17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
While Snoot snuffled nervously around her feet, Addy packed the last of her things into a shopping bag. Poor pup. He sensed change in the wind, and change made him nervous.
She gave his ears a scratch. “Me too, buddy.”
After the Halloween brawl and subsequent surgery, Kieran had soothed her to sleep with gentle kisses and Irish-lilted declarations of love.
Yesterday, after shooing the last tourists through the lighthouse doors, he’d rushed to her rental cottage for another night of lovemaking that started slow and sweet and ended hot and fierce, followed by cuddles, laughter, and talk until neither could keep their lids from falling.
But Saturdays were Kieran’s busiest day at the lighthouse, so Addy had plenty of solo time to think, and stew, and cogitate. Slowly, one painful clunk at a time, the pieces of her new life were falling into place.
Colonel Okafor had taken the news well. “We’ll miss you, Addy. You’re a fine surgeon and an outstanding officer. But if it’s time to go, well—you’ve earned a respite. I wish you all the best in your next chapter.”
Just what form that next chapter would take depended on a job search that would last weeks, maybe months, and a mountain of paperwork she was dreading.
Kieran said he’d wait, but the bureaucracy involved in job hunting would try the patience of a saint, and they were just two flawed, haunted mortals trying to help each other out of a dark place. It was going to be a long, hard climb.
Starting tonight.
While it was easy to fall in love with someone she was wildly attracted to, someone kind and funny and gorgeous, if they were going to create something lasting, they had to find enough common ground to build on.
After the past two nights in Kieran’s arms, after soul-quaking sex and talking into the wee hours, her heart had no doubts. Her head, though? That stubborn organ needed more persuading.
In her journal, she’d prepared a list of questions to get them started, covering habits, preferences, priorities, hopes and dreams. If she was going to rebuild her life with Kieran at the center of it, she needed to know more about the man than how good he felt naked, his heavy, muscular body pressing hers into the mattress as he moved deep inside her…
She huffed a laugh. Yeah, keeping her mind on their shared future and out of Kieran’s pants would require some serious discipline.
Drawn by her laughter, Snoot dropped into play posture, forequarters low, butt in the air, tail wagging a mile a minute.
“Okay, bud, let’s take a beach break.” She scratched the soft fur behind his ears. “I’ll miss those almost as much as I’ll miss Kieran.”
“Closing time, folks. Good evening to ya.” Kieran gave his last visitors—a talkative couple from Minnesota—a gentle nudge toward the door. If he couldn’t dislodge these friendly barnacles, he’d be late for his date with Addy.
She’d asked to spend their last night together at his place, and he still had to shower, check the Irish stew bubbling in the slow cooker, and make sure the bed linens and bathroom were up to snuff.
This wasn’t goodbye, he reminded himself, just a temporary parting while she sorted out that ‘unfinished business’ she spoke of. Over tea and bagels this morning, she’d promised him big news but refused to give him even the slightest hint. The suspense was killing him.
He was arranging a lopsided bouquet of supermarket daisies and sea grass when a soft knock and a loud woof announced their arrival.
“Right, here we go,” he muttered, giving his breath a final check. He needed tonight to be perfect—cozy, sexy and memorable enough to lure her back ASAP.
As soon as he opened the door, Snoot nearly bowled him over, wiggling joyfully from snout to tail tip.
“Easy, now,” Addy scolded through her laughter. “We want him in one piece.”
“Welcome, love.” Ever since that magic word left her lips two nights ago, he’d been repeating it, trying out its shape in his mouth, whispering it during his park ranger duties, singing it in the shower.
A new buoyancy filled him, transforming his steps into a giddy dance, brightening the colors around him—and still, an element of fear nibbled the edges of his happiness.
She was leaving tomorrow, and he worried the magic they’d found might pop like a soap bubble if stretched over a long distance.
So that was his goal tonight: make a plan to stay in touch and get to know her better despite their separation.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, breathing in her fresh scent, relishing her softness, her warmth. He needed to memorize this moment, a comfort he’d need in the rough days ahead when Addy would only be a voice on the phone, a moving picture on his screen.
“Mmm, you feel so good,” she murmured into the crook of his neck, and his cock stiffened at her hungry tone. He’d get her into bed soon enough, though. Before that, they had more important ground to cover.
When Addy finally let go, her beautiful features were etched with sadness. “Our last night.”
“Just for now, love,” he corrected her, hoping she couldn’t hear the tightness in his voice.
