by Lyn Stone
He nodded. “Are you convinced yet?”
Molly laughed. This made absolutely no sense. “So you can fit in anywhere, huh?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he admitted, drawling as if he were native to Nashville. “It’s a gift I use all the time. You want a French businessman? Maybe an Irish poet or a German stockbroker? You name it.” He grinned. “Sorry, I can’t be a jockey from the Bronx. Even I have limits.” He raked the backs of his fingers over his denim-clad thigh. “You like my duds?”
Smiling at his foolishness, she wandered over to the sofa and sat. With a shake of her head, she looked over at him and sighed. “Oh, Damien, what am I going to do with you? Regardless of what you might have heard, clothes do not make the man. Neither do speech patterns.”
He inclined his head with a knowing look. “My point, exactly. Is it the man inside that you object to?”
Molly thought about it. “In a way, yes.”
“Explain,” he demanded, defensive now, clearly not understanding. “Tell me what it is that you don’t like.”
She couldn’t be anything but honest with him. “Come here,” she said, patting the sofa beside her and waiting until he sat. She took his strong hands in hers. “Here’s what bothers me, Damien,” she said, wishing he wouldn’t caress the backs of her fingers with his thumbs the way he was doing. She cleared her throat and blinked. “And we’ve discussed this before. Remember, nothing in common?”
“Love of children. Fondness for coffee. Marvelous sex,” he reminded her with a wicked leer.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s not quite enough. What about—”
“Views on marriage,” he said succinctly, suddenly very serious. “I firmly believe in it, you’re not sure you do. A problem, but not insurmountable.”
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him. “I have nothing against marriage, Damien, but you—”
“Want to rush things,” he said, interrupting. “My impatience gets the best of me now and then. I’ll try to go slowly, but you have to understand—”
“You don’t want to get married!” she accused. “Not to me!”
“If not to you, then you’re correct. I would never want to. At the moment, I’d like you to think about an engagement. Take all the time you want.”
A laugh escaped her. “Think what you’re asking! You show up decked out like a good ol’ boy. And sounding like one. You admit you change like a chameleon. Is the Damien I think I know real, or another disguise? How am I supposed to figure out who you really are? Do you even know yourself?”
Those piercing blue eyes caught her gaze and held it fast. “I’m nobody unless I’m with you,” he said in a gravelly voice that was sincerity itself. “Until I met you I had no idea what was missing in my life or even that anything was. You make me want a life that’s not a succession of shadowy characters. You make me real.”
“Oh, Damien,” she said, barely breathing the words, unable to look away. She could see need and all the love anybody could ever want. She saw straight through to his soul and knew it was only because he let her. He trusted her that much. If she refused him, he would close up again and go back to that lonely life he hated. “All right,” she whispered, almost unaware that she had spoken. “Yes.”
He let go one of her hands, reached into his pocket and slid off the sofa to one knee. “Will you wear this until you can deal with making it permanent?”
Molly glanced down at what he held. “My God, Damien!” she exclaimed at the huge emerald cut diamond he held out. “It’s so big!”
“You don’t like it?” He pitched it over his shoulder. It clinked off the front of the television onto the carpet and bounced. “We’ll find one that’s right.”
Molly stared, unable to take her eyes off of it. The stone caught the sunlight from the window and glittered with promise. Damien had chosen that ring especially for her. And that business with the jeans, boots and the accent had convinced her. Outer trappings didn’t matter at all. Neither did their differences.
Then Molly looked at him. “I like it just fine,” she whispered, raising a hand to his face, loving the feel of him. She brushed a thumb over his lips. “I love big.” She sighed. “I love you.”
“You’ll marry me, then?” he asked, as if he wanted things perfectly clear. “Someday, whenever you’re ready?”
“Saturday,” she said with a nod.
He laughed and grabbed her, dragging her right off the sofa into his arms. Then he kissed her so thoroughly she could taste the desperate relief. Half of it was hers, she was sure.
His hands tangled in her hair, loosening the pins until it fell around his fingers. “I do love you,” he whispered when he finally let her up for air, “so much more than you know.”
Molly brushed his lips with hers and traced the lower one with her tongue. “Then you’d better show me,” she suggested.
“Here on the floor?” he asked with a devilish smile.
She reached out and yanked two large cushions off the sofa. “Here on the floor.”
Damien pulled her into his arms and kissed her so thoroughly, she never knew when he unbuttoned her jacket and brushed it off her shoulders. She hardly felt the slide of silk when he slipped her camisole over her head. Her palms flattened on the hard, hot muscles of his chest as he shrugged out of his shirt.
