After inhaling a steadying breath, Conor eased a little space between them, ostensibly so he could look down into her eyes, but mostly because his body was firing in ways he wasn’t entirely comfortable with around Laura. And he certainly didn’t want her to realize the purely male interest in her that was stirring behind his zipper. “I’m not the retribution type. I’m okay with this marriage. But I don’t have to be a glutton for punishment. I’m afraid getting too close will stir up things I’m not allowed to feel anymore.”
Or shouldn’t feel in the first place—like whatever was happening to him with Laura tonight.
“Lisa loved you, you know.” She shrugged, as if apologizing for what she said next. “I just don’t think she was in love with you.”
Well, wasn’t that a painfully sharp distinction to make? Time to change the subject to anything but him. “Did you ever get a date with that track star?”
“Nope. Decided he wasn’t my type.” Thankfully, Laura shifted the conversation with him. “That was almost a decade ago. I’m not a kid anymore. You just haven’t been around to notice. I’ve earned a college degree. I have a career as an educational travel coordinator. I book and lead student tours. I’ve seen a lot of the country. A lot of the world.”
“And I thought you wanted to grow up and play professional softball. Or be a veterinarian at a zoo—you wanted to save cheetahs or something like that. Or become a US marshal like your favorite neighbor.”
Laura pulled her hand from his shoulder, laughing as she gestured to the generous swells of her breasts. “These got in the way of being an athlete. Allergy to cats precluded the vet job. And I outgrew my teenage crush on all things Conor Wildman long ago.”
Conor covered his heart, laughing with her. “I’m wounded.”
She teasingly punched his arm before grabbing his hand and pulling him back into the rhythm of the music. “All the years I would have traded anything for you to see me as more than your kid sister. Oh, well. You had your chance, big guy. I’ve moved on.”
That particular choice of words sounded a little too familiar. Moving on was exactly what Lisa had done. Years ago, it was what his father had done, too.
Conor needed to save the conversation before he took a trip too far down the path of bitter memories. “I appreciate the flowers and letter you sent for Mom. That was sweet of you to recall some of the fun things we did growing up. Those were good memories. Mom treasured them as much as I did.”
“They were. I’m so sorry about Marie.” Laura stopped in the middle of the dance floor to slide her arms beneath his jacket and hug him around the waist.
Conor braced his feet, absorbing a bump from the couple moving next to them. When that accidental nudge didn’t loosen her hold on him, he wound his arms around her shoulders, protecting her from the people moving around them. And, if he was honest with himself, relaxing into the curves of her body and the heat of her small form clinging to him, accepting the solace of the compassionate gesture. “You okay, Squirt?”
He felt the hum of her groan vibrating through the cotton of his shirt.
“Sorry.” He dropped a kiss to the crown of her hair. “Laura. You okay?”
Her squeeze around him tightened. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back for the service. But I did go by the cemetery once I was in town. The marker wasn’t up yet, but I left flowers at the site.”
“Thank you.” That reminded him that he needed to go by the cemetery and check the status of the headstone he’d ordered.
They were still hugging as the song ended. The DJ was encouraging the married couples in attendance to make their way to the dance floor for a competition to see who’d been together the longest. “That leaves us out.” Conor finally relented his hold on Laura. She pulled away but latched onto his hand as he walked her back to the tables. “It really is good to see you, Laura.”
“You, too, Conor. I’ve missed you.”
“I appreciate a few minutes of normal amidst all the crazy.” He chucked her lightly beneath the chin and grinned. “I don’t have to pretend to smile with you.”
When he excused himself to leave, she tugged on his tie with one hand and slipped the other around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. What the heck? Her lips were warm, bowed and moving across his before he could close the startled O of his mouth. When he did press his lips together, they caught the decadent fullness of her lower lip between his. Whoa. Did that qualify as a kiss? Had he just kissed Laura? With a noise that sounded suspiciously like a moan beneath the pulse of the music, she pushed up onto her tiptoes, sealing their mouths together in another kiss that exploded somewhere inside his brain and lit a fuse down to his groin, prompting the instinctive need to snap her to his body and take over the embrace. But before he could even acknowledge the desire zinging through him, she dropped back onto her heels and broke the connection between them.
As he leaned over her like this, with her face tilted to his, the color of her eyes changed like a kaleidoscope, showing him tawny sparkles of glitter amidst the forest, moss and olive in her irises. The woman had beautiful eyes. “You should do that more,” she whispered.
“Kiss?” He’d been too startled to respond the way he’d wanted to, but now he was wondering if he had... He could still feel the pressure of her lips softening against his...
She rubbed her fingertips across his mouth, probably wiping off a stray glob of lipstick. But he felt the tug of that unexpected touch down deep inside him. “Smile. You’ve always been such a good-looking son of a gun when you smile.”
Was she flirting with him? How was he supposed to think brotherly thoughts when every cell of his body was standing at attention, eagerly anticipating the next touch? When every self-respecting male hormone was demanding he take her in his arms and show her that Conor Wildman knew exactly how to respond to a woman’s kiss, and not stand there like a statue.
She smoothed his tie against his chest and stepped back, maybe sensing that he’d change the way that kiss had ended if she didn’t put some space between them. “I’d better go. Try to get a hold of Chloe again.”
Right. Get a grip, Wildman. That was a goodbye kiss. Hadn’t he just been thanking her for keeping everything normal between them? He was the one putting a sensual spin on things.
A nod of agreement was the best he could do right now. “Good luck.”
Conor watched her chat her way through the crowd before she disappeared into the same hallway where Isaac Royal had gone. These few minutes with Laura—their dance, that kiss—had been both the most natural and the most unsettling conversation he’d had all evening.
After enduring a couple of quick dances with Lisa, reassuring her every way he knew how that her marrying Joe hadn’t damaged him beyond repair, he finally made his exit. He’d done his time. He’d saved face, rallied a bit of his pride. But he was more than ready to loosen his tie and unbutton the collar of his shirt as he pushed open the door to a rush of damp February air and strode across the parking lot to his SUV.
Conor inhaled deep breaths of the cold, sobering air into his lungs, replaying this whole evening, replaying the last two years, actually, calculating just how quickly he could wrap up his mother’s business and get on the road to Kansas City before he got any more
