The Tempting Mrs. Reilly

by Maureen Child

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tina said and fought the rising pain within. No point in worrying her grandmother. There’d be plenty of time for tears, for regrets, once she got home.

  “Of course it matters,” Angelina snapped. “It’s the only thing that does matter. I thought you knew better than that.”

  Tina smiled grimly. “Even if I do know better, Brian doesn’t. And I can’t make a marriage all on my own, Nana.”

  “You’re both too stubborn, you know.” Angelina huffed out a disgusted breath.

  “That’s what Maggie said yesterday.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “I’ll miss you,” Tina said, turning her hand over so she could link fingers with her grandmother.

  “Oh, honey, I’ll miss you, too.” Angelina turned slightly on the bed. “Why don’t you stay?” she urged. “Don’t give up so easily. Stay here where you belong. This is your home, Tina.”

  Home.

  She was right. Baywater was home. Here, there was Nana and Maggie and Liam and the slower lifestyle Tina’d forgotten how much she loved. Here there were warm breezes and magnolia trees and the scent of jasmine flavoring every breath. Here, there were neighbors and the streets she’d grown up on. There were people who knew her, loved her.

  Here, there was Brian.

  And that’s why she couldn’t stay.

  Everything she’d come home for was gone. The hope for a baby, the yearning for Brian. It had all dissolved like a piece of sugar in the rain. Her wishes, her dreams, were puddled around her.

  She needed to get away—she wouldn’t think of it as running—from the death of those hopes. She needed to see everything that had happened recently more clearly. And for that she needed distance.

  Three thousand miles might be enough.

  “I can’t,” Tina said and heard the regret in her own voice. “I hope you understand, Nana. But even if you don’t, I have to go.”

  Her grandmother sighed, gave Tina’s hand another pat, then stood up and laid a pair of pale green shorts on top of the clothes in the suitcase. “I understand, honey. Wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  Nodding, Angelina shot her a look from the corner of her eye. “Are you going to at least say goodbye to Brian?”

  “No.” Tina stood up, too, and reached for another shirt to throw into the bag.

  “Too scared?”

  She sighed. “Too tired.”

  Brian left the base early, but he didn’t go home.

  He still wasn’t ready yet to face Tina.

  If that was cowardly, then he’d have to suck it up.

  Instead, he went to the Lighthouse to meet his brothers. Now, he was trying to remember why it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “You’re letting her go, again?” Connor snorted, leaned back in the booth and took a long swig of his beer.

  “I’m not letting her do anything,” Brian pointed out in his own defense. “Tina goes where she wants, does what she wants.”

  “Uh-huh,” Aidan said with a smirk at Connor. “And she’s leaving because…?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Brian countered, but he did know. He knew all too well why Tina was leaving. Because there was no baby. No future. With him. And that was a good thing. She was better off without him. And God knew, they were better off without having made a child they’d have to figure out a long-distance way to share.

  He rubbed the center of his chest when the ache came again. He was almost used to the nagging pain now. It came whenever he remembered that there was no baby. That Tina was leaving. That he’d never see her again once Angelina came home.

  Scowling, he told himself that he’d gotten used to Tina’s absence five years ago, he’d get used to it again. With that thought in mind, he signaled the waitress for another beer.

  “You do know though, don’t you, Brian?” Liam asked, jabbing him in the ribs with an elbow.

  Turning that fierce frown on his brother, he snapped, “If you’re looking for a confession here, I suggest you head back to your flock.”

  “Ooh,” Connor said, grinning. “Touchy.”

  “Pitiful,” Aidan said. “Just pitiful. Man can’t even admit it to himself.”

  “Admit what?” Brian thanked the waitress for the fresh, icy cold beer she’d brought him and took a long pull at it. Life would have been much simpler, he thought briefly, if he’d been an only child.

  “That you love her, you moron,” Liam said softly.

  Brian’s breath hitched in his chest and it felt as though a cold hand were fisting around his heart. Love. What was it about that one little word that could bring a man to his knees? What was it that made a man so reluctant to look at that word honestly? Objectively?

  His gaze shifted around the restaurant. He took it all in. The same, familiar faces that he usually saw there at this time of day. The same families. The same children, turning to their parents. The same couples, huddled together in booths, sharing whispered conversations and unspoken promises.

  And it suddenly hit him that there wasn’t a damn thing objective about love.

  You either felt it or you didn’t.

  Wanted it or ran from it.

  Appreciated it or threw it away.

  Damn it.

  Brian slid a glance at his older brother. “You know, I’m getting really tired of you calling me names.”

  “Then stop being stupid.”

  “Do they teach you those comforting little sayings in the seminary?” Brian wondered aloud.

  “Shut up,” Connor said and snickered when Brian sent him a you-are-dead-meat glare. “If you think you worry me, you’re wrong.”

  “Why am I here?” Brian asked no one in particular.

