Reilly's Return (7 page)

“Ohmygod! Ohmygod!” the girl mumbled incoherently, pressing her hands to her pale cheeks. Her fingernails were painted black. “It’s—it’s—ohmygod!”

Jayne shook her head and cast a wry look at Reilly. “If you could bottle your effect on women and sell it, you’d be able to call Donald Trump poor white trash.”

Reilly scowled at the remark but didn’t take his eyes off the awe-struck punk creature advancing on him. He took a wary step backward.

“Candi, heel,” Jayne said, catching her young charge by the shoulder, halting her pursuit of Reilly, who was plastered against the side of his Jeep. “Candi, this is Pat Reilly. He was a good
friend of my late husband. He’s going to be staying with us for a little while.”

Her description of their relationship didn’t escape Reilly, and he shot Jayne a cold look. She was trying to put a barrier between them, trying to resurrect Mac’s ghost. Well, it damn well wouldn’t work. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but her next words brought him up short.

“Reilly, this is Candi Kane. She’s living with me until she has her baby.”

“She’s what?” he croaked as all his hot visions of bedtime games were thoroughly dowsed with the cold water of reality.

Jayne’s lips curved slowly upward in an incredibly smug smile. “Candi lives here. With me. In my house. Twenty-four hours a day.”

Reilly planted one hand on his hip and rubbed the other across his jaw, caught between equally strong urges to laugh and to wring Jayne’s pretty neck. He gave in to the first and quelled the second. The little minx! No wonder she’d given in so easily to his request for housing. His broad shoulders shook as he wagged a finger at her. “Don’t think you’ve got the better of me, sheila.”

Jayne sniffed. “I didn’t know there was a better of you.”

“It all looks choice to me,” Candi whispered reverently, her eyes eating Reilly up.

Jayne shot her a scorching look. “It’s talk like that that gave you an expanding waistline, young lady.”

“Jayne!” the girl wailed, mortified. Her face flushed a furious shade of red. She lowered her voice to an embarrassed hiss. “Jeeze, did you have to bring
that
up?”

Jayne rolled her eyes. “Honey, I don’t think it escaped his attention. Reilly’s not naïve enough to think you were just hiding a medicine ball under your blouse.” Her hands cupping Candi’s shoulders, she gave the girl a serious once-over. “Now, how are you feeling today? You don’t look in imminent danger of death from lack of Fig Newtons. Good thing, too, ’cause I forgot to get groceries.”

“Again?” Candi shook her spikey head and cast a woeful glance Reilly’s way, apparently having survived being star struck. “I hope you didn’t come here for the food. What little there is, is weird. Just wait until you get a taste of her tea.” She made a face that more than described her opinion of the brew.

Jayne took umbrage at the slam against her cooking. “I grow the herbs for that tea myself. And, I’ll have you know, my all-natural cuisine is very healthful.”

Candi snorted. “Sprouts and oat gook. A person could starve.”

“You eat like a marine!” Jayne argued, throwing her hands up in disbelief.

Candi tugged on the bottom of her T-shirt and stuck her nose in the air, presenting them with her ample profile. “Well, I
am
eating for two.”

“Who? Arnold Schwarzenegger and Refrigerator Perry?”

The girl ignored Jayne and looked at Reilly hopefully. “Can you do anything besides look devastating? Like cook?”

He chuckled. “I can fry steak and eggs with the best of them.”

She sighed heavenward. “Maybe there is a God, after all. Now, if you two will excuse me, I have to go get prone; my feet are swelling. Nice meeting you, Reilly.”

“Mr
. Reilly,” Jayne corrected her with a dire look.

“Whatever.”

Reilly dropped a hand on Jayne’s shoulder and stood beside her, watching in silence as Candi waddled back into the barn-cum-house. “Did her folks really name her Candi Kane?”

“Yep.”

“Crikey, they were askin’ for it.”

“And they got it, too.” Jayne shook her head. “She’s a handful.”

“How’d she end up with you? Sounds like she’s from New York or someplace like that.”

“Providence, Rhode Island. She’s a runaway,” Jayne explained. “I sort of adopted her from a shelter in San Francisco. A friend of mine is a counselor there. He introduced me to Candi, and I just kind of brought her home with me.

