An Outrageous Proposal

by Maureen Child

  She hoped not, because she really didn’t want him looking too closely into her mind right now. Twists of emotion tangled inside her and this time she didn’t fight them.

  Okay, yes. She had feelings for him. Why wouldn’t she? He was charming and fun and smart and gorgeous. He was easy to talk to and great in bed, of course she cared about him.

  That didn’t mean she loved him. Didn’t mean anything more than what they had together was important to her.

  Even she wasn’t buying that one.

  Oh, God. No sense in lying to herself, Georgia thought. She’d sew her lips shut and lock herself in a deep dark hole for the rest of her life before she ever admitted the truth to Sean.

  This wasn’t affection. It wasn’t lust. Or hunger.

  It was love.

  Nothing like the love she had thought she’d found once before.

  Now, she couldn’t imagine how she had ever convinced herself that she was in love with Mike. Because what she felt for Sean was so much bigger, so much…brighter, that it was like comparing an explosion to a sparkler. There simply wasn’t a comparison.

  This was the kind of love she used to dream of.

  And wouldn’t you know she’d find it with a man who wouldn’t want it? Feelings hadn’t been part of their agreement. Love had no place in a secret. A pretense.

  So she’d keep her mouth shut and tuck what she felt for him aside until it withered in the dark. It would. Eventually. She hoped.

  Oh, God.

  She was such an idiot.

  “Well,” Sean said after a sip of his wine, “I’ll admit to you now I’ve no notion of what you’re thinking at this minute. But judging by your expression, it’s not making you happy.”

  Understatement of the century.

  “Nothing in particular,” she lied smoothly. “Just how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it.”

  He looked at her for a long minute as if trying to decide to let it lay or not, and finally, thank God, he did.

  * * *

  “So no second thoughts? Being here,” he said, glancing around the bright, modern kitchen, “doesn’t make you want to rethink your decision?”

  She followed his gaze, looking around the room where she’d spent so much alone time in the past year. It was a nice place, she thought, but it had never felt like hers. Not like the cottage in Ireland did.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I came here to live with Laura when my marriage ended and it was what I needed then. But it’s not for me now, you know?”

  “I do,” he said, resting one elbow on the tabletop. “When you find your place, you know it.”

  “Exactly. What about you? Did you ever want to live somewhere else?”

  He grinned. “Leave Dunley?” He shook his head. “I went to college in Dublin and thought it a fine place. I’ve been all over Europe and to New York several times as well, but none of those bright and busy places tug at me as Dunley does.

  “The village is my place, as you said,” he told her. “I’ve no need to leave it to prove anything to myself or anyone else.”

  “Have you always been so sure of yourself?” She was really curious. He seemed so together. Never doubting himself for a minute. She envied it. At the same time she simply couldn’t understand it.

  He laughed. “A man who doesn’t question himself from time to time’s a fool who will soon be slapped down by the fates or whatever gods are paying attention to the jackass of the moment. So of course I question,” he said. “I just trust myself to come up with the right answers.”

  “I used to,” she told him and pulled a slice of pepperoni free of the melted cheese and popped it into her mouth. “Then I married Mike and he left me for someone else and I didn’t have a clue about it until he was walking out the door.” Georgia took a breath and then let it go. “After that, I had plenty of questions, but no faith in my own answers.”

  “That’s changed now, though,” he said, his gaze fixed on hers. “You’ve rebuilt your life, haven’t you? And you’ve done it the way you want to. So, I’m thinking your answers were always right, you just weren’t ready to hear them.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. Then, since marriages, both real and pretend, were on her mind, asked, “So, why is it you’ve never been married?”

  He choked on a sip of wine, then caught his breath and said, “There’s a question out of the blue.”

  “Not really. We were talking about my ex—now it’s my turn to hear your sad tales. I am your ‘fiancée,’ after all. Shouldn’t I know these things?”

  “I suppose you should,” he said with a shrug. “Truth is, I was engaged once.”

