Desiring the Reilly Brothers: The Tempting Mrs Reilly / Whatever Reilly Wants... / The Last Reilly Standing

Chapter Nine

Later that morning, Brian really lived up to his call sign, Cowboy. Every pilot had his own nickname used during flights. Some of his best friends were known as Bozo, or Too Cool, or Goliath. Brian though, had come by his call sign because of his aggressive approach to flying.

Nothing he liked better than doing loops and spins miles above the ground. Ordinarily, too, he emptied his mind of everything but the task at hand—much safer to be thinking only about flying when you went faster than the speed of sound.

But today, Tina was flying with him.

She was there beside him in the close confines of the cockpit. She was in his blood, in his brain, and to get her out again, was going to be far tougher than anything he’d ever faced before.

“She tricked me,” he muttered, still unable to grasp the fact that his ex-wife had deliberately set him up to father her child.

“What?” The voice came from the seat behind him. His radar officer, Sam “Hollywood” Holden.

“Nothin’.”

“Okay, Cap’n,” Hollywood said, “that’s the way you want it. So if you’re finished trying to make me upchuck my breakfast, why don’t we turn this puppy around and head home?”

Brian grinned. “What’s wrong, Hollywood? Late night last night?”

“Hey,” his friend pointed out with a chuckle. “Not all of us signed up for that stupid bet.”

Groaning, Brian shook his head and stared into the clouds whizzing past the plane. Impossible to keep a secret on a military base. At least this kind of secret. Spies, battle plans, sure. You were safe. A humiliating, personal problem—fair game.

He never should have agreed to the bet. If he had told Liam to get lost, he never would have been in such a vulnerable condition when Tina hit town. And he never would have spent a long, endless night exploring her body.

Hard to regret that, even considering the way it had ended.

However, he’d be damned if he’d just sit back and let the guys get a good laugh at his expense.

“Just for that,” Brian said with an evil chuckle, already maneuvering his jet into an upside-down position, “I think we’ll just fly home inverted.”

“Oh, man….”

“I really made a mess of this, didn’t I?” Tina looked down at Muffin and Peaches, sprawled across her bed. “Not that I’m really regretting it. I mean, that is why I came here, right?”

Peaches yawned and rolled over.

Tina paced, marking off the same steps in her old room that she had as a teenager when she was angsting over the serious problems that had faced her back then. Things like, would she ever get her hair straightened? Would she ever get a date? Would she ever get out of AP Chem?

Well, times had changed and the problems had gotten bigger. But her solutions were still the same. Pace and talk to herself.

“It’s not like I forced him, you know,” she said aloud, shooting a look at Muffin, since Peaches, the little traitor, was snoring. “He was more than willing.”

Muffin yapped.

“So why do I feel so blasted guilty?” she demanded and knew the answer, though she didn’t really want to look at it too closely. Using Brian had been wrong. “Fine. I’m a rotten human being. Stand me up against a wall and shoot me.” She stopped at the foot of the bed and plopped down onto the edge of the mattress. “I just wanted—”

What? A baby? Sure. But that wasn’t all, was it? No. She’d wanted Brian back. She hadn’t been able to admit it even to herself before she’d arrived back in Baywater. But it was impossible to deny now.

It wasn’t just his child she wanted.

It was his heart.

And that was the one thing she couldn’t have.

Pushing herself to her feet, Tina stalked around the edge of the bed, grabbed the phone and punched in a familiar number. It rang twice.

“Hello?”

“Janet.” Tina sighed, reached down to scoot a limp Peaches over and then sat down. “Thank God.”

“Tina! How’s it going girl?”

“Not so good.”

“Oh.” Janet was silent for a long minute. “So you couldn’t get him to—”

“No,” Tina said, toying with the pale blue, coiled cord of the ancient Princess phone. “Mission accomplished.”

A long pause. “Really? You mean you really went to bed with your ex?”

“No,” Tina said, scooting back farther on the bed. “I asked him for a donation, then I took it to the clinic and had them douse me with a turkey baster.”

Janet laughed. “Well, for someone who just had sex, you seem a little cranky.”

Frowning, Tina said, “I’m sorry. I’m just mad at myself and you’re easier to yell at.”

“Happy to help.”

“Janet, it didn’t go like I thought it would.”

“It wasn’t as great as you remembered?”

“It was better.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I told him.” Tina closed her eyes and saw Brian’s face again. The betrayal in his eyes and the fury stamped on his features. She couldn’t really blame him. He’d divorced her, after all. And if he hadn’t wanted her as his wife, why would he want her as the mother of his child? A child, by the way, he hadn’t realized he’d been conceiving. Maybe.

“Ahh…” Janet’s sigh was long and eloquent. “You knew going in he wouldn’t be happy about it.”

“I know,” she said and shook her head even as she dropped one hand to Peaches’s back and stroked the little dog gently. “But I didn’t know I’d—”

“—still love him?” Janet finished for her.

“Well, yeah.”

“Tina, honey, this way lies pain.”

“You’re right, but—” Tina’s brain went back to the night before. The passion, the desire, the hunger that had risen up and engulfed them both. It had been stronger somehow, bigger than what she and Brian had shared five years before. Was it because they’d been apart so long?

Or was it because they were meant to be together?

“So what are you going to do about it?”

Tina scowled. “What can I do?”

“Honestly, Tina,” Janet said, clucking her tongue loud enough that it sounded as though she were right beside Tina instead of at home, more than three thousand miles from South Carolina. “You love him and you’re just going to walk away again?”

Tina stiffened slightly. “I didn’t walk the last time, remember? Brian did.”

“And you let him decide for both of you what was going to happen.”

“Yes, but—”

Janet didn’t let her finish. “How about this time, the two of you actually talk about what happened?”

Good idea, in theory, Tina thought grimly. But as she remembered the look on Brian’s face when she’d left his apartment only that morning, she had a feeling that he would be a little less than receptive.

“And say what?”

“I don’t know,” Janet said, sarcasm dripping from every word, “how about, I love you?”

Those three words echoed over and over again in Tina’s mind as she stared blankly out the window. Outside, sunset pulsed in the sky, gilding the cloudstreaked horizon in brilliant shades of crimson and lavender.

“I said that five years ago,” Tina whispered, remembering the pain. “It didn’t help.”

“Couldn’t hurt, either.”

“Maybe,” she said, then changed the subject abruptly. There were no easy answers here. Nothing had really changed between her and Brian. And though she loved him and probably always would, she wasn’t going to tell Brian. What would be the point? Another chance at humiliation when he told her again that he didn’t want to be married to her? No, she thought. Passion was one thing—love was another. And all during the long night with Brian, he’d never once mentioned love.

While Janet talked about her pregnancy and the plans she had for her baby, Tina kept one hand firmly atop her flat abdomen. Silently, she prayed that inside, a child was already beginning to grow.

And if she was lucky, a small part of Brian would always be a part of her life—and no one would be able to take that away from her.

“I’m out.”

Connor, Aidan and Liam stared at Brian for a long minute. He shifted under that steady regard, then bounced the basketball a few times before turning, jumping and shooting for the basket. The ball ricocheted off the backboard and crashed through the pretty stretch of flowers lining the rectory’s driveway.

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