Up Close and Personal (12 page)

His gaze locked with hers as the world shattered around them and Ronan knew that without her, nothing would ever be the same for him.

A few minutes later, with Laura cuddled against him, Ronan decided it was the perfect time to tell her the plan he’d come up with. “You know I told you that I stayed late at work, figuring a few things out?”

“Uh-huh.” She sounded warm and sated and comfortable.

“Well,” he said softly, “I’ve decided what needs to be done.”

“About what?”

“About us.”

That had her attention, he thought as she pushed up from his chest to look at him. Her hair hung in a tangle around her face and shoulders, but her eyes were clear and focused on his.

“Meaning what exactly?”

“Meaning,” Ronan told her with a smile, “I think we should be married.”

“What?” Frowning now, she sat up straight, the duvet pooled in her lap as her hair fell forward to lay across the tops of her breasts.

Idly, he lifted one hand to toy with one of her nipples, but she batted his hand aside. “What are you talking about? Marriage? You said marriage was a trap.”

“It could be, if you went into it all wide-eyed and in love and expecting roses every day,” he said. “But if we went into this as partners—as
friends
, even—we could each have what it is we want most.”

“Friends.”

“More than,” he assured her, pushing himself up higher and stuffing a pillow behind his back. “It would be the best of all possible worlds, Laura,” he said, slightly surprised that she hadn’t jumped at his proposal. This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?

Taking her hand in his, he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, unconsciously soothing her. “I never thought to ask a woman to be mine forever. But with you, it’s different.”

“Different.”

He frowned a little. Her lack of enthusiasm worried him, but he was in too deep now to back away, even if he had wanted to. “We’re a good team, Laura. We get along nicely. We’re great in bed together. We could be happy.”

“Happy.”

Scowling now, he blurted, “Are you only going to repeat my words? Have you nothing to say? I’ve never asked anyone to share my life before you.”

“What am I supposed to say, Ronan? Have you figured that out, too?”

“Didn’t think I’d have to,” he admitted, “though if I had, it would have been different than this.”

Actually, he’d seen it all so clearly in his mind. Him making his very logical, clearly thought out proposal. Her, throwing herself into his arms with a happy cry and a resounding
Yes, I’ll marry you, Ronan!

Perhaps, he thought, she just couldn’t believe how nicely he’d worked it all out. How he had been able to see that she was right and how good they were together.

“And anywhere in this little scenario of yours,” Laura asked, “did the word
love
come up at all?”

“No, it didn’t and why would it, I ask you?” Her features froze so he spoke again, quickly. “This is more of a partnership. More in the way of a contract. Isn’t it enough that I desire you? That I admire so much about you? That I bloody
like
you?”

“No,” she said, dragging the duvet up until she held it like a shield in front of her. “It isn’t. I want more than desire from a husband. I want love.”

“Damn it, Laura, be reasonable.”

“Why should I? I want a family, Ronan. Children.”

“As do I,” he snapped and shoved one hand through his hair, fingers scraping along his skull. “I admit, I hadn’t thought of it until you told me of our lost child, but since then, the loss has haunted me. I keep thinking about that baby and what might have been.”

Her fingers plucked at the duvet as she whispered, “So do I.”

Ronan reached for her, taking her hands in his. “We could have children together, Laura. Build a family and neither of us has to risk something so ethereal as
love.
Marry me, Laura. Live with me here. We’ll bring Beast to Ireland and we can all have what we want.”

She didn’t speak and that gave him hope. She hadn’t said no, so maybe, if he gave her the time she’d need to see that he was right about this, it would all work out in the end.

“Will you think about it, Laura?” His words came softly, but his grip on her hands was tight enough to feel her tremble. “Will you do that at least?”

“I’ll think about it, Ronan, but I won’t make you any promises.”

“That’ll do, for now,” he said and pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her as if determined to hold her tightly enough to prevent her escaping him.

* * *

The following day, he took her to Dublin, where they had an elegant dinner at an amazing restaurant. He watched her over the candlelight and when his eyes flared with passion, Laura’s heart trip-hammered in her chest.

His “proposal” continued to run through her mind and Laura was torn in two over it. He’d offered her the chance to stay. To be with him. To have children with him. To make the family she wanted so badly.

All she would have to do is give up on love.

And that she couldn’t do.

She’d settled once before, she reminded herself, with Thomas. And without real love, even their engagement hadn’t lasted. What chance would a marriage have if it didn’t start out the right way? Besides, how could she marry him, loving him as she did, all the while knowing he wouldn’t love her back?

