Monahan's Gamble

“What do I owe you for the coffee?” he asked, reaching deep into his pocket to retrieve some change.

She held up both hands, palm out, as if in surrender, though what she might possibly be surrendering to, she dared not consider. “It’s on the house,” she told him. “I haven’t opened the cash registers yet, so… Consider it a promotional giveaway.”

He nodded quickly and muttered his thanks but offered no indication that he intended to leave. Instead he only continued to stare at Autumn’s face or, more specifically, her mouth, as if he had some serious plans for it in the not-too-distant future. Then, as if he suddenly realized where his gaze was lingering, he snatched it away, dipping his head to focus instead on the coffee cup that sat on the counter. Very gingerly he reached forward and claimed it, never once so much as glancing at Autumn as he did.

“I gotta go,” he said hastily. And without further ado, he made good on the announcement.

For long moments after he left, Autumn stood alone in the shop part of her bakery, gazing out the door he had exited, watching the impending sunrise change the color of the sky above the buildings across the way from heavy black to midnight blue. For some reason she felt breathless and lawless and tumultuous and, at the same time, easy and comfortable and companionable. And there was one other thing she felt, too, she realized. When she remembered the heat in Sean Monahan’s gaze and the brightness in his smile, when she recalled how handsome, how charming, how eligible he was…

Doomed. Autumn felt doomed.

Sean didn’t get very far before he had to pull his truck to the side of the road and thrust the gearshift into park. Not because he needed to let the coffee cool a bit before sampling it. And not because he was still too drowsy to be driving. And not because he wanted to admire the way the sunrise was smudging the purple sky with fingers of orange and pink, either.

No, much to his amazement, it was because he had to try and get a grip on himself and his feelings.

It was the strangest thing. Not only had he never had to get a grip on himself for anything, but he’d never had feelings like the ones that were spiraling through him now. Strangest of all was that he soon came to realize he wasn’t likely to get a grip on either his feelings or himself anytime soon. How could he, when he couldn’t even identify what he was feeling to begin with?

Well, other than this weird sense of doom, anyway…

Just what the hell had happened back there at Autumn’s bakery? he wondered, not for the first time since fleeing it in fear for his life—well, his social life, at any rate—less than half an hour ago. He’d entered thinking to do no more than ask her out on a date and had exited feeling as if he’d been struck by lightning.

He took a moment to replay every word the two of them had exchanged and to reconsider every suggestive comment he’d made. He recalled every look they’d shared, every sidelong glance they’d sneaked. But he couldn’t figure out where, exactly, things between them had gotten so…hot. Somewhere along the line, though, the two of them had ceased to indulge in harmless banter and had become over-charged with…what? He still couldn’t quite figure it out. And even weirder than all that…

He sighed his disbelief when he remembered. Even weirder than all that, Autumn Pulaski had refused to go out with him. Had refused to go out with him. Him! Sean Monahan! It was inconceivable. Impossible. Unthinkable.

Unacceptable.

Because Sean decided then and there that he would not accept her refusal. And not just because he had a point to prove to his brother Finn, either. But because there was something immediate and intense—not to mention hot and heavy—burning up the air between him and Autumn. And Sean just wasn’t the kind of guy to let something like that go unexplored. Especially when there was a beautiful, desirable, sexy, cinnamon-scented, luscious, mouthwatering…uh…where was he? Oh, yeah. Especially when there was a woman like Autumn at the heart of it. And especially when that woman’s eyes told him she was every bit as aware as he was of the strange fire burning between them.

So she’d said she wouldn’t go out with him on Wednesday, had she? Well, then. Sean would just have to go back and ask her what she was doing on Tuesday instead. Then he remembered what he would be doing Tuesday. What the whole town of Marigold, Indiana, would be doing on Tuesday. What Autumn Pulaski would no doubt be doing on Tuesday, too. Because Tuesday was the Fourth of July. And everybody who was anybody in Marigold would be at the Annual Independence Day Picnic in Gardencourt Park. It was practically a requirement of citizenship.

Throwing his truck back into gear, Sean smiled. Yep, Tuesday would be a very good day for seeing Autumn again. Somehow he could just feel it in his bones. Their destinies were about to collide, for sure. And he couldn’t help but thank his lucky stars for that.

