He closed his eyes, savoring the vanilla scent that enveloped them both. He felt her lips tremble beneath his, but she did not move. He felt her stiffen, but she did not push him away. He ran his tongue across her closed lips, tasting, coaxing, until she yielded, until her mouth opened beneath his with a wordless sound of surprise that gave him the answer to his question.
He'd only been teasing, thinking all of this just a game, but suddenly it wasn't a game at all.
He deepened the kiss, and his body leaned into her, pressing her back against the counter. The aggressive move must have startled her, for he felt her hands come up as if to push him away. He would not let her. He captured her hands, lacing his fingers through hers and drawing their joined hands downward as he savored the softness of her mouth. Her brief resistance disappeared and her hands relaxed within his.
He let go and reached behind her head, pulling away the pins until her hair came down. The pins scattered across the counter and the floor as he buried his fingers in her hair and wrapped its thick strands in his fists.
Something told him he ought to stop, that this little game he'd started with her had already gone too far. He tore his lips from hers, intending to break it off before he lost what few wits he had left, but she made a tiny sound, a fluttering, purely feminine mixture of innocence and invitation. His last vestige of reason dissolved.
He trailed kisses across her jaw, along the line of her throat above the pristine white collar, to her ear. Pushing back her hair, he nibbled on the soft skin of her earlobe and felt her shiver. He tightened one hand in her tangled hair and slid the other down to her waist, then wrapped his arm around her and pulled her tight against him, feeling every soft curve of her body where she was pressed against him.
Her hips shifted against his weight, and he shuddered at the jolt of pure pleasure he felt. He wanted to take her down to the floor, he wanted to feel her move like that beneath him, he wanted to feel her thighs wrap around him.
His hand left her hair and slid down between them to open intimately over her breast. He kissed her again, not a tender kiss this time, but a kiss hard and demanding. As he tasted her mouth, he moved his thumb in a slow circle over her breast, and felt her response through the layers of fabric.
She broke the kiss with a desperate gasp for air. Somewhere past the roar in his ears and the lust that coursed through his body, he heard her say his name.
Permission or protest, he didn't know which. But somewhere within that whispered plea, he found a glimmer of sanity.
Christ, what was he doing? He jerked back, breathing hard, shocked by the hot, driving force inside him that had nearly taken her on a kitchen floor. He let her go and stepped away, his body still pulsing with frustrated arousal. He stared into her wide, startled eyes, striving for equilibrium. Years of will and discipline, years of rigid control and tightly leashed emotions, all of it nearly shattered with a kiss.
"On second thought," he muttered, "maybe you should have a talk with that boy's mother, after all."
He turned away and walked out of the house, breathing deeply of the sultry summer air, but he could not escape the luscious scent of vanilla.
15
When Becky came back to the house about two hours later, her eyes red and her face all puffy from crying, Olivia felt as mean and hateful as Becky had accused her of being. She also felt like a self-righteous hypocrite.
She watched her daughter walk straight through the kitchen and up the back stairs without even looking at her. "Dinner's almost ready," Olivia called after her.
"I'm not hungry," was the stiff reply that came back down. A moment later, she heard the door of Becky's room slam shut.
Olivia sagged against the counter, staring down at the plank floor and the one small hairpin still lying there, and her cheeks heated with guilt. She bent down and retrieved the pin, then pushed it into the coil of hair she had pinned back in place. She could still feel Conor's fingers pulling her hair down, tangling through it, tearing away all the staunch morality and virtuous ideals of a lifetime in the space of three heartbeats.
Only a few minutes before, she'd been giving her daughter a lecture on propriety. What a hypocrite she was.
Dinner was excruciating. Becky stayed in her room, Carrie and Miranda kept up a constant stream of chatter, and Conor acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She rather resented that.
She could still feel the heat of his mouth everywhere he had kissed her, she could still feel the weight of his body pressing her against the counter. Just the memory of it flustered her, made her feel restless and strange. And very, very guilty.
