Chapter 14
Carolina sat in her dark living room for more than an hour after Joe and Janey went to bed.
Somehow, she’d managed to keep up the pretense that everything was fine in front of them, even as she continued to absorb the shock about Seamus’s decision.
Now it was after eleven, and she couldn’t wait any longer to find out if she was the reason he planned to leave.
She got up to grab a sweater and her car keys, praying the dogs wouldn’t bark and give her away. As she tiptoed to the front door, she almost laughed at the absurdity of sneaking out of her own home in the dark of night. Unfortunately, nothing about this situation was funny.
Riley appeared out of the darkness, dragging himself on his front paws.
Startled, Carolina stopped short. “Don’t worry, boy. Everything is fine.” She gave him a pat on the head and felt his intense stare on her back as she pulled the door closed behind her. Thank goodness dogs couldn’t talk.
As she started the car and backed out of the driveway, she expected Joe to come running out to see where she was going so late. Her heart beat rapidly as she pulled away from the house and released a sigh of relief. She’d gotten out undetected. Hopefully, she’d get back in the same way.
She drove into town and parked across the street from the Beachcomber.
Praying she wouldn’t see anyone she knew on the way in, she snuck in the side door and bolted up two flights of stairs to the third-floor room that Joe used to use.
She’d offered up her home, but he’d preferred the room, as it was across the street from the ferry landing.
At the top of the stairs, she took a moment to gather herself and catch her breath. When she raised her arm to knock on the door, she noticed her hand was trembling. Regardless, she rapped on the door and then waited. And waited some more.
Great, she thought. He isn’t even here. She wondered if he’d returned to the mainland. Dejected and still in bad need of answers she wouldn’t get now, she turned to find him standing in the hallway, staring at her.
He seemed shocked to see her outside his room. “Caro? What’re you doing here?”
As always, his lyrical Irish brogue made her a little light-headed. “I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”
He made a sound that might’ve been a laugh or a grunt. “For you, love? I think I can spare some time. Come in.”
He undid her every time he called her “love.” He made her want things she had no business wanting.
She followed him into the small room that seemed to get smaller after he closed the door, sealing them away from the rest of the world.
When he flipped on a light, she took a closer look at him. His green eyes were weary, and he seemed to have lost his sparkle since she last saw him. Was that her fault, too?
“Why did you quit?” she asked, breaking the charged silence.
Tipping his head, he eyed her with a combination of amusement and trepidation. “You know why.”
“You can’t do this! You love that job. Isn’t that what you said?”
“’Tis indeed what I said. I do love it.”
“Then why?”
“Caro…” He ran his fingers through wavy auburn hair, over and over until it stood on end. “Do I really have to spell it out for ya?”
Her stomach began to hurt as she took in his tortured expression. “I guess you do.”
“I’m in love with you. If I can’t have you, I can’t be here. ’Tis that simple.”
She shook her head and held up her hands, as if to protect herself from the surge of longing his words inspired in her. “You… We… We spent one night together. How in the world did you turn that into love?”
“Damned if I know. Some things just are. There’s no explaining them.”
“Seamus, please. You can’t do this to Joe when the baby is due so soon.”
His amiable expression hardened. “’Tis all about poor Joe, isn’t it? Poor Joe will find someone else. No one is irreplaceable. Especially me.”
Carolina realized she’d said the worst possible thing by pleading Joe’s case. After all, Joe was the primary reason she’d kept her distance from Seamus in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you can’t run your life based on what’s best for Joe—or me.”
“Are you serious? I’d rearrange my entire existence for the chance to be with you. I’d do it gladly for you, Caro. Not for Joe, but for you.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Let me ask you something.”
“What?” she asked hesitantly.
“If there was no Joe, would you give me a chance?”
“That’s a foolish question. He’s my son, my heart and soul. No matter what I might want for myself, he’ll always come first. Always.”
“And what do you want for yourself, love?”
“That doesn’t matter. The day his father died, I made a promise to him that I’d always be there for him, no matter what.”
“And you have been. You’ve made him the center of your life for thirty-seven years. Now he has a life of his own, a good life that satisfies him greatly. Do you think he’d want any less for you?”
