The Brooding Stranger

by Maggie Cox

  ‘You’d better go get me that towel, Miss Ford, before I succumb to a temptation that it’s becoming increasingly painful to resist.’ He let go of her arm with a scowl as her brows knit in confusion.

  ‘Why? Does that worry you?’

  ‘You’re not like any of the other women I’ve known.’ His face contorted in a flash of anger. ‘You’re basically a very decent, loving woman, Karen. You need a man who’s the same. Not some dark-souled outsider like me. I’m afraid if I touch you I might never want to stop—and then where would we be? ‘

  His lips twisted in a mocking little smile that caused Karen untold agony, and because she couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would persuade him differently, she scooted past him and fled into the bathroom. As she selected a fluffy white towel from the airing cupboard, she pressed it close to her cheek for a moment. Staring into the square wooden-framed mirror above the sink, she saw with a shock the physical effect Gray O’Connell was having on her.

  Her blue eyes were dilated and sparkling, and there was a hectic flush to her skin that made it appear as if she’d just stumbled out of bed after a night of pure, unrestrained passion. Had she ever looked like that after a night with Ryan? Of course she must have! She’d just never noticed it, that was all. Skimming her hand along the side of her cheek, Karen discovered her skin was as hot to the touch as it appeared. She was all but burning up. Even her pulse was still racing. And all because of her shocking attraction to her infuriating landlord.

  Frustration and anger throbbed simultaneously through her, and she wished again that she possessed some of the necessary sophistication that would help her be more appealing to the man she desired. If only she didn’t look younger than her age. If only she could beguile him with wit and warmth and irresistible charm. If only she didn’t have her heart in her eyes every time she so much as glanced at him.

  Clutching the towel to her chest, she opened the door of the tiny narrow bathroom, with its old-fashioned claw-footed bath, and returned to the kitchen.

  Gray was leaning against the door jamb where she had left him, his handsome face preoccupied. Handing him the towel, Karen slid past him without a backwards glance. She saw straight away that he’d turned off the kettle and moved it to a back burner on the cooker, and she tried not to mind that he wouldn’t stay for coffee if she asked. It was obvious that he was eager to get out of there as soon as possible, and she bit her lip to stifle the tears that kept threatening. She was determined to keep them at bay at least until he’d gone. To distract herself, she selected half a dozen scones from the wire rack where they’d been left to cool and popped them into a plastic sandwich bag. She held them out to Gray with an uncertain little smile and prayed she looked more composed than she felt. Yes, she desired Gray O’Connell, but she didn’t want to make herself totally vulnerable to him. Only a fool would do that.

  He stopped drying his hair with the towel and stared at her.

  ‘I thought you might like to take some of my baking home,’ she said softly.

  When he made no move to take the scones, but continued to examine her with an expression she was beyond explaining right then, Karen shrugged her shoulders and put the bag on the worktop.

  ‘Even if you don’t want them, maybe Chase might like them? I’ve made too many and they don’t keep.’

  ‘One kiss,’ he said hoarsely, and threw the towel on the worktop.

  Startled, Karen was still gathering her wits as he stepped towards her and hauled her roughly up against his chest. The sensation of heat and damp from his sweater enveloped her, even as the wild fresh scent of the sea and the Atlantic air invaded her senses so profoundly that she suddenly felt dizzy as well as exhilarated. As Gray bent his head to kiss her she didn’t have even the remotest inclination to protest. Instead, her lips parted easily as his mouth lowered with unstoppable urgency and took hungry, greedy possession of hers.

  She tasted heat, heartache and desire, all wrapped up in one intense compelling package, as he plundered and took what she so willingly gave, his tongue dipping in and out of her velvet softness like a man possessed, the faint stubble on his angled jaw scraping her chin as his hands slid down to her bottom and impelled her hips hard into his own. Shaking with need, Karen kissed him back with soft little moans that seemed to leave her throat without her realisation. She was near mindless with wanting, and she no longer wished for sophistication—simply ached in every muscle and limb for the fire they had stoked between them to be sated.

