Studying his brother across the table from him, Brian shifted the talk from himself by asking suddenly, “So how’re you doing on the bet front?”
Connor choked on a swallow of beer and when he was finished coughing, he shook his head. “Man, it’s way uglier than I thought it was going to be.”
Brian laughed.
“Seriously,” Connor protested. “Getting to the point where I’m hiding from women completely.”
“I know what you mean,” Brian said, though for him, hiding had just gotten a lot harder. Staying away from women at work was easy. There weren’t that many female pilots or female personnel assigned to the F-18 squadrons. And those that were there made a point of avoiding the guys. Couldn’t blame them. They had to work twice as hard as the men just to be accepted and they weren’t going to blow a career by flirting with their fellow officers.
So work was safe and Brian had planned to hide out at home, staying away from the usual spots, bars, clubs and whatever, to avoid women in his off-duty hours. But now, home wasn’t a refuge. Instead, with Tina in town, home was the most dangerous territory of all.
“It’s only been two weeks,” Connor admitted, “and already, I’ve got way more respect for Liam.”
“I’m with you there,” Brian said.
“Talked to Aidan last night and he says he’s thinking about joining a monastery for three months.”
The thought of that was worth a chuckle. “At least he’s suffering, too.”
“Yeah.” Connor narrowed his eyes, nodded at the waiter, who stopped by to deliver their check, then said, “At least I get to take out my frustrations by screaming at the ‘boots’ every day.”
Brian smiled but couldn’t help feeling sorry for the new recruits under Connor’s charge in boot camp.
Then his brother spoke up again.
“Have you noticed the only one who’s not suffering is our brother the priest?” Clearly disgusted, Connor shook his head. “He’s just sitting back laughing at the three of us. How’d he talk us into this, anyway?”
“He let us talk ourselves into it. None of us could ever resist a challenge. Or a dare.”
“We’re that predictable?”
“To him anyway. Remember, priest or not,” Brian said, “he’s still the sneakiest of us.”
“Got that right.” Connor reached for his wallet and pulled out a couple of bills, tossing them onto the tabletop. “So, what’re you gonna do about Tina?”
“I’m gonna stay as far away from her as I can, that’s what.”
“That was never easy for you.”
Brian tossed his money down, too, then grumbled, “Didn’t say it was gonna be easy.”
Connor stood up, looked at his brother and gave him a smile. “We could try the old switcheroo trick. Since you have a hard time being around her, I could talk to her. Ask her to leave.”
Brian looked at him and slowly slid out of the booth. They hadn’t used the switcheroo since they were kids. The triplets were so identical, even their mother had sometimes had a hard time keeping them straight. So, the three of them had often used that confusion to their advantage, with one of them pretending to be the other in order to get out of something they didn’t want to do. They’d fooled teachers, coaches and even, on occasion, their own mother and father.
But, Brian reminded himself, as the idea began to appeal to him, Tina had always been able to tell them apart. They’d never once fooled her as they had so many others. Still, he thought, watching Connor smile and nod encouragingly, it had been years since she’d seen the three Reilly brothers together. Years since Tina and Brian were close enough that she’d been able to pick him out of a crowd of three with pure instinct.
“I’m willing if you want to give it a shot,” Connor prodded.
What did he have to lose? Brian asked himself. If Tina didn’t catch on to the trick, maybe she would leave, making Brian’s life a little easier. And if she did catch on…well, it had been a long time since he’d seen Tina Coretti’s temper.
And as he remembered it, she looked damn good when she was fighting mad.
Three
Tina heard Brian’s car when he returned to the house late that night and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Moving to the curtains of the upstairs bedroom that had been hers since she was a child, she peeked out to watch him walk up the driveway. When he paused long enough to snarl insults at the barking dogs, she smiled.
She’d been half worried that he might bolt. It would have been easy for him to up and move to the base for a few weeks just to avoid her. But he hadn’t. And she was pretty sure she knew why.
Brian would never admit that he wasn’t up to the challenge of seeing her every day. He’d never allow himself to acknowledge that there was anything to worry about.
He took the flight of steps to the garage apartment two at a time and her heartbeat quickened just watching him move. By the time he opened his door and went inside, without a glance at the house, her mouth was dry and her breath came in short fits and starts.
“Okay,” she muttered, “maybe I’m the one who should be worried.”
When the phone rang, she lunged for it gratefully. Sprawled across the hand-sewn quilt covering her double bed, Tina snatched at the “princess” style telephone and said, “Hello?”
“So, you’re there.”
“Janet.” Tina rolled over onto her back and stared up at the beamed ceiling. Smiling, she said, “Right back where I started, yep.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Oh yeah.”
“And…?”
Tina grabbed the twisted cord in one hand and wrapped the coils around her index finger as she talked. “And, he’s just like I remembered.” Actually, he was more than she remembered. More handsome. More irresistible. More aggravating.
“So you’re still set on this.”
Tina sighed. “Janet, we’ve been all through this. I don’t want to go to a sperm bank. Can you imagine that conversation with my child? ‘Yes, honey, of course you have a daddy. He’s number 3075. It’s a very nice number.’”