Then he reached for her bra.
“Molly!” a deep voice called, drawing out the last syllable of her name. “Hey, where are you, kid?”
She shoved Damien away. “Oh, God! It’s Ford!”
Before she could locate her camisole, he was standing in the doorway of the den, eyes flared with shock. “Molly?” Then the eyes narrowed. The fists clenched. He started forward. “Perry? What the hell—”
Damien gained his feet before Ford reached him. He caught Ford’s fist in one palm, grabbed a wrist with the other and had her brother on his knees before Molly could protest. “Wait!” she squealed. “Damien! Ford! Stop this, you hear me?”
Ford rolled, catching Damien’s arm in a scissor lock, one shoe braced against his chin. He broke the hold.
Molly threw herself between them, her back to Damien, her hands against Ford’s chest, pushing. She squinted up at him. “Don’t make me hurt you, Ford!”
He backed off, breathing like a bellows, his teeth gritted. His chin jutted toward Damien. “What’s he doing here?”
“You have to ask?” she shouted. “What are you doing here?”
“We got home this morning.” He threw up his hands and began to pace. “I dropped Mary off at Mama’s and came to see if I could give you a hand here.”
Ford shot her an accusing look. “And what do I find when I finally get here? You making out with this…this…you don’t know this guy, Moll. He’s—”
“About to marry your sister,” Damien offered without the slightest hint of apology.
Ford’s eyebrows shot up. He looked at her. “That’s not true?”
“Yes, engaged,” Damien answered before she could. He reached down, picked the diamond up off the floor, snatched her left hand and slid the ring onto her finger. “Officially.”
“No way,” Ford said, his head moving from side to side. “Not to my sister, you’re not!” He picked up her jacket and threw it at her. “Put that damn thing on!”
Molly clutched the blazer and gave him a playful shove, but he didn’t budge. “Don’t be a pill, Ford. He’s your friend! What’s your objection, anyway?”
“He’s not a friend,” Ford told her, his menacing gaze pinned on Damien. “If he told you that, he’s a damned liar. I hardly know the man. Not well enough for him to be undressing my sister! We got shot together, that’s all! But I know enough about what he does, Moll. He sheds skins like a snake. You might think you know him, but tomorrow he could be—”
“The French businessman,” she declared with a clap of her hands and a suggestive wink. She leaned forward, lowered her voice and poked him in the stomach with her finger. “But nob
ody spreads the blarney like my Irish bartender. How ’bout a beer, bro? Celebrate with us?”
Ford struggled with his temper, stuffed his hands into his pockets and swung his glare from her to Damien and back. “We’ll see what Mama has to say about this.”
Molly laughed. “Tattletale! I’ll have you know Mama loves him. She thinks he’s James Bond! Now, it’s great you’re home, Ford, but don’t you have somewhere else to be? Go get Mary, Mama and Syd. We’ll be out to your place in an hour, okay?”
With a parting grimace at Damien, Ford turned to leave. Just he reached the door, Damien suggested, “Make that an hour and a half.”
Ford halted for a second, then groaned and left.
Molly waited until the door closed, then cut her gaze toward her intended. “You’re not friends.”
“Obviously,” Damien admitted, sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly, his expression hardly changing. “This was what I was most worried about from the beginning, Molly. That I would never fit in with your family,” he confided.
“Not fit in?” She laughed and plopped down onto one of the cushions. She tugged on his hand until he joined her on the floor. “Ford’s gonna love having you around once he gets used to the idea. I bet he likes you a lot already.”
“Excuse me for not noticing,” Damien said with a snort. He reached up and rubbed his neck where Ford had stretched it with his foot. “Are you sure I won’t be coming between you and your family, Molly?”
“You’ll be as welcome as Mary was,” she promised. “But I have to ask you this, Damien. If you really didn’t know Ford all that well, why would you come when I asked you to? Why did you do all you did for us? The only reason I contacted you was because I thought you might do it for Ford, because I was his sister.”
“It was your laugh, I think. Those freckles on your nose. The fire in your curls.” He shrugged one bare shoulder. “And perhaps that photo of Sydney with the garter on her head.”
Molly cleared her throat. She tried to look away, to break the connection. Somehow she couldn’t. “That’s it?”
He smiled then, surely sensing he was home free. “It seemed quite enough at the time. I really needed to see you again.”
