“My father?” Mick gripped her shoulders. “What are you saying, Tess?”
“I met an old man in City Park, and he told me how he’d been looking for his son for years.” She caught his arms. “Mick, he described you.”
“Ahh, Tess. Tess, my girl.” Mick lifted one of her hands to his lips and kissed it. “There must be a thousand men who look like me.”
“Never. Not a single one. You’re special, Mick Flannigan.”
“You could be a bit prejudiced,” he said, but he was pleased all the same. He hadn’t felt special in years, not since he’d left Tess, as a matter of fact. “Tess, my darling, you’ve probably come across a lonely old man who touched that tender heart of yours. You were always picking up scraggly, broken-down creatures.”
“Casey’s a bit scraggly, but he’s not broken down. In fact, he’d be quite elegant if his clothes fit.”
“Casey?”
“That’s his name. Irish, like yours. And his eyes...”Her own eyes glowed as she talked. “You should see them, Mick. Exactly like yours. As blue as the bonny blue sky.”
Mick got caught up in her dream. His father. He could picture him, tall and elegant, his dark hair graying at the temples, his speech rich with Irish cadences.
“I’ll just take a look at this man, Tess. Where is he?”
“In the car.” She grabbed his hand and fairly tugged him back through the terminal and out the front door where the car waited with Casey inside. “There he is, Mick.”
Mick saw the snow-white hair and beard, the weathered old face. For a moment he expected the heavens to open and choirs of angles to sing. He expected a ghostly hand to write across the sky, Mick Flannigan, this is your father.
But the dream lasted only a moment. He didn’t believe in impossible dreams anymore.
The old man turned his head as Mick opened the door. Their eyes met. Casey was a con artist. Mick knew it immediately. Uncle Arthur had been the consummate con artist. It would have been impossible for Mick not to recognize one when he saw him.
“My name is Mick Flannigan.”
He held out his hand. The old man took it in a surprisingly firm grip for one who looked so frail.
“I’m Casey.” Casey stepped from the car, moving as elegantly as if he were stepping from the podium in front of a symphony orchestra. His tuxedo sagged around him as he faced Mick.
“Tess thinks you might be my father,” Mick said, giving him a straight look that said, I know your kind.
“Well, now.” Casey tilted his head this way and that, like a cocky old mockingbird. He cast a sidelong glance at Tess, then slid his gaze back to Mick. Finally he took a step backward. “Alas. You are not my son.”
“How do you know I’m not? I understand you haven’t seen your son in years.”
Tears sprang to Casey’s eyes, and Mick was impressed. Damn the old con artist. Mick had always admired a good one, and Casey was good.
“A father would recognize his own son.” Casey placed his hand over his baggy suit somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “I would know in here.”
“Oh,” said Tess, disappointment clearly written in her face. “Mick, what are we going to do?”
Mick decided that fate was either a trickster or a genius. His plane was still on the tarmac, and Tess was looking at him with tears in her eyes. He didn’t believe in spitting in the face of fate.
“Tess, my darling, what we’re going to do is help Casey.”
“Do you mean that, Mick? You’ll help?”
“Now, Tess. When have you known me to turn a stranger from my door? Of course I’ll help.”
He thought Casey looked a mite relieved. As well he should. Mick would have a talk with him later, a very long, very private talk.
But for now, his main concern was protecting Tess. He didn’t know how she had managed all those years without him. How could he have forgotten her penchant for dragging home strays? When they’d been at Mississippi State, she’d always been rescuing lame dogs and starving cats. Rescuing a human being was a different matter. There could be a certain element of danger in getting tangled up in the affairs of another human being.
He’d watch over her, though. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, so a few more days wouldn’t matter. He’d get this business with Casey settled. Then he’d say good-bye to Tess. Really say good-bye.
Mick draped his arm around Tess’s shoulders. She had such slim, elegant shoulders. Fragile feeling. He’d never noticed that about her before.
“Why don’t we gather Mr. Casey’s things?”
“Just Casey,” the old man interrupted.
“Okay. Then we’ll go back to Johnny’s house and make plans.”
Mick climbed behind the wheel of the car, and Casey directed them back to City Park.
“You left your things there?” Tess asked as they followed Casey back toward the redwood bench.
“No. I live there.”
“You live there?” Tess looked at Mick, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even seem surprised.
