Gypsy

‘Not if you don’t want it to.’ Her voice was a soft apology. ‘We could meet when you get back from Bermuda and I come home from Ireland.’

‘So we could,’ Lyon grated his displeasure. ‘Well, I’d better get you home.’

She had known he was angry, that he was still angry when he left her at her home fifteen minutes later having made no arrangements to see her again after Christmas as she had suggested they should.

She had spent a miserable Christmas in Dublin with her grandfather, had sensed the elderly man’s concern when she constantly assured him she was perfectly all right; he just wouldn’t have understood if she had told him she was pining for a man like Lyon Falconer, a man who was still married and also fifteen years her senior.

She would have been much better off if Lyon had remained angry with her, if he hadn’t telephoned down to her desk several weeks later and ordered her up to his office on the fourteenth floor!

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d0bd46fb-caac-5df1-8b05-33834dd7c190)

‘SHAY!’ the excited male voice greeted. ‘My God, Gypsy, no woman has the right to grow even more beautiful, the way you have!’

‘Neil,’ she greeted dryly, used to the exuberance of her youngest brother-in-law. But even she wasn’t prepared for the way he burst into the room and swung her round in his arms. ‘Neil, you fool, put me down,’ she laughed breathlessly, pushing at his arms.

‘I came up to warn Neil you were resting and didn’t want to be disturbed,’ Lyon remarked coldly from the doorway Neil had left open. ‘But it seems only some members of this family disturb you,’ he added icily.

Shay’s smile faded as she slowly released herself from Neil’s arms, straightening her black and white silk dress before answering. ‘You don’t disturb me, Lyon,’ she looked at him haughtily, ‘you disgust me!’

He sucked his breath into his lungs at the insult, a savage twist to his mouth as he turned on his heel and left the room, his back rigid.

Shay hadn’t seen him since she had struck him so forcibly the day before, had refused dinner yesterday, and had eaten breakfast and lunch in her room today, asking the friendly Patty to tell the Falconer men she preferred to stay in her suite and rest, just wanting to be alone. She hadn’t allowed for Neil’s arrival today, or his determination to see her again.

She looked at him now, regretful that he should have witnessed that ugly scene. ‘As you can see,’ she grimaced, ‘nothing changes.’ She sought for lightness.

‘You have.’ Neil’s eyes glowed with admiration. ‘I can remember a time when you would simply have thrown something at Lyon rather than give him a verbal dressing down.’

‘How are you, Neil?’ Shay ignored the reference to her past, often stormy, relationship with Lyon. ‘You’re looking very well.’

‘I am well,’ he nodded, sobering. ‘I’m really sorry about Ricky,’ he added softly.

Neil was only a slightly older version of her husband—blond hair, blue eyes—and looking at him now caused a fresh ache in her chest for the man she had lost. ‘So am I,’ she sighed.

He flushed awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve intruded, if you would rather not talk about Ricky. Lyon told me—’

‘Damn what Lyon told you!’ Shay burst out in agitated anger. ‘What does he know about how I feel, what did he ever care?’ Now that the icy veneer was cracking she didn’t seem able to stop the angry flow. ‘I’d like to talk about Ricky, I’d like to share him with someone. But I can’t!’ Her face contorted with the agony of burying the memories of Ricky deep in her heart.

‘You can share him with me, Gypsy.’ Neil moved to take her in his arms. ‘Talk to me about him; even though he was my brother I didn’t see much of him the last few years.’

‘That was my fault,’ she groaned into his throat.

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Neil chided. ‘God, we might all be brothers, but we don’t have to live in each other’s pockets! When I marry, if I marry,’ he amended ruefully, ‘I don’t intend to stay in the family mausoleum either!’

Shay moved back to give him a watery smile. ‘You always were good for me,’ she said gratefully, taking the handkerchief he held out to her.

‘Believe me, after being one of the middle of four boys, it’s nice to have a sister I can tease and spoil.’ He guided her over to the sofa as he spoke, sitting them both down, his arm about her shoulders as he held her at his side. ‘I’d also like to be the brother you feel you can confide in,’ he prompted softly.

‘Neither Lyon nor Matthew exactly fit the role, hmm?’ she derided.

He shook his head. ‘Both as tough as old leather. Now me, I’m the easy-to-know-and-get-along-with brother,’ he grinned encouragingly.

‘Like Ricky,’ she said sadly, having talked to her husband about anything and everything.

‘Like Ricky,’ Neil nodded.

Once she began to talk, Shay couldn’t seem to stop, telling Neil everything that came into her mind, her head resting on his shoulder as she did so, feeling a closeness with him that she hadn’t known since those last precious days with Ricky.

SO HE DISGUSTED HER, did he! He remembered a time when disgust was the last thing she felt towards him.

