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‘No, well, it’s not like I took an ad out in the paper in Outer Mongolia, or wherever it was you were.’ She felt her cheeks warming, suddenly embarrassed by her condition. Well, at least under the scrutiny of someone she had once dreamed would have helped get her into that condition.
‘Peru.’
‘Peru, then.’ She stepped back, her hand going to the small of her back as she made her way back to the desk.
‘I didn’t know you were married.’
‘You don’t have to actually be married to get one of these. I’m sure I have a book on high school biology somewhere you could read.’
Ignoring her sarcasm, he asked the obvious. ‘So you’re not married?’
‘Nope.’ She sat back down on the old chair, which creaked a little under her weight. ‘Not married.’
‘Engaged, then?’
She waved her hands in front of her face. ‘Nope, no rings on these fingers.’
Not any more.
Eamonn looked surprised. ‘You’ll be getting engaged soon, though?’
Momentarily amused by his assumption, she shuffled the paperwork on her desk into a neater pile, and put it all back inside its manila folder. ‘No. I tried that, and it didn’t turn out so good. He walked. So there’s just me and the fifteen-stone baby now.’ She glanced up at him. ‘I had no idea you were so old-fashioned.’
‘Some things I’m old-fashioned about. Like a kid having two parents.’
‘Well, this one will just have to make do with me.’
Eamonn stared at her in silence for a long, long time. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he lowered his voice and asked, ‘What happened?’
The question was an innocent one, she knew, and he meant well. Under normal circumstances she’d have been touched that he wanted to know. But he had no way of knowing how loaded a question it was—of the repercussions the answer would have on his own life. Or what those repercussions had meant for his father.
Colleen would never, ever forgive herself for the mistake she’d made. Because, thanks to her, Eamonn’s father was dead. How exactly did she go about telling him something like that?
Looking into the hazel eyes that for most of her teenage years she had wanted to look at her with the kind of warmth they now held for a brief second, she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Yes, she would have to at some stage. But just not yet. Not today.
‘It ended badly.’ Which barely began to explain what had happened.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Not half as sorry as Colleen was.
Chapter Two
EAMONN didn’t know what he’d expected when he’d come back to Killyduff, the tiny village he’d once called home. But if he’d had a list of things he wouldn’t have expected…
Colleen McKenna being so grown-up had to be expected, he supposed. But she’d grown up pretty damn well. In his memory she’d been this scrawny little slip of a thing who had followed him around the farm like a puppy. She’d been a tomboy back then—sometimes in jeans, sometimes in riding jodhpurs, always in muddy boots. Wherever she’d been there had been a fat, hairy pony of some shape or other, and a dog with a permanently wagging tail. On the very odd occasion when she’d entered his thoughts that was how he’d thought of her. The little kid whose fair hair he had always ruffled.
She wasn’t that now.
When he’d driven back through the narrow lanes and looked at the open scenery around him his mind had been filled with memories. So many of them bad ones—or happy ones tinged with a bittersweet after-taste. And when he’d walked into the office he had even been prepared for a moment to see his father behind the desk. Even though he’d known that wouldn’t happen ever again.
Even though part of him had wanted the older man to be there. Just one last time. A ghost to lay to rest his own ghosts, or rather his demons.
The sight, then, of a fully grown, sparkling-eyed woman behind the desk his father had occupied for so long had caught him off guard. It had even taken him a few seconds to realise who she was. And then her direct way of speaking had amused him. The way her eyes would flicker away from him and then back had fascinated him.
But the sight of her so full and rounded with a baby? Looking as feminine as a woman could, lush and glowing. That had knocked him sideways.
Then to find out some jerk had walked off and left her like that…
Well, he wasn’t sure why the thought of that annoyed him so much. Maybe simply because out of all the bad memories he had from this place he’d once called home it would have been nice to be left with one happy one. That the Colleen he remembered was happy and settled.
It would have been nice if one of them had figured out how to be happy.
If she’d been better settled he wouldn’t have felt quite so bad about what he’d decided to do. He had hoped she’d be in a position to keep the place if she wanted to. But that wasn’t looking likely, was it? It made him think somewhat more deeply about his plans.
What would she do when her baby came? How would she cope alone? How would she make her living? The questions shouldn’t have been on his mind as much as they suddenly were. It wasn’t really his concern, after all. But the questions were there regardless. And what had been planned as a flying visit—literally—wasn’t looking so likely.
