An Outrageous Proposal by Maureen Child Page B

and help you paint.”
    Surrendering, she smiled and asked, “Are you a good
painter?”
    “I’m a man of many talents,” he reminded her.
    And as he walked out of the shop, Georgia thought, he really
hadn’t needed to remind her of that at all.

Six
    “I ’ve an itch between my shoulder blades,”
Sean confessed the following day, as he followed Ronan into the front parlor of
his cousin’s house.
    He felt as if he were surrounded by women lately. Ordinarily,
not a bad thing at all. But just now, between Georgia and his mother and his
housekeeper and even Laura, who was giving him a glare every time they met up,
he was ready for some strictly male company. And his cousin was the one to
understand how he was feeling. Or so he thought.
    “Not surprising.” Ronan walked to the corner, where an elegant
table stood in for a bar, and headed for the small refrigerator that held the
beer he and Sean both needed. “It’s probably much what a rabbit feels when the
hunter’s got his gun trained on it.”
    Sean winced and glared at his cousin’s back. “Thanks for that.
I’ve come to you looking for solidarity and you turn on me like a snake. Are you
going to be no comfort to me in this?”
    “I won’t.” Ronan bent to the fridge, opened it and pulled out
two beers. As he closed the door again, he spotted something small and white
beside it on the floor and picked it up. “A shirt button?”
    “What?”
    “A shirt button,” Ronan repeated, standing up and glancing down
at his own shirt front as if expecting to see that one of the buttons had leaped
free of the fabric. “Where did that come from?”
    Sean knew exactly where. It was one of his, after all, torn
from his shirt the first night he and Georgia had made love, right here in this
room, before a roaring fire. At the thought of that, he went hard as stone and
covered his discomfort by snapping, “How’m I to know why your shirt button is on
the bloody floor? Did you not hear me, Ronan? I said I’m in trouble.”
    Frowning still at the button, Ronan tossed it onto the table,
then crossed the room and handed one of the beers to Sean. “’Tis no more than
you deserve,” he said, tearing off the bottle cap and taking a long drink. “I
warned you, didn’t I, at my own bleeding wedding, to keep your hands off our
Georgia?”
    Sean uncapped his beer as well and took a long, thirsty drink.
Ronan had indeed warned him off, but even now, when things had gotten so
completely confused, he couldn’t bring himself to regret ignoring that
warning.
    “When a man’s tempted by a woman like her,” Sean mused, “he’s
hard put to remember unwanted advice.”
    “And yet, when the shite hits the fan, you come to me for more
of that advice.”
    Sean scowled at his cousin. He’d thought to find a little male
solidarity here in this house that had been as much his home as Ronan’s since he
was a child. Seems he’d been wrong. “When you’ve done gloating, let me
know.”
    “I’ll be a while yet,” Ronan mused and dropped onto the sofa.
Propping his booted feet up on the table in front of him, he glanced up at Sean
and said, “What’s got you so itchy, then?”
    “What hasn’t?” Shaking his head, Sean wandered the room, unable
to settle. Unable to clear his mind enough to examine exactly why he felt as
though he were doing a fast step-toe dance on a hot skillet—barefoot.
    “Then pick one out of the bunch to start with.”
    “Fine.” Sean whirled around, back to the fire, to face his
cousin. Heat seared him from head to toe, and still there was a tiny chill
inside it couldn’t reach. “Father Leary dropped in on me this morning, wanting
to have a ‘pre-marriage’ chat.”
    Ronan snorted. “Aye, I had one with the old man, as well.
Always amazed me, bachelor priests thinking they know enough about marriage to
be handing out counsel on how to treat a wife.”
    “Worse than that, he wanted to tell me all about how sex with a
wife is different from