"Except the levee project was my own, Ryan," she said, motionless as he looked down into her face. "I wanted you to recognize me for something that I did."

"Enough to kiss me in London?"

Rachel wet her lips but as he watched her, her chin came up with new resolve. "That was...personal."

"How personal?"

She regarded his expression, defined by the shadows that shaped his mouth, and oddly vulnerable, and wanted to kiss him again. "Extremely personal."

He pulled back, and his eyes caught the moonlight.

"None of it was a lie, Ryan," she whispered. "I swear."

The tree at her back, she could go nowhere. A gust of wind flapped her skirts against his legs. One hand bracing the tree, he held his head down as if that act could restrain him from touching her. "If I kiss you again, I won't stop again." His voice was no louder than a whispered caress. A promise. "It won't stop with only a kiss, Rachel."

Drawing the cool air into her shaky lungs, she did no more than breathe as she cast her gaze away from Ryan's compelling profile. A muscle bunched in his cheek.

The distant music had ceased as the bonfire burned itself out, leaving the sky a velvety morass of stars. "What do we do, Rache?" he asked her. "We dance around the other. We sway to the cadence of our own personal rhythm. We always have. Do we keep dancing until one of us goes insane? Or do we just do it."

Rachel's jaw eased open. "Do it? It?"

"I want it. You want it. You make me hard just smelling you." He pressed his nose into her hair. "I'l never be able to eat apple pie again without imagining my mouth all over you. No apple will pass my lips without me thinking of having wanton sex with you. I want to see you naked. Touch you. Taste you." He pulled back to look into her face, his mouth so close she could taste his breath on her lips. "Do we continue the same old dance, Rache?" He slid his fingers into her hair, his eyes on her parted lips. "Or do we sin?"

They stood together in the scented fragrance of the woods, not quite touching, yet so attuned to the other, Rachel could almost hear his heartbeat. "Are you mad, Ryan?"

"Completely." His voice had taken on an edge. "And I'm not even drunk."

"You should be," David said from behind him. "Because when you wake up in the morning you're going to have one big headache to contend with."

Paralyzed with shock, Rachel remained where she was between Ryan and the tree as she listened to David's footsteps in the leaves. "If you two aren't really, really careful, you are going to find yourselves married," he said, like a priest.

A domineering one at that, and Rachel stepped around Ryan. David's dark eyes fell first on her disheveled state, then moved to Ryan, who had yet to turn around she noted as he still leaned with his palm against the tree as if in pain. "Ryan no longer belongs to the Catholic Church," she said bluntly, in no mood for intimidation. "You can't marry us, David. Nothing happened."

"Yet," Ryan said, throwing his arms akimbo as if it were her fault that he had carried her off into the woods. "Nothing has happened, yet." He returned her stare.

Truly, she stood between two of the most domineering men in all the empire.

Then Ryan walked away and left her standing with David, who looked as benevolent and compassionate as a bolt of lightning.

Chapter 8.

R yan's nose itched. Somewhere in the farthest recesses of his brain, he sensed that he wasn't in bed alone and that he was suffering God's worst headache. A warm body curled next to his back.

With the sunrise, Ryan's senses continued to awaken.

He could hear panting, feel the lick of a wet tongue against his neck, the awful scent of dog breath. He groaned on an oath and turned his head. The hound beside him leapt to its feet, wagging its long tail as if Ryan had been asleep for a century rather than a few measly hours. He objected to dogs in general. Mornings in particular.

He lay on his coat atop a thick cushion of straw. He could still scent Rachel on his shirt. Taste her on his lips. His eyes focused on the heavy timbers of the ceiling. A white mass of spiderwebs competed with bird nests on the drooping crossbeams that stretched across the breadth of the roof. A dozen species of noisy finches fluttered about the eaves, sweeping in and out of the hole in the drooping roof.

Until this morning, he thought he was sleeping in an abandoned barn. Ryan turned on his side to pet the ugly hound, his hand freezing as his gaze caught movement in the corner of the stall.

David sat on an empty molasses barrel, his elbows resting on his knees. Ryan groaned as much from the tormenting ache in every muscle in his body as from the sight of a black-garbed priest looking at him with wrath flickering in his eyes. A fat chicken landed on the stall door in a flutter of wings, shedding feathers over Ryan's bed.

"Congratulations," David said, on a note tainted with amusement. "You found the only private quarters to be had within ten miles."

Ryan sat up and pulled his leg against his chest. His face itched with the start of a beard. "Good morning to you, too."

"I'm asking you to stay away from Rachel."

Succinct as always. Ryan shouldn't have been surprised. He had no intention of staying away from Rachel. "That's difficult to do considering the business we both share."

"You know in what way I mean. Rachel is more vulnerable than you think."

"Vulnerable?" he scoffed in disgust. "Like a slab of steel."

"Steel, for all of its strength, can fracture." David met Ryan's gaze, silently defying him to challenge the statement. "Before you accuse her of treachery, know that she used her entire inheritance to float this project and pay the laborers. She is the only reason twelve hundred people have not lost their jobs. She sold her estate in Carlisle to finish this project. Rachel is very popular among the locals, and her crew is protective."

