“I’m not sure whether to start by asking if you’ve lost your mind or if you’re happy.”
“Both,” Kelly said.
“Then you are involved with your client,” she said, making sure that Kelly understood exactly what was at stake. “I was afraid of that.”
“We’re not involved,” Kelly said. “Not yet, anyway. And I quit last night.”
“And that’s supposed to make it all right?”
“Look, I know I’m skating on thin ice, professionally speaking, but Michael matters to me. I thought I could keep my personal feelings out of it, but I can’t.” She shrugged. “So I quit.”
“Is he planning to hire another therapist?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And you intend to go on with his therapy in the meantime?”
Kelly nodded.
Moira met her gaze. “He’s that important to you?”
“Yes, he is.”
Moira sighed. “How does he feel about you?”
“He wants me,” she said. “He doesn’t want to, but he does. I figure that’s got to be a good start.”
“Or a disaster waiting to happen,” Moira predicted.
“Come on,” Kelly coaxed. “Stop being so gloomy. This could be the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve been half in love with Michael Devaney for most of my life. I’m finally getting a chance to see if that’s real.” She gave Moira a penetrating look. “Are you telling me that if you had the same chance to test things with my brother, you wouldn’t grab the opportunity with both hands?”
Moira’s pale, lightly freckled complexion flushed a bright red. “Let’s leave my feelings for your brother out of this.”
It had been an unspoken topic between them for years now. Kelly decided it was past time to put an end to the silence. “Why?” she demanded. “You’ve been carrying a torch for him forever. Why should both of us continue to deny it?”
“Because it’s pointless. Bryan has never given me a second glance. Besides, you’re just trying to change the subject to take the heat off of you.”
“Yes, I am,” Kelly admitted cheerfully. “As for Bryan not giving you a second look, maybe that’s because you try to fade into the woodwork whenever he’s around. I’ll bet he’d take notice if you gave him half a chance. You’re a wonderful woman, and you’d be terrific for Bryan. He’s a dreamer with his head in the clouds most of the time. You’re real. You’re grounded. You’d balance each other perfectly.”
“In your opinion,” Moira pointed out. “If Bryan thought that, he would have asked me out before now. He’s had plenty of opportunities.”
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black,” Kelly chided. “You think it, and you haven’t done anything about it. It’s pitiful actually. You’re shy and he’s dense. I could fix that.”
Hope stirred in Moira’s eyes. “Fix it how?” she asked warily.
Kelly wondered why she hadn’t thought to push the two of them together before. Maybe she’d wanted to believe fate would take care of it, but she was discovering lately that fate sometimes needed a helping hand.
“Leave it to me,” she told Moira. “What are you doing Friday night? Are you free?”
“I usually do laundry on Friday night.”
“Oh, please,” Kelly said, dismissing the feeble excuse. “You’re free. Meet me at Ryan’s Place at seven. It’s an Irish pub.”
“I know what it is, but why there?”
“Because it’s owned by Michael’s brother and it’s become the Friday night place to be for his family.” She gave her friend a wicked grin. “And for my brother.”
Moira, who was as confident about most things as any woman Kelly knew, regarded her uncertainly. “I don’t know. Won’t it be obvious that it’s a setup?”
“To my myopic brother?” Kelly scoffed. “Hardly. Don’t even think of arguing with me about this. I’m not taking no for an answer. Seven o’clock, and wear something blue. It’s Bryan’s favorite color, and you happen to look great in it.”
“Okay, fine. You win,” Moira finally agreed. “But I’m only saying yes so I can meet this man who has you taking crazy chances.”
“Of course you are,” Kelly teased.
“Just because you’re trying to fix me up with your brother does not mean you’re off the hook,” Moira insisted. “I’m still worried about you.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Kelly said. “I know exactly what I’m doing where Michael’s concerned.”
In fact, she was growing more and more certain of it with each passing day.
“So, you’ll do it?” Kelly was asking, as she massaged the taut muscles in Michael’s calf.
“Do what exactly?” he asked, trying to drag his attention away from the heat that was spreading through him with each strictly professional caress.
“Ask Bryan to join us at the pub Friday night,” she explained with obvious impatience. “Weren’t you listening to anything I said?”
“Every word,” he assured her. Most of them just hadn’t registered. It was impossible to concentrate when she was rubbing warm oil into his skin. He’d never thought eucalyptus to be an especially provocative scent, but he was rapidly beginning to change his mind. He forced himself to pay attention to the conversation. “This has something to do with your friend. What was her name again?”
“Moira Brady.”
“And Bryan knows her?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t pay any attention to her, at least not the way he should.”
“So, basically what you’re doing is matchmaking, and you want my help?”
“Exactly.”
“No way,” he said emphatically.
Her hands stilled, and Michael almost regretted being so adamant. Clearly she wasn’t pleased with his response.
“Why not?” she asked, her tone suddenly chilly.
“Because men don’t meddle in their friends’ love lives.”
“You don’t have to meddle. You just have to ask him to meet us at the pub. It’s not as if you’ve never asked him to join you there before.”