“Of course.” She slid her hand down his back and—heavens!—inside his trousers to squeeze a big handful of his arse. “No worries there, Keeper. I’m coming back to you. Now—” She wriggled her hips against his. “Food first, or a pre-dinner quickie?”
This time, Snoot didn’t protest their long, deep, steamy kiss, instead making himself comfortable on the cushion Kieran had provided near the hearth.
But Addy’s phone did protest—with a snatch of AC/DC.
“Highway to Hell?” He chuckled into her hair.
“Ugh.” She dug the phone from her pocket, silenced it, and tucked it away again. “It’s my Aunt Tish, chief flying monkey for my mom’s cause.”
“Flying what now?”
“You know, from The Wizard of Oz ?”
He shrugged at the unfamiliar name.
“Wow.” She slid her hands into his hip pockets and grinned up at him. “We’re going to have so much fun learning each other’s cultural references. But in the meantime…” She kissed him again, then drew his lower lip between her teeth and gave it a tiny nip that shot fire through his veins.
He gripped her hips and angled his, teasing her with shallow thrusts. “Well, I was planning to woo you over my gran’s Irish stew, but—”
Her phone vibrated beneath his fingers.
“Ugh.” She wriggled from his grasp and pulled the electronic pest from her pocket. “Is one night’s peace too much to ask?”
“Sounds like it is.” He smooched her cheek. “If you need to talk to your monkeys, I’ll take Snoot out for a walk.”
She hesitated, a scowl on her kiss-stung lips. “I hate to interrupt our evening, but it’s high time I put this to rest.” She hovered her finger over the screen, then raised an eyebrow. “You want a sample of what I’ll be dealing with while we’re apart?”
Her offer floored him. “You want me to listen in?”
“Why not? You’re a wise person. Maybe you can give me perspective.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Then I’d be honored.”
The phone stopped buzzing, then started again.
“Oh, crap. It’s a video call.” She angled the screen away from his face, rolled her shoulders like a boxer warming up, and pressed Accept.
At first, Kieran found the caller’s tirade amusing, like a panel guest’s rant on one of those trashy talk shows his ma had loved. But as the woman grew shriller, he found himself struggling not to snatch Addy’s phone and give the venomous cow what for.
“Your mother’s nerves are shot, Miss Addy,” the woman insisted in her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. “She needs your help, and it’s about damn time you stepped up.”
Addy’s jaw muscles ticked. “What exactly is her diagnosis, Aunt T?”
“Diagnosis?” The woman’s snort rang out loud and clear. “Excuse me, Doctor High Horse, for not knowing the medical terms. My sister is sick and old, and she can’t handle living alone anymore, so someone’s gotta take care of her.”
A voice from Kieran’s past wheedled into his memory.
You’re abandoning us too? This is the thanks we get after devoting our lives to our children— a blatant lie, because his parents had done the bare minimum to stay out of trouble with the authorities.
And so it was with parents of their ilk, his and Addy’s. In their view, it was kids’ job to sacrifice for parents, not the other way around.
“You know what your problem is, Addison?” the auntie shrieked. “You’re selfish. Always have been.”
Growling low in his throat, Snoot stalked over to stand at Addy’s feet. His hackles bristled.
Damn right, pup.
Anger sizzled along Kieran’s nerves. How dare this shrew abuse the woman they loved? Before he could stop the impulse, his hand shot out and grabbed Addy’s phone.
“Now it’s your turn to listen, Tish.” He spat the words out like shards of glass.
“Addy is the least selfish person I know, and her work is damned important. She’s saved more lives than there are people in your puny town.
There’s a nationwide shortage of doctors, and you expect her to sacrifice her career to take over her mother’s care? Explain to me how that makes sense.”
Snoot chimed in with a resounding woof.
“Who the hell are you?” the red-faced woman demanded.
“Someone who cares about Addy a helluva lot more than you do.”
Addy pried the phone from his fingers and shot him a look that would have silenced a rabid wolf.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, flushed with shame for his loss of control, but still furious.
Unfazed, Aunt Tish continued her barrage. “All Betsy’s other kids have their own families to worry about. Addy’s the only one who’s single.”
Kieran put his arm around Addy and snugged her to his side. “No, she’s not.”
The woman glared. “A boyfriend is not the same as family, Addy. Blood matters more than some foreign—”
Before she could finish her insult, Kieran barked, “You really want to talk to a surgeon about blood? As if you had the tiniest notion in your pea brain about what Addy’s been through, what she’s sacrificed to help others.”