neck as she continued to work. “What’s up?”
“I have a favor to ask. Or maybe I’ll be doing you one, depending on your point of view.” Her mother chuckled. “Your father came home with tickets to the circus for tomorrow. We’d like to take the boys, if you don’t have plans. In fact—” her voice warmed enthusiastically as the brainstorm hit “—why don’t I come get them and let them spend the night? I can be there in thirty minutes, they’d have a little time to play this evening, maybe take a late swim in the pool, and then they can sleep in tomorrow. We don’t need to leave to get to the circus until about ten.”
Her mother’s timing couldn’t have been worse. If she came for the boys in thirty minutes, Deirdre would have to finish the meal alone with Ronan, a situation more awkward than she could imagine. But search as she might, she couldn’t come up with a plausible reason to nix the plan. “I guess that would be okay, Mom. If it’s all right with the boys.”
Both children and their guest had straggled back into the kitchen as she spoke on the phone. She held the receiver to her shoulder and said to Lee and Tommy, “Would you guys like to spend the night with Gramma and Grampa and go to the circus tomorrow?”
Wild war whoops were the answer, and she motioned for quiet as she said to her mother, “I think that’s a yes. See you shortly.”
Quickly, she got the rest of the meal on the table, adding two wineglasses and handing Ronan a corkscrew as she cut the boys’ spaghetti into manageable sizes. She tried not to notice how efficiently Ronan opened the bottle with a few deft twists of his wrist, then slowly and smoothly extracted the cork before filling her glass and his.
“We can dispense with the tasting ceremony,” he said.
She made a determined effort to smile casually, nodding in agreement. It felt incredibly strange to be sitting at a table with a man again, although if she was truthful, Nelson had rarely taken family meals with them. Most of the time she and the kids had been on their own.
“So tell us where you’ve been going when you walk,” she said. “Have you found a favorite spot yet?”
He considered the question, but Lee couldn’t stand to be quiet for long. “We all have a special spot,” he said. “Mine’s the big rock up on the hill. It’s my fort.”
“An’ mine’s the pine tree clearing,” said his brother. “We play we live in there sometimes.”
Ronan smiled. For the first time he noticed Lee was missing both top front teeth. His little brother had a lisp a deaf person could hear. They were both so damned cute he thought they could be the kids he saw in commercials. “You’ll have to show me your fort and your house in the clearing someday,” he said. “Maybe next week you can come with me when I take my walk.”
“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
