Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Liam
I hung onto the sight of Nancy D’Onofrio until her car turned the corner, suppressing the mad urge to sprint to the end of the block to catch another glimpse.
I didn’t do it. I had that much self-control, at least. Which wasn’t saying a hell of a lot.
I ran down the steps through the rain and got into the truck. Eoin, a distant cousin of mine fresh from County Wicklow, gave me a questioning glance as I wiped rain off my face.
“So?” Eoin asked. “What are we doing?”
“We’re getting on with it.”
Eoin’s blue eyes widened. “Really? The daughters want to go ahead?”
I nodded, squeezing my hand around the sense memory of Nancy D’Onofrio’s cool, slender fingers. Eoin caught the vibe, sensitive, curious little bastard that he was, and shot me a keen sidelong glance. “Daughter’s a looker, eh?”
“She just put her mother in the ground yesterday,” I snarled.
Eoin mumbled something apologetic that made me feel like a hypocritical piece of shit.
Like I had any right to scold the kid. What the fuck was I thinking, coming on to a woman who’d just buried her mother?
She was still in her funeral dress, red-eyed from crying.
She probably took me for one of those slimy opportunists who preyed on grieving women.
God. My tongue had probably dangled out like a slavering hound.
Lucia D’Onofrio had been a smart old lady—funny, elegant, with a sharp sense of humor. She’d reminded me of my own mom, which had made her feel precious to me. I’d only known Lucia a few weeks, but news of her death made me feel as if something had been taken from me personally.
A burglar? Jesus. It was so stupid. So fucking offensive. It made me furious.
“Ah ... is there a plan here, Liam?” Eoin asked cautiously.
“Yes, waiting for the goddamn rain to ease off,” I retorted.
Eoin looked away without comment.
I sighed. “Shit. Sorry. It just winds me up. Mrs. D’Onofrio, getting attacked in a home invasion. She was a fine old lady, and it pisses me off. It’s not your fault.”
“I get it. Don’t give it a thought.” Eoin’s voice was long-suffering.
I felt Nancy D’Onofrio’s business card in my pocket and pulled it out.
Her name was printed in bold, curvy letters that stood out sharply from the creamy paper.
A name, a phone number, a QR code. Sleek, classy, minimalist. I was going to scan that code first chance I got and read everything there was to read about her.
I stuck the card in my pocket before Eoin noticed me fondling it.
I didn’t usually admire black clothing on women, but Nancy’s tailored black dress made her skin look pearly and her mahogany hair gleam.
That tight bun showed off every finely molded detail of her face.
Only a woman with amazing bone structure could pull off that severe style and still look good.
The oppressed-but-secretly-sensual governess look.
I wanted to play the horny, unscrupulous lord of the manor. Sign me up for that.
I could have looked at her face for hours, always finding something new to admire.
Her high cheekbone were striking, her skin impossibly soft.
Her wide-set eyes were beautiful. She seemed elegant, smart, a person to be reckoned with.
Sinuous. Tough-minded. Practical. And also like the perfectly formed but dangerous girl who undulates through the opening credits of a Bond movie. A fantasy woman.
And paying a crew out of my own pocket for an undetermined interval? That was a fucking fantasy, too. That was the little head talking.
But damn. I couldn’t let a chance to see her again slip away. She was elusive, wary. Going after a girl like her would be like catching fish with my bare hands.
Christ, sometimes I scared myself. I flung the car door open. “Let’s get started.”
Eoin peered at the rain sliding down the windshield, started to say something, then thought better of it. He sighed and followed me out.
I ground through the whole internal mental lecture while we unloaded.
Pursuing a woman like Nancy D’Onofrio would be a huge waste of time.
I shouldn’t even start. She was a hyper-focused, a workaholic.
Lucia had told me how driven she was, and I’d regretfully written her off as soon as Lucia described her.
She was the polar opposite of what I wanted in my life.
Over the years, after a few relationships went sour, I’d given some long, hard thought about what I really needed in a lover.
No, in a wife. Enough dicking around. I was a grown-ass man.
I wanted to take root. I wanted to have a family.
I wanted someone who fit in my life. Who wanted what I wanted out of life, at least roughly.
I didn’t need to look any further than my own parents to see what happened when you messed with that cardinal rule and tried to jam square pegs into round holes.
My mother’s dream had been a big, noisy family, lots of kids.
My father had been driven by professional ambition.
He’d had no time to spend with me. He’d leave early in the morning for work, come home after my bedtime, never make it for meals.
He’d always been working—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, ball games, recitals.
It was almost comical how consistent he was.
Mom had begged, schemed, and nagged for years. She finally accepted that he would never change and told him to leave. I hadn’t seen my father since that day.
Not that I’d seen much of him before. I was eleven when that happened.
Mom eventually found the kind of man she wanted, but at that point, she couldn’t have more kids. She’d wasted too much time waiting for Dad. She’d missed her window.
I’d taken the lesson to heart. When my time came, I knew what to look for, and what to avoid.
I was plenty ambitious too, in my own low-key way, but I liked my life.
Living on my land in the countryside, running my own business, keeping my own hours.
I liked playing the occasional seisiún in the Irish pubs with my fiddle, whistles, and flutes, downing a few pints with friends now and then.
I liked growing my garden, tending my small orchard of walnuts, apples, and pears.
