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‘Not particularly.’
‘So, you’re just an old-fashioned girl who likes to take care of a man…I think I’m going to enjoy this stay after all.’
‘My other reason for offering to cook this is simply that I’m not at my best first thing in the morning,’ retorted Maggie, having extreme difficulty in keeping her tone in any way civil. ‘I like to have something to keep me occupied, otherwise I’m quite likely to doze off.’ She unwrapped the bacon, unable to believe the rubbish she had just spouted. ‘And that wouldn’t be very sociable, would it?’
‘I’ll have to take you at your word about how you feel at this hour,’ he murmured, ‘but from where I’m sitting you look great. You haven’t drunk your coffee…I’ll make you some fresh.’
There was absolutely no need for him to lean over and against her as he reached for the kettle, but that was what he did. Her body responded in a way that both startled and horrified her, melting to a liquid state of unequivocal sexual excitement as the heady, newly bathed masculine scent of him engulfed her.
So unnerved was she by the totality of that involuntary response that an equally involuntary shriek exploded from her as, in her panic to escape, she leapt smack into the kettle he had just lifted.
‘Now, that wasn’t very smart, was it?’ he drawled, putting down the kettle and taking her face in his hands.
‘What are you doing?’ she protested, twisting violently in an attempt to escape those hands. ‘Stop it!’
‘For God’s sake, stop being so damned stupid!’ he exclaimed, his hands tightening in a vice-like grip. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’
‘Get your hands off me!’ she cried, a note of hysteria slicing through the words as her hands tugged frantically at his arms.
‘Hell, anyone walking in here and seeing you dripping blood and freaking out all over the place would assume I was trying to kill you!’ he exploded, his eyes blazing fury as he abruptly released her. ‘Just what in hell are you playing at?’
‘What do you mean, what am I playing at?’ shrieked Maggie, unable to exert any control over herself. ‘You’re the one who’s just broken my nose with the kettle!’
‘I don’t believe this,’ he groaned softly to himself, then reached over to a roll of kitchen paper and tore off a couple of sheets. ‘Here—dab your nose with that. And for God’s sake don’t blow it.’
Maggie took the wad of paper and gingerly did as he’d said, the madness at last mercifully subsiding in her. Then she wondered just how much of a mercy it was as she found herself face to face with a blackly scowling man, the angry heave of whose chest had loosened his robe and exposed an expanse of fine, silkily hirsute darkness.
It was when her mind’s eye began casually stripping the entire robe from that magnificent body that she was reduced to considering pinching herself to end what had to be a ghastly nightmare.
‘It doesn’t seem to be bleeding any more,’ he muttered, flashing her a distinctly hostile look before grabbing a teatowel and walking over to the fridge. ‘You’d better pack this around it for a while,’ he said, handing her the towel, now wrapped around a mound of ice-cubes. ‘It might prevent it swelling.’
Now feeling an utter fool, Maggie moved towards the cooker, the lumpy towel clamped to her nose.
‘Now what are you doing?’ he demanded in weary exasperation.
‘Cooking your breakfast’
‘Don’t you think you have enough to occupy you?’ he drawled, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Forget it—we’ll go have a look at the lab facilities, then get ourselves breakfast downtown…assuming, that is, you’re up to it.’
At first Maggie was surprised at how well Slane knew his way around, then she remembered that he had spent quite a bit of time in Dublin.
‘Did you come here on holiday regularly?’ she asked after a silent battle with herself. They had exchanged barely a word since getting into Connor’s car, but a subconscious fatalism in her reasoned that, having committed herself to stay, her best bet was to try to establish at least a veneer of civility between them before she got around to confronting him. The only alternative appeared to be a descent into out-and-out war…
Besides, there was this growing, insistent part of her showing an insatiable need to find out everything there was to know about him…Not that she had any intention of indulging it to the full.
‘Not on holiday, exactly,’ he replied. ‘We did visit quite a bit, but my dad had this thing about me not missing out on the Irish half of me. I went to school here as a kid—though I went through high school in the States. I was also here at Trinity before going on to Yale.’
‘Didn’t you mind?’ exclaimed Maggie involuntarily.
‘What was there to mind?’
‘Surely it must have been disruptive—switching between the Irish and American education system like that? And what about leaving your family and friends?’