“She’s a good kid, really,” she said, appealing to Reilly with her liquid black eyes. “She’s just made a lot of bad choices. She could have a very bright future if she’d quit trying to sabotage herself.”

Reilly lifted a hand to brush his fingertips along the curve of Jayne’s cheek. “Trying to save the world, Jaynie?” he asked softly. There was no sarcasm in his voice, no derision, but a kind of sweet curiosity. His eyes glowed with it.

“Just a little piece of it,” Jayne replied honestly, her lush mouth turning up at one corner in an endearing smile.

As much as he had wanted to have her all to himself, Reilly couldn’t find it in him to be angry or even annoyed at the presence of Candi Kane. Looking down into Jayne’s sweet face, all he could feel was a strange warmth in his chest. It
was something like pride, only more intimate, something that seemed very special, very rare.

“You’re one in a million, Calamity Jayne,” he murmured.

And he leaned down and kissed her—not in the possessive, sexual way he had kissed her before. This kiss was gentle, a benediction. Jayne drank in his approval. She felt as if the sun had come down and encircled her with a golden glow.

When he lifted his head, Reilly tweaked her nose and gave her a wink, nodding in the direction of the converted cow barn. “Come on, luv, show me to my stall.”

Jayne loved her house. She had designed it with two things in mind—comfort and open spaces. One room flowed into the next with scarcely a wall in the place. One bonus she hadn’t even considered at the time was the lack of privacy. It was going to be very difficult for Pat Reilly to get her totally alone in a room … or for her to get him alone, she added with a frown.

Her common sense might have been wary of Reilly and his motives for wanting to rekindle the previously forbidden flame, but her hormones were all for jumping into the nearest bed with
him, Jayne admitted to herself. It seemed she was no more immune to Reilly’s roguish charm than the rest of the women on the planet were.

Who was she kidding? She had no immunity to it whatsoever. If she had, she would never have given him a second look when Mac had introduced her to him all those years ago. The temptation to betray her beloved husband would never have crossed her mind or blackened her conscience.

Mac’s dead, Jaynie. Dead and buried. There’s no reason for the livin’ to go on feelin’ guilty
.

But guilt was only a part of the bigger picture.

Reilly stood with his hands planted at the waist of his jeans, staring off across the sweeping expanse of the first floor with something like disbelief in his eyes. He’d never seen anything quite like it. The living areas were divided by various groups of furniture or by curtains of hanging plants. There were heavy posts and beams aplenty, but there was nary a solid wall on this level.

They walked through an enormous kitchen where copper and iron pots and bunches of dried herbs and flowers hung from the heavy ceiling beams, and where a polished, pine harvest table dominated the floor space. The cupboards had been constructed of weathered barn siding. The
cobalt-blue tiled counter tops were crowded with Kentucky salt-glazed pottery.

Beyond the kitchen, on the north side of the building and up three steps, was a more formal dining area. On the south side and down three steps was a sprawling living room with plush lavender carpet. The south wall was virtually all window, decorated by nothing more than a deep purple velvet swag valance artfully slung on a thick brass rod.

The collection of furniture in the room could only be called eclectic. Bon Jovi blared from a tall French armoire crammed with stereo equipment. A low, black-and-gold japanned trunk topped with a thick slab of glass served as a coffee table. It was cluttered with old books and magazines. There were iron floor lamps with fringed shades and a bamboo cage made in the likeness of an elaborate house with two tiny birds flitting about within it—no doubt trying to escape the rock music, Reilly thought.

For lounging there were three huge, ornate Victorian sofas upholstered in purple brocade. Two were piled with paisley-print pillows in shades of mauve and purple and green. One was occupied by Candi, sprawling the length of it with her stocking feet propped on one arm and her spikey hair sticking up over the other. She was thoroughly engrossed in the latest copy of
WE
magazine.

Reilly scowled at the picture of himself staring out from the cover of the magazine with a crooked grin. Turning away, he nearly plowed into an aquarium. He pulled himself up short and stared in utter disbelief at the contents of the tank.

“Bloody hell! That’s a tarantula!”

“I know,” Jayne said calmly, as if everyone she knew kept one. “You shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, you sent him to me.”

