Page 13 of Intimately Faithful

It was probably the sexiest four minutes she’d spent in a long time and air whooshed out of her lungs.

“Will you be standing there long, or do you want to come and eat, Aoife?”

Oh, God. There went her cheeks rushing with blood and Aoife, like she’d been raised in monkey school, stumbled fully into the room, with the gurgling girl in her arms as her only shield.

He turned then, and the breath caught in her throat.

Thank God he didn’t offer a smile, or she might have died on the spot.

“I’ll eat, thank you,” she answered, feeling timid in front of him in the daylight.

Which was crazy. No one knew Danny better than she did.

“Can I make a bottle for Misha?”

“Already done,” he nodded to the table where a bottle was cooling along with a small bowl of what looked like smooth oatmeal.

Something cracked in her chest.

“Thank you, Danny.” She croaked.

She was afraid if she said more now, her words would be an incoherent messy jumble through sheer exhaustion and fear. She’d grown up in what anyone would call a rough life. Her parents were no good drunks. Her two brothers were thieves and con men who didn’t think anything of stealing from Aoife if they thought they could sell it on for a profit.

She was given to a man she loathed in order to do right by her family and still the fear she’d witnessed this week was something brand new.

It put a coldness in Aoife’s bones until she heard only the rattling inside her skin.

Every step she’d taken over the last seven years had been wrong.

It was as if she couldn’t find her way back to rightness again.

She was so lost and had been for the longest time, that was a certainty.

She had no family worthy of asking for help.

This whole craptastic show started because of them.

Her da was a drunk, her mother not much better. Alcoholics ravaged through families until there was only waste land left and her family was littered with them. Aoife knew that more than most, it was the one reason she never took a drop of alcohol.

If there was a gold medal for addiction, Flanagan’s would be on the podium… if they could find their way out of the pub. Thankfully, both of her parents were across the world and she was in no rush to ever see them again. Did that sound cruel for a daughter to say? Maybe if they hadn’t sold her to the highest bidder to pay off gambling debts she could think more favorable.

Misha was almost finished with her breakfast when she realized she’d sat there for minutes not saying anything. It was only when Danny pushed himself off from leaning on the counter that her heart stumbled over itself, watching him from the corner of her eye.

“Let’s be seeing how that blister is,” he said nonchalantly, unaware he’d set off a stampeding thrumming throughout her limbs. The tingling sensation only intensified when he suddenly dropped to his knees in front of her and Aoife bit back her whimper.

He smelled incredible. Cedar and fresh linen.

The smell of a man she remembered as much as she did her own skin.

How could he be so nice to her after everything she’d said and done?

I can’t marry you, Danny-boy. We were stupid kids making grown up plans.

Because her begging heart longed for any passage of kindness, she let him roll up the leg of the pants and clean her blistered ankle once again. The brush of his long fingers were torture and if not for the baby draining the last of her milk within her arms, Aoife might have done something so stupid by touching his hair, his cheek, his very grown up kissable lips.

She was a woman who loved him … would always love him … and didn’t have the right to express it.

The way he went on glancing at her, felt as it always had … old souls reconnecting.

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