Anne Winston - Dedicated To Deirdre

“O-kay!” Lee clenched his fist in the air and drew it down to his side.

“Nelson Lee.” His mother was giving him the eye. “You have manners. Use them.”

“So.” Ronan thought he’d draw fire away from the kid. “Does Mom have a special spot?”

“Uh, not re—”

“Yep.” Lee bounced in his chair. “She likes the creek. She takes off her shoes and goes wading sometimes.”

“One time we all taked off everyfing and got inna water.”

Deirdre made a choking sound. A deep red blush washed up from her neck to her hairline as she said to Tommy, “Do you remember our rule about telling Private Family Stuff?” To Ronan she said, “Don’t ever have children. The whole world hears all.” She picked up her wineglass and took a healthy swallow, but he noticed she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

That was okay for now. He sensed her skittishness, and he wondered if she’d had any relationships since her husband. The idea made him frown. He hoped she hadn’t given any other guy the kind of green light she was giving him tonight, arranging for her mother to take her kids so they could have the evening alone. Thinking of what would happen later tonight was a bad move, he decided, shifting in his chair to ease the sudden tight fit of his shorts. A very bad move. Purposefully he turned his attention back to the meal.

Supper was lively, as he’d expected with the little boys around. He learned that they had both been hospitalized last summer after they used big, healthy-looking poison ivy leaves for a “salad” they decided to sample outdoors. Lee proudly showed him the missing space in his front teeth, courtesy of a close encounter with a swing that he didn’t see coming his way. Tommy showed him a small scar on the side of his knee where he’d had stitches after he’d fallen from a tree. He learned that Lee’s favorite color was green and that Tommy slept with a stuffed alligator he’d had since he was an infant.

“From my father,” Deirdre explained. “My father is a biologist. He’s a little...different. How many people do you know who would pick out a three-foot, stuffed alligator for a six-pound baby?”

Ronan agreed that it was an unusual gift while he watched the shift and play of shadow over her smooth ivory shoulders, bared by the light summer clothing. He was truly amazed by her children. How she stayed sane keeping up with these two was beyond him. He’d felt himself sweating as the boys described their various creative escapades.

But he couldn’t keep his mind on the conversation. It was taking a concentrated effort not to stare at his hostess with his tongue hanging out. She looked like a porcelain doll, he decided. She must garden, because he knew she didn’t hire anybody to help out with the yard work, but her ivory flesh looked as though it had never known the kiss of the sun.

When she emptied her wineglass, he refilled it and handed it across to her, and her fingers brushing over his raised goose bumps up his arms in a pleasantly arousing tingle. Even more arousing was the knowledge that the tingle was going to get a whole lot stronger later this evening.

Tommy proudly presented his baking effort for dessert, an angel food cake with lurid green icing made from whipped topping, food coloring and vanilla pudding. He’d seen the frosting recipe in his Sesame Street magazine, he informed Ronan, and Bert an’ Ernie made it. Ronan had no idea who Burton Urney was, but he thought the guy should be drawn and quartered for teaching little kids to make disgusting-looking things like that. He tasted it gingerly and was surprised to find it was pretty darn good.

Murphy began to bark as Ronan was finishing his second piece of cake, and Deirdre’s mother breezed in the back door. She stopped dead when she saw Ronan sitting at her daughter’s kitchen table with Tommy on one knee and a smear of green icing on his cheek.

“Good evening,” she said, eyes as striking as her daughter’s sweeping over him from head to toe. Though she was quite polite, he could sense the curiosity radiating from her.

Ronan set Tommy on a chair and rose, politely offering his hand. “Hello. I’m Deirdre’s tenant, Ronan Sullivan.” Deirdre’s mother was no taller than her daughter, with an amazingly trim figure for someone he figured had two-plus decades on her. Her hair was snow-white, carelessly anchored in a bun at the back of her head from which stray tendrils escaped and wisped around her head. He was looking at Deirdre in thirty years, he realized.

It wasn’t an unpleasant thought.

“Ronan, this is my mother, Maura Halleran,” said Deirdre.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Halleran,” he said.

When she smiled at him, his heart was lost. “Sullivan,” she said, “A good Irish name. When did your family come over?”

“Come over?” As far as he knew, his parents were still safely ensconced in their condo.

“From Eire.” Her green eyes were deadly serious. “My grandmother O‘Leary was born there. We O’Learys haven’t been away that long. The Hallerans abandoned—”

“Mo-ther.” Deirdre had obviously heard this before. “Take my children and go before you scare Ronan away. He’s a good tenant and if he leaves, who knows what kind of maniac I’ll wind up with.” She kissed her mother’s cheek and herded her and the boys toward the door. “Could be someone like you.”

He was still laughing to himself when the boys hollered goodbye and disappeared around the corner of the house with their grandmother, after retrieving the amazing alligator from Tommy’s room.

“Wait a minute,” he said, belatedly remembering something. “They didn’t pack anything. Don’t kids still need suitcases?”

“Not for a night at Gramma’s,” Deirdre said. “She keeps extra sets of clothes there all the time. The only thing that can’t be replaced is the alligator.”

“Ah.” Another tidbit to file away. He never knew when a reference to a grandmother might come in handy in a story.

Deirdre was hovering nervously in the middle of the room and he patted the seat beside him. He’d been anticipating this moment ever since she’d announced before dinner that the boys would be going to their grandmother’s house. “Come sit down. I imagine you don’t get many chances to put your feet up when those two are around.”

“You imagine correctly.” But she didn’t sit down. Instead, she began gathering plates and flatware and fitting them into the dishwasher. “I’m sorry about my mother. She’s always been interested in Irish history. Well,” she added, “that’s the polite way to phrase it.”

“I liked your mother,” he said mildly as he rose and gathered glasses, carrying them to the sink. If she needed some time to ease into his arms, that was all right.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“Sure I do. You cooked. It’s only fair that I help clean up. Besides, the sooner the table is cleared, the sooner you’ll sit down and relax.”

He didn’t imagine the startled glance that came his way as she quickly put away the remains of the meal. But she didn’t comment, just bent and hauled an enormous dog bowl out from beneath the sink. “I have to feed the big guy first.”

He was riveted to the spot by the sight of her rounded bottom straining against the seat of her overalls when she bent over. He could hear his blood roaring through his veins, could feel his body reacting and he resisted the strong impulse to grab her by those lush hips and pull her back against him, to tear off first her clothes and then his, to plunge into her and let his flesh pound against those smooth buttocks that would be as porcelain white and soft as the rest of her until they both were satisfied.

He was hard as a rock now, distinctly uncomfortable in the shorts that had seemed plenty roomy when he’d put them on. Turning his back to her, he spotted the wine still on the table, and on the pretext of retrieving it, used the opportunity to tug himself into a more comfortable position. Even the touch of his own hand made his flesh leap and he closed his eyes, forcing himself to think of his story, the apartment, his agent’s phone call earlier in the day... anything to keep him from giving in to the primal demand to turn back to that enticing little body this very minute.