by JoAnn Ross
“Nice kite,” he said as he stopped beside Jamie. At the center of the kite, a picture of a sea horse shimmered emerald against the blue sky.
“It’s the Lady.”
“The one in the lake?”
“Aye.” He nodded and smiled shyly. “Would you like to fly her?”
“Perhaps later.” Without thinking, he ruffled Jamie’s hair and felt him freeze much as his mother had when she’d sensed his approach. Understanding childhood fear all too well, Alec didn’t immediately take his hand away, but left it there for a heartbeat, as if to prove he meant no harm. “You seem to be doing a bang-up job yourself.”
The kid beamed, reminding Alec of how a boy can yearn so for the slightest word of praise from an adult male.
“Alec!” He was suddenly tackled around the legs by a whirling dervish of four-year-old energy. “Come dance!”
“It’s Mr. MacKenna to you,” Kate corrected her daughter in a smoky voice that slipped beneath his skin. “And I’m sure he’d be having better things to do than dance with such a flirt as you, Brigid girl.”
“Wanna dance!” the little girl repeated firmly. Ignoring her mother’s prohibition, she lifted her arms.
Since it seemed the thing to do, Alec bent down, lifted the sprite into his arms and began waltzing across the sand.
“You needn’t humor her,” Kate insisted.
“Hey, it’s not every day I get a chance to dance with a beautiful red-haired lass.” He grinned at Brigid, who smiled right back at him. When he spun her she squealed with pleasure, and when he dipped her she giggled.
“You’re a good dancer,” she said, once she was upright again. “Almost as good as Uncle Quinn.”
“Almost? Well, I guess I’ll just have to practice some more.”
“With me!”
“You’ve got yourself a deal, pumpkin.” Needing to speak to her mother, he began to lower her to the ground when she wrapped her arms tighter around him. “Uncle Quinn always kisses me after we finish dancing.”
“He does, does he?”
“Aye!”
“Well, then.” He brushed a light kiss on the tip of her nose.
“No! Not there. Here.” She touched a pudgy finger to her petal pink lips. The familiar purple polish glittering on her tiny fingernails revealed that he wasn’t the only one who’d fallen under this sprite’s spell. “Like they do on the telly.”
Alec laughed at her exaggeratedly pursed lips. Then glanced over at Kate, silently asking permission. With a resigned expression, she nodded.
He touched his lips briefly to Brigid’s.
“That’s good,” she declared, wiggling in his arms. “Now you can put me down.”
He did as requested.
“Now dance with Mama.”
“Oh, Brigid,” Kate protested, “doesn’t Mr. MacKenna have much better things to do than dance around the beach with an old married woman?”
“Dance!” Brigid insisted.
“Actually,” Alec said, enjoying the faint bloom of roses beneath Kate’s cheeks, “I think your daughter’s on to something.” He skimmed a thumb along the faint blue shadow beneath her eye. “Anyone ever tell you that you work too hard?”
He’d viewed the light in her window late into the night. And he’d already discovered that she was up each morning before dawn.
“The stud doesn’t run itself.”
“True enough. But from what I’ve been able to tell, you’ve hired yourself a good crew. So, what’s to stop you from taking a little twirl around the beach?”
“Dance!” Brigid continued to insist.
“Yeah, Ma,” Jamie entered the conversation. His kite, now high enough to soar on its own relatively free of danger, was a sparkling green dot in the sky. “You haven’t danced since Dr. Erin and Michael’s wedding.”
“You’re all ganging up on me,” she accused.
“Absolutely.” Alec held out his arms. “Mrs. O’Sullivan, may I have this dance?”
Appearing to know when she was licked, Kate sighed and went into Alec’s arms. Her soft curves felt so good against his body that if her children hadn’t been watching so closely, he would have drawn her a great deal closer.
He hummed a Celtic tune he’d heard on his bedroom radio only this morning. It was slow and typically Irish, a tragic tale of loyal home boys being slain by enemy swords on rolling fields of golden corn.
