would never forget that.
‘You couldn’t carry me if you had a truck.’
Eamonn smiled. ‘I have the info here on the Queens project. I’ll look it over and e-mail you back any thoughts I have—okay?’
‘No problem, buddy.’ There was a pause, then, ‘You doin’ okay?’
‘Course I am.’ But even as the words came out he was asking himself if they weren’t a lie. He didn’t know what he was.
‘Can’t be easy, missin’ your dad’s funeral and all.’
Eamonn took a breath, moved the receiver from one ear to the other. No, that part wasn’t easy. The least he could have done was be there to pay his respects. To say sorry for not having come back sooner. He’d always thought there would be time—that the bridges that had started to mend through phone calls would be the first steps towards him seeing his father again face to face. Instead he’d had to make do with a silent vigil by a graveside under a grey sky that had wept tears he couldn’t shed himself. Weeks after his father had been buried. It didn’t make him feel like much of a man.
‘I have a couple of issues to work through. But I’m fine, Pete. Really. You don’t need to worry.’
‘Well, look, I hope the visit home does you good. You’ve been restless a while now.’
Wasn’t that the truth? He’d tried burying himself in work for years, had made a clean fortune out of it. But that hadn’t been enough. He’d dated—stunningly beautiful women, as it happened—but nothing that had lasted. And he’d travelled, seen parts of the world he could only have dreamed of when he’d been growing up in the wilds of Ireland.
But he was still restless.
And now he was rearranging his life to continue a visit that should have taken only a few days, to take care of someone who really didn’t want his help.
He took another breath. ‘I’ll send this stuff through in a while, Pete. E-mail me anything else that comes up, and we’ll work that way ’til I get back.’
Pete took a similar breath and gave up. ‘Right. Okay, then. I’ll talk to you soon.’
‘Send my love to Marcy.’
‘Sure I will. If I ever get to see her again.’
Eamonn set the receiver down and stared at the laptop screen for a long while, his eyes not even focusing on the e-mail. What was he doing?
The next time he saw Colleen he was going to have to have more belief in her strength and tell her why he’d come back. What it was he wanted to do to sever his ties for good.
It just would have been easier if she’d been in a position to buy him out. If he hadn’t thought that telling her his plans might be the one thing to break the thin hold she had on what she obviously cared about the most. The thing he needed gone, so his last link to Ireland was severed. And he’d never have to come back again.
It was just business. That was all.
Colleen avoided him for as long as she could. But eventually the growling in her stomach refused to be ignored. And though on her own she could have coped with hunger, she wasn’t eating just for herself. As if somehow sensing she was being stubborn about it, the baby leaned on her again. Hard.
She smoothed a hand against the protruding bump. ‘All right, I hear you. We’ll go now.’
Eamonn was already in the large old kitchen when she came in through the door, his laptop open on the huge wooden table.
He glanced up at her, his eyes studying her face for a long moment. ‘You feeling okay?’
Colleen quirked a brow. ‘Are you going to ask me that every time you see me?’
His mouth twitched, eyes sparking. She was just so defensive sometimes, so determined to challenge him, that it amused him. How else was a man supposed to react to a woman so gloriously large with child? It was his job to be considerate, even if he wasn’t the father. That was what the good guys did.
What amused him more was that being around her had him thinking of himself as a good guy. Being a bad boy around women had always worked for him better.
She tilted her head and continued. ‘I have to go to the toilet the second I finish a cup of tea, my back aches, but not as much as my feet, and the baby has been trying to push a hole through my stomach all day. But apart from that I’m just grand. Is that enough information for you, or should I go into a bit more graphic detail?’
A low whistle sounded between his teeth. ‘Man, but you’re testy, aren’t you?’
‘Testy?’ She blinked at the word. ‘As soon as nature organises it for men to carry the babies you can talk to me about being testy.’
‘The human race would die out.’
‘You’re damn right it would.’
When he grinned, a dimple appearing in full glory on his cheek, she smiled back. It was a rare flash of acquiescence. But she couldn’t hold his gaze for long, though, and felt a flush building on her neck. Instead she nodded at the fridge. ‘I came to get something to eat. Have you had lunch?’
‘No, I haven’t.’It wasn’t a big surprise. He’d always been one of those people who could get through from breakfast to dinner so long as there was coffee. But he was irritated he hadn’t thought of Colleen. So much for being a good guy.
He pushed his chair back from the table, the legs screeching on the slate floor. ‘Sit down. I’ll rustle something up for us.’
Colleen shook her head, reaching a hand up self-consciously to tuck a long curl behind her ear. ‘You’re doing it again. I can make a sandwich—thanks anyway.’
Glancing at her with a spark of warning in his eyes, he pointed a long finger at the table. ‘Sit.’
With no idea why she did it, she sat down as she was bid. But she eased her annoyance with herself for obeying by pouting. And then felt childish. Damn him.
‘Is there anything you can’t eat?’
She folded her arms defensively across her breasts. ‘Is that a dig at my size?’
There was brief moment of tense silence, and then he laughed at her deadpan expression, the oh-so-male sound echoing around the cavernous room. ‘No-o. It was a query in case anything I made would make you sick.’
Her mouth pursed momentarily in thought, before she sighed dramatically. ‘Not really. I’ve been past all that stuff for a while. But if you put a pickled anything in it, it would taste one heck of a lot better.’
Inside a few minutes he had made sandwiches, with pickled onions on one side of hers, and two steaming mugs of tea. To distract herself from watching him move around the kitchen, Colleen allowed herself to glance at his laptop screen. It had no effect on her pulse whatsoever.
He pulled up a chair beside her. ‘It’s work.’
Flushing slightly at
