What Were You Expecting? (29 page)

***

Feeling Maggie climax against his hand was the most erotic, arousing thing he’d ever experienced. But surprisingly, as much as he knew their chemistry would be mind-blowing in bed, he wasn’t in a rush to get her there. He’d known that he loved Maggie for a long time, but being with her physically was changing that love from a distant longing to something more real, more solid, more undeniable. Something substantial had just shifted between them. He wondered if she felt it, too.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Aye,” she said softly, letting her legs drop slowly from around his waist.

“That was intense.”

“Aye,” she said again. She leaned forward, staring at her hands in her lap.

“Do we need to talk about it?”

She shook her head no, so he put his finger under her chin and lifted it, giving her a small, reassuring smile. “Tell me you’re hungry.”

“Tha an t-acras orm,”
she said, luminous green eyes staring up at him with uncertainty.

“Maggie,” he said. “Ask me anything.”

“Why did you always say you just wanted to be friends?”

“I didn’t know how to do this.” He stepped away from her, taking the cutting board of chopped onions and moving them closer to the stove. “Frying pan?”

She hopped down from the counter then squatted in front of the cabinets to get one for him. He plopped a bit of butter in the skillet and set it on the stove to melt.

“What does that mean? You’re a grown man, not a wee lad.”

“I’ve got history, like anyone else.”

She sat down at the table to watch him work. “Tell me.”

“Let’s start simpler and work up to it.”

“I need to know somethin’ first.”

He pushed the onions into the pan with the back of the knife and turned to face her, folding his arms across his chest.

“Was that a one-time thing? What just happened?”

“God, I hope not,” he answered.

“In twenty-four hours, we’ve gone from not speakin’ for a month to agreein’ to play at being married, to…
that,
” she said, a blush deepening the already pink color of her cheeks.

“I don’t know any other way to do this. To make it look real, it has to feel real.”

He was pretty sure she winced as she looked away.

“What about when the truce is over?”

Aw, hell, that’s not how he meant it. What had just happened between him and Maggie had zero to do with the goddamned truce. And even more than merely
feeling
real, he wanted it to
be
real. Over? He didn’t ever want it to be over. Frankly, he hadn’t even thought in terms of it
ever
being over. As far as he was concerned their marriage started forty-five minutes ago when she walked in the door after work. Getting to know each other? Figuring out how to be married? Eventually telling their families? Details they’d hash out together over time.

He looked back at her, trying to be brave. It was entirely possible that this was only a one-month temporary arrangement for
her
, and that Beck would be waiting for her on the other side. And even as that made his heart ache, he comforted himself that he had a month to make her see they were right for each other, to try to find compromises that would let them be together. For now, pressuring her wouldn’t get him anywhere.

“I guess we can walk away,” he said softly. “If one of us wants to.”

She nodded, biting her lower lip before looking down. It was on the tip of his tongue to say,
But it won’t be me. It’ll never be me. I’m in this for the long haul. I’m in this forever.

“Then I guess we should be careful. With our feelin’s.”

“I guess so,” he responded.

He gulped quietly, miserably, as he stared at her downcast face that had been so enraptured in his arms just minutes before. His eyes watered as he turned around and stirred the onions, moving them around in the pan so they wouldn’t burn.

Chapter 14

On Thursday night, they sat side by side on the couch in front of Maggie’s TV, watching her favorite movie,
The Quiet Man
, which Nils had never seen before. His mother and sister’s tastes had tended toward high-brow British movies, while he and his brothers, when they actually watched a movie, opted for action. An old John Wayne romance wasn’t something he’d been likely to come across, but he had to admit, it was pretty good. American man, spirited Irish woman with red hair…he glanced over at Maggie, who sat on the other side of an enormous popcorn bowl, with a perpetual smile on her face and her feet tucked up under her butt. She wore a pair of skimpy pajama shorts that she changed into almost every evening after work—that tortured him for the entirety of their date—and a low-cut sweatshirt that left just enough to the imagination to keep things on the painful side of interesting. Especially since they’d barely touched again since Monday night’s kitchen make-out session.

As if by tacit agreement, they’d concentrated on their questionnaires, not writing in the answers, but asking the questions and talking about them. He’d learned that she never knew her birth parents. Never went to find them. She’d been born in what she called a Magdalene House, a convent-like institution, and assumed her biological mother had been an unwed teen. She also assumed she was from Kerry, since her adoption papers had listed the institution address there, but other than those few bits of information, the rest of her early history, aside from her birthday, was unknown.

“And you were happy? Your childhood?” he’d asked her over grilled burgers and potato salad on their second night.

“I guess. My mum and da loved me. In their own way. As best as they could anyone. As much as they did Ian, anyway.”

He sensed she wasn’t finished, so he sat patiently, giving her the time and space to finish her thoughts. She sat staring at her food, her brows creased and worried.

“What else?” he asked.

When she smiled, he recognized it—from his vault of friendship knowledge—as her melancholy smile, the smile she forced for the benefit of someone else.

“Another time.”

She’d left off talking about her brother. Perhaps the shadows across her face belonged to him. He prodded gently. “And Ian? You mentioned once that you’re not close?”

She shrugged lightly. “He was older, maybe a little resentful. Now he’s married and settled north of Edinburgh with a family of his own. I barely see him.”

“Your, um, mum?”