He took a deep breath. Damn it. It was a complication he didn’t need. And it wasn’t as if Colleen McKenna was his responsibility.
After a wander around the large old farmhouse, he threw some things out of his bag, showered, and searched through the cupboards for something to eat that might wake him up. Sleeping might be what his body craved, but he knew jet-lag well enough to know the sooner he adjusted to the time zone he was in the better.
Then, with the light fading outside, he wandered to the back of the house and looked out over the empty yard.
To catch sight of Colleen, pushing a huge wheelbarrow.
What the—?
He was in front of the stable she was in in less than two minutes. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Colleen’s head jerked up at the sound of his sharp voice, and the huge grey horse beside her baulked. Immediately her hand came out, smoothing along the horse’s wide neck to reassure it. ‘Evening stables. What does it look like I’m doing? Belly dancing?’
Eamonn scowled as she smiled at her own joke. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. Isn’t there someone else?’
‘The two girls we have left do most of it before they go home, but I do a wee skip round and check the rugs before I go to bed.’
‘On your own?’
‘Yes, on my own.’ His astonishment seemed to surprise her. ‘I’m pregnant, Eamonn. I’m not in a wheelchair. And keeping moving is good for me.’
‘Wheeling a bloody great wheelbarrow about isn’t.’
‘Are you a gynaecologist now?’
‘No, I don’t need to be. It’s common sense.’ His eyes narrowed as the large horse stepped towards him to investigate. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and spread his feet wider, as if preparing himself for an attack, which made Colleen laugh aloud.
‘I’d tell you Bob doesn’t bite, but I’d be lying. And if you keep your hands in your pockets like that he’ll think you have food.’
Eamonn removed his hands, held his palms out for the horse to nuzzle in evidence of his lack of food, and tilted his head to see past to what Colleen was doing.
She was lifting droppings onto a shavings fork. While he opened his mouth to give out to her again, she spoke in a softly firm voice. ‘Bob, back.’
Bob dutifully stepped back from the door.
‘And another one. Back.’
He stepped back again, leaving enough room for Colleen to deposit what she was carrying into the wheelbarrow she had placed across the open doorway. She looked around the stable floor again. ‘I’ll be done in a minute anyway. I’ve just this row to do.’
‘I’m not happy with you pushing that wheelbarrow around in your condition.’
‘Thoughtful as that is, I’ve survived without your help this far. I can make it to the end.’
‘Are you always this stubborn?’
Her head turned as she fluffed the wood shavings into place, one eyebrow quirking. ‘I’ve always been this stubborn. Don’t you remember that much?’
‘I remember you frequently being a pain in the—’
She laughed. ‘Oh, I was that too.’
He wheeled the barrow out of the way as she came out of the stable, pausing to pat the horse’s neck again before she closed the stable door, bolted the top bolt and kicked the bottom into place.
She then turned to retrieve the barrow. But Eamonn jerked his head towards the next stable. Stubborn only went so far with him. ‘If I can’t stop you then I’m wheeling the barrow. So hurry up.’
‘I can do this just fine without your help.’
The rise of her chin and the glint in her eyes amused him, gave him a small sense of pride at her fierce independence that almost made him smile. Almost. If he smiled she’d think she’d won. And she hadn’t. ‘I believe you. But I’m here now, so learn to live with it. Now, hurry up. It’s bloody freezing out here.’
‘Warmer in Borneo, was it?’
‘Peru. And, yes it was.’He jerked his head again, ‘Go on, then.’
After a moment of hesitation, she sighed, and then moved to the next stable, where a finer darker head was over the door. ‘Get back, Meg.’
Eamonn watched with less surprise as the animal did as it was bid. ‘Do they all jump when you ask them to?’
‘They know who’s boss.’
He wheeled the barrow into place the same way she had at the previous stable, before leaning against the doorframe, watching her movements, and that of the horse, with cautious eyes. ‘You’re still taking a chance going in there, though. You know that.’
‘Everyone who works with horses is taking a chance. It comes with the territory.’
Oh, he knew. Knew better than most people on the street. But then he’d seen first-hand what could go wrong, and that kind of memory tended to stick with a person. The day his mother had taken her bad fall he’d been ten. It had been the last time she had ever sat on a horse, and less than five years later she’d quit trying to like horses for her husband’s sake. And left.
As the old memory seared across his mind and his heart, leaving a dull ache in its wake, he glanced around the empty yard. ‘Don’t any of the stable girls live in any more?’