  “Really?” A ping of something an awful lot like jealousy sounded inside her. Just went to show her mom was right. She used to tell Georgia, Never ask a question you don’t really want the answer to.

  “Didn’t last long.” He shrugged again and took a sip of his wine. “Noreen was more interested in my bank account than in me, and she finally decided that she deserved better than a husband who spent most of his time at work.”

  “Noreen.” Harder somehow, knowing the woman’s name.

  “I let her maneuver me into the thought of marriage,” Sean was saying, apparently not clueing in to Georgia’s thoughts. “I remember thinking that maybe it was time to be married, and Noreen was there—”

  “She was there?” Just as she had been there, Georgia thought now, when he’d needed a temporary fiancée. Hmm.

  He gave her a wry smile. “Aye. I know how it sounds now, but at the time, it seemed easier to let her do what she would than to fight her over it. I was consumed at the time with taking Irish Air to the next level, and I suppose the truth is I didn’t care enough to put a stop to Noreen’s plans.”

  Dumbfounded, she just stared at him. “So you would have married her? Not really loving her, you would have married her anyway because it was easier than saying ‘no thanks’?”

  He shifted uneasily on his chair and frowned a bit at the way she’d put things. “No,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t have taken that trip down the aisle with her in the end. It wouldn’t have worked and I knew it at the time. I was just…”

  “Busy?” she asked.

  “If you like. Point is,” Sean said, “it worked out for the best all around. Noreen left me and married a bank president or some such. And I found you.”

  Yes, he’d found her. Another temporary fiancée. One he had no intention of escorting down an aisle of any kind. Best to remember that, she told herself.

  He lifted his glass and held it out to her, a smile on his face and warmth in his eyes. Love swam in the pit of her stomach, but Georgia put a lid on it fast. She hadn’t planned to love him, and now that she did, she planned to get over it as fast as humanly possible.

  So, she’d keep things as they had been between them. Light. Fun. Sexy and affectionate. And when it was over, she’d walk away with her head high, and Sean would never know how she really felt. Georgia tapped her wineglass to his, and when she drank, she thought that the long-gone Noreen had gotten off easy.

  Noreen hadn’t really loved Sean when she left him, or she’d never have moved on so quickly to someone else.

  Georgia on the other hand…it wasn’t going to be simple walking away from Sean Connolly.

  * * *

  Georgia was glad they’d come to the wedding. Just seeing the look on Misty’s face when she spotted Georgia and Sean had made the trip worthwhile. But it was more than that, too, she told herself. Maybe she’d had to attend this wedding. Maybe it was the last step in leaving behind her past so that she could walk straight ahead and never look back.

  And dancing with her ex-husband, the groom, was all a part of that. What was interesting was, she felt nothing in Mike’s arms. No tingle. No soft sigh of regret for old time’s sake. Nothing.

  She looked up at him and noticed for the first time that his blue eyes were a little beady. His hair was thinning on top, and she had th
e feeling that Mike would one day be a comb-over guy. His broad chest had slipped a little, making him a bit thick about the waist, and the whiskey on his breath didn’t make the picture any prettier.

  Once she had loved him. Or at least thought she had. She’d married him assuming they would be together forever, and yet here she was now, a few years after a divorce she hadn’t seen coming and she felt…nothing.

  Was that how it would be with Sean one day? Would her feelings for him simply dry up and blow away like autumn leaves in a cold wind?

  “You look amazing,” Mike said, tightening his arm around her waist.

  She did and she knew it. Georgia had gone shopping for the occasion. Her dark red dress had long sleeves, a deep V neckline, and it flared out from the waist into a knee-length skirt that swirled when she moved.

  “Thanks,” she said, and glanced toward Sean, sitting alone at a table on the far side of the room. Then, willing to be generous, she added, “Misty makes a pretty bride.”

  “Yeah.” But Mike wasn’t looking at his new wife. Instead, he was staring at Georgia as if he’d never seen her before.

