Maureen Child - Desiring the Reilly Brothers - The Tempting Mrs Reilly / Whatever Reilly Wants... / The Last Reilly Standing

She did and at the first sip, she shuddered and felt a caffeine reaction punch through her like a bunched fist. The woman must have brewed the tea for days. It was almost thick enough to chew.

“I did warn you,” Liam said, obviously watching her reaction.

“Right.” She set the glass onto the tray, then turned to face her ex-brother-in-law again. “Start talking, Liam.”

He did. And when he was finished, she just stared at him for a long minute.

“You bet your brothers that they couldn’t abstain from sex for three months.”

“Yep.” He grinned again and leaned back into the faded floral couch.

“You’re a priest. ”

He held up one finger. “I’m also a Reilly. And I know my brothers. They’ll never make it.”

“And you’re enjoying this.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said with relish and rubbed his palms together. “And,” he said, “with you back in town, the odds just went even higher in my favor.”

“How do you figure?”

Liam smirked at her. “Please. You and Brian are meant to be together.”

“We’re divorced, remember?” Tina cringed inwardly at the word. She still didn’t like it. Still hadn’t accepted it, even five years after the event.

She’d dated over the past five years, but Brian had always been there. In her heart. In her mind. He was the shadow she couldn’t quite lose. The memory she couldn’t quite forget. He was the love of her life. Or, at least, he had been.

Liam waved one hand at her, waving away her objections. “I blessed your marriage,” he said. “And the marriages I bless don’t dissolve.”

“Nice in theory,” she said.

He shook his head, sat up and leaned in toward her. “Tina, you guys are both Catholic. You know as well as I do that Catholic marriages are forever.”

“Until the state of South Carolina says they’re not,” she reminded him.

“ My boss has a lot more clout than the governor,”

he said, with a smile.

“I guess so,” she admitted, but shook her head again.

“Look,” Liam told her, giving one of her hands a squeeze. “Brian’s a man on the edge already. It wouldn’t take much for you to push him over.”

“So my priest is suggesting I seduce a man who isn’t my husband?”

He winked at her. “According to the church, you’re still married. Besides, this is a poor parish. We need that new roof.”

In spite of everything, Tina laughed. “You Reillys are really something.”

“We thank you.”

“I don’t think Brian will,” she mused, reaching for her iced tea, before remembering and drawing her hand back empty.

Liam scooted around on the couch, dropped one arm across Tina’s shoulders and gave her a brief hug. “That’s where you’re wrong, Tina. Brian made a big mistake letting you go. Maybe it’s time you showed him how big a mistake it was.”

She leaned into the solid comfort of Liam’s embrace and thought about everything he’d said. As she did, she smiled. The only reason Brian would be trying so hard to get rid of her, is if he didn’t trust himself around her. Which told Tina that seducing Brian Reilly just got a lot easier.

Now all she had to do, was convince herself that she really was doing the right thing.

No problem.

By the time Brian got home from the base, he was worn out. He’d done everything he could to run himself ragged so that he’d sleep tonight, without the taunting dreams he’d been experiencing the past few nights.

Ever since Tina came back to town, he’d hardly dared close his eyes. The minute he did, she was there. Surrounding him in living breathing color. He could feel her, hear her, smell her. She filled his mind and tortured him in his sleep.

For three nights running, he’d awakened in the middle of the night, with his only recourse an icecold shower.

Not the way he wanted to spend the next two and a half weeks.

So until she left, he’d just work himself into the ground so exhaustion would take care of shutting down his too-busy mind. Today, after taking his jet up for some qualifying runs, he’d hit the weight room, then talked three of the guys into doing a fivemile run. The summer heat had pounded at them and the humidity was enough to make a grown man weep.

But as he pulled into the driveway that night, even exhaustion couldn’t completely stamp out the instantaneous reaction his body went into at Tina’s nearness.

The house was lit up like a fistful of birthday candles. Every light in the living room was on and a wide slice of lamplight spilled from the kitchen windows onto the flower-lined driveway. Music, something soft and entreating, drifted through the partially opened window overlooking the drive. It all looked warm and friendly, but he knew that inside that house was the biggest danger of all.

Brian walked along the driveway and stopped just short of stepping into the patch of light. Instead, he stayed in the shadows and looked through the kitchen window. Tina was there, alone, dancing slowly to the beat of the music playing on the stereo. His breath caught as he watched her move around the room in time to the music. Her body, long and lean and tanned, looked great in the shorts and skimpy tank top she wore. Her hips swayed, her eyes closed and when she lifted her arms like a gypsy dancer, it was all he could do to keep from storming into the room and grabbing her.

He rubbed both hands across his face and told himself to get a grip. But it was impossible. When he was thirty thousand feet above the ground, in the cockpit of his F-18, blasting across the sky, he felt in control. Sure of himself. But with his feet firmly on the ground and Tina in Baywater, Brian was a drowning man going down for the third time.

God, why was this so hard?

He’d let her go five years ago because he’d believed, deep in his heart, he was doing the right thing for her. For both of them. And it was fairly easy to keep himself convinced of that when she was on the opposite end of the country.

But now that she was home again.

Here.

Within arm’s reach—he wasn’t so sure anymore.

As that thought skittered uneasily through his mind, he headed toward the stairs, determined to ignore Tina and sneak—correction—go home without seeing her. And take another cold shower.

Of course, he’d forgotten about the damn dogs.

Muffin and Peaches erupted into a cacophony of sound that damn near deafened him and Brian shot the closed, backyard gate a furious glare. The little mutts had it in for him.

Suddenly the back door flew open, he turned to look and there was Tina, silhouetted in the doorway. His heart did a quick spin, jump and lurch and it was a second or two before he could draw an easy breath.

“Quiet, girls,” she said and instantly, silence dropped over them.

It was almost eerie.

“Thanks,” Brian said with another glare for the two little meatheads hidden from sight behind the gate. “I’m still not sure why they hate me.”

Tina cocked a hip and leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “Maybe they love you and they’re just too shy to show it.”

He snorted. “Yeah, that’s it.” He lifted a hand and started for the stairs.

“Brian?”

He stopped and looked back, wishing he could just keep walking. “Yeah?”

“Would you mind taking a look at Nana’s TV?”

“What?”

“The TV. It’s all fuzzed out and I can’t get a picture.”

Go into the house? With her? Alone? Feeling like he did right now?

Not a good idea.

She saw him hesitate and spoke up before he could say no. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

Brian snapped her a glance. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was challenging him. Throwing down a gauntlet. Making a dare. Because she knew he’d respond to it, damn it.