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“I could prove how much I still want you in half a second, Laila, but I’m not going to,” he said, his tone a whole lot more noble than the desire thrumming through him. “If we start over, and I’m sensing that might be a possibility here, then we’re going about it the right way this time. No more extremely hot, middle-of-the-night trysts.”
“You mean no sex?” She seemed a little shaken by that.
“No sex,” he confirmed, barely able to choke out the words.
“What’ll we do?” she asked, sounding bewildered.
“Now, that’s just downright insulting,” he said indignantly. “We’ve been known to have intellectually challenging conversations.”
“Sure, in bed,” she replied, then grinned. “But maybe we could compromise.”
He was fascinated by the suggestion. “Compromise how?” “We could talk first.”
Though Matthew laughed at her notion of compromise, he refused to back down. “Nope, I think we’ll do this my way. You’ll come to Ireland. I’ll share my brother’s room. And I’ll court you like the fascinating lady you are in full view of my family.”
“I’m not all that enamored with being a lady,” she complained. “That’s why being with you was such a refreshing change. You saw me in a completely different light, as an unpredictable woman who was impossible to resist. I liked that.”
“Oh, if you must know, you’re still plenty tough to resist, but I’m going to pull it off.” He looked her over with just enough heat in his gaze to make his point. “Those are the terms. Are you in or out?”
“Your grandmother says there’s no place quite like Ireland at Christmas,” she said wistfully.
“Is that a yes?”
She took a deep breath, met his gaze, held it for what felt like an eternity, then finally nodded. “Yes, I’ll go with you.”
Matthew resisted the desire to get up and do a little jig. There’d be plenty of opportunities for that once they got to Dublin.
Laila gave him a wry look. “You do know we just got manipulated by a master, don’t you?”
He regarded her blankly. “Who? How?”
“Your grandmother, of course. I didn’t see it at the time, but every word she said to me at Sally’s tonight was calculated to get me to race over here and confront you.” She shook her head. “I thought I was smarter than that.”
Matthew gave her a consoling look. “Don’t feel bad. We’ve all been taken in by Gram a time or two.”
This time, though, he was going to owe his grandmother big-time for accomplishing what no one else had been able to. She’d broken the impasse between him and Laila. Now it was up to him to make sure the détente turned into something that would last.
3
Laila arrived in Dublin with the first wave of O’Briens. The rest—Thomas and Connie, Jake and Bree, Connor and Heather, Kevin and Shanna—weren’t arriving for a few more days. There were so many of them that Mick had chartered a bus to take them to the hotel after the overnight flight.
Somehow Laila had ended up seated next to Matthew, who turned out to be a surprisingly adept tour guide. He pointed out all the sights and offered one amusing anecdote after another as they rode toward St. Stephen’s Green and their hotel in the heart of downtown Dublin.
When she managed to tear her gaze away from the ornate, colorful doorways decorated with lush holly wreaths and the window boxes overflowing with ivy, evergreens and bright flowers, she turned to find him regarding her with amusement.
“What?” she demanded.
“You’re as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.”
“You’ve been here before. I haven’t. It’s everything I imagined it would be.”
He smiled at that. “Glad you came?”
She ignored the last of her reservations about being here in such close proximity to him. “Very glad,” she said, unable to tear her gaze away from his.
He attempted a frown. “Now, don’t be looking at me like that, with your eyes all sparkly and dreamy.”
She nearly laughed at his suddenly solemn expression. “Why is that?”
“You’ll be giving me ideas, and I’ve made a promise to you to keep my hands to myself. It’s nearly impossible when you look at me like that. I’m a mere mortal, and no mortal man can be ignoring the invitation I’m seeing in your eyes.”
For a moment Laila had forgotten all about the promise, all about her own resolve to make this trip about Nell’s happiness and Susie’s, about sightseeing and enjoying a new holiday experience, and not about Matthew and her thoroughly confusing feelings about him. Now all of that ripped through her, leaving her with a whole passel of conflicting emotions.
“Good point,” she replied, trying to match his solemn tone. “I’ll have to watch myself.” She quickly looked out the window again. “Now, where are we exactly?”
Matthew leaned closer to peer out the window, deliberately crowding her, if she wasn’t mistaken. He grinned when she scowled at him.
