Spicy, he wanted to say, but was afraid it would come out sounding seductive. Curiously, her sexual impact was both subtle and overt. The overt part didn’t bother him. It was the subtle, vulnerable part of her that had him ready to bark at the moon.
Yet even as the thought formed, Alex shook his head in denial. He doubted there was a vulnerable cell in Shannon O’Rourke’s delectable body. She was bright and fiery, like the shining surface of a diamond. Sure, she had a soft spot for his son and seemed to care about people who were less fortunate, but vulnerable?
Not a chance.
“I’ve learned to like most everything, too, with all the traveling I’ve done,” he said. “But if you hope Jeremy will try something new, I’d get mild.” He nearly added and don’t get your hopes up, then decided Shannon would find out soon enough about his son’s preference for unimaginative food.
She picked up the phone. “That’s fine. I’ll ask them to put some crushed red pepper on the side.”
In a short time she’d ordered a number of dishes and sweet-talked the manager into having the delivery driver pick up a burger, fries and a carton of milk.
“I think you ordered too much,” Alex said.
“Not if you have a big appetite like my brothers.”
Shannon’s comfortable references to her family made Alex uneasily aware that he rarely spoke to his own relatives, even during the holidays.
“You’re close to them, aren’t you?” he asked curiously.
“Of course I am. Naturally they drive me crazy trying to interfere with my life. And Kane takes his position as head of the family way too seriously, but they aren’t bad for big lugs with the mentality of cavemen.”
His eyebrows shot upward. “Cavemen?”
“Completely. You should have seen the way they acted when I started dating.”
Alex smiled. “That bad, eh?”
“Worse. I swear that Kane or Neil or Patrick followed me on every date for the first six months. Even Dylan and Connor were weird about it. Do you know what it’s like to be unable to enjoy your first kiss for fear one of your brothers is going to pounce?”
“Not really.” Alex choked, fighting a laugh.
Shannon was trying to sound aggrieved, but he could tell she was touched by her brothers’ protectiveness. Yet he sobered quickly, wondering if his own sister had ever had trouble when she started dating, and if she’d ever wished her brothers were there to protect her.
He’d been long gone to college and building his career by the time Gail was old enough to start going out with boys.
“Did you ever have trouble on a date? One you needed help handling?” he murmured.
“Me? Not a chance. I take care of myself.”
Something flashed through Shannon’s eyes so quickly, it was gone almost before it registered.
She was lying.
Not in a bad way. Just covering up something she didn’t like remembering, or didn’t want to confess.
It bothered him that Shannon might not be as tough as she appeared—maybe because her brothers were still protecting her, while he’d seen Gail just once in the past three years. Gail was tough, too; you didn’t grow up in the McKenzie household without developing a protective shell. But what if his sister wasn’t as tough as he thought?
Because it raised a confusing array of emotions that Alex didn’t want to feel, he sat next to Jeremy, who was playing once again with Shannon’s Christmas train set.
“Choo, choo,” Jeremy chanted. Mr. Tibbles had been leaned up against one of the miniature Victorian houses, and he looked decidedly tipsy with one of his long ears flopped over a black button eye.
Sometimes Alex hated that rabbit.
It represented the dark days, the loss his little boy never should have suffered. Only the introduction of Shannon into their lives had lessened his fierce attachment to Mr. Tibbles.
Shannon…
Sighing to himself, Alex glanced across the room. She’d knelt by the fireplace and was lighting a neatly laid stack of logs. The sway of her hips beneath her formfitting jeans made him uncomfortably warm. Her impact on his senses was the most likely explanation for his agreeing to dinner, but knowing that didn’t make him happy.
He cleared his throat. “I’m surprised you don’t have a gas fire. It’s more convenient.”
She turned and smiled. “I prefer the light and warmth of a real fire.”
“Gas puts off heat and light.”
“Not like this.” Shannon gazed into the new flames licking across the wood, a dreamy expression on her face. “Every year I visit Ireland with my mother. The cottage she grew up in has a fireplace that fills most of a wall in the kitchen. The light bounces off the polished copper pots and kettles, and it feels so safe and secure, as if nothing will ever change.”
“Everything changes.” The words came out sharper than Alex had intended, but it was the truth. Things changed, no matter how much he disliked the process.
The corners of Shannon’s mouth turned down, and the soft light of memory faded from her eyes. “I know. That’s a lesson I received when I wasn’t many years older than Jeremy. Anyway, my grandparents still live in the cottage, though Kane wants to build them a modern house with modern conveniences, either in Ireland or here in Washington.”
Alex found himself moving closer, drawn partly by the warmth in his lower extremities, and partly by the unguarded emotions he’d seen in her face. “They refused?”
“Yes. Generations of Scanlons have grown up there, and they’re not ones to be goin’ anywhere that God didn’t put them.” She said the last in a distinct brogue, and he knew she was repeating something she must have heard often from her faraway grandparents.
“I take it your grandparents didn’t approve of your mother going to America.”
“It was my father they didn’t approve of. That is…” Her voice trailed, and to Alex’s surprise, Shannon looked shy, as if she’d revealed something she thought should have stayed private. “They’re good people, but my father was wild before he married my mother, and then he took her thousands of miles away.”
Wild?
“You take after your father, don’t you?” he asked before he could think better of the question. He didn’t need to know those kinds of things about Shannon; they weren’t even friends, much less lovers.
“Yes, though my third-oldest brother is the most like Dad. Of course, Patrick is settling down now, too. He got married a couple of months after Kane.”
“Is marriage the answer for your family? Like a ship’s anchor for all that wildness?”
“Maybe.” Shannon flipped a curling lock of auburn hair away from her face, and shrugged. “But probably not for me.”
Once again there was a confusing emotion in her green eyes, quickly concealed. A man could get whiplash trying to figure her out, and for the hundredth time Alex’s head warned him to get out, now, before he got involved. Women like Shannon might be fascinating, but they were also too disturbing.
Despite the warning, he leaned forward. “Why not you?”
“Lots of reasons,” she said lightly. “I’m too independent and want things my own way. I enjoy working and keeping my own hours, that sort of stuff.”
Once again he had the oddest sensation, as though she’d told him something that