Page 94 of Beneath Pearly Irish Skies
Chapter Twenty-Four
Bets was going to kill Dan.
“I’d forgotten how much I disliked him,” she said to Donal as they snuck out of the main house toward the shed, or their love lair #2 as Donal liked to call it. “The way he talked about Megan and Angie made me see red.”
“He’s a difficult man. You’ll get no argument from me there.”
“Patty is the same as ever, but I feel different.”Set in her wayswas the phrase that came to mind for her cousin.
“How so,mo ghrá?” he asked as they entered the shed and he hit the lights.
She loved that he was already pulling off his boots. “I looked at her buzzing around to clean up in the kitchen after I told her to leave it, not taking a moment to connect with who and what was around her. Liam’s been a good influence on me that way. I used to be crazy busy like that when I was a bartender.”
“You’re nonstop when you work in a pub.” Donal tore off his jacket and then went to undo the buttons of his shirt.
Bets decided to sit down and enjoy the view, enjoyment being her newmodus operandiabout life. Since they’d dived into this part of their relationship, she couldn’t get enough of him. “I was nonstop, and then I had three boys.”
He tugged on his pants playfully. “And now you have me.”
She did, thank God. “But you aren’t busy like that, even with your sheep and the doorbell incident. You look around and take in your surroundings. You sit and read with me or hold my hand. You listen. You don’t make me tired.” All the oxygen seemed to be sucked up from the room when Dan and Patty were in it. Mostly Dan.
“Are you too vexed to make love?” he asked softly.
She cocked a brow. “Now, why would you think that?”
“I’m used to such things ruining the mood,” he said, scrubbing his jaw.
“Come here,” she said, patting the comforter.
He strode toward her, his broad chest making her mouth water. He was crazy if he thought she’d let Dan ruin her evening.
“Don’t sit down yet,” she said when he reached her.
His green eyes fired as she reached out and grabbed the waistband of his pants, angling him toward her.
“Let me show you just how much I’m in the mood.”
When he was spent—and then later when she was—she crawled onto his body. He was so large, she could lie comfortably on him like he was her own heated mattress. When they slept together, and they were doing so more and more, she slept on him.
“You might need to bring over a few more things than your toothbrush,” she said, tracing the muscles in his arms. “I love watching you leave in the same clothes you had on, but you might shock my cousin.”
He laughed. “I doubt that. I suspect I could be bleeding from an artery, and she wouldn’t blink. She’s fierce. Like her husband. I can see why they suit.”
She rose up. “Couples are weird sometimes.”
“Do you think we’re weird?” he asked, caressing her cheek.
“Sometimes,” she said, kissing him lightly on the mouth. “We’ve known each other for decades, but now we’re wild for each other. Except…I guess I never really knew you at all.”
“Nor I you,” he said softly. “But I’m glad to know you as I do now. I love you, Bets.”
She hugged him, settling more into the rightness of the feeling. “I love you too. How would you like to go to Paris after the new year? Heck, maybe we should be cliché and go for Valentine’s Day.”
He rolled her onto her back, looming over her. “Took you long enough to ask.”
She blew a raspberry in response.
“Do you know why you weren’t sure about coming away with me before?”
