Bride Of The Emerald Isle. Trish Wylie
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slammed the door shut, Keelin looked back at Garrett’s profile, her voice low. ‘I’m so sorry—I had no idea.’
‘Why would you? It’s not like we run around wearing T-shirts with it written on the front.’ He shrugged in a similar way to his daughter. ‘It was a long time ago.’
She waited until his face turned towards her, his eyes searching hers for a brief second while she held her breath, exhaling it on a question. ‘You brought her up alone?’
‘No, I brought her up with Dermot’s help.’
‘That can’t have been easy.’
‘No worse than being dragged from pillar to post most of her life might have been.’
Keelin looked down at her lap, joining her hands and focusing on them. ‘We all have something to deal with.’
‘Yes.’ The word was low, intimate in the confined space of the car. ‘Yes, we do.’
Keelin’s eyes rose slowly, her gaze tracing up each of the buttons on his dark blue shirt, sweeping over the few dark hairs she could see at the open vee, and then up, past the sensual sweep of his mouth until it locked with his. The warm toffee melting as he blinked back at her.
And Keelin had never before been so knocked sideways. So aware of the steady sound of someone else’s breathing, or the way that his mouth parted slightly as he took each breath, of how the very space that he occupied seemed made more vibrant by the very fact that he was in it.
Oh, this could not happen! Not with him.
But even as she straightened her spine and leaned back towards the door he turned away, his voice suddenly cooler.
‘Dermot will be wondering what’s keeping us.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHY do you call your father by his first name so much? Is that an island thing?’
Garrett tried to focus his attention on the mist-covered lane as they left the house, his grip tighter than necessary on the steering wheel. But the tension he felt wasn’t linked to a fear of driving in such bad visibility. Oh, no. It had much more to do with being alone in Keelin’s company. Again.
No matter how he tried he couldn’t seem to stop himself from being abundantly aware of her, no matter how close or how far away she was from him. Even when she had sat on the far side of the living room after dinner, he had had to force himself to look away from her, to stop himself being consistently hypnotized by her smile or the golden sound of her laughter or her sweet scent when she walked by. A scent that now surrounded him inside his own car.
And he felt a growing resentment towards her for all those things. She had no damn business being so noticeable.
He frowned at her question. ‘Do I?’
‘Yes, I caught it a few times earlier but I guess I only really thought about it tonight.’
‘Well, it is his name.’
‘Would you like it if Terri called you Garrett?’
‘No, I’m her dad, and I work harder on six days out of every seven to live up to that title; especially since she hit puberty.’
‘You’ve earned it.’ Her voice was softer this time, like velvet almost, as it reached across the minuscule gap between them and caressed his eardrums.
She had the most gorgeously sexy, husky voice. A bedroom voice. The kind of voice that would have seduced even without the aid of the way she looked. And she’d almost floored him when she’d walked into the foyer earlier. With her almost ethereal beauty, and an innocence that belied the kind of worldly upbringing he now knew she’d had.
‘Don’t you feel that Dermot has, too?’
Garrett could have corrected her simply enough. Dermot had more than earned it, which was why Garrett had taken his name in the first place. But his resentment at how he had been feeling in Keelin’s company all evening, hell, since he’d first set eyes on her, translated as a lack of willingness to share any information with her.
‘He’s never complained, so maybe he’s happy with it.’
With his eyes still fixed on the grey blanket beyond the wind-screen, he couldn’t attempt a look sideways to see her expression. But he felt the change, heard the slight whisper of the material of her dress against the seat as she straightened. And when she eventually spoke, her voice told him even more.
‘Do you want to tell me what it is I’ve done wrong? Or should we just play twenty questions ’til I hit it? You can give me yes or no answers if that’s easier for you.’
Her tone was cool, but there was an underlying edge to it that translated to him as hurt. Which brought an unwelcome wave of guilt washing over him.
‘Is it because I mentioned Terri’s mother earlier?’
‘No, it’s not because you mentioned Terri’s mother.’
‘Then what is it?’
His fingers flexed around the steering wheel. ‘What makes you so sure you’ve done something wrong?’
‘Maybe the fact that you’ve been staring at me with a scowl on your face for the last half an hour? You need to work some on your polite face, just for future reference.’
‘Not all of us find it easy to bury things so deep that people can’t see them. Or feel the need to try.’
He heard her sharp intake of breath and knew he’d hit a nerve. Well, at least all of his silent observation hadn’t brought him to false conclusions, then…
Another risked, split-second sideways glance found her staring straight ahead, her full mouth pursed in a tight line. ‘Which is what you try doing, isn’t it? It’s what you’ve been doing since I met you this morning.’
Keelin didn’t answer him.
‘I’m not the only one that needs to work some on their polite face. Just for future reference.’
She was silent for another long moment, then. ‘And this isn’t because I made the mistake earlier about your wife—you’re quite sure about that? Because if it is then I apologize again, I had no way of knowing—’
‘It isn’t about that. And she wasn’t my wife.’
‘You didn’t get married?’
‘She wouldn’t marry me. Marrying me would have involved her settling down and she wasn’t ready to do that.’ Now why had he just told her that? She didn’t need to know. No matter how he tried he couldn’t seem to stop himself talking around this woman. Or saying or doing something inappropriate, like offering a hug of comfort or his earlier comment about how ‘good’ he was…
And in telling her this latest piece of information he’d opened a doorway for further conversation on the subject, which was the last thing he wanted. ‘It’s about Terri if you really must know. I’ve spent all of her life making sure she had a secure home and firm foundation to build on. The last thing I need is for a stranger to come in and help feed her obsession with running off to the big city for a life of adventure.’
There was a long pause. Then. ‘And you think one night with me will have her running off?’
‘Well, you sure as hell didn’t help. She’s fourteen! She doesn’t need some complete stranger making it out that the city is all things bright and shiny. And that’s precisely what you did. It’s tough enough keeping young people on the island as it is.’
‘I had no intention of—’
‘Maybe not, but you did.’
Another long pause, then. ‘I see.’
Her voice was cooler this time and Garrett’s resentment grew. This time because she was trying to