The Brooding Stranger

by Maggie Cox

  Capturing a handful of her wind-blown hair, he planted a hot hard kiss on her mouth that instantly had her senses clamouring for more.

  ‘Race you to the car,’ he taunted, and headed off across the sand like a sprinter.

  Laughing again, knowing she didn’t have a hope of beating him, Karen chased after him.

  When Gray opened the door of the grand old house that was his home, Karen definitely didn’t feel like laughing. Straight away she noticed the newly framed paintings lining the high walls, and for a moment was speechless with delight.

  Turning to the man at her side—a man who had fallen worryingly silent since they’d left the car—she grabbed his hand and squeezed it. ‘You hung the paintings. Gray, that’s wonderful!

  ‘I never would have done it if it hadn’t been for you,’ he answered quietly. ‘It was your encouragement and belief in me that did it. You made me face up to a lot of my self-inflicted behaviour, too … my bad habits.’ He grinned, looping his arm affectionately round her waist and hugging her to him.

  ‘I think you credit me with far too much. Sooner or later you would have woken up to your true nature as well as your talent, Gray.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do … But I think sometimes we really do have to hit rockbottom before we reassess our life. I can’t pretend to know what your answer is, but even if it’s just to be the wonderful man you are … that’s enough.’

  ‘Wonderful, is it?’ He brought her hand up to his lips and warmly kissed her fingers. ‘That doesn’t come close to what I think of you, my bright-eyed girl. But I think it’s going to take the rest of the night for me to tell you every superlative that springs to mind.’

  ‘Really …? The rest of the night, you say?’ The warmth that flooded Karen at his words extended right down to the edges of her toes. The hope that she’d dared to feel earlier when he’d promised to share his feelings with her returned.

  ‘Really. But first I think we need a drink to warm us up, don’t you? What’s it to be? Hot chocolate or whiskey?’

  ‘Hot chocolate, I think. I already feel light-headed. But before we get our drinks I want to look at your paintings.’

  ‘Okay. Your wish is my command.’

  Hand in hand, they started to walk past the art on the walls together, inspecting it. At the end of the corridor, completely taking them by surprise, Bridie appeared. She had her warm woollen coat on, ready to leave for home. It was way past the time she usually stayed, and Gray’s frown was a concerned one.

  ‘Bridie … shouldn’t you be home by now? Is anything the matter? It’s not Chase?’ His stomach rolled over at the mere thought.

  Clasping her generous-sized maroon handbag in front of her checked coat, the kind-hearted woman who had cooked and cleaned for him since he’d returned to Ireland, who had put up with his surly moods and dark ways and carried on doing what she could for him regardless, met his anxious gaze with a gentle smile.

  ‘The dog is fine, Mr O’Connell. He’s asleep in front of the fire as usual.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I was looking at the picture you did of you and your mother—the one that you painted from the photograph your father showed me once. This one.’

  She moved towards the painting nearest to where she stood and Gray’s heart lurched. Wordlessly—with Karen’s hand clasped firmly in his—he found himself standing in front of the lovingly painted portrait of mother and child. At his request the picture-framer had given it his best gilt-edged frame—one embossed with beautifully made golden leaves.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘She would have been so proud if she’d seen it. “My little man is going to do something great one day,” she’d say to everyone. Never had a mother loved her baby as devotedly as your mam loved you, Mr O’Connell … Gray …’ Bridie sniffed, her top lip quivering a little.

  Gray froze.

  ‘It was herself that she couldn’t love,’ she continued. ‘Your father was always telling her how lovely she was, that she meant the world to him … but she was dogged by this terrible depression that no doctor could help cure. It was pitiful to see the way she got sometimes. We knew it had got bad, but nobody expected her to do what she did. It was an awful shock. She used to go down to the sea all the time, staring out at the horizon as if there was some answer in the waves that could help her. One day she didn’t come back. Her poor body was washed up on the shore the next day. When it happened your father wanted to die, too. But he knew he had a child to take care of, and so he devoted himself to working hard on the farm and raising you in a way that would have made your mother proud. I know Paddy never talked about your mother’s death with you, Mr O’Connell, and I can’t say those of us who knew him agreed with that. We all believed he should have told you the truth long ago, but there …’ The housekeeper shook her head sadly. ‘He did his best, God rest him. When I saw the picture I realised how much you must still think about her, and I just felt it was right to tell you. I hope you won’t hold it against me?’

