Kitabı oku: «Up Close and Personal»

One

“Laura, I know you’re in there!”

Ronan Connolly pounded on the brightly painted blue front door a few more times, then paused to listen. Not a sound from inside the house, though he knew too well that Laura was in there. Hell, he could practically feel her, standing just on the other side of the damned door.

Bloody hardheaded woman. How had he ever thought that quality attractive? Now that attractive hardheadedness had come back to bite him in the ass.

Seconds ticked past and there was no sound from within, which only irritated him further. He glanced at the sunshine-yellow Volkswagen parked alongside the house—her car—then glared again at the still-closed front door.

“You won’t convince me you’re not at home. Your bloody car is parked in the street, Laura.”

Her voice came then, muffled but clear. “It’s a driveway in America, Ronan. You’re not in Ireland, remember?”

“More’s the pity.” He scrubbed one hand across his face and rolled his eyes in frustration. If they were in Ireland right now, he’d have half the village of Dunley on his side and he’d bloody well get her to open the damned door.

“I heard that,” she said. “And feel free to hop onto one of your private planes and go back to Connolly-land anytime you feel like it!”

If only he could, Ronan thought. But he’d come to California to open an American branch of his business and until Cosain was running as it should, he was going nowhere at all.

At the moment though, he was tired, on edge and in no mood to be dealing with more females. Especially one with a head as hard as Laura’s.

He had spent the past six weeks traveling across Europe acting as bodyguard to a sixteen-year-old pop star whose singing was only slightly less annoying than her attitude. Between the girl and her grasping mother, Ronan had been more than ready for the job to end so he could get back to his life. Now that he was back, he’d expected peace. Orderliness. Instead …

Grinding his teeth together, he took a long moment or two and counted to ten. Then did it a second time. “Whatever the hell you want to call it, Laura, your car is here and so’re you.”

“I might have been out,” she shouted. “Did you ever think of that? I do have friends, you know.”

The Connolly temper lifted a couple notches inside him and Ronan was forced to fight it back down.

“But you’re not out, are you?” he asked, entirely reasonably, and he gave himself points for it. “You’re here, driving me to distraction and making me shout at a bloody closed door like I’m the village idiot turned loose on his own for the first time.”

“You don’t have to shout, I can hear you,” she said, her voice carrying nicely through the door.

Laura Page lived on a tidy street in Huntington Beach, California, in one of a dozen town houses built to look like a Cape Cod village. When he’d first seen her place, he’d thought it charming. Now he glared at the building as if it were to blame for his current situation.

A cool ocean breeze shot down the narrow street and rattled the limbs of the nearly naked elm tree in Laura’s front yard. Roiling gray clouds overhead promised a storm soon, and he hoped to hell he wasn’t still standing on this bleeding porch when it hit.

“Your neighbors can hear me, too,” he pointed out with a brief nod at the man clipping his hedge with enough vigor to whittle it into a toothpick. “Why not open the door and we can talk this out. Together. In private.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

He laughed shortly. That would be a first indeed, he told himself. A more opinionated woman he had never met. In the beginning, he’d liked that about her. Too often, he was surrounded by smiling, vacuous women who agreed with everything he said and laughed at the lamest of jokes just to ingratiate themselves with him.

But not Laura.

No, from the first, she had been stubborn and argumentative and unimpressed with his wealth or celebrity. He had to admit, he had enjoyed verbally sparring with her. He admired a quick mind and a sharp tongue. He’d admired her even more once he’d gotten her into his bed.

He glanced down at the dozen red roses he held clutched in his right hand and called himself a damned fool for thinking this woman would be swayed by pretty flowers and a smooth speech. Hell, she hadn’t even seen the flowers yet. And at this rate, she never would.

Huffing out an impatient breath, he lowered his voice a bit. “You know why I’m here. Let’s get it done and have it over then.”

There was a moment’s pause, as if she were thinking about what he’d said. Then she spoke up again. “You can’t have him.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she called back and Ronan narrowed his gaze fiercely on the door as if he could see through the panel to the woman beyond.

“Aye, I heard you. Though I don’t believe it. I’ve come for what’s mine, and I’m not leaving until I have it.”

“Yours? You’ve been gone two months, Ronan. What makes you think anything is still yours?”