Oh, she hadn’t told him yet, because she didn’t want to waste what little time she had left with him in arguments that wouldn’t change anything. She needed love. He wouldn’t give it. So there was no chance for compromise, no matter what the great and powerful Ronan Connolly might think.

God, she would miss him.

Her memories were piling up inside her, and she knew, that as wonderful as they were, they would choke her with misery once she was home and alone again. Yet she couldn’t begrudge this time with Ronan. Couldn’t help but be glad he had blackmailed her into this trip.

After dinner, they walked the crowded streets, hand in hand. She heard traditional Irish music pouring from the dozens of pubs they passed in the Castlebar district. There was a sense of urgency here, in Dublin, that the village of Dunley didn’t have. It was bright and shiny and filled with tourists even so late in the season. She heard snatches of accents from around the world—American, British, German and more—and yet, with her hand in Ronan’s, she felt as if she belonged there.

They stood on one of the lovely bridges and stared down into the river Liffey, looking like a silver thread in the moonlight, winding its way through the city.

And he kissed her there, sliding his fingers through her hair, holding her while he took his time about tasting her, driving her body into a mad gallop of passion. Another memory made, she told herself, as the city and all of the people fell away.

When he ended the kiss, he leaned his forehead against hers and whispered, “We’ve a two-hour drive to get back to Dunley. Shall we go home, or get a hotel for the night?”

The scent of the sea floated past them on a brisk wind, fluttering the hem of her dress and ruffling Ronan’s hair. She was far from the home she’d made for herself in California. But the home of her heart was within reach and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be there. With Ronan.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

He grinned. “Good answer.”

Then he draped one arm around her shoulders and together, they left the city behind.

Ten

M
aeve Carrol was seventy years old and more stubborn than two rocks. The woman had been Ronan’s nanny when he was a boy and was somehow under the impression he hadn’t yet grown up. She gave him the look he remembered from his childhood, and he sighed.

Ronan was at the end of his tether. But it wasn’t dealing with Maeve that had him feeling as though there was a spike going through his head. It was Laura. As hardheaded as the old woman standing patiently before him, Laura refused to see reason. Refused to even discuss his proposal. What the hell more did she want from him?

He kept expecting her to suddenly see he was right. To throw her arms around him and say yes. That she’d marry him and stay here, in Dunley, where, he told himself, she bloody well belonged.

He was willing, wasn’t he, to make a life and children with her? It was more than he’d ever offered any other woman. Couldn’t she see that? Was the woman really so blind as to ignore what they might have together for the sake of her pride?

It seemed so. After their evening in Dublin, she’d begun to close herself off to him. There was a distance in her smile, in her touch and a part of him worried that no matter how he tried to make her stay, she was already preparing to leave.

The woman was making him crazy.

He glanced over at Laura now, wearing her jeans and a thick cable knit sweater in a soft oatmeal color. Her blond hair hung down on her shoulders and her smile was for Maeve alone.

His chest ached, and he rubbed one fist against it. Wasn’t his heart. He knew that because he wasn’t—and
couldn’t be
—in love. Asking for trouble that was and God knew he’d seen enough of that in his lifetime already. But he cared for her, that he could admit freely. So why wasn’t that enough?

Why did it have to be so damned complicated, this thing he and Laura shared? Why couldn’t they keep it simple, untangled by emotion and guided instead by the logic he saw so plainly? Wasn’t it easy enough to see that he just wanted to be with her? That they enjoyed being together? That they liked each other? Why must they make more of it than that? Why did she need words that choked in his throat? Why couldn’t the woman see that he was offering her more than he’d ever thought to offer anyone?

Marriage under the conditions he’d laid out so thoughtfully could be a blessing rather than the curse he’d been buried under as a child. Why couldn’t she bloody
see
it?

Temper chewing at him, Ronan took a breath and told himself to give her time to think. Time to realize that what they could have was too good to turn her back on.

Meanwhile…

“Maeve, it’s a sodding roof,” Ronan said, patience wearing thin in his voice. “If you don’t let me replace it, when the rains come this winter, you might as well be sleeping outside for all the cover you’ll have. You’ll wash away to sea on a tide of your own stubbornness.”

The older woman lifted an eyebrow at that and stiffened her spine until her whole five feet two inches of height looked formidable. “You’ll mind your tongue with me, Ronan Matthew Connolly.”

Laura watched, amused and touched, as Ronan bit back the temper she could see sparking in him and said only, “Yes, ma’am.”

“When I need a new roof,” Maeve told him, with a fast glance at her white-washed cottage with the bright blue door, “I’ll let you know. Until then, you can patch the holes.”

