Up Close and Personal
Page 1
“I’ve come for what’s mine.”
When brash Irish billionaire Ronan Connolly meets Laura Page, the connection is electric. He’s danger. She’s a safe haven. And the passion between them burns—too hot and too fast. So Ronan ends the affair before it can get serious.
But he can’t stay away.
Six weeks later he’s back, wanting to pick up where they left off. But Laura’s having none of it. She’s hurt, angry—and hiding something. Ronan vows to find out everything that happened while he was gone. But this time, getting up close and personal may mean giving Laura his heart.
The Door Was Yanked Open Suddenly And There She Stood.
Even in her worn jeans and button-down white shirt, she took his damn breath away and he resented that fact down to his bones.
Distance hadn’t helped. He’d thought of her. Dreamed of her, and awakened nearly every morning with his body tight and ready for her.
Even now, the lush, slightly floral scent of her reached out to him as if to tease every sense memory he had of touching her, tasting her, being inside her.…
Jaw tight, he looked deeply into those calm blue eyes and wondered if she was as unaffected by him as she seemed.
Dear Reader,
I love Ireland. It’s my favorite place to visit, and every time I go, it’s harder and harder to leave. Everything about that country appeals to me, from the staggering beauty of the countryside to the bustle of the cities and especially the warmth of its people.
So writing this story was really fun for me. Ronan Connolly lives in Ireland, but he’s in California on business. His life gets complicated, though, when he meets Laura Page.
Sweeping her off to Ireland for a romantic visit is, Ronan thinks, the way to get her out of his system. But Laura isn’t the kind of woman it’s easy to walk away from. Soon enough, he realizes he doesn’t want to lose her. The problem is finding a way to keep her without engaging his heart.
I hope you enjoy Up Close and Personal as much as I did.
You can visit me on Facebook, Twitter and at my website, www.maureenchild.com.
I wish you all great books and the time to relish them.
Maureen
Maureen
Child
Up Close
and Personal
Books by Maureen Child
Harlequin Desire
*King’s Million-Dollar Secret #2083
One Night, Two Heirs #2096
*Ready for King’s Seduction #2113
*The Temporary Mrs. King #2125
*To Kiss a King #2137
Gilded Secrets #2168
Up Close and Personal #2179
Silhouette Desire
†Scorned by the Boss #1816
†Seduced by the Rich Man #1820
†Captured by the Billionaire #1826
*Bargaining for King’s Baby #1857
*Marrying for King’s Millions #1862
*Falling for King’s Fortune #1868
High-Society Secret Pregnancy #1879
Baby Bonanza #1893
An Officer and a Millionaire #1915
Seduced Into a Paper Marriage #1946
*Conquering King’s Heart #1965
*Claiming King’s Baby #1971
*Wedding at King’s Convenience #1978
*The Last Lone Wolf #2011
Claiming Her Billion-Dollar Birthright #2024
*Cinderella & the CEO #2043
Under the Millionaire’s Mistletoe #2056
“The Wrong Brother”
Have Baby, Need Billionaire #2059
†Reasons for Revenge
*Kings of California
Other titles by this author available in ebook format.
MAUREEN CHILD
is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. An author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website, www.maureenchild.com.
For Patti Hambleton
That first trip to Ireland was the best
Because it was shared with you.
For all the years, for all the laughs,
I love you, my friend.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Excerpt
One
“Laura, I know you’re in there!”
Ronan Connolly pounded on the brightly painted blue front door a few more times, then paused to listen. Not a sound from inside the house, though he knew too well that Laura was in there. Hell, he could practically feel her, standing just on the other side of the damned door.
Bloody hardheaded woman. How had he ever thought that quality attractive? Now that attractive hardheadedness had come back to bite him in the ass.
Seconds ticked past and there was no sound from within, which only irritated him further. He glanced at the sunshine-yellow Volkswagen parked alongside the house—her car—then glared again at the still-closed front door.
“You won’t convince me you’re not at home. Your bloody car is parked in the street, Laura.”
Her voice came then, muffled but clear. “It’s a driveway in America, Ronan. You’re not in Ireland, remember?”
“More’s the pity.” He scrubbed one hand across his face and rolled his eyes in frustration. If they were in Ireland right now, he’d have half the village of Dunley on his side and he’d bloody well get her to open the damned door.
“I heard that,” she said. “And feel free to hop onto one of your private planes and go back to Connolly-land anytime you feel like it!”
If only he could, Ronan thought. But he’d come to California to open an American branch of his business and until Cosain was running as it should, he was going nowhere at all.
At the moment though, he was tired, on edge and in no mood to be dealing with more females. Especially one with a head as hard as Laura’s.
