Having Her Boss's Baby

by Maureen Child

  Her mother sighed. “Robbie says to ask you are there zombies in the new game that’s coming.” Then to her son, she said, “Why would you want zombies? A lot of dead people stumbling about...”

  Aine grinned. “Tell Robbie they’re all very keen on zombies, and I saw a drawing of a werewolf.”

  “There, you see,” her mother repeated. “Zombies there are, as well as a werewolf or two. Well,” she said to Aine now, “you’ve made him a happy man. Werewolves indeed.”

  Listening to her family made Aine feel better. Even though they were thousands of miles away, she could imagine them sitting at the kitchen table over tea, and she wished ferociously that she were there. Safely away from Brady Finn and the temptations he presented.

  But as that wish was a useless one, she said only, “I’ll think on what you’ve said, Mum. I promise.” Aine stepped out onto the deck, where the wind blew and seabirds cried with a lonesome, mournful sound. “I’ll talk to Brady about Danny Leary and then call you again in a day or two.”

  “Don’t worry about calling, love. You do what needs doing and come back to us soon.” Her mother paused, then added, “And Robbie says to bring him back a drawing of that werewolf if you can.”

  “I will.” Laughing, Aine hung up, leaned one hand on the cold iron railing and stared out to sea. Right then, Ireland felt a lifetime away, while the lure of Brady Finn was all too close for comfort.

  Six

  “So what’s the deal with you and Irish?” Mike Ryan leaned back in his chair and lifted the bottle of beer for a sip.

  “There is no deal,” Brady said, studying the label on his beer bottle as if it was a New York Times bestseller. The memory of the kiss he’d shared with Aine that afternoon was fresh enough that his blood was still frothing in his veins—not something he felt like sharing. “We’re working together on the ideas for the castle and then she goes home. End of story.”

  “Right,” Mike said with a lazy smile. “That’s why you go all stone-faced at just the thought of her.”

  Brady fired a hard look at his friend. Sitting at their usual table in the neighborhood bar, Brady should have been relaxed. Instead, he was anything but. He never should have kissed her, but hell, what man wouldn’t have? Standing there in the wind, that amazing hair blowing about her face and shoulders, those wide green eyes looking up at him. Was he made of granite? Hell no.

  Stalling, he looked around the bar. The after-work crowd was all there, with a handful of tourists sprinkled in for good measure. The heavy oak tables gleamed under what was probably a million coats of wax. Overhead lighting made things clear but not overly bright, and the music was low enough that you could enjoy it and still have a conversation. Waitresses in blue denim shorts and yellow T-shirts emblazoned with Lagoon in Long Beach weaved in and out of the crowd with the ease of long practice.

  He and the Ryans had been coming to the bar since they’d set up shop in the oceanfront Victorian. Right down the street, the location was easy, the bar food was good and they could each catch up on the other’s day and compare notes over a cold beer and some hand-cut onion rings. Apparently, though, Brady told himself, work talk wasn’t on the menu tonight.

  Looking back at Mike, he saw the man’s curious expression hadn’t abated. He wasn’t going to let this go, so Brady made a stab at ending the conversation.

  “She’s doing the job I want her to do and that’s it,” he said, grabbing one of the onion rings and crunching down on it.

  “Good to know. Okay, then,” Mike said, “if there’s nothing going on there, you won’t mind if I take her out to dinner.”

  “I mind,” Brady said quickly, giving his friend a hard stare. Maybe he was holding back from anything with Aine, but damned if he wanted someone else going after her.

  Mike grinned. “Interesting...”

  “Stow the grin,” Brady told him. “There’s nothing going on between us and there won’t be with you and her, either. She works for us, Mike.”

  “It’s not the Middle Ages, Brady.” Mike laughed and took another sip of beer. “You’re not the duke of the castle flirting with the kitchen maid.”

  Well, that made everything sound ridiculous. Yet he knew that starting up something with an employee was asking for trouble. “Same principle,” he insisted.