Someday, I hoped to buy a couple of horses, when I could afford a bigger pasture and had some kids to ride them.
I wanted to build my own house on that land, from the ground up. A big, beautiful, comfortable, rambling place, made exactly to order. Full of kids, noise, color. Life.
I’d tried to picture the woman who might fit into that fantasy. She didn’t have to be a raving beauty. I wasn’t all hung up on that. It was more important that she be kind, good-natured, have a sense of humor. That she like gardening, canning, baking her own bread, that kind of thing.
But my body wasn’t thinking about my long-term contentment. It wanted what it wanted, and it wanted that slim girl with big, mysterious eyes behind her trendy glasses and the high-heeled, pointy-toed boots on her tiny feet.
Nancy D’Onofrio definitely didn’t make her own bread. Her type lived on yogurt, carrot sticks and take-out sushi.
The results were nice, though. I loved how her back stayed so straight, her head high, chin up. I liked the jut of her shoulder blades, the smart, nipped-in fit of her short black jacket. The delicate shape of her upper lip, the lush swell of the lower one.
I wanted to smooth away the anxious crease between her dark brows. Those shadowy hazel eyes were full of sadness. Secrets.
Problems. Sadness, shadows, secrets. Those were synonyms for problems. Always.
The voice of reason shouted at me from a far, echoing distance, but I was too lost in my fantasy to listen. I wanted to pamper her. Scramble her eggs. Butter her toast. Pour cream into her tea.
Crash. Thud. I’d knocked over a flower arrangement with my boot. Bruised white lilies scattered across the floorboards.
I laid my boxes down on the pile forming in the middle of the floor, gathered the flower heads up, and threw them away. The sweet, heavy smell of lilies reminded me of my mother’s funeral, and the memory still made my belly clench, after all these years.
It didn’t matter how attractive Nancy D’Onofrio was.
By her own mother’s admission, she was a compulsive workaholic.
She would make me frustrated and miserable.
But I kept visualizing her ass in that tight skirt.
Her breasts were nice, too— small, but perky and firm, with a brash, in-your-face personality all their own.
Taut nipples that poked audaciously through the fabric of her dress. No bra. No need.
God, enough. I was thirty-six and I still hadn’t found my earth mother type.
I was looking around in a relaxed sort of way, hoping destiny would kick in and help me out.
I didn’t want to force it, but damn. I didn’t do casual affairs anymore.
I hated that flat, feeling when one of those scratch-the-itch things had to end. It was just too depressing.
The morning passed in grim, sweaty silence. Two trips to Latham, loading, unloading, loading and unloading. It was late afternoon by the time we were done.
When we got back to my place, we were ravenous, having worked through lunch.
I put on the kettle to make a pot of tea for me and Eoin, who was currently boarding in my basement. Eoin cooked some hamburgers, or charred them, rather. I lunged for the gas and turned it off. “Making lunch?”
“I made one for you, too, if you fancy it,” Eoin said timidly.
“Keep the flame a bit lower,” I advised.
Eoin’s freckled face flushed. “Sorry.”
“Speaking of stoves, I found you a secondhand electric range. After we eat, maybe you can help me haul it down into the basement.”
“Great,” Eoin said. “Now I can make myself a cup of tea without bothering you.”
I grunted. “It was never a bother.”
“Thanks anyway,” Eoin said earnestly. “For the place, the work, the stove.” He laid the burgers on the table. “Are you going to the seisiún at Malloy’s Saturday night?”
“I might. You going?”
“God, yes,” Eoin said. “I’ve been working on that new tune of yours all week. I want to try it out with the lads.”
“Fine, then. Malloy’s on Saturday,” I promised.
Malloy’s was a good seisiún, from ten to two every Saturday night in an Irish pub in Queens.
A motley but talented group of regulars gathered each week to mainline Irish tunes.
I almost always went with my fiddle and flutes, unless I was too worn out from work, but young Eoin was religious in his zeal.
And he was damn good on those Uilleann pipes.
I’d never heard anyone better. The kid should go pro.
But work was work, so the tunes and the Guinness had to wait. Which reminded me that Saturday followed Friday, the day I was starting work on the D’Onofrio house.
Which meant that I would see her again tomorrow.
Through the buzzing zing of excitement, it occurred to me that I could go early.
Help her get the kitchen ready for the reno.
I could lift boxes. Wrap dishes in newspapers.
Box up pots and pans. Eoin could come by later.
Excitement swelled inside me, at the idea of being alone with her.
And that wasn’t the only thing that swelled.
“You okay? You look a bit off,” Eoin said.
I swallowed the last bite of charred burger with some difficulty. “Nah, just remembering some things I have to do. Ready to haul that stove down?”
“Sure thing,” Eoin agreed.
I kept myself busy. First hooking up the stove in Eoin’s lair, then cleaning up the kitchen.
I moved on to sweeping debris out of the truck bed, and from there, to cleaning out the rain gutters.
When I found myself soaping the squeaky bottom of my sock drawer, I had to face the truth.
I just sat there on my bed, the upside-down drawer in my lap, socks and underwear scattered across the quilt, and contemplated it.
I had a monster crush on this woman. It was destined to crash and burn. And I didn’t even have the good sense to back away. Just couldn’t do it.
I was so fucked.