Janet laughed. “Fine. I’m just saying, it seems like you’re asking for trouble here. I’m worried.”
“And I appreciate it.” Tina smiled and let her gaze drift around her old bedroom. Nana hadn’t changed much over the years. There were still posters of Tahiti and London tacked to the walls, bookcases stuffed with books and treasures from her teenage years and furniture that had been in the Coretti family since the beginning of time.
There was comfort here.
And Tina was surprised to admit just how much she needed that comfort.
Though she’d been born and raised in this house, this town, she’d been gone a long time. And stepping into the past, however briefly, was just a little unnerving.
“But you want me to back off,” Janet said.
Tina heard the smile in her friend’s voice. “Yeah, I do.”
“Tony told me you’d say that,” Janet admitted, then shouted to her husband, “okay, okay. I owe you five dollars.”
Tina laughed and felt the knots in her stomach slowly unwinding. “I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I needed to hear a friendly voice,” Tina admitted. With Nana in Italy and Brian holed up in his cave, Tina had been feeling more alone than she had in a long time. “Even I didn’t know how much I needed it.”
“Happy to help,” Janet said. “Call me if you need to talk or cry or shout or…anything.”
“I will. And I’ll see you in three weeks.”
After her friend hung up, Tina sat up and folded her legs beneath her. She looked around her room and felt the past rise up all around her. She’d still been living in this room when she and Brian had started dating.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Back then, she was still working part-time at Diego’s, an upscale bar on the waterfront, and studying for her MBA during the day. Brian was a lieutenant, the pilot’s
wings pinned to his uniform still shiny and new. He’d walked into the bar one night, and just like the corniest of clichés, their eyes met, flames erupted and that was that.
In a rush of lust and love, they’d spent every minute together for the next month, then infuriated both of their families with a hurried elopement. But they’d been too crazy about each other to wait for the big, planned, fancy wedding their families would have wanted.
Instead, it was just the two of them, standing in front of a justice of the peace. Tina had carried a single rose that Brian had picked for her from the garden out in front of the courthouse. And she’d known, deep in her bones, that this man was her soul mate. The one man in the world that she’d been destined to love.
They’d had one year together. Then Brian dropped the divorce bomb on her and left the next morning for a six-month deployment to an aircraft carrier.
“So much for soul mates,” Tina whispered to the empty room as she left the memories in her dusty past where they belonged. Then she flopped back onto the bed, threw one arm across her eyes and tried to tell herself that the ache in her heart was just an echo of old pain.
The next day, Tina dived into work on her grandmother’s garden. Nana loved having flowers, but she wasn’t keen on weeding. She always claimed that it was because she had no trouble getting down onto the grass, but getting back up was tougher. But Tina knew the truth. Her grandmother just hated weeding. Always had.
The roses were droopy, the Gerbera daisies were being choked out by the dandelions and the pansies had given up the ghost. Tina knelt in the sun-warmed grass and let the summer heat bake into her skin as she leaned into the task.
Classic rock played on the stereo in the living room and drifted through the open windows to give her a solid beat to work to. The sounds of kids playing basketball and a dog’s frantic bark came from down the street. Muffin and Peaches watched Tina’s every move from behind the screen door and yipped excitedly whenever something interesting, like a butterfly, passed in their line of vision.
She’d already been at it for an hour when she straightened up, put her hands at the small of her back and stretched, easing the kinks out of muscles unused to gardening. In California, Tina lived in an apartment and made do with a few potted plants on the balcony overlooking Manhattan Beach. At home, she was always too busy working, or thinking about working, or planning to be working, to do anything else. And when had that happened? she asked herself. When had she lost her sense of balance? When had work become more important than living?
But she knew the answer.
It seemed as though everything in her life boiled back down to Brian. She’d buried herself in her ambition when he’d divorced her. As if by immersing herself in work she could forget about the loneliness haunting her. It hadn’t worked.
It felt good to be out in a yard again, she thought. Good to not be watching a clock or worrying about a lunch meeting. It was good just to be, even if the South Carolina humidity was thick enough to slice with a knife.
A thunderous, window rattling roar rose up out of nowhere suddenly and Tina tipped her head back in time to see an F-18 streak across the sky, leaving a long white trail behind it. Her heart swelled as it always did when she spotted a military jet. Every time, she imagined that Brian was the pilot. She’d always been proud of him and the job he did. There’d been fear, too, of course, but when you married a Marine, that was just part of the package.
She lifted one hand to shield her eyes as she followed the jet’s progress across the sky.
“Pretty sight,” a voice from behind her said, loud enough to be heard over the music still pouring from the house into the hot, summer air.
Tina sucked in a breath and slowly turned around to look up at him. She hadn’t heard him drive up. Hadn’t expected him to come back home in the middle of the day. In fact, she’d figured him for spending as much time away from the house as possible.
Yet, here he was.
