Patrick's Destiny (6 page)

Normally a thorough housecleaning, followed by an afternoon poring through gardening books, would have occupied her on a day like this, but today she was far too restless to sit still or even to clean. All she could think about was the amazing scene on Patrick’s boat the night before, when his three brothers had shown up out of the blue.

As she’d followed him up to the deck and listened to their exchange, she’d been stunned, but Patrick’s shock had been almost palpable. The fact that he’d turned to her and all but pleaded for her to stay had touched her
more than she wanted to admit. It had been a long time since anyone other than her students had needed her for anything. There was something about a usually strong man turning vulnerable that could twist her inside out, too. She’d fallen just a little bit in love with Patrick Devaney at that moment.

As soon as she finished tidying up in the kitchen after her breakfast, she automatically reached into the closet for her cleaning supplies, only to put them right back. The curiosity was killing her. She had to know how last night had turned out. Patrick had been given the chance she’d always dreamed about, a chance at a reconciliation with his family. Had he taken advantage of it?

She wasn’t quite brave enough to risk another visit to Patrick’s boat, but there was someone who’d have the answers she was after. Because yesterday’s balmy breezes were a thing of the past, and a cold front had turned the air wintry once more, she pulled on her sheepskin-lined jacket and headed for Jess’s.

“I was wondering when you’d turn up,” Molly called out cheerfully when Alice stepped inside the dimly lit room. The window facing the street let in precious little light even on a sunny morning like this one.

“I’m not
that
predictable,” Alice replied with a hint of indignation as she approached the bar.

“You are to someone who’s known you since grade school,” Molly said, then chided, “even if I don’t see nearly enough of you these days.”

Alice slid onto a stool and faced her friend. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, just start coming around a bit more. You class up the place.”

Alice laughed. “Hardly. If anything, having the kindergarten teacher around will kill your business.”

“Since your visiting is such a rare thing, to what do I owe the honor…or need I ask? I imagine you came by to find out what went on with Patrick after you left last night,” Molly said, giving her a sly once-over.

“Why would you think that?” Alice asked, as heat crept into her cheeks.

“Oh, please! When you were in here with the kids yesterday, you were watching the man as if he were covered in Belgian chocolate and you were in desperate need of a major fix of the stuff. You were no better last night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Alice protested indignantly.

Molly grinned. “Then I suppose it is of absolutely no interest to you that he’s sitting over in the corner, brooding over his fourth cup of coffee.”

Alice barely resisted the sudden desire to bury her burning face in her hands. “He’s here?”

“Has been for a couple of hours now. His brothers just left.”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Snippets of their conversation came back to her. “Molly, what if he heard?”

“Honey, he’s lost in his own thoughts. And I wasn’t exactly shouting, you know. I do know a little bit about being discreet.”

“Since when?” Alice asked, getting in her own barb. “Aren’t you the girl who kept a record of the boys she’d kissed on the front of her English notebook in seventh grade?”

“I’m better now,” Molly said primly. “All the juicy stuff about my love life is in the journal beside my bed.” She studied Alice intently. “So, are you going to go over there or not?”

Alice glanced across the room and spotted Patrick in
the corner. He was staring into his mug of coffee as if he’d never before seen anything so fascinating…or so sad.

Alice made a decision on impulse, something she’d done more in the past two days than she had in years. “Pour me two cups of coffee,” she told Molly.

“Want me to slip a little Irish whiskey in his? It might loosen his tongue. I tried earlier, but I couldn’t get a word out of him.”

Alice was tempted, but she shook her head. If she could get a shy five-year-old to start chattering like a magpie, surely she could deal with one stoically silent male.

Coffee in hand, she crossed the room and slid into the booth opposite Patrick. He didn’t even seem to notice her until she shoved one mug under his nose. Then he blinked and stared.

“Where’d you come from?” he asked, sounding cranky and not the least bit delighted to see her.

Relieved at the evidence that he’d heard none of Molly’s teasing, she ignored the lack of welcome. “Are you asking in the cosmic sense?”

A half smile tugged at his lips. “It’s too early in the morning for that.”

“It’s past ten.”

Clearly startled, he stared at the clock over the bar. “How the hell did that happen?”

“The usual way. Time goes by, tick-tock, minute by minute.”

“Very funny.” He sat back and studied her, the tension in his shoulders visibly easing. “So, Alice Newberry, what are you doing hanging out in a bar at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning? Do the parents of your students know where you spend your free time?”