She chanced a look at him across the table as he and Carrie talked about tree houses, of all things, and she wondered how he could behave as if that kiss had never happened, how he could act so calm, so nonchalant about it all.
But then, by his own admission, he'd kissed lots of women.
Olivia pushed back her plate and rose. She prepared a tray and took it up to Becky's room, leaving Conor and Carrie to their talk of tree houses.
There was no answer when she knocked on Becky's door, and when she gently pushed it open, she found her daughter lying on her stomach in the center of her bed, her face buried in her pillow. She didn't look up when Olivia entered the room.
"I thought you might want something to eat."
"Go away," Becky mumbled from the depths of her pillow.
Olivia set the tray on the washstand and walked over to the bed. She sat down on the edge and reached out, touching Becky's shoulder. She felt her daughter stiffen, but she did not pull her hand away.
"I think we need to talk," Olivia said, rubbing Becky's shoulder gently. "I know that you probably don't feel much like talking now, but I have something to say, so you can just listen for now."
She paused for a moment, then she said, "I was very upset when I found out what happened this afternoon because you're my daughter. It's hard for me to think of you growing up. To me, you're still a little girl."
Becky sat up. "I'm fourteen. My mother married my father when she was only a year older than I am."
"That's true." Sarah had been about two months pregnant at the time, and her father had almost shot loe in a duel, Olivia remembered. But she didn't tell Becky that. She fought back the protective panic that rose within her and took a deep breath. "Do you want to marry Jeremiah?"
A change came over Becky's face. Suddenly, she looked very bewildered and very vulnerable. "I don't know," she whispered.
"Honey, Jeremiah is the first boy that's come along. He's the first boy you've had feelings for. But there will be others. I think you know that," she added gently. "That's why you're unsure."
"He wanted to kiss me," she mumbled, ducking her head to stare at her hands. "And I wanted him to. I was curious. I wanted to know. . . ." Her voice trailed off into silence, but she didn't finish.
Olivia bit her lip. She understood perfectly.
Becky looked at her anxiously. "Was that wrong, Mama?"
Here was the perfect opportunity to give the appropriate mother's lecture. But Olivia thought of Conor Branigan, and she couldn't do it. "What do you think?"
"I don't know! I feel so confused."
She wrapped an arm around Becky and pulled her close. "I know just what you mean."
Olivia held her daughter for a long time, stroking her hair and letting her think. She waited until Becky pushed away and sat up again before she spoke.
"Why don't you and I make a deal?" She reached out and brushed a wisp of hair gently out of her daughter's eyes. "I promise you that I will trust you. I will not forbid you to see Jeremiah. The two of you can continue to sit together at church and have peppermint sticks at the mercantile all you like. I will not say anything to Lila about this. In return, you promise me that you will not violate my trust in you. You won't walk with him alone. No more kissing down by the creek. If you want to go walking with him after church, I will accompany you."
"Mother!"
"Mind, I'll probably see lots of herbs and wildflow- ers to pick along the way, so you two will probably walk much faster than I will." She watched her daughter smile. "Is that a deal?"
"Deal."
"Good. Now, why don't you have some dinner? Then we'll go up to the attic and see if we can find a dress for you to wear to the harvest dance."
"Can Jeremiah take me to the dance?"
"Of course," Olivia answered. "In two years or so."
Conor could not sleep. He lay in bed, thinking of her, of how she had melted against him with all that soft yielding, how his own desire had flared in response, sudden, hot, and so intense, his body still ached with it.
Never had he lost control like that with a woman. For those few moments, he'd lost himself in her, forgetting everything. A lifetime of struggle to keep passions in check, a lifetime of suppressing all the hate and love and fear that raged within him, a lifetime of swallowing his pride and lowering his eyes and pretending indifference. A lifetime of control lost. Forget the prison guards at Mountjoy—they'd stripped away his control in bloody pieces, with much harsher weapons—but losing control to a woman whose only weapons were chocolate-brown eyes and soft, full lips was a shattering experience, indeed. In a kitchen, for God's sake, in broad daylight, where any one of the girls could have walked in and seen them.