  Breaking out of the painful trance that had taken him prisoner, Gray cleared his throat and forced a smile. ‘Of course I don’t hold it against you, Bridie.’ He let go of Karen’s hand, stepping forward to embrace the older woman in a fierce hug. ‘Thank you—thank you for telling me. But you’d better get yourself off home now. It’s late. I’ll see you on Monday morning as usual, okay?’

  When the front door had closed behind the housekeeper, Gray dropped his hands to his hips and stared blankly down at the floor.

  ‘Gray?’ Moving closer, Karen reached for his hand but, distracted, he turned away and headed for the staircase.

  ‘Just give me a few minutes, will you?’ In the midst of the fog of pain that engulfed him he prayed she would understand.

  ‘Of course.’ Her reply was softly compassionate.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HALF an hour passed and Gray still hadn’t reappeared. Sitting on the sofa, with Chase’s great fawn head in her lap, Karen grew increasingly anxious about his state of mind. She was also getting cold in that big lonely room, but too wrapped up in her concern for Gray to stoke the fire.

  Unable to sit and wait any longer, she spoke softly to Chase, telling him to stay. Even before she reached the door the Great Dane had made his way back to the dying fire in the grate and with a great sigh lay down in front of it.

  Locating the perfectly tidied kitchen, with its gleaming iron range, meticulously swept stone-flagged floor and beautiful Irish dresser lined with rows of delicate white and patterned crockery, Karen hunted down a saucepan, boiled some milk, and made two mugs of hot chocolate. The rain that lashed rhythmically at the windows was a haunting accompaniment as she worked.

  Bridie’s story about Gray’s mother had been heartrending. She wondered how the housekeeper had borne the truth for so long without being tempted to tell him before. All Karen could think was that she must have respected his father very highly to keep it a secret. If Gray hadn’t displayed the portrait of his mother would he ever have found out what happened? She could only imagine the legacy of sorrow he’d had to live with, knowing his mother had taken her own life.

  Suddenly impatient to be with him again, she gave the hot drinks a final stir and then, with her heart in her mouth, climbed the great winding staircase to the first floor. She was hoping she’d find Gray without having to search behind every door, and silently prayed that he hadn’t descended into so deep a despair that she wouldn’t be able to reach him. It was obvious that Bridie’s words had profoundly affected him, and now she longed for the opportunity to talk and offer solace.

  In the end, Karen didn’t have to search very far to find him.

  At the end of the first-floor corridor a door was ajar. When she reached it she softly called out his name. Receiving no answer, she nudged the door wider with her elbow and went inside. In the impressive high-ceilinged room, with its tasteful muted decoration and spare antique furniture, Gray was seated on a huge
carved bed with his back to her, his dark head bowed, his hands resting on his jean-clad thighs. She felt such a powerful rush of love for him that for a moment she was literally struck dumb.

  Leaving the mugs of chocolate on the nearest cherrywood bedside cabinet, Karen moved quietly round to the still silent man. Sucking in a nervous breath, she reached out to lay her hand on his hard-muscled shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Gray. I’m so sorry about your mother. It must have been so hard for you and your dad to live without her. But maybe now that you know the truth about why she did what she did it might help you to understand that it was out of anyone’s hands? No one was to blame.’

  Slowly he raised his head and looked at her. The raw, unfettered glance he gave her was shocking and said so much more than words. For a moment her limbs felt frozen and she couldn’t move. Then, as if a switch had been flicked, Karen’s blood turned into a wild river of molten need that suspended everything. Only the desire to comfort and help him in any way that she could remained.

