Page 21 of Hot Irish Halloween

“Not another interruption, Penny.” Jack slid his hand up her dress to her thigh, and she squeaked when his hand touched thick silky fabric. “What’s this, shorts?”

Looking flustered, Penny put her hands over her face. “Yes. Please let me go take them off, and I’ll be right back.”

“What? Hell, no. This is my job tonight.”

“But…they’re tough to get off.”

Jack sighed. “You think a former professional athlete can’t get off a pair of tight shorts? You keep underestimating me.”

“No, I’ve gotta go.”

With all his might, Jack reined in his raging desire, rolling onto his side so she could sit up and then scoot off the bed.

“Be right back,” she said with a shy grin that could have melted stone.

“Please hurry,” Jack urged, and she left with a wicked laugh.

With the temptation of Penny’s sweet ass out of reach, sanity and sense gradually returned to Jack’s dazed head. It gave him time to look around. See if there were any hints he could glean about who Penny was when she was by herself.

Her bedroom was small, with a neatly made bed and a few clothes draped on a corner chair. The armoire in the corner was also small. There was a guitar, a fiddle, a violin, and a banjo onstands near a wall waiting to be played and a dresser with an array of bottles and framed portraits. And next to the bed, on a nightstand, there was a lamp and a single 8x10.

It was Penny and Brendan in a black-and-white wedding photo. She was laughing with her eyes closed while he held her possessively and gazed at the camera. Brendan’s light eyes seemed to be staring at him as if asking, “What are you doing in my wife’s bed?”

All at once, the cock that had been raging to fuck this man’s wife was suddenly not quite so hard anymore. Not because he felt any guilt about this. Penny was a free woman. It was because she had her wedding photo on her nightstand where she could see it every night, where Brendan could spring from paper and glass and follow her into her dreams. It was because there were more photos of Brendan on the dresser, which Jack examined when he got up to have a closer look.

Suddenly, in the grip of a dangerous curiosity, he followed the pictures as if hiking a trail back into their past. Downstairs in the living room, pictures of her and Brendan were on a mantle over the fireplace, from adults to teenagers to cute kids with teeth missing. Along with a tiny army of crocheted animals he assumed she’d made were the notes for Brendan’s book open on her desk.

He’d known they’d been childhood friends from her bio. He’d already done the math and knew Penny had spent seven years being Brendan’s wife and ten years being his widow. But to count up the numbers, to really understand that she’d spent nearly forty-two years loving this man, was a punch to the gut.

Brendan’s pictures, Brendan’s book. The man might as well still be living in this house. Maybe it held only enough space for the two of them. How the fuck was a new man supposed to make room for himself in this? The idea of it seemed next to impossible.

Then he took a pause and a deep breath. He needed to get a fucking grip. Here he was, jealous of a dead man who’d probably been a good husband to her, a man who’d probably loved her unconditionally. He should have been happy she’d had that kind of love in her life instead of wishing Brendan had never existed and it had been him she’d built that life with.

It was going to take some time for Penny to accept what he knew, that Brendan’s time as the man in her life was over. It was his time now, his and Penny’s alone. For the first time in his forty-three years on earth, a future with a woman seemed more than possible. It was inevitable. He had to give her the time she needed to understand that.

“What are you doing?”

Jack hadn’t noticed Penny’s arrival. She was staring at him from the bottom of the stairs, suddenly looking uncertain.

Touching a photo of her with what looked like her mother, Jack turned back to the desk. “I was just looking at your pictures. Your family. And your late husband. He’s in every room. You must have loved him a lot,” Jack said reflectively.

Immediately, Penny stiffened. “Does it make you uncomfortable? Because I’m not putting any of his pictures away.”

Jack shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Well, I’m kinda getting the feeling you are.”

She was on the defensive now. And he was sorry he’d said anything.

“Penny —”

“The puppy,” she interjected suddenly. Turning away, she wouldn’t look at him.

“Trixie? Oh, shit.” Jack realized he hadn’t thought about much beyond getting Penny’s dress off since they’d left the restaurant. He rubbed his face, feeling the beginnings of the scruff that would need shaving the next morning. “Fuck, I forgot.”

“Yeah, you’re a bad dog dad,” she said with a high-pitched, nervous giggle. Penny wiped her hands on her dress as if her palms were sweating. She headed for the door, and he followed.

“I’m right around the corner. I can go get her and bring her by so you can meet her,” Jack suggested. He didn’t like the tenor of his own voice. It sounded fucking needy.

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