The Last Bride in Ballymuir (21 page)

His hand just hovered there as his eyes
traveled from her face downward, then lingered at her knees.

“
Sloppy,” he echoed in a
thick voice.

“
With the paint.” She tried
not to laugh at his dumbfounded expression, rather like one who had
been slipped a shot or three of whiskey in his morning
tea.

“
Ah.” He stared over at his
hand as if he wondered what it was doing out there. Quickly
dropping
it to his side, he said, “Well, I
want my workers to be
comfortable.”

“
I’m comfortable enough...
for now,” she added, throwing a cheeky grin his way.

The choked noise he made was
everything she’d
hoped for. How grand it
felt to be a bit of a flirt. And a
bit of a
fraud, too, Kylie admitted to herself. Knowing they were well
chaperoned by Jenna Fahey gave her a
boldness she wouldn’t otherwise possess.

Michael opened a paint can and began
stirring. After a moment or two, he cast a considering look her
way. “I’d be worried about those shoes, if I were you.”

“
My shoes?”

“
Paint thinner is hell on
leather. You’d have no hope of saving the shoes if you got paint on
‘em.”

“
You think?”

“
I do,” he
affirmed.

“
Well, then there’s only one
thing to be done for it.” Kylie slipped out of her shoes. “But now
my stockings will never survive,” she said with just a hint of a
regretful sigh. “They’ll have ladders all the way up if I walk
shoeless on this rough floor.”

A smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“You think?”

“
I do. Now turn your
back.”

He did, but not without a
muttered objection. And she wondered just how much he was picking
up, anyway, while he faced the windows with their fine
reflective qualities. She’d not deprive him of his
little
game. After all, he was playing so
nicely with her. A little roll of the waistband downward, then some
awkward tugging and she was free of her stockings. All dignity, she
carried them and the shoes over to the corner to join her
skirt.

“
You can look now,” she
said, smiling at his own smile in the window.

Whistling a cheery tune, he pulled two
paintbrushes out of a box filled with a jumble of tools. “Ready to
work?”

She nodded, taking a brush from him.

“
Now, you don’t need a heavy
hand when you paint,” Michael began directing before she’d even
dipped her brush in the can. “All we’re doing is sealing
off—”

Truly the take-charge sort,
she mused. And in need of a reminder that this game was being
played according to
her
rules.

“
Oh, no,” she murmured,
shaking her head ruefully at the sliver of white blouse that peeped
out from beneath one shirt cuff.

“
What’s the
matter?”

“
My blouse,” she said
gesturing at the smidgen of exposed fabric. “It’s not quite
covered, and it’s my best one, too.”

Michael’s green eyes widened and grew
brighter with humor. “Are you suggesting that—” He finished the
thought by waving his brush in the direction of her clothing
pile.

Kylie nodded. “It would be a shame to have
anything happen to it, don’t you think?”

“
I do. Shall I turn my
back?”

She hesitated a heartbeat,
then
purred out
her
answer.
“Only if you want to.”

His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment,
then he finished with a shaky, “I don’t.”

For a woman with no experience in sheer
brazenness, Kylie was finding she had quite a taste for it. After a
dramatic pause, she slowly unbuttoned the dress shirt’s cuffs.
Biting her lower lip with feigned nervousness, she brought her
right hand to the top button of the shirt, toyed with it for a
moment, but then shook her head and left the garment chastely
buttoned. She thought she heard Michael make some sort of low growl
in response.

“
This will only take a sec,”
she promised, knowing
the noise he’d made
had nothing to do with impatience. “I don’t want to keep you from
your work.”

Holding the shirt’s right
cuff firm in her opposite
hand, she tugged
free, then did the same for the other
arm.
Now she wore it rather like a tent buttoned around
her, with her arms able to move beneath its
protection.
Safely covered, she set to work
on her blouse.

Kylie allowed her eyes to
meet Michael’s. Humming a merry tune of her own, she quickly
unbuttoned the blouse, slipped it off, and let it drop from
beneath the shirt and onto the floor. All the
while she
reveled in the parade of emotions
crossing his face: surprise, frustration, and finally, what looked
to be amused respect.

She scarcely had her arms back through the
dress shirt’s sleeves before he hauled her up against his hard,
warm body.

“
You’re a smart one, aren’t
you?”

She had no chance to agree.
All hot persuasion, his
mouth settled over
hers. Here, drawing up on tiptoe, snuggling in closer, wrapping
herself around him, Kylie was just where she wanted to be.
Lord,
he
tasted
dangerous. Forbidden. Perfect.

Breaking the kiss to send
his mouth on a fiery
trail
over one cheek, against her jaw, and finally
to
the
sensitive
spot beneath her ear, he murmured words of praise and
encouragement. Not that the desire singing inside her needed any
prompting.

Slipping under the fabric of
the shirt, he cupped
her bottom with his
big hands, lifting her. She moaned
with
pleasure.

“
Silky,” he said before
bringing his lips to
hers
again, and she knew that he wasn’t referring to
her plain cotton undies, but to the skin beneath them that he
stroked with his thumbs.

Kylie’s head whirled with
the wonderful deca
dence of the moment. The
taste of Michael, the feel of
the sun
shining through the windows on them, and her with nothing more than
a shirt to cover her. It was the wildest thing she’d ever
done.

She loved it.

