Conor's Way (22 page)

"What do you mean?" Becky jumped up so fast,
her chair went skidding backward. "What about when school starts?
Jeremiah and I always go over to the store and have peppermint
sticks after school."

"I know." Olivia also rose to her feet. "I
think it would be best if that stopped for a while."

"And I think you're mean and hateful!"

Olivia felt her own temper flaring. "That was
uncalled for, Rebecca Ann," she said sharply. "This issue is not
open for debate. For the time being, you will not be going anywhere
with Jeremiah. I intend to discuss the situation with Lila, and
make sure this does not happen again."

"What?" Stunned, Becky stared at her. "You
can't. I'll be completely humiliated. Jeremiah will never speak to
me again."

"Under the circumstances, I find that a
blessing."

Becky's face crumpled into misery. "How could
you do this to me?" she burst out. "I hate you!"

She ran out of the kitchen, sobbing, and
slammed the door behind her.

Olivia jumped at the sound. She leaned
forward, pressing her fingertips to her forehead, feeling
defensive, angry, and very worried. There were times when being a
mother was a very trying thing.

***

When Conor opened the back door and looked
in, Olivia was standing at the kitchen counter, with one arm
wrapped around a bowl and a spoon in her other hand. She was
savagely stirring the contents of the bowl, and she barely spared
him a glance.

"Is it safe?" he asked from the doorway.

"I don't know what you mean." She slammed the
bowl down on the counter and reached for the canister of flour.

"The way Becky went flying out of here, I
thought there might be a war here all over again. I sent Carrie and
Miranda after her, just to make certain she doesn't do something
dramatic and stupid, like run away from home."

She began measuring flour into the bowl and
didn't reply.

He entered the kitchen and set a pail of
sweet potatoes on the pie safe beside the door. He closed the door,
then leaned back against it and studied her across the kitchen. He
hadn't seen her this angry since she'd found out he was a
prizefighter. She got angry about the oddest things. Prim and
proper, starchy Olivia. "So, what's to be poor Becky's fate, then?"
he asked.

Olivia shoved the canister of flour back in
its place and began stirring the dough in the bowl. "I suppose
Carrie told you everything."

"Every fascinating detail."

She bristled at that. "I'm glad you find it
fascinating. When you have daughters of your own, I pray they give
you no end of trouble."

Conor grinned. "Sure, that's the mother's
curse," he said blithely. "When I was a lad and got into mischief,
my mother always ended her lecture with the words, 'Conor, my son,
when you have children of your own, may they give you half the
grief you've given me.'"

She continued to stir the contents of the
bowl and did not reply.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

Olivia stopped taking out her anger on the
cookie dough. "I'm going to make certain this doesn't happen
again," she said, reaching for an egg. She cracked the egg against
the side of her mixing bowl with unnecessary force. "I'm going to
talk with the boy's mother."

"What?" Conor stared at her back in
disbelief. "Have you no heart at all, Olivia?"

She tossed aside the broken pieces of
eggshell, and whirled around. "What?"

"Talking to his mother." Conor shook his
head. "How embarrassing for the lad. Talk to him, if you must, but
leave his mother out of it."

"He should be embarrassed," Olivia replied
hotly. "He should be ashamed."

"Why? The lad was only stealing a kiss from a
pretty girl behind the church. 'Tis harmless enough, I'm
thinking."

"Kissing is not harmless," she shot back. "It
can lead to—"

He folded his arms across his chest, and
looked at her with one raised eyebrow, waiting for her to
finish.

She pressed her lips together and turned
away. "Becky's too young for that sort of thing," she said,
cracking another egg into the bowl. "She's only fourteen."

"It was just a kiss. How old were you when
you got your first kiss, Olivia?"

She began stirring again and didn't answer.
He studied her rigid back and thought of that morning when she'd
rubbed that liniment into his skin, and how his response to her
touch had shocked her. He thought of last night when he had touched
her lips and she had looked at him with wide, dazed eyes. He
wondered if Olivia had ever been kissed in her life. Suddenly, he
wanted an answer to his question. He wanted it badly. "How old,
Olivia?"

"I don't think that's any of your
business."

"And I don't think you've ever been
kissed."

"I have, too." She picked up a bottle of
vanilla and yanked out the cork. She dumped a spoonful of the brown
liquid into the bowl. "Twice," she added, slamming the bottle
down. A spray of vanilla spilled onto her hand and across the
wooden counter.

He laughed out loud. "Twice? Two whole
times?"

The egg came flying at him before he knew
what was happening—but Conor was a prizefighter. He had quick
reflexes, and he knew how to duck. The egg sailed over his head and
hit the door with a splat.

White, yolk, and broken shell slid toward the
floor. He whistled, then straightened, and grinned at her. "Good
aim, but too slow. Care to take another shot?"

"Must you always be so mocking?" she
demanded, her voice shaking with anger.

He began walking toward her, watching as she
took a step back and hit the counter behind her. He stopped a foot
in front of her and spread his arms wide. "Well, go on, then. I'm
ready."

"What?"

"You've been kissed twice. Give me the
benefit of your expertise. Show me how it's done."

"I will not!"

He studied her shocked and outraged
expression and nodded slowly. "Just as I thought. Not a single kiss
to your name."

She lifted her chin and scowled at him. He
responded with a wicked smile, and waited.

"All right, then," she said, unexpectedly
rising to the challenge of that smile. She stood on her tiptoes,
touched her lips to one corner of his, and moved back again, so
quickly that he almost missed the whole thing. "There."