  ‘I’ve been haunted for a long time about why she would do it … why I wasn’t enough to make her stay.’

  ‘Oh, Gray. It wasn’t that you weren’t enough—there was nothing you did wrong. How could you have? You were just a beautiful innocent little boy, and your mother was suffering from depression. It can be the most terrible illness.’

  She put her arms round him to give him a warm, sympathetic hug, but suddenly the tenor of that hug turned into something much more compelling. Karen sensed Gray tense, then breathe out on a ragged sigh. Her heart pumping wildly, she suddenly found herself tipped into his lap, and with his hands placed either side of her face his lips ravished her mouth with the kind of primal urgency and demand that made her feel as if she was at the epicentre of a sensual hurricane.

  As he groaned into her mouth his teeth clashed against hers, his scalding velvet tongue mimicking the kind of unbridled sex that made her snatch at her breath. His heat burned her all the way down to her soul. Momentarily lifting his head, he stared intensely into her eyes and his gaze transmitted everything—every emotion, every feeling he had ever felt. If Karen hadn’t already been sitting on Gray’s lap she would have been knocked off her feet by that shockingly frank glance.

  But she barely had time to register what lay in those depths before she found herself on her back, her mind spinning and her blood throbbing heavily through her veins as his hands urgently helped her part with her clothes. Removing the leather jacket he was still wearing, he pulled his sweater and tee shirt over his head, jettisoned them carelessly behind him, then unzipped his jeans. Roughly tugging at the sides of Karen’s black silk panties, he yanked them down over her slender thighs and plunged himself deep inside her.

  Shutting her eyes, she registered the shock of their passionate union with an unrestrained broken cry—a feral sound that was punched from her lungs and didn’t hide her pleasure or her need. Driving her fingers hungrily through the silken mass of his ebony hair, she raised her legs up to clasp his hard, lean hips and take him even deeper. His mouth descended on each breast in turn—first to suckle, then to nip—spearing ecstatic arrows of explosive sensation straight to her womb. The volcanic fever that was already close to erupting inside her clung precariously to the heady precipice of her desire. Then, as Gray rocked her hard, it did erupt.

  As Karen soared dizzyingly into the erotic sensual stratosphere that he took her to she held on to his arms, her fingernails biting helplessly into the iron-hard biceps that surrounded her. The lean, tight hips above her vigorously slammed against hers as he thrust again and again, then went powerfully still, releasing a throaty groan of ecstatic release that echoed in her ears even as she dazedly realised that he’d knowingly spilled his seed inside her.

  Now her heart did drum hard.

  He dropped his head against her breasts, and as well as the slightly roughened scrape of his unshaven jaw she sensed the warm leakage of moisture from his eyes. She knew Gray was shedding silent, soul-deep tears for the family he had so tragically lost. Her fingers tunnelled softly through his silken hair and gently massaged his scalp. Their wild sexual coupling had been a way to help him purge some of his pain, she realised. Now that the storm had passed he must be feeling empty and raw.

  Powerful emotion like that had a way of scraping your insides clean, Karen knew. She’d experienced it many times in the days and months following Ryan’s death.

  Lifting himself away from her, Gray smiled ruefully down, wiping his hand roughly across his face to remove the traces of his distress before moving to her side and firmly enfolding her in his arms.

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply.

  The huskily voiced declaration stopped her world in its tracks. When the shockwaves started to ebb, she laid her hand over his heart and lifted her gaze to his.

  ‘I love you, too, Gray,’ she admitted softly, without reservation. He went still. ‘Gray?’ she prompted nervously.

  ‘I’ve never felt like this about anyone before … never felt that I would gladly surrender everything I have, give away everything I owned, just to be with a woman. But that’s how I feel when I’m with you, Karen. At first I thought it was some crazy obsession that had taken hold of me, but now I know for sure that it’s love. It was love all along, if I’m honest. From the first moment you angrily tore into me in the woods. I couldn’t believe it. You were just a slip of a thing, and yet you didn’t hesitate to quite rightly put me in my place. Do you know how much it scares me to want and need you so much?’

