This again? Lord, she’d forgotten how pushy Keely could be. What she hadn’t forgotten was Ronan Murphy standing in his kitchen, looking messy and fierce and frustrated and so very sexy, muscles rippling under his tanned skin. Those memories ambushed her constantly.
She thought about him far more than she should...
Keely didn’t wait for her to answer. “Poor Ronan is pulling his hair out trying to work and look after them.”
Why was that her problem? There were agencies and nannies in Boston—surely finding one wasn’t the impossibility Keely made it out to be?
Before she could respond, Tanna, Ronan’s petite sister, jumped into the conversation. “Listen, I’ve heard some stories about my brothers when they were young that would curl your toes. I suspect Ro is raising himself. Times two.”
Joa accepted her glass of wine, smiling at Tanna’s fond but frank assessment of her brother. She could easily imagine Ronan raising hell.
Joa looked around and didn’t see Sadie, the one person she actually knew. “Sadie isn’t here?”
Keely shook her head. “She’s gone to Virginia to do some research on our Homer.”
“Our possible Homer,” Joa corrected her. There was no point in getting their hopes up.
Keely ignored her and raised her eyebrows at Tanna. “How do you feel about becoming an aunt again?”
Tanna smiled. “I’m over the moon. I just hope this one is a girl. I don’t know if this family can cope with more boys.”
Keely laughed. “But can you imagine Carrick with a daughter? He was super-protective of you growing up. Can you imagine how overprotective he will be of his daughter?”
Tanna pulled a face. “Sadie will keep him in line. I hope.”
Darby sucked on her straw, her attention captured by a commotion at the door. “Well, wow.”
They all turned around to look. Four impossibly good-looking guys stood by the entrance shedding their coats.
“Darby Brogan-Huntley, you are so married!” Tanna said, laughter in her voice.
Ignoring the thought that none of those men were as sexy as Ronan, Joa jumped into the conversation. “But I’m not. In fact, I’m very, very single. Who are they?”
Keely slapped her arms across her chest and glared at the foursome who were heading toward the pool room to the left of the bar. “Those are the Seymour brothers. The one on the far left is the executor of our estate, Joa, Wilfred ‘Dare’ Seymour. How can you not know that?”
Well, easily, since she’d only very briefly met the man, and, at the time, she’d been coping with soul sucking grief over Isabel’s death. Since returning home she’d heard a litany of complaints about Dare Seymour but Keely had never once mentioned that he was tall, dark and sinfully sexy.
Purely to wind Keely up, Joa placed her tongue in her cheek. “He’s really hot. I think I need to be formally introduced to him.”
“Do it and die,” Keely seethed.
When none of them could contain their laughter, Keely tossed her hair and defiantly downed her glass of wine. “This is a girls’ night out and we’re not going to hit on, ogle or drool over any men.”
Aw, but wasn’t that one of the joys of a girls’ night out? At least for single women?
Oh, well, it didn’t matter since none of the Seymour clan could hold a candle to the current star of her sexual fantasies.
In Richmond, Sadie sat cross-legged on the bed in her very boring hotel room and squinted at the appalling picture on the wall opposite her. Call her spoiled but she’d spent a lot of time in Carrick’s house lately and his art collection was fantastic. Looking at generic, boring images as she went to bed was a hell of a crash back to earth. And reality.
She loved Carrick’s house, loved the big rooms and the molded ceilings and original black-and-white-tiled floors. Okay, it was a little tired decor-wise, but nothing a paint job, new drapes and a few scatter cushions couldn’t sort out.
When the baby came, they’d have to remove the precious and breakable items from the desks and tables, and put childproof locks on the cupboards and a security gate at the top of the stairs...
Oh, God, she was acting like she was going to live there, like she had a say in how to decorate and childproof his house.
She didn’t...
She was just the mother of his child, and his current lover.