Three

Sean found Autumn precisely where he’d known she would be on Tuesday, right smack in the middle of Gardencourt Park, at the Autumn’s Harvest bread booth, hawking her wares. The Fourth of July was a very big deal in Marigold, Indiana, and pretty much the entire town closed down and showed up to celebrate it. Many of the local retailers, however, opened booths at the picnic, alongside the local craftspeople and artisans, selling specialty items or products that commemorated the day. Autumn, for example, he noticed as he approached the booth, was offering cranberry scones, white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, and blueberry muffins—presumably in honor of Old Glory.

And he was glad he’d dressed up for the occasion in unripped, only marginally faded blue jeans and navy polo shirt, because Autumn, looking quite fetching, was dressed in what he, with his very limited knowledge of history—Rory was, after all, the historian in the family—assumed must be Betsy Ross attire. Except that ol’ Betsy probably hadn’t filled out her Colonial garb quite the same way Autumn did. The full skirt of her multicolored, vertically striped gown flared nicely over her hips, and the top part hugged her generous breasts with much affection.

So affectionately, in fact, that had it not been for the white apron loosely covering her torso, the picnic would no doubt have had to be called on account of mass licentiousness. But the little mobcap perched atop Autumn’s head went a long way toward tempering what Sean had decided was just her naturally sexy state.

Well, to the casual observer, the mobcap tempered her sexuality, anyway. Sean himself found the lacy little ruffled number to be surprisingly arousing. Then again, Autumn could be dressed up as George Washington’s faithful springer spaniel, Buddy, and Sean would still find her attractive. Then again, maybe that wasn’t an admission he should be owning up to. Still, she did look extremely delicious—or, rather, her baked goods looked extremely delicious—so what else could Sean do but step up to the booth and ask to sample her—or, rather, them?

“Excuse me, miss? I’ll have one of those plump, luscious-looking scones, please,” he announced, proud of himself for completing the request without a trace of suggestiveness.

Autumn’s head had been bent when he approached, but she snapped it up quickly at the sound of his voice. Immediately she blushed, something Sean considered to be a very good sign, then her lips parted fractionally in clear surprise. “I…what?” she asked.

He jabbed a finger toward the rich bounty of baked goods before him. “I’d like a scone, please,” he said, reading the hand-lettered sign in front of the selection. Otherwise he would have had to call it “one of those big lumpy things with the red spots,” because he had no idea what a scone actually was. He just hoped the letter c in the word was a hard c and not a soft c, otherwise, he’d just made a fool of himself. Then again, maybe that was why she was looking at him the way she was looking at him—as if she weren’t sure what language he was speaking.

He was about to correct himself—he hoped—and repeat his request, asking for a “sone” this time—or, at the very least, a “big, lumpy thing with red spots”—when Autumn blinked twice, something that seemed to break whatever spell she’d fallen under.

“Right,” she said. “A scone.”

Sean breathed a silent sigh of relief when she pronounced it the same way he had. Then he expelled a soft groan of frustration as he watched her lean forward to collect a particularly fat one from the front of the pile—because when she did so, her apron fell forward a bit, offering him a view he was certain Betsy Ross never would have offered, even for the sake of her country. Then, as quickly as it had been given, that view disappeared, because Autumn straightened to drop the scone into a small paper bag.

When she extended it toward him, Sean was reminded of the last time he’d seen her, three mornings ago, when she’d thrust forward the cup of coffee he’d requested. This was becoming a habit, he thought, her pushing something his way in a silent sort of “Beat it.”

“Here you go,” she said brightly. A little too brightly, Sean thought. Translated, her words almost certainly meant, “Beat it.” Especially since she punctuated the statement with, “That’ll be $1.50, please.”

He held her gaze steadily as he tugged his wallet from the back pocket of his blue jeans and withdrew two faded bills, trading them for the little paper sack. When she turned to make his change, Sean allowed his gaze to rove over the back of her, finding it every bit as enticing as the front. The flair of her hips and the dip of her waist gave new definition to the phrase hourglass figure, because he realized he wanted to take a whole lot of time exploring that part of her anatomy. Unfortunately, she chose that moment to spin back around with his change, and it was only at the last possible moment that Sean managed to drag his gaze back up again.