She bit back the first response that popped into her head. It would be way too revealing to admit that this was the first Saturday morning she’d ever ventured into Jess’s. Patrick might have been lost in thought there for a minute, but he wasn’t dense. He’d likely make the connection between her presence here today and his the night before. She didn’t want him guessing that she was here to check on the outcome of his meeting with his brothers, after she’d made such a point of not intruding on it.

“Actually, I move from bar to bar so they can’t keep up with me,” she retorted. “This is my week for Jess’s.”

“How convenient for me,” he said with what sounded like complete sincerity. “Have you eaten?”

“Hours ago,” she admitted, almost regretting her early-morning habit of fixing a hearty breakfast to get her through a day that too often had no more than a few stolen minutes to grab a bite of lunch.

“Had enough coffee?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Feel like going out on the boat for a couple of hours?”

“Sure,” she said at once, telling herself it was only because he seemed eager for the company. “But for the record, I don’t know anything about fishing.”

“I know enough for both of us,” he said, tossing some money on the table and grabbing his jacket. He shrugged into it, then held hers so she could slip it on.

He gazed into her eyes as he pulled her jacket snugly around her. “Besides, I just feel like getting out on the water. The salt air clears my head. The fish’ll be there come Monday morning.”

“If you want to clear your head, are you sure you want me along?” Alice asked.

“I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t want you there,” he said. “Ask Molly,” he added, raising his voice and nodding toward the woman who was blatantly eavesdropping. “I rarely do anything I don’t want to do.”

“That’s true enough,” Molly confirmed. “Have fun, you two. And you can both thank me later.”

Patrick stared blankly at Alice. “Thank her for what?”

Alice knew but wished she didn’t. “Believe me,” she said fervently, “you don’t want to know.”

P
atrick wasn’t used to having anyone on board when he took the boat out, but Alice made a good companion. She didn’t pester him with a lot of questions. In fact, she seemed perfectly content to sit on deck with a blanket wrapped around her and her face tilted up to the sun’s rays. The wind was whipping her hair, but once again she seemed oblivious to the tangle.

“Your nose is getting sunburned,” he said, tapping her gently on the tip of it before dropping down into the chair beside her.

She blinked in surprise, then yawned. “I think I dozed off.”

“Must be my scintillating company,” he said wryly.

She glanced around. “Not that I’m nervous or anything, but if you’re sitting over here, who’s piloting the boat?”

“I dropped anchor a few minutes ago,” he explained.

“Where are we?”

“Not that far offshore, actually, just far enough away to keep from being bothered.”

She grinned. “I gather you’ve concluded that the No Trespassing sign has lost its effectiveness.”

He chuckled. “Given the parade coming down the dock yesterday, pretty much. From now on, if I want total peace and quiet, I’m moving out to sea.”

“How come you invited me along, if you want total peace and quiet?”

“Maybe I knew you’d fall asleep the second you got a good dose of sea air,” he teased, and pulled a tube of suntan lotion from his shirt pocket. He put a dab of the cream on his finger and spread it across her nose, then onto her cheeks. Her skin was so soft he lingered, reluctant to stop touching her. His gaze drifted to hers and lingered there, as well. The sudden and totally unexpected spark of desire in her eyes stunned him and sent a jolt of sexual tension racing straight through him.

Before he could think it through, he was following his instincts, leaning forward, his mouth covering hers. She uttered a faint gasp of surprise, then moved into the kiss with an eagerness that once again caught him off guard. The kiss turned greedy and hot in a flash that almost brought him to his knees. Who would have thought that the sweet little kindergarten teacher packed a wallop like that? He was shaky when he finally had the sense to pull back.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, sending yet another jolt through him. She reached out and touched his cheek. “Please. It’s been forever since anyone kissed me like that. It felt good. No, it felt great.”

Her honesty rattled him. “Alice…” The protest formed in his head but died when she took the matter
out of his hands by leaning forward and kissing him, holding on as if he had something to offer that she’d been missing for eons.

Who knew where it would have led had it not been for the blast of a ship’s horn that shattered the silence. Alice was trembling, the color in her cheeks high, when he reluctantly pulled away for the second time.

“We aren’t by any chance bobbing around out here right in the path of some cruise ship, are we?” she asked without any real evidence of fear.

“Nope. That was just a friendly greeting,” he assured her.

“And a timely one,” she said with obvious regret. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not in the habit of attacking men I barely know.”

