"What are you doing here?" she managed without stammering. Her heart pounded.
"Helping you save face." He walked to the player and changed the selection to the CD he'd held in his hand. In seconds, everyone who wasn't already watching turned toward them as the opening notes of Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline came through the speakers.
"Would you like to dance, sweet Caroline?" Oh God, she wailed silently. Don't let me trip over my own feet. "I haven't danced in a long time. Except for the Texas two-step." With Luke.
"Dancing's like riding a bike." Mick took her hand. "Or making love." He drew her into his arms. She hadn't made love with anyone since Luke, either. "You never forget how to do it."
He was right. In seconds, Caroline gave herself over to the rhythm she knew so well. Sweet Caroline, good times never seemed so good. He spun her away, then pulled her back to him and into a low dip.
"Easy, easy," she cried, breathless from the unexpected move but energized by it, too.
Mick reeled her up, slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. She felt his hand on her warm skin. Because 81
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they fit together in height so well, Caroline clasped her hands behind his neck and rested her cheek against his. She felt his shiver like he must have felt hers, and suddenly, she wanted to feel every inch of him. His skin against hers, the length of him pressed to the length of her, her fingertips moving slowly along the most forbidden part of him. Yikes! She had to stop thinking about Mick this way.
"No, sweet Caroline, no," he whispered. She had unclasped her hands and pressed her palms against his shoulders to put more distance between them. But the song was ending, and there was little he could do to stop her. "Stay," he said, refusing to let go of her. "Don't go."
"I have to..." She didn't want to. They both knew it.
"One more dance?"
She hesitated but stayed in his embrace. "One more." To Caroline, dancing with him was heaven. How she'd missed the touch of a man who wanted her, and she had no doubt that's exactly what Mick Mahoney had in mind. And, heaven help her, if he snapped his fingers she just might say yes. From her first time, Caroline had enjoyed making love enormously. She never understood her married girlfriends who did everything possible to hold their man at bay. If anything, Luke had done that to her more often than she cared to remember.
The second dance had just begun when Ian Foy called to her from across the pool. "Caroline, it's nine-thirty. Time to go."
"Shh." Mick tightened his arm around her waist. "Don't listen to him. Stay with me."
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"Caroline! I'm waiting."
If she'd had a rock, she might have thrown it at Ian. He had broken the mood in the most boorish way possible. Caroline took a step back, and Mick released her, except he kept her hand, and searched her eyes for something she couldn't or wouldn't show him. Ian's footsteps sealed the break.
"Mick, good to see you again." There was no warmth in his greeting, and suddenly there was no sound from the crowd, either, just the music playing.
Mick nodded. "Striker."
Caroline looked from one to the other. She saw the vein jump in Ian's temple, and Mick's jaw tighten.
"I don't want Caroline driving alone in the dark. She's still too new to the area."
"I'll make sure Caroline gets home safely." He smiled slyly, purposefully. "I'm going her way, you know."
"Caroline." Ian said her name as if it were a command. She looked at Mick, then at Ian. Nerves taut, her body telling her to stay while her mind asked, What are you thinking? To whom did she owe her loyalty? Her boss, or her landlord? A man who'd likely been with another woman only hours before? A man who might very well be her cousin. Or her brother.
"Thanks, Ian. Give me a second to find my purse." With that she freed her hand from Mick's, turned and without looking back, walked away.
* * * *
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HANDS ON HIPS, Mick watched Caroline go. He wasn't used to being turned down, especially in front of a crowd, and especially for Striker Foy.
"Damn it," he swore under his breath and yanked the Neil Diamond CD from the disk holder, then threw away the cellophane wrapper that had covered the disk case. He cursed the fact that he'd taken the time to stop at three shops before finding the right recording.
Yet when Mick Mahoney turned and faced the group that had watched the incident unfold, he smiled his brightest and best. His mother was wrong. Women were like buses. If you missed one, another would be by in ten minutes. Holding that thought, he stayed only long enough for a few sips of flat beer and was on his way.
* * * *
MICK DID NOT expect to see Caroline or Ian's cars in the parking lot on his way out. Didn't take a mental giant to figure out where they'd headed. Half an hour later, he pulled to a stop on the street in front of the Mahoney Building, his bleak conjecture confirmed. His mood plunged and unfamiliar pain stabbed at his middle. Striker's blue Beamer was parked under the street lamp and a dim light shone in Caroline's window.
