She rounded the corner of the barn and stopped dead. Her battered lorry was gone. In its place sat a gloriously new and shiny truck, bright red in color, boasting a massive white bow on its roof. “What? How? When?”
“All very good questions,” a deep voice rumbled from nearby.
Maura shot a look at Jefferson, leaning back against the side wall of the barn like a man well pleased with himself. The broad smile on his face told her he was responsible for this—as if she hadn’t been able to guess.
“What’ve you done?”
“I should think that’s fairly obvious.”
“Where’s my lorry?”
“You mean that chunk of rust with wheels?” He shrugged. “I had it towed away an hour or so ago. Surprised you didn’t hear it.”
She had heard more general clatter than usual this morning to be sure, but she’d become so accustomed to disregarding the hubbub caused by the film crew that she’d paid it no mind at all.
“You—” Maura looked at the new truck and felt herself being seduced by the shining paint and the large, sturdy tires—and even as her heart yearned, she closed herself off to it. “You’d no right.”
“I’ve every right, Maura.” He pushed away from the wall and walked toward her. When he was close enough, he ran the flat of his hand over the roof of the new truck and smiled, satisfied. “You weren’t just trusting your own life to that accident waiting to happen, remember. You’re carrying my baby. No way do I let you ride around in that old truck.”
“Let me?” She gasped, pulled in air and prepared for battle. “You don’t let me do anything, Jefferson King. I don’t want your shiny new toy here—”
He smiled knowingly. “Yes, you do.”
Oh, it was a hard thing to know that he could read her so easily.
“The nerve you have,” she muttered darkly and stepped around him. Her gaze raked the area, hoping that he’d lied and that she’d find her old truck still here, worn and weary from too many years of work. But it wasn’t. All that remained was the shiny, tempting lorry, complete with unpatched tires, uncracked windshield and—she peered in the window surreptitiously—lovely black leather seats. Wasn’t it a lovely thing?
Not that it mattered, she thought as she straightened up to glare at him again. “What made you think I would be happy about this?”
“Oh, believe me,” he said, opening the driver’s-side door for her, “I never once thought you’d be happy. In fact, I knew you’d look daggers at me. You’ll notice it didn’t stop me.”
He dangled the keys before her as he would a cookie in front of a recalcitrant toddler. “But you’re too intelligent to not admit that you needed this truck, Maura.”
She glared at him, then the keys and back again. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Clever, aren’t you? Flatter me so that to turn you down makes me seem like a complete fool.”
Clearly pleased with himself, he grinned. “Bottom line is, Maura,” he said, “I’m going to take care of you and the baby with your approval or not. So you might as well get used to it.”
Was it so wrong, she wondered, to allow him to take care of her? Was it wrong to wish for more? She’d wanted him to acknowledge their child. But she now wanted something she couldn’t have. She wanted love. The fantasy.
“And if I don’t?”
“You will.” He cupped her cheek in his palm.
Maura shivered right down to her toes. How was it that the simple touch of his skin to hers could cause so many different sensations to course through her? And how was it that he didn’t share them? That he could shut himself off from the threads of connection that bound them?
He bent his head to hers until his mouth was just a breath away. “You might be stubborn, but you’re an intelligent woman and you’ll eventually see that I’m right about this.”
She sighed and gave him a resigned smile. “So, I’m intelligent to agree with you and foolish to have my own opinion.”
“Pretty much.”
That slight curve of his mouth was a weapon, she thought. One he wielded expertly. And she was a willing victim. For heaven’s sake, the man had purchased her a lorry and tied a huge bow to it. How was she to argue or stand up against a man who surprised her, not with diamonds or fancy clothes, but with the one thing he knew she not only wanted, but needed?
“You’re making this difficult for me.”
“Glad to hear it. Now, do you want to take her out for a spin?”
Those keys dangled in front of her face and this time, Maura snatched them. Who was she to fight the inevitable? Besides, if she was to admit the truth, at least to herself, she could say how grateful she was to have a vehicle she felt confident driving. “If you’re coming,” she told him with a grin, “get in and buckle up.”
He did, managing to tear the white bow off the roof as he went and once they were settled, Maura fired the truck up and hooted with glee at the pantherlike snarl of a well-tuned engine. “Isn’t she a beauty, then?”
“Yeah,” Jefferson said, and when she glanced at him, saw that he was staring right at her as he said, “she really is a beauty.”
Jefferson had the marriage license. Now all he needed was the bride. But Maura was showing no signs of weakening. He’d even moved to a hotel in Westport, to give her some space. To prove that he could be as sensitive as the next guy. But did she appreciate it? Hell no. The only thing being “sensitive” had gotten him was three days of missing the woman more than he would have thought possible.
He even missed her damn dog.
Something had to break and it had to happen soon. He couldn’t stay in Ireland indefinitely. He had a life, work, waiting for him.
“Which is the only reason I was willing to try Cara’s plan,” he said into the phone.
“Cara,” his brother Justice asked. “Who is she again?”
Jefferson gave an impatient sigh. “Maura’s sister. I told you.”
“You’ve been rattling off names of everyone in the village for the last half hour, how’m I supposed to keep them all straight? So Cara is Maura’s sister and Maura’s the one who turned you down.”
Jefferson scowled both at the phone and at his younger brother on the other end. “Yes, thanks for reminding me.”
Justice laughed and he sounded as if he were in the next room, not sitting at his ranch in California. “Pardon me for enjoying this, but I seem to remember you getting a charge out of watching Maggie make me miserable not so long ago.”