O'Reilly's Bride

‘I am not sleeping in that bed with you.’

‘You’re small enough for the sofa.’

Her green eyes flickered towards the small sofa. It looked plush enough but it was tiny. She guessed the usual occupants of this particular room didn’t have that great a need for sitting. Sean continued grinning and running his hand back and forth along the duvet cover. ‘Seems an awful waste of a honeymoon suite though. Don’t you think?’

She laughed, knew she shouldn’t have when she saw the answering sparkle in his dark eyes, but laughed anyway. ‘A desperate waste altogether.’

‘Then the very least we can do is share the bed. The room demands it.’ His hand stilled and he fixed her gaze with his darkly sparkling eyes. ‘I can manage to control myself if you can.’

Ah, now, but that was just the thing, wasn’t it? The knack for flirting with each other, that they’d both got ever so good at, made this situation all the more difficult.

A few months ago, when Sean had been like a child in a toy store where women were concerned, Maggie would have had no problem sharing a bed with him. Because at the time she’d thought he was a friendly version of lice, relationship-wise.

But since she’d moved into the apartment across the hall from him, spent more ‘quality’ time in his company, got to know him, really know him, they’d become genuine friends. He’d cleaned up his addiction to airheads and the next thing Maggie had known she was batting her eyelashes at him!

So with all the flirting stuff going on and knowing that she genuinely liked him, the last great idea she could have would be sharing a bed with him. In a honeymoon suite, of all places. And in an exhaustive state.

Not a good combination for maintaining that fine line between friendship, and, well, other stuff. And she just couldn’t focus on any ‘other stuff’ when she had other ‘other stuff’ to cope with in her life now. Serious stuff.

‘I know it will be hard for you to resist me.’

Her eyes widened again at the low, sexy tones to his voice. Oh, yeah, him using a bedroom voice would help.

‘How do you get that head through doors?’

‘Well, I’m in here so there must be a way.’

‘Amazing.’ She shook her head and began to peel off her coat. ‘We should do a story on how you manage that.’

His dark eyes watched as the jacket was removed and her shoes were kicked off. She then sat on the edge of the small sofa and unclipped her hair, shaking her head to allow the long auburn curls to frame her face.

Her eyes eventually rose to meet his again. ‘You’re not going to move, are you?’

He shrugged. ‘I might think about it if you continue to undress in front of me. I’d swap a night on the bed for that little show.’

A traitorous giveaway of a beating pulse throbbed in a vein in her neck and Maggie lifted a hand to cover it. She tilted her head a little and rubbed her fingers against the back of her neck to disguise what she was doing.

‘I’d even pay money, to be honest.’

‘Ooh, now, that would put me in a whole different profession, wouldn’t it?’

‘Everyone should have the chance to change careers if they want to.’

Her hand stilled and she glanced at him from beneath long lashes. ‘Like you did.’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t exactly change.’

‘Giving up making award-winning documentaries on war-torn countries to filming the local news wasn’t much of a change, right enough.’

He grimaced slightly. ‘I guess some people would see it as a downgrade.’

‘Some people would, but do you, now that you’ve been at this a while?’

He studied her for several long moments and then smiled a very small smile. ‘Some might. I don’t. You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to change the subject here, would you, Mary Margaret?’

She smiled at the full use of her given name. To everyone else she was just plain old Maggie. But when Sean used her full name it had started out as a way of teasing her. Here, in the provocative surroundings of a honeymoon suite, it was almost an endearment.

‘You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to avoid having a real conversation by flirting with me, would you, Sean O’Reilly?’

‘I might be tempted to open up if you were over here beside me.’

‘Might you?’

The question remained in her eyes long after her words faded into the air and Sean faltered for a moment, his eyes avoiding hers. He blinked as he studied the duvet cover, his hand automatically smoothing it again as he spoke in a low voice. ‘Maybe if you trusted me not to molest you in the night I might consider answering some of your questions.’

Maggie studied the dark hair on his head as she thought over the offer. So far their friendship had been limited to everyday conversations and simple truths about family and friends. They’d talked movies and books and current affairs on their many car journeys around the country but nothing deeper than that. Already she knew enough about him to have become attached to him, to care. But what she’d learned so far made her want to know even more why he had made so drastic a change to his life. She felt that knowing that would slot the rest of what she knew into place, would give her the complete picture.

It was almost too good an opportunity to miss.

But she also knew that there had been tension in the air between them lately. A very sexual tension. And the only way she knew of to ease that some and veer away from it was to make him smile. Because she couldn’t allow herself to get involved with him on a sexual level, no matter how much her body reacted to the idea. Not while a cloud hung over her.

‘OK. I’ll just have to trust you to be good.’

The required smile was instantaneous as he looked back at her and winked. ‘Honey, I’m way more than good.’

Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll take your word for that.’

‘You could find out.’

‘No, I couldn’t.’ She stood up and began to walk towards the bathroom, her chin held high. ‘Because nothing is going to happen. I’m going to trust you.’ At the door of the bathroom she looked back over her shoulder and smiled sweetly. ‘And I’m going to ask you personal questions till you’re so tired you’ll snore the rest of the night away.’

Sean watched the door close behind her and continued to smile until her words sank in. It was a big step for him. Huge, in fact. Because he hadn’t talked to anyone about his reasons for coming home. He hadn’t met anyone whom he thought could take listening to it.

Could Mary Margaret Sullivan? Could she listen to all the horrors and understand? He needed to talk about it to someone so that he could start to put it behind him. And he guessed he’d known for a while that she was a candidate for a listening ear. It had just been much easier to hide behind flirting with her.

Spending the night convincing her of how ‘good’ he could be was certainly a more inviting prospect.

But maybe it was time he allowed himself to make a genuine friend, one who really knew him. He may not tell her everything in one go, but hey, it would be a start.

She reappeared from the bathroom ten minutes later. At the sound of the door opening he turned on the bed and his breath caught. It wasn’t going to be easy baring his soul in a gigantic queen-size bed with a woman who looked like that. He could think of much better things to do. Lots of them, in fact.

It wasn’t that she’d dressed to seduce him. Oh, no, nothing that simple from Mary Margaret. In fact, he guessed she probably looked that way every night when she went to bed. All freshly scrubbed face and a simple two-piece pyjama suit in a baby pink. There was nothing vaguely sexual in the way she looked. It was the fact that she looked so sweet and fresh, so untouched by the sordid things of the world.

For the first time in his world-weary life he was immediately and ragingly turned on by pink cotton pyjamas.

‘What?’

He blinked and forced himself to look up into her large green eyes. How in heaven’s name did she manage to look better without make-up? His sisters had always told him that wasn’t humanly possible.