‘I was a bright kid, so the differences didn’t bother me,’ he replied. ‘I guess I was also a pretty secure one. It wasn’t as though I was packed off to Ireland against my will; I was given the choice and I couldn’t wait to live here for a while. As for family and friends, I knew they’d still be there when I got back—which was most vacations.’
Bright, well-adjusted and utterly modest, thought Maggie wryly, and that had just been the child!
‘I guess you had a more conventional childhood,’ he murmured as, with the outskirts of Dublin behind them, he speeded up along the coastal road, beside which angry grey seas sent foam-tipped waves hurtling across mile after empty mile of pale gold sand.
‘I guess you could say that,’ responded Maggie drily.
‘Oh, I see,’ he chuckled, the sound sending shock waves of heat rippling through her. ‘This is to be a “tell all” for me and a “tell nothing” for you. Great.’
Maggie bit back an angry retort, reasoning with herself that she could hardly blame him for the effect he was having on her—an effect of which he seemed, thank heavens, mercifully unaware.
‘I’m sorry if you got that impression,’ she said, trying so hard to feign normality that she ended up sounding prissy, ‘but there really is nothing to tell. I went from one school to the next, in the same town, then on to university—there’s hardly anything exotic about that…Where exactly are we heading?’
‘To a place just outside Dun Laoghaire,’ he replied, taking a sudden right turn from the coast road. ‘In fact, we’ll soon be there.’
Maggie frowned in puzzlement as with each turn they took they drove deeper and deeper into what was obviously a most affluent residential area. ‘We are on our way to a laboratory, aren’t we?’ she muttered, peering out through the rain-bleared windows at houses that were getting grander and sparser by the minute.
‘We sure are,’ he replied, with a soft laugh, as they entered what was more of a lane than a road, at the end of which stood huge, wrought-iron gates set into a massive, creeper-clad wall. He stopped the car in front of the gates, released his seat belt and opened his door. ‘Your turn to drive.’
Before Maggie could utter a word he was out and drawing aside the heavy, creaking gates.
He motioned her to remain where she was once she had driven through, and got in beside her, spraying her with droplets of rain as he shook his glossy dark head like a boisterous puppy.
‘Straight on up,’ he directed.
It was like driving through a miniature forest, and then a house loomed into view.
‘This looks more like a minor stately home than a laboratory site!’ exclaimed Maggie as they neared the impressive, ivy-clad building. ‘Who on earth owns it?’
‘Maurice Ryan—an old friend of my father’s,’ replied Slane. ‘Just follow the drive round to the back of the house and on down to that line of trees—you’ll see where to turn once we’re there. Maurice is a character and a half, but unfortunately we won’t see him—he’s off picking daisies at the end of some rainbow or other.’
‘He’s what?’ exclaimed Maggie, following the curve of the drive and bringing the car to a halt in front of a white, single-storey building, hidden from view by the trees behind which it stood.
‘Maurice is a botanist. He eats, sleeps and breaths botany. Fortunately he has vast independent means with which to indulge his passion.’
‘I take it he’s the one who’s grown this plant you’re going to test?’ said Maggie.
Slane nodded. ‘Yes, he—Ah, that must be John,’ he said as a man clad in waterproofs and wellington boots appeared from around the side of the building. ‘You might just as well stay here in the dry while I have a word with him about setting things up for the morning.’
He got out of the car and approached him, and a while later the two of them disappeared inside the building. In less than five minutes they reappeared and stood deep in conversation, the other man every now and then pointing towards a row of greenhouses of varying sizes and shapes and sometimes to the land beyond.
What am I doing here, and with this of all men? Maggie asked herself incredulously as a shiver that was entirely unrelated to the bleakness of the late November weather shuddered through her.
She busied herself for a while, moving back to the passenger seat, but, with that little distraction over, her eyes were drawn back to the taller of the two figures. Whatever it was his shorter companion had said, Slane suddenly threw back his head and laughed, oblivious of the rain now deluging down on them.
That ruinously expensive-looking coat of his would be soaked, thought Maggie; then she found herself smiling at her own innate practicality—after all, what was the odd cashmere coat or two to the seriously wealthy? And Slane Fitzpatrick, apart from everything else he had going for him, was very seriously wealthy.
He slapped the man on the shoulder, then turned and walked back to the car. He was walking to the passenger side, then stopped, gave a lopsided grin, and changed direction.
He’s also a very seriously attractive man, thought Maggie as her heart gave a drunken lurch, and I’ve got to get my act together before I make a complete and utter fool of myself.
