending her into a floating swirl...

“I think we should give
him a bout of food poisoning.” Joyce shot to her feet. “On second
thought, it would be more cruel to ban him from the café.”