Over breakfast that morning, Ronan had told Laura exactly what would happen when they went to Maeve’s cottage. She had been his nanny when he was a boy, and he looked out for her, but he claimed she didn’t make it easy.

Laura wouldn’t make things easy for him, either. His proposal still echoed with a dull thud in her heart. She’d done as he asked and had thought about it. But she always came back to the same conclusion. Marry as friends. She’d never heard anything so stupid in her life. It amazed her that he’d actually gotten the words out at all, not to mention the fact that he’d looked so proud of himself for finding a solution to their situation.

She imagined he had thought of his proposal as quite the compromise. Give Laura what she wants without having to give anything truly important of himself. His body, yes. Children, sure. But his heart, Ronan would keep locked away in a drawer somewhere.

Hardheaded, close-minded, wonderful man that he was, he couldn’t even see that with his offer, he was cheating them both out of something special. Something once-in-a-lifetime special.

It was going to break her heart in two to leave him, but she didn’t have a choice. Not anymore.

“There are more holes in that roof than there are shingles,” Ronan said, shattering her thoughts.

“Then you’d best get busy,” Maeve told him, blithely brushing aside his rising temper.

He threw his hands high in defeat and stomped off, after giving Laura a
What did I tell you?
glance.

Alone with the older woman, Laura followed her to a worn wooden bench beneath a tree, then sat down beside her. “You know, he really wants to put a new roof on for you.”

“Oh, I know, but this one will do another year.” Maeve patted Laura’s hand. “Always a generous one, is Ronan. He’s a good boy, mind, but he never could figure out how to take no for an answer.”

“He does like to get his own way,” Laura muttered, watching as he strode across the roof, balancing a heavy weight of shingles on one shoulder.

“And why wouldn’t he?” Maeve clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Raised by those who should have known better, to be as self-sufficient as he could. He was making his own decisions at ten and was as hard to move from them as a boulder from the mud.”

Here was a source who might be able to give Laura some real insight into Ronan. Carefully, she said, “He’s told me about his parents. That they were miserable together.”

“That they were,” Maeve agreed with a sigh. “Two less suited people I’ve never known. Butting heads together like two rams fighting for the same herd.”

Laura sighed in sympathy for the boy he’d been and looked up at the man, kneeling on a roof, hammering shingles into place for a woman who needed—but didn’t want to need—the help. He was so damned stubborn. Insisting he didn’t know how to love when the proof that he
did
was right there in front of him.

Laura
felt
the love he had for her when they were together, but she wasn’t going to settle for less than hearing the words. If he never admitted what he felt, how could he really commit to her? To a life together?

She remembered his proposal again, offering her what he could but withholding what they both needed and she tried to understand, in spite of the pain. But why did he have to be so thickheaded about this? He did love her. He just refused to see it.

“It must have been hard on Ronan.”

“Oh aye, it was,” Maeve agreed. “Ronan was, most often, caught between the two, torn always in his loyalties until finally he turned from them both. And who could blame him?”

“But he had you.”

“He did. He also had Sean and his mother, plus his friends in the village and Patsy Brennan, bless her.” Maeve frowned. “But always there was an emptiness in him where that love he’d missed should have been. Still and all, he grew up fine, with a good heart.”

“He did,” Laura said. “But it’s his hard head I have a problem with.”

Maeve laughed. “Well, that’s not a surprise, either. Always was as proud as a bishop and as sure of himself.”

“And absolutely convinced that he doesn’t know how to love,” Laura blurted. She cringed a little as soon as the words left her. She hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

Maeve blinked at her, eyes wide as she shook her head in denial. “But that’s nonsense.”

“Thank you.” Laura smiled sadly. “I know it is. Unfortunately, Ronan believes it, absolutely.”

Maeve squeezed Laura’s hand. “And you’re after changing his mind.”

“I tried,” she admitted, feeling that heaviness in her heart that she was getting so accustomed to.

“Ah. You’d better luck turning back the tide with a wall of sand.”

“I suppose so.” Sitting here in the shade of the tree with the sound of Ronan’s hammer tapping away like an angry heartbeat, she realized that she’d needed this talk with a woman who also loved Ronan.

“What is it that’s tearing at you, love?” Maeve’s voice was gentle, her hand on Laura’s firm and steady.

“I really tried to reach him, but I failed, I guess.”

“You love him.”

“I do,” Laura confessed, “not that it matters.”

“It’s
all
that matters.”

“Not if he’s too stubborn to ever admit that he loves me, too,” Laura said, glaring at Ronan now. His back was turned to her as he wrestled free an old, rotten shingle then sent it sailing over his shoulder to the ground. “I
know
he does,” she whispered, more to herself than to Maeve. “I can see it in his eyes. But he won’t admit to it. Won’t let himself feel it. Won’t let
us
share it.”