God, she had been incredibly sweet the night he rescued her from Turner’s lecherous clutches. Although he doubted ‘rescued’ exactly described what had happened; the amount of alcohol Turner had consumed by that time meant that he would probably have passed out if he had tried any real physical exertion, such as making love. And Shay would probably have realised how far gone he was once he got over his anger at having his toes crushed by her shoe!

Which was why he had stepped in when he had. Shay had been suitably grateful for his interception, and it had stunned him when that gratitude had left him outside her door at the end of the evening instead of on the other side of it. He had decided then and there not to contact her again, that her naïvety had not only confirmed her youth; and he was too old and too cynical to participate in such ‘no touch’ games.

Bermuda had been everything he had thought it would be, and worse. Family Christmases, especially in a family like his own, were destined to be a failure from the onset, for everyone involved. He found himself thinking of the ‘Irish pixie with the purple eyes’, wondering if she were enjoying her Christmas as much as she had seemed sure she would, and if Devlin Murphy were helping her enjoy it! God, the mere fact that he remembered the man’s name had come as a shock to Lyon, that he envied Shay her ‘little cottage, real fire, and pine-needle-shedding tree’ when he had a villa on a private beach, miles of unspoilt coastline, the hot temperatures providing him with a deep sun-tan, and the ten-foot-high artificial tree in the lounge that wouldn’t dare shed anything, let alone pine-needles, had totally astounded him.

That the deep purple of dark-fringed eyes haunted him angered Lyon, throwing him into a whirl of parties and women once he returned to London after the holidays. And when they hadn’t worked in banishing her from his mind he had decided to see Shay once again, to talk with her, to see if she really were as beautiful as he remembered. When she had entered his office on that Monday morning he had known his memory had played tricks on him; she was even more enchanting than he remembered, those huge violet eyes dominating her beautiful face.

That she was nervous of him, of his reasons for summoning her there, was obvious, her long slender hands clasped together to stop them from trembling. ‘Why do you think I wanted to see you?’ Lyon asked harshly, unable to resist the impulse to make her suffer a little for haunting him in the way that she had.

Her throat moved convulsively, a long creamy expanse of delicate flesh he wanted to caress with his lips and tongue. ‘I—I have no idea,’ she answered steadily enough after that initial hesitation.

Some devil possessed him, annoyed at her coolness. ‘I want you to go down to your desk and get your things,’ he ordered. ‘You’re leaving.’

Shay gasped, her small breasts moving beneath the thin silkiness of her pale lilac blouse, the aroused points of her nipples visible through the lace of her bra and the sheer material of her blouse. If just thinking about seeing him again could cause that reaction it promised much for their future together! He forced himself to dampen the elation and listen to what she was saying.

‘You can’t just sack me,’ she claimed indignantly. ‘I always do my share of the work, and I haven’t missed a day or been late since I started working here. I’m not even the last one to be employed, Stacy came after me. Surely you have to have a good reason nowadays for sacking someone like this? I can’t—’

Charming as he found the increased Irish lilt to her voice when she became angry, he was bored with the game he had started with her. ‘I’m not sacking you,’ Lyon calmly interrupted her tirade. ‘I merely want you to get your coat and bag so that I can take you to lunch.’

‘Take me—? But—I—You—’ Her spluttering ceased as two bright spots of red colour entered her cheeks, her eyes two purple jewels. ‘You aren’t taking me anywhere, you arrogant swine!’ She turned on her heel, her body moving gracefully as she walked.

‘Shay!’ Lyon was on his feet in seconds, realising he had seriously misjudged this Irish vixen, that the placid demeanour and violet eyes hid a fiery temper, an independence that wouldn’t allow any man, even one as powerful as she must know him to be, to order her about. She was waiting for him when he crossed the room to her side, stiff with anger as he put his hands on her shoulders to turn her round. ‘Will you have lunch with me?’ he coaxed, trying to remember the last time he had had to persuade a woman to spend time with him. He couldn’t.

‘I don’t—’

‘Please.’ He turned her fully into his arms, her perfume as elusive as the woman herself, feeling his body quicken with the same desire that had assailed him the last time he was with her. ‘Shay?’ he prompted cajolingly.

She tilted her head back to look at him, her young face challenging. ‘Why?’

Why? God, what strange questions this woman-child asked! ‘Because I want to be with you,’ Lyon smiled.

‘You haven’t felt that same need the last three weeks,’ she accused, seeming to bite her lip as she realised how much she had revealed in that candid statement.

And she had revealed a lot; it was exactly three weeks since they had all returned to work, when he had vaguely said he might get in touch with her again. This little vixen wasn’t as immune to him as she wanted him to believe!

His gaze dropped to those revealing breasts, her breaths short and shallow, the nipples even more pronounced, showing darkly against the light material of her blouse. She wanted him as much as he wanted her! ‘I wasn’t sure if Devlin Murphy would have followed you back from Dublin,’ he teased.

‘Devlin leave his beloved Ireland?’ Shay smiled at the thought. ‘Never!’