  He caught her hand and kissed the delicate skin across her knuckles. Her gaze tenderly examined his. ‘Why does it scare you to love me?’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

  As he touched his palm to her cheek his expression had never been so starkly vulnerable, and Karen knew he must be mulling over the tragic losses that had made him wary of giving his heart to anyone ever again.

  ‘You won’t lose me, Gray. I mean to stay with you for a very long time. I never thought I’d ever want to be with another man after I lost Ryan … but I was wrong. Even though you were gruff and defensive when we first met—yes, and bossy and angry, too—I knew that wasn’t the real you. I’m glad I stayed around to find out the truth.’

  ‘I behaved the way I did because I was lost, Karen. Utterly lost. That is until I met you. I’d made my fortune, but my personal life was a train hurtling towards a cliff-edge. I’d lost faith in everything … didn’t see the point in aiming for anything ever again. I couldn’t even enjoy my wealth because I despised what I’d done to make it, and I wore my rage and disappointment in myself and the world like a shield.’

  ‘I know it must have been agony for you to hear it, but did it help when Bridie told you about your mother? About her illness, I mean?’

  The dark-lashed silvery eyes closed briefly. ‘I suppose it brought an end to my wild imaginings that my father might have somehow driven her to end her life. It’s a relief to find out the truth at last and get some closure, I suppose. And to know that my dad was the solidly loyal man I always secretly believed him to be. But just the mere thought of her standing there on the beach alone, looking out to sea … it still tears me up.’

  ‘I know, my darling, but you’re strong … much stronger than you think you are. And whenever you get down about the past in future I’ll be there to listen if you want to talk, and to help you in any way that I can. You won’t be alone any more.’

  ‘And I’ll do the same for you, sweetheart. You’ve had a hell of a tough journey, too. I haven’t forgotten that. It pains me to ask you, but do you still miss him? Ryan, I mean?’

  Karen didn’t know the precise moment when missing him had turned into poignant acceptance that he was gone and the realisation that she must build a new life for herself, but somehow that was what had happened. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened so soon if she hadn’t fallen in love with Gray, but she thanked God that she had.

  Looking straight into his worried glance now, she had no r
eservation in speaking to him from the heart. ‘I’ll never forget him, but I don’t miss him any more … no. And he was the kind of man who would want me to find love again … to build a new life with someone who really cared about me and who I cared for. To tell you the truth, music was the main passion we shared. Ryan wasn’t able to love me in the way that you do, Gray.’ She felt her blood grow hot at the frank admission. ‘But what happened to both of us is in the past. We can’t live the rest of our lives in fear of bad things happening again, because living in fear means that we can’t ever trust that things can get better—and I honestly believe that they can.’

  ‘As long as you know that you’re going to have to make an honest man of me now—because I won’t live in sin, you know. I do have morals to uphold.’

  ‘Morals, my—’

  ‘Tut-tut … That’s not the kind of response I expect from a lady,’ he teased.

  Karen grinned, feeling a joyous surge of hope and delight pulse through her. ‘Are you certain that you want to be with me, Gray?’ she asked, momentary doubt making her anxious.

  Stroking her hair, Gray sighed deeply. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so certain about the rightness of a thing in my life,’ he admitted thoughtfully. ‘I’d be an absolute fool if I were to let you go, Karen Ford. I’m many things … uptight, morose, and—yes—too prone to giving in to my temper sometimes. But I’m no fool.’

  Rising to her knees, her honey-gold hair spilling wildly across her shoulders, Karen stared in wonder down into the darkly handsome face with the haunting silvery eyes she had so come to love, and inside her chest her heart skipped a beat.

  ‘What did you mean by you won’t live in sin?’

  ‘What do you think I meant?’ His hands were guiding her over him as he talked, bringing the backs of her slender thighs down flat across his more softly hirsute limbs. She quickly discovered that he was heavily aroused again, and her blood began to thrum as he eased his way inside her, his hands possessively enfolding her hips as he did so.