The Brooding Stranger

by Maggie Cox

  ‘Do you have great ideas? Are you good with people? Can you sing? That kind of thing.’

  Now Karen’s heart started to thump even louder. Across the room, as if sensing her discomfort, Sean threw her a reassuring smile.

  ‘Can I sing?’

  ‘Sure—everybody likes a tune here. I was thinking some kind of entertainment in the lunch hour a couple of times a week while folks eat their meal would be a great selling point.’

  Did this place get enough customers to warrant entertainment in the lunch hour? Karen wondered in further bemusement. Meeting Liz Regan’s dancing emerald eyes, she suddenly knew that if anyone could make such a maverick venture a success it was her. Clearing her throat, she smoothed some drifting strands of hair away from the side of her face and sat up straighter.

  ‘Yes, I can sing.’

  ‘You can? I don’t suppose you play an instrument as well?’

  Karen smiled. Inside her chest, her heartbeat resumed its normal beat at last. Now she was confident that this was something she did excel at. ‘Guitar,’ she replied. ‘I play the acoustic guitar.’

  ‘Eureka!’

  To Karen’s surprise, Liz hauled her out of the chair and danced round the room with her.

  ‘Liz … for God’s sake, what are you doing?’ Sean grabbed his sister’s arm to curb her enthusiasm, but she still whirled round and round with a helplessly laughing Karen.

  When she came to a sudden standstill, Karen pushed the hair from her eyes breathing hard. ‘You don’t even know if I can really sing a note!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Can you?’ The grin plastered across the other girl’s wide mouth froze, as though the possibility had never even crossed her mind.

  ‘I sang professionally,’ Karen admitted, her heartbeat racing slightly again. It was perhaps only at that moment that she realised how terribly she’d missed the pleasure of performing—’singing for her supper’, as Ryan had used to teasingly call it—and how much she longed to do it again.

  ‘You did?’ Now it was Sean’s turn to look surprised.

  ‘I did. My late husband was my manager.’

  ‘You’re a widow?’ Liz’s expression turned serious.

  ‘I am. But moving here has been really good for me … helping me come to terms, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘I knew you were special the moment I first clapped eyes on you. There’s a light round you that draws the gaze. And it’s not just because you’re the prettiest thing this town has seen in years, Karen Ford!’

  Spearing icy fingers through his rain-dampened black hair as he stood outside Karen’s door that evening, all thought of discomfort and cold left Gray as the music drifting out from the house made him still. She must be playing the radio. Whatever the song was that accompanied the gently strumming guitar he heard, it was riveting … haunting. The singer had a rare talent.

  Before he knew it the backs of his eyes were pricking with tears. He rarely ever listened to music these days, but his father Paddy had loved it with a passion. He’d often been found at Malloy’s Bar on a Saturday night, tapping his feet to whatever tunes were on offer, for a while forgetting his troubles and helping to numb them with a pint of Guinness, or three …

  Grimacing, Gray raised his fist and pounded on the door. Instantly the music inside stopped. The urgency which submerged his senses every time he thought of Karen gripped him with a vengeance as he silently asserted that her enjoyment of the music on the radio would have to be postponed until he’d had his fill of her company this evening. He’d spent a miserable afternoon imagining her with Sean, and the antique clock on the mantelpiece had barely chimed seven o’clock before he was striding from the house and climbing into his car to make his way here. To make his way to her …

  Gray’s heart thudded hard when she opened the door.

  ‘Oh … it’s you.’

  He hated it that she seemed disappointed to see him. Was it Sean she’d been hoping would knock on her door this evening? Jealousy stabbed through his insides with all the stinging hurt of a hot dagger. Wearing black leggings, a black silk top and a red fringed cotton scarf draped round her shoulders, with her pretty hair left long and loose and her blue eyes shooting irritated sparks at him, right then Karen was the answer to any prayer for good fortune to visit him that Gray had ever prayed.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I said I’d drop by, remember?’

  ‘You’d better come in, then, I suppose.’

