Page 62 of Beside Golden Irish Fields
She’d said the house was beautiful. At last. But she was right.
It wasn’t for her anymore. It couldn’t be.
Fitzgerald’s Folly was well and truly his own.
Chapter Nineteen
Her excuse was pathetic.
She stared at the brick-red front door of Carrick’s cottage, the rose tags in hand.This is stupid, Angie. He’s going to see right through you.
But he’d enlisted her help, after all, and then proceeded to avoid her every morning this week. She was sick of it. She pounded on the door.
Moments later, she heard him bark, “Jesus, I’m coming.”
When it opened, his Payne’s grey eyes locked on hers and the look in them said it all. Longing. Delight. Then fear crept into the irises, and he retreated, taking the light in his eyes with him. She’d seen his walls go up before and wasn’t pleased to be the cause.
“What did my door ever do to you, Yank?”
“It was blocking my way to you,” she said, nerves dancing up her legs. “You enlisted me as a rose spy and then denied all existence of me after I’d completed my mission. How typical of you handlers.”
His mouth twitched, and her belly clenched with desire.
“Here! I found out which roses your sheep ate.”
She thrust out the tags to him, and he took them with care, making sure their fingers didn’t touch. She stared at his hands, the ones she’d painted on a bona fide canvas only today. They had some new nicks and cuts, ones she wanted to bandage and soothe.
“Good work, Yank.” His voice was as perfunctory as the look in his eyes. “You have my thanks.”
Her anger mushroomed. “Well, I don’t want your thanks, Carrick. I want you to stop avoiding me. Just because you turned me down for sex doesn’t mean you need to stop seeing your sheep on my account. You don’t need to reject all of your girls, and I don’t want you to feel sheepish.”
Ultramarine blue flecks fired in his eyes. Good. She had his attention. “Being direct, are you, Yank?”
“Yes! You know I don’t mind you calling me Yank, but sometimes Angie would do just fine. Now, you didn’t answer me. Will you stop avoiding me?”
“No.”
“That’s it?” That was all he planned to say? “Do you want me to take back what I asked? I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
He waved as a car went by on the road and honked. “Come around back.” His gaze flitted to the drive, empty but for his SUV. “Wait! You rode a bicycle here?”
“It’s a standard method of transportation,” Angie said, hoping it would help her lose weight as much as the midafternoon walks she took to clear her head after painting. “Are you embarrassed to have me here? I can leave.”
She was surprised at the hurt the notion caused. Maybe sheshouldleave.
Glaring at her, he charged down the sidewalk to where she’d set her red bike and hauled it across the yard and around the back.
She stood on the sidewalk.
“Are you coming, Angie?” His shout could be heard across the yard.
He’d used her name, and she touched her heart as the pain changed to warmth. She followed him, taking note of the rose bushes flanking the light gray stone walls. They were bursting with blooms in canary yellow, Persian rose, and titanium white.
When she reached the back, she stopped short at the little stone courtyard decked out with more flowers bursting from the very cracks. “Oh, this is charming.”
“You sound surprised. Did you think I lived like an ogre?”
She felt her mouth twitch as he set her bicycle against the wall. “Well, you do act like one from time to time. I brought some money in case I needed to pay to cross the bridge. No, that’s a troll, right? And no. You didn’t really act like an ogre until I asked you to have sex with me.”
