by Liz Talley
Mary Paige fanned herself and headed toward the bar for a ginger ale. She’d downed the first itty-bitty cup and was working on a refill when Brennan appeared at her side.
“Well, you really are Miss Merry Sunshine, aren’t you?”
“Figure your family is paying me to knit rainbows and crap sunshine. Have to earn my pay.”
“I see you even made yourself feel better about Creighton, too.”
She looked hard at him. “Maybe you should make Creighton feel better about Creighton.”
“Maybe you should climb off your high horse and stop casting judgment on others. You don’t know anything about me and Creighton.” His words were angry and she wondered if she’d ever thought he had any inkling of kindness in his ice-water veins.
“No, I don’t. And that’s a good thing to remember.”
For a moment they were both silent—Mary Paige reaffirming in her mind she needed to stay away from a man who treated people like tools and Brennan thinking…well, she didn’t know what he was thinking. And wished she didn’t care.
“Your shareholders and moneybag friends aren’t looking too uncomfortable now.” She jerked her head toward the dance floor, still angry, wanting to rub his nose in his mistaken truth.
His gaze found hers, and in his eyes she saw a flash of admiration before he shuttered his emotion. “Yes, a relief. Look, I hope you realize I have nothing against helping a bunch of kids from the streets, but this isn’t the place to drag them in and make them trot around like a ring of ponies.”
“You think that’s what your grandfather intended? To parade them about and make them feel out of place so he could feel good about himself?” Disbelief shadowed the irritation in her voice. Brennan obviously couldn’t see the forest for his big-ass ego and misplaced idea of his grandfather’s objective.
“Of course not, but others might view it as such. The goal tonight is to raise money, not change the landscape of the city by forcing people to—”
“Do you hear yourself?” She glared at him. She hadn’t felt so angry, so out of her league in understanding a person, in so long. How could he not see getting one’s hands dirty was the best way to bring about change? “Writing a check is all well and good, but it’s not enough. Changing the world, creating a better place for all God’s creatures, only happens when people’s hearts are changed.”
“You do realize people will never be equal?” Brennan said, his eyes narrowing in thought. “And not just economically, but in beauty, talent and desire. Not everyone can have a Rolls-Royce, a perfect set of teeth or turn a perfect cartwheel.”
“You don’t get it,” she said, jerking a glass of champagne off the tray as a waiter passed by. “I’m not trying to make everyone equal or the same. I’m trying to show compassion, to treat others as I want to be treated, to use my talents and abilities to create a world where everyone gets the chance to better him- or herself. It’s not about writing a check or—”
“But even you took the check,” he said, taking the empty glass from her hand.
She stared down at his hand, registering she’d downed the entire glass of bubbly midtirade against Brennan’s asinine idea of social politics. “Yes, I took the check. I’m a hypocrite, so why don’t you go find someone else to bother and leave me alone.”
“Fine, but first you might want to take this.” He shoved her clutch, which he’d been holding, toward her.
“Why? You afraid one of the kids from Hope and Grace might take off with it?”
“No, but your ex-boyfriend might show up and need a loan,” he said with a smart-ass smile.
“Ugh.” Mary Paige grabbed the clutch, turned on her heel, tilted a little sideways, but corrected herself before making her way toward the ladies’ room. Her blood boiled, even though she knew Brennan’s words were partially true. No, she couldn’t fix greed and depravity, but she could do her part to respect all the people who inhabited her world—from strangers on the street to the idiot in the tuxedo who was too damn practical, too damn set in his ways, too damn…sexy. Okay, yes, she found Brennan sexy. But that attraction didn’t mean she had to agree with him.
Was her attraction what had her so angry?
And she hadn’t missed the smallness in his remark about Simon…or the overtone of jealousy.
She pushed through the gleaming oak door and headed to the sink, glad she’d retrieved her clutch. She pulled out her lipstick and stared at it. She didn’t really need a touch-up, simply needed to get out of there and grab some space.
“Oh, Mary Paige,” Judy said, stepping out from a stall, “glad you’re here. I can’t reach the closure for this dress.”
Darn. Just what she needed. Small talk. “Sure, I’ll be glad to help you.”
Judy washed her hands and then spun around, presenting her back. “I’m having such a good time. How about you?”
Peachy.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” she said, hooking the tiny closures at the neck of the dress.
“Brennan likes you, huh?”
“Brennan is an ass.”
Judy laughed, turning toward her. “He’s quite abrasive at times, but I’ve often found those brittle soldiers hide the most gentle of hearts.”
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure his heart has shriveled into a tiny, dried-up…thing.”
“Well, then he needs you more than you know.” She paused briefly before saying slowly, “And I think his grandfather feels the same way. I’m inferring he wanted Brennan to escort you to these events so you might teach his grandson something about love.”
Mary Paige shrank against the sink. “Love?”
“Oh, I don’t mean necessarily in a romantic fashion. More in learning what it means to love one another as Jesus suggested—love your neighbor.”
“Oh,” Mary Paige said, snapping her clutch closed and tucking an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear. Just hearing the word love in association with Brennan had given her shivers, filling her with hope and something that felt like indigestion.