‘How can you do this to me, Maggie?’ he groaned, laughing as he got back into the car. ‘I have enough problems with which side of the car to get into in this country without you complicating matters by switching seats on me.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, her pulse rate still chaotic, ‘but it’s better if you drive as I’d never find my way—’ She broke off with a gasp at the sight of him. ‘Have you any idea of the state you’re in? Your coat’s soaking—and as for your hair…!’
He made a soft growling sound in his throat as he turned towards her with a wicked grin, then shook his head vigorously. With a yell of protest Maggie grabbed a box of tissues from the door pocket and flung a handful at him.
‘Any intelligent person would have done his talking inside,’ she protested.
‘Gee, sorry, Mom,’ he replied, with an idiot grin, scrunching up the tissues and rubbing his hair with them. ‘Oh, great!’ he exclaimed in indignant disgust an instant later when the tissues began disintegrating and peppering his hair like soaked confetti. ‘This is all your fault,’ he complained, running tissue-smeared fingers impatiently through his hair and making matters worse, ‘so you can get it out—every last scrap of it!’
‘The intention was that you should dry your face with them, not smear them all over your hair,’ laughed Maggie as he lowered his head and leaned towards her.
She began removing the clumps of sodden tissue, but as her fingers delved into the thickness of his soaked hair her mind hurtled her back to another time, when it had been the exertions of passion that had dampened the hair in which her fingers had feverishly explored—a passion that had dewed their entwined, naked bodies with its own sultry rain. She snatched back her hand as though scalded, her entire body tensing as it shrank towards the door.
‘I—Y-you really ought to get out of that coat,’ she stammered when he lifted his head a little to gaze up at her with coolly mocking eyes.
‘Ought I?’ he drawled, his mouth curving into a smile tinged with mocking malevolence as he straightened. ‘We’ll go find somewhere to eat…I can get out of it there,’ he announced with sudden briskness and started the car.
Maggie gave inordinate attention to fastening her seat belt, racking her brains for something to say that would miraculously clear the air of the almost palpable tension fogging it.
‘I wasn’t exactly needed on this trip, was I?’ she muttered, and realised that those were hardly the words to produce any miracle. ‘I’ll do the gates,’ she offered when, having made no response, he halted the car before them.
‘What, to justify your coming along?’ he drawled, opening his door. ‘There’s no point us both getting wet so I’ll do them. It’s best if I drive through as well—the seat’s probably all messed up too.’
The leather upholstry was wet, Maggie conceded to herself as they went through the tortuous procedure of negotiating the gates, but she could easily have wiped it dry.
‘John’s got it all in hand for us to start tomorrow,’ he said once they were on their way. ‘He’s been with Maurice God knows how many years. Maurice swears John has forgotten more than the average botanist learns in a lifetime about plants—exotic or otherwise.’
‘Does he usually accompany Maurice on field trips?’ asked Maggie, welcoming the distraction of the topic with limp relief.
‘No,’ chuckled Slane. ‘It seems Maurice has never been able to persuade John to set foot on a plane, so John and the team run everything while he’s off gadding about.’
‘You must have been pleased to hear they’d managed to grow this plant. How near to extinction is it?’
‘Extremely near—in its natural habitat, that is,’ he replied as he eased the car into the city’s rush-hour traffic. ‘It grows like a weed just about anywhere. The trouble is it mututes and ends up lacking the vital properties that made it of interest in the first place.’ He swung the car into the entrance of a multi-storey car park. ‘I’ve just realised,’ he muttered, turning to her once they were parked, ‘I don’t have any change on me—how about you?’
Maggie rummaged in her bag. She took out her purse, and a comb which she handed to him.
‘I’ll get a ticket while you get the rest of that tissue out of your hair.’
That she was accompanied by the sort of man who turned heads was made abundantly clear to Maggie as they made their way from the car park towards Grafton Street. She found herself trying to remember what her own reaction had been in that very first instant when she had laid eyes on Slane, but her uncooperative mind kept leaping too far forward, presenting her with images that made her cheeks burn despite the chill of the rain now drizzling lightly against them.
‘We’re going to one of my old haunts—Bewleys,’ he told her, the touch of his hand at her elbow light as he guided her through a sudden swell of people.
‘I’ve never seen so many people!’ exclaimed Maggie. ‘Is it always this crowded?’