  “Right. With that point of view there’d never be any office romances. Then what would Jamie and Paul in Accounting do?”

  “Their work for a change?” Brady asked, thinking of the young couple, who were too busy concentrating on each other to pay attention to business half the time.

  “Okay, good point,” Mike said and leaned forward, snatching one of the onion rings off the platter. “I’m just saying it wouldn’t kill you to relax around her a little.”

  “I’m plenty relaxed.” Hell, he was so relaxed around Aine he should have been giving off sparks. The only thing that was going to ease the coiled tension in his body was sex. With her. And that was not going to happen.

  He’d come here to meet with his partners and maybe take his mind off Aine for a while. So now his only hope was to shift the subject to something Mike didn’t want to talk about, either. “Since you’re so interested in office romances, what’s the deal with you and Jenny Marshall?”

  Mike’s face went cold and hard. He bit into the onion ring, chewed, then took another swallow of beer before saying, “Like you said about you and Aine. There is no deal. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Sean might be blind,” Brady told him, “but I’m not. I saw the look she sent you when she brought her drawings into the meeting. Hell, your hair should have been on fire.”

  “Nice. Thanks.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  Mike sucked in a gulp of air, scowled at his beer bottle and finally admitted, “About a year ago, we spent some time together, is all.”

  “Before she came to work for us? Where’d you meet her?”

  “At the gaming convention in Phoenix,” Mike muttered. “I met her in the bar the night before the con started. Found out the next day she was there running a booth for Snyder’s.”

  “The art program Snyder?”

  “Yeah, seems the old man’s her uncle.” Mike shrugged, but Brady saw the flash of something in his friend’s eyes. “She didn’t mention that when we met.”

  “Uh-huh.” Okay, good. Subject off Aine and onto something that made Mike look as if he wanted to bite through a rock. Intrigued enough now to take his mind off his own problems for a while, Brady asked, “So what happened?”

  “What do you mean what happened?” Mike countered and signaled to the waitress for two more beers. “We met. We said goodbye. Sean hired her and we’ve been avoiding each other ever since.”

  “Wow,” Brady mused wryly. “It’s like a fairy tale.”

  “Funny.” Mike pointed his beer at him. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you changed the subject.”

  “Always said you were the smart Ryan.”

  “Got that right.”

  “So why’re you avoiding her?”

  “Are you writing a book?” Mike asked.

  “There’s a thought.”

  “More funny, thanks,” Mike grumbled. “Look, it just didn’t go anywhere and I don’t see the point in pretending we’re gonna be friends, because we won’t be. I don’t like her. She doesn’t like me back. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “There’s more you’re not saying.”

  “Damn right there is,” Mike agreed, then glanced at the door when it swung open and Sean walked in. Quickly, he glanced back at Brady. “As you pointed out, little brother there seems to be blind when it comes to me and Jenny. I’d like to keep him in the dark.”

  “You quit giving me grief over Aine and it’s a deal.”

  “Done.” All sm
iles now, Mike turned to look at his brother. “You’re late and we’re out of onion rings. Next round’s on you.”

  “Why’s it on me if you two ate them all?” Sean complained, but waved a waitress over.

  Brady only half listened to the Ryans as they cheerfully insulted each other. While conversations went on around him, Brady let himself think of Aine again, and had to admit that knowing Mike was having his own problems with a woman made Brady feel just a bit better.

  And actually, Mike was in worse shape than Brady. Because Jenny wasn’t going anywhere, but soon Aine would be on a plane back to Ireland.

  The thought of which didn’t make him as happy as it should have.

  * * *

  Two days later, painters were at the office, and so they were holding a meeting in Brady’s home. Well, Aine corrected mentally, his penthouse suite in the same hotel she was currently staying in.

