Born in Fire (10 page)

But she didn’t draw away, not even when the sound came again, quiet and helpless and beguiled. No, she didn’t pull away. His mouth was too clever, too gently persuasive. She opened herself to it and absorbed.

She seemed to melt against him, degree by slow degree. That first blast of heat had mellowed, ripened into a low, long burn. He forgot that he’d been angry, or that he’d been challenged, and knew only that he was alive.

She tasted dark, dangerous, and his mouth was full of her. His mind veered toward taking, toward conquering, toward ravishing. The civilized man in him, the one who had been raised to follow a strict code of ethics, stepped back, appalled.

Her head reeled. She placed a hand down on the workbench for balance as her legs buckled. One long breath followed by another helped clear her vision. And she saw him staring at her, a mixture of hunger and shock in his eyes.

“Well,” she managed, “that’s certainly something to think about.”

It was foolish to apologize for his thoughts, Rogan told himself. Ridiculous to blame himself for the fact that his imagination had drawn erotic and vivid pictures of throwing her to the floor and tearing away flannel and denim. He hadn’t acted on it. He’d only kissed her.

But he thought it was possible, even preferable, to blame her.

“We have a business relationship,” he began tersely. “It would be unwise and possibly destructive to let anything interfere with that at this point.”

She cocked her head, rocked back on her heels. “And sleeping together would confuse things?”

Curse her for making him sound like a fool. Curse her twice for leaving him shaken and horribly, horribly needy. “At this point I think we should concentrate on launching your show.”

“Hmmm.” She turned away on the pretext of tidying the workbench. In truth she needed a moment to settle herself. She wasn’t promiscuous by any means, and certainly didn’t tumble into bed with every man who attracted her. But she liked to think of herself as independent enough, liberated enough and smart enough to choose her lovers with care.

She had, she realized, chosen Rogan Sweeney.

“Why did you kiss me?”

“You annoyed me.”

Her wide, generous mouth curved. “Since I seem to be doing that on a regular basis, we’ll be spending a lot of time with our lips locked.”

“It’s a matter of control.” He knew he sounded stiff and prim, and hated her for it.

“I’m sure you have just buckets of it. I don’t.” She tossed her head, folded her arms over her chest. “If I decide I want you, what are you going to do about it? Fight me off?”

“I doubt it’ll come to that.” The image brought on twinges of humor and desperation. “We both need to concentrate on the business at hand. This could be the turning point in your career.”

“Yes.” It would be wise to remember that, she thought. “So we’ll use each other, professionally.”

“We’ll
enhance
each other, professionally,” he corrected. Christ, he needed air. “I’ll go in and call for that truck.”

“Rogan.” She waited until he reached the door and turned back to her. “I’d like to go with you.”

“To Dublin? Today?”

“Yes. I can be ready to go by the time the truck arrives. I only need to make one stop, at my sister’s.”

She was as good as her word. Even as the shipment chugged away she was tossing a suitcase into the back of Rogan’s rented car.

“If you’d just give me ten minutes,” she said as Rogan started down the narrow lane, “I’m sure Brie has some tea or coffee on.”

“Fine.” He stopped the car by Blackthorn and went with Maggie up the walk.

She didn’t knock, but stepped inside and headed straight toward the kitchen in the back. Brianna was there, a white bib apron tied at her waist and her hands coated with flour.

“Oh, Mr. Sweeney, hello. Maggie. You’ll have to excuse the mess. We have guests and I’m making pies for dinner.”

“I’m leaving for Dublin.”

“So soon?” Brianna picked up a tea towel to dust off her hands. “I thought the show was next week.”

“It is. I’m going early. Is she in her room?”

Brianna’s polite smile strained a bit at the edges. “Yes. Why don’t I go tell her you’re here?”

“I’ll tell her myself. Perhaps you could give Rogan some coffee.”

“Of course.” She cast one worried look at Maggie as her sister walked out of the kitchen into the adjoining apartment. “If you’ll make yourself comfortable in the parlor, Mr. Sweeney, I’ll bring you some coffee right away.”

“Don’t trouble.” His curiosity was up. “I’ll have a cup right here, if I won’t be in your way.” He added an easy smile. “And please, call me Rogan.”

