As always, she gave him a quick smack on the lips in greeting as though she didn’t even remember that yesterday those same lips had rubbed against his, opened and tasted him like a welcoming lover. The friendly kiss was over in an instant, but it had been long enough for him to catch the scent of her perfume. Since when had the scent of honeysuckle become such an aphrodisiac?
“I wasn’t sure what you were serving, so I brought red and white,” she said, indicating the bottles of wine in her hands.
Sean wrapped his fists around the wine to keep himself from reaching for her. He checked out the labels. “Hey, these are both good. Your taste in wine is improving, Malloy.”
“Gee. You have such a way with compliments, Fitzpatrick. If a girl isn’t careful, you’ll just turn her head.”
Sean chuckled as he was meant to do, and the tension in him eased a notch. “We’re having steaks. So, I’ll open the red and let it breathe. Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
“Need any help?”
“Are you kidding? You think I’d let you come near my kitchen again? It took me a week to rid the place of the stench of burned pasta.” At her scowl, he laughed. “Go ahead, kick your feet back and relax. I’ve got everything under control.”
And he did have everything under control, Sean told himself, as he poured more wine into their glasses. Claiming the chair opposite the old-fashioned porch swing where Katie sat, he congratulated himself. Everything had gone like clockwork—right down to the antique music box he’d given her as a gift.
It had been just like old times—comfortable, enjoyable. So what if he couldn’t help noticing how soft her skin looked in the moonlight? Or the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed?
She looked up at him over the lid of the music box. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered in that throaty whisper that sparked visions of her lying on satin sheets. Quickly, ruthlessly, he deep-sixed the dangerous image.
“I’m sorry it’s late,” he told her.
“Don’t be silly. You were out of town for my birthday. I know that. And you really didn’t have to buy me anything. I got the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers from all the Fitzpatricks.”
Sean shrugged, his gaze riveted to the fingers lazily stroking the silver latch on the music box. “The flowers were from my family,” he said dragging his eyes up to her face. “I wanted to give you something from me.”
“I…thank you.”
The friendly sass that had been in her eyes all evening gave way to a soft yearning that made his blood heat. Desire, tucked safely away throughout dinner, sneaked out, tempting him. Sean tightened his grip on the glass in his hand and stood. “How about some more wine?”
“No, thanks,” Katie told him, and carefully placed the music box on the table amid the nest of wrappings. Then she stood and went to him. Reaching out, she stroked his cheek. “Thank you, Sean,” she whispered, then pressed her mouth to his. It was a simple kiss, over almost before it began, but it sent desire shooting through him like heat lightning. “I’ll treasure it always.”
She backed away, retreating until she came up against the swing and sat down. Not until she’d pushed off on her back foot and set the swing to swaying was he finally able to untangle his tongue.
The silence stretched between them for several awkward moments, then Katie cut him a narrow-eyed glance. “You know, Fitzpatrick, it just occurred to me that this dinner and that music box might actually be a bribe.”
“A bribe, huh?” he said, welcoming the teasing and the break in tension that came with it. “And just what would I be bribing you for, Malloy?”
“Well, knowing what a sneaky man you are, maybe you thought that if you plied me with a great dinner, let me stuff myself with that sinful cake and gave me such a fabulous gift, that maybe I’d let you off the hook about doing the investigations for me like you promised.”
“The thought never crossed my mind.”
“That’s good. Because I’m not letting you off the hook, pal.”
Try as he might, he couldn’t sustain the light humor. “Katie, about this baby business—”
“Tonight when you lit the candles on the cake and told me to make a wish, do you know what I wished for? I wished that by this time next year, I’d have a baby. I know you don’t agree with this, Sean, but as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted that package. You know—husband, wife, babies—a family. A psychologist would probably say it’s because I didn’t have the family I wanted as a child with my parents divorcing, my stepfather cutting out on us and stuff. And they’d probably be right. But I always knew that someday I would have a family like…well, like yours.”
She tore at the napkin in her fingers. “Well, it hasn’t happened, and it isn’t going to—at least not the husband part of it. But I still want the babies, Sean. Sometimes I think it was because I wanted to have children so much that I talked myself into thinking I was in love and getting engaged twice. I think I wanted to get married so I could become a mother.”
It broke his heart to hear the sadness in her voice, to see it in her eyes. Family was something that he’d always taken for granted, and it was something that Katie had never really had. Sean put down his wineglass. “Honey, I understand what you’re saying. But—”
“You don’t agree with me on this. I know that, and I understand. Really, I do. But I know what I’m doing, Sean.”
Frustration knotted like a fist in his stomach. “You’re a young woman, Katie. You deserve more than stud service from some guy who’ll be happy to get you pregnant and then more than likely split on you. You deserve the whole shebang—love, marriage, babies, white picket fences.”
“You’re talking about fairy tales. I stopped believing in them and in Prince Charming a long time ago.”
“Maybe you just haven’t found your prince yet.”
She gave him a smile that was meant to be cocky, but came across as impossibly sad. “Believe me, I’ve kissed my share of frogs, even got engaged to two of them, remember? But not one of them ever turned into a prince. I don’t want—no, I refuse to put my life on hold and wait for someone who probably doesn’t exist.”
There was an aching loneliness in her voice that ripped at him. “Whatever happened to that little girl? The one who believed in knights and fairy tales and magic?”
“She grew up.”
And because she had grown up, she knew not to read anything into the sexual voltage that kept zinging between her and Sean. Oh, it had always been there on her part. It was pretty hard not to have fantasies about a man like Sean. But fantasies were all that they were. She’d gotten used to feeling that heat suck low in her belly every time he was near her, and she’d gotten good at hiding it from him. So what if he seriously kissed her a time or two—she was too smart to let that romantic heart of hers start spinning fairy tales again. Sean wasn’t interested in her in that way. He was simply being a good friend.
And it was out of friendship, she knew, that he was still trying to talk her out of her plans to have a baby thirty minutes