“Why can’t you ask him? Moira is your friend.”
“Because that’s too obvious,” she said impatiently. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Apparently not when it comes to matchmaking, thank God.”
This time when her hands stroked his leg, there was something far more sensual than therapeutic about it. Michael responded accordingly. He had to will himself to stop paying attention to those long, lingering strokes and concentrate on counting backward from a thousand. He was getting to be quite good at it.
“Michael, please,” she coaxed softly. “It’s not such a big deal. There will be a whole crowd of us there, right? It’s not as if we’re asking him to spend a deadly dull evening all alone with a total toad.”
Michael groaned. He was going to say yes eventually and hate himself for it. A few months ago he’d barely remembered Kelly’s existence and now he was considering conspiring with her against a man he’d always thought of as his best friend. He suspected traitors could fry in hell for less.
Kelly leaned closer, her breath whispering against his cheek. “Are you thinking about it?”
“How can I think when you’re all over me?” he muttered irritably.
She laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant that way,” he groused.
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t. But you are going to do this one tiny thing for me, aren’t you?”
He rolled over, dragging the sheet with him to cover his unmistakable reaction to her sneaky massage technique. “I’ll do it on one condition.”
“Great!” she said, obviously pleased.
“Hold on. You haven’t heard the condition. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me exactly what put this little scheme into your head. Have you ever fixed your brother up with one of your friends before?”
“No,” she admitted, looking decidedly uneasy
.
“Then why now? Why Moira?”
“I think they’d be perfect for each other,” she said, sticking to her story.
Michael wasn’t buying it, not entirely anyway. “And you just reached that conclusion this week? Out of the blue? After knowing this Moira for how long?”
“A while,” she conceded.
“And the inspiration to matchmake never struck you before?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then I have to ask again, why now?”
She frowned at him. “I sort of owe her.”
“For?”
“Keeping her mouth shut about something,” she told him grudgingly.
Suddenly it all became perfectly clear to him. “Moira’s the woman who runs the rehab clinic where you work part-time, isn’t she? And she found out about the two of us.”
He didn’t have to see the telltale flush in Kelly’s cheeks to know he’d hit the nail on the head. He would have known it by the way she suddenly found a million little things to do to avoid meeting his gaze. When she started lining up her selection of free weights according to size, he shook his head.
“You can’t avoid answering me forever,” he said.
“Sure I can,” she said with obvious bravado.
“So, the price of Moira’s silence is a date with your brother,” he said, drawing his own conclusions. “And this is a woman you want me to trick him into spending an evening with?”
She scowled at that. “You make it sound so sleazy. It’s not that way at all. Moira is a terrific woman. She’s just a little shy. She gets all tongue-tied when Bryan is around. And just so we’re very clear, this was my idea, not hers.”
“But she went along with it,” he reminded her.
“Reluctantly. Come on, Michael, what’s the harm?”
“There are so many possibilities, I can hardly list them all,” he responded.
“Name one.”
“Your brother could be furious.”
Kelly shrugged. “It won’t be the first time or the last. Brothers and sisters are always at each other’s throats.”
“He could be furious at me,” Michael corrected. “And that would be a first. I’m at a disadvantage, you know. Under normal conditions, I’d be a more than even match for him, but right now I’d prefer to pick fights I can win with words.”
“So you’ll smooth things over, if it comes to that,” she said, clearly not taking his fears seriously. “It won’t. I’m telling you, he’s going to thank you. And I will certainly find some inventive way to demonstrate my gratitude.”
Michael choked at the immediate image that slammed through him. “Inventive, huh?”
She grinned, clearly sensing victory. “Absolutely.”
“Care to give me a small sample, just a little incentive offered in good faith?”
“Roll over,” she ordered.
Michael cast one last, lingering look into her suddenly smoldering eyes and did as she’d asked. The sheet fell away. He wasn’t entirely sure what he expected, maybe some new, exotically scented oil that would drive him wild. Maybe the light skim of her fingers just a little too high on the back of his thigh.
What he absolutely, positively had not expected was the light brush of her lips against the back of his calf, the back of his knee, the back of his thigh. If it hadn’t been for one small, but very strong hand placed squarely in the small of his back, he would have jolted off the massage table and dragged Kelly straight into his arms and then onto his bed without giving propriety a second thought.
When she finally finished her little demonstration, his breathing was ragged and his resolve in tatters. He sighed heavily and tilted his head to meet her gaze.
“Bring me the phone.”
She grinned, a cat content with its expected reward of cream.
“And don’t look so damned smug,” he added.
“Aye, aye, sir,” she said cheerfully as she handed him the phone.
“I know I’m going to regret this,” Michael muttered as he dialed Bryan’s number.
Then he thought of the way Kelly’s clever mouth had felt against his skin and concluded that even if her scheme blew up in their faces, he still might die a happy man.
Chapter Ten
Her brother truly was the biggest dolt on the planet, Kelly concluded as she watched him all but ignore Moira, who was seated next to him. And if sparks didn’t start to fly soon, Michael was never going to let her forget it.
