Sean frowned and fell silent so she got up and took both their plates to the sink. As she washed them with a sponge she’d bought a week and a half ago, she tried not to think that Mr. O’Banyon had still been alive back then.
“So you and my father were real tight, huh?”
She held a plate under the rushing water. “We used to watch TV together. And we always ate dinner up here on Sundays. We also looked out for each other. It was nice to think someone wondered whether or not I made it back from my night shifts. Made me feel safer.”
And cared for.
With her mother, Lizzie had always been the watcher, the worrier, the keeper…even when she’d been young. For the time she had known Mr. O’Banyon, it had been really nice to be something other than a ghost on the periphery of someone’s artistic inspiration.
Feeling awkward, she asked, “So do you live right in Manhattan?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there,” she murmured as she put the plate in the drying rack. “It seems so exciting and glamorous.”
“City’s not far from here. Just drive down some time.”
She shook her head, thinking of the time she would have to take off from work. “I couldn’t really afford to. With two jobs, my hours are long and my mother needs the money more than I need a vacation. Besides, who am I kidding? I’m a homebody at heart.”
“And you were happy being a homebody here. With my father.”
She picked up a towel and began to dry what she’d washed. “Yes, I was.”
“Were you lovers?”
“What?” She nearly dropped the skillet. “Why would you think that?”
His eyes were cold and cynical as he said, “Not unheard-of.”
“Maybe to you. We were friends. Good Lord…”
She quickly put away the dishes, hung up the towel and headed for the exit. “Thank you for breakfast.”
He rose from the table. “Elizabeth—”
“Lizzie.” She stepped around him pointedly. “Just Lizzie.”
He took her arm in a firm grip. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
She leveled her stare on his hard face. His apology seemed sincere enough; though his eyes remained remote, they didn’t waver from hers and his tone was serious.
She reminded herself that he was under a lot of stress and it was four—well, almost five in the morning. She cleared her throat. “It’s all right. This is a hard time for you right now.”
“Hard time for you, too, right?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “Very. I’m going to miss him.”
Sean reached out and touched her cheek, surprising her. “You know something?”
“What?”
“A woman like you should have someone waiting up for her, Lizzie.”
In a flash, she became totally aware of him down to the details of his beard’s dark shadow and the hazel of his eyes and…
And the fact that he was looking at her mouth.
From out of nowhere, an arc of heat supercharged the air between their bodies and Lizzie had to part her lips to breathe.
Except just as she did, his face masked over and he dropped her arm. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
He turned away as if nothing had happened.
Okay…so had she just imagined all that?
Apparently.
Lizzie forced herself to walk out of the kitchen and found him standing next to the apartment’s open door. As if she’d overstayed her welcome.
* * *
As Sean waited for Lizzie to come from the kitchen, he figured he either needed to put his long-tailed button-down shirt on or get her out of here. Because his body was stating its opinion of her loud and clear, and he didn’t want to embarrass the poor woman.
He was totally, visibly aroused. And the quick rearrange he’d done as he’d walked through the living room had only helped so much.
Then things got worse. As she came over, he started to wonder exactly what was under that baggy shirt of hers—and his “problem” got harder.
“Are you going to have a funeral for him?” she asked.
Well, at least that question slapped him back to reality.
“No. He’ll be cremated and interred next to my mother. Told me ten years ago he didn’t want any kind of memorial service.” Man, that had been an ugly phone call. His father had been drunk at the time, naturally, and had maintained he didn’t want his three sons dancing on his coffin.
Sean had hung up at that point.
“That’s a shame.” Lizzie tucked a piece of blond hair behind her ear. “For both of you. People should be remembered. Fathers should be remembered.”
As those green eyes met his, they were like looking into a still pond, gentle, calming, warm. Teamed with the heat that had sprung up in his blood, the impact of her compassionate stare was like getting sucker punched: a surprise that numbed him out.
Unease snaked through him. Stripped of defenses and vaguely needy was not what he wanted to be, not around anyone.
His voice grew harsh. “Oh, I’ll remember him, all right. Good night, Lizzie.”
She quickly looked away and scooted past him. As she hit the stairs at a fast clip, she spoke over her shoulder. “Goodbye, Sean.”
Sean shut the door, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. As he thought about his arousal, he reminded himself that there was nothing mystical or unusual at work here. Lizzie was attractive. He was half-naked. They were alone. Do the math.
Except there was something else, wasn’t there?
He thought back to the past. Though his memories of his mother were indistinct, he recalled her as warm and kind, the quintessential maternal anchor. From what he’d learned about her, she’d come from a very good family who’d disowned her when she’d married a blue-collar Irish Catholic. Her parents had even refused to come to her memorial service.
Back when she’d still been around, their father had been relatively stable, but that had changed after she’d died when Sean was five. After they’d buried her, all hell had broken loose and hard drinking had moved into the apartment like a mean houseguest. Turned out Anne had been the glue that had held Eddie together. Without her, he’d spiraled fast, hit bottom hard and never resurfaced.
Sean stared at the Barcalounger.
Dimly, he heard the water come on downstairs and he imagined Lizzie brushing her teeth over a sink. When the whining rush was cut off, he saw her stripping off those jeans and sliding between clean white sheets.
She looked like the kind of woman who had sensible sheets.
She hadn’t been his father’s lover, he thought. The outrage on her face had been too spontaneous, the offense too quick. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been stringing Eddie along for money.
God, one look into those green eyes and even Sean had been hypnotized.
Picturing her face, he was surprised that he wanted to believe she was a well of compassion and goodness. But the Mother Teresa routine was tough to buy. That talk about wanting to go to Manhattan, but needing to hold down two jobs to help out her fey, artistic mother? It was almost Dickensian.
He went back over to the couch and lay down. As he put his arm under his head, a small voice he didn’t trust told him he was reading her wrong. He ignored the whisper, chalking it up to the fact that he was off-kilter because he was back in his father’s place.