Conor's Way (45 page)

"I wish Conor and I fought," Olivia said,
slumping forward to rest her chin in her hand. "We don't talk
enough to fight. He didn't want to be married. He made no secret of
that."

"Well, like it or not, he's married now."

"Only because he had no choice."

"Olivia." Kate set down her teacup and eyed
her sternly across the table. "A man who can't afford to foot the
bill has no business looking at the menu. Of course, he had a
choice. No one forced him to sleep with you."

Olivia blushed hotly. She could not look
up.

"He's a grown man, Liv, who knew what he was
doing. The worst thing you can do is blame yourself."

"What can I do?"

"Give the man time. I think he'll come
around."

Olivia looked up. "He doesn't love me."

"Did he say that?"

"Not in so many words, but—"

"You, of course, tell him every day how much
you love him."

Startled, Olivia sat up in her chair. "Well,
no, actually, I haven't."

"Why not?"

"I'm afraid that'd just make him run for the
next stage out of town," she confessed in a small voice.

"When I got married, my mama gave me some
advice I'll never forget. Since your mama never got the chance,
I'll tell you what my mama said. She said that the most important
thing to a marriage isn't being in love, although that's important.
It isn't money, although that would be nice. It isn't even
children, although they usually come with the territory. The most
important thing is trust."

She reached across the table and gave
Olivia's hand an encouraging squeeze. "I think you picked yourself
a good man. Now, you just have to have faith in him. From what
you've told me, he's been through some hard times in his life. A
man like that won't wear his heart on his sleeve, but that doesn't
mean he doesn't have one."

"Thanks, Kate."

Kate waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.
"Nothing to thank me for. Besides, next time Oren and I have a
fight, I'll come cry on your shoulder."

***

In the middle of the night, Carrie had a
nightmare. Conor heard her screaming—"Daddy! Daddy!"—and he took
the stairs two at a time to reach her. When he got to her room, her
sisters and Olivia were already there. Olivia was sitting with her
on the bed, rocking her. She looked up as Conor moved into the
room, past Becky, Miranda, and the ever-faithful Chester.

He walked over to the bed and sat down.
Olivia relinquished her hold, and Conor pulled the sobbing child
into his arms. Her frightened sobs tore at his heart—wee Carrie,
who never seemed afraid of anything.

Olivia glanced over at the other two girls.
"Everything's all right," she said gently. "Go back to bed."

The girls departed, taking Chester with them,
and Olivia returned her attention to Carrie, watching as Conor held
the child and spoke softly to her.

"
Sha sha
," he murmured, stroking her
hair. "
Sha sha. Bermíd go maith. Tá mé
anseo
." He repeated the soothing Gaelic
words over and over until Carrie's sobs faded to
hiccups.

He pulled back and brushed tears from her
cheeks. "Better?"

She nodded, but when he moved to pull away,
she clutched at him. "Don't go, Daddy."

"I'll not go anywhere, lass." He shifted
their positions so that he could lean back against the headboard
with her on his lap. She rested her head on his chest and closed
her eyes. He glanced at Olivia, who sat beside him on Carrie's bed,
but neither of them spoke. After a few minutes, he tilted his head
to look at the child in his arms.

"Is she asleep?" Olivia asked.

He nodded. Moving
carefully, he eased himself out from beneath her, and settled her
back into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. He bent and
pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Good night,
mó paisté
."

Olivia kissed her sleeping daughter, too,
then she and Conor left the room together, closing the door behind
them. They paused in the hall.

"You'll have to teach me some of that Irish,"
Olivia said. "It seems to work."

"I've some whiskey left, but I didn't think
you'd let me give her that."

She slanted a prim look at him. "You thought
correctly. No whiskey in our house." Then, suddenly, she smiled at
him. "Oh, dear. I told myself I wasn't going to do this. Mr.
Branigan, I'm afraid your wife is a nag."

My wife
, he thought.
My
wife
.