‘Not since the last foreign groom we had, no. They tend to live in the town. There’s more going on there. The shops are closer—and, more importantly, the pubs.’
Eamonn put the pieces together. ‘So you’re out here doing this on your own with no one even within shouting distance?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She set her fingertips against the horse’s side. ‘Meg, over. Good girl.’
He was scowling by the time she dumped into the barrow again. ‘So you’re telling me you could get hurt and there would be no one here to help you ’til morning?’
‘Pretty much.’ She stopped, leaning on the handle of the shavings fork as she studied his scowling face in the dim light outside the stable. Then she shook her head and smiled. ‘Jeez.’ She fumbled in her jacket pocket and produced a small mobile phone, which she wiggled back and forth in front of her. ‘I can call for help. See? Prepared for every emergency, that’s me. So you can quit fussing over me like an old mother hen. I’m grand.’
‘Well, while I’m here you don’t do this stuff alone.’
‘What are you, now? My guardian angel?’
A brief nod in reply and, ‘For now.’
The firmly spoken words made her eyes widen for a split second, and Eamonn felt a smile build on the corners of his mouth again. The kind of smile that made it all the way down inside his chest. When was the last time he’d smiled like that?
But then it was the first time since he’d come home that he’d felt vaguely in control. More like his usual self. And it was an even longer time since he’d had so capable a sparring partner. A victory was a victory, no matter how small.
Her blue eyes swept to a point above his head.
After a second he tilted his chin and looked upwards. Then he looked back at the deadpan expression on her face. ‘What?’
‘I think your halo’s a little crooked.’
And just like that the victory was taken away from him. A burst of deep, resonating laughter escaped his lips. It had been one hell of a long time since anyone had spoken to him like she did. It was refreshing as be damned.
Colleen rewarded him with a glorious smile in return, ‘Make yourself useful, then, and move the barrow. Back, Meg.’
The smile remained on his face as they made their way down the line of stables. Watching each horse from the corner of his eye, he observed how Colleen efficiently manoeuvred the animals, and did what she had to do with an ease of movement that spoke of confidence and physical ability, even with her ungainly size.
He allowed himself to study her closer.
She was very different from the women he’d known for most of his adult life. When he dated he dated in NewYork—his base for his travels. In New York he had the job that supported his many meanderings around the world in search of something he’d never found. In New York he filled in time between work and trips with the kind of women who dated professionally, who knew what face to present to the kind of guy they were trying to get. They dressed in clothes that accentuated their figures, had manicured nails, and hair that was tamed in such a way it was supposed to look natural. But Colleen…
Colleen was what Colleen was; there was no carefully constructed outer appearance. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, and from the exertion involved in her task; her blonde hair was already escaping in long curling strands from the soft band that held it in a single ponytail at the nape of her neck. The long lashes that framed her startling blue eyes were free from mascara—as free as her full lips were from lipstick. In fact the redness of her lips was only due to how she would chew on them with the edge of her even white teeth as she concentrated on what she was doing.
And the rumour about pregnant women seeming to glow was apparently true too. All in all, she was the most naturally gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. And for the first time in his life Eamonn was finding a pregnant woman highly attractive.
What would be the point in that, though? It wasn’t as if anything could come of it. His life was in New York, and the other places he journeyed to, and hers was in this tiny corner of Ireland he’d walked away from. With her horses. And it wasn’t as if he spent a whole heap of time around kids—well, not every day anyway. A purely physical relationship was out of the question too. Because, apart from the most obvious restrictions, she was Colleen. She was practically family.
He was obviously a lot more tired than he’d thought. And he hadn’t had a recent partner to distract him in a while. Something he would have to remedy when he got home.
Eamonn mulled it over as he pulled the barrow back from the door and moved to the next one.
Colleen was obviously a very capable woman. So what had him wheeling a barrow for her and offering to be her guardian angel? Being an angel wasn’t something he was famous for, after all.
Maybe it was simply the age-old gene that demanded that the male of the species protect the female while she carried a child? A genetic thing in Colleen’s make-up that made her attractive to him, so that he felt the need to be protective towards her?
He smiled at the thought. Nah. If that was all it was then he’d be chasing around after every vaguely pregnant woman, opening doors and offering to carry shopping. Though he guessed if he ever took a bus or a train anywhere he would give up his seat. But then he didn’t need to take a bus or a train, he had a driver, and all it really proved was that he still had good manners.
It was more likely to be some kind of guilt.