  Then, as suddenly and abruptly as he had pulled her into his arms, Gray released her, his hands gripping her by her shoulders to hold her away from him. The next instant he abruptly let her go and, dazed, Karen stumbled, hitting her lower back against the worktop. She stared at him as pain and humiliation hazed her eyes, her lips still throbbing from his hungry kisses, her body languid with the desire he’d stoked, and at an utter loss to know what to do or say.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He voiced his concern almost grudgingly, as if he couldn’t wait to be gone.

  Karen suddenly wanted him gone, too. Now she understood why hate and love were so closely intertwined.

  ‘Why should you care?’ she tried, but was unable to prevent the sob that accompanied her words.

  ‘I do care, damn you!’

  Shaking her head, Karen blinked up at him through eyes that were helplessly brimming with tears. ‘No, you don’t. Just go. Please … just go.’

  His lips pressed grimly together, Gray turned and did just as she asked …

  * * *

  Wiping his palette knife clean of the worst excesses of paint, Gray laid it carefully down beside the black metal box of paints. The sun filtered in through the huge uncurtained window, pouring light onto the picture fastened to his easel. The rough sketch was of a woman with long rippling gold hair and almond-shaped blue eyes that gazed back at him with hurt as well as temptation in their depths. Karen.

  He hadn’t been able to think about anything else since he’d left her crying in the kitchen of his father’s old cottage. That had been two weeks ago. He’d made no attempt to get in touch in all that time. He wondered what she’d been doing. He hadn’t seen her on the beach or in the woods—not that she would have welcomed bumping into him. She’d probably chalked him up to bitter experience by now. It was nothing less than he deserved, but still a pain twisted through his guts, making him scowl.

  Cursing out loud, he raked his fingers through his already mussed black hair, then reached out to tear the rough portrait from the easel. In spite of himself his fingertips lingered on the likeness he had created, smoothing down the soft curve of the feminine cheekbone he had captured only too well, despite having to work from memory only. But there it was. Karen’s face was indelibly printed on Gray’s mind like a photograph he couldn’t erase.

  The door of his studio creaked open just then, and Chase padded hopefully across the bare wooden floor and nudged his head into Gray’s side. His master glanced down distractedly at the huge dog, absent-mindedly stroking the impressive fawn head.

  ‘Give me half an hour, hmm? Then I’ll take you for your walk.’

  As if understanding perfectly, Chase turned round, loped back across the floor and went out through the door.

  Replacing the unfinished sketch of Karen on the easel, Gray exited the large sunlit room that was bereft of heating or adornment of any kind, except for the haphazard stacks of paintings propped up against two of the walls. Without realising why, he found himself hurrying downstairs to the first-floor landing.

  In the middle of the largest bedroom in the house was a beautiful handcrafted bed, with a plain navy blue throw flung across the duvet. Apart from the sensually coloured Moroccan rug on the floor next to the bed, there was one large chest of drawers in reclaimed pine, and two cherrywood bedside cabinets, but that was it as far as furnishings and fittings went. No curtains or blinds hung at the windows, and right now, as the sunlight hit the bare wooden boards of the floor, highlighting the du
st-motes dancing in its beam, the room appeared almost stark in its emptiness. But Gray paid no mind to that. Stalking across the floor, he pulled open one of the drawers in the pine chest and took out a faded brown envelope.

  Dropping down onto the huge bed, he shook out the contents onto the navy blue throw. Three photographs lay face upwards on the bed. He picked up the first one that caught his eye and held it up to examine it more closely. It was Maura, with her pale blonde hair and laughing green eyes. They’d started an affair when Gray was working in London, and she’d stubbornly followed him back to Ireland—even though he’d tried to end it between them—and somehow moved in. He’d been glad of her company then. She’d been with him when Paddy had died and things had been pretty bleak. Just knowing someone else was in the house had helped, because he’d ultimately been terrified of facing himself. Now he wondered how she’d stuck it. If Gray had been morose before, he’d been worse after the tragedy of his father’s death.

