Marion Lennox - Summer Of Love

‘So if I’m attached to my hair I’m doomed to peasantry.’

‘I guess.’

‘Then peasantry it is,’ he said and he smiled and reached out and touched her copper curls. ‘I don’t mind. I kind of like the company.’

And then silence fell. It was a strange kind of silence, Jo thought. A different silence. As if questions were being asked and answered, and thought about and then asked again.

The last wisps of leftover smoke were wafting upwards into the warm spring sunshine. The castle loomed behind them, vast and brooding, as if a reminder that something immeasurable was connecting them. A shared legacy.

A bond.

This man was her sort-of cousin, Jo thought, but the idea was a vague distraction, unreal. This man was not her family. He was large and male and beautiful. Yet he felt...

He felt unlike any of the guys she’d ever dated. He felt familiar in a sense that didn’t make sense.

He felt...terrifying. Jo Conaill was always in control. She’d never gone out with someone who’d shaken that control, but just standing beside him...

‘It feels right,’ Finn said and she gazed up at him in bewilderment.

‘What feels right?’

‘I have no idea. To stand here with you?’

‘I’m leaving.’

‘So am I. We have lives. It’s just...for here, for now...it feels okay.’ He paused but there was no need for him to continue. She felt it too. This sense of...home.

What was she thinking? Home wasn’t here. Home wasn’t this man.

‘My home’s my bike,’ she said, out of nowhere, and she said it too sharply, but he nodded as if she’d said something that needed consideration.

‘I can see that, though the bike’s pretty draughty. And there’s no bath for when you fall into bogs.’

‘I don’t normally fall into bogs.’

‘I can see that too. You’re very, very careful, despite that bad girl image.’

‘I don’t have a bad girl image.’

‘Leathers and piercings?’ He smiled down at her, a smile that robbed his words of all possible offence. And then he lifted her arm to reveal a bracelet tattoo, a ring of tiny rosebuds around her wrist. ‘And tattoos. My nieces and nephews will think you’re cool.’

‘Your nieces and nephews won’t get to see it.’

‘You don’t want to meet them?’

‘Why would I want to?’

‘They’re family, too.’

‘Not my family.’

‘It seems to me,’ he said softly, ‘that family’s where you find it. And it also seems that somehow you’ve found it. Your hair gives you away.’

‘If we’re talking about my red hair then half of Ireland has it.’

‘It’s a very specific red,’ he told her. ‘My daddy had your hair and I know if I’ve washed mine nicely you can see the glint of his colour in mine.’ And he lifted a finger and twisted one of her short curls. His smile deepened, an all-enveloping smile that was enough to make a woman sink into it. ‘Family,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome to it, Jo Conaill. You and your teddy.’

‘I don’t want...’

‘Family? Are you sure?’

‘Y...yes.’

‘That’s a big declaration. And a lonely one.’ He turned so he was facing her, then tilted her chin a little so her gaze was meeting his. ‘I might have been raised in poverty, but it seems to me that you’ve been raised with the more desperate need. Does no one love you, Jo Conaill?’

‘No. I mean...’ Why was he looking at her? Why was he smiling? It was twisting something inside her, and it was something she’d guarded for a very long time. Something she didn’t want twisting.

‘I won’t hurt you, Jo,’ he said into the stillness and his words made whatever it was twist still more. ‘I promise you that. I would never hurt you. I’m just saying...’

And then he stopped...saying.

* * *

Finn Conaill had been trying to work it out in his head. Ever since he’d met her something was tugging him to her. Connecting.

It must be the family connection, he’d thought. Or it must be her past.

She looked stubborn, indecisive, defiant.

She looked afraid.

She’d taken a step back from him and she was staring down at the bear in her arms as if it was a bomb about to detonate.

She didn’t want family. She didn’t want home.

And yet...

She wanted the teddy. He knew she did.

By now he had some insight into what her childhood must have been. A kid alone, passed from foster family to foster family. Moved on whenever the ties grew so strong someone wanted her.

Learning that love meant separation. Grief.

Learning that family wasn’t for her.

A cluster of wild pigeons was fussing on the cobblestones near the stables. Their soft cooing was a soothing background, a reassurance that all was well on this peaceful morning. And yet all wasn’t well with this woman before him. He watched her stare down at the teddy with something akin to despair.

She wanted the teddy. She wanted...more.

Only she couldn’t want. Wanting had been battered out of her.

She was so alone.

Family... The word slammed into his mind and stayed. He’d been loyal to Maeve for so many years he couldn’t remember and he’d thought that loyalty was inviolate. But he’d known Jo for only three days, and somehow she was slipping into his heart. He was starting to care.

‘Jo...’ he said into the silence and she stared up at him with eyes that were hopelessly confused, hopelessly lost.

‘Jo,’ he said again.

And what happened next seemed to happen of its own volition. It was no conscious movement on his part, or hers.

It was nothing to do with them and yet it was everything.

He took the teddy from her grasp and placed it carefully on the ground.

He took her hands in his. He drew her forward—and he kissed her.

Had he meant to?

He didn’t have a clue. This was unchartered territory.

For this wasn’t a kiss of passion. It wasn’t a kiss he’d ever experienced before. In truth, in its beginning it hardly felt like a kiss.

He tilted her chin very gently, with the image of a wild creature strongly with him. She could pull away, and he half expected her to. But she stayed passive, staring mutely up at him before his mouth met hers. Her chin tilted with the pressure of his fingers and she gazed into his eyes with an expression he couldn’t begin to understand. There was a sort of resigned indifference, an expression which should have had him stepping back, but behind the indifference he saw a flare of frightened...hope?

He didn’t want her indifferent, and it would be worse to frighten her. But the hope was there, and she was beautiful and her mouth was lush and partly open. And her eyes invited him in...

It was the gentlest of kisses, a soft, tentative exploration, a kiss that understood there were boundaries and he wasn’t sure where they were but he wasn’t about to broach them.

His kiss said Trust me. His kiss matched that flare of hope he was sure he’d seen. His kiss said, You’re beautiful and I don’t understand it but something inside is drawing me to you. And it said, This kiss is just the beginning.

* * *

Her first reaction was almost hysterical. Her roller coaster of emotions had her feeling this was happening to someone other than her.

But it was her. She was letting the Lord of Glenconaill kiss her.

Was she out of her mind?

No. Of course she wasn’t. This was just a kiss, after all, and she was no prude. She was twenty-eight years old and there’d been men before. Of course there had. Nothing serious—she didn’t do serious—but she certainly had fun. And this man was lovely. Gorgeous even. She could take him right now, she thought. She could tug him to her bed, or maybe they should use his bed because hers was ridiculously small. And then she could tear off his gear and see his naked body, which she was sure would be excellent, and she was sure the sex would be great...