He touched her face. His palm grazed her
cheek, his thumb brushed across her lashes. His fingers slid
through her hair. His other hand glided over her hip, pulling her
closer.

He couldn't fight this, he
didn't want to fight it. All he wanted to do was kiss her and touch
her and ravish her. He wanted to please her, keep her safe, make
her glad that she had married him.
His
wife
.

"Olivia." He wanted to say more than just her
name, but he found he could not. He could not form the words to ask
for what he wanted. All he could do was take it.

He drew his hand from her hair and reached
behind him, grasping for the door handle. He pushed the door wide
and pulled her into the bedroom they should have been sharing all
along. She came without resistance, and once they were inside, he
closed the door. He even remembered to lock it.

In the darkness, he found her lips with his.
He kissed her, a long, hard kiss. His hands curved around her
waist; his fingers spread across the small of her back to pull her
closer. He trailed kisses along her jaw, to the delicate line of
her throat, as his hands slid between them and reached for the top
button of her nightgown.

Her arms came around his neck. "Oh, Conor,"
she whispered against his ear. "Yes. Yes."

It took every ounce of will he possessed to
stop himself from ripping the gown apart. His hands shook as he
fought to keep his desire in check just a little longer. He worked
his way down, slipping the pearl buttons free, one at a time, until
all twenty-six of them were unfastened. He curled his fingers
beneath the edges to pull the gown from her shoulders. It slid down
her arms and caught at the flare of her hips.

He left it there and slid his hands up her
ribs to the long braid of her hair. He pulled the ribbon away and
the braid unraveled in his hands. He twined the thick, heavy silk
in his fists as he tasted the heated skin of her throat and felt
the pulse beneath her jaw beat a frantic rhythm against his
tongue.

He loved her hair, her skin, her breasts, her
scent, her heart, all the softness in her that drew him with a
power stronger than his will to resist it. It alarmed him, it
enthralled him.

He wished they had light so he could see her,
but he found the exquisite shape of her with his hands—her breast,
her waist, her hips.

He gave the gown a tug. It slipped free of
her hips and fell to the floor. He slid his hand between her
thighs, and he felt her arousal in the silken warmth he found
there. He caressed her, savoring the shivers that ran through her
as his fingertips glided back and forth.

Her arms tightened around his neck, and he
heard her breathing quicken to tiny gasps as he found the place
that pleased her most. Suddenly, her body arched and she cried out,
a soft keening wail muffled by his shoulder.

He couldn't hold back another instant. He
withdrew his hand, then he lifted her in his arms and took her to
the dim outline of the four-poster bed. He lifted her onto the high
mattress, then began tugging at the buttons of his shirt and
trousers with impatient movements, muttering a curse when he had
to stop and pull off his boots. When he was finally out of his
clothes, he climbed up beside her, not bothering with the
stepstool, which he would only have wasted precious time trying to
find in the dark anyway.

"Jaysus," he muttered, "for a woman who's
afraid of heights, you've a bed damned high off the ground, Mrs.
Branigan." And he kissed her before she could even think about
admonishing him for swearing.

He covered her body with his own. Her arms
encircled his neck, welcoming him. Her legs parted, inviting him
to come inside. He slid his hands beneath her shoulders, his weight
on his forearms, and entered her slowly. He'd hurt her that night
in Monroe, and although he felt her yield and stretch to
accommodate him, he strove to contain the driving force inside
himself. But when she whispered his name in that shy, drawling,
incredibly erotic way of hers, his control snapped and he forgot
all his tender intentions.

Wanting complete possession, he thrust deep,
then deeper still. The rhythm caught him in a burning tension that
built upon itself, growing stronger, until she shuddered beneath
him and made the startled, gasping cries of feminine release. He
felt the heat, the flash, and the explosive climax like gunpowder
set alight.

He lowered himself onto her and buried his
face in the curve of her neck, his arms closing tightly around her.
He did not move for a long time, savoring the feel of her
fingertips gliding across his back in hypnotic circles, until he
felt himself sinking into that blissful lethargy.