“I kissed you first,” he reminded her, then added solemnly, “Besides, kissing isn’t about thinking. It’s about feeling.” He tilted her chin up and met her gaze. There was no mistaking her need for reassurance, so he gave it to her. “I haven’t felt like that in a long time, Alice.”

She swallowed hard, her gaze drifting away, then back as she finally admitted, “Me, neither.”

“Why is that?” he asked, wondering whether someone had broken her heart.

“Bad choices and the sudden realization that I needed to figure out why I was making them.”

“Did you reach any conclusions?”

“A few.”

“Care to share them?”

“And ruin your image of me? I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know what my image of you is,” he pointed out.

“You think I’m a little ditzy, a lot naive and very prim,” she said.

Patrick chuckled. “That was my first impression. It’s been changing quickly.”

“I probably shouldn’t ask about your current impression.”

“Probably not,” he agreed.

He looked into her eyes and instantly the laughter died on his lips. From the moment they’d met, Patrick had had the feeling that he was no longer in control, that something bigger had taken over. He’d blamed it on the circumstances of their meeting, on his brothers, on anything other than the attraction that was so obviously simmering now.

“So, what are we going to do about all of this, Alice Newberry?” he asked.

“Nothing, if we’re smart.”

Patrick grinned at that. “Then isn’t it wonderful that no one’s ever accused me of doing the smart thing? How about you?”

“I
always
do the smart thing.”

Somehow he doubted that. He had the sense that she’d only recently made a resolution to do the right thing, but that she wasn’t quite living up to it yet. He rubbed his thumb across her lips, saw the flash of excitement stir in her eyes once more. “Then I suppose one of us will have to change,” he said.

Her mouth curved into a faint hint of a smile. “I suppose so.”

He glanced sideways and gave her a lazy once-over. “You any good at change?”

“Not much.”

“Neither am I.” He reached for her hand and laced their fingers together. “How about this for now?
There’s nothing too dangerous about holding hands, is there?”

“Nothing at all,” she agreed, leaning back in the chair and closing her eyes against the sun’s glare, and quite possibly against his probing looks.

Patrick felt himself drifting off, oddly comforted by the feel of her soft, delicate hand in his much larger, rough one. What was it about a woman’s touch that had the power to soothe when nothing else worked, he wondered.

The highly emotional meeting with his brothers faded from his mind. The complications ahead didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered at this instant was the warmth of the sun on his face, the gentle rocking of the boat and the woman beside him. Life didn’t get much better than this…unless, of course, a little hot, steamy sex was added in.

He fought a grin and resisted the desire to sneak a glance at Alice. Best not to go there. That one stolen kiss of his had unleashed unexpected passion in her. While he’d never been averse to uncomplicated, energetic sex, he had a feeling slipping into bed with Alice was going to be anything but uncomplicated. Besides, he’d hate to prove his brothers right about his level of involvement with Alice only a few brief hours after heatedly denying that he had any feelings for the woman.

Yes, indeed, he thought, his eyes clamped tightly shut, definitely best not to go there.

Alice could feel Patrick’s gaze on her, but she absolutely, flatly refused to open her eyes. She was still simmering with embarrassment over her too-eager response to his kiss. What must he think of her? She’d
all but crawled into his lap the instant he’d locked lips with her. She’d turned what might have been meant as an innocent, exploratory kiss into something wild and dangerous. She’d been so startled by her uncharacteristic reaction, it was a wonder she hadn’t jumped overboard just to cool herself off.

Finally, when she felt his grip on her hand ease, she slipped her hand out of his and sighed. Risking a glance, she saw that he’d fallen asleep. His impressive chest was rising and falling with each steady breath he took. His long, dark eyelashes rested against his deeply tanned skin like smudges of coal. His lips—his magnificent, sweetly provocative lips—were curved into a half smile, as if he were dreaming something wonderful. She could have looked at him all day…and all night. The thought made her shiver with a sense of anticipation.

It would happen, too. She could feel it. The attraction wasn’t one-sided. What she’d told Patrick was true. It had been so long since she’d felt anything like it.

When she’d first left home, she’d been so overwhelmed with work and difficult college classes that she’d had little time for romance. In her senior year, with the end of school in sight, she’d finally allowed herself the freedom to date and promptly fallen for the first man who’d asked her out.

Greg had turned out to be more interested in sharing her apartment than her life. She’d caught him at home, in their bed, with another classmate. An hour later everything he owned was on the lawn outside and he was sputtering protests and explanations even as she slammed the door in his face. It had taught her a lesson about getting involved too quickly.

