Chapter 19
Four months later in Connemara, Ireland.
"What are you thinking, Roisin, in your condition?"
"Give me it back, Finn." Roisin scowled as her brother wrestled the heavy spade from her. "I'm four months pregnant. I'm not an invalid."
"You're four months gone and on your own." Her brother's blue eyes narrowed dangerously. "If you're after planting a garden, why didn't you say so?"
"This is my cottage and I'll do as I please." She'd moved into the quaint stone house on the edge of her family's farm as soon as she'd returned from New York. Keeping anything a secret from her brothers had proved impossible—pregnancy included. Dealing with their overprotectiveness, though, had soothed her battered heart in the early days after she'd arrived home. But now it was starting to annoy her.
Her bullheaded brother refused to relinquish the shovel.
Figures.
"Suit yourself," she said. "I'm off to the village to get some groceries."
She stomped through the back door before her brother could insist on helping her with that too. But after stamping on her boots and donning her rain coat—this was Ireland, there was bound to be rain at some point in the afternoon—she stepped outside… And stopped dead.
A shiny black SUV she didn't recognize was traveling up the track. Sunshine glinted off paintwork flecked with mud. But when the all-terrain vehicle stopped and a tall figure climbed out, her insides coalesced into a lump of raw emotion.
"Nate?" she whispered.
"Hello, Roisin."
Was it really him? The man she'd run from four months ago? The locks of golden hair were gone, the darker hair beneath shorn close to his scalp. But the forbidding frown and that voice—raw, rugged and disturbingly intimate—were exactly the same.
Panic consumed her. Why was he here? Surely he had gotten her note? The white lie she had told him to set him free?
She turned to dart back into the house, to barricade herself in if necessary—she didn't want to speak to him, any more than she had four months ago—or he would know how hard she had fallen for him, and then her pride would be in tatters along with her heart. But before she could make a clean getaway, he grasped her arm.
"Don't run from me again, damn it," he said. "I know you didn't take the money."
"But…how?" she asked. She'd been concerned at first he might find out, he might come after her, making the clean break she knew they both needed unbearably messy… But after four months, she'd thought she was safe.
"Did you think Brett wouldn't tell me? Once I'd finally got my head out from up my butt long enough to ask?"
She tugged her arm free, his touch causing heat to rise across her skin—the emotions she'd held so carefully at bay for so long erupting inside her.
She knew Nate had gotten his life back on track in the past four months, because she'd scoured the internet for news of him as soon as she'd landed back in Ireland. And she���d taken some solace in that.
She'd read of how he'd left his penthouse and taken up the helm of his family's business. Of how he'd reappeared on the social scene. She'd had to stop looking a few weeks back, though, because although he'd not been seen dating anyone yet, she'd known it would only be a matter of time. She'd had to protect herself, once the discovery of her pregnancy had confirmed what she'd already known.
Her heart would always be lost to him.
She thanked goodness for her baggy sweater now. She had resigned herself to the fact she would need to contact him and tell him about the baby…eventually. But not now, not like this. Not when her emotions were still so volatile, her love for him still so overwhelming.
"It's of no consequence," she said. She should have taken the money; she could have put it in a trust fund for the baby. But her stupid pride and her broken heart had made her act irrationally when Brett Charles had emailed her stating Nate would pay her the five grand as long as she signed a legal agreement never to contact him again. She'd signed the agreement but told Brett she didn't want the money.
"You shouldn't have followed me here," she added, folding her arms over her chest to hold in the telltale shudders at his nearness.
What was he doing here? She couldn't bear his pity, but what else could this be about?
"Really? Do you think I had a choice?" Nate said, the forceful emotion in his voice only confusing her more.
"And who's this fella, now?" Finn's voice had them both swinging round.
Her brother strolled toward them.
"Who the hell is he?" Nate snarled, fronting up to her brother like a billionaire scorned. Literally.
"Oh, for pity's sake," Roisin cried. Trust the most dramatic moment of her life to turn into a farce. "Finbar go back inside the cottage. This is no business of yours."
"The hell it isn't…" Finn shot back.
"Finbar? He's your youngest older brother," Nate supplied, the tension in his shoulders releasing.
"And you would be..?" Finn asked, the enquiry deceptively calm.
"The man who loves your sister and wants to win her back," Nate declared.