  She held the door wide, albeit reluctantly. Swallowing down his regret that she wasn’t happier to see him, he went inside. The first thing that he registered on entering the small sitting room, after the soporific perfume of scented candles, was the acoustic guitar propped up against the couch. His brow puckered, then his stomach clenched.

  ‘I heard music just now, while I was waiting outside the door … I thought it was the radio.’ Gray hadn’t meant for the remark to sound accusing, but somehow it did, and he found himself silently cursing the lack of sensitivity that seemed to be ever growing the more time he spent on his own.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me now that it’s not allowed for a tenant to play the guitar?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish.’ He jammed his cold hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. He was tempted to cross to the fire crackling in the grate to warm them, but he wouldn’t concede to any such comfort until he’d reassured the woman in front of him that he hadn’t come to visit her merely to be difficult. His glance cleaved to her as though magnetised, and he knew it didn’t hide the hunger building inside him. ‘Was that you singing?’

  Folding her arms across her chest, Karen sucked in a breath. ‘Yes … it was me.’

  Gray dropped his voice in awe. ‘The sound almost stopped my heart.’

  She flushed, then stared down at the ground.

  Seeing how the compliment undid her, he closed the gap between them. Without giving himself time to change his mind, he impelled her urgently into his arms. ‘You’re a surprise and a delight, a mhuirnín …’

  ‘Your hands are freezing.’

  ‘That may be so, but inside I’m burning up … burning up from wanting you so bad that I can’t think of anything else.’ His voice a husky grate, Gray cupped her face, stroking her soft satin cheeks with the sides of his thumbs.

  She trembled, her warm breath drifting over him like a scented summer breeze. ‘We wouldn’t be good for each other Gray.’

  Her voice had a catch in it, but even before she’d finished speaking he was kissing her, plundering her mouth as if she was supplying life-giving oxygen. He hardly knew his own name any more. He’d yearned to hold her … to love her if she’d let him.

  ‘How do you know until we try?’ he whispered.

  Flattening her palms against his chest, Karen tried vainly to push him away.

  ‘I may have gone a little crazy lately, but I’m not some witless lemming about to hurl myself over the edge of a cliff—because that’s what I’d be doing if I let you—if I let you—’ She broke off to bite her lip, and Gray saw that her beautiful sky-blue eyes had grown moist.

  ‘If you let me what? Keep the cold away for a little while?’

  As if surrendering the urge to somehow try and stem the powerful attraction that flowed between them Karen laid her head against him. Holding her to him with a sigh, Gray stroked his palm over her hair, murmuring soft words in Irish as he marvelled at its silken fall as well as silently registering the warm quivering curves of her compact slender body. ‘Hush, hush, a chailín álainn.’ He’d never felt as protective or possessive of a woman before. Briefly closing his eyes, he kissed the top of her head.

  Lifting her gaze, Karen stared up at him. ‘If I let you keep out the cold for a little while? That’s all it will be?’

  ‘If that’s all that you want.’

  ‘You won’t expect anything more from what we share?’

  Fielding the jolt of dismay that hurt his heart, Gray stoically bit back his disappointment. ‘No.’

/>   ‘Then neither will I.’ Curling her palm inside his, Karen glanced wistfully back into his eyes as she led him into her bedroom in silence.

  When she saw he was going to reach for her first, to help her undress, Karen gripped the front of Gray’s still damp leather jacket as though indicating no, and then slowly, carefully, slipped it from his shoulders. His quixotic grey eyes were full of longing, and she sensed the powerful self-restraint he had to employ to keep from hauling her roughly to him. A dizzying, almost painful excitement gathered force inside her, making her shiver. Gray O’Connell was a man hardened and embittered by his past, but with his wind-tossed raven hair and feral, hungry gaze he was heartbreakingly beautiful as well as wounded, and right then he was everything she needed … even if ultimately the fire he stoked in her would burn her to cinders.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Karen!’ He was all but shaking as she continued to methodically remove his sweater, then the maroon tee shirt he wore underneath. Both were cast heedlessly onto the floor.