"Damn it all to hell!" He didn't know whether his anger came from being bested by the one person he loathed. Or—
and he didn't want to go there—that he cared about Caroline Spring. She'd barely given him the time of day, and had 84
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neither good taste nor good sense, or she would have stayed behind with him and not left with Striker Foy. Choking back the bitter taste of defeat, something he seldom experienced, Mick eased his car into a spot in front of the Calla Lily Inn. If Caroline Spring didn't want to spend the evening with him, he'd jolly well find another woman who did. 85
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Chapter Seven
THINGS WERE NOT going quite as Mick planned. The bar at the Calla Lily rocked like it always did on Friday nights. As usual, there were a dozen beautiful women he could have flirted with, a couple he might have asked to dance, and at least one he would have walked to her car at closing time. Not tonight. Tonight, Mick had one woman on his mind, and she was about thirty yards and one flight of steep steps away, entertaining a man who, in Mick's opinion, had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
He didn't understand why he cared. He'd told himself that he barely knew Caroline Spring. She'd walked into his life only five days ago. She not only dominated his thoughts since, she had witnessed one of his ugliest secrets; the darkness. On Wednesday, the darkness had seized him in its iron grip, and over and over again, he relived those horrifying twenty seconds that had destroyed his future and the lives of everyone he loved. Until Caroline Spring banged on his apartment door long and loud enough to drag him back. For a minute, or an hour, however long the "episode" had lasted, he was that little boy again, an eight-year-old watching helplessly as his father blew himself to pieces. Every excruciating detail unfolded, including the panicked screams of the line foreman, "Michael, the quadrants are wrong, find cover!"
In the next instant, an explosion with all the majesty of Nature pitted against Man shook the ground. It deafened the 86
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entire crew for hours, and some permanently, a suffocating mushroom of flames and smoke climbing into the air and blinding them while it seared their throats and singed the hair on their heads, faces, and arms.
Only Mick had come out of it physically unscathed. His uncle had pushed him under him to protect him and to stop him from running into the cataclysm. He'd managed to struggle free only enough to uncover his eyes and witness a horror far beyond what no man, let alone a child, could comprehend. One moment his father stood rooted in place, paralyzed by a sound that shattered the quiet night and a flash that lighted the sky like the blazing sun. Next, as if in slow motion, Mick watched his father's feet shoot
out from under him while he rocketed through the air for a millisecond before he blew into pieces and fell to the ground, no more than a shower of bone and tissue. In that instant, Mick entered a private hell that sucked him into an abyss of despair. He didn't remember screaming, but his uncle told him later he wailed until he lost his voice. Even then, the paramedics had to sedate him to slacken his jaw enough to force his mouth shut.
Physically, Mick took only a few weeks to recover fully, but the darkness plagued him throughout his life. As he grew, the time between episodes lengthened. When they came, they slammed him with such ferocity, he responded in the only way he knew how—screaming out in the night, drenched in sweat, with his heart pounding like a jackhammer. Wednesday night, it hadn't been his mother or Annie who'd intervened and dragged him back. It was a stranger whom 87
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Mick felt he'd known all of his life. Like it or not, he and Caroline now shared a bond, a link he'd never shared with anyone outside of his family before. And still she preferred Striker Foy to him!
Exasperated, Mick banged his fist against the bar, almost upending what was left of the third pint of ale he'd downed in the last two hours. The vision of Caroline and Striker, arms and legs entangled while they made passionate love, gnawed at Mick's insides. He'd been trying to obliterate the image with one ale after another, but the tactic hadn't worked. Tonight he knew he could down the entire keg and leave as sober as the moment he had risen that morning.
"What's going on, mate?" Seth passed a fresh towel over the circles Mick drew in the beads of moisture weeping down the side of his glass. "I'm sensin' a wee sadness inside you." Before Mick had a chance to answer, Seth added, "I'm not servin' you another, so don't ask."
Mick looked down into his near empty mug. "I don't want any more," he grumbled. In fact, he hadn't wanted this one, either. There was a burning in the pit of his stomach that he had to quench, one way or the other.
"No flamin' way that woman prefers Striker to me," he burst out, throwing down a verbal petard.
Startled, Seth dropped the cloth and pushed back from the bar. "Sorry, mate, I'm not followin'..." Mick shot up and off the barstool he'd warmed for the last two hours.
"Neither am I." A bleak expression clouded his face. He knew from the moment Caroline had turned around and seen 88
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him leaning against the diving board that she'd been happy he was there. Knew it by the way she molded her body into him, how she'd rested her cheek, as soft as an angel's breath, alongside his. How she'd pressed closer as the dance wore on, and the way she shivered when he whispered "Sweet Caroline" into her hair. He'd felt her stiffen at Striker's call. He saw it in her eyes, and on those luscious lips that she unknowingly and yet so seductively moistened with the tip of her tongue. He knew it. Still she'd left with Striker Foy, and now they were in her apartment, in his building, doing God only knew what. Why?
"You'll close up?" he said to Seth in a tone that was both a question and an answer. The time for guessing was over. "I'm outta here."
"I don't like that look, Mick," Seth called after him. "Don't do somethin' stupid."
Mick waved off Seth's concern and zigzagged a path through the regulars staring after him. In the front window, he caught Seth's reflection, and saw him shaking his head while he wiped a mug clean.
Outdoors, wisps of fog hung in the chill night air, carried inland on ocean breezes that mingled with the aromas wafting out of the open windows of the dining room. In the distance, Mick heard a truck's horn blare and the squeal of breaks, and for an odd moment, the street was empty of traffic and pedestrians. He was alone on the sidewalk, ten feet from Foy's Beamer. Parked under a street lamp, the car's windshield was glazed with mist. It hadn't been moved for hours.