“You have it black as I recall.”

“You have a good memory.” And you’re a bundle of nerves, he observed, watching Brianna reach for a cup and saucer.

“I try to remember the preferences of my guests. Would you have some cake? It’s a bit of chocolate I made yesterday.”

“The memory of your cooking makes it difficult to refuse.” He took a seat at the scrubbed wood table. “You do it all yourself?”

“Yes, I…” She heard the first raised voice and fumbled. “I do. I’ve a fire laid in the parlor. Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable?”

The clash of voices from the next room rose, bringing a flush of embarrassment to Brianna’s cheeks. Rogan merely lifted his cup. “Who’s she shouting at this time?”

Brianna managed a smile. “Our mother. They don’t get on very well.”

“Does Maggie get along with anyone?”

“Only when it suits her. But she has a heart, a wonderful, generous heart. It’s only that she guards it so carefully.” Brianna sighed. If Rogan wasn’t embarrassed by the shouting, neither would she be. “I’ll cut you that cake.”

“You never change.” Maeve stared at her oldest child through narrowed eyes. “Just like your father.”

“If you think that’s an insult to me, you’re wrong.”

Maeve sniffed and brushed at the lace cuffs of her bed gown. The years and her own dissatisfactions had stolen the beauty of her face. It was puffy and pale, with lines dug deeply around the pursed mouth. Her hair, once as golden as sunlight, had faded to gray and was scraped back ruthlessly into a tight bun.

She was plumped onto a mountain of pillows, her Bible at one hand and a box of chocolates at the other. The television across the room murmured low.

“So, it’s Dublin, is it? Brianna told me you were going off. Frittering money away on hotels, I imagine.”

“It’s my money.”

“Oh, and you won’t let me forget it.” Bitterness reared as Maeve pushed up in bed. For her whole life, someone else had held the purse strings, her parents, her husband, and now, most demeaning of all, her own daughter. “To think of all he tossed away on you, buying you glass, sending you off to that foreign country. And for what? So you could play at being an artist and superior to the rest of us.”

“He tossed nothing away on me. He gave me the chance to learn.”

“While I stayed on the farm, working my fingers to the bone.”

“You never worked a blessed day in your life. It was Brianna who did it all while you took to your bed with one ailment after another.”

“Do you think I enjoy being delicate?”

“Oh, aye,” Maggie said with relish. “I think you revel in it.”

“It’s my cross to bear.” Maeve picked up her Bible, pressed it to her chest like a shield. She had paid for her sin, she thought. A hundred times over she had paid for it. Yet if forgiveness had come, comfort had not. “That and an ungrateful child.”

“What am I supposed to be grateful for? The fact that you complained every day of your life? That you made your dissatisfaction for my father and your disappointment in me clear with every word, every look.”

“I gave birth to you!” Maeve shouted. “I nearly died giving you life. And because I carried you in my womb, I married a man who didn’t love me, and who I didn’t love. I sacrificed everything for you.”

“Sacrificed?” Maggie said wearily. “What sacrifices have you made?”

Maeve cloaked herself in the bitter rage of her pride. “More than you know. And my reward was to have children who have no love for me.”

“Do you think because you got pregnant and married to give me a name, I should overlook everything you’ve done? Everything you haven’t done?” Like love me even a little, Maggie thought, and ruthlessly pushed the ache away. “It was you on your back, Mother. I was the result, not the cause.”

“How dare you speak to me that way?” Maeve’s face flushed hot, her fingers dug into the blankets. “You never had any respect, any kindness, any compassion.”

“No.” Because her eyes were stinging, Maggie’s voice was sharp as a whip. “And it’s that lack I inherited from you. I only came today to tell you that you won’t run Brie ragged while I’m gone. If I find you have, I’ll stop the allowance.”

“You’d take food out of my mouth?”

Maggie leaned over to tap the box of chocolates. “Yes. Be sure of it.”

“Honor thy father and thy mother.” Maeve hugged the Bible close. “You’re breaking a commandment, Margaret Mary, and sending your soul to hell.”

“Then I’ll give up my place in heaven rather than live a hypocrite on earth.”

“Margaret Mary!” Maeve shouted when Maggie had reached the door. “You’ll never amount to anything. You’re just like him. God’s curse is on you, Maggie, for being conceived outside the sacrament of marriage.”