  The faint, musky warmth of his body sent a wave of aching desire bolting through her blood that threatened to buckle her already shaking knees. Gazing in nervous wonder at the display of strongly toned muscle beneath the fine little coils of ebony hair on his chest, she couldn’t resist laying her open palm there, softly stroking it across the flat male nipples and feeling him tense with longing beneath her touch. Lifting her glance, Karen silently registered the near desperation she saw in his gaze and slid her hand over his sculpted high cheekbone to push her fingers curiously through his unruly mane of dark hair. It was far softer than it looked. Just like raw silk.

  ‘Do you want to drive me insane? Do you?’ With a growl, Gray grabbed hold of her hand and pressed a hot kiss deep into the centre of her palm.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ she said softly. ‘I just wanted to see you.’

  ‘And I want to see you in all your glory, too. But more than that I need you in my arms, before I die from the sheer agony of wanting you.’

  After hastily removing his jeans, Karen was at last hauled against him and lifted high against his chest as Gray eagerly carried her to the bed. She had already turned down the sheets in preparation for her night’s rest, and the smooth cotton was cool against her heated skin, even through her clothes. But Gray soon removed the last flimsy barriers between them to sit astride her, his strong thigh muscles trapping her between them before lowering his dark head to steal a deeply voracious kiss.

  It was a kiss such as she had never experienced before—a kiss that flooded her with such intoxicating heat that she barely registered the soft moans that filled the air as her own. The wild ocean-swept taste of his mouth and tongue stoked her longing to a level almost beyond bearing. When his lips closed over one burgeoning tight nipple, his teeth grazing the tender flesh there, Karen gasped her shock and desire. When Ryan had been intimate with her it had never been like this … had never created this wild storm of need that ripped her from her moorings and threatened to cast her out to sea for ever …

  She wanted to weep at what felt like the worst betrayal of the love she had shared with her husband. But she remembered, too, that he’d often been uncomfortable with the desire she’d sometimes expressed for more uninhibited intimacy, telling her that it was a fact of life that some men had a lower sex drive than others and he was sorry but that was just the way it was for him. He might not be able to love her in the way she needed, but he promised he would put every ounce of his effort into helping her forge a wonderful career and being the best, most devoted friend she could ever have.

  Karen shut out the unwanted recollection as she lost herself in Gray’s ardent drugging kiss. Her hands slid down his long muscled back to cup his taut firm buttocks, and his expression of pleasure was instant and vocal. That unrestrained, almost feral sound made her feel more desirable and womanly than she’d ever felt before. Silently she acknowledged she wanted to be ripped from the moorings that anchored her too painfully to the past—she wanted to be somehow set free. Free to fall or fly—she didn’t care which right then …

  ‘I want …’

  ‘What do you want, my beautiful little songbird, hmm?’

  Her lover kissed the side of her neck just behind her ear, making Karen quiver. Her hips grew soft and pliant as volcanic heat flooded into her centre.

  ‘More of this?’ Gray teased as he palmed her breasts and then pinched her nipples until she almost came up off the bed.

  ‘Yes!’ she rasped, almost delirious with need.

  Raising his head, then sitting up, Gray reached for the jeans he had thrown onto the bed before taking Karen into his arms and hurriedly sheathing his hardened sex with the protection he’d brought.

  Transfixed by the honed male beauty of his strongly corded arms and chest, shyly observing how well endowed he was, Karen didn’t waste time speculating on the fact that he’d been so sure of her capitulation he’d come prepared. What would be the point? They were both adults—both knew that the near violent chemistry they shared would sooner or later have to have an outlet.

  But she was shivering so hard that it was almost impossible to relax. Clearly some fear and tension had inadvertently crept into her reckless bid for sensual freedom. Might it even be guilt? In any case it was a long time since she had been with a man, so when Gray started to penetrate her, even as her mouth hungrily melded with his and their tongues hotly entwined, she couldn’t help the little gasp of pain that left her.

  ‘What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?’ He stared down at her in the dusk-filled room, surprising her with the genuine concern that she saw blazing from his long-lashed eyes.

