Protecting Peggy Read online

  She slid her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Thanks for the use of your car. The keys are by the phone in the kitchen.”

  “I was on my way downstairs when I noticed the door leading up here was open.” He angled his chin. “The inn is as still as a tomb tonight.”

  “Things are quiet,” she agreed. “That’s to be expected. January and February are my slowest months. I don’t have any reservations on the book for another couple of weeks.” The wind gusted, picking up strands of her hair. She skimmed them back from her cheek. “Some friends who own one of the art galleries in town called and offered me the use of their house at Lake Tahoe. I think I’ll take Samantha there for a vacation after you check out.”

  “That shouldn’t be much longer.” He shifted his gaze to the south where the lights of Prosperino glowed in the advancing twilight. “You’ve got quite a view.”

  “Yes. Gran and I used to sit out here and count the stars. Samantha and I have carried on the family tradition.”

  Rory glanced up. “Since there aren’t any stars out yet, I have to figure you’re standing here wondering what happened to O’Connell and your station wagon.”

  “Among other things.”

  Rory took a step forward, placed his hands on the rail. “I never used to take time to look at the scenery. Never cared about looking. Lately I’m finding myself doing a lot of that. I haven’t figured out why.”

  “You miss a lot of beautiful things when you don’t bother to stand in one place and take in what’s around you.”

  He turned toward her, his face nearly lost in the twilight shadows. “You’re right about that. What other things?”

  She raised a brow. “What?”

  “You said you’re thinking about O’Connell, among other things. What other things?”

  She dragged in an uneven breath. It was now or never. “You. I was thinking about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “I was trying to decide if I should come downstairs and knock on the door to your room. Since you’re going out, you’ve saved me from having to make that decision.”

  His eyes turned intense. “What if I wasn’t going out? What would your decision be?”

  “I don’t have a clue. That’s why I’m still up here.”

  “Think you’ll make up your mind anytime soon?”

  “Hard to say.” She pulled her gaze from his and stared at the endless expanse of ocean. “I keep telling myself to be sensible. To remember what you said last night. That there are things about you that you can’t, won’t, tell me. That you’re leaving as soon as your job here is done. That you’re not the right man for me.”

  “None of that has changed.”

  “I know.” Inside her pockets, her hands clenched. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”

  He took a step toward her. “It should matter, Ireland. It does matter.”

  “Maybe. Probably.” Shaking her head, she turned to face him. “I don’t know what to feel around you, Rory. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can handle knowing what I feel.”

  The next step he took put him an inch from her. She could smell the mix of soap and spicy cologne that clung to his skin. He reached, ran his hands up the sleeves of her coat to her shoulders, then down to her elbows again. “If it helps, I don’t know what I feel around you, either.”

  She gazed up, his blue eyes looking like smoke in the advancing darkness. “Then I guess we’re both confused on that point.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “I don’t know how it’s possible to have been swept away so quickly. To want so desperately what I know I shouldn’t have.” As she spoke, she placed a palm against his chest, felt the heat from his body, the beat of his heart.

  A wave of unspeakable need fired through her blood.

  In that slash of time, the decision was made. She no longer had the will to fight whatever was growing inside of her. She didn’t want to spend her life regretting what might have been. Rory was here. In her life now. She didn’t care if she never saw him again. Didn’t want to wonder if there could be more between them if their lives were linked by more than just a physical need. She wanted the now. Him.

  She reached up with her fingertips and traced the deep curve of his bottom lip while the muscles in her stomach clenched. “Last night you held me at arm’s length. If I tell you that I want you, that I want us, are you going to do the same thing tonight?”

  “I wish to hell I could. I should. Problem is, I’m not strong enough to do that twice in one lifetime.” His voice had gone low and raw. “All I can manage right now is to ask if you’re sure.”

  “Yes.” She rose on tiptoe, her body sliding up, pressing against his as she placed a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. “I’m sure.”

  In the next instant his arm wrapped around her waist, lashing her to him. His fingers shot into her hair, arching her head back as his mouth settled on hers. The kiss was hard, explosive, searing.

  Desire flooded her veins like flame leaping along spilled gasoline.

  Desperate to feel him, she shoved up his sweater, fumbled open the buttons of his shirt. Her fingers slid across the whipcord strength of his chest, the crisp mat of hair. She pulled her mouth from his, used her lips and tongue on his nipple. She felt the quick contraction of his muscles, the jump in his heartbeat.

  He knotted his fingers in her hair and drew her face up. “You do that, and this isn’t going to take long at all.” His lips grazed her temple, her cheek, the curve of her jaw. “Slow down, Ireland.” When his teeth grazed her throat, her knees began to tremble. “I want slow. I want this to take all night.”

  “Yes,” she breathed. Her pulse throbbed with a primitive beat. “All night.”

  Just then, the floodlights set into the landscaping below switched on automatically. The face of the inn illuminated in a fan of bright light.

  “Dammit, I don’t want the entire town for an audience,” Rory grated against her throat.

  “Downstairs,” she urged breathlessly. One of her hands was locked on the back of his neck; the other was still beneath his sweater, inside his shirt, against his chest. “We have to go downstairs. Now.”

