The Baron (17 page)

Nick shook his head and walked back inside. He’d think about it later. Maybe when he met Halley for lunch. Maybe tomorrow.

“You’re beautiful.” Nick kissed her lightly, and then once again, not so lightly.

“And you’re clouding my glasses.” Halley took his hand in hers and fell in step beside him as they walked down the street. “Rosie’s meeting us. She invited herself to lunch.”

“Where?”

“Finnegans’ Place.”

“Your folks?”

“Yes. Why pay when you can get it free?” She laughed, bouncing her hip against his. “Besides, my mother was feeling cheated. Everyone had met my incredibly sexy friend but her.”

Nick watched the light reflect off her hair and breathed in the clean smell of her. She’d suggested they meet outside the neighborhood post office today, and that had been fine with Nick. He’d meet her anywhere she said, and he’d go to a doughnut stand with her for lunch if that’s where she wanted. Or Pierre’s in France. Or her mother’s.

“I’m having a hard time concentrating on my library work, Nick,” she confessed solemnly.

“What?” He tried to focus on her words instead of the gentle sway of her body against his.

“Work. You—you’re becoming a liability.”

“Hmm.” He leaned down and dropped a flutter of kisses into her hair. “What are we going to do about that?”

Halley squeezed his hand tighter. “Don’t know. I can’t seem to walk past D. H. Lawrence’s books—or Balzac’s—without this crazy sensation carrying me off.”

“It sounds serious.” Nick released her grip on his
fingers and wrapped his arm tightly around her. “Maybe I could camp out in your closet. Then we could—you know—take care of problems as they arose.”

“Librarian Finnegan’s closet … hmm. I think I like the sound of it.”

Nick slipped one hand inside her red cardigan sweater and lightly began to rub the soft jersey material of her shirt. “What about the feel of it …?”

“Nick!” Halley blushed fiercely but made no move to pull away. “You now have sent at least three shopkeepers to the phone, and
if
it reaches the postman, by dinnertime everyone will know Halley Finnegan was molested on River Street by a rogue with black hair and sex-starved eyes.” They turned off the business street onto a block of neatly kept two-story houses.

“Sex-starved eyes?” Nick laughed huskily.

“Well,” Halley said demurely, “I know mine are, so I assumed the same about yours.”

“There is certainly a bit of Irish fire beneath that calm, easygoing exterior.”

“Aye.” Halley nodded. “And it’s off to the back of me soul with it for now, because here we are.” With a sweep of her hand she motioned toward the white two-story house off to the right. Clumps of neatly pruned red-and-gold marigold bushes dotted the walkway leading up to it, and stretched across the front was a wide, freshly painted porch.

Nick smiled and started up the sidewalk. “Someday, Halley, I’m going to get me a porch just like this.”

“A porch.” The thought made her smile. Nick, who had everything money could buy, including a high-rise apartment, wanted a porch—a very
middle-class
porch. “It might be difficult to attach it to the side of that building of yours.”

“Maybe I’m outgrowing that building,” he murmured, surprised by the passing thought.

“Why do you want a porch, Nick?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe it’s because porches are for sitting on, and talking and laughing, being close. It’s an image I’ve had tucked away since childhood.”

“Like vine-covered cottages,” she said, weaving her fingers through his and thinking hard about porches.

The screen door swung open as they reached the top step. “Hello! You must be Nick.” A small woman with Halley’s eyes stepped out onto the porch and captured Nick’s hand.

“Hello, Mrs. Finnegan,” Nick said as he looked down into the familiar sea of green.

She smiled. “Jane, please.”

Nick scrutinized her face to find Halley’s features in it. Except for the eyes, he couldn’t, but her face was very lovely just the same, outlined by soft brown waves of hair wisping around her high cheekbones.

Jane turned and embraced her daughter, then ushered them both inside. “Rosie and Mickey are stirring the soup.” She wiped her hands on her apron, and they followed her through the small hallway into an enormous, warm kitchen..

“Hi!” Rosie looked over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks, Rosie,” Halley retorted. “Don’t mind if we do.” She walked across the waxed wooden floor and sat down on an old-fashioned oak bench with a high back. Nick joined her, his gaze sweeping the room. The bench was in front of a huge brick fireplace, and on either side were two cushioned chairs. Everything was within earshot of the large working island where Rosie and Mickey were diligently stirring.