He had spent the past six weeks traveling across Europe acting as bodyguard to a sixteen-year-old pop star whose singing was only slightly less annoying than her attitude. Between the girl and her grasping mother, Ronan had been more than ready for the job to end so he could get back to his life. Now that he was back, he’d expected peace. Orderliness. Instead…
Grinding his teeth together, he took a long moment or two and counted to ten. Then did it a second time. “Whatever the hell you want to call it, Laura, your car is here and so’re you.”
“I might have been out,” she shouted. “Did you ever think of that? I do have friends, you know.”
The Connolly temper lifted a couple notches inside him and Ronan was forced to fight it back down.
“But you’re not out, are you?” he asked, entirely reasonably, and he gave himself points for it. “You’re here, driving me to distraction and making me shout at a bloody closed door like I’m the village idiot turned loose on his own for the first time.”
“You don’t have to shout, I can hear you,” she said, her voice carrying nicely through the door.
Laura Page lived on a tidy street in Huntington Beach, California, in one of a dozen town houses built to look like a Cape Cod village. When he’d first seen her place, he’d thought it charming. Now he glared at the building as if it were to blame for his current situation.
; A cool ocean breeze shot down the narrow street and rattled the limbs of the nearly naked elm tree in Laura’s front yard. Roiling gray clouds overhead promised a storm soon, and he hoped to hell he wasn’t still standing on this bleeding porch when it hit.
“Your neighbors can hear me, too,” he pointed out with a brief nod at the man clipping his hedge with enough vigor to whittle it into a toothpick. “Why not open the door and we can talk this out. Together. In private.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
He laughed shortly. That would be a first indeed, he told himself. A more opinionated woman he had never met. In the beginning, he’d liked that about her. Too often, he was surrounded by smiling, vacuous women who agreed with everything he said and laughed at the lamest of jokes just to ingratiate themselves with him.
But not Laura.
No, from the first, she had been stubborn and argumentative and unimpressed with his wealth or celebrity. He had to admit, he had enjoyed verbally sparring with her. He admired a quick mind and a sharp tongue. He’d admired her even more once he’d gotten her into his bed.
He glanced down at the dozen red roses he held clutched in his right hand and called himself a damned fool for thinking this woman would be swayed by pretty flowers and a smooth speech. Hell, she hadn’t even seen the flowers yet. And at this rate, she never would.
Huffing out an impatient breath, he lowered his voice a bit. “You know why I’m here. Let’s get it done and have it over then.”
There was a moment’s pause, as if she were thinking about what he’d said. Then she spoke up again. “You can’t have him.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” she called back and Ronan narrowed his gaze fiercely on the door as if he could see through the panel to the woman beyond.
“Aye, I heard you. Though I don’t believe it. I’ve come for what’s mine, and I’m not leaving until I have it.”
“Yours? You’ve been gone two months, Ronan. What makes you think anything is still yours?”
Tossing the roses to the ground, Ronan set his hands on either side of the door and leaned in. “Laura, I’ve been on a bloody plane for ten hours, listening to a teenage girl list the reasons she is to be adored. I’ve had her mother bitching about everything from the type of bottled water on the jet to the fluffiness of her pillow. I’m a man on the edge, love. All I’ve thought of for these last weeks is getting back to my house on the cliffs and seeing my damned dog. I’m not leaving without him.”
The door was yanked open suddenly and there she stood. Five feet nine inches of curvy blonde with a pair of blue eyes as clear and lovely as a summer sky. Even in her worn jeans and button-down white shirt, she took his damned breath away, and he resented that fact down to his bones.
She kept one hand on the door and the other braced against the doorjamb as if she’d be enough to keep him out if he decided he wanted in.
Ronan glanced down and saw his dog leaning into her with slavish adoration. He scowled at the animal he called Beast, and the dog paid him no attention whatsoever. “A few weeks gone and you’ve dismissed me?” he asked the dog in a withering tone. “What kind of loyalty is that from man’s best friend?”
The dog whined and leaned even more heavily into Laura’s side until she staggered a little under his weight.
“A ‘best friend’ wouldn’t have abandoned him,” Laura said.
“He wasn’t put out into a jungle forced to hunt for his own food,” Ronan countered. “My cousin Sean—”
“Left him with me when he went back to Ireland. You can see now that Beast is fine. He’s happy here. With me.”
“That may be,” Ronan told her after sparing his traitorous hound another hard glare. “But he’s not yours, is he?”
“He’s in my house. That makes him mine.”
“He’s only in your house because Sean asked you to look out for him until I got back.”
And for that, Ronan owed his cousin a punch in the face. Called back to Ireland unexpectedly, Sean had asked Laura to watch Beast in order to save the animal a monthlong stay in a kennel. Which Ronan hadn’t found out about until it was too late to change anything. Yes, it had been the right choice for the dog. But for Ronan?
He hadn’t seen Laura since he ended their affair two months ago. Though he couldn’t exactly claim to have shut her out of his mind. Hell, he had taken the bodyguard job for the teenage singer himself, rather than handing it to one of his employees, only so that he could get a little distance from the woman standing so temptingly close to him at the moment. Distance hadn’t helped. He’d thought of her. Dreamed of her, and awakened nearly every morning with his body tight and ready for her.