  She’d never known anyone who actually lived in a hotel, and now that she’d seen Brady’s place she could safely say she still hadn’t. All right, yes, it might be the place he slept in, but there was no real sign of life. Oh, the sprawl of rooms was lovely and richly appointed and afforded spectacular views of the coastline. But there was nothing there that indicated it was someone’s home.

  She scrubbed her hands up and down her arms while she wandered the suite. Until they started talking about the castle and what more was to be arranged, she wasn’t needed in the conversation. So while the Ryan brothers and Brady argued points of their next game, Aine looked around the palatial space, hoping for insight into Brady Finn. Yet there was nothing. Oh, there was evidence of his wealth in the very fact that he could live here, but there was nothing of his soul. Nothing to scream out, “Brady Finn lives here and these are his things.”

  Because there were no things. A few books stacked tidily on an end table, three framed photos of him with the Ryans, and beyond that, the place might as well have been standing empty. There were flowers, no doubt delivered by hotel staff. There were lovely paintings on the walls that looked so generic they, too, must have been part of the standard furnishings.

  It was lovely but cold. Luxurious but empty. The man had invested nothing of himself in his home. A deliberate choice? She had to wonder if the place he lived was a kind of metaphor for the man himself. Was he only the cold shell he showed the world? Or was there more to the man, hidden away so no one could see?

  She thought it was the latter. He was a man who’d closed himself off from emotion, entanglements, and now, knowing he’d had no family to love and be loved by, she could almost understand it. Aine hated that he fascinated her so, because she knew there was no future in it. Beyond the fact that he’d made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with her, she was only in America temporarily. Soon enough she’d be back in Ireland with Brady nothing more than a voice on a phone or a signature on a paycheck.

  Yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him. That kiss on the pier hadn’t helped anything, either. She’d relived that moment countless times in the past couple of days—despite his ridiculous statements after. She’d felt more in those few moments with him than she had with anyone else ever in her life, and so she was left attempting to understand the man who tugged at her heart even when he wasn’t trying.

  “If the enchanted sword can kill the banshee, then what’s the point?” Sean demanded. “It’s too easy.”

  Aine frowned and turned toward the table where all three men stood, bent over the layout of storyboards that Mike had brought to the meeting with him.

  “It’s not just the enchanted sword,” Mike argued. “It’s not as if you pick it up off the ground and kill the banshee. You have to win the sword first and, you know, the banshee will fight back.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Mike cut his younger brother off. “You also have to navigate through the Burren, avoid the portal tomb, solve the puzzle and find the key that unlocks the damn sword in the first place. It’s not easy.”

  Curious, Aine wandered closer. The Burren was acres and acres of limestone and rock, dotted with grasses and wildflowers. There were rock formations and a view of Galway Bay that drew thousands of tourists a year to the place. Moving in beside Brady so that she could see the drawings spilled across the table, she had the distinct feeling none of the men even noticed her.

  “And where’s the key going to be hidden again?” Brady asked no one in particular.

  Mike sighed. “The key’s hidden outside the portal tomb. It’s actually in the rock itself, but the player has to solve the riddle to find the key or he gets swept into the tomb and transported back to the beginning of the chapter.”

  “How do you solve the riddle?” Sean asked.

  Mike pointed to a series of drawings. “There. John’s noted the placement of the clues. There are four. Each clue leads you to a medallion with part of the code. Collect all four, enter the code, get the sword and you can kill the banshee. Otherwise, you’re zapped back to the beginning and have to start all over again with no weapons.”

  “Ooh, that’s a nice touch,” Sean said, “stripping the player of his weapons.”

  “It would infuriate my little brother,” Aine put in.

  Sean grinned at her. “That’s what I like to hear.”

  She shook her head at his obvious pleasure. What an odd way to make a living, she thought. Grown men gathered together, discussing banshees and zombies and enchanted swords.

  “You can earn more weapons,” Mike told her with relish, “but it’s going to cost you time, and a real gamer is always looking to set time records.”