‘I guess quite a few of these people are on their way to work,’ he laughed, steering her through a doorway and into a shop heavily scented with the aroma of coffee, ‘but Grafton Street is usually pretty lively.’
Slane at last removed his coat as they entered the famous coffee-house, grinning at Maggie’s reaction of wide-eyed delight as she gazed around the dark wood and marble interior, packed almost to the hilt, and filled with the soft buzz of conversation.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked once they were seated.
‘Starving,’ she replied, a hand rising self-consciously to her damp hair as her eyes met those of a strikingly attractive woman at the next table who had just finished giving Slane a thorough perusal. The woman smiled in sympathy and patted her own hair as much as to say, Mine too, then resumed conversation with her companion.
Just about every woman in their immediate vicinity had done it, observed Maggie without rancour—given Slane an appreciative inspection, followed by a quick appraisal of the woman accompanying such an Adonis. A pretty natural reaction, she thought with a tinge of ruefulness that quickly deteriorated into a pang of alarm as her nose began to throb—with her present luck it was probably shining like a beacon!
‘Shall I just order us the full works?’ asked Slane as a waitress approached.
Maggie nodded, and made the grave error of distracting herself from gloomy speculation regarding her appearance by subjecting Slane to a surreptitious inspection as he spoke to the waitress.
All right, so she was still in a state of shock, she reasoned miserably, feeling as if her mind was operating on badly depleted batteries as her eyes lapped him up. But she had to snap out of it, she told herself angrily. And accepting one minute that her past was a fact that she could no longer avoid facing, then in the next wallowing in the fantasy that she would wake to find it had all been a terrible dream was only a short cut to insanity.
‘You look pensive,’ Slane observed when the waitress had left, his eyes disconcertingly inscrutable as they flickered over her.
‘Do I?’ she exclaimed with a guilty start.
‘Yes.’ He leaned back in his chair, his amused, mocking eyes holding hers.
‘Well, I was thinking,’ she blurted out defensively, and then had to ransack her mind for a topic to back up the claim. ‘I was thinking…about that plant Obviously the aim is to reproduce it intact—but if it grows like a weed why get Maurice to do the trials here? Surely it would have been more practical for you to get someone to grow it in America?’
‘Perhaps—except that I didn’t get anyone to grow it for me anywhere,’ he replied unenlighteningly, then began gazing around him, a look of bored detachment on his face.
Maggie felt anger and confusion doing battle within her. Even if she had only been roped in at the last moment as a lowly lab assistant, it was perfectly natural for her to show an interest in the project…Or perhaps it was simply that he was loath to discuss anything with a woman with whom he had had a one-night stand and whom he was determined not to acknowledge.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, his face brightening. ‘Food. What a welcome sight’
What a welcome distraction, thought Maggie, gratefully inhaling the glorious aromas emanating from the huge platters set before them. Whether he remembered her or whether he was simply an uncommunicative boor with a bad memory, for now she didn’t give a toss—she was starving!
They ate in the silence that such hearty, immaculately prepared food warranted. And it was only after her hunger pangs had been well and truly pandered to that Maggie found her thoughts straying back to where they had been before the arrival of the food had rescued her.
‘I feel it’s almost criminal to leave all this,’ she sighed, resisting the tug of those thoughts, ‘but I couldn’t manage another mouthful—there was enough for three on my plate.’
He grinned across at her, then casually speared a juicily glistening sausage from her plate with his fork.
‘It’s just as well Mrs Morrison isn’t around,’ he laughed. ‘I once made the near-fatal error of telling her I’d breakfasted here—boy, did I have to grovel to get back into her good books.’ He demolished the sausage, then returned to her plate to forage further.
It was what lovers did, thought Maggie weakly—ate titbits from one another’s plates…And wasn’t that what they had been so briefly—the most passionate of lovers?
‘So, this Maurice doesn’t actually work for your company,’ she stated, her need for distraction driving her back to the topic he had so abruptly dismissed.
‘Maurice?’ he echoed, one blue-black eyebrow arching superciliously. ‘I thought I’d already explained—Maurice doesn’t work for anyone. He’s just a brilliant botanist who does his own thing.’
It was like pulling teeth, thought Maggie angrily. ‘You haven’t explained anything—despite your intimation last night that you would,’ she snapped. ‘And that’s why I’m still asking.’