“But you two do look rather nice together, and he watches you constantly.”
Another shivery thing did somersaults in her belly. “Probably making sure I don’t do something to make the investors and shareholders sew up their wallets.”
“I’m positive it’s not that.”
“Well, I’m not the kind of woman for Brennan Henry,” Mary Paige said, before she could think better of it. Why had she admitted she even had hope? Because that’s what her decree had sounded like. I’m not good enough, but I want to be. And she knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t a good-enough thing, more like a not-suitable thing.
Tilting her head, Judy looked hard at her. “I feel the same way.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, I know I’m all trussed up in this dress, but I’m the director of a school for special-needs kids and, up until twenty-six years ago, I was a member of the Dominican Order and known as Sister Mary Hyacinth. I no more suit a dashing millionaire than a donkey suits a knight.”
A nun?
Mary Paige studied Judy. “I think he’s a billionaire.”
Judy’s smile faltered. “That much? Well, I know I look incredible in this getup, but Malcolm took me to see his friend Gigi, who pulled a Makeover Story on me. The woman even threw my good black sweater set in the trash can!”
Mary Paige laughed. “She threw it away?”
“Yes, and implied I still wore a habit.”
Mary Paige pressed her lips together and tried not to laugh again because Judy looked really upset about the sweater, but a giggle slipped out. And that made Judy laugh. They stood in front of the gilded mirror in the bathroom of a pavilion designed to look like an orangery dressed in their finest, giggling like schoolgirls. It was a perfect moment.
“Now I actually feel better about having to deal with Oscar the Grouch out there,” Mary Paige said when she finally composed herself.
“Well, I’m glad something good can come from that
woman throwing a perfectly good sweater away. Now, let’s go out. Malcolm will be starting the silent auction and introducing those boys. You know the one you danced with has a full scholarship to Tulane next year?”
“Darian?”
“See? Can’t judge a book by its cover. So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to thumb through Brennan’s pages.”
Mary Paige didn’t respond because her mind contemplated those very words…and the words Brennan had tossed at her before she fled to the bathroom. Maybe she should dismount from the high horse and stop making assumptions about him.
She didn’t have to agree with him to respect he thought differently than she did.
She didn’t have to like everything about him to appreciate his good points.
And she didn’t have to love him to…
That’s where her thoughts betrayed her because she’d been about to finish with sleep with him.
Mary Paige had no business going there, did she? No matter how much she wanted to, no matter how tempted she was to throw caution to the wind, he was not for her. She only had to consider the seemingly callous way he’d treated Creighton to know that she didn’t stand a chance against him. There would be no way Mary Paige could protect herself from either his charm or being cast aside. And she would be cast aside once his interest in her was done.
So even if she wanted to read those particular naughty pages in the book that was Brennan Henry, it needed to remain on the shelf.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BRENNAN STOOD IN the shadows as his grandfather spoke about Malcolm’s Kids and the new partnership with the Hope and Grace Home for Boys. Usually he stood beside his grandfather when he made these sorts of announcements, as a united front from the Henry family. But tonight he’d ducked away when his grandfather looked for him.
And he didn’t know why.
Maybe because Mary Paige had chastised him, made him feel bad about being a realist. Made him feel like an ass for saying what others were thinking. Made him not want to get onstage and smile at Alvin and those boys he’d misjudged. He was thoroughly shamed at his thoughts.
No, he was more like dog shit on the bottom of a shoe.
“Hey,” Mary Paige said quietly, sneaking up on him.
He looked at the woman who poked him with sticks and made him see the world around him in a different shade. “Hey.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m sorry—”
They both whispered at once before closing their mouths and exchanging glances.
He shook his head. “My fault, Mary Paige. I was wrong.”
Her eyes reflected a mixture of pleasure and hope, and something felt weird in his chest—sort of warm and slightly painful, making him feel as though he couldn’t take a good breath.
“But not altogether wrong,” she whispered.
A few people turned toward the palm tree where they hid, so he motioned her toward a door that led out to a stone patio. Thankfully, she didn’t argue and followed him.
The night air was cool and clear, stars glittering as if they were part of the festivities. A puff of vapor emerged with his sigh as he faced Mary Paige, who looked up at the night sky, her features luminous in the light of the moon.
Incredibly beautiful were the two words on his tongue, but he held them back because they seemed selfish, designed to get him what he wanted, which was this woman beside him.
Mary Paige wasn’t like Creighton, or the countless other women who had paraded through his life like accessories, taken only to complement his life.
It was a callous thought.
A mind-bending thought.
That he would see others as mere conveniences rather than people who felt, hoped, loved and had value.
God, he was desolate—an empty shell walking among those he disdained. A perfect misanthrope. A modern-day Scrooge.
Mary Paige hadn’t been far off the mark.
“It’s beautiful out here,” she said, smiling at the sky.
“Yeah,” he said, not taking his gaze from her.
“I shouldn’t have been so judgmental earlier. You were right to call me out on it. I often forget people have opinions that aren’t the same as mine.”