“It’s not so bad, really.” Casey led them into the woods until they came upon a large cardboard box. Several black garbage bags covered the outside of the box, but some of the lettering showed through. It was a refrigerator box. “Of course, when it rains, my house gets soggy, then I have to go out and find a new one.”
He disappeared into the box. Tess and Flannigan could hear him inside, singing softly to himself.
“In the sweet by and by. We will meet on that beautiful shore. In the sweet by and byyy...”
“Tess.” Mick tipped up her face. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up about this old man.”
“I only want to help him.”
“We will. We’ll do what we can.”
“Thank you for staying, Mick.”
“I don’t have an adoring public waiting for me where I’m going, Tess.”
“Where are you going?”
“I was thinking of Texas. Remember how we used to talk about Texas?”
“You were going to fly, and I was going to wait for you in a field of bluebonnets, singing to our babies.” Tess’s eyes were misty.
“It was a good dream once.”
“It still would be... if we were in love.”
“Yes... if we were in love.”
During the course of their conversation they had stepped back some distance from the box, and Mick had unconsciously moved so close to Tess, they were joined shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. He separated himself from her.
“I think what we should do,” he said, “is find a place to sleep tonight, and then bright and early tomorrow morning take Casey to the Welfare Department so those people can take care of him.”
“You said you’d help.” Tess looked at him with accusing eyes.
“I’m going to.” He waved his hand toward the refrigerator box. “Look at that, Tess. He lives in a cardboard box. He wears threadbare clothes. The Welfare Department will feed and clothe him and find him decent housing.”
“What about his son?”
“How do you know he even has a son?”
“When did you get to be so cynical, Mick Flannigan? He told me so.”
“Tess...”
Flannigan reached for her, but she flung herself away from him, waving her arms dramatically.
“Just go on and leave us alone. We don’t need your help. I’ll find Casey’s son all by myself.”
“Dammit, Tess. You’re being stubborn.”
“You’re being heartless.”
“Wanting to give the old man clothes and food and a place to live is not heartless.”
What he should do, he thought, was get into his Skyhawk and fly off and never look back. Tess Jones was nothing but a passel of trouble. She was hard to handle besides.
They glared at each other in the waning light of day. Inside the refrigerator box, the singing had stopped.
“Look, Tess. I only stayed to keep you out of trouble—”
“Keep me out of trouble!” She jutted out her chin and glared at him. Everything about her sparked with anger, her eyes, her hair, her body. “The only trouble I ever had was with you.”
His hot blood roared in his ears, and he turned his back to her and stalked off.
“Good. Leave!” she yelled. “You always did leave when the going got tough!”
“Hell.” He stalked back to her, then caught her and dragged her close, tipping up her chin with his hand. “Do you want me to help look for a man who probably doesn’t exist?”
“No. You go to Texas or Timbuktu or wherever your wandering feet take you, and I’ll look for Casey’s son.”
“Tess...” He could never stay mad at her, especially when he was touching her. “Ahhh, Tess, my girl.” He folded her next to his heart and pressed his face into her fragrant hair. “For you. I’ll chase Casey’s rainbow.”
With her face against his shoulder she smiled. “I knew you would all along. You’re nothing but a big old soft-hearted teddy bear.”
“Humph,” he muttered, but he was pleased all the same. He’d missed being somebody’s teddy bear.
He released her, then stepped back and lit a cigar. It gave him something to do with his hands. Then he said, “I’ll go with you on this wild-goose chase, but only for a little while, only until you can see the truth.”
“We’ll see.” She smiled her satisfied Mona Lisa smile. It was the one she always smiled when she knew she’d won a battle with Flannigan.
He clamped his teeth down hard on his cigar. He’d never stopped loving her, that much was true. But at the moment he was very close to being smitten by her all over again. Being in love and knowing he had to be noble was one thing. But being smitten was something else entirely. Being smitten caused a man to do impulsive things, foolish things.
He blew smoke rings into the night and watched them disintegrate. The search for Casey’s mythical son could possibly be the most dangerous journey of Flannigan’s life.
Joy bubbled in his soul and spilled over. His laughter startled a rabbit nearby.
“What’s so funny, Mick?”
“Remember the last trip we took together, Tess?”
“How could I forget? That old hearse broke down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and we ended up in one of those barns with a hex sign painted on the side.”