  He executed a fast turn and Georgia had to grab hold of his shoulder to keep from stumbling. He pulled her in even closer in response. When she tried to put a little space between them, she couldn’t quite manage it.

  “You’re engaged, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said, thumbing the band on her engagement ring. Sean had made quite the impression. Just as she’d hoped, he’d been charming, attentive and, in short, the perfect fiancé. “When we leave here, we’re flying home to Ireland.”

  “Can’t believe you’re gonna be living in a foreign country,” Mike said with a shake of his head. “I don’t remember you being the adventurous type at all.”

  “Adventurous?”

  “You know what I mean,” he continued, apparently not noticing that Georgia’s eyes were narrowed on him thoughtfully. “You were all about fixing up the house. Making dinner. Working in the yard. Just so—” he shrugged “—boring.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Come on, Georgia, admit it. You never wanted to try anything new or exciting. All you ever wanted to do was talk about having kids and—” He broke off and sighed. “You’re way more interesting now.”

  Was steam actually erupting from the top of her head? she wondered. Because it really felt like it. Georgia’s blood pressure was mounting with every passing second. She had been boring? Talking about having kids with your husband was boring?

  “So, because I was so uninteresting, that’s why you slipped out with Misty?” she asked, her voice spiking a little higher than she’d planned. “Are you actually trying to tell me it’s my fault you cheated on me?”

  “Jeez, you always were too defensive,” Mike said, and slid his hand down to her behind where he gave her a good squeeze.

  Georgia’s eyes went wild.

  * * *

  They made a good team.

  Sean had been thinking about little else for the past several days. All through the mess of closing up her home and arranging for its sale. Through the packing and the donations to charity and ending the life she’d once lived, they’d worked together.

  He was struck by how easy it was, being with her.

  Her clever mind kept him on his toes and her luscious body kept him on his knees. A perfect situation, Sean told himself as he sat at the wedding, drinking a beer, considering ways to keep Georgia in his life.

  Ever since she’d laid out her ideas to improve the look of his company jets, Sean had been intrigued by possibilities. They got along well. They were a good match. A team, as he’d thought only moments before.

  “And damned if I want to lose what we’ve found,” he muttered.

  The simplest way, he knew, was to make their engagement reality. To convince her to marry him—not for love, of course, because that was a nebulous thing after all. But because they fit so well. And the more he thought about it, the better it sounded.

  Hadn’t his cousin Ronan offered very nearly the same deal to his Laura? A marriage based on mutual need and respect. That had worked out, hadn’t it? Nodding to himself, he thought it a good plan. The challenge would be in convincing Georgia to agree with him.

  But he had time for that, didn’t he?

  Watching her here, at the wedding of her ex-husband, he was struck again by her courage. Her boldness in facing down those who had hurt her with style and enough attitude to let everyone in the room know that she’d moved on. Happily.

  The bride hadn’t expected Georgia to show up for the wedding. That had been clear enough when he and Georgia arrived. The stunned shock on the bride’s face mingled with the interest from the groom had been proof of that.

  Sean frowned to himself and had a sip of the beer sitting in front of him. He didn’t much care for the way Georgia’s ex-husband took every chance he had to leer at her. But he couldn’t blame the man for regretting letting Georgia go in favor of the empty-headed woman he’d now saddled himself with.

  Georgia was as a bottle of fine wine while the bride seemed more of a can of flat soda in comparison.

  The reception was being held at the clubhouse of a golf course. Late fall in Ohio was cold, and so the hall was closed up against the night, making the room damn near stifling.

  Crepe paper streamers sagged from the corners of the wall where the tape holding them in place was beginning to give. Balloons, as their helium drained away, began to dip and bob aimlessly, as if looking for a way out, and even the flowers in glass vases on every table were beginning to droop.

