“I didn’t say a word.”
“You didn’t have to. You’re restless, bored and frustrated.”
“And you would be what—just frustrated?”
She ignored his innuendo and dug her suitcase out of her bedroom closet. She’d been so anxious to get out of there that morning, she hadn’t made the bed. Since he was glued to her side, Colin hadn’t, either. She set her suitcase on the mattress, noticing that the barrier pillows were scattered and the duvet was twisted, dragging on the floor. If agents had to come in there now to search for a bomb, they’d be convinced she’d had quite a night for herself.
As it was, she’d awakened with Colin’s arm slung over her. He was on his stomach, mercifully not facing her. She’d stared at his tousled hair while she’d debated what to do. Waking him had struck her as simultaneously tempting and dangerous. She’d finally eased out from under his arm, then decided he was faking being asleep and giving her a chance to get free of him.
She’d changed in the bathroom and hadn’t said a word when she came out and found him awake, dressed and making coffee.
She unzipped her suitcase. “You don’t want to watch me pack.”
“Sure I do.” He picked up a lace-edged throw pillow that looked impossibly feminine against his dark canvas shirt as he held it football-style. “It’s more fun than watching you type.”
“You can imagine the reports I had to write.”
“Did you mention incorruptibles?”
She pulled open a drawer and grabbed whatever was clean to take with her to Ireland. She’d spoken to her grandfather in Dublin and her parents in London, and they were all relieved she was still coming to Ireland and would be leaving Boston that evening. They understood that she wouldn’t be able to stay as long as she’d planned, and that she hadn’t canceled in part because of the situation in Heron’s Cove. She wanted to talk to her grandfather in person.
Colin Donovan, she was quite sure, didn’t have a ticket to Dublin.
He flopped onto her bed, stretching out his long legs and crossing his ankles. “Yank said you wore one of those baggy tunics and skirts when you were a nun.”
“That’s right, I did.”
“Tights?”
She laid jeans, slim black pants and two tops in the suitcase. “Sometimes I wore tights, yes.”
“Did your inner Barbie want you to climb the convent fence and sneak down to Saks?”
“I never gave fashion a second thought until I moved to Dublin to work with my grandfather.”
“You also didn’t have any money,” he said, pointing the pillow at her. “The whole vow of poverty thing. Me, I vowed never to live in poverty.”
Emma put her hands on her hips and sighed at him. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I’m trying to make you smile.”
“A vow of poverty doesn’t mean living a life of deprivation. I wasn’t poor. I had food, shelter, money for personal expenses.”
“You’re still not smiling,” he said.
She scooped up a pillow off the floor and threw it at him. He caught it handily, laughing. She found herself laughing, too. “And your mother had four Donovan sons. I can’t imagine.”
“She and my father run an inn in Rock Point now. She’s as happy as she can be. He was a police officer for thirty years. Now he’s off the street, and she’s got him whipping up muffins with her every morning.”
Emma discreetly retrieved underwear from her dresser and tucked it in her suitcase, trying not to look to see if Colin noticed that she did, indeed, own a thong. “Does your mother worry about you and your brother Kevin?”
“She worries about Andy and Mike, too. Mike especially, because he’s alone up in moose country.”
“I meant worry about your safety.”
“Kevin’s job with the marine patrol is pretty safe.”
“And she thinks you work at a desk at FBI headquarters and have a normal life, with dinner dates, movie nights and trips to the mall.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes I do have that kind of life. No trips to the mall, though. What would I do at a mall?”
“Your father must guess you’re an undercover agent. What about your mother?”
“We don’t discuss my status.”
Emma added shoes, socks and a little bag of toiletries and zipped up her suitcase. “You trust your gut. Has it ever let you down?”
“You tell me.” He rolled off the bed, his eyes a dusky gray as he looked at her. “Right now my gut is telling me you wish I’d kicked down our little barrier last night and made love to you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You were sleeping the sleep of the dead. You needed it. You’ve had a rough couple of days.” He walked around the end of the bed, closing the distance between them. “I figured we’d have another chance.”
“It wasn’t thinking of me as Sister Brigid—”
“Oh, yeah. It was that, too. The tights,” he said. “I just can’t get over the black tights and sensible shoes.”
“Colin.”
“I guess you don’t have to be a nun to live a life of poverty, chastity and obedience.”
“I left that life behind me.”
“It’s not the same as when I look back on my three years in the marine patrol. Not even close, Emma.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t tell people. I don’t hide my past, but I don’t advertise it, either.”
“I must have sailed past the convent dozens of times while you were up there—doing what? Picking apples, teaching art?”
“I didn’t do much teaching. I worked in restoration and conservation with Sister Joan, and I finished my degree in art history. I did pick apples, though.”
He touched a fingertip to her lips. “I’m not afraid of you, Emma. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about you, but I’m not afraid of you.”
“That’s easy. You’re not afraid of anything.”
“Yank,” he said.
“Especially not Yank.”
He grinned and offered to carry her suitcase back to the HIT offices. She turned him down. She was accustomed to being on her own, and she didn’t want him to get the