  “Because you’re too dumb to admit you’d rather be with Tina,” Connor said.

  “You already lost the bet, Bri.” Aidan picked a tortilla chip out of the basket in the middle of the table and crunched down on it. “What’s holding you back?”

  “This is not about the bet.”

  “Then what?” Liam prodded.

  “It’s about being fair,” Brian argued.

  “To who?” Connor demanded.

  “To Tina.” Brian leaned in over the table, and swept his gaze across his brothers’ faces, one after the other. “Being a Marine wife is hard. Harder than any other job out there and you guys know it.”

  “What’s your point?” Aidan asked.

  “I want Tina to have better,” Brian snapped. “She deserves better.”

  “Better than loving and being loved?” Liam asked.

  Brian slumped back against the booth seat and cradled his beer between his palms. Shaking his head, he muttered stubbornly, “She deserves better.”

  Connor snorted.

  Aidan opened his mouth to speak.

  Liam held up one hand to silence him and then looked at Brian. “She deserves the chance to decide for herself,” he said quietly. “She deserves to have the man she loves respect her enough to give her a choice.”

  “You don’t underst—“

  Liam cut him off. “She knew when she married you that you were a Marine. She grew up in a military town. She knows what being a military wife means. And she chose to love you. To marry you.”

  Brian heard the words and let them sink in. As he did, he felt a flicker of light shimmer in the darkness within and hope bubbled up inside him. Images of Tina raced through his mind, one after the other. Her eyes flashing, her mouth curving, her arms encircling him. He heard her laugh again, felt the soft sigh of her breath on his cheek and relived the sensation of her turning to him in her sleep.

  And he knew.

  Damn it, he’d always known.

  Hard or not, life wasn’t worth living without her.

  “I gotta go,” he muttered, reaching for his wallet and tearing a couple of bills out. He tossed them onto the table and slid out of the booth. Staring down at his brothers, he gave them a quick grin and said, “Gotta ta
lk to Tina.”

  “Better hurry,” Connor said, lifting his beer in a half-assed salute.

  “Yeah,” Aidan added, “before she remembers what a jerk you are.”

  As Brian darted between the crowded tables, the three remaining Reilly brothers clinked their beer bottles together and smiled.

  Three days back in California and Tina knew what she had to do. Actually, to be honest, she’d known before she flew back to the land of perpetual sun and smog.

  But she’d had to come here to be positive.

  Now she was.

  Smiling to herself, she shuffled the papers on her desk, straightened them up and set them in the file marked “urgent.” Janet would take care of it all. She knew Tina’s cases as well as or better than she did herself.

  Everything would be fine.

  And now, so would she.

  “Are you sure about this?” Janet rubbed her swollen belly as if rubbing a good luck charm. “I mean, you just got back, maybe you should take more time and—“

  Tina shot her a quick grin and shook her head. She would miss Janet, but they’d keep in touch. Telephone calls, e-mail, visits, somehow, someway, they’d do it.

  “Trust me on this,” Tina said. “I’ve already had five years. I’ve thought this through and it’s what I have to do.”

  Janet sighed. “Okay, but it’s not going to be the same around here without you.”

  “Thanks.” Tina came around her cluttered desk and hugged her friend tightly. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  Brian hated L.A.

  Always had.

  He’d been stationed at Pendleton for a couple of years once and the crowds had chewed at him. Just too damn many people. And they all seemed to be on the freeway at the same time.

  While he sat in traffic, his brain kicked into high gear, as if trying to make up for the standstill by revving at top speed.

  He’d left the restaurant, determined to talk to Tina. To apologize. To do whatever he had to do to make her listen. To make her know that he loved her. Always had. Always would. He’d finally gotten it through his thick head that love wasn’t something fragile to be protected. It was something strong, something to lean on when things got rough. And there was nobody stronger than Tina.

  He’d just been so determined to take care of her, that he hadn’t realized that a marriage was about taking care of each other.

  But when he got home, he’d found Angelina, back from Italy and just mad enough at him to tell him that Tina had left for L.A.

  Gone.

  Just like that.

  With no word.

  No warning.

  But then, he hadn’t really deserved one, had he? he thought now. Remembering the blind panic that had shot through him, he nearly strangled on it. He’d tried to catch her at the airport but her flight had already left by the time he got there.

  He could have called her, but he knew that what he had to say couldn’t be said on a phone. He had to be standing in front of her, so she could see his eyes, so he could reach out for her and hold on if she decided to make this harder than it had to be.

  So, he’d spent the next two days wangling a brief leave and then talking his way onto a transport plane headed to Camp Pendleton. Now, his rental car was overheating and he was stuck in traffic next to a teenager in a black truck with a stereo system loud enough to reach Mars.

  And all he could think was, he hoped he hadn’t waited too long. Hoped he wasn’t too late.