She shook her head. “He’d never understand this. He’d never understand us.”
It only took two steps for him to cross the room to her.
He framed her face in his hands, compelling her to look at him.
“I dream about you. I dream we’re together, that I’m holding you and kissing you and sleeping with you and making slow, sweet love to you.
And then I wake up alone, and it’s like I’ve lost you all over again.
I’ve gotten so I hate to sleep because it ends the same way every time. ”
Only when he brushed away her tears with the sweep of his thumbs did Carolina realize she was crying. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so very sorry. I never meant to hurt you like this—”
He brought his lips down hard on hers, surrounding her with his strong arms and his scent, and the magic he made with the soft press of his lips and the insistent strokes of his tongue. “I’ve been starving for you,” he said gruffly before going back for more.
Carolina clung to him as the understanding that she, too, had been starving settled over her like a blanket, warming her from the inside out.
“Caro, Caro,” he whispered as he worshiped her neck, “I’ve tried so hard to stop thinking about you, to stop wanting you, but it only gets worse instead of better. God, I love you so damned much. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, nothing I wouldn’t give to be with you. Nothing.”
He took her mouth again, rendering her helpless in the storm of his passion.
Even with Pete, it had never been like this. Nothing had ever been like this. While her rational side urged her to get out of there and go home while she still could, her heart and body cried out for him.
Without breaking the kiss, he lifted her and turned them toward the bed. The next thing she knew she was falling, and he was coming down on top of her.
She turned her head, tearing her lips free of his. “Seamus, we can’t do this. We can’t.”
“Yes, we can. We’re both adults. We both want to.”
She started to shake her head, but he stopped her with another kiss.
“I’ll talk to Joe,” he said. “I’ll tell him the truth.”
“No.” She pushed at his chest, seeking space and perspective. “You can’t do that.”
His frustration was apparent as he rolled off her and lay on his back with his arm shielding his eyes. “Just go, Caro.” He sounded so defeated that her heart broke, knowing she’d done that to him. “If there’s no changing your mind, please go.”
The pain she heard in his voice made her ache. She rested a hand over his hammering heart. “It’s not that I don’t want you, too.”
Raising his arm off his face, he stared at her, incredulous. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t feel how much you want me in every kiss? That I don’t see it every time you look at me?”
Astounded by his impassioned words, she had no idea what to say. “I—”
“Please, love, just go. I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much.”
“I don’t want to go.”
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “But you can’t stay, either, can you?”
She shook her head.
“Hell of a dilemma.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I, love. So am I.” With another kiss to the palm of her hand, he released her.
Carolina stood on trembling legs. Her lips burned from the force of his kisses. She felt rather than saw him standing behind her. Images of the long, lonely winter she’d passed thinking about him and the night they’d spent together flashed through her mind.
Now was the time to be honest, finally, with herself. Not a day had gone by since they were together that she hadn’t yearned to be with him, to talk to him, to hear that lyrical brogue and the outrageous things he said that made her feel so safe and adored.
“I’ll talk to Joe.” The words were out of her mouth before she took the time to ponder the implications.
“You’ll talk to him about what?”
Carolina forced herself to turn and face him. She owed him that much. “I’ll talk to him about what I want.”
“And what’s that?”
“You,” she said softly. “I want you.”
He rested his hand on his heart. “Don’t say that if you don’t really mean it, and for the love of all that’s holy, don’t say it so I’ll stay and run the business for your son.”
Carolina rested her fingers on his lips. “I never say anything I don’t mean, and this has nothing at all to do with the business.”
His eyes lit up with delight, and for an instant, he resembled his old self. “You’re making me all giddy with foolish hope, love.”
For the first time since she’d stepped into the room, she smiled. “You have such a way of saying things.”
“I have so many things I’d like to say to you.” He put his arms around her and drew her in close to him.
Carolina closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around his waist and breathed in the scent that had haunted her since the last time she’d been close to him.
“I worry I won’t live long enough to tell you all the things I want to tell you.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“I’ll be waiting.”