  For six months after it had happened he’d become a virtual recluse. He’d never meant for that to happen. Somehow he’d withdrawn so far into himself that he’d known he wasn’t fit company for anyone—let alone a bright, vivacious woman with a bold laugh and a love of life he couldn’t possibly begin to emulate. So he’d lock himself in his studio, where he would paint into the early hours until he was grey-faced and frozen, only leaving the room to use the bathroom or grab a bite to eat. He hadn’t cared what—it might as well have been cardboard for all he’d been able to taste of it. He had grown numb to everything. His heart, his mind, his senses had all been frozen.

  Maura had been more or less left to her own devices—but she was a resourceful woman, who’d forged a successful career in the still mainly male-dominated world of investment banking, so she wasn’t exactly short of determination or grit.

  Surprisingly, she had made herself a life of sorts in Gray’s once fashionable, still beautiful old house, and had started to interest herself in restoring it to its former glory. In the process she had involved herself in the life of the community—making friends with shopkeepers, publicans and neighbours alike—and had generally been well thought of. Until her less than discreet dalliances with some of the local lads had come under scrutiny, that was. Gray had eventually got wind of the gossip that was circulating like wildfire in the small close-knit community, but he hadn’t actually cared very much. Not then. He’d reacted by immersing himself even further in his painting, and when on occasion he’d found himself in need of some intimate companionship Maura had still been a willing and enthusiastic lover.

  He shook his head now at how crazy things had got. How low, how dark, how plain bloody miserable.

  When Mike Hogan, his best friend from university, had shown up out of the blue, begging a bed for a week or so before he jetted off to Canada and a new job, Maura had immediately set her sights on him. And who could have blamed her? Mike was pleasant-looking, witty, intelligent—and, more to the point, a far more sociable creature than Gray could ever hope to be. Within a couple of days of setting eyes on each other the pair had been making plans to leave together.

  ‘You’re welcome to each other,’ Gray muttered darkly, then tore the photograph cleanly straight down the middle and dropped the two glossy halves carelessly on the bed—something he should have done a long time ago.

  The second photograph was an old black-and-white print of his mother, and his heart lurched as he studied it.

  A pretty woman, she was smiling tenderly down at the dark-haired baby she held in her arms as if he were her sun, her moon, her stars. It was himself as a baby. Only Gray thought if she had really loved him that much, why had she chosen to end her life and leave him when he was only three? He’d never found out the truth about why she’d committed suicide. Paddy had kept stubbornly silent about Niamh O’Connell’s reasons for doing such a shocking thing, and in his heart Gray had started to blame him for her death. It had tainted their already poor relationship.

  Swallowing down the painful swell inside his throat, Gray put the photograph carefully back into the envelope.

  The last print was a colour photograph of Paddy himself. It had been taken on a jaunt with some locals by none other than Eileen Kennedy, the shopkeeper-cum-postmistress. He was standing on a hillock, a bottle of Guinness held aloft, and a devilish grin splitting his mouth wide. It had been taken just three months before he’d died. Probably around the same time that Gray had found out that his last investment had helped his portfolio run into millions. Poor comfort the knowledge had brought him.

  It finally dawned on him that it was the journey he’d loved—the wheeling, dealing and speculating that had lit his fire—not the actual destination. Money hadn’t impressed his father and why should it have when the pursuit of it had taken his only son too far away from him?

  ‘Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy, you old devil.’ He addressed the picture with a painfully rueful smile, then relegated the photograph—along with the bittersweet memory of his father—back to the confines of the brown envelope.

  Downstairs again, Gray pulled on his battered leather jacket, speared a hand through his already ruffled black hair and whistled up Chase to go for a walk. He deliberately headed for the beach, thinking that the sea air would do him good, blow away the proverbial cobwebs, and help him think more clearly. Looking at the photographs, delving into his past, hadn’t helped. He’d known it wouldn’t before he’d even undertaken the exercise. Sometimes sheer bloody-mindedness just got the better of him.