Reilly opened his mouth and clamped it back shut. He looked from Jayne to the huge hairy arachnid and back again. He had bought the thing at a pet shop and sent it to her when she’d panned
Deadly Weapon
. It had been a practical joke, just one of many he had played on her over the years. “I never expected you to keep it!”

Jayne leaned over the tank and crumbled in some homemade spider food, smiling as Harry scrambled over a rock to get to the treat. She turned an angelic look up to Reilly. “What else could I have done with him?”

For the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He couldn’t name one other woman of his acquaintance who would have kept a tarantula.

“I voted we sent it to that big roach motel in the sky,” Candi said. “That thing gives me the creeps. No offense intended, Reilly.”

“None taken,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

“And you shouldn’t let that ugly thing keep you from asking Jayne out. She’s not
that
attached to it.”

Jayne reached over the back of the couch to pluck the magazine from Candi’s hands. “This doesn’t even remotely resemble an algebra book.”

Candi ignored the hint. Struggling into a sitting position she kept her eyes on Reilly, who had wandered off to inspect a Chinese screen. “Jayne, do you have any idea who he is?” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. She snapped a finger against the magazine cover. “He’s the sexiest man in the universe. You’ve got the sexiest man in the universe in your living room, and you’re showing him your pet spider. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Are there any helpful articles in this magazine? Like one that advises people to mind their own business?” Jayne asked pointedly. It hadn’t occurred to her that Candi would want her to pursue Reilly. She had thought the girl would act as a buffer, just like her younger sisters always had when she’d been a teenager bringing boyfriends around.

“No,” Candi said, “but there’s plenty in here about what a stud this guy is.”

Jayne scowled, not appreciating the reminder in the least. If it was at all possible, she was going to try to think of Reilly in asexual terms for the time being.
She would try to think of him as a fellow life force in her circle of existence, a spiritual energy, a hunk and a half. Oh, fudge, she thought, grinding her teeth.

“Don’t let the glitter get in your eyes, sugar,” she advised Candi sagely as she handed her the magazine. “He’s just a man.”

Candi gave her a long-suffering look that suggested she thought Jayne a bit dim. “Jayne, my uncle Fred who sells orthopedic shoes is just a man. That fat guy that comes to read the meter is just a man. Pat Reilly is
awesome.”

She was right, Jayne thought with a sinking heart as she stared across the room, meeting Reilly’s smoldering gaze. Everything inside her turned to warm honey. There were men and then there was Reilly. There was definitely something about him that set him apart—an inner fire, a blazing sexuality, a bod to die for. And she now had to accompany that something to a bedroom.

Offering a fervent little prayer to every deity she could think of, she crossed the room and motioned for him to follow her. The trip up the winding open staircase to the second floor seemed to last an eternity. She could feel Reilly’s gaze on her derriere every step of the way. She was so aware of it, it was like a tangible caress. By the
time they gained the second-story landing, her breathing was labored and her knees were weak.

Practicality had dictated there be at least a few walls in this part of the house. There were four spacious guest rooms, and Jayne’s own large suite, which was set apart from the other bedrooms by a lofted den. She flung open the door to Reilly’s room and turned to him with a skittish smile.

“Here you go. All the comforts of home. You even have your own bath.” She sidled toward the steps, shooing him toward the room with an airy wave of her hand. “Go on ahead. Settle in. Settle away. I’ll just—”

Reilly took a step backward and propped himself against the wall, effectively cutting off Jayne’s escape route. A lazy smile twitched his lips. “Aren’t you gonna give me the grand tour, Jaynie? What kind of a hostess are you?”

Jayne’s brows drew together in annoyance, and she crossed her arms tightly against her chest, not realizing that she was plumping her breasts up practically under Reilly’s nose. Her black eyes sparkled. “It’s a bedroom, Reilly. I hardly think you, of all people, need a map.”

That was an argument best left alone, Reilly decided. His love life had been blown out of all proportion by the Hollywood press, but he did
certainly know his way around a bedroom. To his way of thinking, a man didn’t discuss such things, particularly with a lady and most especially not with a lady who had qualms about becoming just another notch on his belt.

“Come on, Jaynie,” he said in his most persuasive tone. He gave her a little-boy’s smile that was designed to melt the coldest female heart. “How are we supposed to get to know each other if you keep running away from me?”