She slithered down so that she could punctuate her words with little kisses over his shoulders and chest. “I arrived at the shop precisely thirty minutes before opening, in order to see to the morning paperwork and check any displays that might require updating. Thirty minutes for a proper lunch, fifteen minutes, exactly, at four for a cup of tea, then close shop and walk home by that same route.”
She worked her way up his throat. “Mmmm. Watched the news during dinner—must keep up with current affairs. Read a chapter of a good book before bed. Except for Wednesdays. Wednesdays I went wild and took in an interesting film. And on my half day, I would go over to my mother’s to lecture her.”
Though her pretty mouth was quite a distraction, he paid attention to her words, and the tone of them. “You lectured your mother?”
“Oh, yes.” She nibbled at his ear. “My beautiful, frivolous, delightful mother. How I must have irritated her. She’s been married three times, engaged double that, at least. It never works out, and she’s heartbroken about it for, oh, about an hour and a half.”
With a laugh, Kayleen lifted her head again. “That’s not fair, of course, but she manages to shake it all off and never lose her optimism about love. She forgets to pay her bills, misses appointments, never knows the correct time, and has never been known to be able to find her keys. She’s wonderful.”
“You love her very much.”
“Yes, very much.” Sighing now, Kayleen pillowed her head on Flynn’s shoulder. “I decided when I was very young that it was my job to take care of her. That was after her husband number two.”
He combed his fingers through her flower-bedecked hair. “Did you lose your father?”
“No, but you could say he lost us. He left us when I was six. I suppose you could call him frivolous, too, which was yet another motivation for me to be anything but. He never settled into the family business well. Or into marriage, or into fatherhood. I hardly remember him.”
He stroked her hair, said nothing. But he was beginning to worry. “Were you happy, in that life?”
“I wasn’t unhappy. Brennan’s was important to me, maybe all the more so because it wasn’t important to my father. He shrugged off the tradition of it, the responsibility of it, as carelessly as he shrugged off his wife and his daughter.”
“And hurt you.”
“At first. Then I stopped letting it hurt me.”
Did you? Flynn wondered. Or is that just one more pretense?
“I thought everything had to be done a certain way to be done right. If you do things right, people don’t leave,” she said softly. “And you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen next. My uncle and grandfather gradually let me take over the business because I had a knack for it, and they were proud of that. My mother let me handle things at home because, well, she’s just too good-natured not to.”
She sighed again, snuggled into him. “She’s going to get married again next month, and she’s thrilled. One of the reasons I took this trip now is because I wanted to get away from it, from those endless plans for yet another of her happy endings. I suppose I hurt her feelings, leaving the way I did. But I’d have hurt them more if I’d stayed and spoke my mind.”
“You don’t like the man she’ll marry?”
“No, he’s perfectly nice. My mother’s fiancés are always perfectly nice. Funny, since I’ve been here I haven’t worried about her at all. And I imagine, somehow, she’s managing just fine without me picking at her. The shop’s undoubtedly running like clockwork, and the world continues to spin. Odd to realize I wasn’t indispensable after all.”
“To me you are.” He wrapped his arms around her, rolled over so he could look down at her. “You’re vital to me.”
“That’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever said to me.” It was better, wasn’t it? she asked herself. Even better than “I love you.” “I don’t know what time it is, or even what day. I don’t need to know. I’ve never eaten supper in bed unless I was ill. Never danced in a forest in the moonlight, never made love in a bed of flowers. I’ve never known what it was like to be so free.”
“Happy, Kayleen.” He took her mouth, a little desperately. “You’re happy.”
“I love you, Flynn. How could I be happier?”
He wanted to keep her loving him. Keep her happy. He wanted to keep her beautifully naked and steeped in pleasures.
More than anything, he wanted to keep her.
The hours were whizzing by so quickly, tumbling into days so that he was losing track of time himself. What did time matter now, to either of them?