Tossing the roses to the ground, Ronan set his hands on either side of the door and leaned in. “Laura, I’ve been on a bloody plane for ten hours, listening to a teenage girl list the reasons she is to be adored. I’ve had her mother bitching about everything from the type of bottled water on the jet to the fluffiness of her pillow. I’m a man on the edge, love. All I’ve thought of for these last weeks is getting back to my house on the cliffs and seeing my damned dog. I’m not leaving without him.”

The door was yanked open suddenly and there she stood. Five feet nine inches of curvy blonde with a pair of blue eyes as clear and lovely as a summer sky. Even in her worn jeans and button-down white shirt, she took his damned breath away, and he resented that fact down to his bones.

She kept one hand on the door and the other braced against the doorjamb as if she’d be enough to keep him out if he decided he wanted in.

Ronan glanced down and saw his dog leaning into her with slavish adoration. He scowled at the animal he called Beast, and the dog paid him no attention whatsoever. “A few weeks gone and you’ve dismissed me?” he asked the dog in a withering tone. “What kind of loyalty is that from man’s best friend?”

The dog whined and leaned even more heavily into Laura’s side until she staggered a little under his weight.

“A ‘best friend’ wouldn’t have abandoned him,” Laura said.

“He wasn’t put out into a jungle forced to hunt for his own food,” Ronan countered. “My cousin Sean—”

“Left him with me when he went back to Ireland. You can see now that Beast is fine. He’s happy here. With me.”

“That may be,” Ronan told her after sparing his traitorous hound another hard glare. “But he’s not yours, is he?”

“He’s in my house. That makes him mine.”

“He’s only in your house because Sean asked you to look out for him until I got back.”

And for that, Ronan owed his cousin a punch in the face. Called back to Ireland unexpectedly, Sean had asked Laura to watch Beast in order to save the animal a monthlong stay in a kennel. Which Ronan hadn’t found out about until it was too late to change anything. Yes, it had been the right choice for the dog. But for Ronan?

He hadn’t seen Laura since he ended their affair two months ago. Though he couldn’t exactly claim to have shut her out of his mind. Hell, he had taken the bodyguard job for the teenage singer himself, rather than handing it to one of his employees, only so that he could get a little distance from the woman standing so temptingly close to him at the moment. Distance hadn’t helped. He’d thought of her. Dreamed of her, and awakened nearly every morning with his body tight and ready for her.

Even now, the lush, slightly floral scent of her reached out to him as if to tease every sense memory he had of touching her, tasting her, being inside her …

“Ronan,” she said in a patient tone that interrupted his musings, “we both know Beast is better off with me. You’re not exactly a good dog parent—”

“I’m not his father, I’m his bloody owner,” Ronan countered.

She ignored him. “Soon enough you’ll be going back to Ireland and—”

“Taking Beast with me,” he finished for her.

In truth, he hadn’t really considered what he would do with Beast when his time in America was over. But right now, the decision seemed an easy one. Even fighting the quarantine laws to get the dog home to Ireland would seem like a vacation after dealing with Laura Page.

Jaw tight, he looked deeply into those calm blue eyes and wondered if she was as unaffected by him as she seemed. Had she forgotten him so quickly? Gotten over him so completely? A lowering thought for a man to consider.

Brushing aside what had once been between them, he said, “Beast is mine, and I always intended to take him home to Ireland with me when I go. Nothing’s changed.”

“Sure it has,” she said, taking a step toward him, dislodging the dog so that he nearly toppled over. “You have a dog back home, right?”

“Aye. Deirdre.”

“And it’s been how long since you’ve seen her?”

“That’s nothing to do with this.”

“It’s everything to do with it,” she countered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “A dog needs more than a visit every couple of months. A dog needs love. Companionship. Someone he can count on. Someone who will be there.”

Frowning, Ronan looked hard at her. This was the reason he had stepped back from their relationship in the first place. The woman had hearth and home and forever practically stenciled on her forehead. She was a woman who wanted and deserved to be loved. He just wasn’t the man to give that to her. So he’d ended their affair before things got even more complicated than they had been already.

“Are you talking about Beast now, Laura, or yourself?”

She gaped at him. “Your ego knows no bounds, does it? Do you really think I’ve been sitting here moping? Missing you?”

Actually, yes. He did. And the more fired up she got, the more he knew she was no more over him than he was her.

“This isn’t about us, Ronan. It’s about Beast, and you can’t have him. You don’t deserve him.”

Before he could counter, she slammed the door in his face and Ronan heard the lock snap into place. Stunned, he stared at the closed door for a long minute. He could hardly believe it. No one shut a door in Ronan Connolly’s face, for pity’s sake.