  ‘No. I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong.’ She didn’t want his kindness. If he was kind to her then that might make her care for him too much. That was a risk she didn’t want to entertain for long. Wanting Gray O’Connell to stay in her life would be like trying to hold on to a sea breeze, or to the morning birdsong that died away when winter came. ‘Just hold me,’ she murmured.

  ‘I’ll do more than that, a stór … I’m going to take you to a place where we can both be free for a time … free from grief and pain … that’s a promise.’

  Another gasp left her as he penetrated her fully and then, like a big cat, watched her register her pleasure and surprise, a small knowing smile playing about his roguish lips. Gray’s loving of her body was hard, strong and demanding, and Karen revelled in it with every fibre of her being as she had never revelled in this most intimate act before, meeting every thrust with a lift of her hips to take him even deeper inside her.

  So lost was she in the sensual ride that she couldn’t say when it changed to an unstoppable rocket, taking her to the stars, but she heard Gray’s deeply gravelled tone urging her onwards. Tears washed into her eyes as she flew apart in his arms.

  As revelations went, it was pretty damned wonderful. That was why she cried. And it had happened so quickly and so easily. She hadn’t even had to try. It grieved her to admit it, but with Ryan that part of their lovemaking had always been a cause of great frustration for Karen. Knowing that her husband could more or less live without sex had seemed to inhibit her ability to just let go and enjoy the act when they did spend time in bed together.

  But now, even as the warm salty trail of tears slid into her mouth, a savage cry from Gray near shook the rafters as he held himself still inside her for long seconds and then shuddered hard. Catching his stunned glance as the waves of sensual fulfilment washing through her began slowly to ebb, Karen reached up and drew his head down between her breasts. His warm breath, unshaven jaw and the heavy weight of his strong, fit body pressing her down into the mattress felt like the nearest thing to heaven she could imagine.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE intoxicating scent of Karen’s body aroused an inexplicable longing in Gray for something he couldn’t or wouldn’t name as she tenderly cradled his head between her breasts. The realisation unsettled him, made him quickly bring his attention back to the physical
aspect of their union … something he definitely could handle. His climax had sent his pleasure thermometer shooting right off the scale into another stratosphere, but it hadn’t quelled his insurmountable need for her. Again he sensed himself harden.

  Reaching out for the tissue box beside the bed, he disposed of the latex protection he’d sheathed himself with and, keeping his passionate gaze locked with Karen’s, fitted a fresh one. Desire was swift as a flaming arrow, shooting through him as he began once again to move inside her. Rising up so that he could observe her, he smiled, enjoying the expression of surprise and languorous pleasure on her face. In the fading dusk her blue eyes were dark sapphire, with the emphasis on fire, and her beautiful mouth was a lush, sensual paradise he could easily explore for the rest of his life.

  Silently, she lifted her hands to cup his face and pull him down to her, gifting him with a hot, sexy kiss. Near on fire with lust, Gray altered his position, urging Karen on top of him. Even before she settled her delicious peachlike rear across his arrow-straight hips he was pushing inside her, desperate to maintain the seismic contact that he knew awaited him. He groaned as she started to rock her hips, not just taking delight in the time-honoured motion of passionate lovers everywhere but in the sight of her gorgeous face, her tumbling honey-gold hair and ravishing pert breasts. He promised himself he would paint her, vowing the study would be his best work yet …

  ‘You’re a goddess—but even that description doesn’t do your loveliness justice.’

  When Karen opened her mouth to reply, Gray’s hands enfolded her hips to pull her down even more firmly onto his silken rigid shaft and hold her there. Her dazzling blue eyes widened and ragged breath punched from her lungs. For long seconds he was deluged with the most incredible sensations of unbelievable connection, as well as a fierce longing for a way to make this breathless pleasure last for ever.

  But in amongst that longing doubt reared its head. He didn’t deserve her, he reflected painfully. But, by God, now that he had her he wouldn’t let her go in a hurry! Making love with Karen was everything Gray had dreamt it would be, and no stain or recrimination from his past or guilt about her husband dying would keep him from hoping for more.