"You call that a kiss?" He shook his head.
"Olivia, I don't know what that was, but it wasn't a kiss."

She flushed pink, and a pained expression
crossed her face. "There's no need to make fun of me. Not all of us
have your...your ..."

"My what?"

"Your capacity for sin," she snapped.

"Kissing is a sin, is it?"

"I'm sure it would be, the way you would do
it."

He threw back his head and laughed. "God, I
hope so."

She didn't share his amusement. "You know all
about it, of course. No doubt you've kissed lots of women."

She started to turn away, but he lifted his
arms to brace them against the counter, trapping her. He leaned
closer, inhaling the scent of vanilla. "My fair share," he
murmured. "Would you like me to show you how to do it
properly?"

Her face took on a hint of panic, but she
tilted her head back and met his eyes. "No, Mr. Branigan," she
answered primly. "I would not."

He grinned. No woman could stick her nose in
the air better than Olivia. "Afraid my sinful ways might corrupt
you?" He bent his head until his mouth was an inch from hers.
"After all, you might like it."

"I doubt it."

That was too much. He couldn't let that
comment pass unchallenged. "'Tis doubting me, you are?" He touched
his lips to one corner of hers. "I'm not sure you know enough about
it to judge."

He tilted his head slightly and kissed the
other corner of her mouth. "The main thing about kissing," he
said, his lips brushing lightly over hers with each word, "is not
to think about it too much."

He closed his eyes, savoring the vanilla
scent that enveloped them both. He felt her lips tremble beneath
his, but she did not move. He felt her stiffen, but she did not
push him away. He ran his tongue across her closed lips, tasting,
coaxing, until she yielded, until her mouth opened beneath his with
a wordless sound of surprise that gave him the answer to his
question.

He'd only been teasing, thinking all of this
just a game, but suddenly it wasn't a game at all.

He deepened the kiss, and his body leaned
into her, pressing her back against the counter. The aggressive
move must have startled her, for he felt her hands come up as if to
push him away. He would not let her. He captured her hands, lacing
his fingers through hers and drawing their joined hands downward as
he savored the softness of her mouth. Her brief resistance
disappeared and her hands relaxed within his.

He let go and reached behind her head,
pulling away the pins until her hair came down. The pins scattered
across the counter and the floor as he buried his fingers in her
hair and wrapped its thick strands in his fists.

Something told him he ought to stop, that
this little game he'd started with her had already gone too far. He
tore his lips from hers, intending to break it off before he lost
what few wits he had left, but she made a tiny sound, a fluttering,
purely feminine mixture of innocence and invitation. His last
vestige of reason dissolved.

He trailed kisses across her jaw, along the
line of her throat above the pristine white collar, to her ear.
Pushing back her hair, he nibbled on the soft skin of her earlobe
and felt her shiver. He tightened one hand in her tangled hair and
slid the other down to her waist, then wrapped his arm around her
and pulled her tight against him, feeling every soft curve of her
body where she was pressed against him.

Her hips shifted against his weight, and he
shuddered at the jolt of pure pleasure he felt. He wanted to take
her down to the floor, he wanted to feel her move like that beneath
him, he wanted to feel her thighs wrap around him.

His hand left her hair and slid down between
them to open intimately over her breast. He kissed her again, not a
tender kiss this time, but a kiss hard and demanding. As he tasted
her mouth, he moved his thumb in a slow circle over her breast, and
felt her response through the layers of fabric.

She broke the kiss with a desperate gasp for
air. Somewhere past the roar in his ears and the lust that coursed
through his body, he heard her say his name. Permission or protest,
he didn't know which. But somewhere within that whispered plea, he
found a glimmer of sanity.

Christ, what was he doing? He jerked back,
breathing hard, shocked by the hot, driving force inside him that
had nearly taken her on a kitchen floor. He let her go and stepped
away, his body still pulsing with frustrated arousal. He stared
into her wide, startled eyes, striving for equilibrium. Years of
will and discipline, years of rigid control and tightly leashed
emotions, all of it nearly shattered with a kiss.

"On second thought," he muttered, "maybe you
should have a talk with that boy's mother, after all."

He turned away and walked out of the house,
breathing deeply of the sultry summer air, but he could not escape
the luscious scent of vanilla.

When Becky came back to the house about two
hours later, her eyes red and her face all puffy from crying,
Olivia felt as mean and hateful as Becky had accused her of being.
She also felt like a self-righteous hypocrite.

She watched her daughter walk straight
through the kitchen and up the back stairs without even looking at
her. "Dinner's almost ready," Olivia called after her.

"I'm not hungry," was the stiff reply that
came back down. A moment later, she heard the door of Becky's room
slam shut.

Olivia sagged against the counter, staring
down at the plank floor and the one small hairpin still lying
there, and her cheeks heated with guilt. She bent down and
retrieved the pin, then pushed it into the coil of hair she had
pinned back in place. She could still feel Conor's fingers pulling
her hair down, tangling through it, tearing away all the staunch
morality and virtuous ideals of a lifetime in the space of three
heartbeats. Only a few minutes before, she'd been giving her
daughter a lecture on propriety. What a hypocrite she was.

Dinner was excruciating. Becky stayed in her
room, Carrie and Miranda kept up a constant stream of chatter, and
Conor acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She
rather resented that.

She could still feel the heat of his mouth
everywhere he had kissed her, she could still feel the weight of
his body pressing her against the counter. Just the memory of it
flustered her, made her feel restless and strange. And very, very
guilty.