  “We’re going.” His mouth continued to plunder her throat as he tugged her toward the door. Together, they stumbled down the short staircase, arms and legs banging against the banister, the wall, the doorjamb. When they surged into the dimly lit hallway, Rory shoved the door closed then pressed her back against it.

  “Your place, or mine?” he asked while his deft fingers loosened the belt on her coat.

  Lungs heaving, Peggy slid her gaze sideways. The door to his room was at the end of the hallway. Hers was down two flights of stairs, through the foyer, study and the kitchen. She wasn’t sure they could make it that far. In her hazy brain she confirmed that she had her cell phone clipped to her coat pocket in case Samantha needed her during the night.

  “Your room. It’s closer. A lot.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Belt loosened, he shoved back the coat’s flaps. His eyes sparked; for an instant he went still as stone. “If I’d known sooner this was all you had on underneath this coat…”

  Her pulse throbbed harder when his hungry gaze raked over the thin chemise of ivory silk. “I bought this today when I made an unscheduled stop at a boutique in town. Going there was out of my way. I wasted your gas.”

  “You can borrow my car every day if you make stops like that.” He shoved the coat off her shoulders, nudged it down to her elbows while he replaced fabric with teeth. “Hell, you can have the damn car.”

  “It’s a rental.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  With their mouths locked together, they staggered down the hallway. Somehow, she wound up facing him, stumbling backward when the coat’s dangling belt wrapped around one of her ankles. Rory’s hands curved over her backside, lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and used her teeth on his throat.

  At the door to hi
s room, he muttered a curse when he jerked at the knob, found it locked. By the time he dug the key out of his pocket, managed to slide it into the lock and pull open the door, she had his sweater off.

  He slammed the door behind them, locked it. She kicked off her slippers, fought the coat off of her arms while nipping at his bottom lip.

  The room was dark, lit only by slashes of silver moonlight. With her clinging to him like a silken burr, he went down on his knees. One of his hands cupped her head as he laid her back onto the braided rug that pooled in the center of the bedroom. Shoving the chemise up to her waist, he knelt between her spread thighs, his shirt hanging open, his eyes glinting as he gazed down at her. “I was wrong.” His palms cupped her silk-covered breasts. “I want fast. This first time, I want fast.”

  “Yes.” She didn’t want soft words or slow hands. Not now, not when her body ached so fiercely that she shook from it. She surged up, pushed the unbuttoned shirt down his arms, then off. Her greedy fingers went to his belt, fumbling, tugging. Seconds later, he was naked. In the moonlight, his body was beautiful, strong, with sinews that rippled and tightened as he moved.

  When she reached for him again, wanting what her body so violently craved, he pushed her backward to the floor, then quickly stripped her of the thin silk. She felt a small thrill as she lay naked beneath his gaze while greed glinted in his eyes. This, then, was that dangerous man she had glimpsed the night she had looked up and found him in the foyer, watching her in silence. He knew exactly what he wanted to do to her, and all she could do was let him do it.

  Leaning over her, he dipped his head, feasted on one nipple, then the other as if he were ravenous, using his teeth, his tongue, his lips. Heat saturated her, as though a furnace door had been thrown open, and the roaring blaze had enveloped her flesh.

  Her hands raked along his back, her nails digging into his heated flesh. The air around them went as thick and heavy as velvet. An ache spread from deep in her center, her bones throbbing with it.

  As he continued to suckle, she could hear his breath, ragged and strained against her skin.

  One of his hands slid down her rib cage to her belly, along the flare of her hip, then eased lower, cupping where her flesh was hot and wet. When his fingers plunged into her, a hoarse, shuddering breath strangled in her throat.

  His mouth fed at her breasts while his fingers thrust inside her with deep, grinding, glorious pleasure. She could feel every pulse beat, hundreds of them, pounding beneath her flesh. The muscles in her stomach jumped and quivered. His thumb circled the bud between her thighs, an erotic massage against her throbbing, swelling flesh.

  Moaning his name, she slid her calf along his naked flank.

  His fingers withdrew, entered her again, then again; the pleasure he released in her was like the rush of some wonderful drug. Sweat slicked her flesh as she felt herself going up, soaring in the fire, impaled on the wings of its heat. The climax exploded around her hard and fast. Tension drained out of her in a long shudder of ecstasy.

  “Again,” he murmured. His fingers continued moving inside her, his thumb massaging her flesh, shooting her back up that slippery, heated path. The second climax ripped through her, more shattering than the first.

  With no strength left in her body, her hands slid from his back. Her eyes fluttered shut while he shifted, mounted her, his weight crushing her breathlessly. She felt the sweat on his skin, his muscles tight with urgency.

  “Look at me. Look at me, Ireland.”

  With her remaining strength, she forced her eyes open. His face was intent, his eyes staring deep into hers as he thrust inside her, mating, possessing.

  “I want to see your eyes while I take you.”

  He moved inside her with increasing urgency, flooding her with a swelling pleasure that grew and spread. Her mind clouded, her vision dimmed as her hips moved like lightning, meeting him thrust for thrust, her body arching in surrender. She felt her inner muscles clench around him at the same time his arms tightened around her and his body convulsed. He buried his face against her throat and groaned her name.