  “I thought Ireland was supposed to be lush and green,” Brady said, staring at the images spread before him.

  “Mom told us about the Burren,” Mike said, “and Joe did the research necessary to make the drawings real. But I think we should let Aine explain the place.”

  All three men turned to face her, and she reached for one of the drawings depicting the barren moonscape of this little corner of County Clare. “The Burren is about the only place in Ireland that isn’t, as you said, green and lush. There’s acres of limestone and rock, with many underground caves and tunnels—”

  “Hey, we could incorporate caves and tunnels into the player’s experience.” Sean clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms briskly.

  “We could,” Brady said. “Let’s have Jenny whip up a few bare-bones sketches of tunnels, caves, and how they could tie into the hunting of the banshee.”

  “Why’s it have to be Jenny?” Mike asked.

  “Dude,” Sean said, “get over it already. She’s a terrific artist.”

  Mike fumed silently and Aine’s head whipped back and forth as if she was watching a tennis match as Sean and Brady fed off each other’s ideas.

  “Anything else, Aine?” Mike asked loudly, getting the other two men to quiet down.

  “Nothing specific,” she said, smiling. “It’s more the feeling you have when you’re there, in the midst of that barrenness. It’s a haunting place, really. Beautiful in its own way, but raw and wild, as well. Some say if you’re there at night, you can hear the cries of the long dead, sobbing into the wind.”

  “Have you heard them?” Brady asked.

  She looked up at him. “I haven’t, no. But then I’m not one for crawling about the Burren late at night, either.”

  Mike grinned. “Haunting. A good description, at least of our version of it. And Sean, let’s tell John what Aine just said about the sobs of the dead. See if he can integrate that as background filler through the music.”

  “So it’s sort of a shadow,” Brady mused. “I like it.”

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “Me, too. Thanks, Aine. Want a job in the design department?”

  “Thank you, no,” she countered. “The castle will do me fine. So at the Burren? The werewolves will be t
here, as well?” she asked, a little sorry to see the stark landscape of the Burren reduced to a habitat for the weird.

  “Nah,” Sean put in. “Just the banshee, really. Oh, and the ghosts of people she’s killed.”

  “And a zombie or two,” Brady put in, pulling another drawing in to show her. “People she’s killed but brought back to a half-life to serve her.”

  Oh, how Robbie would love this, Aine thought, making a face at the image of the rotting zombie. Shaking her head, Aine could only sigh. “Of course, she’d need a servant or two. Even dead ones. And I suppose she rides a pooka?”

  “Nice touch,” Sean said, clearly loving the idea. He made a quick note on one of the storyboards. “How cool would it be for our banshee to ride a wild pooka? Black horse, red eyes, flames streaming from his mane, black chains hanging off his body just waiting to wrap themselves around unwary travelers...”

  Aine laughed and looked up at Brady, charmed to find a real smile on his face as he watched her. How that smile warmed his eyes and touched something deep inside her. Her heart simply turned over in her chest. The man was a mystery, yes, but there was an air about him that made her want to solve the riddle of him. To find what drove him, what touched him. Foolish woman, she thought. To want so much from a man she could never have.

  * * *

  For the next few days, Brady focused solely on business and told himself they were both better for it. If he caught confusion in Aine’s eyes or regret in his own, he ignored it. Just as he ignored the fact that he wasn’t sleeping, because whenever he closed his eyes Aine’s features rose up in his mind. Knowing that her hotel room was just five floors down from his wasn’t helping the situation.

  So he was tired, sexually frustrated and had only himself to blame. If he was anyone else, he’d simply sweep Aine off to bed and release some of the damn tension that had him wired tightly enough to give off sparks. But Brady Finn didn’t do complications, and Aine had complicated practically stamped on her forehead. She was the kind of woman who would expect happily-ever-after, and since Brady didn’t believe in those, he had no business getting involved with her. Besides, she was here temporarily, and when she went back to Ireland, he’d never see her again.