“’Tis a sad song,” she murmured. Her breath was warm against his neck.
“True.” To please himself, he drew her just a bit closer, so that her calf-length, crimson wool skirt flattened against his thighs. “Most of your Irish songs are, I’ve discovered. What is it they say about the Irish? That all your wars are merry and all your songs sad?”
“’Tis a foolish saying. And not at all true, since there’d be nothing merry about war. Or violence of any kind.”
“Good point.”
Because he hated to ruin what was a surprisingly enjoyable moment, he did a series of three quick turns across the sand that had her arms tightening around his neck ever so slightly and caused her hair to fly out like a black silk flag.
“Mama’s dancing!” he heard the small voice call out with obvious childish glee.
“And very well,” Alec murmured as he rested his chin against the top of her head and drew in the mysterious fragrance that surrounded her like a sensual cloud. From the various bottles and jars he’d seen lining the shelves of the bathroom, he suspected it was a potion she’d concocted herself.
“Aye,” she responded when he asked her about it. “I’ve an herb garden in back of the house. Some of the plants are on rootstock from Biddy Early’s own garden.”
“Would that make them magic?” Magic or not, they were certainly having an effect on him.
She laughed lightly. “Now, isn’t there no proper answer to that question? Since you don’t believe in magic, if I respond aye, you’ll accuse me yet again of having a too vivid imagination.”
“And if you answer no?”
She pulled back just enough that she could look up at him. “Then I’d be telling a falsehood. Though the magic is not so much in the plant itself, but in the intent to which it’s harvested and used.”
Alec still didn’t buy the witch story. But he did admire her refusing to back away from what she was. What she professed herself to be.
“It could be that my mind is a bit more open,” he admitted. “After my call to the States.”
The bright laughter in her eyes was instantly replaced by interest. “Did you find out something about Legends Lake?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
Her scent was tangling in his mind as they swayed on the golden strand of sand, stimulating thoughts that had nothing to do with horseracing and everything to do with Kate.
“Later.” He ran his hand down her back, settled his fingers at her waist.
When he’d first sought her out, concerned about getting Legends Lake ready for the May Classic, he’d been all too aware of the ticking of the clock. Now, enjoying the feel of her in his arms, Alec was in no hurry to leave the beach.
Feeling more ridiculously, foolishly carefree than he could ever remember feeling in his life, he spun her in a dizzying series of circles that made Brigid giggle and had Kate clinging tightly to him. Then, as he had with her daughter, he dipped her so deeply that the tips of her raven hair nearly touched the sand.
“Kiss Mama!” Brigid called out.
“Don’t be a foolish girl,” Kate said. Alec took some satisfaction in the fact that neither her tone nor the hotly curious look in her eyes echoed her negative words.
“Alec danced with me. Then he kissed me.” The sprite was standing there, hands splayed on her hips, her head tilted back as she looked up at them, red hair cascading over her shoulders in a tumble of riotous curls. “Now he’s dancing with you. So he needs to kiss you, too,” she insisted with rigid, four-year-old logic.
“Sounds reasonable to me,” A
lec said.
“A man who is a parent himself ought to be knowing that there’s very little reasonable about a child Brigid’s age.”
“Kiss!” Brigid shouted again.
“I don’t think she’s going to give in that easily.”
“She’s a stubborn lass,” Kate murmured. She was looking at his lips, seeming as fascinated as he was with hers.
“Sounds as if beauty isn’t the only thing she inherited from her mother,” he said. “We’re only talking about a kiss, Kate. No more intimate than the one I gave your darling daughter. The type ‘kissing cousins’ might share back home.”
“Since I’d like to be standing back on my own feet sometime in the next century, I suppose I have no choice.”
“You always have a choice, Kate. At least with me.”
Her gaze met his and held. “Aye.” It was barely a whisper floating on the sea breeze, but a world of meaning—and acceptance—shimmered in the soft tone.
