Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 92734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
He looked over when Carrigan took his hand and squeezed. “We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.” Her shiver belied her words. She wasn’t dressed for the frigid winds coming off the water.
That got him moving more than anything. He kept a hold of her hand as they crossed the street and walked up the steps. The place still looked the same as it had when he was fourteen. He’d paid for repairs out of pocket as they came up—most recently it had been the roof that needed to be completely replaced. James unlocked the door and stepped back to let Carrigan precede him.
They moved through the entrance to the living room and kitchen, turning on lights as they went. It was like stepping into the past, the cheery beach decorations and bright colors still almost painful after all this time. She stopped in front of the mantel and touched a painting of three boys playing on the beach. None of their faces were visible, but he had no problem recognizing which was which.
“Your mother?”
“She said painting calmed her thoughts and she needed all the calm she could scrape up in a houseful of boys.” The bittersweet ache in his chest unraveled a little. His old man didn’t talk about Elizabeth Halloran, and James had learned pretty damn fast after her death that to bring her up was as good as asking for a beating. But his brothers didn’t want to talk about her, either. It seemed like the pictures of her had disappeared overnight—as if she’d been a figment of his imagination all along and he was the only one still clinging to it. This beach house was the only place left untouched, the only one that still bore the stamp of her years in this world.
James sat on the couch and ran his hand over the knotted afghan draped over the back of it. The thing had more holes than yarn. “She tried knitting, but she was terrible at it.” He smiled at the memory of her cursing up a storm as she finally threw it across the room. And how he’d picked it up and brought it back to her and told her that it was the most beautiful thing he’d seen. He’d been maybe all of ten.
“You don’t have to…”
“I know.” He looked around the room again, seeing the ghosts of so many good memories that he’d locked away. “I didn’t bring you out here to whine about my poor dead mother. This was just the one place I figured we could both sit down and breathe for a little bit.”
“So you didn’t bring me up here to seduce me.” She smiled as she sat next to him. “I’m horribly disappointed.”
“I think I could sneak in some seduction.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her to sprawl across his chest. It felt right to have her here in this place with the wind howling around the house and the memories of a time long gone around them. “Come out with me.”
She arched her eyebrows. “I hate to be the one to point this out, but I am out with you.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He paused and tried to figure out the best way to go about this. She hadn’t signed on for anything, let alone anything beyond sex. But seeing her sitting across the table from that kid tonight had really struck home how fucked up their situations had been since they met. He wanted a slice of normalcy, even if normalcy wasn’t normal. “Carrigan O’Malley, I’d like to take you on a date.”
Her eyebrows rose. “A date.”
“Yeah. The whole nine yards.”
“But not tonight.”
“Nope.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “Tonight I swept in and crashed your date with that idiot—you’re welcome, by the way—so it doesn’t count.”
Her lips twitched. “You are a very strange man, James Halloran.”
“Lovely, you have no idea.” He kissed her, soft and slow, taking his time because neither of them had anywhere to be, and fuck if he’d rush this. For the first time, he had her in a house with walls between them and the rest of the world—not the backseat of his car or, worse, the goddamn storage closet in a club. She went soft as he traced the seam of her lips with his tongue. He pulled back, framing her face with his hands. “Come to bed with me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Carrigan couldn’t shake the feeling that this was about to change everything. She could get up and walk away, and he’d let her. She knew James well enough to know that now. Or she could say yes to his question that wasn’t a question and jump headfirst down the rabbit hole.
I only have a little less than two weeks left. What do I really have to lose?