He heard her inside, cooing to Beast, assuring him that he was safe from bullies and that was nearly enough to have Ronan pounding on her door again. But he thought better of it. Let her believe she’d won this battle. It would make her complacent and that much easier to get around later.

Still furious, he turned sharply, stomped on the fallen roses and left.

But he’d be back. Connollys didn’t know how to quit.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” Laura said to Beast as she scrubbed the top of his head and scratched behind his ears. “The mean man is gone.”

Laura was trembling by the time she heard Ronan’s sports car fire up and zoom off. Oh, not from the argument. She had known that confrontation was coming for weeks. But actually seeing him again had been much harder than she’d thought it would be.

Looking up into those dark blue eyes of his, she’d watched them flash with temper and had been just as stirred as when she’d seen them darken with passion or glitter with a cool, businesslike gleam.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with chestnut hair that showed just a hint of red in the sunlight, he wore business suits and jeans with the same casual air that made him both intimidating and irresistible. And apparently two months apart hadn’t dimmed her reaction to him at all.

From the moment he had first walked into her real estate office several months ago, Laura had known that she was in trouble. Oh, she and her sister had sold homes to unspeakably rich people before, but there had never been the slightest temptation to fit herself into their world. With Ronan, it had been different from the start.

Everything in her still wanted him, even though her mind knew better. He’d been out of her life for two months and that was as it should be. After all, she had known going into that mind-dazzling affair that it couldn’t last. He was rich; she wasn’t. He was Ferrari and she was Volkswagen. He lived in Ireland. And she’d be staying in California.

She sighed a little, then looked down at the dog each of them wanted. Beast was big, at least a hundred pounds and his black hair was full and shaggy, clumps of it usually falling across his eyes. No one knew what mixture of breeds he might be, but privately, Laura had often thought a pony must have been involved somewhere in his lineage.

Now, Beast looked up at her as if sympathizing with the situation, and Laura smiled.

“Sure,” she whispered, still stroking Beast’s head, “I knew Ronan would be trouble from the first. But a gorgeous, successful man with an Irish accent that makes my bones melt? How was I supposed to fight that?”

The dog gave her one long swiping kiss and she laughed. In his own way, Beast was as charming as his master—just another reason she wouldn’t give him up. Then she stood and walked to the kitchen, hearing Beast’s claws clatter on the floorboards behind her.

“Well,” her sister, Georgia, spoke up from the kitchen table. “That was dignified.”

Laura poured herself a cup of coffee, then carried it across the room to take the chair opposite her sister. “I wasn’t going for dignified.”

“Luckily.”

She already knew Georgia’s opinion on the whole situation with Ronan—namely, Never mix business with pleasure—and she really didn’t want to go into it all again. Laura avoided her sister’s all-too-perceptive stare by sliding her own gaze around the comfortable kitchen.

The soft yellow walls combated the gray day outside. White appliances gleamed and the black granite countertops shone like obsidian. The chrome-and-glass table sat before a bay window that overlooked the backyard where the few trees stood nearly bare in the autumn weather.

Georgia tapped her finger against the glass tabletop until Laura finally looked at her.

“Georgia, I’m not going to talk about this.”

“Fine,” her sister said, setting her computer tablet down and flipping the lid over the screen. “I’ll talk. You listen. Did you really think Ronan wasn’t going to show up demanding his dog back?”

“Of course not.” Beneath the table, Beast dropped to the floor, laying his heavy body across the tops of her feet. His heavy, solid warmth was a balm. “I knew he would come.”

And a part of her had been anticipating seeing him again. Even though she knew it was useless. That they didn’t have a future together. That he had ended their amazingly hot affair before they could get too involved. None of that seemed to matter. He had been pretty much completely on her mind from the moment she had met him.

“And your solution to this problem is to hold his dog hostage?”

“Not his dog anymore. Sean brought him to me, remember?”

“Yes. To hold for Ronan until he got back.” Georgia picked up her coffee and leaned back in her chair.

Georgia’s blond hair was a more subtle shade than Laura’s and cut into a short swing that ended at her jawline. Her eyes were a darker blue, her body curvier and her heart a little more hardened. But she was loyal to the bone and Laura’s best friend as well as her sister.

“What’s this really about, Laura? Are you trying to get back at Ronan?” She cradled her cup between her hands. “Teach him a lesson? Hurt him like he did you when he broke up with you?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” she said, a little stung that Georgia would think she could. “Besides, he didn’t hurt me. I always knew that affair would end.”