Smiling, satisfied, Alec refused to accept the idea that what he was about to do could complicate both their lives. He lifted her back up so she was standing on her own power, directly in front of him. Her lake blue eyes were both wary and expectant as he threaded his fingers through the ebony silk of her hair, pushing it away from her face.
“Like cousins,” she reminded him.
“Absolutely,” he promised huskily.
With his eyes on hers, he slowly lowered his head. He watched her gaze go a little soft-focus. Heard her faint intake of breath. It crossed his mind that the same expectancy that was written across her exquisite features was currently humming through his own body. Since the chemistry between them was in danger of mucking up his mission here, the best thing to do was just get the damn kiss he’d been thinking about too much lately over with. Then they could get back to business.
One taste. With her children standing by as chaperones. Two pair of lips meeting. Like cousins, he reminded himself. One kiss, then they could both satisfy their curiosity and move on.
He was still assuring himself that this was the logical way to handle the problem that had kept his mind wandering off business too much since his arrival in Ireland, when he made the fatal mistake of touching his lips to hers.
And immediately forgot to think.
16
LATER, LOOKING BACK on the kiss, Alec would realize that he’d known, in the suspended moment when his lips had hovered a breath away from hers, that he was wandering into dangerous waters. At the first taste of her sweet and succulent lips, he realized that he’d dived in over his head.
She felt it too. Her eyelids, which had drifted partway closed, flew open. She drew in a short, sharp breath and her fingers, which had been curved around his upper arms, dug into his skin through the denim of his shirt.
It hadn’t even been a true kiss, little more than a whisper of a touch without pressure. Far more promise than passion. But it was obvious from the stunned look in her eyes, which had darkened to indigo, that no cousin’s kiss had ever had such an effect on her.
Join the club, sugar.
She reminded him of a wild bird, poised on the verge of flight. But Alec was not prepared to let her escape quite yet.
“Let’s try that again.” He splayed his hands at the back of her head, gently holding her captive as he brushed his lips lightly, tantalizingly against hers.
Kate was vaguely aware of the cry of gulls circling overhead, the steady muffled sound of the surf washing onto the sand, her daughter’s delighted laughter ringing out like the silvery tones of a faerie’s flute.
Her mind clouded as she allowed her lips to cling. For that glorious, suspended moment, Kate refused to consider that what she was doing could be reckless.
It was only a kiss. They were, after all, on a public beach, with her children. Alec would do nothing she didn’t want to do. How dangerous could a mere kiss be?
The problem with that reasoning, Kate realized, as the tip of his tongue skimmed along the seam of her lips and made her feel as if she were levitating right off the sand, was that with this man there was no such thing as a mere kiss.
Her body went fluid. She heard a soft moan of surrender and realized it had come from her own throat. A sweet tenderness uncurled from somewhere deep inside her, lacing its way through the initial shock of passion like a silver ribbon woven through a crimson tapestry. She sighed. Offered. Opened for him, lips, heart and mind.
“Alec is kissing Mama!” The sweet voice of her daughter broke through the lovely mist fogging her mind.
Alec eased away, but seeming unwilling to entirely give up contact, touched his forehead to hers. “My guidebook didn’t say a thing about earthquakes in Ireland.”
“They’re not unheard of.” Her breath was labored, as if she’d been running along the beach. “But I suspect this was something entirely different.”
“I suspect you’re right.” He sighed, then straightened to his full height. “I suppose we should talk about this.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s no need.” Because she was so shaken, Kate was determined to keep both her tone and her attitude light. “It was, after all, just a kiss. Like an American cousin, didn’t you say?”
“Kiss!” Brigid echoed like a small dear parrot who’d learned a single word she was inordinately proud of.
“Kiss, indeed.” Forcing a laugh, Kate bent down and scooped up the child clinging to her knees. “The tide’s coming in. We’d best be getting back to the house before the selkies claim my darling girl to come live beneath the sea with them.”