“I saw no sacrament of marriage in my house,” Maggie tossed back. “Only the agony of it. And if there was a sin in my conception, it wasn’t mine.”

She slammed the door behind her, then leaned back against it a moment to steady herself.

It was always the same, she thought. They could never be in the same room together without hurling insults. She had known, since she was twelve, why her mother disliked her, condemned her. Her very existence was the reason Maeve’s life had turned from dream to harsh reality.

A loveless marriage, a seven-month baby and a farm without a farmer.

It was
that
her mother had thrown in her face when Maggie had reached puberty.

It was
that
they had never forgiven each other for.

Straightening her shoulders, she walked back into the kitchen. She didn’t know her eyes were still angry and overbright or her face pale. She walked to her sister and kissed her briskly on the cheek.

“I’ll call you from Dublin.”

“Maggie.” There was too much to say, and nothing to say. Brianna only squeezed her hands. “I wish I could be there for you.”

“You could if you wished it enough. Rogan, are you ready?”

“Yes.” He rose. “Goodbye, Brianna. Thank you.”

“I’ll just walk you—” Brianna broke off when her mother called out.

“Go see to her,” Maggie said, and walked quickly out of the house. She was yanking at the door of Rogan’s car when he laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

“No, but I don’t want to talk about it.” With a final tug, she jerked the door open and climbed inside.

He hurried around the hood and slipped onto the driver’s seat. “Maggie—”

“Don’t say anything. Anything at all. There’s nothing you can do or say to change what’s always been. Just drive the car and leave me alone. It would be a great favor to me.” She began to weep then, passionately, bitterly, while he struggled with the urge to comfort her and the wish to comply with her request.

In the end, he drove, saying nothing, but holding her hand. They were nearing the airport when her sobs died and her tensed fingers went limp. Glancing over, he saw she was sleeping.

She didn’t awaken when he carried her inside his company jet, or when he settled her in a seat. Nor did she awaken all through the flight as he watched her. And wondered.

Chapter Six

M
AGGIE
awoke in the dark. The only thing she was certain of in those first groggy minutes was that she wasn’t in her own bed. The scent of the sheets, the texture of them was wrong. She didn’t have to sleep on fine linen habitually to recognize the difference, or to notice the faint, restful scent of verbena that clung to the pillowslip in which she’d buried her face.

As an uncomfortable thought zeroed into her brain, she stretched out a cautious hand to make certain she was the only occupant of the bed. The mattress flowed on, a veritable lake of smooth sheets and cozy blankets. An empty lake, thank Jesus, she thought, and rolled over to the center of the bed.

Her last clear memory was of crying herself empty in Rogan’s car, and the hollow feeling that had left her drifting like a broken reed in a stream.

A good purge, she decided, for she felt incredibly better—steady and rested and clean.

It was tempting to luxuriate in the soft dark on soft sheets with soft scents. But she decided she’d best find out where she was and how she’d arrived. After sliding her way over to the edge of the bed, she groped around the smooth wood of the night table, eased her fingers over and up until she located a lamp and its switch.

The light was gently shaded, a warm golden hue that subtly illuminated a large bedroom with coffered ceiling, dainty rosebud wallpaper and the bed itself, a massive four-poster.

The veritable queen of beds, she thought with a smile. A pity she’d been too tired to appreciate it.

The fireplace across the room was unlit, but scrubbed clean as a new coin and set for kindling. Long-stemmed pink roses, fresh as a summer morning, stood in a Waterford vase on a majestic bureau along with a silver brush set and gorgeous little colored bottles with fancy stoppers.

The mirror above it reflected Maggie, rumpled and heavy-eyed among the sheets.

You look a bit out of place, my girl, she decided, and grinning, tugged on the sleeve of her cotton nightshirt. Someone, it seemed, had had the good sense to change her before dumping her into the royal bed.

A maid perhaps, or Rogan himself. It hardly mattered, she thought practically, since the deed was done and she’d certainly benefited from it. In all likelihood, her clothes were gracing the carved rosewood armoire. As out of place there, she decided with a chuckle, as she was in the glorious lake of smooth linen sheets.