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"Bloody hell," he swore over the bitter taste of the emotion he refused to acknowledge. The J word—jealousy—had never been a part of Mick's vocabulary, at least not until now. Muttering every Gaelic curse he'd learned in Ireland, he stomped the rest of the way, slammed the outside door shut behind him, and took the steps two at a time.
* * * *
CAROLINE SAT CROSS-LEGGED on one of the twin love seats, making notes on the week's findings on her laptop. She heard the front door slam and what sounded like a wounded buffalo galloping up the stairs. She checked her watch. 12:10
p.m. Only she and Mick had keys to the exterior doors. Apparently whatever he'd planned to amuse himself after the party hadn't quite jelled.
She waited to hear his footsteps cross the hallway and the sound of his door opening and closing. To her amazement, she heard his fist pound on hers.
"Caroline, I know you're in there." Mick's voice shattered the quiet.
Of course I'm in here. Where else would I be at midnight?
She was fresh from a shower, dressed in a nightshirt, her hair still wet and cascading to her shoulders in damp ringlets.
"Caroline!"
She thought of her options. She could ignore him, but if he'd stayed at the party and helped finish the keg, she guessed he wouldn't relent until she opened the door.
"I'm coming, Mick. You don't have to knock down the door."
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"CAROLINE!"
"I said I'm coming." She stood and shook the kinks out of her legs from sitting in a crossed position too long and walked to the door. She opened it only an inch. "What's wrong? It's after midnight."
"I want Striker Foy. Send him out here." Ian? "Get a grip, Mick, Ian's not here."
"Don't lie to me, Caroline. His car's out front." He placed a hand on the frame of the door, as if to steady himself. "Send him out, or I'll come in and get him." Caroline had to stop herself from laughing. Those violet eyes with their enlarged pupils, and Mick's deepening brogue told her he'd had at least one ale too many. But it wasn't his tipsy condition that amused her. It was the possibility that a man who could snap his fingers and have any woman anywhere was jealous of Ian Foy. "You've had too much to drink."
"I have not!"
"Then why are you looking for my boss in my apartment?"
"You left with him. That's his car."
"Oh, Mick, you are too much." She rolled her eyes and opened the door wide. "Come in," she invited. "See for yourself. If Ian's here, so is Elvis." She didn't have to repeat the invitation. In two giant strides, Mick cleared the length of her living room en route to the bedroom.
Caroline thought about following him and decided against it. She plopped down on the loveseat and switched off her laptop. She folded her arms across her chest to hide the 91
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outline of her breasts under the worn fabric of her nightshirt, and waited. She didn't know what little bee was buzzing
'round in Mick Mahoney's tipsy little bonnet, but she was glad she wouldn't have his headache in the morning. Over the next few minutes, she heard closet doors opening and closing, accompanied by angry words grumbled in a language she didn't understand. Finished with her room, he headed for the bath. She couldn't suppress a giggle. Did he really think he'd find Ian hiding behind the shower curtain?
Then there was silence.
Caroline waited.
Twenty seconds. Forty seconds. A minute. Still not a sound. Another twenty seconds.
"Are you all right?" she asked, speaking only loudly enough to make sure he heard. He must have shifted positions. She caught the faint sound of cloth rubbing against plastic. "Mick, are you okay?"
Another minute dragged by, and just about the time she decided he might have passed out in her tub, she heard him declare softly, "I'm an idiot."
"Yes, you are," she agreed. "Now come out here and tell me what the hell is going on."
* * * *
IN SLOW STEPS, and w
ith a grin Mick hoped passed for boyish and charming, not drunk and stupid, he rounded the corner and walked into the living room. Caroline sat across from where he stood, arms folded, a condemning look on her face but a glint of humor in her eyes.
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He noticed that she'd scrubbed her face free of make-up and had unbraided her hair, which fell in damp soft waves to her shoulders. It looked as yielding as titian silk. Mick closed his eyes, unable to stop the image of the Caroline lying on a bed of the finest Irish lace, her fiery red hair glowing against a pristine white pillow. A groan slipped past his lips.
"If you're going to fall asleep standing up, go home!" Mick opened his eyes. If she'd only known how far from sleep his thoughts had traveled she would have conked him on the head with her laptop.
"What's going on?"
Mick shifted from foot to foot, feeling more foolish than he had as a third grader when the water fountain on the playground squirted out of control, soaking the front of his pants just as the bell sounded the end of recess. He looked down at his shoes, not knowing how to begin. Outside, he heard an eighteen-wheeler lumber away from the traffic signal on the corner, and a car door slam. Caroline sat quietly, her knees clamped modestly together, one ankle over the other.
With each tick of the second hand of the clock in the hallway, Mick's discomfort grew. "Striker's car is parked out front—"
"The one under the street lamp?" she interrupted.
"The blue one."
"For your information, Doctor Mahoney, the car outside is silver, not blue." She stood and tugged on the hem of her nightshirt, which Mick noticed, stopped well above her knees. 93
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He also noticed her folded arms, meant to cover her breasts, pushed them up instead and revealed that her nipples stood invitingly erect.
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