He followed her lead to contemplate the world above them. “Sometimes I wonder if I argue with you on purpose. You’re gorgeous when you have that fire in your eyes, all that passion I want to see, to taste in you.” He looked at her, wanting to see her reaction to his bold statement.
Mary Paige’s eyes widened but she didn’t turn his way. “You’re saying you do that intentionally? Yanking my pigtails like a little boy wanting my attention. I find that hard to believe of you.”
“I don’t know why. It’s strange really. I guess your ire is better than receiving no part of you at all.”
She moved to study him, searching for something he hid far beneath the layers he’d built. “I want to understand you, Brennan, but those words make it difficult. You know I feel more for you than anger.”
“Pity?”
“Maybe. A little. I certainly wish for more for you. Honestly, I don’t think you’re as complicated as I once thought. Quite simply, you’re scared.”
“Of you?”
She stepped closer to him. It was what he wanted, but suddenly it felt too much. He felt naked and not in a good way. “Perhaps, but the more I know you, the more I see you’re afraid of loving…and losing.”
He fixed his gaze on a crack in the base of a huge planter holding some shrub—anything to avoid her seeing too deeply into him, seeing through his bluff. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
Her touch on his jaw was the brush of angel wings. “Everyone is afraid of something.”
“Yeah?” He met her gaze. “You’ve been analyzing me? Thinking about how I lost a sister and then my parents? About how I blame that on Christmas? On God?”
Her hand stilled. “Do you blame God?”
“You think I haven’t been to therapy? Haven’t thought about why I am the way I am?” He grabbed her hand and jerked her to him, enjoying the surprise in her eyes, liking the way her mouth opened, the way she didn’t shrink back. Mary Paige wasn’t afraid of him.
He watched her breathing grow erratic, felt her heart beat hard against his chest…and acknowledged the very essence of her soft body against the unyielding planes of his. This woman fit him, not like a glove, but like a well-cut dinner jacket, not too tight, not too forgiving, but perfect in every way. She balanced him, and for once in his life made him feel hopelessly inadequate.
For this woman, he wanted to be a better man.
Brennan lowered his head and kissed her. Maybe he wanted to silence her or climb back in the driver’s seat. Maybe he didn’t want her probing the parts of him that still throbbed like a bruised thumb, never easing. Or maybe he wanted to wrap her around him, make her part of him, let her become what he needed more than anything he could give voice to.
Her hands slid into his hair, and she met him, opening her mouth, giving him all she was. In true Mary Paige fashion, the kiss was generous, passionate and enthusiastic.
His blood sang.
Somehow his hands found her delicious ass and he pulled her closer, feeling her meld to him, knowing she could feel his heart, his erection and maybe even his damaged soul.
He broke the kiss, sliding his lips down her throat, catching the vibration of her groan. She tasted so good, salty and sweet, mixed with a heady spiciness, some crazy elixir created to drive men to the edge of lust. One hand slid up her satin dress, while the other held her to him, bending her back so he could graze the top of the beading with his teeth.
“You’re making me crazy,” she murmured, her hand anchoring his head against the silkiness of her chest.
He reached for her zipper as riotous applause sounded inside.
Mary Paige stiffened, her hand uncurling from his hair. “Oh, my…stop.”
He released her and took a step back. “Shh, no one saw.”
She pres
sed a hand to her lips. “But if they had— I mean, I suppose everyone thinks—”
“Come with me,” he said, taking her hand.
“Where?”
“Away from here,” he said, drawing her into his arms, moving them away from the doors and into the shadows.
“You’re talking about something more than leaving here,” she said, shivering as he brushed his lips against her collarbone. Mary Paige felt so different in his arms. This was no carefully constructed woman with sharp angles and practiced moves. Mary Paige was like a newly opened bloom.
New, wonderful and fresh.
He brushed his mouth across her jaw, moving to her ear. “Please, come with me. Let me love you, Mary.”
Her hands stroked the hair at his neck, making the fire inside him crackle. Then her hand found his jaw and she pushed him away slightly so she could see his eyes.
“I want to go to your place,” she said.
He grabbed her hand and started to move toward the entrance.
“But I can’t.”
Her words stopped him. “Why not?”
The chill of the night air filled the space around him as Mary Paige stepped away, raising trembling hands to her face, pushing blond strands of hair behind her ears. “Because I’m not like Creighton, or any of the other girls you sleep with. I can’t lie to you and say it won’t mean something to me. I’m not wired that way…even if I really, really want to be.”
He felt stupid, unable to comprehend her words while he stared at the creature who was exactly what he wanted, but who denied him on principle.
“You make it sound like you’re some paragon of virtue…and I’m the very devil. Do I need to marry you? Is that what you’re saying? You don’t sleep around? You don’t—” Anger flooded him, which was childish, churlish and any other “ish” he could think of.
Brennan tried to control his emotions, but Mary Paige’s words hurt. Her actions stung. He knew she wanted him, but she treated him like something she might get on her hands and have to disinfect to get off. Was he really that horrible of a person? “You make me feel like a bad person all the time.”
