It wasn’t just his looks that were haunting her, though. It was him. She’d felt an instant connection to him the moment their eyes had met. Bad idea or not, she just couldn’t stop thinking about the man.
Mary fell back on the sofa and groaned. If she closed her eyes, she could remember everything about those twelve hours. The way his eyes seemed to look right into her soul, golden and glowing. His strong hands as he gripped her wrists so easily, frightening and thrilling her at the same time. The quiet but powerful timbre of his voice when he told her she had soft, warm hands.
It was official. She was in lust.
Her phone rang, jolting her from her memories. Even though she knew it couldn’t possibly be him (because, moron that she was, she’d refused to give him her number) part of her still hoped he had somehow found a way. It wouldn’t be that hard. He knew where she lived, after all.
Of course it wasn’t Aidan. It was her mother. Mary closed her eyes and put her hand over her forehead, angry with herself for not remembering that it was Sunday, and her mother always called on Sunday nights.
A sense of doom settled into her chest, displacing the lingering desire. Usually there was some mental preparation required before Mary had the strength to hold a civil conversation with her mother, and even then it was an exercise in patience. In her weakened mental state she didn’t stand a chance.
“You sound off,” Catherine (Cat) Murphy said within seconds, confirming Mary’s fears. “Are you sick?”
“No, Mom,” Mary said, forcing more energy into her voice than she felt. “I was just reading, and I guess I dozed off.”
There was a moment of silence, but Mary knew it was a very brief respite while Catherine loaded her guns.
“You should be out living life, not reading about it,” Catherine said. “You’re still young, Mary, but not by much. Each year you wait, it gets harder and harder to find a decent man willing to care for a woman beyond sweating up the sheets.”
Mary groaned inwardly, wishing that just once, her mother would give it a rest. They rarely saw eye-to-eye on anything, but this was an especially sore topic. Catherine Murphy lived for male attention; to her, it was the most important thing in life. She simply could not understand how Mary could be content to be alone.
“Happy New Year to you, too, Mom,” she said, feeling the weight of guilt upon her shoulders for not calling and wishing her so on New Year’s Eve, which would have been much smarter. There was no way her mother would sit home on a night known for celebrating. She could have just left a message and avoided this. “Can we talk about something else, please?”
“I at least had ten good years with your father,” Cat said, ignoring her. “You barely had ten weeks before you became more of a nursemaid than a wife.”
“Cam didn’t ask for cancer, Mom,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he didn’t. My point is that bad things happen, Mary, whether we want them to or not. Often without warning. It is exactly why you need to grab as much of life as you can while you can. Life is too short, too unpredictable to spend it alone.”
“I’m not alone, Mom,” Mary said, the familiar argument weighing on her already-weary soul. “I have Max.” Besides, she added silently, it’s not as if there were many offers.
“For God’s sake, Mary, he’s a dog.”
Mary looked over her legs at the huge mass of yellow fur currently resembling roadkill. On his back, belly bared to the world, his long legs protruded out at odd angles that would have been painful for a dog with proper hip sockets. His big head hung off the side of the sofa, lips pulled away from massive, gleaming white fangs by gravity, eyes rolled far back in his head, lost in some utopian doggie dream. Max was so much more than a mere dog. He was the only other living soul to which she felt inexplicably linked.
He was also the primary excuse Mary repeatedly used to decline her mother’s frequent pleas to visit her in Florida. There were other reasons, too, not the least of which was her mother’s unerring ability to get on her last nerve in record time. She meant well (at least Mary kept telling herself she did) but she and her mother had very different opinions on what a woman needed to be truly happy.
“You need a vacation,” Cat said, right on cue. “Book a flight and put him in a kennel for a few days. It will be good for both of you.”
Max in a kennel? Only over Mary’s dead, lifeless body. The look of utter betrayal in Max’s eyes alone would be enough to kill both of them. As if sensing he was the topic of conversation, he rolled over onto his side and looked at her. Those big brown eyes sought her out. Once assured that she was near, they closed once again in slumber.
“Not happening, Mom.” Mary wondered, not for the first time, if she was adopted.
“Bill has a son about your age,” she said, switching gears without warning. “His second divorce is almost final, and he’s got a good job.”