The One-Night Wife

Yes, they all said, yes, of course, absolutely, they'd leave.

Nobody did.

In the end, the only people she didn't try to boss around were Briana and Sean. It was, she said, lovely having her youngest daughter nearby. And when she and Sean were alone, she told him it was better to know he was here than to imagine him wasting his time at a card table.

Sean knew his mother had never really approved of the way he lived but she'd never come out and said so before. He was surprised by her candor and she knew it.

"It's what a little glimpse of your own mortality does to you," she told him as he sat with her in the hospital's roof­top conservatory one afternoon. "A mother should speak bluntly to her favorite son."

Sean smiled. "I'll bet you say the same thing to Keir and Cullen."

"Of course," Mary said, smiling back at him. "You're all my favorites." Her smile dimmed. "But I worry about you the most. After all, you're my baby."

Sean raised his mother's hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. "I'm thirty years old," he said gently.

"Exactly."

"I'm almost disgustingly healthy."

"Good."

"And I'm happy."

"That's what you think."

"It's what I know, Ma. Trust me. I'm happy." .

Mary shook her head. "You're a gambler."

"I like gambling. I'm not addicted to it," he said, smiling at his mother, "if that's what you mean. I can stop whenever I want."

"But you don't."

"Because I enjoy it. You should understand that. Pa was a gambler."

Mary nodded. "He was, indeed," she said quietly. "It was the one thing about him that broke my heart."

Sean stared at her. "I thought—"

"Oh, I loved your father, Sean. Loved him deeply." She sighed. "But I wish he'd loved me more than the cards."

"Ma, for heaven's sake, he worshiped you!"

"He did, yes, in his own way, but if I'd been enough for him, he'd have settled down. Made a real home for us. You remember how bad it was, the years before we stumbled on to the Desert Song." Mary clasped her youngest son's hand and looked deep into his eyes. ' 'A man should find his hap­piness in a woman, not in the turn of a card."

"We're not all the same, Ma. What's good for Cull and Keir isn't necessarily right for me."

His mother sighed. After a minute, she squeezed his hand. "My birthday's the week after next." "Your..."

"My birthday, yes. And don't look at me as if I've slipped 'round the bend, Sean O'Connell. I can change the subject without being daft, though I'm not really changing the subject. I'm just thinking how quickly life slips by."

"Ma—"

"Let me talk, Sean. Why shouldn't we admit the truth? I almost died."

"Yes." A hand seemed to close around his heart. "But you didn't," he said fiercely. "That's what counts."

"Lying in that bed, drifting in that place halfway between this world and the next, I kept thinking, 'It's too soon.'"

"Much too soon," Sean said gruffly.

"I don't want to leave this earth until all my children are happy."

"I am happy, Ma. You don't need to worry about it."

"You're alone, Sean."

"Times have changed. A person doesn't need to be mar­ried to be happy."

"A person needs to love and be loved. That hasn't changed. You have your father's itchy foot and his gift for the cards, but that can't make up for the love of a good woman."

Unbidden, a face swam into Sean's mind. Green eyes. A mane of golden hair. A soft mouth tasting like berries warmed by the sun. It was the face of a woman a man would burn to possess, but love? Never. Thinking of Savannah McRae and the word "good" at the same time was absurd. Besides, his mother was wrong. A man didn't need love. He needed freedom. His father had loved his wife and chil­dren but Sean suspected he'd have been happier without them. In his heart, he was the same. It was the one bond he and his old man had shared.

"I know you think you're right, Ma," he said gently, "but I like my life as it is." He smiled. "You want to be a matchmaker, why not take on Briana?"

"Bree will find somebody," Mary said with conviction. "She just needs a little more time. But you..."

"I'll give it some serious thought," Sean said, trying to sound sincere even if he was lying through his teeth, but it was a white lie, and white lies didn't count. "Maybe, some­day, when I meet the right woman."

Mary sighed. "I just hope I live long enough to see it happen."

"You'll be here for years and years."

"Nobody can see the future," his mother said softly.

What could he say to that? Sean swallowed hard, searched for a change of subject and finally found one.

"That birthday—"

"Ah, yes. Dan and I want to have a big party."

"Not too much, though. You need peace and quiet."

"What I need is to get back into life."

Sean smiled. "You sound as if you're back into it already. And what would you like as a special gift?''

"Just all my children and grandchildren gathered around me.

"Nothing more?" Sean grinned. "Come on, Ma. Tell me your heart's desire and I'll get it for you."

Mary's eyes met his. "You will?"

"Yes. Absolutely. What do you want, hmm? Emeralds from Colombia? Pearls from the South Seas?" He bent for­ward and kissed her temple. "Name it, Mrs. Coyle, and it'll be yours."

His mother gave him a long look. "Do you mean it?"

"Have I ever made a promise to you and broken it?"

"No. No, you haven't."

"Well, then, tell me what you want for your birthday and you'll have it. Cross my heart and hope to die."

Sean said the words as solemnly as if he were seven years old instead of thirty, and he smiled. But his mother didn't smile. Instead, she looked so deep into his eyes that he felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck.

"I want to see you married, Sean O'Connell," she said. And from the expression on her face, he knew she meant every word.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Amazing, what a combination of medical science and determination could accomplish. Ten days after Mary O'Connell-Coyle's stroke, her doctors pronounced her well and sent her home.

Keir, Cullen and Sean accompanied Dan and their mother to the airport. They sat with her in the first-class lounge and asked if she wanted anything so many times that Mary fi­nally threw up her hands and said if they didn't stop fussing over her, she was going to go and find a seat in the terminal.

"One seat," she warned, "with no empties nearby." She looked at her husband, who smiled, and smiled back at him. "All right. Two seats, then, but not another within miles."

The brothers looked at each other sheepishly. Then they hugged her and kissed her, waited until the plane that would take her to Vegas had safely lifted off, and headed, by un­spoken consent, for a taxi and a quiet, very untrendy bar Keir knew in lower Manhattan.

"My arms hurt," Sean said solemnly. His brothers raised inquisitive eyebrows. "From doing all that lifting to get the plane in the air."

He grinned. His brothers laughed, and Keir raised his glass of ale. "To Ma."

The men touched glasses. They drank, then leaned back in the time-worn leather booth.

"So," Keir said, "I guess we can all head home. Me to

Connecticut, Cull to Boston." He looked at Sean. "You going back to that island?"

Sean felt a muscle knot in his jaw. "Yes."

"Can't get enough of the sea and sand?"

"I have unfinished business there."

"Must be important."

Getting even was always important, Sean thought coldly. "Yeah. It is."

Cullen grinned and nudged Keir with his elbow. "Some­thing to do with that woman, I bet."

"What woman?" Sean said, much too quickly.

"Come on, bro. The babe you won in a game of cards." Keir reached for the bowl of peanuts. "You never did ex­plain that."

&nb

sp; "There's nothing to explain."

"There's nothing to explain, he says." Cullen dug out a handful of nuts, too, and started munching. "A man wins a night with a hooker, and he says—"

"Did I say she was a hooker?"

Sean's voice was glacial. Cullen and Keir exchanged glances. He could hardly blame them. What was he doing? Defending Savannah's honor? It would be easier to defend a Judas goat.

"Well, no. But I figured—"

"Forget it."

"Look, I didn't mean to imply you'd sleep with a call girl, but who else would—"