  Anyhow, now there was a tight band of tension round his head and it served him right. He was too bloody destructive for his own good sometimes.

  Relaxation—if he’d ever really given house-room to such a concept—was a thing of the past. Now all he seemed to do was spend every day regretting more and more the bad decisions he’d made and punishing himself with the memories.

  Not exactly the best way to live a life, he thought. Still, as he climbed the hillock that led down to the vast strand of white sandy beach it was his beautiful fair-haired tenant that predominantly occupied his mind—not the perpetual inner turmoil that seemed to accompany his every waking moment. Just what the hell was he going to do about this persistent dangerous fascination he had for her? A fascination that had crept up on him and taken too strong a hold before he had time to avert it?

  She didn’t deserve a man as inwardly craggy as him. She deserved better … much better. But even so Gray’s heart suddenly seemed to beat more strongly in his chest just at the mere possibility that he might see Karen again sometime soon, and there was a rare spring in his step as he increased his stride to catch up with Chase.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KAREN answered the door with a crazy leap of hope in her heart—only to have it recede with bitter disappointment and surprise when she found Sean, Gray’s young assistant from a couple of weeks ago, standing on the step. Blinking up at him in the strong morning sunlight, she shivered at the cold gust of air that also greeted her, wondering why he had come and if Gray had sent him. She knew she was probably clutching at straws but, having not seen the man for a fortnight, she was beginning to feel a little frayed around the edges.

  Sean grinned and Karen waited for him to speak first, still nursing the vain hope that he was bringing news of Gray.

  ‘Hello, there.’

  He was wearing a short denim jacket faded to the palest blue over a once black tee shirt now almost grey. With his long legs encased in similar light blue denims, he had the lazily optimistic grace of youth and his fair share of beauty, too—making Karen feel a sudden deep pang for the lost innocence of her own youth. For a moment she gazed up at his boyishly handsome face, with its unruly halo of uncombed fair hair and clear blue eyes, and wished somehow that she could be more like him. She knew it might be an unfair assumption, but he really did look as if he didn’t have a care in the world on that bright blustery morning. She couldn’t help but envy that. Yet his appearance still engendered a heavines
s of heart, because he wasn’t the man she’d been hoping to find standing there. Instinctively she knew that Gray was deliberately keeping his distance. If he’d wanted her to get the message that this craziness between them wasn’t going to progress any further then she’d received it loud and clear. For two weeks now she’d hardly been able to sleep nights for thoughts of him. It was crazy and futile, but she seemed powerless to put a stop to it. And Karen would bet her last penny that he hadn’t suffered similarly sleepless nights over her.

  If only she’d been able to deal with their attraction a little better. If only she had some knowledge of the rules of this game maybe she could have handled things with a bit more finesse instead of feeling so painfully lost. Maybe then she wouldn’t have scared him off the way she’d done. But she couldn’t turn back the clock and be something she wasn’t. All she could do was deal with what was right in front of her—and right now life had brought Sean, with his twinkling blue eyes and ready smile. The least she could do was greet him in a civil manner.

  ‘Hello.’ She smiled back, genuinely taken aback to see the flicker of pleasure in his face that her greeting had provoked.

  ‘Karen,’ he replied in a rush, reddening slightly, ‘I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking a walk with me?’

  ‘A walk, Sean?’ She resisted the wild impulse to giggle. His request seemed so incongruous that Karen’s interest was snagged in spite of herself.

  ‘Yes. You like walking, don’t you?’ He looped his fingers behind the black leather belt fastened round his worn blue denims and managed to look sheepish and endearing all at once.

  Wiping her hands carefully on the checked tea towel she’d been drying the dishes with, Karen frowned. As endearing as the young Irishman appeared, she really didn’t feel like going anywhere just now. Her mood was a little too blue, for one thing. It was the result of another sleepless night over Gray O’Connell, along with sadness and guilt because suddenly she couldn’t seem to remember her husband’s face any more.