Seeming delighted at that idea, Brigid giggled as they waited for Jamie to reel in his lake beastie kite. On the way back up the cliff, she regaled them all with a fanciful story about a little girl who dwelt beneath the sea and swam with selkies, combed her hair with sea shells and danced with lobsters.
While Kate managed to respond at the appropriate times, her mind was not focused on her daughter’s mermaid tale, but on the silent man who was following close enough behind.
Zoe had just returned to the house when she looked out the kitchen window and saw Alec walking across the fields. Kate was walking beside him. He was carrying Brigid piggyback, and Jamie was tagging along a little behind, carrying a huge green kite almost as big as he was and gazing at Alec with a goofy adoring look she figured had probably been pasted on her face back when she’d been the kid’s age and living at Inverness Farms.
They looked good together. Almost like a family. No. Exactly like a family.
Hot moisture burned at the back of her lids as jealousy pricked her heart. Not wanting them to see her crying, she streaked up the stairs and managed to get inside her bedroom just as the kitchen door opened.
Kate had known she was being reckless. Just having Alec MacKenna staying here at the stud was a temptation she’d been having more and more difficulty resisting with each passing day. Even without her ability to sense moods, she would have known he wanted her. That his interest in her went beyond what he was hoping she might be able to do for his poor wounded horse was all too obvious. The tension had been building for days, like the dark and dangerous storm clouds she’d gathered together to halt Brian’s bulldozer. The primal forces between her and the MacKenna had become so electrified, she’d been feeling it sparking beneath her skin.
As bad as the days had been, the nights had proven even worse. From that first day Quinn Gallagher had forced Cadel to leave their home, Kate had reveled in her solitary life with her children. One of the best parts of that new life had been not having to share a bed with a husband who’d felt the privilege of taking her whenever he pleased, with no more foreplay than drunkenly jerking her out of a restless, fearful sleep, covering her body with his thick and heavy one, then taking her swift and hard with no thought of anything but his own release. Which was why Kate didn’t miss sex. It was impossible to miss something both painful and degrading.
She’d been relieved to see the back of him, yet ever since the MacKenna’s arrival, the
double bed she’d been born in had become lonely and cold.
Surely it was only natural desire that had her tossing and turning and tangling the sheets as if caught in the grasp of a fever night after night. She was, after all, a woman in the prime of her life; she should be worried if she weren’t experiencing a surge of hormones while living in such close proximity to a virile, intense male. The solution, she’d managed to convince herself, was to stop fighting the attraction. After all, weren’t forbidden temptations the most appealing? Hadn’t they both been avoiding the subject, playing individual games of hide and don’t seek?
Kate had always considered herself an honest person. While she’d never flaunted her gift, neither had she hidden it. Such frankness had cost her occasionally, but she could not live any other way. While the Irish might be known for their penchant for talking circles around any topic, Kate had always preferred a straightforward approach to conversation and to life.
She was not one to play games, which was why she’d made the decision that the next time Alec looked as if he wanted to kiss the very breath out of her, she’d let him, and gladly, taking her own pleasure, then moving on. As intriguing as he admittedly was, a kiss was, after all, merely a kiss, and surely his would be no different from any other man’s.
How wrong she’d been! The merest touch of his mouth on hers had sent a force like a tidal wave surging through her. A roaring like storm-tossed surf had pounded in her ears, and all the breath had left her lungs in a rush that had left her drowning in a sea of emotions more tumultuous than any she’d ever experienced. Afraid of being swept off the face of the earth, it had been all she could do not to fling her arms around his neck and cling to him, as a shipwreck victim might cling to a piece of driftwood.
When they entered the house the sound of the door closing upstairs caught Alec’s attention. “Zoe’s home.”
Kate wondered if he realized he’d called her house home. Then worried that she liked hearing him refer to it that way. “So she is,” she responded with a calm that cost her.