Taller than most pilots, Brian used to complain about the cockpit of an F-18 being a tight fit. But she’d always liked the fact that he was so much taller than her. Unless she was on the ground having to tip her head all the way back just to meet his eyes. She stood up, brushing grass off her knees and then peeling the worn, stained, gardening gloves from her hands.
The sun shone directly into her eyes, silhouetting Brian, throwing his face into shadow. But she felt him watching her and knew that his gaze was locked on her. “What’d you say?” she finally asked, then remembered and said, “Oh. The jet. Yes, it is pretty.”
“Didn’t mean the jet, but, yeah,” he said, “it looked good, too.”
Tina felt a rush of warmth spin through her and told herself that a compliment from Brian meant nothing. Only that he was alive and breathing. He’d always been smooth. Always known just what to say. Known how to talk her down from a mad and how to talk her out of her panties.
Instantly, memories dazzled her body and the resulting warmth turned to heat and Tina had to fight to keep her knees from wobbling.
“Brian—“
“Tina—“
They started talking together, then each of them stopped and laughed shortly, uncomfortably. A twist of regret tightened in her chest as she acknowledged that discomfort. How had they come to this? she wondered. How had the passion, the love they’d once felt for each other dissolved into this awkward courtesy between strangers?
“You go first,” he said tightly.
Shaking her head, she said, “No, it’s okay. You go ahead.”
Nodding, he jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, rocked on his heels and shifted his gaze to one side briefly before slamming back into hers. “Tina, this isn’t easy for me, but…”
While he talked, Tina watched him. And as she watched, her brain, dazzled at first by his unexpected arrival, began to kick in. She noticed the way he held his head. The shrug of his shoulders. The way he stood and the way one corner of his mouth tilted up when he spoke. But it wasn’t just how he looked that was different. It was how he felt. Or rather, how he wasn’t making her feel. There was no buzz of electricity jumping up and down her spine. There was no hum of energy bristling between them. And no matter what else had passed between them, they’d always shared a combustible chemistry.
Whenever she was near Brian, the very air changed, and she felt that tingle right down to her toes.
Except, at the moment, she felt absolutely nothing.
As her brain calculated all of this information and more, Tina’s temper flared.
“…I know I don’t have the right to ask you to do anything,” he was saying.
She should call him on it now. He deserved it. Had to be Connor, she told herself. Aidan wouldn’t have tried it. In seconds, dozens of thoughts raced through her mind as she tried to decide how to handle the last of the Reilly triplets. When the solution finally dawned on her, she smiled.
So did he. “See? I knew you’d be reasonable. No sense in you staying here when it would just make it awkward for both of us.”
“Awkward?” she said on a deep, throaty purr. “Brian, honey, we know each other way too well to be awkward together.”
“Huh?” He looked confused.
Good. Tina chuckled gleefully inside, but on the outside, she gave him a sultry smile and stepped close enough to walk her fingers up his chest and then stroke his cheek. “I missed you, Brian,” she breathed and took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “I’m…lonely.”
She let that one word hover in the air between them and watched with some small sense of satisfaction as panic lit up Connor’s eyes just before he backed up a step. “Now, Tina, I don’t think you really mean that and—“
“Brian, baby,” she cooed, closing in on him with unerring instinct, “haven’t you missed me, too?”
“Uh, sure.” He looked around wildly for help that wasn’t coming.
Tina moved in even closer and reaching up, wrapped her arms around his neck and leane
d into him, pressing her breasts to his chest. He pulled his hands free of his pockets and tried to hold her away from him. But she’d felt the frantic beat of his heart and knew she’d gotten payback. “So, kiss me, Connor.”
“Kiss you—” he broke off and looked down into her eyes. “Connor?”
“You idiot.” She released him and took a step back while having the pleasure of watching him mentally trying to backtrack.
“Look, Tina…”
“Did you really think you could fool me?” she demanded hotly, all kidding aside.
“Whoa,” he said, swallowing hard and shaking his head. “Tina, I don’t know what you’re talking about—“
The temper she’d felt building a moment before leaped into pure rage, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to feel steam coming out of her ears. “Sure you do. But it looks like both you and Brian have forgotten a few things. See, I can tell you guys apart. Always could. Remember?”
He scraped one hand across his jaw, then shoved both hands into his pockets again. “Okay, it was a bad idea.”
“Bad idea?” She stared up at him in openmouthed fascination. “I don’t believe you guys. What? Are we in junior high? What were you supposed to do, Connor? Talk me into leaving so Brian wouldn’t have to face me again?”
A short bark of laughter shot from his throat as he pulled his hands free of his pockets and held them up in surrender. “Come on, Tina. It was just—“
“What?” she demanded, moving in on him, keeping pace as he backed up toward his—Brian’s—car parked in the driveway. “A joke?”
“No!” He scraped one hand across his jaw and stumbled over the hose that had been stretched out across the lawn. He recovered quickly, did a fast two-step and kept moving toward the safety of the car. “Brian just thought—I mean I just thought—“
Muffin and Peaches sent up a din of barks and frantic yelps that had Connor throwing an uneasy glance at the screen door.
The Tempting Mrs. Reilly Page 3