Nick glanced at Mickey, who was lifting a large spoon to his lips. “Say, sport, seems everywhere I go, I see you.”

Halley’s head jerked up to stare at Nick. For a
moment she wasn’t sure why she was surprised, and then it came into focus. It was his tone of voice … or the lightness to his words. Or something. He’d greeted Mickey with a new ease that she was sure had not been there before, and it pleased her far more than was rational.

“I knew you were coming,” Mickey said, his huge blue eyes watching Nick. “And Grams likes me to be here.”

Jane Finnegan laughed, and Nick discovered something else Halley had inherited from this lovely lady—that soft, lilting laugh with the silver edge to it. “Mickey is our little pass-around,” Jane continued, “since he’s not in school full-time. And he does love my Irish stew.”

Mickey walked over and nudged his way onto the bench beside Nick. He looked up and smiled, and Nick smiled in return; then, without thinking, he settled his arm around the small boy’s shoulder.

“Seems you have a little fan in our Mickey, Nick.”

Nick smiled and gave Mickey a playful rub on the top of his head, then settled back and watched Jane glide around the kitchen, pulling down bowls, folding napkins without a thought, straightening a marigold leaning against the vase. Halley had gotten up to help her, and the two of them moved in an unspoken rhythm with each other, laughing at small things the other said, teasing Rosie as she tasted more than she stirred. He caught Jane watching Halley, paying close attention to the shining, lovely glow that touched her smile. He wondered what she was thinking, how she felt about it. Halley looked like he did, like someone alive with the glow of loving.

Suddenly Jane dropped her dish towel on the counter and walked over to the table where Halley was straightening the place mats. “I love you, little Finn,” she said as she hugged her daughter tightly.

Nick felt the power of the exchange all the way
across the room, and it caused him to shift involuntarily on the bench. It was intimate—and so natural.

Jane looked over at him and smiled. “Halley was our firstborn, you see, and her father was so proud of her, he took her everywhere: Knights of Columbus meetings, parades, restaurants; and she was nearly a fixture at Finn’s garage. Folks took to calling her little Finn, a chip off the old block.” She brushed Halley’s hair back from her forehead and laughed. “Although she’s far prettier than Joe.”

There it was again, that easy loving manner. Nick cringed slightly, wondering if it was something he could learn.

During lunch Rosie regaled them all with tales of searching through an attic in a Gothic mansion for dresses for her store and accidentally locking herself in. The old lady who owned the house forgot she was there and was sure it was a ghost making all the racket, so she had found a mystic and held a seance in the drawing room.

Halley watched Nick as his strong face softened in amusement. He seemed oddly comfortable in this room that had held years of laughter and tears and loving.

They left the house after lunch and walked back to the post office, reluctant to go their separate ways. “I feel like a kid,” Halley murmured. “I have a pile of work a mile high, and all I want to do is …”

“Is?” Nick curled his fingers around her shoulder and played with her hair.

“Is be with you and figure out these past few days. No, I take that back. I’m not sure I want to figure them out. I simply want to find a way to make them last, to freeze the moments.”

“Things don’t ever stay the same, Halley,” Nick said. “But that doesn’t mean the future can’t be good.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Nick didn’t answer. He just pulled her close and walked on. Lord, she felt so good and so right in his arms. Loving her felt so right. Would he lose her? He didn’t think he could bear that. Not again.

His hold tightened until finally Halley wiggled beneath his fingers. “My Baron is certainly strong.”

He loosened his grip immediately, and his voice was rough. “I’m sorry, Halley. Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head and calmed him with a tiny smile. “I was trying to read the pressure of your fingers. I thought maybe you were sending me a message in code.”

“Maybe I was.”

She stopped walking and turned toward him. “What was it?”

He stared at her. Her rust-colored hair was blowing slightly in the breeze and was outlined majestically by sunlight. Her breasts bounced slightly beneath the jersey, and her smile tugged at something so deep inside him that he found it difficult to speak for a moment.