She grinned at his use of her vernacular. “She was a hard worker. Most kids are raised by their mum while their da goes to work. But, my da went to the pub and my mum went to work. She kept food on the table and clothes on my body, but…”

“You don’t know her very well?”

“I dinna think life turned out the way she wanted it to. She loved my da, you know, when they were young. Even when they adopted me. Even when I was a little girl. He was a gentle drunk. He could make her laugh, even three sheets to the wind. It got worse, though. He died of cirrhosis at forty-three, leaving her alone with a little girl and a rowdy teenager.”

“Do you miss him?”

She shrugged again. “I didn’t know him very well.” She looked down, lost in thought for a few moments and he watched as a tentative smile spread uncertainly across her face. “He sang to me. Bawdy songs that he shouldn’t a-taught me. I remember every one of them.”

He reached out and covered her hand with his, and when she looked up there were tears brightening her eyes. For the first time for as long as he could remember, he felt the silent communion he’d always suspected that committed couples experienced. He felt the pain of her loss, that terrible loss of potential when someone you love dies. All of the things that weren’t, and now, could never be. He related to it. He understood it. He reached out to her to let her know that from now on, he’d own some of it for her, if she’d let him.

After a moment, he drew his hand back and as she dabbed at her eyes with her napkin he asked, “And Graham? Your cousin?”

“Wee Gingy.” She’d smiled then, nodding her head and chuckling. “He’s a big handful of trouble and no mistake. I told you he’s comin’, right?”

“No!” exclaimed Nils. “When?”

He’d done a quick calculation that a troublemaking younger cousin would throw waves into the waters of their nightly dates. He knew it was selfish, but he wanted every possible moment he had with Maggie while their truce was in effect.

“Oh, a few weeks. End of September, I think she said. My aunt called a week ago and said she’d finally booked a ticket for him to come. He’s finishin’ a carpentry course and tryin’ to keep his nose clean ’til it’s over with. He’ll come for the fall and built me a deck for outdoor coffee and dinin’. Nice, aye?”

Nils had nodded, but he quietly promised himself to keep an eye on her wayward cousin.

They’d discussed other details of her childhood; where she went to primary and secondary schools, what subjects she liked the best and the names of her two best friends “back home”: Fiona and Becca, with whom she still spoke on the phone monthly.

Throughout all of it…their dinners and conversations, even when they talked about something sad, he felt the underlying tension between them. He felt it when their hands brushed against each other washing the dishes or setting the table. He felt it when he reached for her hand and she didn’t pull away. He felt it every night when he headed to the door, his feet like cement as he forced himself to leave her without touching her, without holding her, without kissing her good-night, without making love to her in her bed which teased and taunted him every time he passed it en route to the bathroom. He certainly felt it now. He was supposed to be watching
The Quiet Man
, but with her warm, wonderful body only inches away from his in flimsy pajamas that drove him crazy, it was almost impossible to concentrate on the movie.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, throwing his arm over the back of the couch, but his hand barely reached her shoulder, and he couldn’t slide over next to her with the swimming-pool-sized bowl of popcorn between them. He glanced down at her legs, feeling his body tighten. Her legs had been the focus of his ardor ever since the night in May when he’d pulled her jeans off, his knuckles skimming the soft skin as she lay almost passed out on her bed. He ground his teeth together then forced his eyes back to the screen. As distracting as she was, it was important that he knew the plot of her favorite movie. In fact, he’d looked up some trivia online before coming over tonight. Maybe to impress her. Just a little.

“This is only the second of five movies that paired John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara,” he commented nonchalantly, lowering his useless arm and reaching for a handful of popcorn.

He felt her look over at him, but kept his eyes trained to the screen.

“Is that so? I had no idea! You did some research, did you?”

“I did.”

“What were the others?”

“Rio Grande
,
McClintock
,
Wings of Eagles
, and
Big Jake
.”

“Never heard of any of them, which means The Quiet Man was the best of the bunch.”

“They were Westerns.”

“Do you like Westerns?” she asked, her eyes sparkling in the ambient light of the TV.

This is how it was. Talk a little, ask a question. Talk a little, ask a question. Always learning more about each other, always aware that they needed to cram years of knowledge into the space of a month. Mostly he was okay with it. Unless he remembered their conversation over onions on Monday night. Predictably, the more time he spent with Maggie, the more his feelings deepened, the more agonizing the thought of their “truce” ever ending.

He shrugged, reaching for another hand of popcorn. “I don’t have anything against them.”

“But action is your favorite,” she reconfirmed.

“That’s right,” he said, grinning at her.

“Especially Indiana Jones.”

“Right again.”

She grinned back at him then shifted her attention once again to the TV, giggling as Michaleen Flynn walked into the newlyweds’ cottage to find their bed broken.

“Impetuous! Homeric!” the actor exclaimed in an amazed whisper.

“Homeric,” she repeated in a soft voice full of laughter, moving her hair off the shoulder closest to him.

Drawn by the scent of strawberries suddenly wafting in his direction, he looked over, transfixed by the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder—the smooth, white skin, covered in freckles. He wished he could lean over and kiss every one of them. Touch his lips to her skin over and over and over again until she—

“Aren’t you watchin’?”

“Yeah,” he murmured, flicking his eyes from her shoulder to her legs and then back up to her lips.