Oops. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t dragged it back up quite soon enough, he was forced to concede when he saw Autumn scowling at him. But she was blushing again, too, and that made him smile. If she was blushing, it must mean she was uneasy, and if she was uneasy, it must mean she was having a reaction to him. He still wasn’t entirely sure what kind of reaction she might be having, but at this point any reaction—short of throwing things—was welcome. And he was reasonably optimistic that her reaction now was something in the good family. After all, she hadn’t thrown anything, had she?

“Have lunch with me,” he said suddenly, impulsively, even though he had approached the booth with the express purpose of asking her to join him in that very activity. But he’d planned to go about it a bit less impulsively and a bit more smoothly. He hadn’t meant to just blurt it out that way. He’d intended to work up to it gradually, because Autumn seemed like the kind of woman who needed a lot of buttering up.

Immediately Sean wished he’d come up with another way to put that. Because the thought of buttering up Autumn Pulaski—or whip creaming her up or chocolate saucing her up or maple syruping her up or honeying her up—just roused images that were far too graphic for a public, family-oriented place. Much better to entertain ideas like that later, when the two of them were alone together somewhere. Preferably somewhere that was close to a kitchen.

“Thank you, Mr. Monahan,” she said as she handed him his change, sounding a bit breathless for some reason, “but I’m much too busy to be able to break for lunch. As you can see, I’m womaning the booth all by myself.”

As if cued by her announcement, two teenage girls dressed in huge khaki shorts and even larger white T-shirts bearing the Autumn’s Harvest logo approached the table and ducked behind it. Each donned an apron identical to Autumn’s, then each positioned herself at opposite sides of the booth.

“Thanks for the break, Autumn,” said the blondest of the two. “Go ahead and grab some lunch yourself. Brittany and I can handle things here for a while. You deserve a break.”

Autumn’s cheeks pinked even more becomingly, and involuntarily Sean’s smile grew broader. “Gosh, guess you’ll have time, after all, won’t you?” he asked.

“Uh,” she replied eloquently. “I, um… Actually, I… That is, I need to… Ah…”

“Excellent,” he said. “I know just the place.”

Before she could object, he reached across the table to curl his fingers gently around her upper arm, silently urging her body—if not her spirit—toward the space between two tables that obviously served as an entry to the booth. Autumn stammered a few more half-formed—and, he was certain, halfhearted—protests, but Sean easily disregarded and dismissed each one. He kept talking until the two of them were a solid twenty or thirty yards from the booth, then, still not convinced he had her completely in his thrall—go figure—he looped his arm through hers and pulled her closer still. And all the while, Autumn seemed to be too flummoxed to do anything but follow him wherever he might lead her.

Now if he could just keep her flummoxed for two lunar months, Sean thought, he would make Finn eat his dare.

Unfortunately for Sean, though, by the time he’d picked up two box lunches for them at the Rotarians’ booth, snagged a couple of lemonades from the Girl Scouts’ booth, and reached the fountain at the heart of Gardencourt Park—the nauseatingly romantic one that looked like an urn full of flowers spewing water all over a bunch of buck-naked cupids—Autumn was becoming decidedly less flummoxed. And damned if she didn’t dig in her heels and tug her arm free of his, just as he deposited their lunches and lemonades on a two-seater wrought-iron bench that sat near a privacy-providing sweep of wisteria tumbling completely uninhibited—and almost blindingly purple—from a fat hedge behind it.

“Mr. Monahan,” she began a bit breathlessly.

“Sean,” he hastily corrected her, reaching out to wrap his fingers lightly around her wrist once more.

“Mr. Monahan,” she repeatedly adamantly. She deftly maneuvered her arm to her side before he could grasp it, curled both fists ineffectually—and really rather adorably, Sean thought—at her sides and frowned. “I’m afraid I can’t accommodate your request right now. I have other things I should be doing besides eating lunch.”

“Sean,” he corrected her again. “I’m Sean. If you keep calling me ‘Mr. Monahan,’ you’re going to have me and all four of my brothers heeding your beck and call.”