“Remember the look on that old lady’s face when she saw the hearse? She thought we had come to take her husband.”
“But he ain’t dead yet,” Tess said, imitating their long-ago hostess, ‘‘he’s just drunk.”
She reached for his hand, and he took it. “That was a long time ago, Mick.”
“Yes. A long time ago.”
“Well, here I am.” Casey emerged from his box.
He was carrying a small bundle tied with an old blue bandanna and a walking cane with a tarnished gold head. He smiled at both of them, showing two rows of very white teeth, a little too large for his mouth.
“I feel like Dorothy setting off to the Land of Oz.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be any magic this trip, Casey.” Mick took his bundle and his arm, and led him toward the car.
“You never know,” Casey said.
o0o
They ended up that night in two rooms at a small motel outside Tupelo—Tess in one room and Casey and Flannigan in the other. Johnny had insisted they stay with him, but they hadn’t wanted to impose. They had collected Tess’s cat and her clothes; then Johnny had driven them to a car-rental agency. The sturdy Ford Mick had rented stood outside the door of unit four.
Lights glowed in the windows of units three and four, and then shortly after midnight the lights in unit four went out. Mick lay in the dark with his feet hanging off the end of the bed. Motel beds were always too short for him.
He listened for sounds from the other room. Through the thin walls he heard the television click on. A short time later it clicked off. The plumbing between the walls rattled. Tess was showering.
He rolled himself in his sheet and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Tess with water beading her skin.
Now she was singing. He raised himself on his elbow, listening. The words sounded true and clear through the partition that separated them. Tess was singing the hauntingly beautiful love song from Carousel, If I Loved You.
Tears squeezed under his eyelids, and he was not ashamed. One of the good things Uncle Arthur had taught him was that it was okay for boys to cry. Men too.
“Think of me my darling,” he said. Then he lay back on his pillow and drifted asleep, lulled by the sound of Tess’s voice.
o0o
Tess huddled under her covers, gravitating naturally toward the warmest spot in the bed. The spot was not only warm, it was also big and bulky and solid. She hugged her arms around it and snuggled close, blissful, even in her sleep.
The warm spot moved, and she followed it, hooking her legs around it this time so it would remain steady. When it moved again, she came out of her slumber.
She sat up in bed, one strap of her nightgown sliding down her shoulder. When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw why her warm spot had kept moving.
“Mick Flannigan, what are you doing in my bed?”
“Lie back down and go to sleep, Tess.”
He rolled over, taking half the covers with him, and presented her with his broad, naked back.
“And you without a stitch of clothes on, I’ll bet.” She ran her hands under the covers to check out her theory.
“It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie,” he grunted, moving out of her reach. He yawned hugely, stretching his arms over his head. Then he crossed them on his chest and shut his eyes.
“You look like something freshly laid out in a casket. Get up from there, Flannigan.”
He sat up and propped himself against the headboard.
“Here I am, and here I’ll stay. I’d planned on getting a good night’s sleep, but if you want to chatter, I’m awake now, and I’ll listen for about two minutes.”
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Casey snores.”
“So do you. Since when has a little snoring bothered you?”
“Since it sounds like a freight train.”
Tess flopped against the headboard beside him, pulling up the strap of her gown.
“I don’t suppose I need even bother to ask how you got in.”
“I’m the one who taught you to pick locks, remember?”
“It was one of the more useful things you taught me.”
Now that she was wide awake and her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she glanced around her room. Mick’s clothes lay in a heap on top of her sequined shoes. One toe was peeking out from under his jeans, winking at her.
The sight of their clothes tangled together made her nostalgic.
“Flannigan, what am I going to do with you?”
He swiveled his head so he could see her better. Her hair shone in the dark, and her gown was a soft rosy sheen that beckoned to him. Desire smote him so hard he had to clamp his jaws together to keep from groaning.
Silently he cursed the impulse that had driven him to her bed. What was he doing? Sure, Casey had been snoring. But that wasn’t the reason he had slipped through the darkness and picked Tess’s lock and climbed in beside her sleek, warm body.
The reason was insanity. Plain and simple. Tess Jones was driving him insane. It had started when she’d sauntered up the walk at Johnny’s house, and every day it had got worse. Every song she sang drove him closer to the edge. Every time she laughed, he felt pieces of himself flying off and landing at her feet. Every time she touched him, a big chunk of his heart broke off and became hers forever.