Even now, the lush, slightly floral scent of her reached out to him as if to tease every sense memory he had of touching her, tasting her, being inside her…
“Ronan,” she said in a patient tone that interrupted his musings, “we both know Beast is better off with me. You’re not exactly a good dog parent—”
“I’m not his father, I’m his bloody owner,” Ronan countered.
She ignored him. “Soon enough you’ll be going back to Ireland and—”
“Taking Beast with me,” he finished for her.
In truth, he hadn’t really considered what he would do with Beast when his time in America was over. But right now, the decision seemed an easy one. Even fighting the quarantine laws to get the dog home to Ireland would seem like a vacation after dealing with Laura Page.
Jaw tight, he looked deeply into those calm blue eyes and wondered if she was as unaffected by him as she seemed. Had she forgotten him so quickly? Gotten over him so completely? A lowering thought for a man to consider.
Brushing aside what had once been between them, he said, “Beast is mine, and I always intended to take him home to Ireland with me when I go. Nothing’s changed.”
“Sure it has,” she said, taking a step toward him, dislodging the dog so that he nearly toppled over. “You have a dog back home, right?”
“Aye. Deirdre.”
“And it’s been how long since you’ve seen her?”
“That’s nothing to do with this.”
“It’s everything to do with it,” she countered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “A dog needs more than a visit every couple of months. A dog needs love. Companionship. Someone he can count on. Someone who will be there.”
Frowning, Ronan looked hard at her. This was the reason he had stepped back from their relationship in the first place. The woman had hearth and home and forever practically stenciled on her forehead. She was a woman who wanted and deserved to be loved. He just wasn’t the man to give that to her. So he’d ended their affair before things got even more complicated than they had been already.
“Are you talking about Beast now, Laura, or yourself?”
She gaped at him. “Your ego knows no bounds, does it? Do you really think I’ve been sitting here moping? Missing you?”
Actually, yes. He did. And the more fired up she got, the more he knew she was no more over him than he was her.
“This isn’t about us, Ronan. It’s about Beast, and you can’t have him. You don’t deserve him.”
Before he could counter, she slammed the door in his face and Ronan heard the lock snap into place. Stunned, he stared at the closed door for a long minute. He could hardly believe it. No one shut a door in Ronan Connolly’s face, for pity’s sake.
He heard her inside, cooing to Beast, assuring him that he was safe from bullies and that was nearly enough to have Ronan pounding on her door again. But he thought better of it. Let her believe she’d won this battle. It would make her complacent and that much easier to get around later.
Still furious, he turned sharply, stomped on the fallen roses and left.
But he’d be back. Connollys didn’t know how to quit.
* * *
“It’s all right, sweetie,” Laura said to Beast as she scrubbed the top of his head and scratched behind
his ears. “The mean man is gone.”
Laura was trembling by the time she heard Ronan’s sports car fire up and zoom off. Oh, not from the argument. She had known that confrontation was coming for weeks. But actually seeing him again had been much harder than she’d thought it would be.
Looking up into those dark blue eyes of his, she’d watched them flash with temper and had been just as stirred as when she’d seen them darken with passion or glitter with a cool, businesslike gleam.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with chestnut hair that showed just a hint of red in the sunlight, he wore business suits and jeans with the same casual air that made him both intimidating and irresistible. And apparently two months apart hadn’t dimmed her reaction to him at all.
From the moment he had first walked into her real estate office several months ago, Laura had known that she was in trouble. Oh, she and her sister had sold homes to unspeakably rich people before, but there had never been the slightest temptation to fit herself into their world. With Ronan, it had been different from the start.
Everything in her still wanted him, even though her mind knew better. He’d been out of her life for two months and that was as it should be. After all, she had known going into that mind-dazzling affair that it couldn’t last. He was rich; she wasn’t. He was Ferrari and she was Volkswagen. He lived in Ireland. And she’d be staying in California.
She sighed a little, then looked down at the dog each of them wanted. Beast was big, at least a hundred pounds and his black hair was full and shaggy, clumps of it usually falling across his eyes. No one knew what mixture of breeds he might be, but privately, Laura had often thought a pony must have been involved somewhere in his lineage.
Now, Beast looked up at her as if sympathizing with the situation, and Laura smiled.
“Sure,” she whispered, still stroking Beast’s head, “I knew Ronan would be trouble from the first. But a gorgeous, successful man with an Irish accent that makes my bones melt? How was I supposed to fight that?”
The dog gave her one long swiping kiss and she laughed. In his own way, Beast was as charming as his master—just another reason she wouldn’t give him up. Then she stood and walked to the kitchen, hearing Beast’s claws clatter on the floorboards behind her.
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