He gave Moira a curious look. “Even you?”
She laughed at his skeptical expression. “Even me. You’ve done nothing yet today to annoy me.”
“Then I’ll do my best to make sure it stays that way,” he promised.
When Jo had left them, he looked into her eyes. “Did she scare you off?”
“Far from it,” Moira admitted. “I’m more convinced than ever that you’re quite a knight in shining armor.”
The bigger question, still unanswered, though, was whether he was hers.
13
Even though she’d put her cards on the table with Luke a couple of nights ago, by Monday Moira was back to wondering how she fit into Luke’s life. It was the drawback of a life spent questioning her own judgment and decisions.
It was true that spending nights in his bed was amazing, but in reality that told her nothing about the future. And she knew from prior conversations that nothing was likely to change for some time to come. It left her feeling disgruntled and alone. Add in Luke’s increasing distraction and she was having one of those days when she wondered if it was even wise to stick around for the scheduled month.
Today there’d been a steady parade of potential employees through the pub. Luke hadn’t suggested that she sit in on the interviews, and she hadn’t offered. She knew that made sense, since it wasn’t her business, but, as hard as she’d tried not to, she’d felt left out.
She’d spent most of the day closeted in his office, going through the pictures she’d taken on Saturday and making prints for Kevin and Shanna and the rest of the family, then putting certain ones into the file for her portfolio to show to Megan. While seeing so many laughing images made her smile, ironically they left her feeling more like an outsider than ever. This wasn’t her family, no matter how she might wish it were. And at the rate things were progressing, it might never be. The date of her departure loomed ahead, unmistakable in its possible finality for the relationship.
By midday she was restless and out of sorts. Since the sun was shining, she slipped past Luke and his applicants and headed for the beach. Perhaps a walk by the water would clear her head. It sometimes worked in ways nothing else did.
But at the end of an hour, she was still trying to analyze her mood. She could hardly complain about the sex, because that was as magical as it had ever been. There was plenty of laughter and teasing and quiet conversation as well. So what was missing? Eventually she realized that, for the first time ever, she wanted something more from a relationship, something she didn’t dare ask for. She wanted forever. And Luke, she knew all too well, did not. At least not now.
Should she decide totally on her own to stay and fight for what she really wanted, or should she accept that Luke might never be ready and cut her losses by going home now? Losing him would hurt whenever it happened, but now might be for the best, when she at least had the prospect of an exciting career to explore when she returned to Dublin. A call from Peter had promised a half-dozen assignments on her return, all of them for more money than she’d ever dreamed of making from her photography.
She wasted most of the afternoon waging an internal war with herself. By the time she returned to the pub, she’d reached no conclusion, which left her feeling more out of sorts than ever. She should have gone straight back to Nell’s till the clouds over her dispersed, but she didn’t. Maybe she was itching for a confrontation, after all.
Seeing that Luke was on the phone in his office when she returned, she sat at a table by the window he’d been using earlier and peeked out at the bay through a sliver of an opening between the sheets of protective brown paper. She thought she’d never tire of that view, especially on a sunny day like this one.
When he finished his call, Luke joined her, dropping a distracted kiss on her cheek, then pausing to take another look.
“Are you unhappy about something, Moira?”
“Just feeling a bit at loose ends,” she admitted, dancing toward the topic, but not yet ready to bring it up.
“You spent the whole morning working on your photographs,” he reminded her, looking puzzled. “Were you unhappy with them?”
“No, some are quite good, in fact. And I have prints to give to Shanna and Kevin and some of the others. I’ve made several for Nell as well. I hope to find frames and give them to her as a thank-you for welcoming me into her home.”
“She’ll love that,” he said. “So what is going on in that complicated mind of yours?”
She met his gaze and risked expressing just a bit of what she’d been thinking on her walk. “I’m not entirely sure I’m cut out to be a career woman.”
“But you’ve barely even begun,” he protested. “How could you possibly know? I thought the idea of being a photographer was exciting to you.”
“It was,” she said. “In a theoretical way. It’s the first time I’ve ever had people tell me I’m not just good at something, but possibly even extraordinary. It took my breath away, to be quite honest. And Peter has jobs waiting, so the pressure’s already on to treat this as something more than a hobby.”
He was obviously floundering, but she had to give him credit. He kept trying to figure out what she was saying.
“You don’t want to be a photographer?” he asked. “You’ve figured that out after only a few days at it? How can that be?”
She sighed. How could she tell him that what she wanted was something much simpler,