“Sure, but it’s better to be the ender not the endee.”

In spite of everything Laura laughed a little. “Those are not even words.”

“They should be,” Georgia said with a quick grin. “Anyway, I’m just saying, this is not only about the Beast and you know it. The least you could do is admit it.”

Why should she? Laura frowned, opened her laptop and pushed the power button. The fan whirred and lights flashed as the computer hummed to life. And while she waited, she thought about what Georgia had said. Maybe it did sting to know that Ronan could end their affair so easily and then just walk away without a backward glance. Maybe it had hurt to know that he hadn’t felt what she had. Maybe she still experienced a twinge of pain at all she had lost in the last couple of months.

But she had her home. Her sister. And now, a dog. What more could she ask for, really? If a little voice inside whispered How about love? She ignored it. Laura had tried love, and it hadn’t worked out. Then she’d tried a hot and sexy, no-strings-attached affair with Ronan and that hadn’t worked, either.

“Maybe it’s time to consider a convent,” she mused.

“Yeah,” Georgia said on a short laugh. “Because you do so well with authority.”

Frowning at her sister, Laura was forced to concede that Georgia had a point. After all, if she did well taking orders, she would still be working for Manny Toledo’s real estate office instead of trying to build an empire of her own with Georgia.

Beast snored from under the table and Laura smiled even as a trickle of guilt rippled through her before she deliberately squashed it. Ronan just didn’t want to admit that she was right, that Beast would be better off with her.

“This is all his fault,” she murmured. “Yes, he owns Beast. But that’s not enough. A dog needs someone to love. To count on. Ronan can’t go flying off around the world and expect everything to be right there waiting for him when he gets back.”

“Uh-huh. And we both know you’re not really talking about the dog.”

She frowned at her sister. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that she was doing the right thing. Beast needed more than Ronan could provide and besides, the dog had become a part of her life. She loved him, and she wasn’t going to give him up.

As she’d had to give up too much already.

For a moment or two, her heart ached and the sting of tears filled her eyes. But she blinked them back and lifted her chin. It was done, and maybe some dreams shouldn’t come into reality anyway. Besides, she had a home she loved, her sister to share it with and a business that she and Georgia were working hard to grow.

Speaking of …

“Can we just talk about work?” Laura deliberately avoided looking at Georgia, by staring instead at the laptop screen going through its wake-up routine.

“Okay then, we’ll do a little more avoidance therapy.”

“Appreciate it.” Laura was grateful for the reprieve.

“So,” Georgia said. “Our beloved landlord is jacking the rent up in six months—”

“What?”

“But, he’s also offered to lower the price if we still want to buy the building.”

“Hike the rent and lower his selling price? How does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Georgia agreed. “But as long as he’s in charge, he can pretty much do what he wants. And our lease is up in six months, so …”

It felt good to get her mind off of Ronan, if only for a few minutes. Together, she and Georgia owned A Brand New Page real estate office and rented a small building on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach. The rent was astonishing, but that area of Orange County was renowned for high rents. To sell the kinds of homes Laura and Georgia specialized in, they had to be in the center of it all.

“Why’s he willing to lower the price on the building?”

“Got me,” Georgia admitted with a shrug. “But the market’s down and he knows it. Plus, his wife wants to move to Montana to be closer to their grandchildren.”

Their own parents had up and moved to the wilds of Oregon five years ago, Laura remembered and wistfully almost envied them the courage it took to pack up and go. To discover new places, see new things. But she was rooted in California and couldn’t see herself living anywhere else.

“So all we need is a giant down payment.”

“Yes,” Georgia agreed wryly. “That’s all.”

“Okay, won’t be easy, but if we really work the next few months, we should be able to swing it. I could take out a second on this place and—”

“No.” Georgia spoke up fast and firm. “That’s crazy, Laura. You’re not going to risk your home for this.”

“Our home,” she corrected.

“Thanks for that, but I still say no. We’ll find another way.”

Thankfully, even in a bad housing market, there were always a handful of people looking for upscale homes. Enough of those commissions and they’d be able to manage it.

“Okay then, we’ll find a way to make it work.”

“Now see,” Georgia said, catching her sister’s eye, “why is it you can be positive about our prospects for getting enough money together to buy the building but not about Ronan?”

“Can we not?” She stared down at her laptop, willing the darn thing to boot up already. Why did it take so long? She could be typing, entering information, focusing on work and more able to shut out Georgia’s questions.

