by Trish Wylie
‘Don’t think it was the builders.’
Well, it wasn’t something he’d done, not this time. In fact, life had been fairly harmonious of late. He’d even been the perfect guy and looked after Shannon when she’d taken a stomach bug. Connor felt he was even more of a helluva guy than he’d been before he’d discovered her again.
So he held his hands up as he walked past the counter. ‘Not me this time. I’m a guilt-free zone. Night, Mario.’
Mario laughed. ‘G’night, Connor.’
Two steps away, a thought occurred to Connor, and he stepped backwards again. ‘I have to ask you. Is your name really Mario?’
Mario rolled his eyes, leaning forwards to answer in a stage whisper, ‘No telling.’
Connor answered with some trepidation. ‘O-okay.’
Mario looked from side to side. ‘It’s Patrick. But Mario sounds much more interesting, don’t you think?’
‘Does Shannon know that?’
‘No. So it’s our secret.’
Connor laughed, taking the stairs two at a time to get to Shannon. Not pausing on any of the three flights, until he was standing in her doorway again, his eyes immediately searching the large room for her.
Norah Jones was singing in soft tones in the background, low light warming the room from an assortment of lamps and candles. And there, legs curled up beside her and a blanket over her knees, was Shannon.
Connor exhaled.
As if she had heard the sound, even over the music, her eyes rose and she blinked slowly as she studied him. And Connor could see the momentary caution there.
Uh-oh.
‘Hello.’
He stepped into the room, his eyes still locked on her face as he got closer. ‘Feeling better?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
Stopping a few feet away from her, he narrowed his eyes as he searched the familiar green of hers. And there it was—the ever-elusive something. Only this time it was tinged with a something he knew only too well.
‘What’s wrong?’
Swinging the blanket back, she blinked up at him. ‘Now, why would there be something wrong?’
‘You see, that’s why I’m asking. I have no idea. But Mario said I should be prepared before I came up here.’ He leaned in for a brief kiss as she got close to him. Which she responded to the way she usually did, so he couldn’t be in that much trouble.
But when he leaned back she was more blatant about blinking, her lashes fluttering as she accompanied it with an innocent pout. ‘That’s sweet that you two are such good friends now.’ Then her head tilted and she smiled. ‘Remind me to fire him again tomorrow…’
‘You already fired him three times this week. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.’
‘He is right, though. We do need to have another little one of our talks.’
‘About what? ’Cos I know I haven’t sold a building you love today, kicked any kittens or informed any small children that fairies don’t exist. So it can’t be me on your hit list.’
Shannon stepped round him and walked into the kitchen area of the large room, refilling her glass with water at the counter before she looked him directly in the eye again. ‘Rory came to see me.’
Connor wouldn’t have been any more surprised if she’d told him that Santa had been there. ‘My brother came to see you to get you to talk to me? Oh, that’s rich. Not like him to get a woman to do his dirty work.’
Shannon laughed sarcastically. ‘From what I hear, you’re damn lucky his wife didn’t find you first.’
The thought of that raised the first open smile he’d smiled in a while when he thought about his elder brother. ‘Well, I’ll grant you, Cara can be scary when she gets on a roll.
But it’s not like Rory not to pick his own fights.’
‘Oh, I think if he’d found you he’d have picked a fight all right. From what he tells me you two still have the odd wrestling match.’ She shook her head. ‘You’d think two grown men would have more sense.’
‘It takes two to make a wrestling match. And he threw the first punch this time.’ Connor scowled hard as he replayed that day in his mind. It had been ugly. ‘Anyway, he shouldn’t have to hide behind his wife, or you.’
When he folded his arms across his chest Shannon shook her head again. ‘You’re both pathetic.’
‘So what did he want you to do exactly? Send me home to apologize to him with my tail between my legs?’
She ignored his sarcasm, sipping her water before she pursed her lips together in thought, her gaze focusing on the glass as she ran her forefinger around the rim. ‘Don’t you want to know why he didn’t want his wife traipsing up here even when she was determined she could get you to listen to her before you’d listen to him?’
‘I get the feeling you’re about to enlighten me.’
‘Yes, indeed I am.’ She walked back towards the sofa, waving a hand as she went past him. ‘Help yourself to beer, wine, coffee, whatever. You know where everything is.’
Tempting as a drink was, Connor decided against it. Somehow he had a feeling that he was going to have to keep his wits about him. So he turned around and sat opposite her, his elbows on his knees while his errant eyes made an intensive study of her legs as she folded them back up on the sofa again.
He was definitely a legs man. And Shannon had great legs. Long, shapely, soft-skinned legs. And, as always, the sight of them reminded him of those legs wrapped around his while he pushed deep inside her body. Which would lead to the memory of her crying out his name, her sighs, her body tightening round his and pulling him over the edge.
Like last night, and every night since the night they had sorted through those few things.
When he smiled, her hand appeared in his line of vision, drawing the blanket back over her knees. And when his gaze rose to her face he saw a flush on her cheeks and a frown between her eyes. She knew what he was thinking. But she wasn’t happy he was thinking it.
