The Groom's Revenge

“What kind is that?”

“Balky.”

“Me? Why, Mr. McGuire, I’m the easiest-going woman you’d ever hope to meet.”

“Balky,” he repeated, matter of fact

“Well, you’re pushy.”

“Only when I know I’m right” He refilled her wineglass, then looked at her. “I’m going home tomorrow.”

Her heart skipped. “Will you be back?”

He nodded. “In the meantime—”

“I know. We’ll e-mail.” She wondered if he had hair on his chest. She wondered what he would do if she pressed her mouth to that tempting vee of tanned flesh revealed by his open collar.

“I may even call you,” he said.

“Be still my heart.” She thumped her fist between her breasts, watching his gaze drop, then linger, even after she let her arm rest on the blanket again. Her body tingled as much as it had in her apartment. And all he’d done was look.

A tiny leaf swirled down, landing on his head. She resisted the temptation to brush it away, because she liked how it looked against his hair—and because he didn’t seem comfortable being touched. Touch was one of the things she missed most these days. She and her mother had hugged every day. Every single day.

“We should probably get back to your place and start working,” he said, sitting up.

Gray had just put the first container into the cooler when he sensed her inching toward him. She lifted her hand. He went still. Her fingers brushed his hair, then she held a small leaf for him to see.

“It landed on you a while ago.”

His reaction was ridiculous—getting aroused by a touch so faint it was hardly worth calling it that A whisper of contact, no more.

“Thanks,” he murmured, tossing the rest of their stuff into the cooler, then jamming it shut.

“My mom and I used to picnic here a lot,” she said, a catch in her voice. “I’ve been back since, but this is the first real picnic.”

He looked at her. She gazed into the distance.

“At times like this, I miss her so much I can hardly breathe.”

He clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt. “I thought I’d never get over my father’s death,” he said, the memories slamming into him. He hadn’t talked about his father in so long. So very long. “Nothing ever replaced him.”

“No. Nothing could. But maybe having a family of your own would help?”

He hesitated. That was her dream, not his. Family life hadn’t amounted to much. But he appeased Mollie, anyway. “Maybe,” he said.

“I want a family of my own so much I can taste it.”

Her words didn’t surprise him, but brought anger instead. She had a family, one that had ignored her all these years. She should have had their support, their love.

The list of crimes against Stuart Fortune grew longer.

“One last thing to show you,” Gray said three hours later. He closed the screen, then opened another. “Here’s your dictionary.”

“I think it would be easier to use the real thing,” she said. “It’s two feet away.”

“Not if you’re already on-line. Here. Let’s look up something.” He typed the word leprechaun. “ ‘One of a race of elves in Irish folklore who can reveal hidden treasure to someone who catches him,’ ” he read. “One who screeches,” he added with a smile at Mollie.

“Yarg doesn’t screech, he shrieks. There’s a difference, you know.”

“Yarg. What kind of name is that, anyway?”

She didn’t answer right away. He took his gaze off the screen and saw her face pinken.

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