Now, he was broken into a million pieces, and only Tess could put him back together again. Honor and nobility be damned. He was in her bed because he wanted her. Selfish, that’s what he was. The question was not what she was going to do, but what he was going to do.
“What you’re going to do, Tess, my girl, is lie back down on that side of the bed and get a good night’s sleep.” He reached for her with the intention of tucking her in. His plan was to be matter of fact and nonchalant so she wouldn’t see how much he wanted her. He was also going to stuff plenty of covers between them so he wouldn’t be tempted to change his mind.
When he touched her, she trembled. Tucking her in wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d thought.
“We used to kiss, Flannigan,” she whispered, her eyes huge and shining. “We used to kiss until one of us got sleepy.”
“I remember.” God, he remembered only too well. He scooted closer so he could handle her better—tucking her in—and she smiled at him. He felt as if a jagged blade had pierced his heart.
“If we got started now, we might not stop.”
“Speak for yourself, Flannigan.” She reached up and curled her hands in his hair. “I can stop with you anytime I want to.”
He called on all the saints he knew to protect him from his own folly. He should never have come to her bed.
“That’s good, Tess. You’ve learned some restraint in your old age.”
“Restraint!” She lunged at him. He caught her, and they both tumbled back to the mattress. She battered at his chest, her eyes blazing as brightly as her hair. “You let go of me, Mick Flannigan. I don’t need you to tell me how to behave.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ve never needed you. Never!”
He was astonished. And alarmed. He sat up and straddled her, pinning her to the bed. Her fists kept flailing his chest. He ignored them.
“Easy girl. Calm down.”
“I don’t want to calm down.” Her fists battered at him. “All my life people have been trying to remake me. Don’t you start with me, Flannigan.”
He caught her flying fists, then rolled over, wrapping her tightly in his arms.
“Who has tried to remake you, my darling?” She struggled against him. “Who?”
“Everybody.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “Nobody,” she said, stronger this time. “Let me go, Flannigan.”
“Ahhh, Tess.” He began to stroke her hair. “Tess, my love.” Strands of her hair clung to his hands, curled possessively around his fingers. “You’ve always been perfect in my eyes. Always.”
“Do you mean it, Flannigan?”
“I mean it.” His hands moved lower, stroking her back.
“Then why did you leave?”
“It had nothing to do with you.” She grew stiff and silent. Even his caresses couldn’t rouse her to life again. “My Lord. What have I done to you?”
He eased away from her so he could see her face. She looked like a china doll, beautiful and perfect and lifeless.
“Tess, my love, my darling.”
His mouth covered hers. She remained stiff and unyielding. He wrapped her close, molding her against his body, rocking back and forth on the bed as he continued to kiss her.
“My love, my sweet.” He felt the first flutter of response, and his heart soared. He leaned back again to see her face. Color was flowing into her skin again. “Saints be praised,” he whispered as his mouth claimed hers once more.
She curled her hands in his hair. “Flannigan... Flannigan.”
They spiraled backward in time. She was his and he was hers, and she was calling his name, over and over. He slid his hands down the back of her gown, and she arched against him. The thin layer of silk between them seemed to disintegrate.
His hands began to move, down her back and around her hips and over her legs.
“Mmmm,” she said, closing her eyes and purring like a kitten under his touch.
“Do you still like that, Tess?”
“I never stopped liking it.”
He slid his hand up her thigh. “Your legs are beautiful.” His hand inched higher. “Silky.” And higher. “Warm.”
“Flannigan... Flannigan.”
With his hand resting high on her thigh, he kissed her arm, her shoulder, her ear. Her skin felt just the way he remembered, cool and fragrant, with the pulse in her neck fluttering like fragile butterfly wings.
“You are mine,” he murmured. “Always were, always will be.”
He nudged aside her straps and moved his lips over her throat and shoulders, reclaiming what was his. “Here,” he murmured, “and here... and here. It’s all mine... all mine.” Reckless with greed and hunger, he staked his claim all over her body. She grew wild under him, hot and wild, writhing at his touch, urging him on with her voice of music.
He tore her gown aside. The silk whispered in the darkness as it ripped, and then it lay on either side of her body, and she was offered up to him like an exotic flower. He explored her soft curves, delved into her warm hollows, and drank deeply of her sweetness.