And Connor wondered if it was because she was annoyed at his sense of timing, his one-track mind, or just bugged by whatever his darling brother had said.
Any thought he might have had about finding out which one it was was abruptly interrupted by the frustrated edge to her voice.
‘You know, if you stopped being such a moron for five minutes and answered the phone when he called you I wouldn’t even have to have this damn conversation with you. I hate that there’s still one of them that you haven’t spoken to.’
‘You don’t have to have this conversation. Rory should never have asked you to get involved. And frankly I’d be much happier if you didn’t get stuck in the middle.’
She shook her head in annoyance. ‘He didn’t ask me to get involved. He came looking for you ’cos Mal told him where to find you. And since you weren’t answering the phone—’
‘I’m not ready to talk to him.’ He frowned hard at the confession. ‘I’ve already built plenty of bridges this last while. I’ll get round to him. And if he didn’t ask you to get involved, then why—?’
The outburst caught him unawares. ‘Someone had to tell you what an idiot you’re being!’
And there was the something again. Way more obvious than it had been in a long time—
and laced with a raw anguish that startled him.
‘Shannon—’
‘Do you know why he’s been calling you more this last couple of weeks? No, of course you don’t, because you don’t answer the phone. Well, I’ll just tell you why he’s been calling—’
‘I know—’
‘No, you don’t!’ She leaned forwards, her eyes flashing in the soft light. ‘Because you think he wants to try and force some kind of mutual admission of guilt on you that you’re not up for. When all he wants to do is tell you that you’re going to be an uncle!’
The statement momentarily silenced him. Because he knew what it would mean to his brother and his wife, hell, what it would mean to the whole family. It was a major event, the first of a new generation of F
lanaghans.
When he didn’t answer her straight away, Shannon made her own interpretation of his scowl and unfolded her legs again, to lean forward and ask him in a voice laced with emotion, ‘How can that not matter to you? How, can you be this stupidly stubborn?’
The tears forming in her flashing eyes held all of Connor’s attention. She looked as if he had somehow deeply hurt her by not talking to Rory. But that couldn’t be right. So what in hell was wrong?
He felt an angry bubble of frustration building in his chest. Was she ever going to completely trust him? Hadn’t they already proved how great they were together—how their lives had slotted so neatly around each other’s? It all made perfect sense to him.
In the silence, the calm edge she forced into her voice was all the more noticeable to him.
She was drawing back again, shutting herself off, forcing whatever pained her down inside as she always did. Where he supposedly wouldn’t see it. ‘You have such an amazing family and you’ve always been so close—even with Rory, who was away so much. How can you not know how very lucky that makes you, Connor?’
Suddenly part of her motivation in being so upset about the fight he’d had with his brother, even the earlier rift that he had had with the rest of his family until he’d started making amends of late, made more sense to him. And he mentally kicked himself for not piecing it together earlier. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t hinted at it before.
‘I know you didn’t have a big family growing up—’ he took a deep breath before he continued ‘—and maybe I do need to talk with Rory, especially now—’
‘Maybe?’
Keeping calm and avoiding another of their famous arguments was the least he could do this time, considering he knew her history, her way of building a substitute family within the walls of this building that she loved so much and considering that he knew she was only interfering because she cared.
He could give a little under those circumstances. ‘All right. I do need to talk to him.’
Her green eyes widened marginally in surprise at his back-down. Then they narrowed in suspicion. ‘Sooner rather than later.’
Connor smiled a half-smile. ‘You’re pushing it now. I’d suggest you quit while you’re ahead.’
The very visible rise of her chin made him smile all the more. Until she eventually announced, ‘You needn’t try turning on the charm either. Because I know on top of everything else, you lied to me way back at the start.’
His smile left, at speed. ‘Did I now?’
‘Yes, you did. And you know you did.’ When he simply stared at her with the same implacable gaze he had worn that first day, she shook her head and rose from the sofa again. ‘I don’t know why you feel the need to pretend to be someone you’re not, Connor, especially with me.’
As she stepped near to his chair he reached a hand out and grasped her wrist, his long fingers tight against her beating pulse. And she froze. Nothing more than the skipping beat against his fingertips betraying the fact that she was affected by his touch. But it was enough.
Enough to encourage him to lean back in the over-stuffed chair a little while his fingers relaxed, his thumb brushing back and forth against that beating pulse. And his eyes watched the movement, still fascinated by the velvety smooth softness of her skin, even after being able to touch it and kiss it so often. He remembered seeing his hand on the pale skin of her shoulders, on her flat stomach, cupping her beautiful breasts; most of all he remembered it framing her face, when she closed her eyes and kissed his palm. So many new memories now.
When he spoke his voice came out a little huskier than he’d planned. ‘What did I lie about?’
‘Did you tell so many that you don’t remember which one it might be?’
The question forced him to think about that while his thumb continued to rub back and forth, his eyes still fixed on the movement. ‘I didn’t lie about the building, or owning Devenish or never forgetting that one night we had. I didn’t lie about not knowing sometimes whether to strangle you or kiss you—though I do think I have a preference firmer in my mind on that one now…’
Her pulse fluttered again.