“Nick?” she asked softly.

His fingers played with her waist. His eyes sought hers. He didn’t think he’d ever say the words again, but then he hadn’t in his wildest moments dreamed that a Halley Finnegan existed for him. “I love you, Halley. I don’t have any right to, but I love you.”

“Does one achieve a right to love? A license?” She lifted her hands to his shoulders, and her chin tipped upward. “I love you, too, my Baron. Very much.”

Her eyes closed as his lips met hers, but Nick’s remained open, absorbing every small detail of her.

Halley pulled away, and when she spoke, her voice was husky with feeling. “And now the postman can say the handsome rogue was molested by that brazen Irish hussy, Halley Finnegan. And we’ll be even.”

They walked to their cars and parted, the words between them already taking on a shape of their
own. They’d said it, “I love you,” and now what? Halley wondered as she sat still in her car and watched Nick drive off. It was like a third party, a presence between them that they’d given life to, allowed to be. What would it do, now that it was?

“Halley,” Nick said the next day, “I’m sorry to do this, but I’m not going to be able to come to dinner as I promised.”

His voice sounded tired, Halley thought. Is that what “I love you” does? Tires you out and makes you break dates? “All right, Nick—”

“I’m sorry, my love, I want very much to see you, but …” He paused as if he wanted Halley to fill in the gaps and tell him why he couldn’t see her.

“I understand, Nick. But I will miss you.”

Miss you
. The words screamed at Nick. That didn’t begin to explain the way he felt. His whole body ached for her, needed her to soothe it, make it whole again. She’d given life to parts of him that were dead, and they needed constant, second-by-second nourishment. Nick pressed one hand against his temples and tried to stop the throbbing. “I … I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you, Halley.”

He replaced the phone and checked his watch. It was still early afternoon. He’d take the whole day, try to put his life in order. Could he put his life in order in a day?

Within an hour he was on the highway, headed toward the country. The sky was a deep violet with only a smattering of clouds that looked like cotton stretched across a painted landscape. When he looked up at it, he could almost hear Halley humming and see the sparkle in her eyes that the beauty of the sky would light there.

Stan and Abbie Melrose’s estate was vast and sat alone at the top of a rise in the forested countryside.
He’d always loved it out there. He and Anne used to ride bareback through the woods for hours and hours, but now, when he drove by, the image of Anne didn’t shout at him and tear him apart; it merely was, and he wondered if Halley liked horses.

Anne
. She would have wanted him to love again; he knew that. She’d even like Halley, although their worlds would never have brought them together. She wouldn’t have wanted the devastation that filled him, absorbed him completely, when she died, but he hadn’t been able to help it.

He parked the car at the edge of the drive and walked up the familiar steps that had become a pattern in his life. Stan was coming out of the library when he walked into the spacious entry hall.

“Nick, good to see you.” He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. “Earlier than usual, but that’s good, very good. You know, we’re both thrilled you’re managing to drop in a bit more frequently these days.” He smiled warmly and led the way into the living room. “Abbie’s been resting, but she’ll be down presently.”

“Is she ill?”

“Old age, Nicky, my boy. It happens to the best of us, I’m afraid.”

Nick looked long into Stan’s lined eyes. They were aging, he and Abbie, and he hadn’t allowed himself to see it.

“Nicky!” Abbie Melrose slowly walked into the elegant living room, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

Nick was at her side in a second and kissed her cheek affectionately.

“Before you say one single word, I want to set a date with you.”

“Sure, Abbie, what gives?”

“I want you to bring Halley out, Nick. I
very
much want you to.”

Nick sat down on a brocade sofa and leaned his arms on his knees, his eyes focused on the swirl of color edging the Oriental rug in front of the fireplace. “You do, do you?”

“Yes, Nick.”

“I can’t fool you, can I, Abbie? Never could. You know exactly how I feel about her, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about the ‘exactly,’ Nick, but I could hazard a guess. I like her very much. She’s natural and sweet and kind. And she obviously loves you.”

Nick managed a half smile.

“And you love her …” Abbie Melrose’s voice was thin, but there was a strength behind her words.

Nick saw the emotion expressed in her face, and he felt it fill the air.