Page 39 of Temptation at His Door

Joa shook her head. “That’s not the way it works. It has to be homemade and the kids should’ve helped to make it.”

Ronan sat down on the edge of the sofa and rested his forearms on his knees. “Dammit, sorry.” He looked at the mess and picked up a paper plate she’d painted with orange, white and black stripes.

Ronan pointed to the mess surrounding her. “Do you need some help?”

Well, yes. Or she’d be here until dawn. Not giving Ronan time to rescind his offer, she handed him a piece of paper and a pair of scissors. It was the template for Aron’s monkey mask. “Cut this out.”

Ronan took the paper and scissors and without saying another word, began to cut. Joa glanced at the expensive watch on Ronan’s strong wrist, surprised to see that it was only nine thirty. She wasn’t going to ask why he was home so early; who he dated and what he did had nothing to do with her. They’d just had a one-night stand and it would never be repeated...

“That was a quick date.”

Inquisitive much, Joa?

Ronan didn’t lift his eyes off his task. “Yeah. We ended it earlier than expected.”

“Oh.”

Ohwas good,ohwas noncommittal.Ohwasn’t nosy. Good job, Joa.

“Why did it end earlier than expected?”

Bad job, Joa.

Ronan’s lovely eyes slammed into hers. “She was as boring as hell.”

Joa winced, partly in sympathy for the unknown woman, partly because she wondered if he found Joa equally boring. After all, she was sitting in PJ pants and a tank top, bare feet, cross-legged on his carpet, making a kid’s mask. Sophisticated she was not.

“She wouldn’t stop talking about kids, hers and mine.” Ronan rested the paper plate on his knee and pushed an agitated hand through his thick hair. He had lovely hair, nut-brown and glossy, with a wave to it that wouldn’t be tamed. “I love the monsters, but I could’ve done with talking about something else, anything else.”

“Art?” Joa teased him.

“Sure. Baseball, climate change, books, history...”

“Ancient or modern?”

“More modern than ancient, although I am partial to those bloodthirsty Vikings and randy Romans.”

Joa smiled. “I’ve always been fascinated by the Russian Revolution.”

Ronan resumed his task of cutting out the monkey face and Joa resisted the urge to rip it out of his hand and get it done. She didn’t need perfection, just a rough outline. “Speed it up, Murphy, I don’t want to be doing this all night.”

“Bossy as well as beautiful,” Ronan murmured. Joa felt her face heat and slowly raised her eyes to look at him, both frustrated and relieved when he kept his eyes on directing the scissors around the monkey’s ear. Dammit, he shouldn’t say things like that, sexy things.

Things that made her remember the feel of his hard muscles under her hands, the crisp hair on his chest, the rougher hair on his...

For crying in a rusty bucket, Jones! Get your mind out of the bedroom...

“What got you interested in the Russians and their revolution?”

“Don’t all little girls want to be princesses?” Joa blithely replied.

“That family didn’t come to a gracious end.”

“Sure, but their lives, before the revolution, were amazing. To a kid who grew up hard, they lived a fairy tale. Well, up until they were shot.”

Ronan cocked his head to the side, all his attention on her. “You grew up hard?”

Dammit, how had she let that slip? She never, ever, not even with Keely, spoke about her past. What was the point of telling people that she was put into the foster system through sheer neglect, that she had no idea whether her druggie, far-too-young mother was alive or dead, that she’d been relying on herself for, well, all of her life? She loathed pity and she’d learned that sympathy didn’t change a damn thing...

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