  People who weren’t dancing huddled together at tables or crowded what was left of the buffet. Sean was seated near the dance floor, watching Georgia slow dance in the arms of her ex, fighting the urge to go out there and snatch her away from the buffoon. He didn’t like the man’s hands on her. Didn’t like the way Mike bent his head to Georgia and whispered in her ear.

  Sean frowned as the music spilled from the speakers overhead and the groom pulled Georgia a bit too tightly against him. Something spiked inside Sean’s head and he tightened his grip on the beer bottle so that it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least to feel it shatter. Deliberately, he released his hold on the bottle, setting it down carefully on the table.

  Then Sean breathed slow and deep, and rubbed the heel of his hand against the center of his chest, unconsciously trying to rub away the hard, cold knot that seemed to have settled there. He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes when the groom’s hand slipped down to cup Georgia’s behind.

  Fury swamped his vision and dropped a red haze of anger over his mind. When Georgia struggled to pull free without success, something inside Sean simply snapped. The instinct to protect her roared into life and he went with it. His woman, mauled on a dance floor? He bloody well didn’t think so.

  Sean was halfway out of his chair when Georgia brought the sharp point of one of her high heels down onto the toe of the groom’s shoe. While Mike hopped about, whinging about being in pain, Misty ran to her beloved’s rescue, and Sean met Georgia halfway between the dance floor and the table.

  Her eyes were glinting with outrage, color was high in her cheeks and she’d never been more vividly beautiful to him. She’d saved herself, leaving him nothing to do with the barely repressed anger churning inside him.

  His woman, he thought again, and felt the truth of it right down to his bones. And even knowing that, he pulled away mentally from what that might mean. He wouldn’t look at it. Not now. Instead, he focused a hard look at the groom and his new bride, then shifted his gaze back to Georgia.

  “So then,” Sean asked, “ready to leave?”

  “Way past ready,” Georgia admitted and stalked by him to their table to pick up her wrap and her purse.

  He let her go, but was damned if he’d leave this place without making a few things clear to the man he’d like nothing better than to punch into the next week. Misty was clinging to Mike when Sean approached them,
but he didn’t even glance at the new bride. Instead, his gaze was for the groom, still hobbling unsteadily on one injured foot.

  Voice low, eyes hard, Sean said, “I’ll not beat a man on his wedding day, so you’re safe from me.”

  Insulted, Mike sputtered, “What the—”

  “But,” Sean continued, letting the protective instincts rising inside him take over, “you even so much as think of Georgia again, I’ll know of it. And you and I will have a word.”

  Misty’s mouth flapped open and shut like a baby bird’s. Mike flushed dark red, but his eyes showed him for the true coward he was, even before he nodded. Sean left them both standing there, thinking the two of them deserved each other.

  When he draped Georgia’s wrap about her shoulders, then slid one arm around her waist to escort her from the building, she looked up at him.

  “What did you say to him?”

  He glanced at her and gave her a quick smile to disguise the fury still pulsing within. “I thanked him for a lovely party and wished him a broken foot.”

  “I do like your style, Sean,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder.

  He kissed the top of her head and took the opportunity to take a long breath of her scent. Then he quipped, “I believe the American thing to say would be, ‘back atcha.’”

  With the sound of her laughter in his ears, Sean steered her outside to the waiting limousine, and ushered her inside.

  With a word to the driver, they were off for the airport so Sean could take his woman home to Ireland.

  Ten

  A few days later, Sean was standing in Ronan’s office in Galway, looking for a little encouragement. Apparently, though, he’d come to the wrong place.

  “You’re out of your mind,” Ronan said.

  “Well, don’t hold back, cousin,” Sean countered, pacing the confines of the office. It was big and plush but at the moment, it felt as if it were the size of a box. There was too much frustrated energy pumping through Sean’s brain to let him stand still, and walking in circles was getting him nowhere.

  He stopped at the wide window that offered a view of Galway city and the bay beyond. Out over the ocean, layers of dark clouds huddled at the horizon, no doubt bunched up over England but planning their immediate assault on Ireland. Winter was coming in like a mean bitch.