“I’m supposed to be the cynical one,” her sister pointed out. “I am the one with the loser ex-husband. The one who had to move in with you when she got divorced because said loser took everything out of our bank accounts on his way out of town with Busty the Cheerleader.”

Laura laughed shortly at the description. It was dead-on. Georgia’s ex-husband had been a football coach at a small college in Ohio. Two years ago, when their season ended, the beloved coach and the head cheerleader—who also happened to be the Page sisters’ distant cousin—ran off to Hawaii, taking every cent out of a joint account and most of Georgia’s self-confidence.

It had taken her sister a while to work her way through the betrayal and the humiliation of being tossed aside. But finally, the Page family temper had come in handy and Georgia had finally gotten angry. Much easier to live with than feeling sad—as Laura knew all too well.

“So,” Georgia said, “I know why I don’t trust men in the slightest. But my question is, are you ragging on Ronan because of what Thomas did to you?”

Thomas Banks. Her ex-fiancé. Five years ago, she had lost a dream, but it was so long ago now, that she barely remembered why she had thought herself in love with the man anyway.

“No. This is different. Thomas was supposed to be forever—well, until he broke up with me in favor of Dana—”

“May she’ll go blind from the sun glinting off that tacky huge ring he bought her,” Georgia put in.

“Good image, thanks!” Laura took a deep breath. “Anyway, losing Thomas didn’t really hurt, Georgia. I don’t think I ever loved him and he deserved better.”

“So did you,” Georgia put in.

Smiling, Laura said, “And I shouldn’t let myself be hurt by Ronan, either. I knew going in that he was just temporary. He’s danger. I’m cozy. I’m stay at home, he’s adventure. Never the twain is going to meet or whatever.”

“And yet, you kept his dog.”

There was that small ping of guilt again. Especially when she recalled the dumbfounded expression on Ronan’s face when she refused to hand the dog over. “Well, it wasn’t Beast’s fault who his owner was.”

“Was?”

Beast whined in his sleep, and Laura reached a hand down to pat him. “Beast is mine now, and he’s going to stay mine.”

“Good luck with that.”

She’d need it. Yes, Ronan had left, but he’d be back. Laura knew that. Ronan Connelly didn’t accept defeat. Ever. Ronan was the kind of man who made things happen to suit himself. He had built his company into the premier private security business in the world. He traveled by private jet. Knew the famous and the infamous and swept through life with the confidence of a gladiator.

Which was both attractive and annoying. Impossible to have a good argument with a man who never thought he was wrong.

“This isn’t really about the dog anyway,” Georgia reminded her softly, “and we both know it.”

Laura’s gaze flicked to her sister’s, and she braced herself. She didn’t want to talk about this.

But Georgia was too stubborn to let it go.

“You can’t blame him for something he didn’t even know about.”

“I’m not blaming him,” Laura countered, though a part of her did, as ridiculous as that sounded. “I’m really not. Ronan’s in the past, that’s all. That affair of ours had an expiration date stamped on it. I knew that going in.”

“Doesn’t have to be over,” her sister suggested.

“I’m not the one who ended it, remember?”

When Georgia would have argued, Laura spoke up fast. “He’s not here forever, Georgia. He’s going back to Ireland and we both know it. Well, I live here. And besides all of that, we want different things. Move in different worlds. It’s just … doomed.”

“And you’re not going to tell him what’s behind all of this? Don’t you think he’s got a right to know?”

“Maybe he does.” Laura shifted her gaze to the trees outside and watched the last few yellowing leaves flutter in the wind before snapping free of the branches and flying off in a twisting dance. Rain pelted from the sky in a burst and tapped at the windowpanes like impatient fingertips against a table.

Funny, their mother had always hated fall and winter. She’d actually called autumn the Death of Hope season because it would be so long until summer again. Funny that she’d chosen to move to such a rainy place. Laura hadn’t thought of that in years. Now, it seemed unerringly apt.

Because in this Death of Hope season, she was finally accepting that what she had had with Ronan was over. Finished. Hope was ridiculous when there was absolutely no reason for it.

Turning her gaze back to her sister’s, Laura said, “What point is there in telling him that I miscarried his baby?”

“You said it yourself,” her sister pointed out gently. “It was his baby. Maybe that’s point enough.”

But it wouldn’t change anything, Laura thought. And what if she told him and he didn’t care? She didn’t think she wanted to find out what Ronan’s reaction would have been to almost being a father.