Bracing an elbow across his knee, Ryan observed his brother in the dusty, hazy light of the barn. "How the hell did you find me anyway?"

"A lot of folk saw you leave with her last night and did not take kindly to any threat ye might be posing. They worry for her. So, I kept an eye on you." His gaze surveyed Ryan's sleeping quarters, and one corner of his mouth dimpled. "Did you have a restful night?"

At least he'd been able to sleep prone, which was more than Marrow had probably accomplished in the carriage. Ryan picked straw off his sleeve. "Is she happy living in Ireland? Hiding her passions behind books and other people's lives? Who are her friends?"

"Rachel has many gifts. She is generous in spirit and beloved by those who know her. Perhaps that is all she needs to be happy."

Reformed sinners made pious god-awful saints. Normally, Ryan didn't care for David's sanctimonious half-truths and propaganda. His brother had walked a wide swath of road when he was younger. But David's protective tone pulled at Ryan's conscience-and something else. There were entire years from Rachel's life that Ryan knew nothing about. She had practically disappeared after his wedding to Kathleen. Ryan would find letters every so often that she'd written to Kathleen.

"It isn't my intent to hurt her," Ryan said, dropping his gaze to the straw in his hand before resuming his posture and dusted off his hands. His impatience, the power he'd restrained for her sake, gave Ryan's voice a hard edge. His reasons for being in Rathdrum were far too complicated to launch into explanations now.

"Last night...if you want to know what happened, let Rachel tell you."

David scoffed. "Rachel fakes confession. She wouldn't tell me anything if I buried her in sand up to her neck at low tide."

"Rachel lies during confession?" Ryan was incredulous.

"Not at all. She just doesn't confess to anything." David unfurled his long frame. "You aren't far from my place of residence. Glenealy happens to be my diocese. Do you want to wash and shave?"

"Is that an invitation?"

"You smell like a hound. Besides"-David remained in the doorway of the stall-"you've earned the right, since it's your donation that just increased our building fund. I can spare the water and some breakfast for you and your men."

Ryan raised a dark brow. "Indeed." Obviously, David had absconded with the money Ryan had had in his satchel.

Marrow sat sleepy-eyed on the step of the carriage and came to his feet when Ryan walked out of the barn five minutes later, shrugging into his coat. "Sir." A thatch of blond hair stood straight on end. "Father Donally told us to follow him."

Adjusting his collar, Ryan turned to look over his shoulder as David climbed into a black buggy.

"Sir," Marrow said beneath his breath, "he asked why I was here with you."

Ryan turned his attention on Marrow. "What did you tell him?"

"That I'm here to take over Miss Bailey's duties."

Ryan stared at the sky, wondering why he'd felt it so bloody necessary to come to Ireland and handle this matter with Rachel when a dozen accomplished Ore Industries solicitors could have completed the task. Even if he hadn't begun to chafe under the moral bit of his quandary, the approaching clouds added an edge to his mood. He did not suffer dilemmas. Not when they applied to business decisions.

"She won't like your decision, sir," Marrow contributed further.

Ryan directed the force of his tone at the young engineer, for it seemed annoyingly obvious he was smitten with Rachel. But pity the poor fool who could not control her.

She would leave heel prints on his back.

Ryan reached around Marrow for his personal effects beneath the seat. "Follow us in this carriage. I'll go with my brother."

"Mum"-Elsie pushed aside the tent divider-"he is here."

Rachel's head was bent over the last of her buttons on her shirtwaist. "Who is here?" She yanked her jacket off the cot and shrugged into the sleeves.

The color rose high in Elsie's pretty cheeks. "Mr. Donally, mum," she whispered energetically. "He is here with Mr. Marrow. They have gone to the work site."

Marrow again. Rachel frowned. She had overslept for the first time in years.

She watched as a flustered Elsie hurried to straighten the tent as if Ryan would be coming inside her private quarters. "Elsie, please see to breakfast." Rachel's impatience with the flighty girl was evident in her voice. "We'll eat outside."

Rachel checked herself briefly in the glass before leaving the tent, aware that a pebble had somehow gotten into her boot. She'd had a wretched night's sleep. Freckles were clearly visible on her nose after she'd spent all day yesterday in the sun. Though why she should care at all she didn't know.

A dreary sky threw a canopy of gray over the treetops. The closer Rachel got to the river, the louder the sound of rushing water and the slower her steps until she reached the ledge. A mist rose from the forest floor behind her. Ryan stood balanced between two girders stretched over the river, looking at something near the bank below as he spoke to her foreman. Marrow stood beside them.

Ryan appeared much as he did last night when he'd taken her in his arms and kissed her in the moonlight. Dressed in dark trousers and a white shirt now plastered to his body from the river spray, he looked as if he could be a fixture to the steel-and-granite construction site. Clearly, he was a man straddling the banks of two opposing worlds, knowing both intimately. A crane was swinging its heavy load over the riverbed, the sound of the steam engines too loud to hear anything else. Then, as if sensing her presence, Ryan lifted his head and saw her standing on the ridge.

