than handing it to one of his employees, only so that he could get a little distance from the woman standing so temptingly close to him at the moment. Distance hadn’t helped. He’d thought of her. Dreamed of her, and awakened nearly every morning with his body tight and ready for her.
Even now, the lush, slightly floral scent of her reached out to him as if to tease every sense memory he had of touching her, tasting her, being inside her …
“Ronan,” she said in a patient tone that interrupted his musings, “we both know Beast is better off with me. You’re not exactly a good dog parent—”
“I’m not his father, I’m his bloody owner,” Ronan countered.
She ignored him. “Soon enough you’ll be going back to Ireland and—”
“Taking Beast with me,” he finished for her.
In truth, he hadn’t really considered what he would do with Beast when his time in America was over. But right now, the decision seemed an easy one. Even fighting the quarantine laws to get the dog home to Ireland would seem like a vacation after dealing with Laura Page.
Jaw tight, he looked deeply into those calm blue eyes and wondered if she was as unaffected by him as she seemed. Had she forgotten him so quickly? Gotten over him so completely? A lowering thought for a man to consider.
Brushing aside what had once been between them, he said, “Beast is mine, and I always intended to take him home to Ireland with me when I go. Nothing’s changed.”
“Sure it has,” she said, taking a step toward him, dislodging the dog so that he nearly toppled over. “You have a dog back home, right?”
“Aye. Deirdre.”
“And it’s been how long since you’ve seen her?”
“That’s nothing to do with this.”
“It’s everything to do with it,” she countered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “A dog needs more than a visit every couple of months. A dog needs love. Companionship. Someone he can count on. Someone who will be there.”
Frowning, Ronan looked hard at her. This was the reason he had stepped back from their relationship in the first place. The woman had hearth and home and forever practically stenciled on her forehead. She was a woman who wanted and deserved to be loved. He just wasn’t the man to give that to her. So he’d ended their affair before things got even more complicated than they had been already.
“Are you talking about Beast now, Laura, or yourself?”
She gaped at him. “Your ego knows no bounds, does it? Do you really think I’ve been sitting here moping? Missing you?”
Actually, yes. He did. And the more fired up she got, the more he knew she was no more over him than he was her.
“This isn’t about us, Ronan. It’s about Beast, and you can’t have him. You don’t deserve him.”
Before he could counter, she slammed the door in his face and Ronan heard the lock snap into place. Stunned, he stared at the closed door for a long minute. He could hardly believe it. No one shut a door in Ronan Connolly’s face, for pity’s sake.
He heard her inside, cooing to Beast, assuring him that he was safe from bullies and that was nearly enough to have Ronan pounding on her door again. But he thought better of it. Let her believe she’d won this battle. It would make her complacent and that much easier to get around later.
Still furious, he turned sharply, stomped on the fallen roses and left.
But he’d be back. Connollys didn’t know how to quit.
“It’s all right, sweetie,” Laura said to Beast as she scrubbed the top of his head and scratched behind his ears. “The mean man is gone.”
Laura was trembling by the time she heard Ronan’s sports car fire up and zoom off. Oh, not from the argument. She had known that confrontation was coming for weeks. But actually seeing him again had been much harder than she’d thought it would be.
Looking up into those dark blue eyes of his, she’d watched them flash with temper and had been just as stirred as when she’d seen them darken with passion or glitter with a cool, businesslike gleam.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with chestnut hair that showed just a hint of red in the sunlight, he wore business suits and jeans with the same casual air that made him both intimidating and irresistible. And apparently two months apart hadn’t dimmed her reaction to him at all.
From the moment he had first walked into her real estate office several months ago, Laura had known that she was in trouble. Oh, she and her sister had sold homes to unspeakably rich people before, but there had never been the slightest temptation to fit herself into their world. With Ronan, it had been different from the start.
Everything in her still wanted him, even though her mind knew better. He’d been out of her life for two months and that was as it should be. After all, she had known going into that mind-dazzling affair that it couldn’t last. He was rich; she wasn’t. He was Ferrari and she was Volkswagen. He lived in Ireland. And she’d be staying in California.
She sighed a little, then looked down at the dog each of them wanted. Beast was big, at least a hundred pounds and his black hair was full and shaggy, clumps of it usually falling across his eyes. No one knew what mixture of breeds he might be, but privately, Laura had often thought a pony must have been involved somewhere in his lineage.
Now, Beast looked up at her as if sympathizing with the situation, and Laura smiled.
“Sure,” she whispered, still stroking Beast’s head, “I knew Ronan would be trouble from the first. But a gorgeous, successful man with an Irish accent that makes my bones melt? How was I supposed to fight that?”
The dog gave her one long swiping kiss and she laughed. In his own way, Beast was as charming as his master—just another reason she wouldn’t give him up. Then she stood and walked to the kitchen, hearing Beast’s claws clatter on the floorboards behind her.
“Well,” her sister, Georgia, spoke up from the kitchen table. “That was dignified.”
Laura poured herself a cup of coffee, then carried it across the room to take the chair opposite her sister. “I wasn’t going for dignified.”
“Luckily.”
She already knew Georgia’s opinion on the whole situation with Ronan—namely, Never mix business with pleasure—and she really didn’t want to go into it all again. Laura avoided her sister’s all-too-perceptive stare by sliding her own gaze around the comfortable kitchen.
The soft yellow walls combated the gray day outside. White appliances gleamed and the black granite countertops shone like obsidian. The chrome-and-glass table sat before a bay window that overlooked the backyard where the few trees stood nearly bare in the autumn weather.
Georgia tapped her finger against the glass tabletop until Laura finally looked at her.
“Georgia, I’m not going to talk about this.”
“Fine,” her sister said, setting her computer tablet down
