Besides, that smooth, authoritative woman had disappeared and the prickly, insecure, hissing creature was back. He exhaled his irrational irritation and reached out to sooth the hackles he’d raised on Esa. She hesitated for a second when he pulled her toward him but then sank her head and pressed it into his chest.
“I’m really sorry,” she muttered against his shirt.
He placed his chin on the top of her head and inhaled the scent of her fragrant shampoo. “No. I’m sorry. I should be thanking you for helping out with Grandma Glory that way instead of provoking you. You handled that situation like a pro. Did you use to work as a nurse or something?”
“Er, something like that,” she said almost unintelligibly into his chest. He prodded her shoulder and she looked up at him. “It was really nothing though. You just have to be familiar with the signs—”
“It was something. Thanks.”
His gaze narrowed on her parted lips. She had the prettiest, most kissable mouth he’d ever seen in his life—full, pink lips that always were begging to be sampled…to be penetrated. Just thinking about the honeyed cavern inside made his cock thicken with a stab of undiluted lust. The potent memory of her kneeling between his thighs, using that mouth for the sweetest of sins, flashed graphically into his brain
The arousal that suddenly coursed through his veins felt shockingly strong and imperative. It amazed him to realize that he honestly didn’t know if he could wait for the length of time it took to get back into the city in order to have her. She had said something about a few nights in bed, hadn’t she? A few could technically be…what? Six? Seven? A dozen?
Maybe he could bargain for an extension at the end of his term?
“Let’s go to my place,” he suggested gruffly.
“Oh…all right.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her hastily toward the door.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later Esa unlocked the door of Rachel’s car so that Finn could squeeze his long frame into the passenger seat. Esa had been puzzled by his terse explanation that they would take separate vehicles from his mother’s house. Before they’d separated he’d told her to follow him to the restricted construction area off the 59th Street overpass on the Dan Ryan.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he had told her before he’d ducked his head and kissed her through the car window, quick and potent, and then left to get in his own vehicle.
“Why are you leaving your truck here?” Esa asked, eyeing the white pickup truck where he’d parked it next to a bulldozer that read Madigan Construction on the side of it.
“I don’t need it. I’ve got my car at home and I can always take the ‘L’ to get to work. I usually only use the truck to get back and forth along the highway during work hours.”
Esa couldn’t help but feel like an insider as she gazed at the huge machinery and the brand-new stretch of pristine white road that led just inside the barricade. On the other side of the cement barricade traffic moved at a sluggish thirty miles per hour even at eleven-fifteen at night.
Finn readjusted the seat so that it went back as far as possible.
“When I was with your Grandma Glory earlier she said that you have master’s degrees both in architecture and engineering,” Esa stated baldly.
He paused for a fraction of a second in the process of pulling on his seat belt.
“Yeah. Is the number of degrees I have important to you or something?” he asked with a stiff jaw as he fastened his seat belt.
“Yes…I mean no, not in some kind of nasty way. I’m not…you know, hanging around you for your diplomas,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “It just struck me when she said it because you’d never told me. Jeez, Julia really did a number on you, didn’t she?” Esa mumbled under her breath after a strained silence.
He shifted in his seat, seeming entirely too big for the confines of the sleek sports car. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about Julia. I’m sorry about what happened last weekend. I was as shocked about Julia showing up as you were.”
“I know. I mean, it seemed pretty obvious that you were surprised. Besides, you don’t owe me any explanations,” Esa added with a sinking feeling, thinking about Finn saying something similar earlier.
She felt his gaze on her. “I do. For the discomfort you experienced—I at least owe you something for that.”
Despite the anxiety the topic of Julia provoked, Esa’s lips twitched slightly. Molly Madigan would approve of her son’s manners.
“So…Julia Weatherell was the fiancée they you told me about. The one who walked out when you decided to take over your dad’s business?” Esa prompted.
He nodded. She listened while Finn explained in more detail about his father and uncle dying and leaving a faltering business, his decision to sell the architecture and design firm that he’d developed with a friend, the resulting fights between Julia and him and her ultimate decision to leave.
“She was dead set against me selling my shares in the firm to Jason. When she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind about getting Dad’s business on solid ground again she decided to leave. I guess she felt like I was saying my family was more important than she was.”
“If that’s the way she felt, she was being unfair. You weren’t choosing your family over her. It didn’t have anything to do with her,” Esa said sourly. Although of course Julia would have made it all about her—her needs, her expectations, her image. Never mind the fact that her fiancé was suffering from the abrupt death of his father and that his family required support. Never mind that Finn had needed someone in his corner.