“Don’t give up on him, Laura,” Maeve said, her grip on Laura’s hand tightening. “He’s not an easy man, but he is a good one. I’ve seen the way he looks at you and aye, there’s love there. He just hasn’t found a way to accept it yet. He will. I know he will.”

“Maybe.” Laura sighed heavily as she watched Ronan grab another shingle and hammer it into place. She hated that her anger was sliding away into misery. Anger was so much easier to deal with.

“But Maeve, I can’t simply stay here indefinitely and hope that he figures it out some day. That would kill me by inches, I think. No. I have to go home. While I still can.”

With the hammering pounding away and the sigh of the sea in the background, Maeve frowned and watched the man she’d loved since he was a boy and thought that maybe it was time for another lesson.

* * *

Monday morning saw Ronan off to work and Laura set to do what she had to. Leave him while she still could.

She felt badly, sneaking off this way, but she never would have been able to say goodbye to him face-to-face. One look into his eyes and she’d forget all about wanting more and learn to settle for what she could get.

But it wouldn’t be enough, in the end. And sooner or later, she’d come to resent him for holding back. So, better like this, she assured herself, zipping her suitcase closed. Better for both of them.

She had a reservation on one of Sean’s Irish Air jets to take her to Heathrow in London and from there she’d book a flight home to California. Wryly, she smiled as she took one last look around Ronan’s bedroom. The room they had shared for almost two weeks.

The wide bed with the dark red duvet. The windows that opened out onto a view of the garden she would never see blossom in the springtime. The two wide, leather chairs in front of the now cold hearth where she and Ronan had cuddled to watch the flames dance in the darkness.

“Oh, God…” Laura swallowed the knot of misery in her throat and forced it into the cold hard shell of her heart.

She had built enough memories in the last week or more to last her a lifetime. It would have to be enough.

With the wheels of her suitcase humming against the wood floor, she walked from the room, and closed the door behind her.

She didn’t look back.

* * *

That odd sense of something being…off…stayed with Ronan.

He couldn’t seem to shake it and when he tried, it settled in deeper. Since the night of his proposal, Laura had seemed quieter. More thoughtful. That distance he’d felt coming from her at Maeve’s cottage had grown more pronounced. He told himself it was only because she was seriously considering his offer. Thinking about what they could have, the two of them, if only she were willing to bend.

“Must she be so damned contrary?” he muttered in disgust. “Can’t she see that all she needs to do is give just a bit and we can have what we want?”

The echo of his words slapped back at him in the quiet of his office and for the first time, he realized that Laura had been the one to bend all along. She hadn’t wanted an affair, but had gone into one with him because she’d cared for him.

He had seen it from the beginning, the shine in her eyes, the dreams of a future. Wasn’t that what had chased him off in the first place? Damned humiliating to admit, even to himself.

She had taken in his dog and yes, held him hostage, but only because she rightly thought that Beast had deserved a better owner than Ronan had been.

Scowling now, he thought back, going over every moment with Laura. She had worked with him, arguing all the way, but had showed him house after house, hoping to find the one he wanted—when the truth was, all he had wanted was more time with her.

And finally, she’d come home to Ireland with him. All right, yes, he’d blackmailed her into it, but once she was here, with him, she’d thrown herself into the moment, not holding anything back from him. He’d felt love in her touch, tasted it in her kiss and knew that he didn’t want to live without it.

She was unique, he thought, stalking toward the wide window that overlooked the city and the stretch of ocean that spilled out toward the sky at the horizon. A blue sky and thick white clouds framed the picture of Ireland today, but he saw none of it. All he could see, was
her
.

Strong and soft, loving and stubborn, kind and generous. Laura was smart and funny and ambitious and talented and damned if she wasn’t everything he’d ever wanted in a woman and more.

“Bend,” he muttered, slapping both hands to the wall at either side of the window and leaning in. His own reflection shone back at him and he read the shadows of frustration in his own eyes. “Will you ask her for even more? Or will you at last admit to what you feel? What you know?” Staring at the man in the glass, Ronan asked, “Can you risk it? Can you afford to
not
risk it?”

A knock at the door sounded and he turned, grateful for the interruption. Molly walked into the office. “A Mrs. Carrol is here to see you, sir.”

“Maeve Carrol? Here in the office?”

“Yes, sir, she doesn’t have an appointment but—”

“I’m right here, girl, you don’t have to speak around me,” Maeve said, stepping into the room.