She clung to him, singing his name. The music penetrated his heart, seeped into his soul.
“Tess, my love, my darling. Do you want me?”
“Flannigan, oh yes. Yes. Yes.”
He came home then, slid into the deep, silky recesses of her body and found his way home. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, and they rejoiced together, moving in perfect harmony, dancing in perfect rhythm. At last, at long, long last, they both knew heaven.
They soared together, up among the stars with a heavenly chorus ringing in their ears. But the chorus was not angels: It was the combined voices of Tess and Flannigan, giving vent to the music of their hearts.
“I’ve dreamed of you like this.” He eased to a slow, languorous rhythm, gazing down at her face. “Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of this?”
“Two?” Her hips danced with his, and she smiled with sheer joy.
His laughter rang out richly in the darkness.
“I lied to you, my love. It took me more than two days to get over you.”
Her fingernails dug into his back, and her face became fierce.
“Are you over me, Flannigan?” For a moment they were still, straining toward each other, pulsing with tension. “Are you?” she whispered.
Her question pierced his heart and seared his soul. Looking down at her, with her hair spread across the pillows like flame and her eyes shining up at him, he knew he could not lie. Not now.
“Never. I’ll never be over you.” He caught her fiercely to him, pressing his face in her hair and inhaling her fragrance.
They stayed that way, their bodies joined, their hearts thundering against each other.
“Never,” he whispered once more as he began to move once more. “Never.”
Suddenly they were caught up in a wild rollercoaster ride, thundering over the tracks, dipping and swaying and tilting. The exhilaration of the ride rose high in their throats, until they were both crying out their pleasure.
They careened over the tracks, going the same place and arriving at the same time. The ride came to a thundering, crashing stop.
“Ahh, Tess, my girl.”
He pressed his face to against her hair, his arms circled around her. Then he tipped them over so they lay, facing each other, across the bed. “On stormy nights I used to lie in my bed—wherever I happened to be—and listen to wind blow and thunder crash and dream I held you in my arms. Remember how thunderstorms used to bring out the primitive in us, Tess?”
“We didn’t need a thunderstorm tonight, did we?” She played with the curls that dipped across his forehead.
“We created our own.”
He traced her face with his fingertips. “I could kill them, you know.”
“Who?”
“Your other husbands.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve always considered you mine.” He hugged her close. “Always.”
“Even after you left me?”
“Yes. Even then.”
She pressed her forehead into the crook of his shoulder, underneath his chin. They stayed that way for a long, long time. Mick started stroking her back, the way he did so long ago, and she sighed.
“Mick...”
“Hmmm?”
“How long can you stay with us, with Casey and me?”
They shifted a little, and she turned her face so her cheek was pressed against his chest.
“As long as you need me, Tess. I don’t have anyplace special to go, and I certainly don’t have an important career waiting for me.”
She thought of herself, back in the club in Chicago, standing on the stage all alone, singing blues songs and meaning them, then going home to an empty bed and a cat.
“My career isn’t all that important.”
He pulled his head back so he could see her face. In the dark it was a pale, beautiful outline.
“How can you say that? It’s something you’ve worked for all your life. It’s something you’ve always wanted.”
“It’s not all I’ve wanted, Mick.” His eyes were so brilliant, so probing, she had to turn away. She feigned a huge yawn. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sleepy.”
“Tess...” Mick caught her chin. “Don’t turn away from me.” He tugged her face around and they stared at each other for a long time.
What they had done dawned suddenly and simultaneously on them. He had reclaimed her, and she had let him. He called himself insane, and she called herself foolish.
It was too late to undo what had been done, but it was not too late to change the way things would be.
“You turned away first, Mick,” Tess whispered.
A boulder settled on Mick’s heart, and he let her
go.
“So I did, Tess.”
He put his arms around her and positioned them correctly on the bed, their heads at the headboard and their feet pointing south. They lay side by side, staring straight ahead into the darkness.
“Good night, Tess.”
“Good night, Mick.”
o0o
Mick woke up with such a sense of peace that for a moment he thought he was back in college. In those days with Tess at his side, loving him, he’d been invincible. Or so he had thought.
Strange he should wake up feeling invincible again.
He rolled over in his bed, and there she was—Tess, by his side once more. Seeing her in his bed filled him with such a sense of wellbeing, he laughed out loud.