Fatal to be vulnerable, fatal to need her, fatal to want her.
But he did. He wanted to touch her again; he wanted to lose himself in her softness and warmth again. The conflict was like anarchy inside him.
And she had no idea. Olivia was not the kind of woman he could easily tumble and conveniently leave behind. She was innocent. Very proper and completely innocent. He could still see her staring at him in shock, wide-eyed, with her fingers to her lips, tendrils of her long brown hair stirring in time with his harsh and labored breathing.
Through the window, he heard the incessant chirp of crickets and the low grumble of bullfrogs. The air was hot and sultry, there was no breeze at all, and the room felt suffocating. He rose from the bed, knowing he had to do something; he had to find a way to take his mind off her. A month of this, and he was going to be insane.
He never should have promised to stay. He should have just ignored the pleading look in her eyes yesterday, the proud lift of her chin, the catch in her voice that reminded him that somewhere, lost amid the guilt and the self-loathing, he still had a conscience.
He should have just walked on. A conscience was a damned inconvenient thing.
He pulled on his trousers and boots, took the lamp, and went outside. He stood on the porch, leaning against the rail and staring into the black emptiness beyond the lamplight.
Discipline. Control. Pride. They were his armor, they were all he had. So painfully won, so easily lost.
He remembered Mary's words from long ago. She'd been right about him. She had sensed the passions that seethed beneath the surface; she'd seen behind his mask, and it had frightened her. She had known that prizefighting wasn't just a job. The boxing ring was his outlet, his way of releasing passions in controlled increments, like a teakettle letting off steam. He'd always used sex the same way. But not with Olivia.
He picked up the lamp, walked down the steps, and crossed the yard to the barn. He found a stout length of rope and a burlap sack of oats that he guessed weighed about a hundred pounds.
He tied one end of the rope securely around the sack and tossed the other end over a rafter, then he pulled the sack up until it hung in the air at just the right level. He secured the contraption by slipping the rope end through a knot hole in the stall behind him, bringing it over the top, and tying a stout bowline knot. Not a very challenging opponent, he supposed, but it was the only one he had.
He threw a few quick jabs in the air, just to get a feel for it again, then he faced the sack, hauled back his right arm, and let fly with a good hard punch, sending the sack swinging away.
Too slow, he thought. He was out of practice. If he punched like that when he went back into the ring, even Elroy Harlan might be able to beat him. As the sack came swinging back toward him, he struck it again, this time with his left fist. Then his right, then his left, then his right.
He focused all his attention on his burlap opponent, ignoring the twinges of lingering pain in his ribs. He kept the sack swinging for over an hour. Sweat rolled down his body, the muscles of his arms and back started to burn, but he did not stop. He kept practicing his punches until he couldn't lift his arm for one more.
He wrapped his arms around the sack to still its swinging, then he sank to the floor, breathing hard. His blood was pumping, his muscles were burning.
He took down his makeshift punching bag, coiled the rope and put it back where he'd found it, picked up the lamp, and left the barn. He walked the perimeter of the house a few times, until his body had cooled and his heartbeat resumed a normal rhythm, then he went back to bed.
But all his efforts proved futile.
His body still ached with wanting her; he could still feel the warmth of her body, and he knew the tension in him wasn't the kind that could be relieved by going a few rounds with a burlap punching bag.
Olivia woke the next morning to the unmistakable thump of footsteps above her. She stared up at the ceiling, still half-asleep, and she wondered if Becky had gone back up to the attic this morning to look at dresses again. She rose and went upstairs, but there was no one there.
