Welcome Back to Apple Grove (6 page)

Patrick laughed at something Danny said, and the sound made her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Lyrics to one of her dad’s favorite Grateful Dead songs started playing in her head—
trouble
ahead…trouble behind
. When Patrick looked up, she felt the air snap and sizzle. His amber eyes deepened in hue. Oh yeah…definitely trouble.

The game was on and her nephews were running around, screaming like little heathens. “Watch out!” she warned as Danny nearly collided with the back of Patrick’s knees, but the man seemed to have a sixth sense where little people were concerned and stepped to the side at the last minute.

Her nephew tumbled to the grass but got up like a shot, sporting a grass stain that she knew her sister wouldn’t be able to remove without a fight. Two minutes later, Joey tried the same move on their honorary Uncle Pat and ended up sprawled on the grass. Their delighted laughter lightened her heart, but the added depth of the men’s laughter was music to her ears.

Grace thrived here, and maybe that had been the biggest motivator to her looking for a job in the city. Deep down, she’d been afraid she couldn’t exist anywhere else, afraid she’d lose the tie to her family—like the one she’d already lost when her mother died tragically.

Grace was Irish to the bone and had been raised to believe in fate, destiny, karma, and the all-important Murphy’s Law. She needed to be the one to sever the chord in order to find out if Apple Grove was her destiny…or if it lay somewhere farther west in the big city.

Wisps of her childhood dream teased at the edge of her memory; she remembered dreaming of a tall and handsome man smiling at children, playing with them. Her brain struggled to pull the rest of the details from that long ago dream but got sidetracked when questions filled her heart.

Why
had
Patrick
been
here
today?

Was
it
the
Universe
or
someone
a
lot
closer
to
Earth who arranged their meeting again this way?

Had
the
long
and
winding
road
brought
her
back
to
Apple
Grove
because
of
her
dream?

Was
she
meant
to
stay?

Her thoughts circled around and around until she had no way of sorting them out.

“Hey?” A strong, callused hand had a hold of her elbow. “Are you all right?” The warmth of that hand snapped her out of it and down off the proverbial hamster’s wheel.

The concern in Patrick’s gaze added to the warmth his touch ignited.
He
cared.
The trick would be figuring out whether it was caring about her as a person…or if it was the something a lot more basic that he’d hinted at when he’d gotten into her personal space earlier.

Grace finally found her voice. “Yes. Fine. Why?”
Was
I
staring
at
you
like
an
idiot?
She sure as hell wouldn’t be asking him that.

“You got quiet all of a sudden,” he said. “When one of my sisters does that, it usually means she’s solving the world’s problems or worried about something.”

She smiled. “How many sisters do you have again?”

He grinned. “Three younger sisters.”

“Do they have adorable freckles across the bridge of their noses like you do?” As soon as the words left her lips, her hands flew to her mouth and her eyes opened wide.
Dork!

Patrick’s cheeks turned an interesting shade of pink. She’d embarrassed herself and him!
Way
to
go
making
a
great
impression
on
the
first
guy
who
set
off
sparks
inside
you
in
more
than
a
year.

“I’ll uh…take that as a compliment?”

She blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, sometimes the words in my head sort of slip out of my mouth.”

“So you didn’t mean to bring up the fact that I’ve got freckles?” His tone was light and his manner endearing as he tried to get her to fess up.

“No,” she said. “But since the cat’s out of the bag, they really are adorable.”

He straightened to his full height, puffed out his broad chest, and pounded on it with a fist. “I’m a man. Men are not adorable.”

“Mommy calls Daddy ’dorable all the time,” Joey said, patting Patrick’s jean-clad leg.

“Jeez,” Dan hissed. “Nothing is sacred once you become a parent.”

Patrick grinned and nodded. “I hear the most interesting things from my nieces and nephews…out of the mouths of babes.”

Grace realized that he’d glossed over the fact that she thought he was adorable, but she knew he’d been touched by her words if those intense glances he shot her way every few minutes were any indication. Deciding to test her theory, she took a step closer to where he stood and watched for a reaction. His body tensed.
Oh
my!

For whatever reason, this handsome hunk of fireman was interested in her—the youngest of the Mulcahy sisters, the only one who didn’t know how to use power tools or a plumber’s wrench. The black sheep of the family, the only one who’d left home to make a life for herself—the only one who wasn’t wand slim.

Maybe he was thinking about something else and it wasn’t a reaction to her nearness. Needing to find out, she moved to stand beside him and touched his arm. The muscles in his forearm jumped beneath her fingertips. She looked down at his arm until she heard his sharply indrawn breath. She glanced up and felt her heart skip a beat watching the desire swirling in his amber eyes.
Desire
for
her.

“Patrick, I—”

“Grace, can you—” he said at the same time.

They laughed together and the tense moment eased into something she hadn’t experienced yet in her life. He was focused solely on her, as if she was the most important person in the universe. The heady feeling threatened to topple her resolve not to get involved with anyone until she was good and ready to.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.
Good
Lord, she hadn’t meant to say that!

His eyebrow shot up. He bent his head until it was close to hers, and whispered, “If you knew what I wanted to do to you right now—”

“Am I interrupting?”