She wanted to tug off his
work shirt and run her
fingers over the
hard rises of muscle on his chest. She
wanted to trace lower to the arousal she could feel
insistent—but, no, not frightening—against her
belly.
A quiver, then another ran through
her, decidedly not fear. She wanted, trembled with wanting,
practically keened with wanting.

Michael abruptly set her back on her feet.
“You’re shaking. I’m scaring you, aren’t I?”

Hands still braced on his chest, sure she
couldn’t stand on her own, she tried to pull together words. “No
... no you’re not,” she managed, thinking that she was the one who
sounded muddled now. “Just hold me.”

He did, rubbing his hand up
and down her back.
“We’re best not left
alone,” he said. “At least not until
we’re
both ready to, ah ... see this to its natural end.”

Kylie nodded, the side of
her face pressed into his
chest. His heart
was slowing now, and she could sense
his
tremendous struggle to rein himself in. Michael, patient, kind, and
infinitely desirable Michael. He was right, though. She wondered if
she’d feel this grand, sweeping need if she were in a place private
enough that it could be satisfied.

Minutes slipped by as they held each other.
Eventually, she stepped back and found that she could stand on her
own. “I’ll help you with the painting now,” she offered.

“
One promise, first,” he
said with a crooked grin.
“You’ll keep the
shirt on. I’m not sure I’d survive that
dropping to the floor as well.”

“
The shirt stays on,” she
agreed, doubting she’d
survive the
consequences of taking it off. But she was
beginning to want to find out.

Chapter Thirteen

There’s trouble in every house, and some in
the street.

—
Irish Proverb

Michael knew he was no
saint. Yet watching Kylie
walk about
half-undressed and knowing
that
to touch her again would be as
incendiary an act as he could imagine, he felt a kinship with those
martyred souls. Saints, though, never fell to temptation. He was
falling, and falling fast.

He glanced around the room,
racking his brain for just one more task that would have her up on
tiptoe, giving him a tasty peek at pink panties. Ah, temptation,
those panties
and
the skin beneath. Skin that he now knew for certain was firm
and silky and that he believed must taste of paradise. He closed
his eyes, reveling in a vision of pale white skin and fine, slender
legs hugging tight around his....

“
Michael... Michael, you’re
dripping paint all over the floor!”

“
Sweet—” He cut off the
oath, and swung his paintbrush back over the can. Giving painting
up for now, at least, he wiped the brush and lay it in a
tray.

“
Perhaps it’s time I take
over as supervisor,” Kylie said, her eyes shining with amusement.
“You’re not earning your wages.”

In truth, he wasn’t, but he
was earning something
of far greater
value—Kylie’s trust. There was an ease
to
their togetherness they hadn’t managed before. If the cost was a
certain discomfort below the belt, he’d lived through
worse.

“
Well then, supervisor, I’m
at your mercy.” Which,
indeed, he was.
“Tell me what you want”

She swallowed once, and a blush crept upward
from the collar of that damned shirt and began to paint her
face.

“
I want you to have dinner
with me. Tonight. In town. Someplace fine.” She blurted out the
words quickly.

Frustration and vile, acid
emotions he couldn’t begin to name swallowed him whole. Dammit, it
wasn’t so much to ask, that meal someplace fine.
That
is,
if
he could eat—hell, walk
down the street—
without the hard stares
and comments not quite out of hearing. If she could be seen with
him without destroying her reputation. She asked for the
moon,
and
it killed
him not to deliver.

“
Are you forgetting you
called in sick today?” he prompted, relieved that the excuse had
even come to him. “It wouldn’t do to be running into one of the
parents, or worse yet, your boss.”

Kylie’s shoulders slumped. “I’d forgotten. I
make a dreadful liar, don’t I?”

He worked up a smile.
“That’s no sin.” Though it
was a sin to be
playing so mercilessly on her sense of
duty.

She sighed, then turned to look out the
window. After a moment she swung back to face him. “I don’t want
this day to end. It’s silly, I know, to think I’m so special that
time would stop for me.”

He walked to her. Heedless
of the paint smears on his hands, he cupped her face between his
palms. “You’re a thousand small wonders, Kylie, love, adding up to
one grand miracle.” He softly kissed her, a tribute to her and a
promise to both of them that he wouldn’t destroy what they were so
carefully building. “Let’s get this room cleaned up. Then you drive
on home and I’ll come for you later. What do
you think of dinner and maybe a show in Tralee? You
should be safe enough that far from
home.”

Her smile returned. “That sounds grand.”

An hour later, Michael stuck his nose into a
barren refrigerator. For a woman who claimed to live on only a bit
of yogurt, his sister had a mysterious way of making food
disappear. He wanted just the smallest nibble to tide him over
until Tralee, and he wouldn’t be having even that. Unless he did
what he hadn’t in weeks—made a trip to town without Vi to shield
him.

Wincing, Michael slammed the refrigerator
shut. God, what a coward he’d become, standing behind his sister.
His future came to him in an ugly vision— years of
slump-shouldered, tail-tucked scurrying.

Since Kylie’s sensitive ears
weren’t present to witness the act, he loosed a string of oaths.
The hell if he’d let this town starve him out. The hell if he’d
live as though he was under siege. He’d rather take the blows and
face them alone than hide anymore. Only one thing in his life would
he hide, and that was his time
with Kylie.
Michael wrenched on his jacket and read
ied
for war.

He marched through town
meeting each expression of distrust with a bold grin and an
exaggerated nod of his head. And behind that smile wide enough to
swallow the River Shannon, he thought, sodding old biddies
whispering behind their hands and
not
knowing shit.