Her heart thumped against her ribs. She'd thought after he'd walked away from her last night that she'd mastered her emotions. She was wrong. Rachel couldn't be within a hundred feet of him without experiencing some bodily reaction that sent her brain into a spin. Doing it had suddenly become a choice in her mind. Restless, she wriggled her foot in her boot, aware that the stone was bruising her insole. She dropped to untie the laces, so did not see Ryan's frown, only felt the slide of his gaze down her body. Her hands not entirely steady, she noted that her thick braid fell over one shoulder. She realized she'd forgotten her work hat. Rachel yanked on the knot. "Damn," she muttered, when she discerned that she would need fingernails to loosen the laces.

The work crew was moving down the river. Turning back into the woods, Rachel let them go on without

her. Embarrassed and furious with herself, she finally dropped upon a fallen tree stump and bent over herknee.How was she possibly going to manage the rest of the day when she couldn't even dress herself?A pair of dark shoes materialized in front of her.Rachel's hands froze. Hands on her laces, she raised her head.Ryan loomed tall against the gray sky. His gaze drifted down her attire, his eyes graphic with displeasure.

Surely, he didn't expect her to climb around on crossbeams and scaffolding in petticoats?He held a hat out to her. "Put it on before you go to the construction site," he said.He was giving her his hat. "Don't worry," he said, reading her silence with amusement, "I'll borrow another."

She rejected the notion that he protect or coddle her, that any act of chivalry on his part only made herfeel inept if not outright suspicious. "You don't have to do that. I can get my own hat.""I'm not being nice. I'm being your boss. It's an order."Rachel snatched the pithlike helmet from his hand, her fingers brushing his, and set the hat behind her."What is wrong with your boot?" he asked."I have a pebble inside. It's nothing.""Let me see.""Absolutely not. I can do this myself.""Jaysus, Rachel." He straddled the tree trunk. "I'm not going to bite you. I'm not even going to kiss you.

Just give me your foot."

His fingernails were smooth and buffed, in better shape than hers. "I don't want the laces cut," she

warned him, knowing she would appear spineless if she refused his aide. "The lace is only knotted. If youcan't untie it, I'll go back to the tent.""Let me see."Rachel brought her leg around and plopped her foot between his legs, causing him a moment's startled hesitation. She lifted her chin. A perceptible flicker darkened his eyes. He wrapped his hand around her

slim ankle and slid it nearer to his pelvis.

Rachel swallowed hard as she tried to look somewhere else, a formidable task as he worked his long fingers over the laces with surprising proficiency. Her lashes drifted downward to his tanned, competent hands, dark against the white cuff of his shirt. Those hands had touched her intimately last night and made her feel needful things inside.

Looking at Ryan's dark head bent over her leg, she forced herself to think of something other than his words to her last night. "Have you ever had a rock inside your boot?" she asked offhandedly.

If he thought her foot between his thighs the least evocative, he said nothing. "Many times when I used to visit sites." He politely attended the laces. "They can be a nuisance."

He smelled different today, more tame.

"I imagine it's been a long time. Climbing around a construction site like a common laborer. And in your churchgoing attire, too."

He ignored her. "You've been in Glenealy with David." She leaned nearer to inhale the clean scent of him. Her braid whispered across his forearm. Ryan had used David's shaving soap. She raised her lashes to see his wary eyes narrowed on hers. "Don't worry," she whispered against his cheek. "You won't find the ladies protesting the scent of his shaving soap on you."

He removed a knife and cut the laces.

"Dammit Ryan!" She stared in disbelief. "I told you-"

"I hope you have another lace," he said without apology, easing her boot off her foot and dumping out the guilty stone. "I would hate to see you don satin slippers with that outfit."

"Thank you very much, but I'm really quite recovered."

He held her ankle captured.

The temperature escalated between them. "Nonsense," he said politely, his hand a solid vise around her ankle. "You look flushed. My services are the least I can provide for all the endearing hospitality I've found among my Irish kinfolk."

She felt the first drops of rain. Suddenly, she wondered where he had gone last night after leaving the fair -or if he had slept alone. "Did you not find your quarters cozy last night?"

"I did." He leaned nearer and leered, no longer interested in appeasement. "And I didn't sleep alone in case you were wondering."

She tried to yank her foot away. Her palms fell back on the rough bark of the tree as she caught herself. "I wasn't wondering any such thing."

His hands warm on her calf, he caressed a thumb across her knee, rolling his palms beneath her legs and sliding her across the rough bark until her foot was again between his thighs. "Don't you want the sordid details? I thought you liked it when I talked naughty."

"Not as much as you like talking naughty." She opened her mouth and tasted the rain, feeling decidedly naughty.

"Does it bother you that I might have had company in bed?"

Taking issue with his smugness, she returned her gaze to his dark enigmatic one. His hair, troubled from the mist, lay across his brow. He grinned. "If I were to compare the way that you both kiss, you slobber less."