The Temptation of Sean MacNeill (15 page)

It felt good. Right.

None of which stopped his slow burn when he looked over and saw Rachel talking earnestly with Patrick about some school bond issue. Sean had told her straight-up and early on he didn't care beans about the five years' difference between them, but there was no getting around the fact that Patrick was nearer her age than he was. More nearly her equal in education, too, Sean thought bleakly. Hell, either of his brothers was more her type: steady, settled and financially secure.

He was a chump to be thinking Thanksgiving dinner when all she wanted from him was sex in the back of his truck.

Nothing is going to change. Mr. MacNeill is a friend, that's all.

Sean scowled.

"Why the long face, bro?"

Pride demanded he deny it. "I'm thinking."

Con's amused gaze flicked to Rachel and back. "I can see how that would be a strain," he drawled, and then winced as his wife kicked him under the table. He changed the subject. "I brought your business plan for the loan application along. We can go over it after dinner."

"Yeah?" Despite his cool pose, Sean felt his heart begin to hammer. "Think the bank will go for it?"

Con shrugged. "Who can say? Looks good, though. Well thought out."

Sean hid his flash of pleasure at his brother's praise. "Did you include those photos I sent?"

"Of the wardrobe and chairs and things? Yeah. They should help, You sure you want to put the truck up as collateral, though?"

Sean squelched his brief regret. He wasn't going to fail. "Don't have any choice."

Patrick spoke up. "You know, Con and I talked it over. We'd be willing to—"

"No." And if he did fail, it would be on his own. "I appreciate the help with the proposal, though."

"We just want to see you protect your cash flow."

Con nodded. "A lot of start-up businesses fold because they're under-capitalized."

"Mine almost did," Val added.

Sean couldn't resent his family's interference. Not when it was so clearly motivated by concern. But he wished they wouldn't emphasize what a gamble he was taking with Rachel sitting right there, listening to every word.

"That's why I'm applying for the loan," he said evenly.

"And his business is not going to fold," Rachel declared in her schoolteacher tone. "His furniture is beautiful. He can sell as much as he makes, and he works extremely hard. Of course he'll do well."

Con raised his eyebrows. "She sounds like Mom."

"Well." Patrick cleared his throat. "Looks like we'd better take this new … venture seriously, then."

"Very seriously," Val said with a twinkle. They weren't talking about the furniture business anymore. Sean wondered if Rachel caught on. Her brow creased uncertainly as she looked around the circle of amused and interested faces.

But later, as Sean carried plates to the dining room, Patrick stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"I don't know what you're getting into here," his brother said. "Do you?"

Sean scowled. "I'm not looking to hurt her, if that's what you mean."

"No. I'm more concerned with whether she could hurt you. This mess that she's in—are you sure it's your fight?"

The same thought had bothered Sean. He shook it away. Rachel and her kids
needed
him. "Since when did you start worrying about me getting into fights?"

"Maybe now that you're grown up, I don't want to see anything happen to that pretty face of yours."

Sean ran his hand over his face. He was the only MacNeill brother to survive adolescence with an unbroken nose. He shrugged. "So, if I'm grown up now, maybe I've got more important things to worry about."

He went through to the dining room, where Rachel was setting forks around the table.

She looked up, her pretty mouth compressed with concern. "I hope I didn't offend your family earlier, speaking out like that."

Offend them? Con, at least, was delighted to watch him take the fall at last. "You didn't offend them."

"I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"You didn't embarrass me."

She set her plates down on the table. "It just made me see red when you're so clearly qualified and committed to doing this, and they did their big-brother-knows-best routine."

"Rachel." He was shaken by her faith in him. He backed her into the china cabinet and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the way her mahogany eyes went wide. "I don't need your support against my brothers. But I like having you in my corner. I like it a lot."

He bent his head and laid his lips on hers. The kiss started smooth and soft and easy. A gesture of thanks. And then the hitch in her breath hooked him and her warm scent fled him in, and he wanted—needed—more. He kissed her again, urged her lips to part and her tongue to play with his.

And cool-schoolteacher Rachel, let's-befriends Rachel, nothing's-going-to-change Rachel, put her arms around him and kissed him back.

He took it deeper, savoring her quick shudder against him. Friends, my butt, he thought with delight.

Her hands tightened in his hair and he stopped thinking at all. There was only Rachel, her smooth warm skin and her hot slick mouth and the hunger in her that woke a primitive need in him. He leaned into her, pushed against her with enough force to make the glasses inside the old pine breakfront chime together. The sound sang in his ears, recalled him to their surroundings.

He couldn't take her in his brother's dining room with their families about to walk in any minute.

Sean lifted his head.

And saw Rachel's ten-year-old daughter watching them through the doorway to the living room.

"Hell," he said.

Lindsey turned and ran.

"What?" Rachel's mouth was red from his kisses. Her eyes were wide and worried. "What is it?"

"Nothing," he muttered. "I hope it's nothing. I'll be right back."

* * *

Sean found Lindsey in the barn, curled in the kittens' stall. She spared him one long, cool look when he showed up and then stared stubbornly down at the straw by her feet.

That was all right, Sean told himself, trying to ignore the sympathetic lurch of his heart at the miserable set of her mouth. He'd had females mad at him before.

He knew better than to ask if he could come in. He unlatched the stall, making the four black-and-white kittens inside scatter, and closed it behind him.

"You want to talk?" he asked.

"No."

"Fine. I'll talk. You can listen." He looked around for a seat. Found it on the bin that held the pet food. It creaked under his weight. "You saw me with your mom."

