Page 31 of After Indigo Irish Nights
His face shuttered as she stepped toward the door. It felt like her heart was twisting within her chest. This could be their last kiss. Ever. That thought destroyed her.
“Goodbye, Kathleen,” he said softly.
She stopped at the door and looked over her shoulder. He might as well have been made of marble, he was so still. “Bye, Ace.”
His face slowly fell, which hurt to watch. Yeah, he knew it too. God!
When she closed the door, she knew she was closing it on the possibilities between them. She took a breath and started walking away. Caught in her thoughts, she didn’t see Brady until she looked up. She froze. He stopped short as well, unshaven in a burgundy robe in the hallway. His gaze flew to Declan’s room and then widened as he looked back at her.
She tried to make her mouth form a smile. “I stopped in early with a question. I was just leaving. Tell Ellie I’ll call her later.”
“Sure,” he said, nearly stumbling over his bare feet as she passed him on her way to the stairs.
“Not a word, Brady,” she heard Declan grind out in a harsh voice before a door slammed.
She flew down the stairs and out the front door of Summercrest Manor. When she yanked open her car door and flung herself inside, she finally realized she’d run out of her best friend’s home without saying a word to her.
Not a proud moment. But Ellie would understand. She’d just kissed the hottest, most compelling man ever.
The scent of oranges surrounded her, and she choked.
Dammit, Sorcha!
She tapped her forehead against the steering wheel.Somehowshe had to fight off the urge to do that again. God!
How was she going to manage that?
CHAPTERSEVEN
Bets’ love life was in the dumps.
How in the hell had that happened?
Before they’d been hot, hot, hot. Now Donal trained and slept and trained some more. They weren’t having sex like they used to, and that annoyed the hell out of her. Had boxing become his new mistress?
Since he’d started boxing training, she’d awoken alone every single morning, which made her grouchy as all get out. She hadn’t expected Donal to roll out of bed to run four miles at five o’clock in the morning at the ripe age of sixty-three!
Sure, he used to rise at five o’clock before he’d retired a few months ago. A sheep farmer started his rounds early. But she’d thought he’d appreciated the change in his routine—staying up late with her and waking even later in the morning, mostly due to the fact that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
Yes, he’d mentioned feeling a smidgeon of guilt from time to time, wrapped in nothing but a white bedsheet and sunlight, saying the robes of decadence didn’t lie well on his shoulders.
But apparently bruises and sore muscles lay very well. He’d told her repeatedly as she’d offered to give him a massage with arnica cream that he wasn’t feeling the training too badly. He was used to muscling four-hundred-pound sheep, wasn’t he?
She wanted to scream.
Bets had wanted Donal to have a hobby. She hadn’t wanted him to have an obsession.
Not that she could say anything, of course. This is what she’d said she wanted. She’d feared he would be too dependent on her in his retirement, and it seemed there was little danger of that happening.
Still, it was a bitter pill. Here she was alone in the morning again.
She sipped her tea and grimaced. It was downright tepid.
Much like her sex life.
Depressed, she cracked open her laptop, prepared to print off another crop of resumes and portfolios that had come into the center’s email box, inquiring about a potential artist residency. After Ellie’s donation, word of the center was spreading far and wide.
But the second email from the top was different from the rest, and it snapped Bets out of her stupor. Francine Pasquardo from San Francisco wanted to know if the center’s classes were open to non-Irish people. She was a hobby artist who loved to travel, and she’d come across Angie’s paintings at an online gallery show in the Netherlands. She’d love to take a painting class with the artist. While it would be possible for her to spend the three-month duration of the class in Ireland, presuming she could find a place to rent, she knew several of her friends would be there with bells on if something shorter were offered.