‘You told me when you were angry and bitter that you were on that mission of yours to have all that money to retire with.’
The soft background music came to an end, and Connor could hear her breathing, the small, shallow breaths she was taking that told him she was still annoyed enough to try to resist the effect of his touch.
‘Yes, but you know I’ve bought more properties than I’ve sold lately—’
And he had, surprisingly. He was even getting a kick out of it. Once he’d finally come to the conclusion that he couldn’t change the past and that he had to try and find a way to deal with what had been handed to him. Though Devenish Enterprises was a very different company in his hands than it had been in Frank’s—it had moved into the twenty-first century, to begin with.
Connor was quite proud of that achievement.
‘But you lied about the money.’
‘No.’ He smiled laconically at her wrist. ‘I definitely have the money. You’ve stuck with a bone fide multimillionaire. In all his glory.’
She paused, took a deeper breath. ‘You were using great chunks of that money to set up trust funds for your younger brothers and sisters. And paying off the entire families mortgages, even when you refused to speak to a single one of them.’
‘Yes. Though, in fairness, Rory wasn’t best pleased when I tried to pay his off. He was, shall we say, rude to the agent I sent…’ He flashed a grin up at her.
When she didn’t speak, he tilted his head to look up into her eyes, while she looked down at him from beneath long lashes, a myriad of emotions crossing her expressive emerald-green eyes. And then she smiled.
She was beautiful.
‘Were you trying to get me to hate you on purpose?’
He felt his gut tighten in response, his hand automatically mirroring the sensation on her wrist as he tugged her round to the front of the sofa and down onto his lap, easing back into the cushions as he wrapped his arms around her. ‘I was possibly a tad irritated by you at the time. We’ve come a long way since then, don’t you think?’
Her throat convulsed, her tongue swiping across her bottom lip before she answered him with another half-hidden tremor in her voice. ‘I really hated your guts for a while.’
He’d probably hated himself a little at the time.
‘I know you did.’ He pulled her closer to him and she lifted her knees, her head tilted back against his arm so she could look up at him.
‘You can be such a pain when you set your mind to it.’ She found one of the gaps between the buttons on his shirt and threaded her fingers in to touch his skin. ‘But you looked like the weight of the world had been lifted off your shoulders when you came back from seeing your mum—think how you’d feel if you sorted things out with Rory.’
‘Maybe.’ He leaned down, resting his chin on top of her head, his fingertips smoothing from her knee to the edge of her loose shorts while he took a deep breath. He guessed if she was ever going to trust him with that something she still hid from him, then he had to show that sharing was something he could do too. ‘But there’s a longer history in my dispute with Rory. It’s part and parcel of why I was a man on a mission when I came here.’
The surprise sounded in her voice, her fingers already beginning to undo buttons. ‘I thought this was just about the fight you had at your mother’s. Rory said you were angry at the time, said a few things he didn’t appreciate you saying to your mum, and that he hit you for it. I’d probably have done the same thing.’
Connor smiled a very small smile. ‘Yes, well, that’s certainly a very condensed version of what happened. I got the solicitor’s letter that morning bringing me the glad tidings and Rory was there when I confronted her. She felt that I hadn’t had any need to know because my dad had loved me like all of his kids. I said that every child had a right to know where he
came from and that every father should know he had a child—which she obviously partially agreed on ’cos Frank had known about me. She then had to confess to both of us that, after Rory was born, she and Dad were so young that they couldn’t deal with a baby and keep their marriage afloat, so they split up—and then when they got together again she was already pregnant with me. And I made a few snide remarks about secrets and why Dad had forgiven her. And what kind of a guy Frank must have been for never wanting to see me. And Rory stepped in when Mum got upset. He hit me when I wouldn’t stop asking questions—I hit him back. And then when he wrestled me out the door, we had—words.’
Shannon went still against him.
He glanced down at the top of her head. ‘And none of that’s anything either of us can do anything about. It happened.’
‘It must have been awful.’
He considered lying so she wouldn’t think less of him for his behaviour, but decided he’d rather be honest and have her mad at him for a while. ‘It wasn’t pretty. But then you know how I can be in an argument—I have a tendency to fight fire with fire.’
Shannon seemed to be undoing the buttons on his shirt absentmindedly, while her thoughts remained elsewhere. ‘Maybe standing on the outside looking in on a family like yours is what it takes for me to see how important it is to hang onto something that rare—
with both hands—no matter what. You know you need to sort it out with Rory. You won’t be happy ’til you do; I know you.’
The familiar, telltale scent of flowers that would always be Shannon surrounded him, filling his senses and clouding his thoughts as she slid her hand inside his open shirt, her fingertips tracing over his skin before she reached her other hand up to his face, tilting her head back as she drew him into a slow, tender kiss that didn’t last anywhere near long enough as far as Connor was concerned. Then, her nose close to his, she stared him in the eye while she told him in a determined voice, ‘You’re very dumb sometimes for someone so smart. You were never any less a brother or a son. One mistake before you were born was never going to take that away. Idiot.’
It had just taken him a while to remember that.
