Standing in the Shadows (McClouds & Friends #2)(38)

"I'm OK," he said helplessly. Christ, he hadn't meant to make her cry. "Don't get all worked up. It was almost thirty years ago."

She sniffed, and looked up at him with a soggy, embarrassed laugh. Her golden brown eyes were swimming with tears.

He didn't decide to do it, it just happened. He reached out to touch the fine-textured skin of her cheek, capturing the tear on his finger. He lifted his hand to his lips and tasted it.

A salty drop of distilled compassion.

The hunger simmering in his body roared up into something huge. She swayed away from him, her tear-bright eyes wide with feminine caution. There was a clatter, a spreading wetness. His hands had clenched on the tablecloth, knocking over a long-stemmed water glass. "Whoa," he muttered. He threw his napkin on top of the puddle. "Sorry about that."

"It's all right," she whispered.

They took a time-out, concentrating on the food left on their plates. Forks clinking in the heavy silence made him think of his father. Eamon McCloud had not tolerated frivolous chatter at the table. He had believed in keeping your mouth shut unless you had something relevant to say. Davy was almost as taciturn as Dad had been, but that mandatory silence had been pure hell on Sean, the born chatterbox.

But Erin hadn't been raised by Eamon McCloud. She didn't know how to cope with enormous silences like he did. She took a deep breath and tried again. "So, what are your brothers like?" she asked brightly.

Her determination made him smile. "They're unique."

"I don't doubt it," she said fervently. "Are they married?"

"No," he said. "Davy was married once, back when he was in the service. We only knew about it because he got drunk one night and told us in a moment of weakness. She made a big impression on him, though. He doesn't want another wife ever again. Davy never learned how to have fun. He had little brothers to look after when he should've been out raising hell, and as soon as I was old enough to look after Sean and Kevin, he got shipped out to the Persian Gulf. The world according to Davy is a grim, dangerous place."

"And Sean?" she prompted. "What's he like?"

Connor smiled. "The polar opposite of Davy. He's a basket case, but in a good way. He's got a wild streak, and he's too handsome for his own good. A chick magnet since he was thirteen. Incredibly smart, like Davy, but he's got some problems with impulse control. And he gets into serious trouble when he's bored. The world according to Sean is a big playground, and everything in it is a joke. What are you smiling at?"

"You," she said. "I can see how much you love your brothers from the way you describe them."

He stared down at his plate, wondering what the hell a guy was supposed to say after a comment like that.

Erin propped her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers together under her chin. "So if the world according to Davy is grim and dangerous, and the world according to Sean is a playground, then what's the world according to Connor?"

He finished off the last swallow of beer, his eyes fixed on her lush, gleaming lips. "The vote's not in on that yet."

The waitress arrived and started collecting their dishes. "The special dessert tonight is fresh baked Dutch apple pie with homemade vanilla ice cream," she informed them.

They looked at each other. "Go for it," Connor said.

"Only if you do," she replied.

Connor grinned at the waitress. "Two," he said.

The pie proved to be delicious. The apples were tangy and sweet and buttery, the crust was crisp and crumbling, blending with the melting ice cream into a goopy, fabulous mess.

Erin closed her eyes and moaned with pleasure every time she puckered her beautiful lips around the dessert spoon, sucking it so it came out of her mouth hot and shiny clean, polished. Everything about her was turning him on, every little innocuous thing.

And it was going to get worse. He was going to see her in her nightgown. He was going to watch her sleep. See her tousled and sleep-flushed in the morning. He was going to press his face into her sheets when she went into the bathroom. Inhale her scent, absorb her warmth as he pictured the water streaming down over her soft, curvy body.

His head might explode before dawn, to say nothing of his balls.

The only solution was to escape into the shower and spend a minute or two trying to relieve the pressure with his fist.



Erin peeked at him in the elevator, daunted by the grim look on his face. Her decision to seduce Connor McCloud was signed and sealed but the actual execution of the seduction was still a scary question mark. She'd thought to make some progress when he opened up about his family, but when she started bawling like a ninny, he clammed right up again. Just thinking about his mother made her throat tighten up.

He looked tense, almost angry, a muscle pulsing in his jaw. He preceded her to the door, gestured for her to wait, and pulled out a gun from the back of his chinos. He checked the room before he let her come in, and silently reattached the weird devices onto the door and window.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Alarms. I got them from my friend Seth. He calls them squealers."

"What a fortress," she murmured.

His eyes hardened. "They can't hurt." He flipped a switch, and a tiny red light on the device attached to the window began to blink.