She didn’t even stir. He tenderly brushed a strand of hair off her face, letting his hand linger on her soft cheek.
“Good morning, my love. Did you sleep well?”
The soft rise and fall of her breathing was his only answer.
“Did you dream of me?” He traced the sensuous curve of her lips with his index finger. “Did you lie on your side of the bed and wish you were on mine?”
She burrowed into her pillow, still fast asleep.
“I did. I lay in the dark for two hours trying to justify moving to your side of the bed and knowing what heaven felt like once more.”
He leaned down and kissed her cheek; then he climbed out of bed. Last night had happened. He hadn’t meant it to, but it had anyhow. And now it was over and done with. The best thing to do was go on as if nothing had changed—and make damned sure it didn’t happen again.
“Ahhh, I’m such a noble man. Uncle Arthur would be disappointed if he could see me now.”
He reached for his jeans, disturbing the cat who had made them into a comfortable nest for himself. OToole arched his back and spit. Then, seeing it was only Flannigan, he leaped onto the bed and assumed his Buddha position beside his mistress.
“Lucky cat. You have a right to be there and I don’t.”
OToole gave him a wise Siamese smile, then leaned down and licked Tess’s shoulder. She moved. With another smile he licked her shoulder again.
“OToole?” Tess yawned and stretched, her eyes still closed. “Is that you?”
OToole purred. Tess came slowly out of her sleep, opening first one eye, and then the other. What she usually saw when she woke up was her cat. This morning the first thing she saw was Flannigan, standing in his shorts holding his jeans in one hand and her sequined shoes in the other.
“Well, good morning.” She smiled. And then because she felt so good, she laughed.
Mick thought it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. He imagined what it would be like to wake up to her laughter every morning for the rest of his life.
“Top of the day to you.” He stuck one leg into his pants, never taking his eyes off her. “If I had known that was how to do it, I’d have done it myself.”
“Do what?”
“Wake you up. The cat licks your shoulder to wake you up.”
“I liked your way better, Flannigan.”
He stood with one pants leg on and one off, watching her. She merely smiled, arching her back and stretching like a great big, satisfied cat herself.
“Don’t play games with me, Tess.”
“I’m not playing games. I’m merely saying I liked your way better.”
His belt buckle thudded softly on carpet as he let go of his pants. Kicking them aside, he stalked to the bed. He leaned over her, forcing her backward against the pillows. Then he put one hand on either side of her, pinning her to the mattress.
“Close your eyes, Tess,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“So I can wake you up my way.”
Their eyes locked and held in mortal combat as they both struggled with passions that had never died and love that was fighting to be reborn.
“You wouldn’t,” she said finally.
“Wouldn’t I?”
“You’re too honorable.”
“An honorable man always gives a lady what she wants.”
A bead of sweat trickled from under her heavy hair and inched down the side of her face. Her entire body heated up, and she felt the sheet stick to her in damp patches.
Flannigan’s eyes roamed up and down her body, and everywhere his gaze touched, she grew hotter. She was playing with fire, and she knew it. But she didn’t care. She had survived being in his bed last night, and she was feeling bold and reckless. She wasn’t thinking about getting hurt again—only about how far she could go with him and still come out a winner. It was a game she was playing. A dangerous game. And she was breaking all the rules.
“I quite agree, Flannigan.” She smiled up at him from the pillows. “A man always gives a lady what she wants.”
“Then, tell me, Tess.” He leaned closer, so close his lips were almost touching hers. “What is it you want?”
“It’s awfully early in the morning for such a hard question. What time is it, Flannigan?”
“Time for the truth.” His lips brushed lightly against hers. “What do you want from me?”
“Hmmm, let me see.” Unconditional love, her mind was screaming. “What I want from you is two pieces of toast, lots of butter—real, not the artificial kind—and one egg, scrambled, and a bowl of whole-wheat cereal with strawberries on the top, and a very large, very cold orange juice. And I’d like it on a silver tray with a red rose.”
“You always did have the appetite of a stevedore... for all things.”
“You asked what I wanted, Flannigan. Now, are you going to satisfy me?”
Laughing, he lifted her off the bed and tossed her over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” She tried to wiggle off, but he held her still with one hand across her bottom and one hand on her legs.
“Tess, my girl, I’m going to give you everything you want.”