In fact, he chose that precise moment to lean in close and whisper, “It’s going well, don’t you think?” The edge of sarcasm in his voice was unmistakable.
“Well, do something,” she snapped back.
His eyes widened. “Me? This was your idea.”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” she offered.
He had the audacity to laugh at that. “Promises, promises.”
One advantage of being with a man in a wheelchair was that his attention could be refocused in a heartbeat. Kelly snagged the handles on his chair and aimed him toward her brother and Moira. “Now, talk,” she muttered.
The look Michael shot at her would have wilted the resolve of a lesser woman, but Kelly was feeling desperate. She wanted this evening to work out, not to guarantee Moira’s silence—truthfully, that was a given anyway—but to try to ensure her happiness. If her friend was foolish enough to be interested in Bryan, then he was the man Kelly wanted for her. Not that she would ever have promoted such a scheme if she hadn’t also believed that Moira was exactly right for her brother, she added piously.
“Great music,” Michael ventured to Moira. “Are you enjoying it?”
Kelly had to fight a smile at his charming awkwardness. Clearly social graces had never been high on his list of achievements. She actually found that reassuring. She’d always assumed he’d been a rogue who flirted with anything in skirts, especially once he’d joined the navy. Handsome as he was, though, she doubted he’d needed much in the way of charm to have women circling around him.
When Moira remained absolutely silent, Kelly firmly poked an elbow in her ribs. “Michael asked you about the music.”
Moira gave them both a weak smile. “Sorry. I guess I was thinking about something else. The music’s very nice,” she agreed politely.
“Are you very familiar with Irish music?” Michael asked, still doing his best to get the conversation rolling.
Kelly nearly groaned when her friend merely nodded. She knew for a fact that Moira loved Irish music and had been to a dozen or more pubs on a trip to Ireland. She would have sworn this was the perfect topic to get her friend to be a little more animated and to catch Bryan’s attention. He considered himself something of an expert on Irish folk tunes.
“You have been to Ireland, though,” Kelly prodded. “How does this compare?”
Finally, Moira seemed to forget Bryan’s apparently intimidating presence. Her expression brightened. “The lead singer’s the best I’ve heard this side of Dublin,” she said with her more familiar enthusiasm.
Bryan’s attention was finally snagged. He regarded Moira intently. “You’ve been to Ireland?”
Moira blinked at him, clearly startled that he’d finally taken notice of her. “Well, of course,” she said. “With a name like Brady, how could I not have gone at least once? Have you been?”
“Twice. Once on a tour by horseback. Another time hiking.”
Moira’s eyes lit up. “You actually went hiking? Where? Which tour company did you use?” The questions poured out of her. “I’ve been thinking of doing that next summer, but I can’t decide which tour to take. Just when I think I’ve decided, I see another brochure that looks even better.”
Kelly secretly congratulated herself on a job well done as the two of them put their heads together, shutting Michael completely out of the conversation. He turned back to Kelly slowly, his expression vaguely bewildered.
“What just happened there?”
“You asked the right question. I provid
ed an extra push. And they took over from there.” She patted his hand. “Nice work. You obviously have a knack for this sort of thing after all.”
He frowned at that. “Don’t go getting any ideas. This was a one-time thing, just to get you out of a bind.” His gaze locked on hers. “Though I have the strangest feeling that your friend Moira was never any threat to your career in the first place. She doesn’t seem the type to resort to blackmail to get a guy.”
Kelly feigned surprise. “Really?” She shrugged. “Well, you never know. Better safe than sorry.”
His gaze darkened as he subjected her to a thorough survey that had her skin heating.
“So, what do you think? Can we get out of here now?” he asked, his voice low and husky.
Something in his tone, in his eyes made her suddenly nervous. “And miss seeing the fruits of our labor? Why would we want to do that?”
He snagged her jacket off the back of her chair and tossed it to her. “Because we have better things to do,” he said, already heading for the door.
Heat spiraled through her along with a little thrill of anticipation. “We do?” she asked, automatically trailing after him just as he’d obviously assumed she would.
“Remember all those inventive ideas of yours?” he said cheerfully. “It’s time to pay up.”
Her step faltered. “Now? Tonight?”
“Can you think of any reason to wait? A deal is a deal, right?”
“Well, sure, but tonight?” She glanced back to see that her brother and Moira still had their heads together. “What if they need us?”
“Their problem,” Michael said succinctly. “We’ve done our good deed for the day, maybe for the year.”
He leveled a look straight into Kelly’s eyes that made her stomach flip over.
“Unless there’s some reason you want to back out on our deal?” he suggested lightly.
Honestly, she had been sure that Michael would be the one backing out. After all, he was the one who’d listed all those reasons why they should keep their emotions in check and their hands to themselves. Her promise had been made half in jest, though with at least a modicum of wistful hope. Now that it appeared he was taking her up on it, she had to wonder if she’d made a mistake. As desperately as she wanted it, were they really ready to take this next step? Maybe they should think it over a little longer, weigh the pros and cons.
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