“Lost my head,” he claimed, moving back before pointing out various highlights of the shopping along Grafton Street.
At the hotel, rooms were quickly assigned, luggage deposited. Left alone, Laila gazed with regret at the huge comfortable bed and its fluffy down comforter. It was going to be very lonely, especially knowing that she could have been sharing it with Matthew.
When there was a tap on the door, she threw it open, relieved to have her train of thought interrupted. Unfortunately, though, it was Matthew himself in the hallway.
“I thought you might be too excited to be taking a nap,” he said. “How about breakfast and then a walk through the neighborhood? Who knows when the sun will be shining brightly like this again? We should take advantage of it, and that should tire you out so you can catch a couple of hours of sleep before the family festivities get into full swing late this afternoon. Uncle Mick’s taken over an entire pub for tonight, I think. He believes we should start as we intend to finish—with Irish music, a hearty meal and a few pints of Guinness.”
Laila hesitated, then shrugged. She knew sleep was out of the question, and Matthew’s company on a busy street was no more dangerous than lying alone in that decadent bed thinking about him and wishing he were there with her.
“Give me two minutes to freshen up,” she said, hurrying to wash her face, run a brush through her hair and spritz herself with a light fragrance she knew Matthew liked.
When she walked back into the bedroom, she looked down at her clothes and frowned. “This outfit looks as if it’s been slept in, which it has. I should change.”
“You look fine,” he assured her. “If you look too perfect, I’ll be fighting off men on every corner.”
She laughed. “Now, there’s the O’Brien blarney in full force. Come on. I’m starving.”
To her surprise, they were the only members of the family in the hotel dining room.
“I thought for sure some of the others would be down here,” she said, glancing around.
“You worried about being alone with me, sweetheart?”
“Hardly,” she fibbed. “I just assumed everybody else would be too excited to settle down right away, too, especially Carrie and Caitlyn. They were bouncing up and down with energy on the bus to the hotel.”
“Oh, believe me, those two were so hyped up after the flight that Trace and Abby immediately headed to the park across the street so they could run wild.” He studied her. “Would you feel better if we joined them?”
Laila considered the offer for a split second. “No way,” she replied. “The food’s here.”
She ordered a pot of tea, a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with fresh berries, along with scrambled eggs and toast. She studied the menu warily. “Do I want to try some of these more traditional things?”
Matthew chuckled. “Probably not on the first day,” he advised, then ordered the same things she had.
After they’d ordered and the waiter had brought their tea, she sat back and looked around the hotel dining room. It could have been any hotel anywhere in the world, but it was Dublin! And, risky though it was, she was here with Matthew!
“I can’t believe I’m really here,” she said happily.
“Are you glad you changed your mind about coming?”
“Yes. I would have hated to miss this.”
He leaned forward as if he had something more to say, only to see Luke appear, pull out a chair and join them. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, though he was already seated.
Matthew frowned at his younger brother. “I thought you were going to rest or go for a run or something.”
“I ran. I showered. And now I’m ready for a full Irish breakfast,” he said, looking around for their waiter.
“Did it even occur to you that you might be interrupting?” Matthew asked testily.
Luke gave him an innocent look. “Interrupting what? The way you explained it to me, you two are adhering to a hands-off policy while in Ireland, which is why you’re in my room instead of Laila’s.”
Laila nearly choked on a sip of tea. She frowned at Matthew. “You told him that?”
“Well, I had to explain why I needed to bunk with him, didn’t I?”
“He did,” Luke concurred. “Because I was hoping to get lucky on this trip and now my plans for a thoroughly raucous holiday are seriously thwarted.”
Laila studied Luke’s expression and thought she detected a hint of sadness behind the cavalier attitude. “You aren’t seriously missing Kristen Lewis, are you? I thought that was over, or that it was some kind of ploy to keep her away from Mack, whatever.”
“Kristen and I had fun, no question about it,” Luke said. “But that’s all it was.”
Laila heard the false note in his voice and shook her head. “Not buying it. It might have started out that way, but something changed. You fell for her, didn’t you?”
Matthew regarded her with surprise. “You can’t be serious. Luke and Kristen? It was a fling.” He turned to Luke. “Right, bro?”