  Together, they slid into hot, sweet oblivion.

  They made love twice more on the floor. Later Rory found the strength to carry her to his bed. Now, with moonlight slanting through the curtains, he leaned back against the headboard, watching Peggy sleep. She lay on her stomach, her head turned toward him, one arm thrown across his stomach, her hair spreading like a pool of ink against the white pillowcase. The dark fan of her lashes against her cheeks made her skin look almost translucent.

  The scent of their passion hung in the cool, still air.

  To please himself, he stroked a hand down her back, over the swell of her hip. She didn’t stir.

  He had been drawn to other women, but never for the long haul. Certainly he had never felt such warmth and need as he did at this moment. Just for a heartbeat, he wondered what it would be like to spend the rest of his life with this one soft, sexy, beautiful woman.

  His brow knit. He cared for her more than he had cared for anyone before, he accepted that. But how he felt about her didn’t change who he was, what he was. He had spent years on his own, needing no one. What had happened between them didn’t change who he was.

  Who he was. He skimmed a hand over the dark pool of her hair. He felt no guilt, not with her lying beside him, not while the memory of what they had shared was so new, so potent. Somehow tonight—this one night—a cloak of sensation had settled around them, allowing him to do as he wanted without hesitation or regret.

  That would all change in the morning.

  He scrubbed a hand across his face, then eased out of bed. Silently, he moved to the window, used the edge of his hand to slice back one side of the curtain, and looked out toward the sea. The moon was still high, cutting a distant swath of light across the black water.

  His mind spun back to the night Peggy told him about Jay Honeywell’s line-of-duty death. The determination that had settled in her eyes, her voice when she vowed to never involve herself with another cop would live forever in Rory’s memory.

  And his conscience.

  His fingers clenched on the curtain. Knowing how she felt, he had made an effort to stay away, to avoid what had happened between them tonight. That wasn’t an excuse—there wasn’t one. In the end, he hadn’t been strong enough to be noble, hadn’t been good enough to do the right thing. He’d been a man caught in a web of desire and, for the first time in his life, he hadn’t walked away. He had stayed, and taken what he wanted.

  He would have to deal with the consequences of his actions if Peggy found out he carried a badge.

  He closed his eyes. There was no if. When. Limits existed to what he could and would give to her. To anyone. But he owed her the truth about himself. She deserved that. Just as he deserved to answer for what he’d done.

  In the morning, he decided. He crossed back to the bed, slid in beside her, drew the covers over their naked bodies and took her in his arms. He would tell her the truth first thing in the morning.

  Eleven

  With a slow stretch, Peggy woke to the soft thrum of rain against the windows. It wasn’t the panes in her own bedroom that the first watery rays of dawn crept through. Her mouth curved in sleepy contentment at the realization. The windows were on the inn’s third floor. Rory’s bedroom.

  Turning her head, she gazed at the man who immediately consumed her thoughts. He lay sprawled facedown beside her, one arm draped across her waist. His head was angled toward the windows so that in the dim light she could make out the slash of one cheekbone. Against the white sheet, his face was tanned, his jaw shadowed by dark stubble.

  Twin surges of contentment and desire swam through her. With a fingertip, she nudged the raven hair off his forehead. The small movement brought the awareness of an ache, dull and sweet, through her entire body, a reminder of their long night of lovemaking. Lying beside him, with the sound of his steady breathing mixed with the patter of rain, she was filled with
a swirling mix of emotion.

  If he was so wrong for her as he claimed, how come he felt so right? Why had her heart reached out to this man, this one man, when it had lain dormant for so long?

  He was so alone, she thought. Rory had no family to speak of, no real place that he belonged. He didn’t even know the simple pleasure of coming home to his own house, his own bed and the familiar view out his own window.

  He didn’t want to know.

  She closed her eyes on a soft sigh. That they had such differences in their basic needs didn’t matter. Nor did the sobering knowledge that he would soon walk away. What mattered was that they enjoy the remaining time they had together.

  It was then, in the quiet, still light of dawn, that she realized what she had not known until that moment. She didn’t simply want him, need him. She loved him. Not just for the searing-hot kisses that had made her half-crazed, or the electric feel of his hands on her flesh. She had fallen in love with the man beneath. With his heart, the innate kindness, the nurturing side he refused to acknowledge. The man who went out of his way to bring a child a fuzzy, pink rabbit. The man who had swept her to safety and cared for her after she’d been attacked, then served her guests a cheese plate. The man concerned enough to offer his car so her daughter’s treasured belongings would arrive at a slumber party.

  Rising on one elbow, Peggy shoved her tumbled hair out of her eyes. Her feelings were so new, so sudden, so jumbled. She needed time to think. To adjust. Accept that she was in love with a man who would soon leave and might never come back.

  Rory had to go, she knew. Just as she had to stay.

  She had no choice but to deal with his absence, she resolved. Live with it. He had told her up-front that was the way things would be. Yet, she’d willingly stepped into the fire. She had lost one man she loved, and she had survived. She would do so again.