He realized it and stirred. "I must be
smothering you," he murmured, and shifted his weight, slipping free
of her, raising himself on his arms as if to leave her. But her
arms tightened around him almost fiercely, and he knew she guessed
his half-formed intention. She lifted her head and kissed him.
"Don't go," she whispered against his mouth. "Stay with me."

Her embrace he could have broken with no
effort at all, but her voice and her kiss conquered him, and he
eased slowly back down, moving to lie on his back beside her. He
slid his arm beneath her and pulled her to his side. She settled
herself comfortably within the embrace and rested her cheek in the
dent of his shoulder with a contented sigh.

"Go to sleep, Olivia," he
said. "I'll not leave you,
á
mhúirnín
. Just go to sleep."

***

Conor knew the moment they strapped him down.
He felt the leather bands across his body, and he struggled until
they broke. Free, he jerked sideways with a savage movement and a
curse, rolling to the edge of the table, his only thought to get
away, to escape. But then everything shifted, changed, and he was
in a darkened room, there were no guards, and what he'd thought was
a table was the soft down of a feather mattress. Disoriented, he
sat up, blinking at the soft moonlight that filtered in through
the window. The only sound was his own harsh breathing.

He turned his head and saw her and remembered
where he was.

She sat huddled at one corner of the
mattress, knees against her chest, the sheet drawn up around her
and bunched in her fists, her long hair tangled around her
shoulders—utterly still. She was watching him, her expression one
of dismay. And fear.

He slumped forward with a groan, cradling his
head in his hands. "I thought they tied me down again. I thought—"
He stopped abruptly.

"It was me," she whispered. "I had my arms
around you."

He shook his head. "Didn't want you to see me
like this," he mumbled, not looking at her. "Didn't want you to
see."

The mattress dipped with her weight as she
moved to his side. She touched his shoulder. "Conor, I already have
seen. I tended you for four nights, remember?"

"I didn't know you then," he cried,
anguished, yanking away from her touch. "I didn't even know you
were there."

He felt everything crumbling, every illusion,
every wish, every vision of a future with her, a future that was
peaceful and safe. Nothing was safe. Nothing. "Did I—" He took a
deep breath and lifted his head to stare at the closed door across
the room. "Did I hurt you?"

"Of course not."

"There's no 'of course' about it, lass," he
said, despising himself. "I could have."

"But you didn't." She put her hands on his
shoulders and pressed her lips to his back. "I love you," she said
against his skin.

Inside, he began to shake. He flung back the
sheet, slid off the bed, and retrieved his clothes. "You don't love
me."

"Yes, I do."

He began to dress. He pulled on his socks and
his linen, then reached for his trousers. He jerked them on. "No,
you don't. You can't."

"Conor, I'm not going to argue with you about
this. I love you. I can't help it if you don't believe me."

He turned his back to her and buttoned his
trousers. "You don't love me," he said and crossed the room.
Keeping his back to her, he added, "You can't. You don't even know
me."

"I know you better than you think."

The shaking inside him grew more intense,
and he took refuge. "Really?" He turned on her savagely, all his
defenses rising, wanting to shock her, repel her, push her away.
"What do you know? Do you know that I've stolen, I've cheated, I've
lied. I even killed a man once. And you love me, do you?"

She did not look shocked, nor repelled. She
did not even look slightly horrified. She just looked at him with
patience and infinite tenderness.

He could not bear it. He closed his eyes,
refusing to see. She could not know, she could not understand and
still look at him like that, as if she loved him. It was
impossible.

Shame. No matter where he went or what he
did, it was always with him. The taint of it was a permanent stain
nothing could remove. He turned away and stared at the moonlit
window. "Olivia, you have no idea what I am, what I've done."

"Then why don't you tell me?"

He drew a deep breath and
faced her, faced the moment of truth. "All right," he said flatly.
"I'll make my
admhaím
."