“Sort of like you and Laila,” Luke retorted, then glanced apologetically toward Laila. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she said. “Why didn’t you ask Kristen to come along on this trip if you’re really hung up on her?”
“And have Susie string me up by the you-know-what?” Luke said with a shudder. “No, thank you. She’s not entirely over the fact that Kristen was once Mack’s lover, even though it was years and years ago. I don’t think she’s anywhere near ready to welcome her into the family fold.”
Laila was impressed that he was sensitive to that. “How about you? Does it bother you that Kristen and Mack had a thing?”
Luke shrugged. “Everybody has a past, and I know Mack and Susie have something really special going. It’s not an issue.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Delusional,” he muttered under his breath.
Luke’s gaze narrowed. “Meaning?”
“Mack’s feelings aren’t really the problem, are they? You should be worrying about the fact that Kristen still has feelings for him. Isn’t that the reason you set yourself up to provide a distraction in the first place, to keep her away from Mack?”
For a moment Luke looked taken aback. “Okay, sure,” he said eventually. “But everybody’s moving on now.” His voice didn’t hold much certainty.
Matthew just shook his head.
Laila gave Luke’s hand a squeeze. “Be careful, okay? Sometimes it’s very difficult to get over an old flame, even when you know it’s the only thing to do.”
“Which explains why you and my brother are sitting here having a cozy breakfast together, instead of sitting all alone in your separate rooms?” Luke taunted.
“Watch it,” Matthew warned.
Laila, however, laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she murmured. “Yes, Luke, walking away from Matthew has been much harder than I expected.” She gave Matthew a defiant look. “But I will pull it off eventually.”
There was no mistaking the sudden twinkle in Matthew’s eyes. “I look forward to seeing you try,” he said mildly.
“You might not want to turn this into a challenge,” she warned him. “I can match you stubborn streak for stubborn streak.”
Matthew winced. “Good point.”
Fortunately their breakfast arrived just then, which gave them both time to retreat from positions that might have proved indefensible. While Matthew sulked and she fretted, Luke dug into his food as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Laila scowled at him.
“He is annoying,” she commented, as if Matthew had just recently mentioned it.
Matthew glanced at his brother. “Very annoying.”
Luke merely chuckled. “See, though, I’ve brought the two of you into agreement over one thing. It’s a fine start for the first day of the trip.”
Nell stood across from Trinity College in downtown Dublin and stared at the window of the tobacco shop that had once belonged to her grandfather. She knew that once she walked through that door, it would be like going back in time. That was one reason she’d never chanced it on previous trips. Some things were better left in the past. Charles would never have understood about those long-ago summers before they’d married.
She’d spent so many afternoons in the shop during the summers her parents had sent her here to stay with her grandparents. Surrounded by the rich scents, she’d sip tea and pretend to read books as she listened to her grandfather talk to his regular customers. They said women were gossips, but she learned more about what was going on in the city right there in that room than she ever had by reading a newspaper or a history book.
Of course, her fear of crossing the shop’s threshold was about more than that.
“Gram, don’t you want to go inside?” Susie asked, slipping an arm around her waist.
“I’m not sure I want to know if there have been too many changes,” she admitted. “Dillon O’Malley, who bought it from my grandfather, is surely retired by now. I don’t know how it will feel to find a complete stranger behind the counter.” Nor did she know how she would feel if she happened to be wrong about that and, instead, came face-to-face with Dillon for the first time in all these years.
“I could at least go in and ask who owns it now,” Susie offered. “Then you could decide.”
Nell seized on the suggestion. “Would you mind?”
“Of course not,” Susie said, giving her grandmother’s hand a reassuring squeeze before heading inside.
Nell all but held her breath as she waited for Susie’s return. “Well?” she asked, searching her granddaughter’s face for answers when she came back.
“The man I spoke to says he’s Dillon O’Malley.”
Just as Susie spoke, the man himself appeared in the doorway, his eyes filled with curiosity. Tall, with only the barest stoop to his broad shoulders and just a hint of silver in his black hair, it was unmistakably Dillon. When his gaze settled on Nell, he seemed to go perfectly still.
“Nell?” That one word was part confusion and disbelief, part hope.