Her chin angled up. "You were kissing her."

So much for not talking. "Yeah, I was."

"She said you were 'friends.'" Scorn and betrayal vibrated in Lindsey's voice.

"Yeah, I heard her." He studied her averted face. He wished he had Patrick's experience at fathering. He envied Con his smooth way of reasoning. All Sean had to go on was his knowledge of the female species and his affection for this one particular child. He hoped they would be enough. "So, are you mad because you think she lied to you, or mad because I kissed her?"

Lindsey lifted one shoulder. "She never tells me what's going on."

Sean sympathized with her frustration. "That's her way of trying to protect you."

She looked at him directly for the first time. "Will you tell me?"

"I can't tell you everything," Sean said cautiously. He'd come out here to make things right for Rachel. But meeting Lindsey's suspiciously shiny eyes, he realized he wanted to do right by her daughter as well. And that didn't include more lies. "If you ask me stuff I can answer, I will."

Lindsey looked back at the kittens. One of them, a black-and-white puffball, was batting a leaf across the hard-packed floor. "Are you her boyfriend?"

"I've got feelings for your mom," Sean said quietly. "And I'm hoping she's got feelings for me. I don't know if we've figured out what to do about all those feelings yet."

"But you're grown-ups."

Right. "And she's your mom. She loves you. She loves you and Chris more than anything. She's got to look at what it would mean to you before she gets mixed up with me."

The child's gaze slid sideways again. "You're all right," she muttered.

Warmth bloomed in his chest. He felt like she'd given him season tickets to the Celtics. Center court.

"I like you, too," he said.

"But I'm still mad at my mom."

Well. Sean shifted on the pet food bin. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "it's easier to be mad at the parent who stays than the parent who goes away. My dad, he was a marine."

Lindsey watched the black-and-white kitten corner the leaf and pounce. But he could tell she was listening. It was there, in the angle of her head, in the tension in her neck. "So?"

"So, he was gone a lot when I was growing up. Overseas. I missed him, but I didn't talk about it much. I was afraid it would make my mom sad. And I didn't want my brothers to think I was a baby."

"I miss my daddy," Lindsey said to the kitten.

"I know you do, honey." Anger filled him at the man who had been her father, who had skipped out on his responsibilities and her love. But anger wouldn't help Lindsey. "It used to make me mad, too," Sean said. "When my dad went away. Like he didn't love us enough to stay and take care of us. I couldn't take it out on him, because he wasn't around. And maybe I worried he didn't want to be around."

Lindsey bent her head. There was a tiny pleat between her brows, a pout to her lower lip. She looked so much like Rachel that Sean's heart turned over in his chest.

"Sometimes I was a real jerk about it," he continued. "Really gave my mom a hard time, until my brother pounded on me some. Patrick," he explained, when her head came up in surprise. "I had to be a little older before I accepted that being away was part of our dad's job. That was how he took care of us."

"My daddy killed himself," Lindsey whispered.

"Yeah. I know. Only the way I figure it, maybe he was still taking care of you the best way he knew how, because he owed so many people money."

Her face set. "I don't care about the money. He shouldn't have gone away."

He stroked her hair. "I know."

And before he had time to prepare, before he could shield his emotions, she ambushed him. His arms were full of little girl, bony knees and silky hair and streaming eyes. She cried as though she had a right to soak his shirt and break his heart.

He was in for it now, Sean thought. He didn't want to do this, didn't want to fall for a kid he couldn't claim and couldn't protect. Panic almost made him bolt the barn. But he stuck, because this kid didn't have anywhere to run and no one else to turn to. He held her until her tears melted his last resistance and she was quiet in his arms, nestled in a corner of his heart that had been empty for twelve restless years.

"Better?" he asked.

She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

He lifted enough to dig his handkerchief out of his back pocket. "Here."

She regarded it doubtfully. "Mom has tissues."

"That's because she's a mom. Goes with the territory. My mother taught me to carry a handkerchief." When she still made no move to take it, he dried the tears from her flushed smooth cheeks himself.

"But you've got to blow your own nose," he said, trying for stern, and got a watery chuckle in response.

She blew her nose, hard, and then offered the handkerchief back.

"Stick it in your pocket," he suggested.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"'
S'all
right."

She sighed and relaxed against him. With the wailing done, the puffball kitten wobbled over to investigate. Lindsey almost—
almost
—smiled. And inspiration hit Sean over the head like a two-by-four.

"Patrick's not going to want all these cats around in a couple of weeks," he said. "I was thinking I might take one off his hands."

"You want a kitten?" Hope quavered in her voice.

He'd never had responsibility for an animal in his life. He traveled too much, job site to job site. A pet required things, like being home at night and regular trips to the grocery store.

"Yeah," he said firmly. "I do. You want to help me pick one out?"

She leaned from his lap to stroke the black-and-white kitten with one finger. "Jack said they couldn't leave their mother yet."

"They're too young now," Sean agreed. "But later, most of them will need another home. That's the way things are with cats."

Very daring now, Fuzzball made a try for the girl's lap. Sean winced as kitty claws pricked through his jeans. Lindsey unhooked the animal from his knee and buried her nose in soft kitten fur.

"It would miss its mom," she said, the words muffled.

I miss my daddy.

Sean nodded gravely. "Nobody could take the place of its real parent. But that doesn't mean somebody else, somebody lucky enough to take it home, couldn't love it. Maybe you could come by sometimes to visit. Give it attention. Do stuff with it, maybe—and then it wouldn't miss its real mom so much."