  Tina looked around her office, exhaled deeply and smiled to herself. Finished. It was done and she was ready.

  More than ready, she told herself, she was anxious to get started.

  “Tina!”

  She jolted and spun around, one hand reaching for the base of her throat. “Brian?”

  “Damn it,” he shouted again, his voice carrying from the main office with no trouble at all, “I’m here to see Tina Coretti, and I’m not leaving until I do.”

  Heart pounding, brain reeling, Tina hurried through the open doorway leading from her office to the real estate business’s main room. She spotted him easily. A tall, gorgeous, totally built Marine, surrounded by men who suddenly looked much smaller in comparison, was hard to miss.

  He saw her instantly and his features shifted from angry frustration to desperation. “Tina, tell these yahoos who I am.”

  “It’s okay,” she called out and ignored the questioning looks being tossed her way. “He’s my ex-husband.”

  Brian pushed through the rest of the people standing between him and Tina and headed for her.

  “Oh, wow,” Janet said from directly beside her and Tina was forced to agree.

  Brian in uniform was something to see. His chest was broad and the medals pinned to his left breast glittered in the sunlight streaming through the bank of floor to ceiling windows. His blue eyes were focused on Tina and his jaw was locked tight.

  He stopped just a foot from her and took a long deep breath before blurting, “You left without telling me.”

  “What?” she asked and nearly shook her head as if to clear it.

  “You heard me,” he said and his voice boomed out around them. “I went to Angelina’s to talk to you and you were gone.”

  “You knew I wasn’t staying,” she said and shot a quick look at the interested faces turned toward them.

  “Yeah.” He shoved one hand along the side of his head then let his hand drop. “But I want you to stay.”

  “Brian—“

  “I came to take you home,” he said, not letting her get more than that one word out.

  Tina felt the earth shift beneath her and decided she liked it. “You did?”

  “I can’t live without you, Tina. Not anymore. Not one more day.” He reached for her, dropping both hands onto her shoulders and squeezing, as if holding her in place should she decide to make a run for it.

  But Tina wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You can’t?” she asked, wanting to hear it all. Hear everything she’d waited five long years for.

  “I thought I was doing the right thing before,” he said and at last his voice dropped until it was as if just the two of them were in the room. “When I let you go. Being a Marine wife is hard. A tough job not everyone can do.”

  “I could have,” she said, needing him to know that he’d made a mistake.

  “I know that now,” he agreed. “You’re plenty tough enough,” he added, then lifted one hand to stroke her cheek. “Tougher than me, because you were able to leave and I couldn’t let you.”

  Tears rushed up from her heart, filled her throat and blurred her eyes. “Not so tough,” she said, catching his hand with hers and holding on. “It killed me to leave.”

  “Then come home,” he said, softer now, more intimately. “Come home with me, Tina. Love me. Let me love you. I’ve always loved you, Tina. Always will love you.”

  “Brian…”

  He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her until all Tina could feel was him. His heart pounded and she felt the thud of it echo inside her.

  “Make babies with me, Tina,” he whispered, his breath a hush on her ear. “Make lots of babies with me.”

  Joy rippled through her, one wave after another, like circles on the surface of a lake after a pebble had been tossed in. She held on to him, holding him as tightly as she could and whispered for him alone. “I love you, Brian Reilly. Always have. Always will. I was always proud to be a Marine wife. And even prouder to be your wife.”

  Relief crashed through him like storm surf and left his legs shaky. Brian had never felt better in his life. Pulling her back so that he could look into her beautiful, teary eyes, he said, “So then. How fast do you think we can move you back to South Carolina?”

  “Does tomorrow work for you?”

  Stunned, Brian just stared at her. “Huh?”

  Laughing, Tina grabbed his hand and ignoring everyone else, dragged him down the short hall to her office and closed the door behind them. Then she flun
g herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and grinning up into his face.

  “I sold my half of the business to my partner,” she said. “Movers are coming tomorrow to pack up my stuff.”

  “You—but—how—” He sounded like an idiot and he was so damn happy, he didn’t care.

  Shaking her head, Tina leaned in and planted a long, deep kiss on him before pulling back again. “I decided two days ago that I couldn’t stay here—that I couldn’t live without you.”

  His arms tightened around her and his heart gave a lurch that jolted him.

  “I was going home to you, you big dummy,” Tina said, smiling. “To make you love me. To make you see that we belong together.”

  “Baby,” he said, pausing for another soul-searing kiss, “I’m convinced.”

  And when they finally came up for air again, Brian gave her a tight squeeze and warned, “You realize you’re marrying a man who’s going to have to be seen in a hula skirt and a coconut bra.”

  “I’ll bring a camera,” she said on a teary laugh.

  “And I’ll even pose for you,” Brian told her, “because I’ve never been happier about losing a bet.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6802-3

  THE TEMPTING MRS. REILLY

  Copyright © 2005 by Maureen Child

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.