The possibility of such a development seemed to make her feel queasy for some reason. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. But she said nothing more to enlighten him about her state of uneasiness, just looked a little pale and distressed.

Sean found her reaction odd. There were plenty of women in Marigold who would jump at the chance to have the interest—romantic or otherwise—of the Monahan brothers, in just about any number or combination. Autumn Pulaski, however, evidently considered such attention to be a fate worse than death.

“Sean,” he said for a third time, feeling frustrated for no reason he could name. “Call me Sean. Please.”

He couldn’t imagine why, but he really, really wanted to hear her say his name out loud. Maybe it was because she had one of those husky, breathy voices, the kind most men only heard when they were sitting in a dark movie theater listening to Kathleen Turner or Demi Moore or Debra Winger in Dolby stereo. The kind of voice that made even the simplest statement sound like an intimate suggestion, somehow, and turned a man’s name into a sensual promise.

When Autumn opened her mouth to speak, Sean braced himself for the sexual awakening he was sure would follow. But instead of uttering his name in that deep, smooth, languid way, she said, “I really should get back to the booth.”

“Why?” he asked. “Your employees looked more than capable of handling the crowd—which, incidentally, is thinning as we speak, because the lunch hour is drawing to a close—and it doesn’t sound like you’ve had lunch yet yourself.”

“I’ve been snacking all morning,” she assured him. “It’s one of the perks of the job. With all those snacks, I don’t need any lunch.”

He threw her his most salacious smile, dropped his eyelids to half-mast and adopted what he’d been told more than once was a very sexy demeanor. Mostly this involved hooking both hands on his hips, shifting his weight to one foot, flexing his pecs and biceps and tossing his head back with just a touch of arrogance. Okay, so that last part was more because his hair was in his eyes and in need of a trim, but it still went a long way toward completing the sexy demeanor thing—Sean was sure of it.

“Snacking,” he then began coyly, “is not the same thing as lunching, Autumn. When one snacks, one never completely satisfies one’s…hunger, does one, even if one snacks frequently? I mean, a little nibble here, a little nibble there… It’s never quite enough, is it?”

He took a single, leisurely step forward, bringing his body to within inches of hers. But he didn’t touch her, didn’t so much as reach for her, only continued to keep her gaze pinned with his own. And my, what a warm gaze hers was, too, he noted. There was no question that he had her full attention.

“Oh, sure,” he continued softly, growing a little warmer himself as he watched her, “snacks can be more…provocative. More…arousing. You get variety. You get a little taste of something exotic, something you might not normally…have. And there’s just something so tempestuous about the haste and the immediacy and the secrecy of a snack, isn’t there?” he added, dropping his voice to a level only she would be able to hear. “Snacks can be very titillating, Autumn, because they’re somehow more forbidden.

“But lunch,” he continued, wrapping his voice around the word in the same smooth way he curled his fingers loosely around her wrist to pull her body closer still, “is much more fulfilling. It requires greater commitment, greater attention to detail.”

He tugged her gently forward, until her body was flush with his, and waited for her to protest. But instead of protesting, she only opened one hand over his chest, splaying her fingers over his heart. And Sean could see by the way the pulse at the base of her throat leaped at the contact that her own heartbeat was every bit as rapid, as ragged, as his own.

“One takes one’s time with lunch,” he told her even more softly, his voice a scant whisper now. “Lunch is so much more satisfying. There are so many ways to enjoy it, and there’s so much to consume.” He dipped his head to very lightly nuzzle her temple, reveling in the little gasp of shock—and dare he say delight?—that escaped her at the contact. “You have to go slowly with lunch, Autumn,” he continued, his mouth right beside her ear now. “You have to be more thorough, taste everything you have on your plate. And you know, done correctly, lunch is infinitely more…pleasurable…than snacking.”

As much as he wanted to duck his head more and drag his open mouth along the elegant curve of her neck, somehow Sean found the strength to draw himself away. He didn’t go far, however, and he dropped one hand to the graceful curve of her hip. Again he prepared himself to be rebuffed, but Autumn offered no reaction one way or the other. When he’d pulled back far enough to gaze at her face, he saw that she was studying him with great preoccupation, even though he’d finished his dissertation on the different manners of…satisfying oneself.