She heard the sound of footsteps again, coming from the roof overhead, along with a strange squeaking sound. What on earth? She went downstairs and out the back door, then halted abruptly at the sight that met her eyes. In the yard were stacks of wooden shingles and sheets of tin—the materials she'd bought last year to fix the roof. And right beside the porch steps, a ladder leaned against the house.
Olivia raced down the porch steps and into the yard, far enough out to get a good look. She turned around.
Conor was up on her roof, straddling the peak and stripping away shingles with a hammer. Olivia pressed her hands to her cheeks and stared up at him, stunned.
Though it was just past sunrise, she could tell he'd been up quite a while. His shirt was off. She could see it hanging over the top of the chimney.
He was fixing her roof. A sudden gust of wind whipped Olivia's tangled hair across her face. She pushed it back and watched as Conor tore away another shingle and tossed it. He caught sight of her standing in the yard and froze as the shingle fell to the ground a few feet in front of her.
He was fixing her roof. She repeated it in her head over and over, like Conor's hated rosary, but she still couldn't quite believe it. The absurd prick of tears stung her eyes.
She lifted one arm to wave and realized that she was standing out here in her nightgown.
Oh, Lord. Olivia ducked back into the house and shut the door. But she couldn't resist having another quick peek out the window to stare at the stacks of shingles in her yard, just to be sure she hadn't imagined the whole thing.
She wrapped her arms around her ribs and closed her eyes. In her mind, she saw him on her roof, sitting astride the peak as if it were a horse. Windblown, perhaps, and definitely battle-scarred, but no less like a white knight out of a storybook, coming to her aid. She murmured a heartfelt prayer of thanks.
Christ, have mercy. She just wasn't going to make things easy on him, was she? Conor jammed the claw end of the hammer under another shingle and pried it loose. The only reason he was out here at this ungodly hour of the morning was because thoughts of her had kept him awake all night. Then what did she do? Come prancing outside in her nightgown with her hair all loose and tumbled, and the sun behind her. He'd been able to see the silhouette of her body beneath the gown, the shapely curves of her thighs and hips. He'd probably spend the rest of the goddamned day imagining it.
He'd bet all his money, all ten dollars of it, that prim white nightgown had pearl buttons all down the front. He thought how ea
sily pearl buttons could slip free. "Bloody hell," he muttered, and pried away another shingle.
If he had any brains at all, he'd leave now, before things got out of hand, before he let his body do his thinking for him.
Conor paused, staring down at the hammer in his hands. He couldn't leave yet. He'd made a promise, and he intended to keep it even if it killed him. A few more glimpses of her in that nightgown and it probably would.
Determinedly, he pushed delectable visions of her out of his mind and turned his attention back to the task at hand.
He heard the back door slam, and he glanced down as Olivia and Carrie came out into the yard. He was relieved that this time Olivia was properly dressed. For the first time, he was rather glad she wore dresses buttoned up to her chin.
Carrie waved at him. "Mornin', Mr. Conor," she called up to him.
"Good morning, mo cailin," he called back.
"How come you're fixing the roof?"
"It needs fixing, don't you think?"
"I reckon! It leaks somethin' awful. Mama has all sorts of cans up in the attic for the water."
He glanced at Olivia. In one hand, she carried a cup, while she grasped a handful of skirt in the other, trying to prevent it from flying up in the stiff breeze. She'd pinned up her hair, he noticed. He imagined seeing her with her hair spread across a pillow, imagined her hair like silk in his fingers, and he quickly looked away. He'd better not think about that.
"Mornin'," she greeted. "You're sure up with the sun."
He wondered what she'd do if he told her why. Instead, he gestured to the roof. "Since I'm going to be here for a bit longer, I thought I'd have a go at fixing this roof of yours."
Olivia smiled up at him. "I appreciate it. Thank you." She held up the cup in her hand. "I'll make breakfast in a bit, but I thought you might want a cup of tea."
He set down the hammer and rose to his feet, hunched over to keep his balance.
"Be careful," Olivia admonished.
Conor's Way Page 16