She pursed her lips and tilted her head, still held fast by those azure eyes. “You always say the right thing, I’ll give you that.”
“Not every time,” he admitted wryly. “For instance, I have no earthly idea what I should say at the moment. But I’d like to say again that I love you more than anything.”
“Well, if you plan to nail down the local pronunciation on that phrase, hon,” Molly said slyly, “then you’re not holding your mouth quite right.”
“No?” he asked, apparently waiting for her to make the first move. “And how would you suggest I hold it, darling?”
She moved closer and slid her arms around his waist. “Against mine would be a real good start.”
“I’m an exceptionally quick study,” he promised, nipping her lips with his, tasting her, bringing her right back to where they were when Ford interrupted.
Molly shifted sensuously against him. “You don’t really have to be all that quick. We have a whole hour and a half.”
Epilogue
Damien smiled as Molly lifted her flute of champagne high above her head. The wine matched her dress of Venetian lace over satin. With that mass of coppery hair caught up in pearl clips, she was the picture of elegance. Lifting a fork in her other hand, she tapped an empty glass that sat on a nearby table. The ring of crystal silenced the laughter and conversation around them. What was she up to now?
“Fill your glasses! One more toast!” she called. “To the groom!”
“Bottoms up?” teased Winton, who was slightly tipsy. A round of laughs and applause greeted that. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, Damien thought. Even the usually dour Michael Duvek spared a few smiles for Agent Kim Avery. That looked promising.
Only Brenda, Sydney, Ford, Mary and Winton had accompanied Molly and him to the courthouse for the brief civil ceremony, but there were nearly a hundred in attendance at the grand reception that Ford and Mary had offered to hold at her ancestral home outside Nashville.
Damien had spared no expense on the food, decorations and orchestra for this affair when he found that Molly only wanted a private wedding. A bride and her family should have fond memories of her special day.
Damien knew almost none of the guests well, other than Mitch Winton, who had agreed to act as best man. For the first time in decades, he felt unaccountably shy. He supposed that was due to the fact that tonight he was not masquerading as anyone else for a change. It seemed strange, just being himself, not hiding behind a fake persona for the purpose of gathering evidence.
To his surprise, most people seemed to like him well enough just as he was. Ford had forgiven him for appropriating Molly, though he still had a few reservations. Mary welcomed him as though he were the brother she’d never had. And, as usual, Brenda alternated between treating him as the only other adult present and chiding him as if he were a child of six. All of them were affectionate, fractious, impulsive and wonderful. Someday he meant to fit into this family. Fortunately, Molly loved him already, and that was more than he’d ever hoped for before.
“To my husband, Damien,” Molly said to everyone assembled. “The man I love with all my heart, the future father of my daughter and, God willing, her brothers and sisters!” She grinned at him and pinched his cheek. “Lawyers don’t blush, honey. They get in the last word!”
Noisy calls of “Hear! Hear!” echoed around the ballroom as everyone saluted with their champagne and drank the toast to him.
Damien took Molly’s glass after she’d sipped and raised it again. “To the elegant and endearing Marian Olivia, who is and always will be my darling Molly. ‘If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.’”
He watched as she pressed her fingers to her lips and stifled a giggle. Poetry did that to her, he remembered with a grin. But there were tears in her eyes all the same. “I love you, Molly Perry,” he said, and drank to her. Then took her hand, kissed it and then her lips.
“Did you mean that?” he asked her a few moments later when the party resumed and they were dancing. “About…other children? We’ve never discussed it.”
“Oh, yes!” she assured him, giving his shoulder a little shake for emphasis. “Don’t you want more? I do produce beautiful geniuses, you know. Or is that geniui?” She shrugged. “Well, pretty smart kids, anyway. Hey, look at Syd if you doubt it!”
He looked. Brenda was whirling to a waltz with the baby’s arms latched around her neck. Damien was amazed at how gorgeous Sydney had grown in the few short weeks he had known her. Pink ruffles became her very well in spite of the red hair. That lovely little girl would be his daughter now, for real when the adoption was complete. A father. Who would have thought it?
Molly had just promised him a whole family of children. At that moment, he knew that despite all she had been through, all the reasons she had to mistrust men for the rest of her life, Molly trusted him completely.
She was smiling up at him when he looked at her again. “You belong now, Damien,” she said softly.
He was unable to speak for a moment as they danced. Holding her close, feeling her move with him as though they were made for each other. And knew it was true.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0691-5
LIVE-IN LOVER
Copyright © 2001 by Lynda Stone
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