Or at least she thought it had until she fell for the
next man she went out with almost as rapidly. That hadn’t ended quite as badly or as painfully, but it had been doomed from the outset. She would have seen that if she’d given the relationship a hard look at the beginning.

She’d spent the next couple of years taking a good long look at herself and her tendency to fall in love at the drop of a hat. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out that she was trying to find a replacement for the family she’d turned her back on. As the song said, she’d been looking for love in all the wrong places.

Until yesterday she’d thought she’d broken the pattern, but now here she was, all-too-fascinated with Patrick, and they hadn’t so much as had a first date yet. Well, she wasn’t going to make the same old mistake, no matter how tempting it might be. She was going to be smart this time, even if kissing him gave her a momentary sense of being connected and filled a huge void in her life.

Besides, there were flashing neon warning signs practically posted all around the man. He was a self-professed loner. He had major issues with his family. He was drifting through his life, quite literally at the moment, she thought wryly. He was the last man on earth she had any business falling for. She didn’t even have to take one of those long, hard looks at the situation to figure that much out. Not that her hormones seemed to give two figs about any of that. Her body seemed to care only that he was a top-of-the-line kisser.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his voice husky with sleep.

“Sure,” she said, a little too brightly. “Why?”

“You were frowning.”

“Just wrestling with some old demons,” she said, keeping her voice light.

“Who won?”

“I suppose that remains to be seen,” she said honestly.

“Tell me about yourself,” he encouraged, regarding her with unmistakable interest.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“You’re from Widow’s Cove, though, right?”

She nodded.

“Why don’t I remember you from school? I thought I knew all the beautiful girls.”

She grinned at the puzzlement in his voice. “I’m sure you did,” she said. “I wasn’t beautiful, and I was two years older, but I certainly knew who you were.”

“Is that so?” he said with a hint of all-male arrogance.

She ticked off the obvious reason why the awareness had been so one-sided. “Star football player even as a sophomore. Advance placement in most of your classes. Girls falling at your feet. You were already a legend.”

“And you let that scare you off?” he taunted.

“Absolutely. Besides, senior girls did not give sophomore boys a second look,” she said airily, as if that had had anything at all to do with it. “We didn’t want anyone thinking we were so desperate we had to rob the cradle.”

“Oh, I think I could have held my own with you.”

“No question about it,” Alice said. “But senior girls had a reputation to maintain, even the quiet ones like me.”

“So, who did you date?”

“No one. I just had one goal back then, to get away.
I wasn’t about to let romance interfere. I headed for Boston the day after graduation.”

His gaze narrowed. “And never came back?”

“Not until last summer.”

“What happened last summer to finally get you back home?”

“My parents were killed in a car accident,” she said, surprised that she could actually say the words without getting choked up.

His expression immediately sobered. “I’m sorry. That must have been rough.”

“You have no idea. We’d never reconciled. I will regret that till the day I die.” She gave him a sideways look. “Let that be a lesson to you. We never know how long we’re going to have to mend fences with the people we love.”

“Some fences can’t be mended,” Patrick said.

“They must be,” she insisted.

“Alice, I can see where you’re coming from, but trust me, in my case, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If you understood the whole story—”

“Tell me,” she urged.

He shook his head. “There’s no point. The past is what it is.”

“And your brothers, where do they fit in?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Will you be seeing them again?”

“I agreed to go to Boston in a few days for Michael’s wedding. After that, who knows?” he said with a shrug, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other.

Alice ignored the shrug and went with what she thought she saw in his eyes, a need so raw that it probably scared him to death. She could relate to that only too well.

“Don’t leave it to chance,” she told him. “Do whatever it takes to keep them in your life.”

His jaw tensed. “Again, not your call to make.”

“I know that,” she said impatiently. “But I also know what it’s like to live with regrets, to know that it’s too late to fix things. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I don’t want that for you.”

“Why do you give a damn about any of this?” he asked. “You hardly know me.”

“I know you better than you think,” she said. “For a lot of years, I
was
you. I was angry and resentful and completely closed off from my parents. I made them miserable, and I lost something important that I can never get back. It’s not too late for you to avoid the mistakes I made.”

Patrick’s expression softened ever so slightly. “I see where you’re coming from, I really do, but I have to handle this my way, Alice. Maybe it’s better if we steer clear of this particular topic from here on out.”

She shook her head. “We can’t, not if we’re going to be friends. It’ll be like the elephant in the room that we’re trying to pretend isn’t there. We can disagree over what to do about it, but we can’t ignore it, Patrick.”