Meg’s question had Patrick clearing his throat. “I, uh, no. How’s little Deidre?” As easily as that, he’d distracted Meg.

What
was
wrong
with
her?
She’d known Patrick for a couple of years and had shared more than one meal with him over at Meg and Dan’s house. They’d always enjoyed one another’s company, but there hadn’t been this sizzle before. Why hadn’t they noticed one another on this level until now?

He glanced her way, and sparks went zinging just beneath her skin. She fanned herself, but her heated reaction to the man just wouldn’t go away.

***

Patrick was listening to Meg talk about Deidre but was staring at the pulse point at the base of Grace’s ivory throat. He had to get her alone for five minutes. A clever man could do a lot in five minutes—given the opportunity. Too bad he couldn’t think of anything to say. His mind had short-circuited from the moment their hands had touched.

“Gracie?”

Joe Mulcahy was walking across the yard toward them. “Can you and Pat give me hand with something in the barn?”

If Grace thought the request was unusual, she didn’t act as though it was. Personally, Patrick had lived with a meddling Irishwoman until he’d moved to Ohio—no one could hold a candle to his mom when it came to sticking her nose into other peoples’ business.

He stared at Joe until the man had to look away. He was up to something, but Pat wouldn’t find out what it was if he didn’t play along. Grace seemed to be clueless.

“Sure, Pop. What’s up?”

When Pat didn’t move fast enough, she looked over her shoulder and asked, “Are you coming?”

He had to bite his lip to keep from uttering the words that came to mind. “Uh, yeah. Right behind you.”

He sprinted to catch up. Joe and Grace were already in the barn, walking toward the back. “I was sure I’d left it here,” Joe was saying while he and Grace poked through piles of what looked like car parts to him.

“Are you looking for the grill?” Grace asked. “I thought you kept it on the other side of the barn, by the building supplies.”

Joe looked up when Pat entered the barn. “I used to keep it there, but it seemed easier to store it here.”

Grace was shaking her head and looking behind crates stacked along one wall. “I didn’t think you’d want anyone coming this close to the Model A now that it’s been restored.”

“I don’t,” Joe answered. “See that you don’t bump into it.”

“Yes, Pop.” Grace moved further along the wall.

“Joe?” Dan called from the doorway. “Cait’s on the phone for you.”

“Coming.” Joe hesitated and stared from Patrick to Grace and back again. “You two keep looking. This call might take a while.”

And that’s when Patrick knew he was being reeled in and set up, but Grace wasn’t going along with her father’s plans. “Oh, can I talk to her first? I just have a quick question for her—”

Joe was already halfway to the door. “She’ll be over later. You can talk to her then.”

“But I—” Grace began, but when her father passed by the tarp-covered antique car he and her brother-in-law had lovingly restored and kept going, she whirled around and glared at Pat. “What’s going on here?”

He held his hands up and struggled not to smile. “I have no idea.”

She stalked toward him and drilled her finger into the middle of his chest. “You’re lying.”

He clenched his jaw and tamped down the instinctive reaction those words always caused—like a match to a stick of dynamite—but he refused to lose his temper with her. “I don’t lie.”

Her face paled and her hand dropped to her side. “I’m sorry, Patrick—it’s just that I’ve been…” Her words trailed off and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what she’d been about to say. Someone had lied to Grace, someone important enough to have hurt her.

The need to pound the living daylights out of whoever had left such a deep mark on Grace filled him. It was a struggle to keep silent, but he sensed that his reaction to her words was important.

He wanted to reach out and touch her but shoved his hands into his pockets instead. “There are usually two reasons people lie.”

Grace’s eyes filled. “There’s never a reason to lie.”

He took his hands out of his pockets and clenched them at his sides. He almost lost the battle against his will not to touch her—yet.

She wiped the tears with the backs of her hands and lifted her chin, daring him to contradict her.

He eased a half step closer, all the while watching her expressive eyes. “In my experience,” he said slowly, “people lie because they are afraid to tell the truth for fear of hurting someone’s feelings.”

He pressed a finger to her lips and felt their trembling in his gut. Need filled him, want nearly had him on his knees, begging. He felt his throat constrict as desire for Grace slashed through him. Strengthening his resolve, he said, “And they lie because they don’t care enough to tell someone the truth.”

His mother had been right when she’d told him that the eyes were the windows to the soul. He saw so much in the grass-green eyes watching him. A long-ago hurt she struggled with—from her childhood when she’d lost her mother or more recent than that? Had the guy she’d brought to Meg and Dan’s the last time he’d seen her done something to hurt her?

A tiny spark of hope flickered in the depths of her eyes. He moved to close the gap between them. He wrapped his arms around her and fought not to groan aloud as her soft curves fit against him. Did fate and destiny have more in mind for him now that he’d stopped running from his past? Reveling in the feel of Grace Mulcahy in his arms, he tried to remember the snippets of conversation he’d heard but couldn’t remember how long she’d dated the guy or when it had ended. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been attracted to her too-thin form. But this new womanly version caught him by the throat and wouldn’t let go.