Read Online Up Close and Personal by Maureen Child - Free Book Online Page B

I got him at the pound because I missed having a dog about. I—”
    “You were lonely?”
    He narrowed his gaze on her and his jaw muscle twitched as if he were grinding his teeth. “I’m never lonely. ’Tis only that a house is an empty thing without a dog in it.”
    Ronan Connolly, billionaire bad-ass, would never admit to being lonely. But Laura could hear the real answer in his words. And it wasn’t hard to understand. Thousands of miles away from his home, rattling around alone in that massive house on the cliffs of Laguna. No wonder he’d wanted a dog for the company.
    “There I agree with you.” She sighed and laid a piece of plastic wrap across the top of her palette, protecting the wet paint from smearing. Then she laid it carefully atop the paints stored inside the box, closed the lid and turned the lock.
    “You’ll still not give him back?”
    “No.” It was more now than protecting Beast from being ignored. Or about teaching Ronan that he couldn’t walk away from a commitment. She loved Beast and as Ronan had just said himself, a house without a dog in it is an empty thing.
    “Aye well, then I suppose we’re not finished, you and I.”
    She stood up, folded her stool and leaned it against the trunk of a nearby tree. Taking her canvas down and setting it aside, she then collapsed the three-legged easel and laid it beside everything else. She didn’t look up at Ronan until she was finished. When she did, she said, “No. I suppose not.”
    “You know what you’re doing to me, don’t you?” he asked suddenly.
    “I’m not trying to do anything, Ronan.”
    “And that’s just the frosting on the cake, isn’t it? You don’t even know it, and yet you still scramble my thoughts until I find myself here—” He took a breath. “As you said, talking in circles.”
    She hated that he could twist her insides into knots. Hated knowing that he didn’t want to be anywhere near her—he was just too stubborn to leave before he had his answers.
    And she was no better. She’d held off telling him. Giving him what he wanted from her because she hadn’t been willing to see him walk away for good. But staring up into his eyes now, Laura knew that nothing would ever be as it was, so what the hell was she hanging on to? Ragged dreams? Tattered fantasies?
    They were gone.
    So for her sake, it was time to end this.
    “You don’t want to be here, so don’t be.”
    He reached out for her, grabbed her shoulders and brought her to him. She felt the strength in his hands, read the determination in his eyes.
    “Tell me,” he insisted, drawing her even tighter to him. “Tell me what’s driving you. What’s kept that glint of banked fire in your eyes whenever you look at me. There’s more going on here than just my dog—”
    “This isn’t about Beast,” she said, temper flashing inside her like a struck match, billowing up in heat and flame. Laura pulled free of Ronan’s grasp and staggered back a step or two.
    “Then what , woman?”
    She grabbed up her things, then spun around to face him. “You want to know what’s eating at me, Ronan? Well, here it is. While you were off playing babysitter to that teenager, I was here at home, losing our baby.”
    He looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. His jaw dropped, his eyes went wide, then narrowed a heartbeat later. “You lost—”
    “Now you know everything,” she told him, lifting her chin and meeting those haunting eyes of his for what she knew would be the last time. “So goodbye, Ronan. Have a nice life.”
    She left him there, standing at the edge of the sea, and when she walked away, she didn’t look back.
    * * *
    He followed her.
    What else could he do?
    Thoughts crashed through his mind with the wild ferocity of waves thundering against rocks. Blindly, he headed for his car and pulled into the street just moments behind Laura’s Volkswagen. His hands fisted on the steering wheel, he was half surprised the damned thing didn’t snap