Strangely enough, though, her attention seemed to be focused almost entirely on his mouth. A tremor of something hot and volatile shook him when he realized it, then nearly exploded when he saw how her pupils had grown larger, her cheeks more rosy, and how her lips had parted softly, as if she wasn’t—quite—getting enough breath.

She wasn’t the only one, he thought. Suddenly Sean felt a bit dizzy himself, as if the oxygen to his brain had been momentarily blocked. Then again, who needed oxygen when you had a woman like Autumn gazing at you like that? Suddenly even lunch didn’t seem like enough to satisfy him. Because over the past couple of moments, he had grown hungry to the point of being ravenous, and he wasn’t sure there was enough food on the planet to sate him.

Of course, food was the last thing on his mind right now. Because Autumn Pulaski was looking at him as if she wanted to tuck a cherry into his mouth and flambé him. And he realized that, at that moment, there was nothing in life that would have brought him greater joy than being, well…cherry flambéed. By Autumn Pulaski. This very second.

Oh, man.

It was happening again, he thought. That same strange electricity that had shuddered between them in the bakery that morning had returned, charging the air between them once more. And what had begun as a well orchestrated, carefully rehearsed flirtation had been jerked completely out of Sean’s hands.

“Um, yeah, okay,” she said softly. “Lunch sounds, uh…pretty good. I, uh…I could go for some, um, lunch. I guess.”

Oh, she was just so cute when she was flummoxed, Sean thought. But he said nothing, just closed his fingers more snugly around her wrist and guided her to the bench, where he had strategically placed their lunches in such a fashion as to require them to sit very close to each other when they took their seats. It was a fact that Autumn duly noted, because before sitting down, she rearranged everything to construct a makeshift wall between their two designated places, perching herself primly on one side of it, nodding in silent invitation for Sean to take his seat on the other side.

Damn.

Squelching a sigh of defeat, he acquiesced with as much good grace as he could and reached for his own lunch. The new moon wasn’t until tomorrow, he reminded himself. That gave him another full day to woo Autumn and convince her that she should give him a chance.

Another day, he remembered, and another night.

How Autumn let herself get talked into things sometimes, she really would never be able to understand. Then again, Sean Monahan hadn’t given her much choice had he? Not only had he practically seduced her earlier that afternoon—right there in front of the Gertrude Hepplewhite Memorial Fountain, no less—just by explaining the differences between snacking and lunching, but he’d followed her around all day like an eager-to-be-accepted puppy.

He had virtually haunted the Autumn’s Harvest booth all afternoon while she worked, had smiled that heart-tugging, heat-seeking smile of his, had twinkled those devastating blue eyes, had been more enchanting than any fairy-tale prince could ever hope to be. She hadn’t been able to resist him. He’d just been so…so handsome. So…charming. So…eligible. And then, before she realized what was happening…

Autumn sighed restlessly. Before she realized what was happening, she found herself stretched out alongside him on a faded, flowered quilt beneath the stars, her entire body humming with anticipation at the prospect of the fireworks that were bound to explode any minute.

Fortunately, those fireworks would be literal, not figurative, because a good foot of faded, flowered quilt lay between her and Sean, and very soon, the first burst of rockets would light the sky above Marigold to open the annual Fourth of July fireworks display. Literal fireworks, Autumn repeated to herself adamantly. Not figurative ones.

At least, she thought further, reconsidering, she hoped there wouldn’t be any figurative fireworks tonight. Sean was, after all, so handsome. So charming. So eligible.

Stop it right there, Autumn, she instructed herself firmly. There would not be any figurative fireworks tonight. Or any night, for that matter. Of that—if nothing else—she was completely certain. Because if there was one thing she had learned since leaving Chicago to come to Marigold, it was how to turn fireworks into fizzle in no time flat. She hadn’t experienced any fireworks since her arrival here, not with anybody. She hadn’t even come close to the merest spark. In fact, there hadn’t been the least little smolder of anything with any man for more than two years. And by golly, Autumn had no intention of setting fire to any wicks tonight. She didn’t care if it was the Fourth of July. Sean Monahan could just keep his sparkler to himself.